Suchergebnisse

Il capitale sociale e la qualità istituzionale sono due fenomeni che, da circa venti anni, hanno assunto il ruolo di protagonisti all'interno delle scienze sociali. Anche se per molto tempo sono stati analizzati separatamente, già dalla loro definizione è possibile intuire come essi rappresentino due facce della stessa medaglia. Questo lavoro ha l'obiettivo di comprendere quale è le relazione che lega il capitale sociale e la qualità istituzionale all'interno delle regioni dell'Unione Europea. Nonostante buona parte della letteratura si sia maggiormente dedicata all'analisi dei due fenomeni a livello nazionale, in questo elaborato si ritiene che la dimensione territoriale regionale sia l'unità di misura più idonea per analizzarli entrambi. La prima parte del lavoro analizza il capitale sociale sia da un punto di vista definitorio che da un punto di vista più prettamente empirico, suddividendolo in diversi elementi. Il capitale sociale è un fenomeno estremamente multidimensionale, analizzarne solo una parte condurrebbe ad un'analisi parziale ed approssimativa. All'interno del testo vengono individuate cinque dimensioni, utilizzate successivamente per la creazione di un nuovo indice di capitale sociale regionale. Nella seconda parte si affronta il tema delle istituzioni e della qualità istituzionale. Dopo aver definito le istituzioni, si provvede ad effettuare una rassegna degli indici più comunemente utilizzati per misurarne la qualità, selezionando l'European Quality of Government Index del Quality of Government Institute di Göteborg come il più appropriato, sia per la sua definizione di governance che per l'unità di analisi prescelta. Nella terza parte, infine, in seguito ad un'analisi di quella parte di letteratura che ritiene i due fenomeni indissolubilmente legati ed utilizzando l'indice di capitale sociale regionale sviluppato nel primo capitolo, si propone una risposta, sicuramente parziale e non definitiva, alla domanda che da vent'anni anima questo interessante filone di ricerca: che relazione sussiste tra qualità istituzionale e capitale sociale? ; In the last 20 years, the concepts of governance and social capital assumed a pivotal role within social science. Even if previous scholars tended to deal with them separately, it is straightforward to notice that the two phenomena are actually highly connected. The aim of this work is to explore the existing relation between social capital and quality of institutions in several European Union's regions. Albeit the majority of the scholars are focused on the national level, this thesis considers the regional dimension, deemed to be the most suitable territorial unit to look at the two phenomena jointly. The first section is devoted to the analysis of the social capital, with the purposes of providing a theoretical definition and illustrating its empirical implications. Social capital is a multidimensional phenomenon, and to deal with just one of these two aspects would have led to a shallow and partial analysis. Moreover, within this section, we are going to individuate five dimensions, used to create a new index of regional social capital. The second part of this contribution is aimed at scrutinizing institutions and their quality. Soon after a preliminary definition, this section is going to provide a review concerning the most common indexes measuring the quality of institutions. Taking into consideration the definition of governance as well as the selected unit of analysis, the European Quality of Government Index, is deemed to be the most suitable for our analysis. Lastly, a final section is going to deal with the body of literature conceiving the two phenomena as highly connected. Employing the new regional social capital index, this conclusive section is going to propose a preliminary answer to the question that, in the last 20 years, has stimulated this interesting debate: what is the type of relation existing between governance and social capital?

AbstractDespite Cohesion Policy representing one‐third of the EU budget, research on the role of EU Cohesion Policy in promoting the European identity is still scarce. Taking stock of a new dataset of citizens' support for and identification with the EU identity at the regional level, we aim to answer to the following questions: what are the determinants of support and identification with EU? Do EU fiscal transfers affect public support for the EU and the European identity? Do citizens' awareness about the Cohesion Policy play a role in it? We find that attitudes towards the EU are driven by individuals' perceptions of the economy in their region and of the effectiveness of EU institutions in solving the regional problems. We don't find evidence of a Cohesion Policy effect, but it provides useful indications for further research.

