Suchergebnisse

The 'years of lead' commonly refer in Italy to the decade of the 1970s, characterized by widespread conflictuality, the use of violence for political aims and harsh state repression of political activism. Political violence has been primarily handled with both normal and exceptional means of criminal justice, yet debates on amnesty and reconciliation have been recurrent over the years. This article traces the history of the debates on amnesty and pardon for politically motivated offences to show how they have been shaped by changing national and international contexts. On the one hand, the 'failed amnesty' reflects the long-lasting repressive approach adopted by the Italian state to address the question of the political violence in the 1970s and the reluctance to acknowledge its collective and political character. On the other hand, this article argues that, beyond the apparent continuity of a punitive approach, the gradual disappearance of amnesty from political debates in the 1990s–2000s is symptomatic of a more paradigmatic shift resulting from the combination of different factors and trends, such as the transformation of the Italian political landscape in the early 1990s, the emergence and affirmation of a new punitive discourse, as well as the increasing delegitimation of amnesties in transitional settings. Thus, through a specific case-study, this article draws links between criminal justice and penal trends, political transformations and developments in transitional justice, and consequently intends to contribute to the discussion of the concept of punitiveness and the effects of the expanding international criminal law on the treatment of politically motivated offences.

The 1970s were characterised in Italy by the radicalisation of radical left political groups, but also by far-right bombings in public spaces: the decade is still a subject of strong political and historical controversies. This paper will present the cases of two commemorative stones in two Italian cities, how they have become areas of contention and how they embody the conflicting memories of the "years of lead". The plaque at the station of Bologna in commemoration of the bombing on 2 August 1980 has been contested several times over the last twenty years by right-wing politicians for the adjective "fascist" used on its inscription "Victims of the fascist terrorism". On the other hand, the stone in memory of the death of the anarchist worker Giuseppe Pinelli, allegedly from falling from a fourth-floor window of the police station in Milan in 1969, has had a difficult existence since it was first put in place in 1977. The controversies about this memorial stone epitomise the long-lasting disagreement over Pinelli's death. These two cases offer an example of how places of memory can be highly charged with political meanings and reveal competing interpretations of the past as well as contemporary political struggles and ideological contexts. Analysis of these local and activist forms of memorialisation illustrates the tension between attempts by different actors to depoliticise or re-politicise the memory of the 'years of lead' in Italy and show how the interpretation of the past is continuously shaped by a complex interplay of actors, groups and levels.

This article introduces the critical analysis of the links between political violence, law and memory that is discussed in the collection of articles that follows. The collection challenge common assumptions about political violence, unveil the processes, practices and discourses through which the Sovereign's violence is legitimized and the demos' violence is delegitimized, and let emerge the dynamic links between violence and law.

By the Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem, every reasonable voting rule for three or more alternatives is susceptible to manipulation: there exist elections where one or more voters can change the election outcome in their favour by unilaterally modifying their vote. When a given election admits several such voters, strategic voting becomes a game among potential manipulators: a manipulative vote that leads to a better outcome when other voters are truthful may lead to disastrous results when other voters choose to manipulate as well. We consider this situation from the perspective of a boundedly rational voter, using an appropriately adapted cognitive hierarchy framework to model voters' limitations. We investigate the complexity of algorithmic questions that such a voter faces when deciding on whether to manipulate. We focus on k-approval voting rules, with k>=1. We provide polynomial-time algorithms for k=1,2 and hardness results for k>=4 (NP and co-NP), supporting the claim that strategic voting, albeit ubiquitous in collective decision making, is computationally hard if the manipulators try to reason about each other's actions.

The international framework: accrual accounting prevalence European countries, as well as other countries worldwide, have recently witnessed profound changes in their accounting systems at all levels of government. These reforms have at their core the need for high-quality and relevant financial information that would eventually be used for transparency and accountability purposes. They have mainly been inspired by the private sector and they encapsulate almost unanimously the application of accrual accounting (Lapsley et al., 2009). In their effort to develop a robust accrual accounting reference framework, several countries have considered the use of the International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) as a benchmark of high-quality standards that enjoys international acceptance.

AbstractImproving the long-term stability of perovskite solar cells is critical to the deployment of this technology. Despite the great emphasis laid on stability-related investigations, publications lack consistency in experimental procedures and parameters reported. It is therefore challenging to reproduce and compare results and thereby develop a deep understanding of degradation mechanisms. Here, we report a consensus between researchers in the field on procedures for testing perovskite solar cell stability, which are based on the International Summit on Organic Photovoltaic Stability (ISOS) protocols. We propose additional procedures to account for properties specific to PSCs such as ion redistribution under electric fields, reversible degradation and to distinguish ambient-induced degradation from other stress factors. These protocols are not intended as a replacement of the existing qualification standards, but rather they aim to unify the stability assessment and to understand failure modes. Finally, we identify key procedural information which we suggest reporting in publications to improve reproducibility and enable large data set analysis. ; S.D.S. acknowledges the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (HYPERION, grant agreement no. 756962), and the Royal Society and Tata Group (UF150033). F.D.R. and T.M.W. would like to acknowledge the support from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) through the SPECIFIC Innovation and Knowledge Centre (EP/N020863/1) and express their gratitude to the Welsh Government for their support of the Ser Solar programme.

L'igiene ospedaliera in Italia ha una lunga e solida storia che però richiede una necessaria riflessione per poter restare al passo con quelle che sono le innovazioni e gli sviluppi dei sistemi sanitari anche connessi a quelle che sono le attività dell'Unione Europea. A livello europeo infatti esistono diverse tradizioni nazionali che riguardo l'igiene ospedaliera e per questo motivo l'European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) ha adottato il termine "controllo delle infezioni e igiene ospedaliera" per poter così includere tutti i professionisti sanitari dei singoli Paesi. La nostra proposta è sia quella di modificare il termine di "igiene ospedaliera" in "igiene delle organizzazioni sanitarie" per poter focalizzare l'attenzione anche ai numerosi livelli di cura non ospedalieri, sia di adottare la seguente definizione: "tutte le attività volte a garantire, in modo appropriato, scientificamente valido ed efficiente, l'assistenza in un ambiente sicuro, confortevole e salubre per i pazienti, i caregiver e gli operatori sanitari". L'igiene ospedaliera ed i suoi professionisti sono un pilastro necessario per garantire la qualità e la sicurezza dell'assistenza sanitaria in Italia. ; Although hospital hygiene has a long history in Italy it is necessary to reflect about it because of the innovation in healthcare systems and because of the evolution due to European Union related activities. Different traditions exist in European countries about hospital hygiene and European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) adopted the term of "infection control and hospital hygiene" which includes all the engaged European healthcare professionals. We propose to modify hospital hygiene as "healthcare organisation hygiene" in order to focalise the attention to all care settings not only hospitals and to adopt the following definition: "all activities aimed to guarantee, in an appropriate, scientifically sound and efficient way, that structures and processes support healthcare practices in a safe comfortable and healthy environment both for patients, caregivers and healthcare workers". Hospital hygiene and its professionals, besides the long tradition, still remain a relevant pillar in guaranteeing quality and safety of healthcare in Italy.