Italian State Research Articles

Requiescat in Pace: Analysis of the Rules on the Prohibition of Funerals during the COVID-19 Emergency in Italy (Presentation Slides)

For centuries art, music, and literature have described the individual and collective backlash due to a pandemic, even though today our society has forgotten these circumstances, thanks to the medical and technological advancement, with all the systemic consequences entailed to the difficulty of stopping the contagion, including burials.In a small village in the Italian countryside an elderly person passed away, it is not known whether or not affected by COVID-19, but due to the contagion and the rules that prohibited public, religious or civil cerimonies, the lady's funeral was not able to take place according to the usual ritual and with the collective participation of family members and the local community. The announcement of her death and her leave-taking were given in a completely exceptional way: instead of the usual affiche published by the funeral home and payed by the family, the announcement was made through Facebook, from the mayor's page, in a participatory and emotional tone, with a mixture of secularism and religion: “This morning we gave our last farewell at the cemetary to Ms. XX, aged ..., mother of YX, her home was at …. Her remains were blessed by the priest. The Mayor was there in representation of all those who would have liked to participate, and who were unable since the restrictions for the ongoing coronavirus emergency. The condolences of all our community to the family. The Mayor". Another image that became well-known worldwide concerned the row of military trucks that carried the coffins of the deceased people from the cemetery of Bergamo (one of the most affected places in Italy) to the cremation sites in other regions.These sad episodes show of how much the ban forbidding public funeral of whom passed away was intrusive and affected entire communities, both in countryside villages, and in towns.The farewell cerimonies to deceased is a deeply felt moment, where the communities gather together with the affected family for helping each other to mourne the beloved one who passed away: in fact the burial of the deads is a universal rule. Between 9 March and 4 May 2020, Italian law was very intrusive in this severance, forbidding funerals with criminal penalties. Although the Italian state is increasingly secularized, the farewell cerimonies are still strongly linked to religious tradition, although secular rites are growing.The aim of this abstract is to verify what was the impact in Italy of the interdictive legal rules about funeral ceremonies on the life of people who have suffered individuals and, at the same time, collective mourning.

Environmental monitoring and assessment: A multi-scale and multiparameter case study in Campania Region (S Italy) on the recreational seawater quality evaluation

Multiple recreational seawater pollution episodes affected the coasts of Campania region (Southern Italy) during the 2019 summer season (May through September). The region’s population detected evidence of this pollution by a change in the water colour (to green–brown).This pollution was only partially revealed by conventional monitoring and standardized indicators performed by the Campania Region Environmental Protection Agency (ARPAC). Starting with this evidence, a multidisciplinary team that included representatives from both Italian and United States universities, the Regional Environmental Protection Agency, and the Italian Coast Guard, studied the phenomenon and found all three actors of the environmental model source-path-target. The research was performed using the Multi-level and Multi-parametric monitoring (MUM3) framework, following a bottom-up approach, comprising both onsite and remote sampled and sensed data, that begins at the surface level and scales up to determine the extent as well as the source of the pollution. By this approach, the presence of a microalgae bloom (Pyramimonas spp. and Euglena spp.) has been disclosed and it has been related to the higher amount of nutrients loading by river inflows, due to the precipitation anomalies occurred in May 2019 in that site. This study represents the first application of a real testbed of the MUM3 framework that follows a bottom-up approach showing the added value of this multi-scale and multiparameter methodology for environmental monitoring and assessment, where conventional methods often fail.

A public health Italian ethical movement to sustain the beveridge model: health promotion and equity