This dataset contains data related to the paper: "Regional diversity in experiences of Cohesion Policy: the cases of Emilia-Romagna and Calabria". The dataset is made up of 5 files: 2 files consist in transcripts of interviews to practitioners, beneficiaries and targets of the Cohesion Policy projects in the Italian selected case‐study regions. Interviewees are asked to provide their views and perceptions on the multilevel governance system, on the communication activities of the Operational Programmes and on the effectiveness of Cohesion Policy. 2 files consist in tables showing the overview of political elections, the turnover of involved practitioners and the ROPs financial implementation in the two Italian case‐study regions. 1 file consist in a table showing the regional indicators on socio-economic cohesion. A readme file is included.

The data set consists of transcripts of interviews to practitioners, beneficiaries and targets of the Cohesion Policy projects in the selected case-study regions of seven different countries (Austria, Italy, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom). Interviewees are asked to provide their views and perceptions on the multilevel governance system, on the communication activities of the Operational Programmes and on the effectiveness of Cohesion Policy. The issues related to the governance schemes in the selected case-study regions were addressed in focus groups with practitioners of Cohesion Policy programmes. Between February and March 2017, eight focus groups were organised by partners of the PERCEIVE consortium with the only exception of WU Vienna who organised in-depth interviews. UNIBO, leader of the Work Package, provided a semi-structured questionnaire that was designed to explore the multilevel governance system, the communication strategies and the policy effectiveness as perceived by the practitioners. The aims of the questionnaire, in regards to governance, were to collect qualitative information about the strengths and weaknesses of the governance model adopted by each of the case-study MAs. In order to grasp the multitude and the complexity of the issues involved, invitations were sent to both internal and external members of the MAs. This assembled a panel of directors and managers from the MAs, relevant stakeholders of the CP programmes and beneficiaries. The questionnaire was designed in such a way that all participants could be able to answer to all the questions throughout the entire focus group, regardless of their affiliations, to ensure that the focus group could generate a fruitful discussion between the participants. The Austrian case is an exception because, in conformity with the confidentiality agreement based on the Austrian Data Protection Act, the transcripts of the interviews must not be made publically available, reproduced, or distributed in any way.

This dataset contains data related to the paper: Aiello V, Brasili C, Revereberi PM (2019) "European identity and citizens' support for the EU: testing the utilitarian approach", published by Regional Science Policy and Practice, Wiley. The dataset was built collecting data from different sources: the dataset "PERCEIVE: WP1: Framework for comparative analysis of the perception of Cohesion Policy and identification with the European Union at citizen level in different European countries: Survey at citizen level and data relative to regional performance of the Cohesion Policy and institutional quality" (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3346047), EUROSTAT (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/data/database) and a dataset on EU funding provided by the European Commission's Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy (DG Regio) ["Historic EU payments - regionalised and modelled", https://cohesiondata.ec.europa.eu/Other/Historic-EU-payments-regionalised-and-modelled/tc55-7ysv]. A readme file is included.

This dataset contains data on the Cohesion Policy projects managed by Local Managing Authorities in the selected case-studies of the PERCEIVE project over the 2007-2013 programming period. The selected case-study regions are the following: Emilia-Romagna and Calabria (IT), Extremadura (ES), Burgenland (AT), Norra Mellansverige (SE), Sud-Est (RO), Essex (UK), Dolnośląskie and Warmińsko-Mazurskie (PL). The framework for the data collection was built by UNIBO after the guidelines set by the European Commission for the monitoring of the Cohesion Policy projects. All partners from the PERCEIVE consortium have contributed to the construction of this dataset by gathering data referred to their own case-study region from the Managing Authorities, some of which are involved in the PERCEIVE project as third-parties: Regione Emilia-Romagna (IT), Ministerio de Economia y Hacienda - Direccion General de Fondos Comunitarios (ES) and Agentia pentru Dezvoltare Regionala Sud-Est (RO). The dataset is made up of 4 sheets: "1. Categorisation" includes information on projects' scopes, locations, titles, as well as on the managing authorities and other bodies involved; "2. Payments" contains information on the CP expenditure, broken down by source of the funding and year of payment, where available; "3. Beneficiaries" contains information on the beneficiaries of the CP funding (name and location, if available) and the amount of funding received broken down by year, if available; "4. Communication" reports the expenditure in Cohesion Policy-related communication and dissemination activities, broken down by type of activities and year, if available. A codebook is included which provides information on the variables' content as well as details regards space and time coverage. This dataset is also available on Zenodo (10.5281/zenodo.1035808).

