Suchergebnisse

AbstractThe onset of the European NGEU program represented for European member states a formidable opportunity for post‐pandemic recovery and yet a significant challenge at the same time: to receive and retain EU funds, each state had to promptly draw up a National Recovery and Resilience Plan—NRRP) and commit to a pressing timetable for its implementation. Regarding this challenge, the Italian government's response is a case in point: first, Italy is by far the largest beneficiary of NGEU funds; second, it has long had a reputation for being laggard in both the implementation of European directives and the spending of cohesion policy structural funds; and the formulation of the NRRP, the design of the governance in charge of its implementation, and implementation itself, occurred at a particular moment in the country's political life. Based on these premises, the article examines the upstream process by which the Italian government designed the implementation arrangements for the adoption of simplification policies under the NRRP and their downstream recalibration in the first two years, taking the implementation arrangements as the dependent variable. Analytically, the focus is on the interplay between the pressures of EU timetables and internal political dynamics, be they the legacy or strategic political considerations on the part of national policymakers, in determining the design and eventual re‐design of implementation arrangements as the plan unfolds.

AbstractA major shift occurred in the European Union (EU) approach to tackle the apparently unstoppable rise of populist parties across European countries and to preserve the integrity of the EU polity. EU economic governance seems to have shifted from a logic of conditionality to a logic of solidarity underpinned by a pan-European strategic view allowing EU governance to support and enable public sector reforms at the national level. By investigating the case of Italy as an EU member state, we find that the European governance shift occurring in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic was largely mediated by the mutating character of Italian populism. A logic of conditionality which was largely centered around EU governance was largely shifted to a logic of solidarity taking into account political conditions in the member countries.

This introduction to our special issue discusses the challenges related to the cooperative and competitive interaction between national regulators, regulatory networks, and European agencies within increasingly complex EU regulatory regimes. In this context, a special attention is given to the dynamic nature of multilevel processes. After presenting an overview of the contributions to the special issue, we conclude by offering three insights on possible avenues for further research, referring to (a) the governance structure of regulatory networks, (b) the micro-foundations of regulatory networks, and (c) their role in implementation and enforcement.

AbstractThis research contributes to the expanding literature on the determinants of government transparency. It uncovers the dynamics of transparency in the Italian case, which shows an interesting reform trajectory: until the late 1980s no transparency provisions existed; since then, provisions have dramatically increased under the impulse of changing patterns of political competition. The analysis of the Italian case highlights that electoral uncertainty for incumbents is a double-edged sword for institutional reform: on the one hand, it incentivizes the adoption of ever-growing transparency provisions; on the other, it jeopardizes the implementation capacity of public agencies by leading to severe administrative burdens.

According to classical literature on delegation in the regulatory state, independent regulators are established to enhance the credibility of regulatory policies. In that regard, anti‐corruption agencies (ACAs) are peculiar not only because they deal with extremely salient issues, but also because they receive delegated competencies from the government as the "principal" while, at the same time, the government is their regulatory target. How do governments manage regulatory reforms to strike a balance between gaining credibility as "principals" and possibly losing credibility as targets? Drawing from insights on historical institutionalism, this article undertakes a qualitative longitudinal analysis of organizational change regarding ACAs in Italy, where these kinds of agencies are particularly relevant to political leaders. The findings shed light on delegation as a dynamic process for which multiple factors intersect over time.

Using a process sequencing approach, this article shows how Italy's response to an earlier fiscal crisis has shaped the response to the current one in two public sector areas that are especially susceptible to fiscal constraints: the budget process and personnel policies. Substantively, it shows the extent to which Italian policymakers have used the repertoire of solutions of the past and the pressures of the current crisis to freeze the expenditure of the public sector. Previous New Public Management-inspired reforms have been sidelined but not completely extinguished. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractInternational organizations such as the WHO have worked to raise awareness of the massive infodemic that accompanied the COVID‐19 outbreak and made it hard for people to find trustworthy sources of information and reliable guidance for their decisions. Our contribution focuses on the Italian case, where the Communications Regulatory Authority (AGCOM) was able to act as first mover in its field so as to strategically frame the problem of disinformation in the absence of a pre‐existing policy intervention. An emerging body of research shows that the activity of formally independent regulators is not necessarily limited to the implementation of delegated regulatory competencies. We discuss the implications of the activity of independent regulators for the fight against disinformation during the COVID‐19 pandemic. We find that as a political actor in its own right, the Italian media regulator claimed control over sectoral expertise in order to shape the crucial first steps of the response to the infodemic.

Action against disinformation has become more important than ever in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. This is due to the synchronous global scale of the problem and its potentially deadlier consequences as the public seeks out guidance regarding what they might do to lower the risk of infection. This article investigates the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on the regulation of social media platforms as it is mediated by the legacy of previous responses to disinformation. It shows that the Covid-19 crisis has catalyzed the shift to co-regulatory approaches that imposed reporting obligations on platforms at the European level. It also raises concerns about the implementation of the new European regulatory package that will largely depend on the initiatives of individual Member States such as Italy, where the low level of societal resilience to disinformation increases the incentives for political leaders to ignore the problem of disinformation.

International organizations such as the WHO have worked to raise awareness of the massive infodemic that accompanied the COVID-19 outbreak and made it hard for people to find trustworthy sources of information and reliable guidance for their decisions. Our contribution focuses on the Italian case, where the Communications Regulatory Authority (AGCOM) was able to act as first mover in its field so as to strategically frame the problem of disinformation in the absence of a pre-existing policy intervention. An emerging body of research shows that the activity of formally independent regulators is not necessarily limited to the implementation of delegated regulatory competencies. We discuss the implications of the activity of independent regulators for the fight against disinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that as a political actor in its own right, the Italian media regulator claimed control over sectoral expertise in order to shape the crucial first steps of the response to the infodemic.

International organizations such as the WHO have worked to raise awareness of the massive infodemic that accompanied the COVID‐19 outbreak and made it hard for people to find trustworthy sources of information and reliable guidance for their decisions. Our contribution focuses on the Italian case, where the Communications Regulatory Authority (AGCOM) was able to act as first mover in its field so as to strategically frame the problem of disinformation in the absence of a pre‐existing policy intervention. An emerging body of research shows that the activity of formally independent regulators is not necessarily limited to the implementation of delegated regulatory competencies. We discuss the implications of the activity of independent regulators for the fight against disinformation during the COVID‐19 pandemic. We find that as a political actor in its own right, the Italian media regulator claimed control over sectoral expertise in order to shape the crucial first steps of the response to the infodemic.