In a perspective of local history that combines problem analysis with a reconstruction accessible even to non-specialists, this book addresses the economy, society and institutions of a rural community of the Tuscan Apennines. The community of Raggiolo is portrayed over a long span of time ranging from the late centuries of the Middle Ages up to the end of the eighteenth century. We are thus offered a picture of the Casentino mountains which reveals - in the centuries-old intertwining of mountain economy, social equality, sharing of the management of the local administration and the goods belonging to the collectivity - one of the main reasons for the resistance to change which was to mark the end of the ancien regime. - In una prospettiva di storia locale che intreccia l'analisi problematica alla ricostruzione accessibile anche ai non specialisti, il volume studia economia, società, istituzioni di una comunità rurale dell'Appennino toscano. La comunità di Raggiolo viene colta in una lunga durata che dai secoli finali del Medioevo si protrae fino alla fine del Settecento. In tal modo viene offerto un quadro della montagna casentinese che coglie nel secolare intreccio fra economia montana, eguaglianza sociale, condivisione della gestione dell'ammistrazione locale e dei beni appartenenti alla collettività, uno dei principali motivi della resistenza al cambiamento che segnerà la fine dell'antico regime.
The article examines the results of the Commission of Inquiry into the Illegal/Irregular Allocation of Public Land related to the case study of the Mau forest (Rift Valley region). The Commission's work (2002-05) has brought to light the close link between land and political patronage, illustrating how land allocation has been used by the political, judicial and military élite to pursue their own political and personal interests. The paper aims to reflect on the effects of the Ndung'u Commission Report in the south-western region of the Mau forest; in particular, it analyses the process of "degazettement" that in the period of democratic transition (1991-2002) led to the conversion of large portions of forest into agricultural land.
The purpose of the paper is to explain the process of policy change that occurred within the IMF during the 1990s in the area of capital account liberalization. Specifically, the paper compares the policies pursued in the aftermath of the Mexican crisis (1994-95) with the policies pursued after the Asian crisis (1997-98) supporting a constructivist political economy explanation of policy change. Showing the influence of economic ideas on the policies pursued by the IMF, the argument is that the governance of the international financial regime has shifted from a system of centralized cooperation to a system decentralized cooperation. Whereas the former revolved around the role of an intergovernmental organization such as the IMF, the latter builds upon the cooperation of states & non-state actors within the framework of a public-private partnership. Adapted from the source document.
The aim of this chapter is to shed light on the policy process triggered by a major private initiative of real estate investment. It consists of thebuilding of a new football stadium with related facilities, plus business and leisure centers. In the considered time-frame (2012-2017) the public-private relationships implied in this process took the form of a long and uncertain bargaining. We wanted to know if this case of urban development reveals significant changes in the strategies public actors pursue in Rome when dealing with private investments in real estate business. Moreover, we have answered questions about continuity or discontinuity in the role played by political actors and institutions in what we consider a peculiar kind of urban regime and the related accumulation strategies. In order to do so, our analysis focuses on the dynamics of the policy agenda and the forms taken by the governance of this process.
The research aims to provide a first introductory look to the life and thought of Jacques-Vincent Delacroix (1743-1831), Avocat au Parlement in Paris during the Ancien Régime, a well-known professor of Public law at the Lycée from 1789 to 1793, Judge in Versailles since 1795 and author of a real bestsellers of the Revolutionary Era, the "Constitutions des principaux États de l'Europe et des États-Unis". Lawyer and man of letters who lived between the reign of Louis XV and the French Revolution of 1830, Delacroix has been both a prolific writer and an eye-witness of the political and cultural changes who finally lead to the creation of the Modern France. So, the life of Delacroix became a case of study due to the fact that it helps to understand better the many ups-and-downs and the late successes of an entire generation, who asserted itself only at the end of the Ancien Régime and slowly became the trait d'union between the revolutionaries of 1789 and the men who arose again in defense of freedom in 1830. This study, who wants also be a first contribution to a future fulfillment of a more specific political biography of Delacroix, takes shape as an interdisciplinary approach to his life – where the first part is a description of the put on trial of Delacroix in front of the Revolutionary Tribunal in 1795 and a report of both the contemporary and the historical debate that surrounded the event, the second one is a complete and revisited biographic profile, and the third one is a reconstruction of his carrier during the Ancien Régime – that finally lead to explain how Delacroix came closer to the revolutionary line-up and what are the origins of his following faithful, but always critical, acceptation of the ideals of 1789.