Abstract Worldwide sustainability of the National Health Systems (NHS) has been facing different challenges, such as population ageing, epidemiologic transition and deep social transformations. All these changes are struggling Italian welfare state and its public NHS. Following the principle of the Right to Health of the Declaration of Human Right and the Italian Constitution, a group of young health professionals from all over Italy founded a campaign called “2018 Primary Health care: Now or Never”(PHC Campaign) reminding WHO report of 2008 “primary Health Care: Now more than never”. This movement promotes a reform of the NHS focusing on comprehensive-PHC (C-PHC) and health promotion to guarantee sustainability of the Beveridge model italian system, fight health inequalities and answer the complexity of population needs in a period of spending cuts. Since the beginning, the movement started an educational program through the study of the literature and the research of the Italian and international best practices of C-PHC and community health promotion. As a result, to achieve the goal of this project, PHC campaign organized peer education training sessions, educational site-visit of some Italian best practices, lectures and workshops with Italian and foreigner health professionals experts on the field. Several national and regional events had been organized all over Italy. Members of “PHC” Campaign have been invited to write books, news on web-based newspapers on this topic and participate in congresses. To date, PHC campaign might be considered one of the strongest not-institutional voices in Italy in supporting the public beveridge-model NHS Moved from a strong ethical health policy view underlined the importance of the Right-to-Health and of a C-PHC based NHS, since the beginning, “2018 Primary Health care: Now or Never” Movement identified three asset of action: advocacy, education/knowledge and diffusion. Key messages The experience showed the importance of health professionals engagement in public health topics such as sustainability of public NHS in order to promote a reform towards health promotion and equity. PHC Campaign is an example of how a bottom-up ethical movement on public health from different Health professionals could actively contribute to promoting cultural and health policy change.

Culture and tax avoidance: the case of Italy

ABSTRACT Culture is increasingly used as an explanatory variable for tax evasion. So far, we know, however, little about the mechanisms that link culture and tax behavior. This paper is a historical-sociological study of how religion influences tax behavior. The contribution focuses on the Italian case, among Western-European countries one with the highest evasion rates. It argues that the willingness of Italians to pay their taxes still suffers today from the Church–state conflict of the 19th century. To the Vatican, territorial integration of the Italian state posed an existential threat, both at the political (loss of territory) and at the spiritual level (diffusion of liberalism). The paper shows how Catholic socio-economic thinkers developed ideas about just taxation in response to Italian reunification that were directed against the Italian state and used by the Vatican to delegitimize it. The paper shows that it is not only rational decisions about the possibility to get audited or low public service provision that drives tax evasion. Instead Italian tax evasion is legitimized through a historically grown mistrust toward the state.

Assessing Causal Effects of Extra Compulsory Learning on College Students’ Academic Performances

SummaryIn Italian state universities candidate freshmen must take an entrance examination. Candidates who obtain a test score less than or equal to a pre-fixed threshold may enrol at the university but must comply with an additional compulsory educational obligation, called obblighi formativi aggiuntivi (OFA). The OFA assignment rule appeals to a (sharp) regression discontinuity design with the entrance examination score acting as the forcing variable. We assess causal effects of OFA status by using data from a school of engineering of a specific Italian state university. For subpopulations of units for which our regression discontinuity design can be described as a local randomized experiment, we draw inference on the causal effects of OFA on students’ academic performances measured by using two variables: the number of university credits awarded at the end of the first academic year and the corresponding average grade. These outcome variables suffer from the problem of truncation by ‘death’, because neither is defined for students who decide not to enrol. Moreover, nor is the average grade defined for students who enrol but do not either take or pass any examination in the first academic year. We deal with these issues by using the framework of principal stratification and adopting a Bayesian approach to inference. We find some evidence that the receipt of OFA may negatively affect students’ academic performances, although the posterior distributions of the causal estimands have high variability.

The distributive implications of welfare reform packages. The Italian case during and after the great crisis

ABSTRACT The paper analyses the pension reforms implemented during and after the Great Crisis in Italy (2011–2019), and evaluates whether a recalibration of the pension system and, more in general, of the Italian welfare state was involved. More specifically, through a multidimensional theoretical framework, the article assesses the distributive implications of the pension reforms not only within the pension realm but also by considering their interplay with those reforms that occurred in three specific sectors - namely, the labour market, the family, and anti-poverty policies. Pension reforms therefore are analysed in terms of welfare reform packages, where old and new policy instruments from different social policy fields are included. The work shows that recalibrating the Italian welfare state is still very difficult.

