Participation In Italy Research Articles

TRENDS AND PROSPECTS OF TRADE AND ECONOMIC COOPERATION BETWEEN KAZAKHSTAN AND ITALY

The article discusses the main directions of strategic cooperation between the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Italian Republic in the trade and economic fields. It is emphasized that the strategic partnership between the two countries is based on a solid foundation, and mutually beneficial relations with the Italian Republic, which is the third largest economy in the eurozone, has become a priority of the foreign policy of the Republic of Kazakhstan. In August 1992, an agreement was signed between the Italian Republic and the Republic of Kazakhstan to establish diplomatic relations. In 2007 the Business Council of Kazakhstan and Italy was created, the Intergovernmental Working Group on Industrial and Economic Cooperation and Exchange also operates.During this period the two states were able to raise the level of bilateral relations to a strategic partnership, went through formation, development and transformation and are looking for reserves to continue effective multilateral cooperation. The need for research is due to a number of factors. Firstly, for Italy, as a country with an open economy, the market of Kazakhstan and Central Asia is an important platform for promoting its goods and services. Secondly, establishing multilateral relations between the two countries is in the interests o f both the European Union and the Eurasian integration. Thirdly, the participation of Italy and Kazakhstan in achieving common goals on the world stage within the UN and the OSCE contributes to an understanding of the goals of foreign policy and constructive dialogue. Kazakhstan is interested in Italy’s experience in the development of small and medium-sized enterprises; we are talking about combining efforts in creating new enterprises in various fields.The relevance of the article lies in the fact that Kazakhstan and Italy build their relations on alliance and respect for national interests and understand the importance of strategic interaction, which will only increase in connection with the integration processes taking place in Europe and the Eurasian space. Today large-scale political transformations are being carried out in Kazakhstan. The Head of our state has proposed a program of reforms aimed at modernizing the political system, improving mechanisms for protecting human rights, and building a New Kazakhstan. In this context the dynamic relationship with the Italian Republic makes an important contribution to the implementation and promotion of the reforms carried out in our country.Kazakhstan intends to continue to pursue a foreign policy aimed at comprehensively strengthening and developing the strategic partnership with Italy.

Increasingly Unequal. Electoral Participation and Political Inequalities in a Context of Decreasing Unionization in Italy (1983-2018)

Turnout has become increasingly unequal in many advanced democracies over the last few decades. Disadvantaged social groups are found to exhibit lower turnout compared to their better-off counterparts. According to numerous scholars, this growing gap is mainly attributed to the weakening of mass organizations that traditionally appealed to socio-economically disadvantaged social groups, particularly trade unions. However, very few studies have investigated these trends in Italy, a country that has witnessed a significant decrease in electoral turnout since the late 1970s, and where the socioeconomic causes of this decline have not been systematically explored. Against this backdrop, this paper aims to analyse, first and foremost, whether electoral participation in Italy is becoming increasingly unequal. Then, it moves to explore the extent to which the turnout gap between individuals with low and high socio-economic status (SES) could be moderated by both de-unionization and trade unions’ membership. By utilizing a dataset that combines 10 waves of the Italian National Election Study (1983-2018), the paper demonstrates that the turnout gap between low and high SES individuals has substantially widened over the last decades. Furthermore, it suggests that while the overall turnout gap is at least partially affected by the strength of trade unions in the country, trade unions still seem to be able to mobilize their members, particularly among lower social groups. This finding underscores the potential of trade unions to continue playing a role in equalizing turnout.

Participating and non-participating in Italy. The COVID-19 as a cleavage?

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine have had significant consequences for various aspects of global society, including the relationship between citizens and politics. This article explores how the COVID-19 crisis has impacted civic and political participation in Italy. To investigate this topic and provide insights, the two authors utilize data from the ‘Italians and the State’ survey conducted by the University of Urbino Carlo Bo’s Lapolis, in addition to data from the Ministry of the Interior. The analysis reveals that the decline in electoral participation is part of a long-term trend that remained unaffected by the pandemic. While other forms of participation underwent a predictable drop during the most acute phase of the pandemic, they subsequently showed signs of recovery, indicating a general resurgence of participation in Italy. However, activities conducted exclusively online appear to have reached a plateau. This might suggest a growing disillusionment with the Internet itself among citizens. In conclusion, COVID-19 was not a decisive turning point but rather an event that intersected with existing long-term trends.

European museology and colonial concord: Italy at the 1934 Expo du Sahara in Paris

AbstractThis article assesses Italy's participation in the Expo du Sahara in Paris in 1934, placing it within the framework of European colonial culture, exhibitions, and international relations during the 1930s. Hitherto, the Expo du Sahara has been largely ignored by historiography, but it offers important insights into Italo-French relations in the years immediately preceding Italy's invasion of Ethiopia, as well as the ways in which Fascist Italy sought national and international legitimacy through the medium of exhibitions. The Paris exhibition, staged by the European powers after years of clashes, was also a physical representation of the so-called ‘colonial concord’ and ‘peaceful’ partition of North Africa, processes in which Italy's role was fundamental.