In line with the Grant Agreement, this deliverable is provided on month 22 (June 2018) and aims to develop a novel probabilistic model to classify EU citizens according to their level of identification with the EU. In order to achieve this objective, D2.4 addresses the following research questions: - To what extent do EU citizens identify with Europe and the EU project? - Have European regions different patterns and level of identification? - Are the results driven by specific socio-economic variables?

In line with the Grant Agreement, this deliverable is provided on month 22 (June 2018) and aims to develop a novel probabilistic model to classify EU citizens according to their level of identification with the EU. In order to achieve this objective, D2.4 addresses the following research questions: - To what extent do EU citizens identify with Europe and the EU project? - Have European regions different patterns and level of identification? - Are the results driven by specific socio-economic variables?

Since its introduction, Cohesion Policy has been the primary tool for the reduction of economic, social and territorial disparities across regions of Europe and the key redistributive mechanism in support to the less developed areas. Despite the statistical indicators register a trend towards European convergence, disparities of many different kinds between regions remain wide (European Commission, 2014) and the EU enlargement reinforced the regional territorial imbalances (Bartkowska and Riedl, 2012). The effects of the Cohesion Policy on the convergence processes have been thoroughly investigated (Islam, 2003; Farole et al., 2011) and policy evaluations hold mixed results about the magnitude of its impact with great heterogeneity depending on the country – or the regions – of implementation (Rodríguez-Pose and Fratesi, 2004; Cuadrado-Roura, 2010). Notably, there is increasing agreement on the fact that domestic factors profoundly influence the way the Cohesion Policy is shaped and the effectiveness and impact of its funding. Weaknesses in terms of social and economic development, territorial capital, political stability, quality of institutions and government, administrative capacity, and national legislative framework might have limited the effectiveness of the Cohesion Policy (Surubaru, 2017; Milio, 2007, 2014; Rodríguez-Pose & Garcilazo, 2015; Fratesi and Perucca, 2018). The Cohesion Policy represented one-third of the EU budget for the 2007-2013 programming period and its delivery system implies an architectural design that is multilevel in nature. Multilevel governance has been a central cornerstone of the European regional policy since the 1990s and, despite the lack of agreement on a common definition, the concept is generally understood as «the participation of a range of different types of actors (public, private and societal) in policy-making and implementation through formal and informal means» (European Parliament, 2014). In this framework, the regional and local authorities have been recognised a growing role in planning and implementing the policy, thus favouring a citizens' perception of Europe that is local-driven. In other words, when individuals think of Europe, they usually do it from a local point of view and they are influenced by the direct observation of Cohesion projects in their territories (PERCEIVE, Deliverable 2.2). That is to say, the European integration outcomes also increasingly depend on how national, regional and local governments manage and implement the policies. Therefore, a rich strain of literature has recently started to investigate whether the intensity and the efficient implementation of the Cohesion Policy can contribute to improve citizens' support and stimulate positive attitudes towards the EU (Dellmut and Chalmers, 2018). Although the extant literature is not conclusive, and any causal implication should be avoided, the empirical evidence seems to point toward some significant positive relation characterized by a "learning effect" (Dall'Erba and Fang, 2017). Nevertheless, the effect may vary conditional on specific regional characteristics, the amount of EU funds allocated and the distribution of the socio-economic groups. All in all, we believe that the efficient use of the Structural Funds allocated to a region can indeed favour a more positive perception of the EU both directly and through its positive effect on economic growth. Overall, this framework suggests the adoption of a European strategic approach to regional development which builds upon the differentiated territorial characteristics in a multidimensional perspective. In the end, the strategic approach should translate in a tailored policy-mix based on integrated programmes – in terms of funds, objectives and governance level – to help maintain the sustainability of the policy action through long-term development.