Transnational politics of prestige? Museums and art collections in German and Italian states in the first half of the nineteenth century

ABSTRACT During the period Koselleck called the Sattelzeit (roughly 1750 to 1850) princely chambers of curiosities became public museums that the elites visited for educational purposes. The Louvre in Paris served as the principal model. Here, after 1800, a chronological (and canonical) collection came into being and that would be emulated by other European rulers. The plurality of territorial states meant that museums and art galleries were rebuilt or maintained in many Italian and German cities, all of which claimed to represent the respective national culture. What was exhibited in European museums from the 1840s onwards was intended to increase the fame of the rulers and the prestige of their capital cities. This contribution is a comparative analysis of how non-national affiliations and loyalties shaped the foundation of Italian and German museums before 1850 while the ideal of a ‘national’ museum drastically changed after the formation of the nation states.

From preservation to entertainment: Accounting for the transformation of participation in Italian state museums

This study investigates the evolution of performance measures in Italian state museums, alongside the evolution of their role from preservation institutes to entertainment sites, remodelling themselves as participatory museums of the digital era. Italian autonomous state museums, and in particular four of these museums, were chosen as the main field of analysis because this category of state museums was affected the most by the move from the participatory to the entertainment model through successive reforms. Results underlined a renewed role for entertainment, which acted as a mediator between the notion of enjoyment and that of knowledge; the primary importance of the measure about the number of visitors, which assumed different nuances along the years; and the double function of digital technologies in entertaining visitors and providing new sources of measurement.

Higher education policy: Why hope for quality when rewarding quantity?

This paper analyses the impact of the Excellence Initiative (EI) in Germany, a policy intervention aimed to promote and select outstanding active research universities by competitively allocating additional public funds. Academic debate on efficiency and effectiveness of higher education policy does not addresses issues such as treatment and selection effects, suffers from generalizable measurement problems, and does not take a comparative approach. Our objective is to fill this gap by adopting Italy as a control country. In doing so, this paper examines (1) whether this policy approach is suitable to stimulate the system and the awarded institutions, (2) how the performance impact can be measured and (3) whether the results are driven by country specific effects or are generalizable. To this end, we applied a triple difference-in-differences analysis (DDD) on a dataset of 72 German and 51 Italian state universities during the first round of the EI, from 2004 to 2013. We found that the EI has had a positive effect on research quantity, but a reverse effect on research quality.

Italian state museums during the COVID-19 crisis: from onsite closure to online openness

ABSTRACT This study investigates the reaction of Italian state museums to the closure of their physical sites caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, taking the perspective of their online activity on social media. The study explores the type and amount of content published by museums on their social media webpages, as well as the level of online engagement that is generated by their activity. Empirically, this study investigated the 100 largest Italian state museums, showing that, during the weeks of lockdown, their cultural initiatives did not come to a stop but, on the contrary, there has been a sharp rise in online cultural material and initiatives taking place through social media, with museums doubling their online activity. This online evidence has stimulated further reflections on the future direction of digitally enabled approaches to culture and its enjoyment.

The Italian State, its Regions and the Virus

AbstractItalian politics has always been characterised by deep regional divides. While the north and centre are well integrated into the European economy, southern regions struggle to keep up their productivity and employment levels. Although this divide has a long history, the Covid‐19 crisis is set to worsen the inequality separating the two parts of the country. This article looks at how the coronavirus pandemic immediately assumed a regional dimension, which was reflected not only in the geography of the contagion, but also in how the central state struggled to manage the contrasting demands coming from northern and southern regions. Although the north has been the epicentre of the health crisis, the south is set to pay the highest economic and social price for the lockdown measures. The conclusion suggests that, while the Covid crisis has confirmed the salience of regional divides for Italian politics, it might also strengthen autonomist forces.

