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[Abstract] Recent emergency legislation in several EU countries as well as continuous developments in the scientific techniques and an improved use of genetic databases in both crime and terrorism prevention and trials proceedings, put the issue of DNA data- base legislation as one of the more delicate challenge of legislative harmonization at the European level. Indeed, the balance between the right to privacy, which founds an incre- asingly detailed and enforced protection at all levels, from national to sovra-national and international arenas, and the right to security and to fair trials is hard to be achie- ved and it depends a lot from the cultural, historical, philosophical background each country is characterised by. At present solutions widely differ in Europe: on the one side there are cases like Italy, that has no official policy on the subject, while others, such as the United Kingdom, have developed detailed policies. And among the countries having adopted specific legislation on the creation, use and management of genetic databases, the approaches are pretty different, as pretty different are the outcomes in terms of protec- tion of privacy, security in a broad sense and the right to fair trial. Despite the presence of several international declarations, as well as relevant resolutions of the EU Parliament, the complex interrelation between the creation and use of DNA databases within States and in the exchanges among them, remains highly problematic. In Europe, most of EU member Status possesses national genetic databases, and national laws ruling over their creation, maintenance and use. Still, only recently EU States have star- ted to question this diversification and consider possible joint solutions. The Treaty of Prüm, signed by 7 member States in 2005, opened the way for an EU system of collection, access and exchange for extremely personal data such as DNA and fingerprints. Given this background, the article seeks first to analyse the most important national EU member states legislation concerning the use of genetic profiling as instrument of crime prevention and protection of public security. We intend to under- line on the one hand the effective norms which characterise the most important and innovative national laws and regulations, and on the other hand the implications of those laws and regulations undermining the protection and enforcement of fundamen- tal rights, first of all the right to privacy and non-discrimination. Second, we will pro- ceed discussing the European milestones on this matter and the process that led to the adoption of the Treaty of Prüm, from both a political and a legal perspective, with their innovations, but even with their dark sides. Finally, the article will try to assess the pro- cess of harmonization, its challenges, the necessary mediations, and above all its rele- vant ethical, social, economic as well as legal implications.

ESPAÑOL: Durante la primera mitad del siglo XIII García Fernández de Villamayor ocupó importantes oficios en la corte castellana, fue mayordomo de las reinas Leonor y Berenguela y del rey Fernando III. Su posición política le permitió llevar a cabo un proceso de expansión patrimonial muy notable. El análisis detallado de ese proceso constituye el objetivo de este artículo. Merece la pena destacar que García Fernández adquirió muchas heredades mediante compras realizadas a parientes u otros individuos que mantenían con él algún tipo de relación vasallática o clientelar. Su dominio se extendía por zonas muy amplias, desde Galicia hasta Andalucía, pero se concentraba especialmente en Castilla al norte del Duero, donde disponía, sobre todo, de derechos en villas de behetría. / ENGLISH: García Fernández de Villamayor hold high posts in the Castilian royal court during the first half of the thirteenth century: he was "mayordomo" (mayor of the court) of the Queens Leonor and Berenguela, and also of the King Fernando III. His political position allows him to expand his lands and properties. This article tries to analyse in deep that process of expansion. It is worth pointing out that García Fernández bought lands and rights to kinsmen and also to other individuals who were his vassals or clients. His lands spread through wide areas, from Galicia to Andalucía, but concentrate especially in Castile north to the river Duero, where he had, above all, rights over behetría villages.

The scientific research on the future of the European Union does not allow a right explanation of this political and legal phenomenon. This is evidenced by economic investigations on the financial market without real social referents, or sociological investigations on differences in the social identity without taking into account the legal norms. Therefore, this work is developed from the perspective of legal sociology, to sustain the thesis that the political and legal project of the European Union, nowadays corresponds to a project of defensive modernization. ; La investigación científica sobre el futuro de la Unión Europea no permite una justa explicación de este fenómeno político y jurídico. Así lo evidencian investigaciones económicas sobre el mercado financiero sin referentes sociales reales, o de sociología sobre diferencias en la identidad social sin tomar en cuenta el cuadro de las normas jurídicas. Por esta razón, este trabajo se desarrolla desde la perspectiva de la sociología jurídica, en vías a sustentar la tesis de que el proyecto político y jurídico de la Unión Europea, de acuerdo con la época actual, corresponde a un proyecto de modernización defensiva.

This work aims to point the pivot of Arendt's ouvrage: the liberty to. Her thought is hopeful in spite of the nazi drift and the process of depoliticization in liberal-democracies because she trusts the thaumaturgic capabilities of plural action among peers. Origins and The Human Condition analyse the elements that characterize the Modern Age: on the one hand, a regime without precedent that tries to change the human nature, on the other the animal laborans' triumph and the rule of nobody. They share the mass-society and the psycho-anthropological transfiguration of monad-man: the roots of the enthralment. To focus the totalitarianism Arendt uses the categories of undesirability, superfluity and sacrificability, starting from the critic of human rights till the lager as laboratory where every think is possible. To explain the eclipse of political dimension she suggests the distinctions zoe/bios, oikos/agora, zoon politikon/homo oeconomicus, but the polis is a deconstructive point of view, not a model.

Este texto caracteriza a situação das mulhres migrantes na União Européia. Na Europa, em 2006, havia um contingente de 18.5 milhões de migrantes procedentes de países do Terceiro Mundo, 54% dos quais eram mulheres. As mulheres migrantes sofrem vulnerabilidades ligadas ao trabalho, participação política e social, maior exposição às violências e sexismo. As autoras apresentam a legislação atual referente à migração no perído de 2000 a 2007, apontando alguns programas e políticas de integração e enfatizando o respeito aos direitos humanos fundamentais." ; This text characterizes the situation of (im)migrating women in the European Union. In Europe, in 2006, there was a contingent of 18.5 million (im)migrants coming from Developing Countries, 54% of which were women. (Im)Migrating women suffer vulnerabilities linked to work, to lower political and social participation, higher exposition to violence and sexism. The authors present the current legislation concerned to (im)migration in the 2000-2007 period, showing some integration programs and policies and highlighting the respect to basic human rights.

