Reform In Italy Research Articles

Managing a public sector project: the case of the Italian Treasury Ministry

Project management strategy in the public sector has attracted the interest of many scholars since the late 1980s, following the growing pressure on governments to abandon bureaucratic organisations in favour of leaner structures. Though Italy is considered a late developer in this movement, its scope, speed and consistency of reforms is considered remarkable [OECD, (2001), Reviews of Regulatory Reform in Italy]. Within this context many projects have been undertaken trying to implement the ideas of New Public Management (NPM) [Public Administration (1991) 69:3; Accounting, Organizations and Society (1995) 20:93]. This paper reports on a reengineering project carried out at the Italian Ministry of Treasury which tested a methodology drawn from the literature of process engineering. Multiple dimensions and actions proved to be crucial in managing the project: the paper discusses them and their relative importance over the life of the reengineering project.

The Italian Welfare System in the European Context

The deep changes that have taken place over the past twenty years in the labor market, demographics, and social disparities have led European countries to reorganize their welfare systems in order to respond more effectively to these challenges. Although several of the European Union's core documents affirm social protection as a fundamental component of European society since it ensures political stability, social cohesion and economic progress, there is significant evidence that today's European countries will follow a United States approach of “minimal social protection” especially in the current climate of liberal ideologies and global market pressures. The erosion of historical commitments to social protection is aided by the fact that a significant number of European voters appear to favor tax reductions and don't seem to make the connection between low taxes and low social services and infrastructure spending. After a brief description of the Italian welfare system, this paper discusses Italy's reforms of the 1990s and reaches the conclusion that actual and planned reforms are paving the way for a residual model of welfare and social protection. It is further argued that a constant re-examination and restructuring of the welfare system is necessary in order to improve its effectiveness in reaching defined goals while at the same time responding to changing economic conditions. However, restructuring efforts should focus on improvements in internal efficiency, rather than on a general reductions of social expenditures. In fact, it is argued that the reduction of social expenditure in itself is neither a necessary consequence of globalization and European unification nor a necessary strategy to remain competitive. It is instead a reflection of cultural leanings and political choices.

Higher Education Reform in Italy: an Institutional Analysis and a First Appraisal. 1996–2001

From the second half of 1996, Italian higher education system has undergone a wide and deep reforming process, aiming at innovate its curricular, as well as its organizational and governance structures.

Is Welfare Reform in Italy a Great Opportunity or is it a Loss of Opportunity? The Analysis of Law 328/00

This paper is carried on in the current political institutional debate in Europe, starting from '90, concerning both local development incentives and promotion of innovative enterprises from bottom up. Among many policies in this strand, we focus on the welfare reform in Italy, essentially based on the decentralization principle intended not merely as a competencies delegation, but as a power devolution process, to local agencies and social communities. This new approach on welfare policy seems to be relevant for social inclusion, by increasing the opportunity-set of employment, promoting local partnership and sustaining a fair cooperation. We interpret the local welfare restructuring design in Italy (L.328/00) that represent the natural conclusion of a path towards policy decentralization, began with L.833/78 and L.287/97, in particularly we will try to put in evidence the novelty of the law and its principal issues.

The Progressive Taxation on Income and the Italian 2003 Budget Law

The paper illustrates three different methods of achieving progressivity of the income tax. The first one is the traditional brackets system, with increasing tax rates in each bracket. The second one is the fixed tax allowance coupled with a flat rate. The third one is the method that the Italian Government decided to implement in its recent renewal of the structure of income taxation: A lower tax rate coupled with a tax allowance continuously decreasing with income. The paper shows that an high tax rate and an high fixed tax allowance has the greatest re-distributive effect on income distribution. It is also shown that the third method is equivalent to a traditional bracket system with a particular tax rates structure. In the concluding section, some comments on the possible outcomes of the income tax reform in Italy are provided.

Ecological tax reforms and environmental benefits in Italy and Sweden

The paper calculates the implications of including monetary measurements of environmental emission changes for the welfare impacts of ecological tax reforms in Italy and Sweden. Taxes on emissions of SO2, NOx and CO2 are investigated. Country-specific computable equilibrium models are used for estimating net welfare changes of the introduction of these taxes, the incomes of which are used for reducing distorting labour taxes. The results indicate that the inclusion of environmental benefits reduces the costs of ecological tax reforms considerably for both countries, and may even turn into net welfare gains.