Italian Experience of the Administrative Justice Functioning

The development of administrative legal proceedings in Ukraine determines the search for optimal ways to improve the system. Each country has its own strategy for the functioning of administrative justice, which depends on cultural, historical, national, integration processes, as well as the gradual formation of the legal system of a particular state. The main purpose of the study is to analyse the Italian experience of the administrative justice functioning. To achieve this goal, various theoretical methods are used. The method of legal forecasting allowed to identify areas for improvement of administrative justice in Ukraine. The author presents the concept and features of administrative justice operation in Italy in matters of protection of violated rights, freedoms and interests of individual and citizen by decisions, actions and omissions of the authorities; analyses the system and structure of administrative justice in Italy, its specialisation; features of some categories of public law disputes and delimitation of jurisdiction of administrative courts and general courts in resolving certain categories of administrative cases, features of their reading in administrative courts of Italy of first and appellate instance; powers of the Italian State Council in resolving public law disputes, and powers of quasi-judicial tribunals of Italy, which perform the functions of justice. It is revealed that the administrative courts of Italy are empowered with the rights to assess the activities of public administration. Based on the experience of other countries, including Italy, we can conclude that a well-built system of administrative justice can help protect the rights of Ukrainian citizens and the rule of law. But it is important not only to focus on foreign countries, but also to take into account the peculiarities of the legal system of Ukraine

Od populizmu regionalistycznego do nacjonalistycznego

From Regionalistic to Nationalistic Populism. Reflection on Italian Populism on the Example of the (Northern) League
 The (Northern) League has been playing a key role on the Italian political scene for almost three decades. The article approaches the issue of the elements of rhetoric of the populist narrative proclaimed by the party with particular emphasis on the two types of populism: regionalistic and nationalistic populism. The purpose of the article is above all an attempt to reconstruct the most important populist characteristics and activities contributing to the League’s significant electoral success and verification of the research hypothesis that the phenomenon of populism in Italy is associated with the long‑standing regional character of the Italian state and the resulting attitude of putting their (often regional) interests above those of others.

INVESTIGATIVE TECHNIQUES IN THE DIGITAL AGE: CYBERCRIME AND CRIMINAL PROFILING

<p>The advent of the Internet and social networks has reduced human and empathic relationships, consequently increasing virtual ones. Cyberspace offers the possibility of carrying out illegal acts with the perception of remaining unpunished. In this article we discussed the differences between crime and cybercrime which takes different forms within cyberspace such as cyberstalking, cyberbullying, online sexual offences and property crimes such as white-collar crimes. Furthermore, the evolution of criminal profiling in the digital age has been described and the profile of the cyber-criminal has been defined as outlined by the Italian State Police. The multiplication of criminal activities perpetrated through the web has led the Legislator to wonder about the most effective repressive methods to repress and try to ward off the numerous dangers that are wandering within cyberspace. The Italian legislator, through various legislative interventions, has introduced changes to the Penal Code as in article 612-bis, introducing in paragraph 2 an increase in punishment for the case in which the crime is committed through IT tools such as e-mail, SMS, chat malware and, above all, social networks. Also, the legislator included article 612-ter in the Penal Code to prosecute the illegal dissemination of sexually explicit images and videos. Finally, criminological research must consider that cybercrime has different variables than traditional crime and the evaluation of criminal behaviour should take into account the influence of the virtual dimension on the cognitive processes of the subjects.</p><p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/soc/0548/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p><a href="https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3877668"><img src="https://zenodo.org/badge/DOI/10.5281/zenodo.3877668.svg" alt="DOI" /></a>

Public and Private Health Services: Wait Times for Health Services and the Risk of Inequality from the Italian Perspective.

Public and Private Health Services: Wait Times for Health Services and the Risk of Inequality from the Italian Perspective.

Giula Bonazza, Abolitionism and the Persistence of Slavery in Italian States, 1750–1850

Esta, femme tatare, nee en 1756, fut amenee par son maitre, un prince catholique, en Pologne puis a Versailles et a Hambourg, avant d’entamer une fuite a Istanbul qui la conduisit finalement en territoire italien : jusqu’au port de Trieste puis a Trevise, Verone, Venise et Rome… L’histoire d’Esta n’est qu’un des nombreux courts recits de vies d’esclaves que Giulia Bonazza parvient a reconstituer dans l’Italie de la seconde moitie du xviiie siecle et de la premiere moitie du xixe siecle. Pour ...