The reception and popularity of the work of Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès has gone through different and erratic phases. Nonetheless, in recent years there has been a remarkable revival of interest in the Abbé's thought. This book is intended to exploit this Sieyès-renaissance, proposing a reconstruction of the constitutional doctrine of the abbot in the light of the latest interpretative acquisitions. The guiding thread of the analysis is the acknowledgement that, underlying the main political-constitutional proposals of Sieyès, we can glimpse a profoundly rationalist philosophical substructure. After presenting the nucleus of this philosophical approach, the book proceeds to shed light on the coherence linking the main constitutional structures upon which the abbot was working in the course of the early years of the Revolution. It focuses in particular on the concepts that contributed to make up the basic grammar of modern and liberal constitutionalism: representation, citizenship, constituent power, rights of man, the division of the powers and the control of constitutionality. The idea is that, by pursuing this approach, it is possible to arrive at an overall picture of the constitutional doctrine of the abbot that reflects both its systematic quality and its originality.

Biomasses and their possible use as energy resource are of great interest today, and the general problem of energy resources as well. In the present study the key questions of the convenience, from both energy and economy standpoints, have been addressed without any bias: the problem has been handled starting from "philosophical" bases disregarding any pre-settled ideology or political trend, but simply using mathematical approaches as logical tools for defining balances in a right way. In this context quantitative indexes such as LCA and EROEI have been widely used, together with multicriteria methods (such as ELECTRE) as decision supporting tools. This approach permits to remove mythologies, such as the unrealistic concept of clean energy, or the strange idea of biomasses as a magic to solve every thing in the field of the energy. As a consequence the present study aims to find any relevant aspect potentially useful for the society, looking at any possible source of energy without prejudices but without unrealistic expectations too. For what concerns biomasses, we studied in great details four very different cases of study, in order to have a scenario as various as much we can. A relevant result is the need to use biomasses together with other more efficient sources, especially recovering by-products from silviculture activities: but attention should be paid to the transportation and environmental costs. Another relevant result is the very difficult possibility of reliable evaluation of dedicated cultures as sources for "biomasses for energy": the problem has to be carefully evaluated case-by-case, because what seems useful in a context, becomes totally disruptive in another one. In any case the concept itself of convenience is not well defined at a level of macrosystem: it seems more appropriate to limit this very concept at a level of microsystem, considering that what sounds fine in a limited well defined microsystem may cause great damage in another slightly different, or even very similar, microsystem. This approach seems the right way to solve the controversy about the concept of convenience.

The paper argues why in the nowadays context of accumulation, named Cognitive Capitalism (CC), from an economic point of view, it is not possible a political compromise (nee deal) as it was in the fordist era. Starting from ch. 24 of Keynes' General Theory, we discuss how the keynesian conditions for a the development of a social pact between workers and entrepreneurs, with the intermediation by the State, are overcome by the structural change of the accumulation and valorisation process. Fordist new deal was based on three main variables: i) the existence of a State-nation able to implement nationalwide and autonomous political economies; ii) the possibility to measure productivity gains in material terms, and, iii) the existence of stable industrial relations, with high degree of representation of national differing social interests. In CC, globalization and finanziarisation strongly reduce the role played by States, the shifting towards immaterial production, based on knowledge and cognitive labour, leads to the impossibility provide an effective measure of productivity, whose dynamics is more and more depending on social factors. Further, the prevailing individual bargain on collective bargain negatively affects the relevance of industrial elations and especially the capacity of tradeunionism. The structural instability of CC could be minimize, first, by the introduction of a limit to intellectual property rights, able to socialize knowledge ad better exploit learning and network economics at the basis of accumulation process. Secondly, by the introduction of a basic income, able to compensate the unfair income distribution due to the capital gains allocation. Nevertheless, both of these measures, cannot be constituent of a new social pact, since they are incompatible with private property statements and with the discipline of work as condition for its exploitation. Therefore, as usual, only social crisis and conflict can provide a solution.

Dottorato di ricerca in Società, istituzioni e sistemi politici europei 19.-20. secolo ; Dal 1946 al 1956 le città e i paesi d'Italia furono lo scenario di alcuni cicli di elezioni amministrative. Si trattò di consultazioni di notevole rilievo non confinate nei limiti locali o amministrativi. Il legame tra politica e amministrazione e tra locale e nazionale fu molto forte nei primi anni del secondo dopoguerra; il rapporto di incontro e scontro tra centro e periferia è del resto uno degli elementi di lungo periodo del caso italiano. Per alcuni cicli elettorali (1946, 1951-1952, 1956) sono stati sistemati, per quanto possibili, i dati e le cifre; ma i numeri non esauriscono il problema. Così, per ogni ciclo elettorale considerato, si è cercato di far emergere i tratti distintivi e qualificanti di un intero periodo storico. Nel 1946 l'attenzione è puntata sulla rinascita della vita democratica attraverso il voto degli uomini (non più alle urne da prima del fascismo) e, per la prima volta nella storia italiana, dalle donne. Nel 1951 e 1952 il problema centrale è il tentativo delle sinistre e del Pci in particolare – lontani dal governo nazionale – di costruire una politica municipale con ambizioni nazionali. Nel 1956 i dati elettorali conducono al problema del nuovo equilibrio e dei nuovi rapporti interni al sistema dei partiti e del governo. In ogni caso, è costante la considerazione e la cura per i linguaggi e la comunicazione, i discorsi, la simbologia politica, la propaganda. ; Local election in Italy from 1946 to 1956 were very important politics event, not restricted at the border of the town. Linking between Politics and Administration and Local and National were stronger in Italy after Second War. For some loc ale elections (1946, 1951-1952, 1956), I put in order, when and if possible, digits and data, but problems are not only numbers. So, for some electoral cycle, I emphasize the features of whole historical period. In 1946, principal problem was democratic life with vote by man (first time after Fascism) and women (first time in the Italian history). In 1951 and 1952, Left and first of all Communist Party, out of central govern, try to build a municipal politics with national ambitions. In 1956 elections provoke new balance and new internal relations in Party system and in the Government. In any case, I took care of languages and communication, speech, political simbology, propaganda.