On University Reform in Italy: Contradictions and Power Relations in Structure and Function

Recent attempts at universityreform in Italy have proved dismal in thecontext of higher education policy in WesternEurope. The pervasive power of academicmandarins, technocratic methods of reform, andthe recurrent expectations that import offoreign models will resolve contradictions thatare deeply rooted in Italian power relations,provide some insight into the problem.

An Open-Ended Transition: The Effects of Electoral Reform in Italy

This article evaluates the impact of the 1993 electoral reform in Italy on four political dependent variables: clear winners and concomitant left-right alternation in government; fragmentation of the party system; governmental stability; and party polarization. The reform, under which 75 percent of parliamentary seats are allocated according to the plurality rule and the remaining 25 percent according to proportional representation, had a declared majoritarian purpose. As a useful benchmark, the attributes associated with a pure majoritarian system are measured against the actual effects that the reform has brought about. Analyzing the outcomes of the general elections of 1994, 1996 and 2001, it is concluded that the changes the new electoral law has engendered on the Italian political system have fallen well short of the stated aspirations of the reformers.

Negotiating the Italian Pension Reform with the Unions: Lessons for Corporatist Theory

Using field research at both the national and the local levels, the author reconstructs the process that led to pension reform in Italy. This reconstruction becomes the basis for a critical re-examination of corporatist theory, which has recently been challenged by the emergence of social pacts in a host of “unlikely” countries, including Italy. The author argues that the theory's traditional emphasis on hierarchical and internally undemocratic interest groups is fundamentally at odds with the particular organizational mechanisms through which consensus was mobilized among both middle-level union structures and rank-and-file workers in Italy. In contrast with standard neo-corporatist theory, the Italian pension reform shows that organizational democracy, far from weakening the hands of reformist union leaders, may actually strengthen them.

Pension Reforms and the Opinions of European Citizens

This paper sheds light on the difficulties of pension reforms by analyzing the citizens´opinions on different aspects of the welfare state and its redistributive programs. We focus on the pension system, reporting the results of a questionnaire conducted in Germany and Italy in the Fall 2001. Our questionnaire was designed to shed light on the following issues: Are citizens aware of the unsustainability of the pension system and informed of its costs? Are reforms opposed by a majority or by a powerful minority? Which reform options seem politically more feasible and why? Which groups of citizens are more likely to favor reforms? We find that citizens are aware of unsustainability but lack information about the cost of the PAYG system. The status quo is a majoritarian outcome along many dimensions: most reform proposals lack a mojority and there is limited scope of packaging as reformers rarely support more than one reform option. Later retirement is the easier reform in Italy while opting-out of the PAYG system is popular in Germany, but only of accompanied by mandatory savings and with no transition burdan.

Negotiating the Italian Pension Reform with the Unions: Lessons for Corporatist Theory

Using field research at both the national and the local levels, the author reconstructs the process that led to pension reform in Italy. This reconstruction becomes the basis for a critical re-examination of corporatist theory, which has recently been challenged by the emergence of social pacts in a host of unlikely countries, including Italy. The author argues that the theory's traditional emphasis on hierarchical and internally undemocratic interest groups is fundamentally at odds with the particular organizational mechanisms through which consensus was mobilized among both middle-level union structures and rank-and-file workers in Italy. In contrast with standard neo-corporatist theory, the Italian pension reform shows that organizational democracy, far from weakening the hands of reformist union leaders, may actually strengthen them.

The Italian Reformation of the Sixteenth Century and the Diffusion of Renaissance Culture

