Unstable Political We-feelings in Italy and Israel: Cyclical de-civilizing parabolas?

Do Italy and Israel attest progressive de-civilizing phenomena in light of the erosion in political stability and institutional paradigms? What are the differences between Italian and Israeli imperfect Statehoods, witnessing fluctuant tendencies in their democratic civilizing and de-civilizing processes? Despite historical, political and sociological differences, both Italian and Israeli democracies have shown signs of political unrest and segmentation. The latter are due to socio-political and socio-cultural cleavages that have been politically addressed but never truly overcome. The interaction between State and citizenry, anchored to national we-feelings (often conceptualized by Elias in relation to power-ratios), transformed the two countries into nation-state-based republics but which remain susceptible to instability, maybe even disintegration. The paper poses the question of how and why the two democracies present similar challenges to their democracies. The article looks at three socio-historical properties which define the democratic ''self'' of the two polities: 1) the plurality of different collectivities within the socio-political national fabric. Italy, a unified nation-state, remains the sum of different regional identities and territorial we-feelings (socio-cultural particolarismi); Israel also, despite the apparent hegemony of Jewishness and Zionism, present multiple forms of collective sense of belonging (Jewish vs. non-Jewish; secularized vs. religious); 2. The capacity of foster pactional compromises between different sociological and ideological stands aimed at securing governability; 3) The institutional cadre of public rites and collective national identification with the democratic republican regime (debates over collective memory in both countries). These three properties shed light on the socio-historical stratification and transformation of institutions in both democracies, conceptualized within a nation-state based social figuration. Though apparently different, both democracies have known political crises and emergencies (terrorism) that impacted their national resilience, embodied by the state. More recently, the two countries have faced the twofold crisis of changes in government, combined with the outburst of the Covid-19 pandemic. Nonetheless, whereas the Italian parliament reacted to the crisis by shifts in government, with the outcome of an enlarged coalition, based on 50% political -50% technocratic members; Israeli dissolved legislatures until general elections were translated into an ideologically diversified grand coalition. The article thus offers a long-term figurational analysis of the differences and similarities between the two ''mature'' democracies. It hence adopts a macro-analysis of (de)civilizing processes while it traces the institutional, normative and political aspects (e.g., electoral turnouts, government-formation, political blocs) indicating change and continuity. The analysis constructs and juxtaposes the democratic ideal-types for each case-study, conceptualises the interdependencies between nation-building, state-building and governability in both Italy and Israel by contextualizing recent changes, given the properties they share. By doing so, the article provides a think description of the intersection between democracy and national identity in the two countries.