This thesis is a collection of three essays about the economics of coordination. Coordination issues arise when, in presence of multiple equilibria, heterogeneously informed agents need to coordinate with each other towards a Pareto-superior outcome. Electoral outcomes, collective decision-making, currency attacks or polit- ical regime changes examples of coordination problems. The first chapter provides a game theoretic analysis of group decision making, investigating how an agent's communication behavior is affected by different voting systems. I show that in an ideal state where communication is noisy but agents can communicate without opportunity costs, agents will always reach unanimous consensus regardless of which voting system governs the deliberative process. I further show that under the more realistic case in which communication involves opportunity costs, voting systems shape an agent's communication behavior. Specifically, when the opportunity costs of communication are low, a voting system based on unanimity approximates the results of the ideal state. Conversely, when communication involves high opportunity costs, a voting system based on majority is more desirable. The second essay is an experimental test of the predictions developed in the first chapter. The experiment is designed to determine how different voting institutions in uence the process of communication of collective decision bodies when communication can be costly. In contrast with the existing literature, I have found that different voting institutions induce different decision outcomes. In particular, a voting system based on unanimity fosters subjects' communication and information sharing. Once subjects choose to communicate, I also have observed that communication unambiguously improves the quality of the decision outcome across each voting rule. The third and final essay provides a political regime-change interpretation of the organized crime phe- nomenon. Under the assumption that the a criminal organization in a society benefits of the support of individuals, I investigate the strategic interplay between a criminal organization and a large number of citizens who might be more inclined to support the criminal organization rather than reporting its illegal activities to the legal authority. Borrowing from the economic literature on coordination and regime change, I model a criminal organization as an autocratic regime and claim that illegal activities are used in order to raise citizens support.
The present study analyzes the historical framework of contemporary Ethiopia. Particular attention is given to the economic and political events from the regime change in 1991 to the death of TPLF leader Meles Zenawi in 2012. In line with the Braudelian historical analysis three aspects will be taken into consideration: the Ethiopian Empire under Haile Selassie's rule, the Ethiopian Revolution of 1974, with the rise to power of the Soviet-aligned Derg, and the ensuing civil war with the Maoist guerillas of the TPLF. In addition, the TPLF regime will be examined according to its three underlying concepts – revolutionary democracy, ethnic federalism, and developmental state – and defining theories – neo-patrimonialism, vanguard capitalism, and political marketplace.
Between the end of the 18th century and the first decades of the 19th century, the eastern coast of the Adriatic experienced dramatic regime changes; after centuries of Venetian rule, Istria and Dalmatia became part of the French Illyrian Provinces, later becoming a dominion of the Habsburgs. Against the background of these political events, the essay explores the contribution of French architects and artists to the European circulation of knowledge on ancient and medieval buildings in the region, in other words, to the formulation of an orientalizing and peripheral image, seen as an intermediate zone between Greece and Italy.
Il contributo intende esaminare i caratteri del notariato milanese nel delicato momento di passaggio dall'antico regime alla successiva età napoleonica, quando l'ideologia della Rivoluzione, esportata dalle armate napoleoniche, comportò, nello specifico settore notarile, l'abbandono delle eterogenee funzioni che avevano caratterizzato i notai settecenteschi, in continuo bilanciamento tra 'privato' e 'pubblico', e l'affermarsi di una serie di nuovi, fondamentali principi. Si studierà, in particolare, il caso di Milano che, dopo aver conosciuto alcuni cambiamenti di rilievo sul finire dell'ancien régime, come la nascita dell'Archivio pubblico (1775), la riforma giuseppina del reclutamento dei notai e il Regolamento generale per i notari della Lombardia austriaca (1794), visse, prima da capitale del Regno d'Italia napoleonico e poi nella realtà politica del Regno Lombardo-Veneto, un'intensa stagione di vivaci dibattiti in merito all'opportunità e alle modalità di innovare una professione, da tempo esercitata in maniera proteiforme da un ceto, tutt'altro che compatto, in cui si distinguevano operatori molto diversi tra loro per cultura e provenienza sociale. Senza apparentemente soffrire i frenetici rivolgimenti politici della prima metà dell'Ottocento, i notai lombardi si dimostrarono una categoria operosa, capace di adattarsi ai tempi nuovi, non più frenati, nella loro ascesa sociale e professionale, dai vincoli imposti dalla società di antico regime. ; The essay intends to examine the characteristics of the Milanese notary profession in the delicate moment of transition from the ancient regime to the subsequent Napoleonic age, when the ideology of the Revolution, exported by the Napoleonic armies, involved, in the specific notary sector, the abandonment of the heterogeneous functions that had characterized the eighteenth-century notaries, in a continuous balance between 'private' and 'public', and the affirmation of a series of new, fundamental principles. With the "legal revolution" that Napoleon introduced in Italy in the field of professions, an unprecedented transformation was achieved, even in the notarial sector. The suppression of professional colleges and corporations put an end to the age-old monopoly of qualifications, now liberalized both in relation to private and public activities. Any distinction between noble and bourgeois professions was canceled with the formal birth of the liberal professions.In particular, the case of Milan will be studied: Milan, after having experienced some important changes at the end of the ancien régime, such as the birth of the public archive (1775), the Joseph II's reform of the recruitment of notaries and the Regolamento generale per i notari della Lombardia austriaca (1794), lived, first as the capital of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy and then in the political reality of the Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom, an intense season of lively debates on the opportunity and methods of innovating a profession, for some time exercised in a protean manner by a class, anything but compact, in which very different operators were distinguished from each other in terms of culture and social origin.The Regolamento sul Notariato of the Kingdom of Italy, published on 17 June 1806, took up the discipline of the Regolamento generale per i notari della Lombardia austriaca and differed in some points from the French notarial law. Still in force after the fall of Napoleon, the Regolamento sul Notariato of 1806 was also an alternative model to French law in the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia, where, for a certain period, there was discussion on whether to maintain or abolish the notary profession. The Austrian civil code, applied in the Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom, did not regulate the figure of the notary by law and the Austrian domination did not leave great autonomy to the notaries. However, without apparently suffering the frenetic political upheavals of the first half of the nineteenth century, the Lombard notaries proved to be an industrious category, capable of adapting to the new times, no longer held back in their social and professional rise by the constraints imposed by the ancient society regime.Despite the numerous studies conducted, in recent and less recent times, on notaries in the modern age, the subject is far from exhausted and, thanks to the rich documentary heritage preserved in the archives, it is possible and desirable to expand research on the specific reality of the nineteenth-century Lombard notary, which, in a period so full of changes, was going through an important process of professionalization. This process, after the Restoration, was defined in a precise manner and notaries became fully qualified professionals capable of aspiring to the most important city offices.