In theory, republican orthodoxy does not acknowledge the political dignity of any intermediary body between free and equal individuals, stripped of all particularism, and the sovereign nation. This is why, right up to the present, the French public debate has been marked by an entrenched suspicion towards all forms of «communitarism», and by the proscription of the very concept of multicultural politics. But have the policies actually pursued by republican France been consistent with the proclaimed principles? Is it genuinely possible to claim that cultural identities have never been publicly «recognised»? This multidisciplinary investigation proposes to address the ambiguous relations between theory and practice in the Republican management of cultural pluralism. - L'ortodossia repubblicana non riconosce teoricamente dignità politica ad alcun corpo intermedio tra gli individui liberi, eguali e spogliati di ogni particolarismo, e la nazione sovrana. È per questo che sino al giorno d'oggi, la discussione pubblica francese è segnata da un radicato sospetto nei confronti di ogni «comunitarismo», e dalla proscrizione del concetto stesso di politica multiculturale. Ma le politiche concretamente seguite dalla Francia repubblicana sono state coerenti con i principi proclamati? Ed è davvero possibile affermare che le identità culturali non siano mai state pubblicamente «riconosciute»? Attraverso un'indagine pluridisciplinare, ci si propone di indagare l'ambigua relazione esistente tra la teoria e la pratica nella gestione repubblicana della pluralità culturale.

Policy change is an issue ranking high in many governmental and academic agendas, especially in the old common Europe. Face to the problems of economic growth that since the 1970s affect many countries, policy change is expected to maintain, if not to improve, citizens' affluence and the availability of resources for enforcing social equity, however defined. Especially after Hall's seminal work, this implies to focus on the change of the paradigm that lies beyond public policies: Namely, as the relevant paradigms for growth‐oriented policies are economic, on the shift from demand‐sided to supply‐sided frameworks of reference. The analysis is supposed to highlight the role that different modes of accounting and evaluation play in stabilizing the paradigm shift: as a (more or less) meaningful discipline of whose players' behavior, and/or as a different arena where stakeholders, policy‐takers, administrative bodies and maybe executive bodies can clear their preferences up, align their framing, and finetune the implementation design to make it viable without losing the nature of change –i.e. fixing framing conflicts by argument and evidences, and allowing policy actors learning. The results could then link the research to the questions raised by detractors of the neoliberal paradigm when accusing it for harming democracy because of the narrower range of options it leaves to voters. This contribution could support the thesis for which the order that results from the paradigm shift is instead 'differently democratic', as it recognizes the need for a reauthorization of policy changes to come from the actors in the administrative field, in order to balance and refine the amorphous consent expressed by vote without reversing it. This would mean a different way for citizens to play political rights–not just as voters but also as those with a stake in the concrete way a "public" good is (poorly) produced and delivered here and now– and to deal with social conflict, in this way dispersed and at the same time attached to the concrete problem.

The reception and popularity of the work of Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès has gone through different and erratic phases. Nonetheless, in recent years there has been a remarkable revival of interest in the Abbé's thought. This book is intended to exploit this Sieyès-renaissance, proposing a reconstruction of the constitutional doctrine of the abbot in the light of the latest interpretative acquisitions. The guiding thread of the analysis is the acknowledgement that, underlying the main political-constitutional proposals of Sieyès, we can glimpse a profoundly rationalist philosophical substructure. After presenting the nucleus of this philosophical approach, the book proceeds to shed light on the coherence linking the main constitutional structures upon which the abbot was working in the course of the early years of the Revolution. It focuses in particular on the concepts that contributed to make up the basic grammar of modern and liberal constitutionalism: representation, citizenship, constituent power, rights of man, the division of the powers and the control of constitutionality. The idea is that, by pursuing this approach, it is possible to arrive at an overall picture of the constitutional doctrine of the abbot that reflects both its systematic quality and its originality. - La ricezione dell'opera di Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès ha conosciuto diverse ed alterne fasi. Nel corso degli ultimi anni, tuttavia, si è assistito ad un notevole ritorno di interesse per il pensiero dell'abate. Il volume intende inserirsi sulla scia di questa Sieyès-renaissance proponendo una ricostruzione della dottrina costituzionale dell'abate alla luce delle ultime acquisizioni interpretative. Il filo rosso che guida l'analisi è il riconoscimento che alla base delle principali proposte politico-costituzionali di Sieyès vada scorta un'impostazione filosofica profondamente razionalista. Nel volume, dopo aver presentato il nucleo di questo approccio filosofico, viene messa in luce la coerenza che lega fra loro i principali istituti costituzionali sui quali l'abate lavora nel corso dei primi anni della Rivoluzione. Il libro si concentra, in particolare, sui concetti che hanno contribuito a formare la grammatica di base del costituzionalismo moderno e liberale: rappresentanza, cittadinanza, potere costituente, diritti dell'uomo, divisione dei poteri e controllo di costituzionalità. Seguendo questo percorso, si intende restituire un quadro complessivo della dottrina costituzionale dell'abate che ne rispetti la sistematicità e l'originalità.

