Suchergebnisse

: In modern democracies, nonprofit organizations and social enterprises have a relevant political role that may be threatened by the entry into the market of services. This risk increases in time of economic crisis, when the competition grows stronger and the economic needs become more urgent. Starting from this assumption, the article analyzes the relationship between the managerial strategies and the political role of the Italian third sector, focusing on the implications of the management models put in place in order to "survive" the 2008 economic crisis. Two ideal-typical strategies will be outlined, labelled respectively "entrepreneurial turn" and "hyper-embeddedness", which seem to have effects both in terms of the manner in which the political role is realized, and in terms of the degree of politicization of the organizations. Since such strategies can both increase or decrease nonprofits' political ambitions, it is not possible to give an interpretation in terms of a tout court distancing from politics. However, it will be argued that a trait common to all the trajectories is the withdrawal from what Mouffe defines "the political", referring specifically to the dimension of conflict and antagonism.

Social policy has undergone a major process of de-politicization all over Europe in the last twenty years, that was fostered by the paradigm shift towards the so-called Social Investment Welfare State. Though similar processes are taking place in many policy areas, social policy can be considered one of the most promising fields of observation of de-politicization. The downgrading of the political character of decision making, indeed, is in sharp contrast with the relevance of the debate about values and justice and with the conflicts that accompanied the establishment of welfare systems. The paper argues that de-politicization is the result of the interaction between three different mechanisms: the shift of emphasis from justice to effectiveness and the model of "governance by numbers"; the process of individualization of social intervention that marginalized collective responsibilities; the inclusive model of governance that co-opt civil society organizations reducing their role as conflicting actors. The three mechanisms give way to a model of de-politicization distinguished by the narrowing of the political debate about solutions, models of intervention and principles, based on inclusion rather than delegation and in which political ac-tors do not disappear. The process of de-politicization is relatively independent from the trend of re-trenchment that begins with the political success of neoliberalism. However, as we will see, it is essential to the survival of its principles.

The 1997 electoral success of Tony Blair's New Labour can be seen as the symbolic conclusion of the debate on political ideologies that had developed in the UK and Western Europe during the '80s and the '90s, and that intensified after 1989. The "post-ideological" approach that underpinned the Third Way model introduced a strong emphasis on policy outcomes and effectiveness, which have gradually replaced values and ideologies in legitimizing governmental action. The article focuses on this aspect of the political experience of the NL, engaging in an analysis of the political discourse developed in the UK at the end of the 90s. The analysis highlights the contradictions in the experience of the NL. In fact, the attempt to move beyond ideologies appears to be a rhetorical instrument rather than a real transformation. However, the Third way model marked an important turning point in the definition of political legitimation strategies, the effects of which are clearly visible in the political discourses of European political parties in the years after the rise of the NL.

The paper analyses the changing role of municipalities in income support policy in Italy as an effect of both the policymaking at national level and the growing relevance of local third sector organizations. By recourse to the empirical observation of the case of the city of Turin, the research focuses primarily on the impact of the introduction of a national income protection scheme, the so-called New Social Card (NSC), planned at national level by the government but implemented at local level by municipalities together with non-profit organizations. Due to its genuinely "multilevel" nature, this policy offers precious insights to both vertical (national-local) and horizontal (public-third sector) relations. The analysis highlights the tensions between formal entitlements and the actual "room for manoeuvre" that local government enjoys. It will be argued that, despite the ongoing decentralization process, the structure of multilevel governance deeply narrows the freedom and the agency of the Municipal Authority. Two critical aspects of the Italian model of multilevel governance of income support will then be underlined, namely the lack of attention for existing local policies in the political and public discourse, and contradiction between explicit and implicit forms of decentralization

This article examines the role of passion among precarious labour force in the Italian academia. By relying on C. Wright Mill's distinction between "passion as a reason" of action and "passion as a motive" to represent and discuss one's employment condition, the article concludes that the symbolic strength of passion is correlated to its applicability both as a tool to govern recruitment in neo-liberal academia and as a strategy to fit recruitment criteria and "become employable". The article is based on more than four-year long documentation and participant observation in political initiatives and campaigns organised by precarious, non-tenured research staff in Italian universities.

The article focuses on the case of Italian psychologysts in order to examine how internship is connected to precarity. In this case, unpaid training enjoys strong legitimacy as it is imposed by the law and represents the prerequisite for the profession. The article investigates the institutionalisation of unpaid training and its consequences for the development of the psychologysts' professional profile. It also examines the consequences of this institutionalisation for the profession, arguing that both top-down and bottom-up incentives for change are absent. Precarious psychologysts find it very difficult to exert voice or ally for political action, whereas employers enjoy free labor force while carrying no responsibility for their working conditions or career development. The article concludes by contributing to the wider debate on training-precarity nexus, which is crucial as the divide between work and training is more and more blurred.