Revenue Stacking for BESS: Fast Frequency Regulation and Balancing Market Participation in Italy

Battery energy storage systems (BESS) are considered a relevant flexible resource for supporting the balancing of a RES-penetrated power grid. Since their cost structure is characterized by very high capital costs, it is of utmost importance to ensure efficient and effective operations from a techno-economic perspective. The possibility of services (and revenues) stacking is one of the most discussed optimization solutions. The present work provides a novel approach for BESS modeling, including the stacking of two diverse ancillary services, a dedicated balancing market bidding model, and a state-of-charge management strategy. Fast frequency regulation is proposed as a power-based service, requiring large ramping capability, but asking BESS activation just for a limited amount of time. For the remainder, BESS power can be traded on balancing market (BM): energy-based services, such as tertiary regulation, could be effectively coupled with power-based, fast regulations, increasing the economic attractiveness of investments in BESS. The case of fast reserve (FR), a new high-speed frequency response service proposed by the Italian TSO in Italy, is assessed in this study. FR provision foresees a capacity-based remuneration (k€/MW/year) and requires to ensure 1000 hours per year of availability. After assessing its cost-effectiveness as a stand-alone service, a sequential multiservice strategy is proposed, where BESS provides FR for 1000 hours, while for the rest of the time it is dedicated to the provision of replacement reserve (RR). Performances of BESS are evaluated considering the reliability of the provision, its operational efficiency, and investment’s economics. Performed tests demonstrate how, within the current Italian regulatory framework, the investment’s rate of return improves thanks to the multiservice approach. In particular, while maintaining a proper reliability, the minimum acceptable remuneration from FR yearly auctions decreases by 13%; at the same time, self-dispatching of energy through BM calls reduces the need to purchase energy on day-ahead market and keeps BESS state-of-charge far from saturation regions, thus also increasing its lifetime.

Mobilised yet unaffiliated: Italian youth and the uneven return to political participation

ABSTRACT Young people have long been considered the most politically apathetic section of the population. Yet, recent elections in the United States and Europe seem to point to a reversal of this trend. To explore this issue, we analyse a survey on youth and political participation in Italy conducted in 2018. Comparing the results with a similar 2004 survey, we find strong evidence of a growth of political participation by young people. Following our model of intensities of participation (low/medium/high), we find that political participation has been growing at the level of low-intensity (voting, consuming news, discussing politics in small circles) and medium-intensity activities (contact and interaction with politicians and political self-expression), also thanks to social media use. With high-intensity activities (campaigning and organisation) the picture is more contradictory. While there has been some growth in attendance to protest events and other non-institutional activities, organisational membership is declining. We argue that this contradiction between high mobilisation and low organisational affiliation cannot be explained simply as stemming from generational suspicion of institutional politics, but that it reflects a problem of supply, the inability of organisations to successfully integrate young people and overcome their distrust of the political class.

Unemployment and labor force participation in Italy

PurposeOur main purpose is to test the unemployment invariance hypothesis in Italy.Design/methodology/approachThis paper provides an empirical investigation of the unemployment and labor force participation in Italy.FindingsCointegration analysis results strongly suggest a clear long-run relationship between unemployment and labor force participation revealing a persistent and general added worker effect.Originality/valueOur results seem to confute the unemployment invariance hypothesis.

The Participation of Italy in the EU VAT Cross-Border Rulings Project: Legal and Procedural Issues

The EU VAT Cross-Border Rulings Project is a product of the EU VAT Forum, and its declared purpose is to allow taxable persons to obtain advanced rulings on the VAT treatment of complex cross-border issues. In this article, the author aims at identifying the main reasons why taxable persons have shown disinterest in this project. The findings of the short analysis herein are expected to be relevant at both European and domestic levels in the event that a decision is made to relaunch or expand this instrument.

Covid-19 and labour law in Italy

This article provides an account of the Italian response to the Covid-19 pandemic in the labour law field. The author focuses on the policy measures in the matters of income support, parental leave, rest and holiday leave, agile working (i.e. teleworking), dismissal, as well as on the special provisions arranged by the social partners and later adopted by the legislator to preserve the health and safety of the employees and also to prevent the spread of coronavirus in the workplace. Ultimately, the author hints at the potential development of employee participation in Italy in the wake of the upsurge of social dialogue during the coronavirus emergency.