The Italian Reformation of the Sixteenth Century and the Diffusion of Renaissance Culture. A Bibliography of the Secondary Literature (Ca. 1750-1997). Compiled by John Tedeschi in association with James M. Lattis. With an Historiographical Introduction by Massimo Firpo. [Istituto di Studi Rinascimentali, Ferrara, Strumenti.] (Modena: F C. Panini. 2000. Pp. iliii, 1047. Lire 300,000.) To review a bibliography is always an arduous task, but how much more so when one finds oneself in the presence of John Tedeschi's monumental construction. Yet the undertaking is assuredly rewarding because of the fact that, in the year it has been in existence, this imposing volume has already assumed its place as an indispensable working tool and a familiar companion in our research. The Italian Reformation of the Sixteenth Century and the Diffusion of Renaissance Culture.-A Bibliograpby of the Secondary Literature is the valuable product of a multi-decade commitment, achieved not only with discipline and erudition but also with a rare capacity to master a vast field of studies over the chronological sweep of more than two centuries. The bibliography takes as its starting-point the first systematic effort to write a history of the Reformation in Italy, namely, the Specimen Italiae Reformatae of Daniel Gerdes (1765), a work through which Italy's role in the Protestant Reformation entered the realm of historical scholarship; and it closes with publications appearing in 1997 after an extended journey through a good 6429 entries or headings. This is a remarkable figure when one considers that Chiminelli's bibliography of 1921 counted a little more than 2000 confusingly listed items.' In Tedeschi's work, it suffices to cast a glance over the list of journals that have been examined, to recognize the scope of the investigation and the accuracy and patience with which even the most obscure periodicals have been combed. To these have been joined monographs, studies in symposium volumes, and critical editions of sources. With the exceptions indicated by an asterisk, the material has all been examined at first hand in order to be able to highlight the essential contribution of each item. In fact, the entries are not limited to reporting the basic bibliographical data but furnish brief, clear resum,6s of the contents, accompanied by critical annotations that help to orient the reader. At times an adverb or an adjective alerts us to the compiler's disappointment after he had gone to a great deal of trouble to locate a particular work, only to find nothing of interest there. It is almost a well-mannered hint to the users of the bibliography that neither should they also expend energy tracking it down! On other occasions the reader is cautioned that a work whose title might lead one to suspect the presence of information pertinent to the themes of the bibliography contains nothing of the sort. In still other cases, we find ourselves confronting stem, succinct opinions about particular entries. Thus, we read about one scholar:Laments gaps in our knowledge of aspects of the Italian tribunal [of the Inquisition] but seems unaware of existing research that would have filled these lacunae. A study on Vittoria Colonna is rapidly disposed of with Uncritical observations on the evidence of Franciscan religiosity in Colonna, About an article devoted to the churches of the foreign Protestant exiles in London, we read:The author would not have lamented 'Little is known of the Italian congregation' if he had used L. Firpo (n. 3673). Furthermore, within the single entries one frequently finds useful references to other listed studies that can serve to integrate, correct, and illuminate the data and information presented by the title under discussion. If I have dwelt on some of the technical aspects of this work-and one could point to many other equally useful ones-it is precisely to make the point that the bibliography is not a dry catalogue of names and titles, but an analytical exposition that suggests new paths of research to follow and serves as a guide to the reader through a morass of studies of uneven quality and substance, and, thus, is especially useful to help newcomers to the field wend their way through the mare magnum of titles. …

D. Kerwer, "Regulatory Reforms in Italy"

D. Kerwer, "Regulatory Reforms in Italy"

Donne ed eterodossia nell'Italia del Cinquecento

To shed light on the question of women and the Reformation in Italy, this essay examines women in various social classes - well-known noblewomen, previously unfamiliar figures from the middling and lower ranks - in the context of their relations with family members, neighbors, and priests. Among female defendants, witnesses, and accusers in trial records from the Venetian Republic and Modena the author finds many staunch proponents of philo-Protestant ideas, some troubled by the religious debate, and still others moved to denounce husbands, daughters-in-law, neighbors, and priests to the Inquisition. On occasion, women manipulated pervasive assumptions about their weakness and subordination to the men in their families, as well as their subaltern legal status, so as to disclaim responsibility for their religious ideas. Often, they broke free of prescriptions by speaking about religion and taking action on their own or in female groups, independent of or even against their families.

Green Taxes: Environment, Employment and Growth - A Computable General Equilibrium Analysis for Italy

In this paper we investigate the potential costs and benefits of a comprehensive green fiscal reform in Italy. Using a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model for the country, we simulate scenarios of progressive reduction of emissions for 13 polluting substances. It is shown that the introduction of a tax targeted to one single pollutant, decreases not only the directly targeted emissions but also those of other pollutants. Besides the green tax costs, in terms of increased distortions and forgone production and welfare, are shown to be quite low. This important result depends on the assumption of a certain degree of flexibility in the production processes that allows polluters to switch to cleaner technologies when the tax is implemented. This assumption closely reflects observed economic behaviour especially when a decade or more is the period of analysis, as in our case. Finally, when green taxes revenues are used to reduce wage taxes, in a revenue neutral fiscal swap, a positive employment double dividend emerges.