THE TITLE OF MY THESIS IS THE ROLE OF THE IDEAS AND THEIR CHANGE IN HIGHER EDUCATION POLICY-MAKING PROCESSES FROM THE EIGHTIES TO PRESENT-DAY: THE CASES OF ENGLAND AND NEW ZEALAND IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE UNDER A THEORETICAL POINT OF VIEW, THE AIM OF MY WORK IS TO CARRY OUT A RESEARCH MODELLED ON THE CONSTRUCTIVIST THEORY. IT FOCUSES ON THE ANALYSIS OF THE IMPACT OF IDEAS ON THE PROCESSES OF POLICY MAKING BY MEANS OF EPISTEMIC COMMUNITIES, THINK TANKS AND VARIOUS SOCIOECONOMIC CONTEXTS THAT MAY HAVE PLAYED A KEY ROLE IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE DIFFERENT PATHS. FROM MY POINT OF VIEW IDEAS CONSTITUTE A PRIORITY RESEARCH FIELD WHICH IS WORTH ANALYSING SINCE THEIR ROLE IN POLICY MAKING PROCESSES HAS BEEN TRADITIONALLY RATHER UNEXPLORED. IN THIS CONTEXT AND WITH THE AIM OF DEVELOPING A RESEARCH STRAND BASED ON THE ROLE OF IDEAS, I INTEND TO CARRY ON MY STUDY UNDER THE PERSPECTIVE OF CHANGE. DEPENDING ON THE DATA AND INFORMATION THAT I COLLECTED I EVALUATED THE WEIGHT OF EACH OF THESE VARIABLES AND MAYBE OTHERS SUCH AS THE INSTITUTIONS AND THE INDIVIDUAL INTERESTS, WHICH MAY HAVE INFLUENCED THE FORMATION OF THE POLICY MAKING PROCESSES. UNDER THIS LIGHT, I PLANNED TO ADOPT THE QUALITATIVE METHODOLOGY OF RESEARCH WHICH I BELIEVE TO BE VERY EFFECTIVE AGAINST THE MORE DIFFICULT AND POSSIBLY REDUCTIVE APPLICATION OF QUANTITIVE DATA SETS. I RECKON THEREFORE THAT THE MOST APPROPRIATE TOOLS FOR INFORMATION PROCESSING INCLUDE CONTENT ANALYSIS, AND IN-DEPTH INTERVIEWS TO PERSONALITIES OF THE POLITICAL PANORAMA (ÉLITE OR NOT) WHO HAVE PARTICIPATED IN THE PROCESS OF HIGHER EDUCATION REFORM FROM THE EIGHTIES TO PRESENT-DAY. THE TWO CASES TAKEN INTO CONSIDERATION SURELY SET AN EXAMPLE OF RADICAL REFORM PROCESSES WHICH HAVE OCCURRED IN QUITE DIFFERENT CONTEXTS DETERMINED BY THE SOCIOECONOMIC CHARACTERISTICS AND THE TRAITS OF THE ÉLITE. IN NEW ZEALAND THE DESCRIBED PROCESS HAS TAKEN PLACE WITH A STEADY PACE AND A GOOD GRADE OF CONSEQUANTIALITY, IN LINE WTH THE REFORMS IN OTHER STATE DIVISIONS DRIVEN BY THE IDEAS OF THE NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT. CONTRARILY IN ENGLAND THE REFORMATIVE ACTION OF MARGARET THATCHER HAS ACQUIRED A VERY RADICAL CONNOTATION AS IT HAS BROUGHT INTO THE AMBIT OF HIGHER EDUCATION POLICY CONCEPTS LIKE EFFICIENCY, EXCELLENCE, RATIONALIZATION THAT WOULD CONTRAST WITH THE GENERALISTIC AND MASS-ORIENTED IDEAS THAT WERE FASHIONABLE DURING THE SEVENTIES. THE MISSION I INTEND TO ACCOMPLISH THORUGHOUT MY RESEARCH IS TO INVESTIGATE AND ANALYSE INTO MORE DEPTH THE DIFFERENCES THAT SEEM TO EMERGE FROM TWO CONTEXTS WHICH MOST OF THE LITERATURE REGARDS AS A SINGLE MODEL: THE ANGLO-SAXON MODEL. UNDER THIS LIGHT, THE DENSE ANALYSIS OF POLICY PROCESSES ALLOWED TO BRING OUT BOTH THE CONTROVERSIAL AND CONTRASTING ASPECTS OF THE TWO REALITIES COMPARED, AND THE ROLE AND WEIGHT OF VARIABLES SUCH AS IDEAS (MAIN VARIABLE), INSTITUTIONAL SETTINGS AND INDIVIDUAL INTERESTS ACTING IN EACH CONTEXT. THE CASES I MEAN TO ATTEND PRESENT PECULIAR ASPECTS WORTH DEVELOPING AN IN-DEPTH ANALYSIS, AN OUTLINE OF WHICH WILL BE PROVIDED IN THIS ABSTRACT. ENGLAND THE CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENT, SINCE 1981, INTRODUCED RADICAL CHANGES IN THE SECTOR OF HIGHER EDUCATION: FIRST CUTTING DOWN ON STATE FUNDINGS AND THEN WITH THE CREATION OF AN INSTITUTION FOR THE PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP OF THE POLYTECHNICS (NON-UNIVERSITY SECTOR). AFTERWARDS THE SCHOOL REFORM BY MARGARET THATCHER IN 1988 RAISED TO A GREAT STIR ALL OVER EUROPE DUE TO BOTH ITS CONSIDERABLE INNOVATIVE IMPRINT AND THE STRONG ATTACK AGAINST THE PEDAGOGY OF THE 'ACTIVE' SCHOOLING AND PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION, UNTIL THEN RECOGNIZED AS A MERIT OF THE BRITISH PUBLIC SCHOOL. IN THE AMBIT OF UNIVERSITY EDUCATION THIS REFORM, TOGETHER WITH SIMILAR MEASURES BROUGHT IN DURING 1992, PUT INTO PRACTICE THE CONSERVATIVE PRINCIPLES THROUGH A SERIES OF ACTIONS THAT INCLUDED: THE SUPPRESSION OF THE IRREMOVABILITY PRINCIPLE FOR UNIVERSITY TEACHERS; THE INTRODUCTION OF STUDENT LOANS FOR LOW-INCOME STUDENTS AND THE CANCELLATION OF THE CLEAR DISTINCTION BETWEEN UNIVERSITIES AND POLYTECHNICS. THE POLICIES OF THE LABOUR MAJORITY OF MR BLAIR DID NOT QUITE DIVERGE FROM THE CONSERVATIVES' POSITION. IN 2003 BLAIR'S CABINET RISKED TO BECOME A MINORITY RIGHT ON THE OCCASION OF AN IMPORTANT UNIVERSITY REFORM PROPOSAL. THIS PROPOSAL WOULD FORESEE THE AUTONOMY FOR THE UNIVERSITIES TO RAISE UP TO 3.000 POUNDS