As part of local welfare in Italy, housing policies underwent reforms that emphasized the role of local governments—and cities in particular—in the definition of the problem and in the elaboration of possible solutions. Housing is quite neglected in the political debate, but it is increasingly important for responding to citizens' demands in times of economic crisis. This paper reconstructs the policy process in two Italian cities, Turin (1997–2011) and Florence (1995–2011). The paper argues that policy change in housing can be fostered by a local political leadership that invests ideational, relational, and positional resources in policy making to spread new ideas, build networks of public and private actors at the local level, and attract fiscal resources while taking advantage of windows of opportunity at different institutional levels. Moreover, collaboration with local bureaucratic leadership proves fundamental to promoting innovative policies.
In Italy, institutional reforms have brought radical changes to local politics. nonetheless, the effect of changes on policy performance has been less evident. This paper proposes an analysis of government effectiveness in four cases of social service provision in two Italian cities, using the most similar systems design. Starting from theories of organisational effectiveness, the paper discusses the influence of policy leadership and perceptions of transparency in overcoming resistance and avoiding institutional conflicts between the council and the executive. Through the collection of official documents and semi-structured interviews, policymaking in social assistance is reconstructed from the inside.
The social sciences have often used leadership as a concept to describe the role of agency in change. Nonetheless, what leadership is and does may not always be clear, especially in the loose networks of local governance. On taking a policy analysis perspective, policy leadership in cities can be seen as coordinated action to achieve a shared goal taken by more than one leader, each endowed with different resources that may suddenly become strategic during the policy process. This paper thus proposes a theoretical reflection on policy leadership and uses a case study in urban planning to unpack power relationships involved in policy change at the municipal level. The contribution of the paper is twofold. First, it clarifies the concept of leadership in different social sciences and proposes an original application to the analysis of the policy process in local governments based on a typology of styles of policy leadership and a classification of strategic resources. Second, it argues for the existence of a policy leadership in the process of urban planning in Turin (1993-2011) as a key component of the complexity of urban governance, by focusing on the situated and strategic nature of exchange relationships
The idea of Southern European excptionalism, the theme that various similarities among the states of this area set them apart from their Western and Northern European counterparts, has recently been challenged. Their party systems and the stability of their governments would suggest the political convergence of Italy, Portugal, Greece and Spain towards the other consolidated democracies. However, the idea of exceptionalism was also linked to the distinctive features of Southern European bureaucracies and to the peculiar evolution of their institutions and welfare states. Assuming these similarities, this article has two main goals. First, I will propose an analytical framework for the comparative study of bureaucratic quality. Southern European bureaucracies will be analysed in terms of a number of dimensions, emphasising the role of public administration in consolidated democracies. I will use these dimensions to answer a specific research question: In what respects (if any) can Italian bureaucracy be considered exceptional when compared to the Greek, Portuguese and Spanish cases? Within this context, the role of administrative legacies and the relationship between politicians and bureaucrats will be considered.
To date, no systematic attempt has been made to describe the main features of the Italian policy advisory system. In particular, we know very little about the role of political scientists within it. This study addresses precisely this gap in the literature. First, by presenting original data derived from an online survey to which 177 Italian political scientists responded, we reconstruct frequency, type, recipient(s), and areas of their (potential) policy advice. Second, by focusing on two very relevant policy processes—the approval of the so-called Italicum (electoral law) and of the so-called Jobs Act (labour market reform)—we add insightful qualitative details to our quantitative analysis. Empirical results show that Italian political scientists are seldom engaged in policy advisory activities: many of them have never been. Moreover, there are no particular differences—from the point of view of personal characteristics (gender and level of academic career)—between policy advisors and the so-called pure academics. Finally, as the two case studies show, informal advice has the greatest impact on policymaking. This latter aspect reminds us of how much the Italian policy advisory system (PAS) is still poorly institutionalised and largely based on personal relationships as well as on political proximity.