Does Culture Make a Better Citizen? Exploring the Relationship Between Cultural and Civic Participation in Italy

In the last decades, policy discussions have increasingly considered participation in arts and cultural activities as a vehicle to reach broader social policy goals, such as social inclusion or active citizenship. However, convincing empirical evidence on the social impacts of arts and culture is still scarce. In particular, little attention has been given to the impact that cultural participation may have on individuals’ engagement in civil society, especially in Europe. In order to address this lack of evidence, this paper explores the connection between cultural participation and civic participation in Italy using Likert-scale data collected in the ISTAT “Aspetti della Vita Quotidiana” Survey (2014). To do so, two composite indicators—the participation in cultural life indicator and the participation in civic life indicator—have been built using an approach based on partial order theory and the concept of Average Rank. The effect of cultural participation on civic engagement has been estimated using a quantile regression model which controls for potentially cofounding factors such as education, income, age and gender. Results do confirm that participation in arts and cultural activities is highly correlated with participation in civic life. It is particularly worth noticing that at higher levels of civic participation, cultural participation has a positive and strong effect on civic engagement of people having a low educational level.

Do Migrants Get Involved in Politics? Levels, Forms and Drivers of Migrant Political Participation in Italy

Migrant political participation is a central challenge to our democracy, especially at a time when migration is so controversial. This study examines level, forms and predictors of migrant political engagement in Italy, a country where 10% of the total population is foreign-born. We measure migrant political participation on the basis of data provided by the Survey on Condition and Social Integration of Foreign Citizens carried out by the National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) in 2011–12 (N = 16,056). In addition to individual characteristics, we analyse the role played by the family in influencing migrant political engagement using a multilevel logistic approach. Our analysis shows that migrants in Italy are largely inactive political subjects in comparison with Italian natives. Political disengagement is related to being a woman, low education and residence in South Italy and the islands. Moreover, we analyse the different factors that are driving soft and strong political participation. We also discuss the negligible impact of EU citizenship in enhancing political participation in Italy.

EMU: An Italian perspective

The paper offers an Italian perspective on the creation and evolution of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), which were and continue to be politically driven processes. European political leaders were responsible not for design defects but for a fundamental fault in execution: an original sin that continues to undermine the workings of the EMU. Contrary to commonly held beliefs, the Maastricht criteria and a rapid convergence process towards political union as the counterpart to the EMU were a viable framework. This consistent time path was not respected when the euro was created: the participation of Italy in 1999 and of Greece in 2001 did not satisfy the condition of prior fundamental convergence, notably in terms of public finance. The currency without a state, the lack of adjustment, and insufficient structural reforms imparted a deflationary bias, heightened the risks of the sovereign/bank nexus, and led to a wrong policy mix. In spite of significant steps to correct the system, current flaws continue to represent a major drawback to improving the resilience of the system . JEL codes : E42, E52, E61, F33, F34, F45, H63

Mediating the contributions of Facebook to political participation in Italy and the UK: the role of media and political landscapes

Over the last decade, an increasing number of academic studies have examined how digital technologies can contribute to political participation, with numerous publications focusing on social networking websites. This article adds to this strand of research by tackling the scarcity of cross-national comparative studies in the field. Drawing from an original dataset acquired by combining a cross-national comparative approach and a mixed-methods methodology, this paper explores how media and political landscapes mediate the contributions of Facebook to citizens’ political participation in Italy and the United Kingdom. A participatory gap between Italian and British participants, with Italians displaying higher levels of political participation through Facebook, is found and explained with reference to three contextual factors: the greater diffusion and relevance of other online platforms such as Twitter in the UK; Italian participants’ more negative perception of traditional media linked to the high level of political parallelism typical of the Italian media system; and the presence in Italy of a political party such as the Five Stars Movement making full use of the communicative and organizational affordances of Facebook. The findings indicate that the contributions of Facebook, and digital technologies in general, to political participation must be analysed in context, within the larger patterns they fit into, and cannot be examined in isolation. Such contributions are better understood if considered within the hybrid media system in which different digital platforms interact, merge and compete. Similarly, the political scenarios in which citizens and political parties operate need to be accounted for when looking at the links between the Internet and politics.

La partecipazione associativa in Italia: un confronto tra diverse surveys

Social participation is considered not only an important resource for society, but also an indicator of social capital. Thus, bearing in mind these features, this paper analyses the trend of the associative participation in Italy. The data used come from different international surveys, such as Eurobarometer, ESS and EVS, and also data from the Italian survey Istat (Aspects of daily life). Particular attention is paid to people who are more than 50 years old in the SHARE survey. The results confirm previous studies: a reduction of participation in trade union and political party membership, and a stable situation with regard to the participation in voluntary associations. The conclusions point out some possible pathways to follow in order to develop the analysis of the social participation.