THE ENROLMENT FEES FOR STUDENTS (WHILE FORMERLY THE CEILING WAS 1.125 POUNDS). BLAIR HAD TO FACE INTERNAL OPPOSITION WITHIN HIS OWN PARTY IN RELATION TO A MEASURE THAT, ACCORDING TO THE 150 MPS PROMOTERS OF AN ADVERSE MOTION, HAD NOT BEEN INCLUDED IN THE ELECTORAL PROGRAMME AND WOULD RISK CREATING INCOME-BASED DISCRIMINATION AMONG STUDENTS. AS A MATTER OF FACT THE BILL FOCUSED ON THE INTRODUCTION OF VERY LOW-INTEREST STUDENT LOANS TO BE SETTLED ONLY WHEN THE STUDENT WOULD HAVE FOUND A REMUNERATED OCCUPATION (A SYSTEM ALREADY PROVIDED FOR BY THE AUSTRALIAN LEGISLATION). NEW ZEALAND CONTRARILY TO MANY OTHER COUNTRIES, NEW ZEALAND HAS ADOPTED A VERY WIDE VISION OF THE TERTIARY EDUCATION. IT INCLUDES IN FACT THE FULL EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMME THAT IS INTERNATIONALLY RECOGNIZED AS THE POST-SECONDARY EDUCATION. SHOULD WE SPOTLIGHT A PECULIARITY OF THE NEW ZEALAND TERTIARY EDUCATION POLICY THEN IT WOULD BE 'CHANGE'. LOOKING AT THE REFORM HISTORY RELATED TO THE TERTIARY EDUCATION SYSTEM, WE CAN CLEARLY IDENTIFY FOUR 'SUB-PERIODS' FROM THE EIGHTIES TO PRESENT-DAY: 1. BEFORE THE 80S': AN ELITARIAN SYSTEM CHARACTERIZED BY LOW PARTICIPATION RATES. 2. BETWEEN MID AND LATE 80S': A TREND TOWARDS THE ENLARGEMENT OF PARTICIPATION ASSOCIATED TO A GREATER COMPETITION. 3. 1990-1999: A FUTHER STEP TOWARDS A COMPETITIVE MODEL BASED ON THE MARKET-ORIENTED SYSTEM. 4. FROM 2000 TO TODAY: A CONTINUOUS EVOLUTION TOWARDS A MORE COMPETITIVE MODEL BASED ON THE MARKET-ORIENTED SYSTEM TOGETHER WITH A GROWING ATTENTION TO STATE CONTROL FOR SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF THE NATION. AT PRESENT THE GOVERNMENT OF NEW ZEALAND OPERATES TO STRENGHTHEN THIS PROCESS, PRIMARILY IN RELATION TO THE ROLE OF TERTIARY EDUCATION AS A STEADY FACTOR OF NATIONAL WALFARE, WHERE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT CONTRIBUTES ACTIVELY TO THE GROWTH OF THE NATIONAL ECONOMIC SYSTEM5. THE CASES OF ENGLAND AND NEW ZEALAND ARE THE FOCUS OF AN IN-DEPTH INVESTIGATION THAT STARTS FROM AN ANALYSIS OF THE POLICIES OF EACH NATION AND DEVELOP INTO A COMPARATIVE STUDY. AT THIS POINT I ATTEMPT TO DRAW SOME PRELIMINARY IMPRESSIONS ON THE FACTS ESSENTIALLY DECRIBED ABOVE. THE UNIVERSITY POLICIES IN ENGLAND AND NEW ZEALAND HAVE BOTH UNDERGONE A SIGNIFICANT REFORMATORY PROCESS SINCE THE EARLY EIGHTIES; IN BOTH CONTEXTS THE IMPORTANCE OF IDEAS THAT CONSTITUTED THE BASE OF POLITICS UNTIL 1980 WAS QUITE RELEVANT. GENERALLY SPEAKING, IN BOTH CASES THE PRE-REFORM POLICIES WERE INSPIRED BY EGALITARIANISM AND EXPANSION OF THE STUDENT POPULATION WHILE THOSE BROUGHT IN BY THE REFORM WOULD PURSUE EFFICIENCY, QUALITY AND COMPETITIVENESS. UNDOUBTEDLY, IN LINE WITH THIS GENERAL TENDENCY THAT REFLECTS THE HYPOTHESIS PROPOSED, THE TWO UNIVERSITY SYSTEMS PRESENT SEVERAL DIFFERENCES. THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM IN NEW ZEALAND PROCEEDED STEADILY TOWARDS THE IMPLEMENTATION OF A MANAGERIAL CONCEPTION OF TERTIARY EDUCATION, ESPECIALLY FROM 1996 ONWARDS, IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE REFORMATORY PROCESS OF THE WHOLE PUBLIC SECTOR. IN THE UNITED KINGDOM, AS IN THE REST OF EUROPE, THE NEW APPROACH TO UNIVERSITY POLICY-MAKING HAD TO CONFRONT A DEEP-ROOTED TRADITION OF PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION AND THE IDEA OF EDUCATION EXPANSION THAT IN FACT DOMINATED UNTIL THE EIGHTIES. FROM THIS VIEW POINT THE GOVERNING ACTION OF MARGARET THATCHER GAVE RISE TO A RADICAL CHANGE THAT REVOLUTIONIZED THE OBJECTIVES AND KEY VALUES OF THE WHOLE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM, IN PARTICULAR IN THE HIGHER EDUCATION SECTOR. IDEAS AS EFFICIENCY, EXCELLENCE AND CONTROL OF THE PERFORMANCE BECAME DECISIVE. THE LABOUR CABINETS OF BLAIR DEVELOPED IN THE WAKE OF CONSERVATIVE REFORMS. THIS APPEARS TO BE A FOCAL POINT OF THIS STUDY THAT OBSERVES HOW ALSO IN NEW ZEALAND THE REFORMING PROCESS OCCURRED TRANSVERSELY DURING PROGRESSIVE AND CONSERVATIVE ADMINISTRATIONS. THE PRELIMINARY IMPRESSION IS THEREFORE THAT IDEAS DEEPLY MARK THE REFORMATIVE PROCESSES: THE AIM OF MY RESEARCH IS TO VERIFY TO WHICH EXTENT THIS STATEMENT IS TRUE. IN ORDER TO BUILD A COMPREHENSIVE ANALYLIS, FURTHER SIGNIFICANT FACTORS WILL HAVE TO BE INVESTIGATED: THE WAY IDEAS ARE PERCEIVED AND IMPLEMENTED BY THE DIFFERENT POLITICAL ELITES; HOW THE VARIOUS SOCIOECONOMIC CONTEXTS INFLUENCE THE REFORMATIVE PROCESS; HOW THE INSTITUTIONAL STRUCTURES CONDITION THE POLICY-MAKING PROCESSES; WHETHER INDIVIDUAL INTERESTS PLAY A ROLE AND, IF YES, TO WHICH EXTENT.

