RT Article T1 ‘The constitution of political membership': Punishment, political membership, and the Italian case JF Theoretical criminology VO 21 IS 4 SP 458 OP 477 A1 Gallo, Zelia LA English YR 2017 UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1679085107 AB The article argues that punishment will vary depending on how political membership is constituted in different polities. This has significant implications for arguments that link contemporary western punitiveness to ‘anti-politics', understood here as a degradation of political membership. The article argues that the spread of ‘anti-politics' and its penal implications will depend on how political membership is constituted in different polities and in their ‘State'. It reaches this conclusion by exploring the way in which ‘the State' appears in the literature on politics and punishment, and by adopting a re-worked definition of ‘the State'. The Italian case study is then used to demonstrate both the link between punishment and political membership, and the need to contextualize our analyses of ‘anti-politics' and punitiveness. K1 Anti-politics, K1 Political membership K1 Punishment K1 State theory K1 Italy DO 10.1177/1362480617724825