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Pubblicato per la celebre collana Institutional Analysis della University of Michigan Press, questo testo è il secondo di tre volumi antologici che raccolgono alcuni dei contributi più rilevanti del Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis. Animato da Elinor Ostrom - vincitrice del prestigioso 'Frank E. Seidman Distinguished Award in Political Economy' - presso l'Università dell'Indiana (USA), il Workshop è al centro di una rete internazionale di scienziati politici, sociologi, economisti ed antropologi che usano l'analisi istituzionale per studiare i beni pubblici ed i problemi della governance (.).

Pubblicato per la celebre collana Institutional Analysis della University of Michigan Press, questo testo è il secondo di tre volumi antologici che raccolgono alcuni dei contributi più rilevanti del Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis. Animato da Elinor Ostrom - vincitrice del prestigioso 'Frank E. Seidman Distinguished Award in Political Economy' - presso l'Università dell'Indiana (USA), il Workshop è al centro di una rete internazionale di scienziati politici, sociologi, economisti ed antropologi che usano l'analisi istituzionale per studiare i beni pubblici ed i problemi della governance (.).

In two articles the author presents some key elements from his recently completed thesis about functional, non-intrusive information infrastructures for interorganisational public policy implementation. The development of these information infrastructures requires a new approach, chain-computerisation, based on new concepts and practices. This methodology is vital for public administration, if the problems associated with interorganisational policy implementation are to be overcome. Chain-computerisation recognises the impossibility in many interorganisational settings of implementing government policy, because no single organisational actor has authority over the system. Thus, for example, a Dutch requirement that prisoners serving longer prison sentences must notify the Benefits system so that benefit paid can be adjusted, cannot be enforced because this multi-agency setting is too complex to allow adequate co-ordinated control. What is needed is an informational solution which automatically signals to the Imprisonment system that a prisoner is receiving benefits. Such highly automated communication systems can also protect privacy, in this particular example by signalling that a note must be sent by the prisoner to his benefit agency rather than by triggering enforcement by the Imprisonment system without the prisoner concerned knowing it. This methodology can be seen as emerged from 'lessons learned' during the period that the author was responsible for the development of information policies at the Dutch Ministry of Justice. Chain-computerisation is explained here by means of examples taken from the penal and social welfare systems, but it should be emphasized that the methodology of chain-computerisation can be applied to many other situations where public policy is to be implemented by close co-operation of many autonomous public and private organisations.

This PhD thesis investigates the role of the reduction of fiscal autonomy and uncertainty in the allocation of resources in driving the behaviour of Italian municipalities in non-autonomous regions and of the central government. Focusing on the uncertainty of grants to compensate the abolition of the property tax on main dwellings, we construct a regression discontinuity (RD) and regression kink (RK) design to test how the behaviour of municipalities changes depending on whether they are in a "bad" state (when they manage fewer resources after property tax reform) or in a "good" state (when they manage more resources after property tax reform), and also in light of the "partisan effect" (the mechanism that allows central governments to allocate more resources to the lower layer of government politically aligned with it). An empirical analysis of Italian municipalities suggests that: 1. Municipalities acted differently in terms of waste tax implementation. Their behaviour depended on the benefits or costs they assumed af- ter the abolition of the property tax on main dwellings: in particular municipalities that suffered a loss of resources increased the waste tax more; 2. Property tax reform led to an imperfect substitution between the prop- erty tax on the main dwelling and the waste tax, with a consequent loss in equality; 3. Despite the weakness of the ex-post control and the absence of pun- ishment for lying municipalities concerning the definition of a compen- satory grant may allow the presence of a weak "partisan effect", the reform of the main dwelling property tax was transparent in resources allocation.

Public good provision has always been a central role of government, but it is also an important element in political competition. The recent financial difficulties of public authorities have undermined their capacity to invest in public goods, requiring politicians to search for new ways to finance those investments. A solution widely adopted is the Public-Private Partnership, an instrument designed to provide more valuable public goods thanks to efficiency gains coming from bundling building and operating phases in a single contract, but that has often resulted in resounding failures. The most common explanation for this lack of results is that PPP are often adopted not for efficiency purposes but to avoid financial constraints. We build a model to analyze the incentives for politicians to use PPP for pork barrel politics in presence of a binding budget constraint, when they have a better ability to look forward than their voters, and are limited in their possibility to stay in charge. We then release the assumption of homogeneous income among voters, and analyze how this modifies politician's incentives to pander.