I Max Bill is an intense giornata of a big fresco. An analysis of the main social, artistic and cultural events throughout the twentieth century is needed in order to trace his career through his masterpieces and architectures. Some of the faces of this hypothetical mural painting are, among others, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Ernesto Nathan Rogers, Kandinskij, Klee, Mondrian, Vatongerloo, Ignazio Silone, while the backcloth is given by artistic avant-gardes, Bauhaus, International Exhibitions, CIAM, war events, reconstruction, Milan Triennali, Venice Biennali, the School of Ulm. Architect, even though more known as painter, sculptor, designer and graphic artist, Max Bill attends the Bauhaus as a student in the years 1927-1929, and from this experience derives the main features of a rational, objective, constructive and non figurative art. His research is devoted to give his art a scientific methodology: each work proceeds from the analysis of a problem to the logical and always verifiable solution of the same problem. By means of composition elements (such as rhythm, seriality, theme and its variation, harmony and dissonance), he faces, with consistent results, themes apparently very distant from each other as the project for the H.f.G. or the design for a font. Mathematics are a constant reference frame as field of certainties, order, objectivity: 'for Bill mathematics are never confined to a simple function: they represent a climate of spiritual certainties, and also the theme of non attempted in its purest state, objectivity of the sign and of the geometrical place, and at the same time restlessness of the infinity: Limited and Unlimited '. In almost sixty years of activity, experiencing all artistic fields, Max Bill works, projects, designs, holds conferences and exhibitions in Europe, Asia and Americas, confronting himself with the most influencing personalities of the twentieth century. In such a vast scenery, the need to limit the investigation field combined with the necessity to address and analyse the unpublished and original aspect of Bill's relations with Italy. The original contribution of the present research regards this particular 'geographic delimitation'; in particular, beyond the deep cultural exchanges between Bill and a series of Milanese architects, most of all with Rogers, two main projects have been addressed: the realtà nuova at Milan Triennale in 1947, and the Contemporary Art Museum in Florence in 1980. It is important to note that these projects have not been previously investigated, and the former never appears in the sources either. These works, together with the most well-known ones, such as the projects for the VI and IX Triennale, and the Swiss pavilion for the Biennale, add important details to the reference frame of the relations which took place between Zurich and Milan. Most of the occasions for exchanges took part in between the Thirties and the Fifties, years during which Bill underwent a significant period of artistic growth. He meets the Swiss progressive architects and the Paris artists from the Abstraction-Création movement, enters the CIAM, collaborates with Le Corbusier to the third volume of his Complete Works, and in Milan he works and gets confronted with the events related to post-war reconstruction. In these years Bill defines his own working methodology, attaining an artistic maturity in his work. The present research investigates the mentioned time period, despite some necessary exceptions. II The official Max Bill bibliography is naturally wide, including spreading works along with ones more devoted to analytical investigation, mainly written in German and often translated into French and English (Max Bill himself published his works in three languages). Few works have been published in Italian and, excluding the catalogue of the Parma exhibition from 1977, they cannot be considered comprehensive. Many publications are exhibition catalogues, some of which include essays written by Max Bill himself, some others bring Bill's comments in a educational-pedagogical approach, to accompany the observer towards a full understanding of the composition processes of his art works. Bill also left a great amount of theoretical speculations to encourage a critical reading of his works in the form of books edited or written by him, and essays published in 'Werk', magazine of the Swiss Werkbund, and other international reviews, among which Domus and Casabella. These three reviews have been important tools of analysis, since they include tracks of some of Max Bill's architectural works. The architectural aspect is less investigated than the plastic and pictorial ones in all the main reference manuals on the subject: Benevolo, Tafuri and Dal Co, Frampton, Allenspach consider Max Bill as an artist proceeding in his work from Bauhaus in the Ulm experience . A first filing of his works was published in 2004 in the monographic issue of the Spanish magazine 2G, together with critical essays by Karin Gimmi, Stanislaus von Moos, Arthur Rüegg and Hans Frei, and in 'Konkrete Architektur?', again by Hans Frei. Moreover, the monographic essay on the Atelier Haus building by Arthur Rüegg from 1997, and the DPA 17 issue of the Catalonia Polytechnic with contributions of Carlos Martì, Bruno Reichlin and Ton Salvadò, the latter publication concentrating on a few Bill's themes and architectures. An urge to studying and going in depth in Max Bill's works was marked in 2008 by the centenary of his birth and by a recent rediscovery of Bill as initiator of the 'minimalist' tradition in Swiss architecture. Bill's heirs are both very active in promoting exhibitions, researching and publishing. Jakob Bill, Max Bill's son and painter himself, recently published a work on Bill's experience in Bauhaus, and earlier on he had published an in-depth study on 'Endless Ribbons' sculptures. Angela Thomas Schmid, Bill's wife and art historian, published in end 2008 the first volume of a biography on Max Bill and, together with the film maker Eric Schmid, produced a documentary film which was also presented at the last Locarno Film Festival. Both biography and documentary concentrate on Max Bill's political involvement, from antifascism and 1968 protest movements to Bill experiences as Zurich Municipality councilman and member of the Swiss Confederation Parliament. In the present research, the bibliography includes also direct sources, such as interviews and original materials in the form of letters correspondence and graphic works together with related essays, kept in the max+binia+jakob bill stiftung archive in Zurich. III The results of the present research are organized into four main chapters, each of them subdivided into four parts. The first chapter concentrates on the research field, reasons, tools and methodologies employed, whereas the second one consists of a short biographical note organized by topics, introducing the subject of the research. The third chapter, which includes unpublished events, traces the historical and cultural frame with particular reference to the relations between Max Bill and the Italian scene, especially Milan and the architects Rogers and Baldessari around the Fifties, searching the themes and the keys for interpretation of Bill's architectures and investigating the critical debate on the reviews and the plastic survey through sculpture. The fourth and last chapter examines four main architectures chosen on a geographical basis, all devoted to exhibition spaces, investigating Max Bill's composition process related to the pictorial field. Paintings has surely been easier and faster to investigate and verify than the building field. A doctoral thesis discussed in Lausanne in 1977 investigating Max Bill's plastic and pictorial works, provided a series of devices which were corrected and adapted for the definition of the interpretation grid for the composition structures of Bill's main architectures. Four different tools are employed in the investigation of each work: a context analysis related to chapter three results; a specific theoretical essay by Max Bill briefly explaining his main theses, even though not directly linked to the very same work