Suchergebnisse

Although deliberative theory has attracted increasing attention from many quarters, a relevant question that has not yet received adequate consideration is whether it should be institutionalized (Fung et al. 2005), and how that might be done. Although there have been many successful 'one shot' experiences of deliberative participation, there are few examples of institutionalization as a routine practice. This raises several issues including the relationship of deliberative processes with representative institutions and processes. Compared with other developed nations, Italy has not traditionally been a leader in the application of public participation practices. However, several regional administrations have ventured into this field in recent years. At the end of 2007 the Region of Tuscany passed Law no. 69 defining Rules on the Promotion of Participation in the Formulation of Regional and Local Policies, an innovative legal provision explicitly aimed at pro-actively promoting citizen engagement in local and regional decision making. This law, by incorporating features explicitly derived from deliberative theory, institutionalizes citizen participation; that is, the involvement through group dialogue of citizens and stakeholders in decision-making about issues or problems of public interest. Tuscany has become a remarkable 'laboratory' for empirically testing the validity of deliberative participation in the real world, for verifying the effects and possible benefits of its institutionalization, and for applying a specific model which enables representative government and mini-publics to co-exist (and to become complementary and mutually reinforcing). The results from this laboratory will be of relevance to scholars, practitioners and politicians who are interested in such democratic innovations. Law no. 69/07 might well inform the uptake of citizen engagement well beyond Tuscan borders, both in Italy and internationally. An analysis of the approach adopted by the Law offers an opportunity to reflect on how authorities might go about actively promoting and institutionalizing citizen participation. This paper examines the impetus for the Law and the participatory process through which the Law itself was designed; it illustrates the goals of the Law and how these have been operationalized into legal provisions, with specific attention to the role of the administrations (including an ad hoc independent Authority) who were entrusted with the implementation of the Law; it highlights the deliberative features of the Law; and finally it offers a preliminary discussion of the outcomes of the Law – both successful and less so – during its first three years of existence.

Since the time of the Grand Tour, the Italian region of Tuscany has sustained a highly visible American and Anglo migrant community. Today American women continue to migrate there, many in order to marry Italian men. Confronted with experiences of social exclusion, unfamiliar family relations, and new cultural terrain, many women struggle to build local lives. In the first ethnographic monograph of Americans in Italy, Catherine Trundle argues that charity and philanthropy are the central means by which many American women negotiate a sense of migrant belonging in Italy. This book traces women

Although deliberative theory has attracted increasing attention from many quarters, a relevant question that has not yet received adequate consideration is whether it should be institutionalized (Fung et al. 2005), and how that might be done. Although there have been many successful 'one shot' experiences of deliberative participation, there are few examples of institutionalization as a routine practice. This raises several issues including the relationship of deliberative processes with representative institutions and processes. Compared with other developed nations, Italy has not traditionally been a leader in the application of public participation practices. However, several regional administrations have ventured into this field in recent years. At the end of 2007 the Region of Tuscany passed Law no. 69 defining Rules on the Promotion of Participation in the Formulation of Regional and Local Policies, an innovative legal provision explicitly aimed at pro-actively promoting citizen engagement in local and regional decision making. This law, by incorporating features explicitly derived from deliberative theory, institutionalizes citizen participation; that is, the involvement through group dialogue of citizens and stakeholders in decision-making about issues or problems of public interest. Tuscany has become a remarkable 'laboratory' for empirically testing the validity of deliberative participation in the real world, for verifying the effects and possible benefits of its institutionalization, and for applying a specific model which enables representative government and mini-publics to co-exist (and to become complementary and mutually reinforcing). The results from this laboratory will be of relevance to scholars, practitioners and politicians who are interested in such democratic innovations. Law no. 69/07 might well inform the uptake of citizen engagement well beyond Tuscan borders, both in Italy and internationally. An analysis of the approach adopted by the Law offers an opportunity to reflect on how ...

Melding evolutionary theory and both animal and human ethology together with descriptive historical research on a typical Tuscan village in the Seventeenth century, this title explains the good reasons individuals had for behaving in ways that now seem strange to us

In the last decades, evaluation has become an essential tool for policymakers, because it provides unbiased estimates of a policy effect. The purpose of an evaluation is to explore the causal relationship between the implementation of a policy and its effects – the "impact". In the programming period 2007-2013, the European Commission – and the member States of the EU – have focused their attention on the development of innovation policies within Regional Innovation Systems: for this reason, the innovation policies have been particularly involved in evaluation processes. Six Italian regions have created the Poli di innovazione (Innovation poles), networks of universities, services centres, incubators, public and private laboratories, and enterprises, whose goals are to foster the creation of networks and to stimulate firms' economic performance through the support in R&D activities. Due to the novelty of the policy, this research is a first attempt to evaluate the Poles, using the Tuscan context as case study. Tuscany Region have supported the creation of twelve poles, facilitating the access to a call for tender for the purchase of R&D qualified services. Using matching and difference-in-differences methods, it has been estimated the Average Treatment on the Treated – in terms of Total Factor Productivity and Labor Productivity – for three possible cases: subsidized SME, SME members of the Poles, subsidized SME members of the Poles. In addition, it has been implemented a model that include network centrality measures to assess the effect of the Poles on the performance of the firms. It emerges that the subsidized firms which belong to the poles experience on average a productivity gain towards the end of the period of subsidization, and the centrality of their pole have a positive effect, which is particularly relevant for the top enterprises – in terms of productivity.