Domestic Violence Policies in Russia and Italy: Comparative Analysis of Policy Changes in 2016-2019

The countries all over the world discuss the problem of domestic violence as complicated and difficult to resolve. Individual states, NGOs and international organizations continue to search for effective mechanisms of fighting against domestic violence and providing victims with workable strategies for recovery. Russia and Italy are among the countries still struggling for more comprehensive policies to decrease the number of domestic violence victims and develop more accessible and understandable measures. In the Russian Federation the two changes in domestic violence policy happened in 2016, when domestic violence was decriminalized, and in 2019, when the project on domestic violence prevention was published. In Italy in 2019 a new law on domestic violence with tougher penalties was adopted. In the master’s thesis we apply Multiple Streams Framework to the analysis of policy changes in Russia and Italy and compare the reasons for these changes in the two countries with different political regimes, but with similar strong influence of traditional and religious forces. Hence, the analysis allows us to identify what pushes the policy changes and which policy entrepreneurs and to what extent influence the decision-making process in two different political environments.