of art considered; the interpretation grid for the composition themes derived from a related pictorial work; the architecture drawing and digital three-dimensional model. The double analysis of the architectural and pictorial fields is functional to underlining the relation among the different elements of the composition process; the two fields, however, cannot be compared and they stay, in Max Bill's works as in the present research, interdependent though self-sufficient. IV An important aspect of Max Bill production is self-referentiality: talking of Max Bill, also through Max Bill, as a need for coherence instead of a method limitation. Ernesto Nathan Rogers describes Bill as the last humanist, and his horizon is the known world but, as the 'Concrete Art' of which he is one of the main representatives, his production justifies itself: Max Bill not only found a method, but he autonomously re-wrote the 'rules of the game', derived timeless theoretical principles and verified them through a rich and interdisciplinary artistic production. The most recurrent words in the present research work are synthesis, unity, space and logic. These terms are part of Max Bill's vocabulary and can be referred to his works. Similarly, graphic settings or analytical schemes in this research text referring to or commenting Bill's architectural projects were drawn up keeping in mind the concise precision of his architectural design. As for Mies van der Rohe, it has been written that Max Bill took art to 'zero degree' reaching in this way a high complexity. His works are a synthesis of art: they conceptually encompass all previous and –considered their developments- most of contemporary pictures. Contents and message are generally explicitly declared in the title or in Bill's essays on his artistic works and architectural projects: the beneficiary is invited to go through and re-build the process of synthesis generating the shape. In the course of the interview with the Milan artist Getulio Alviani, he tells how he would not write more than a page for an essay on Josef Albers: everything was already evident 'on the surface' and any additional sentence would be redundant. Two years after that interview, these pages attempt to decompose and single out the elements and processes connected with some of Max Bill's works which, for their own origin, already contain all possible explanations and interpretations. The formal reduction in favour of contents maximization is, perhaps, Max Bill's main lesson.

This study aims at analysing Brian O'Nolans literary production in the light of a reconsideration of the role played by his two most famous pseudonyms ,Flann Brien and Myles na Gopaleen, behind which he was active both as a novelist and as a journalist. We tried to establish a new kind of relationship between them and their empirical author following recent cultural and scientific surveys in the field of Humour Studies, Psychology, and Sociology: taking as a starting point the appreciation of the comic attitude in nature and in cultural history, we progressed through a short history of laughter and derision, followed by an overview on humour theories. After having established such a frame, we considered an integration of scientific studies in the field of laughter and humour as a base for our study scheme, in order to come to a definition of the comic author as a recognised, powerful and authoritative social figure who acts as a critic of conventions. The history of laughter and comic we briefly summarized, based on the one related by the French scholar Georges Minois in his work (Minois 2004), has been taken into account in the view that humorous attitude is one of man's characteristic traits always present and witnessed throughout the ages, though subject in most cases to repression by cultural and political conservative power. This sort of Super-Ego notwithstanding, or perhaps because of that, comic impulse proved irreducible exactly in its influence on the current cultural debates. Basing mainly on Robert R. Provine's (Provine 2001), Fabio Ceccarelli's (Ceccarelli 1988), Arthur Koestler's (Koestler 1975) and Peter L. Berger's (Berger 1995) scientific essays on the actual occurrence of laughter and smile in complex social situations, we underlined the many evidences for how the use of comic, humour and wit (in a Freudian sense) could be best comprehended if seen as a common mind process designed for the improvement of knowledge, in which we traced a strict relation with the play-element the Dutch historian Huizinga highlighted in his famous essay, Homo Ludens (Huizinga 1955). We considered comic and humour/wit as different sides of the same coin, and showed how the demonstrations scientists provided on this particular subject are not conclusive, given that the mental processes could not still be irrefutably shown to be separated as regards graduations in comic expression and reception: in fact, different outputs in expressions might lead back to one and the same production process, following the general 'Economy Rule' of evolution; man is the only animal who lies, meaning with this that one feeling is not necessarily biuniquely associated with one and the same outward display, so human expressions are not validation proofs for feelings. Considering societies, we found that in nature they are all organized in more or less the same way, that is, in élites who govern over a community who, in turn, recognizes them as legitimate delegates for that task; we inferred from this the epistemological possibility for the existence of an added ruling figure alongside those political and religious: this figure being the comic, who is the person in charge of expressing true feelings towards given subjects of contention. Any community owns one, and his very peculiar status is validated by the fact that his place is within the community, living in it and speaking to it, but at the same time is outside it in the sense that his action focuses mainly on shedding light on ideas and objects placed out-side the boundaries of social convention: taboos, fears, sacred objects and finally culture are the favourite targets of the comic person's arrow. This is the reason for the word a(rche)typical as applied to the comic figure in society: atypical in a sense, because unconventional and disrespectful of traditions, critical and never at ease with unblinkered respect of canons; archetypical, because the "village foolâ€, buffoon, jester or anyone in any kind of society who plays such roles, is an archetype in the Jungian sense, i.e. a personification of an irreducible side of human nature that everybody instinctively knows: a beginner of a tradition, the perfect type, what is most conventional of all and therefore the exact opposite of an atypical. There is an intrinsic necessity, we think, of such figures in societies, just like politicians and priests, who should play an elitist role in order to guide and rule not for their own benefit but for the good of the community. We are not naïve and do know that actual owners of power always tend to keep it indefinitely: the 'social comic' as a role of power has nonetheless the distinctive feature of being the only job whose tension is not towards stability. It has got in itself the rewarding permission of contradiction, for the very reason we exposed before that the comic must cast an eye both inside and outside society and his vision may be perforce not consistent, then it is satisfactory for the popularity that gives amongst readers and audience. Finally, the difference between governors, priests and comic figures is the seriousness of the first two (fundamentally monologic) and the merry contradiction of the third (essentially dialogic). MPs, mayors, bishops and pastors should always console, comfort and soothe popular mood in respect of the public convention; the comic has the opposite task of provoking, urging and irritating, accomplishing at the same time a sort of control of the soothing powers of society, keepers of the righteousness. In this view, the comic person assumes a paramount importance in the counterbalancing of power administration, whether in form of acting in public places or in written pieces