Farmer Participation, Entry and Exit Decisions in the Italian Crop Insurance Programme

AbstractThe factors affecting the demand for agricultural insurance in the USA have been extensively studied over the last two decades. However, the determinants of a farm's entry and exit decisions in the insurance market have received relatively little attention. Turnover in the insurance book of business is an important issue in most private and public crop insurance plans. Moreover, insurance markets in the EU are still largely under‐investigated. We investigate empirically the determinants of crop insurance participation in Italy. We show that the participation rate is high for large firms and that it is negatively correlated with crop diversification, which is itself a form of insurance. High premiums tend to inhibit both entry and exit from the insurance market. Larger and wealthier farms are more likely to adopt insurance and renew coverage over time. We discuss implications of our results for public intervention and the private industry. In particular, we demonstrate that the decision to drop coverage by an insured grower may differ significantly from the corresponding decision to enroll in an insurance programme by an uninsured farmer. To the extent that policymakers want to encourage participation in subsidized crop insurance programmes, education and outreach efforts toward uninsured farmers may differ substantially from those directed toward keeping insured farmers enrolled in the programme. We investigate these differences.

An Indicator for the Measurement of Political Participation: The Case of Italy

In the modern globalized world, political participation is of paramount importance for balanced socio-economic growth and for human development. The Indagine Multiscopo sulle famiglie, a survey by Italian public institutions (ISTAT and CNEL), provides a wide range of data to evaluate specific aspects of Italian life. This work uses a set of data from the Indagine to analyse political participation in Italy at a regional level, by means of a composite indicator using parametric (Pena’s distance) and non-parametric (Mazziotta–Pareto Index) techniques. We have obtained a ranking that shows the level of political participation in different territorial contexts. The aim is to analyse the relation between Italian regions and the political behaviour of their communities: political discussions, participation in political meetings and marches, voluntary activity or donations to political parties and so on. The ranking is not correlated to voter turnout. We can assume that the politically engaged minority are unable to convince and involve the rest. At the same time, these small groups do not alter the general mistrust in parties and, generally speaking, in politics, which is spreading across Italy and also Europe.

Beyond Assimilationist Tendencies

This essay analyses how young migrants, who are settled in Northeast Italy and come from different countries and regions of the world, actively deconstruct racialized knowledges in order to question the discrimination and racism experienced in the context of settlement. The qualitative research explores, through postcolonial and transnational perspectives, citizenship as participation in social life – focusing on young migrants’ involvement in associations and formal and informal groups. The essay engages with issues of participation in Italy and reports on young migrants’ attempts to construct critical awareness and plural dialogues in a postcolonial and globalized society.

An Apathetic Generation? Cohorts’ Patterns of Political Participation in Italy

This article assesses the patterns of political participation of different cohorts in two forms of conventional political participation, attending political parties meetings and donating money to political parties, and in two forms of unconventional political participation, attending meetings of environmental, peace and civil rights associations and attending demonstrations, in Italy. To test the claim that the younger cohorts are less politically involved the article uses Bayesian cross-classified mixed models and repeated survey data collected by the Italian National Institute of Statistics between 1993 and 2012. It is found that the conventional forms of participation are more widespread among “baby-boomers” than among the younger cohorts. Conversely, unconventional forms are increasingly popular in the cohorts born after the 1950s, particularly in the younger ones. The results show that the idea of the Italian younger cohorts as being apathetic and detached from the political sphere may be incorrect.

Quanto conviene studiare?

This paper starts with a critical review of the literature on the role of beliefs in affecting social inequality in Higher Education (HE) and provides an empirical assessment of students’ beliefs about costs, economic returns and risks of failure in Italian HE. This paper provides, for the first time in Italy, empirical evidence regarding the determinants of students’ beliefs related to HE. Moreover, it attempts to assess the discrepancy between “subjective beliefs” and “objective values”. Our results point to the existence of systematic differences between different social strata. Students from more privileged social backgrounds tend to over-estimate economic returns to HE, whereas all students tend to over-estimate the costs of HE. Taken together, these results might contribute to explain the existence of the social-background gradient in HE participation in Italy. However, the paper concludes considering that “observational studies” should be complemented by studies based on randomized trials, for the latter allow to overcome long-standing problems in observational settings – like omitted-variable bias and reverse causality – that may undermine results about the role of students’ beliefs.

Aldo Moro and the Italian Republic's political cultures

As a political man, Moro was to personify better than others the cleverness of dialogue and cooperation among the fundamental political cultures of Italian democracy. There were two limitations on democratic participation in Italy: resistance to the antifascist revolution, and the fact that democratic culture failed to penetrate our country. Moreover, a bitter Cold War characterized the relationship between the two main political ranks. Central were Aldo Moro's role in the Constituent Assembly, the three governments that he led, his opposition in the Catholic Party after 1968, the crisis of the 1970s, and the political choices of the Dc and Pci. Moro, as his friends were to say, the moment he was abducted, was already sentenced to death