Selective emulation in the Mediterranean: Spain’s and Italy’s competing Africa strategies

This article compares Italy’s and Spain’s contemporary strategies towards Africa in order to examine how geographically proximate Southern European states facing similar structural challenges construct different official models of external engagement. Focusing on the Spain-Africa Strategy 2025-2028 and Italy’s Mattei Plan, the article argues that recent Southern Member States’ engagement with Africa is shaped by a process of selective emulation: states adopt similar strategic vocabularies and policy agendas, but filter them through different national constructions of authority. While Spain privileges multilevel coordination and development-oriented cooperation within a broader Atlantic and EU framework, Italy advances a more executive-led model of engagement organized around ministerial authority, private, state-owned and state-linked economic actors, and the geopolitical vision of the ‘Enlarged Mediterranean’. Methodologically, the article conducts a comparative quantitative content analysis of the two national strategies using an original coding scheme organized around four analytical frames – national, EU, African and international – in order to trace how authority, agenda-setting and agency are constructed in official strategic self-representations. The findings show that selective emulation produces convergence at the level of strategic vocabularies and policy priorities, while leaving substantial variation in how state authority and governance are officially represented.