which could circulate for private reading. At this point comes into question our Irish writer Brian O'Nolan(1911-1966), real name that stood behind the more famous masks of Flann O'Brien, novelist, author of At Swim-Two-Birds (1939), The Hard Life (1961), The Dalkey Archive (1964) and, posthumously, The Third Policeman (1967); and of Myles na Gopaleen, journalist, keeper for more than 25 years of the Cruiskeen Lawn column on The Irish Times (1940-1966), and author of the famous book-parody in Irish An Béal Bocht (1941), later translated in English as The Poor Mouth (1973). Brian O'Nolan, professional senior civil servant of the Republic, has never seen recognized his authorship in literary studies, since all of them concentrated on his alter egos Flann, Myles and some others he used for minor contributions. So far as we are concerned, we think this is the first study which places the real name in the title, this way acknowledging him an unity of intents that no-one before did. And this choice in titling is not a mere mark of distinction for the sake of it, but also a wilful sign of how his opus should now be reconsidered. In effect, the aim of this study is exactly that of demonstrating how the empirical author Brian O'Nolan was the real Deus in machina, the master of puppets who skilfully directed all of his identities in planned directions, so as to completely fulfil the role of the comic figure we explained before. Flann O'Brien and Myles na Gopaleen were personae and not persons, but the impression one gets from the critical studies on them is the exact opposite. Literary consideration, that came only after O'Nolans death, began with Anne Clissmann's work, Flann O'Brien: A Critical Introduction to His Writings (Clissmann 1975), while the most recent book is Keith Donohue's The Irish Anatomist: A Study of Flann O'Brien (Donohue 2002); passing through M.Keith Booker's Flann O'Brien, Bakhtin and Menippean Satire (Booker 1995), Keith Hopper's Flann O'Brien: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Post-Modernist (Hopper 1995) and Monique Gallagher's Flann O'Brien, Myles et les autres (Gallagher 1998). There have also been a couple of biographies, which incidentally somehow try to explain critical points his literary production, while many critical studies do the same on the opposite side, trying to found critical points of view on the author's restless life and habits. At this stage, we attempted to merge into O'Nolan's corpus the journalistic articles he wrote, more than 4,200, for roughly two million words in the 26-year-old running of the column. To justify this, we appealed to several considerations about the figure O'Nolan used as writer: Myles na Gopaleen (later simplified in na Gopaleen), who was the equivalent of the street artist or storyteller, speaking to his imaginary public and trying to involve it in his stories, quarrels and debates of all kinds. First of all, he relied much on language for the reactions he would obtain, playing on, and with, words so as to ironically unmask untrue relationships between words and things. Secondly, he pushed to the limit the convention of addressing to spectators and listeners usually employed in live performing, stretching its role in the written discourse to come to a greater effect of involvement of readers. Lastly, he profited much from what we labelled his "specific weightâ€, i.e. the potential influence in society given by his recognised authority in determined matters, a position from which he could launch deeper attacks on conventional beliefs, so complying with the duty of a comic we hypothesised before: that of criticising society even in threat of losing the benefits the post guarantees. That seemingly masochistic tendency has its rationale. Every representative has many privileges on the assumption that he, or she, has great responsibilities in administrating. The higher those responsibilities are, the higher is the reward but also the severer is the punishment for the misfits done while in charge. But we all know that not everybody accepts the rules and many try to use their power for their personal benefit and do not want to undergo law's penalties. The comic, showing in this case more civic sense than others, helped very much in this by the non-accessibility to the use of public force, finds in the role of the scapegoat the right accomplishment of his task, accepting the punishment when his breaking of the conventions is too stark to be forgiven. As Ceccarelli demonstrated, the role of the object of laughter (comic, ridicule) has its very own positive side: there is freedom of expression for the person, and at the same time integration in the society, even though at low levels. Then the banishment of a 'social' comic can never get to total extirpation from society, revealing how the scope of the comic lies on an entirely fictional layer, bearing no relation with facts, nor real consequences in terms of physical health. Myles na Gopaleen, mastering these three characteristics we postulated in the highest way, can be considered an author worth noting; and the oeuvre he wrote, the whole collection of Cruiskeen Lawn articles, is rightfully a novel because respects the canons of it especially regarding the authorial figure and his relationship with the readers. In addition, his work can be studied even if we cannot conduct our research on the whole of it, this proceeding being justified exactly because of the resemblances to the real figure of the storyteller: its 'chapters' —the daily articles— had a format that even the distracted reader could follow, even one who did not read each and every article before. So we can critically consider also a good part of them, as collected in the seven volumes published so far, with the addition of some others outside the collections, because completeness in this case is not at all a guarantee of a better precision in the assessment; on the contrary: examination of the totality of articles might let us consider him as a person and not a persona. Once cleared these points, we proceeded further in considering tout court the works of Brian O'Nolan as the works of a unique author, rather than complicating the references with many names which are none other than well-wrought sides of the same personality. By putting O'Nolan as the correct object of our research, empirical author of the works of the personae Flann O'Brien and Myles na Gopaleen, there comes out a clearer literary landscape: the comic author Brian O'Nolan, self-conscious of his paramount role in society as both a guide and a scourge, in a word as an a(rche)typical, intentionally chose to differentiate his personalities so as to create different perspectives in different fields of knowledge by using, in addition, different means of communication: novels and journalism. We finally compared the newly assessed author Brian O'Nolan with other great Irish comic writers in English, such as James Joyce (the one everybody named as the master in the field), Samuel Beckett, and Jonathan Swift. This comparison showed once more how O'Nolan is in no way inferior to these authors who, greatly celebrated by critics, have nonetheless failed to achieve that great public recognition O'Nolan received alias Myles, awarded by the daily audience he reached and influenced with his Cruiskeen Lawn column. For this reason, we believe him to be representative of the comic figure's function as a social regulator and as a builder of solidarity, such as that Raymond Williams spoke of in his work (Williams 1982), with in mind the aim of building a 'culture in common'. There is no way for a 'culture in common' to be acquired if we do not accept the fact that even the most functional society rests on conventions, and in a world more and more 'connected' we need someone to help everybody negotiate with different cultures and persons. The comic gives us a worldly perspective which is at the same time comfortable and distressing but in the end not harmful as the one furnished by politicians could be: he lets us peep into parallel worlds without moving too far from our armchair and, as a consequence, is the one who does his best for the improvement of our understanding of things.