Liberal democracy is in crisis and an increasing number of countries are at risk of sliding back to authoritarianism, according to several scholars. This paper aims to analyse the possible risks that contemporary democratic regimes face. Most importantly, is the crisis of liberal democracy a temporary malaise, or does it represent the first stage of an outright process of regime change towards autocracy? To address this question, we re-examine the ongoing illiberal trend in light of the processes of autocratization that have occurred in several world regions since the beginning of the 21st century. The research highlights a "goodµ and a "badµ news. On one hand, the backsliding of liberal democracy towards defective forms of democracy does represent a worrisome sign, given that defective democracies are fragile regimes and thus likely candidates to suffer democratic breakdown and to be replaced by some form of autocracy. On the other hand, several cases show that, similarly to democratization, autocratization can fail, or be reversed.
n a few months' time, at the end of July 2021, the President of the Republic's white semester begins, i.e. the last six months of his mandate, during which he will not be able to dissolve Parliament. In this regard, it should be noted that the current Head of State has so far been careful not to use this instrument which, unlike in other legal systems - think of the French semi-presidential regime - does not have a political dimension.In the Italian legal system, the President of the Republic, as is well known, can resort to the power of dissolution only in cases where the conditions of governability are no longer met, i.e. when there is no majority in Parliament capable of supporting and voting in favour of the government to be formed. ; Tra qualche mese, a fine luglio 2021, comincia il semestre bianco del Presidente della Repubblica, ovvero gli ultimi sei mesi del suo mandato, nel quale non potrà sciogliere il Parlamento. In merito, è da notare che l'attuale capo dello Stato, fino ad oggi, si è guardato bene dall' utilizzare tale strumento che, a differenza di altri ordinamenti – si pensi al regime semipresidenziale francese – non ha una dimensione politica.Nell'ordinamento giuridico italiano, il Presidente della Repubblica, com'è noto, può far ricorso al potere di scioglimento soltanto nei casi in cui non vi siano più le condizioni di governabilità, ovvero quando in Parlamento non sia presente una maggioranza, tale da sostenere e votare la fiducia al costituendo Governo.
The chapter on children's literature in Portugal is organised in two parts. The first from 1945 to 1974 and the second from 1975 to 2011. The main reason for this organization is related to the social and cultural changes which have resulted from the policy change, caused by the revolution of April 25th, 1974, putting out the political regime of the "New State". The change from a totalitarian regime, which advocated the isolationism towards Europe, colonialism defender, for a democratic political regime, opening doors to decolonization, to censorship abolition and consequently opened doors to other ideologies and movements of literature from different parts. The children and youth education, the school and the editorial policy, among many other dimensions, reflected these ideological changes.
La caduta dei regimi tunisino, egiziano e libico al seguito di proteste di massa e centinaia di vittime e la conseguente crisi della gran parte dei regimi arabi sottolineano la necessità di nuove analisi teoriche ed empiriche inerenti le transizioni dai regimi autoritari a quelli democratici. Scopo di questo articolo è di interpretare le molte differenze tra i regimi autoritari nordafricani e mediorientali e determinare le concrete possibilità di cambiamento. Il punto di partenza è una revisione critica delle attuali classificazioni di regime. Muovendo dai tipi di regime di Linz e Stepan di 'Transizione e consolidamento democratico' (2000), verranno evidenziate le caratteristiche più importanti dei diversi regimi autoritari. Le conclusioni portano a evidenziare una notevole variazione che inciderà in maniera diversa rispetto alle prospettive di transizione democratica. The breakdown of the Tunisian, Egyptian and Libyan authoritarian regimes, brought about by mass protests and causing hundreds of civilian victims, and the consequent regime crisis in most of the Arab countries underline the need for new theoretical and empirical investigation on process of transition from authoritarianism to democracy. The aim of this paper is to interpret the main differences among some of the North-African and Middle-East authoritarian regimes and explore the real prospects for change. The starting point of the analysis is a critical review of the current classifications of the authoritarianism regimes. Moving from Linz and Stepan (2000) seminal work, significant features among the authoritarian regimes will be highlighted, and it will be argued that these features are likely to affect differently the eventual transition to democracy.
