The Enforcement of External Voting Rights and the Italian Diaspora: The Case of the United States

This essay examines the voting behaviour of Italian citizens in the United States in the homeland’s Parliamentary elections and referenda since the passing of a 2001 legislative package that let Italian nationals residing abroad vote by mail. Specifically, it aims at assessing to what a degree external voting rights strengthened Italian Americans’ diasporic ties to Italy. The essay concludes that most eligible voters failed to profit by such provisions and that the mobilization of the few who mailed their ballots resulted less from Italian-based concerns than from U.S.-oriented stimuli. Therefore, Italian citizens hardly revealed a disporic behaviour in politics.