While almost all European democracies from the 1980s started to accord legal recognition to same-sex couples, Italy was, in 2016, the last West European country to adopt a regulation, after a tortuous path. Why was Italy such a latecomer? What kind of barriers were encountered by the legislative process? What were the factors behind the policy change? To answer these questions, this article first discusses current morality policymaking, paying specific attention to the literature dealing with same-sex partnerships. Second, it provides a reconstruction of the Italian policy trajectory, from the entrance of the issue into political debate until the enactment of the civil union law, by considering both partisan and societal actors for and against the legislative initiative. The article argues that the Italian progress towards the regulation of same-sex unions depended on the balance of power between change and blocking coalitions and their degree of congruence during the policymaking process. In 2016 the government formed a broad consensus and the parliament passed a law on civil unions. However, the new law represented only a small departure from the status quo due to the low congruence between actors within the change coalition.

中文翻译：

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彩虹之上的某个地方：意大利和同性结合的监管

虽然几乎所有 1980 年代的欧洲民主国家都开始对同性伴侣给予法律承认，但意大利是 2016 年最后一个在曲折道路后采用法规的西欧国家。为什么意大利来得这么晚？立法过程中遇到了哪些障碍？政策变化背后的因素是什么？为了回答这些问题，本文首先讨论了当前的道德政策制定，特别关注处理同性伴侣关系的文献。其次，它通过考虑支持和反对立法倡议的党派和社会行为者，重构了意大利的政策轨迹，从问题进入政治辩论到公民联盟法的颁布。文章认为，意大利在监管同性联盟方面取得的进展取决于变革和阻止联盟之间的权力平衡以及它们在决策过程中的一致性程度。2016年，政府形成广泛共识，议会通过了公民工会法。然而，由于变革联盟内的参与者之间的一致性较低，新法律仅代表了与现状的一小部分偏离。