Policy entrepreneurs are considered key actors in public policy. However, there are so many definitions of what they can do that it is difficult to use this concept in a systematic, analytical way. Starting with a critique of the tendency to overstretch the concept of the policy entrepreneur, we propose a more parsimonious conceptualisation by de-personalising entrepreneurial actions and by focusing on a specific pattern of action whose main task is to promote innovation. Thus, policy entrepreneurship is conceptualised as a pattern of action (involving different types of actors) focused on innovation promotion that is pursued by activities such as framing a problem, developing solutions, building a coalition in support, and seeking opportunities and attention. We also highlight prevalent resources for those activities. We then apply this conceptualisation to two cases of urban planning in Italy to discuss the activities of successful policy entrepreneurship as a collective effort.
Public services in Italy have undergone a deep transformation over the past two decades. A major watershed was first reached with privatization and then by listing in the stock market of some municipal companies that had been providing in-house services for almost a century. These companies then underwent major restructuring, through mergers and acquisitions, investments in relatively new activities, and in some cases internationalization. The article provides a preliminary assessment of Italy's turning towards the French model of industrialization, based on the involvement of big multinationals in public services, tracing commonalities and differences as a result of isomorphic dynamics. Empirical focus is on companies and their relationships with the political sphere, through the analysis of key aspects of governance and strategic decision-making of ACEA, HERA and IREN in Italy and SUEZ ENVIRONNEMENT and VEOLIA in France.
The creation of metropolitan government structures was on the agenda in Italy for at least twenty years before they were finally instituted in 2014 within a more wideranging reform of local governance. Ten «Metropolitan cities» are thus headed to become a second-tier level in Italian local government, responsible for a number of vital functions including territorial planning, development, transport. Based on document analysis and interviews, the article describes the transitional phase in which Metropolitan cities have been set up and have started to operate, and analyzes the main dynamics of politics and policy: the indirect election of councils and executive organs, the struggle for economic resources, and the start of policy initiatives.
Italian State-owned enterprises (SOEs) continue to occupy a strategic position in the national economy. In 2013, their aggregate value added was equal to 17% of the Italian national GDP, and they counted for around 40% of the total Italian stock market capitalization. The present paper focuses on the top ten Italian SOEs over the period 2004-2013. A first overview of the changes in their internal and external environment suggests the crucial importance of institutional conditions and the lack of a coherent policy design for privatisation and regulation, as the timing and the intensity of the reforms has varied deeply among sectors. Nevertheless, contemporary Italian SOEs have been increasingly exposed to market incentives, and they seem nowadays more oriented to markets than to public values, with some remarkable divergences depending on the degree of public control and market liberalization. Our textual analysis of the SOEs' statutes reveals a total absence of direct references to a formal public mission. Social goals have been increasingly addressed by means of regulation, while only Ferrovie dello Stato and Poste Italiane are formally subject to the Universal Service Obligation. We also find that, on average, the management and performance of the Italian SOEs has improved and it holds the comparison with private and public European industry peers. Still, remarkable differences across markets and across sectors persist. Listed SOEs are largely profitable and distribute positive dividends to their shareholders. Among them, Eni, Enel and Finmeccanica have expanded their business internationally, though cross-border M&As. As a result, a high share of their revenues and employees originates out of Italy. This suggests that their strategies are no more committed to political goals, such as employment protection. Conversely, other SOEs are somehow compelled to maintain an informal public mission. Unlisted SOEs that provide universal services often incur in economic losses which are partly covered by public subsidies or by taxpayers.Nevertheless they also have modernized their management and expanded into new profitable markets, such as high speed train (FS) and financial and insurance services (Poste Italiane). SOEs managing networks have invested in national strategic infrastructures and their employees and revenues are largely domestic-based. Finally, aggregate data do not reveal strong divergences among the Italian SOEs and their industry peers in terms of employment policies and labor productivity, with some important divergences among SOEs operating in labor-intensive and capital-intensive sectors. In terms of investments in fixed assets we observe divergences among SOEs and private ones. The former have increased their investments in tangible assets over time, while investments by private industry peers have been negatively affected by the financial crisis.