Book Reviews

Joseph Martos and Pierre Hégy, eds Equal at the Creation: Sexism, Society and Christian ThoughtMichael D. Coogan, ed. The Oxford History of the Biblical WorldJon D. Mikalson Religion in Hellenistic AthensWendy Dabourne Purpose and Cause in Pauline Exegesis: Romans 1.16–4.25 and a New Approach to the LettersDavid C. Sim The Gospel of Matthew and Christian Judaism: The History and Social Setting of the Matthean CommunityGeorge A. Kennedy Classical Rhetoric and its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern TimesKhaled Anatolios Athanasius: The Coherence of his ThoughtJoseph W. Trigg Origen. The Early Church FathersRebecca Moore Jews and Christians in the Life and Thought of Hugh of St VictorAlan J. Fletcher Preaching, Politics and Poetry in Late‐Medieval EnglandCary J. Nederman and John Christian Laursen, eds Beyond the Persecuting Society: Religious Toleration Before the EnlightenmentH. J. Selderhuis, trans. by John Briend and Lyle D. Bierma Marriage and Divorce in the Thought of Martin BucerJohn Patrick Donnelly, SJ and Michael W. Maher, SJ, eds Confraternities and Catholic Reform in Italy, France, and Spain.Kevin Herlihy, ed. Propagating the Word of Irish Dissent, 1650–1800Joss Marsh Word Crimes: Blasphemy, Culture, and Literature in Nineteenth‐Century EnglandDavid Nash Blasphemy in Modern Britain, 1789 to the PresentKathryn Teresa Long The Revival of 1857–58: Interpreting an American Religious AwakeningRuth Frappell, Leighton Frappell, Robert Withycombe and Raymond Nobbs, eds Anglicans in the Antipodes: An Indexed Calendar of the Papers and Correspondence of the Archbishops of Canterbury, 1788–1961, Relating to Australia, New Zealand and the PacificMark Hutchinson and Geoff Treloar, eds This Gospel Shall Be Preached: Essays on the Australian Contribution to World MissionIan Gillman and Hans‐Joachim Klimkeit Christians in Asia Before 1500Geoffrey Oddie, ed. Missionaries, Rebellion and Proto‐Nationalism: James Long of Bengal, 1814–87

Confraternities and Catholic reform in Italy, France and Spain. Edited by John Patrick Donnelly SJ and Michael W. Maher SJ. (Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies, 44.) Pp. x+254. Kirksville, MO: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1999. $40. 0 943549 60 4

Confraternities and Catholic reform in Italy, France and Spain. Edited by John Patrick Donnelly SJ and Michael W. Maher SJ. (Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies, 44.) Pp. x+254. Kirksville, MO: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1999. $40. 0 943549 60 4 - Volume 52 Issue 1

The Sources of Policy Innovation: Sub-National Constraints on Negotiated Reform

This paper argues that the principal avenue of policy innovation in the areas of economic and social policy in the advanced industrial countries is a function of the sub-national capacity of interest organizations. In policy areas where these organizations exercise high deliberative capacity, they have access to private information which allows them to be the most likely authors of reforms which many of their members may oppose. They also enjoy a capacity to mobilize their members around policy proposals, using both grassroots organizational strength and considerations of legitimacy, to convince their members to support (or not to obstruct) the reform. In policy areas in which groups possess these organizational strengths, then, the groups themselves (rather than political parties or bureaucrats) will be the most likely source of policy innovation. Where groups lack this capacity, the political system rather than interest groups will be the most likely source of policy innovation. This argument is supported by evidence from recentepisodes of pension reform in Italy and France and of vocational training finance reform in Germany and France.

Umweltbildung in Italien - am Beispiel der Emilia-Romagna

This essay focuses on the specific forms of environmental education in the Emilia Romagna as they have developed from the cultural and socio-economic situation of this region in Italy. Environmental education is an essential part of regional and local environmental policy in Emilia Romagna. Recently, the inclusion in the school reform in Italy has been established as a new orientation for environmental education - as a new paradigm, not as a subject of minor importance. The regional development plan for environmental education is also meant to be a part of local Agenda 21. A driving force for environmental education activities are non-scholastic environmental centers of which a few will be described as examples. They are, combined with environmental policy activities, a cultural project which should motivate citizens of all ages to participate in changing the living conditions in the sense of sustainable development.

Economic Internationalization, Domestic Political Crisis and Corporate Governance Reform in Italy

A key question in current politics concerns the implications of the process of economic internationalization for the sustainability of national systems of economic regulation. It is predicted by many that, where such systems do not conform with the liberal norms of the emerging international economic order, they will be subject to enormous pressure to change. This article examines recent reforms in Italian corporate governance which initially appear to confirm this perspective. It identifies their genuine ambition and ‘Anglo-Saxon’ character. It then assesses the extent to which they can be properly described as the product of international pressure. It concludes by arguing that while international factors played an important contextual role, domestic developments appear to have been of more significance in shaping both the timing and the character of the reforms.