New development: COVID-19 as an accelerator of digital transformation in public service delivery

ABSTRACT In an unexpected circumstance, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, public service delivery cannot be suspended, but must be delivered online, relying on the available digital technology. Social media, specifically, have been widely used to reach a broader portion of the population. This article discusses the digital acceleration that governments and organizations are now facing. The focus is on Italian state museums, which have been pushed for years to adopt digital tools to increase participation. This article highlights three main dilemmas in service delivery: user engagement; planning and control; and costs. The three dilemmas show the social and organizational challenges connected to digital transformation, underlining the issues that organizations will have to face in the future and not just in an emergency such as COVID-19.

L’Unione delle Comunità ebraiche italiane tra adesione all’ebraismo ortodosso e rappresentanza di tutti gli ebrei italiani: l’Intesa del 1987 è ancora attuale?

SOMMARIO: 1 - Introduzione - 2. Il quadro pluralistico dell’ebraismo diasporico e delle sue organizzazioni - 3. Peculiarita dell’organizzazione dell’ebraismo italiano - 4. Pluralismo interno e tensioni nel contesto unitario delle Comunita - 5. Le origini storiche del peculiare assetto organizzativo dell’ebraismo italiano: l’assenza del movimento riformato in Italia e la normativa statualistica del 1930-31 - 6. La struttura unitaria e l’adesione delle Comunita all’ortodossia nello Statuto e nell’Intesa - 7. Conclusioni: la necessaria conciliazione tra pluralismo e unitarieta tra le varie anime dell’ebraismo italiano. The Union of Italian Jewish Communities between adherence to Orthodox Judaism and representation of all Jew in Italy: Is the constitutional Agreement of 1987 with the Italian State still adequate? ABSTRACT: Relations between Italian Judaism and the Italian State are governed legally by the Agreement (“Intesa”) concluded in 1987 pursuant to Article 8 of the Italian Constitution, enforced by Law No. 101 of 1989.The organization of the Italian Jewish communities and their central “Union” is governed by the By-Laws (“Statuto”) adopted by them at that time, which reflect the Intesa. In conformity also with the tradition of Italian Judaism local communities take care of all Jewish activities, religious, social or educational, and the Unione officially represents all Jews and Jewish groups. Since 1987 however, there has been an explosion of various Jewish groups and denominations in Italy, from the Lubavitch to Reformed groups, which organize themselves autonomously. These groups considers themselves part of Italian Judaism and recognize more or less the central role of the local communities and Unione. However they increasingly ask a say in the latter management.. The issue discussed in the paper is whether the unitary structure of Italian Judaism, as enshrined in Intesa and recognized by Italian public authorities, is still adequate to cope with this evolution, and whether a plurality of independent Jewish organizations, separately recognized by Italian authorities would be compatible with Article 8 of the Constitution and preferable in practice.

Prostitution in Italy: the Merlin law and biological predetermination

ABSTRACT In the first decade of the new Italian Republic (1948–1958), debate over the abolition of regulated prostitution, or state-controlled prostitution, led to the re-emergence of anthropological and scientific-medical theories regarding the origins of criminalisation of prostitutes. The notion of biological predetermination of the prostitute, codified by Cesare Lombroso at the end of the nineteenth century, impacted the political-institutional and scientific-medical debate surrounding the Merlin law which, in 1958, ordered the suppression of the ‘closed houses’. The Italian state invoked biological predeterminism to legitimise a double-standard sexual moral code that required the existence of repressive institutions in which to marginalise a category of women dedicated to the sale of sex. This article shows how Italian public institutions, in a strategic alliance with the scientific-medical world, constructed discriminatory policies that materialised in forms of physical and moral mortification, denying women the fundamental rights enshrined in the new Italian Republican Constitution.

Inhabitants of heritage: the dwellers of an Italian Renaissance palace and their problematic eviction in Ferrara, 1900–1940

AbstractThis article examines the eviction of tenants and squatters from a Renaissance palace in Ferrara, purchased by the Italian state in 1920. The case stands at the crossroads of three processes in European history between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: the social and material ‘decadence’ of aristocratic residences, the birth of ‘national heritage’ and preservation policies and the explosion of the ‘housing problem’, following changes in urban demography and social structure. Considering a large range of sources, the article offers new insight into the conflict between different urban bureaucracies and inside them. It also explores the different forms of agency of working-class dwellers against the background of troubled post-war years followed by the advent of fascism.