Suchergebnisse

Investigates the events surrounding the bombing of Florence, Italy, in Sept 1943, & the impact on the city's perceived immunity from attack because of its globally recognized cultural & artistic heritage. In 1941, the Prefect of Florence had commissioned a study aimed at declaring the city of Florence a "no-fly zone." But following the attack in 1943, & concerned with the Nazi occupation of the city, the Florentine cultural community mobilized to get German command to officially guarantee the safety of the city. Citing medieval & Enlightenment-era religious doctrine, the final report of the Florentine Open City Committee was published in 1944. Legitimized by Cardinal Elia Dalla Costa's direct intervention at the German consulate, it defined international legal & humanitarian issues during wartime. J. Sadler

Among European countries, particularly those of Southern Europe, Italy is unanimously considered as a case in point and problematic at the same time. Italy, from its origins onwards, has embarked on the path of early social protection and occupationalism. This imprinting has greatly influenced the development of the welfare state and has proved its importance in various critical junctures. During the Seventies, Italian welfare has moved in the health sector from occupationalism along the groove of universalism with the establishment of a National Health Service. At the same time, many obstacles have prevented Italy to align to the main European countries with respect to the overall provision of protection and the capability of facing problems and challenges. Also, reforms introduced and implemented in the Nineties failed to heal completely. Given this context, the article aims at providing a reconstruction of the evolution of the Italian welfare state from its origins to the present day, illustrating the challenges, and evaluating the solutions gradually implemented. Adapted from the source document.

A review essay on books by (1) James H. Kulinski (Ed), Citizens and Politics: Perspectives from Political Psychology (Cambridge: Cambridge U Press, 2001); & (2) George E. Marcus, W. Russel Neumann & Michael MacKuen, Affective Intelligence and Political Judgement (Chicago: U Chicago Press, 2000). These recent works raise some of the major current problems & hypotheses relating to political psychology, cognitive sciences, & public opinion research. In particular, attention is paid to the controversy opposing the "combinatorial" perspective of Paul Sniderman et al to the "constructionist" approach of John Zaller on opinion formation & change. We argue that Zaller's accent on situational frames & Sniderman's emphasis on the underlying political dispositions are much more complementary than mutually exclusive. Therefore, it seems difficult to deny in toto the plausibuity of the "ambivalence" hypothesis, especially with regard to specific low-involvement segments of citizens & to various new, nonobtrusive, & not yet crystallized, political issues. 14 References. Adapted from the source document.

This article explores the possibility of applying the tools of economic analysis of law, which are traditionally used in the field of private law, to public law as well. The first part investigates constitutional law issues, addressed by prevailing approaches through the social contract framework, by applying an agreement model to a general public good such as the State. This model is typically based on games with features of the 'prisoner's dilemma.' Through the analysis of constitutional preferences that may transform such dilemma in a game with full cooperation equilibrium, two types of preferences are compared: 'utilitarian based on impartiality principle' & 'rawlsian based on difference principle'; it is shown that this second type better facilitates the constitutional agreement. With the objective of utilizing more easily economic theory tools, the article then attempts to apply the distinction between private & public good to that between private & public rights. In particular, both public goods & public rights can be assimilated as they are non-excludable & non-transferable through exchanges or contracts. Moreover, an attempt is made to define an economic counterpart to the juridical notion of 'general interest' which is the basis for those norms in the fields of public & administrative law envisaging the direct intervention of the State to remedy market failures, both at constitutional & sub-constitutional level. Hence the question of what are the most efficient legal procedures to solve such problems is addressed. Using above all the case of negative externalities related to private goods, the article discusses in particular when it is more efficient to resort to administrative interventions rather than judicial ones; or otherwise allowing such problems to be dealt with through private bargaining between injured & injurers. In this respect the latest literature of economic analysis of law often favors private bargaining in the spirit of Coase's thinking. However, it is here put forward that in terms of cost-benefit analysis economic theory reaches much less radical conclusions often supporting the higher efficiency of legal rules & administrative types of intervention. In the final part of the article, different legal systems (minimal, neoliberal, welfarist) are compared by way of analyzing their rationale & limitations from an efficiency point of view. Adapted from the source document.