The Institutional Logics of Citizenship Education in Contemporary Democracies: Insights from the Italian Experience Since 1958

Abstract

Driven by globalization, migration, and digital transformation, the concept of citizenship has undergone significant reconfiguration, prompting education systems to shift from knowledge transmission toward the cultivation of democratic competences and social integration. This study aims to examine the institutional evolution and underlying logics of citizenship education in Italy since 1958, and to explain how policy reforms have responded to changing political and social pressures. Using Italy as a single case study, the research adopts a historical-institutionalist approach and integrates insights from institutional change theory, multicultural education theory, and citizenship theory. The analysis is structured around three analytical dimensions: policy drivers, curriculum structures, and governance logics. Drawing on legislative documents, ministerial guidelines, and secondary historical analyses, the study reconstructs a five-stage developmental trajectory of citizenship education. The findings identify a pattern characterized by both path dependence and episodic institutional recalibration. Citizenship education evolved from postwar moral reconstruction and “defensive democracy,” through phases of depoliticization and curricular marginalization in the 1980s and 1990s, to gradual Europeanization and formal curricular consolidation under Law No. 169 of 30 October 2008. A more explicit phase of state re-centralization emerged following Law No. 92 of 20 August 2019, marking a shift toward a competence-oriented and nationally coordinated framework. The study concludes that citizenship education in Italy has transformed from a loosely defined normative subject into a structured governance instrument aimed at reinforcing democratic cohesion amid pluralism and political distrust. The Italian case offers comparative insights into how contemporary democracies recalibrate citizenship education to address identity tensions, social diversity, and democratic fragility.