Supranational Context Research Articles

Un Modello di Ricerca Evidence Based sull’Inclusione Scolastica In Italia

Abstract: Che cosa significa educazione inclusiva? In che modo è possibile sostenere lo sviluppo di un sistema che favorisca l’inclusione nella quotidiana realtà scolastica? Su un campione di 162 studenti, dagli 8 ai 16 anni, si vogliono misurare gli effetti di efficaci metodologie didattiche quali feedback, formative evaluation, collaborative learning, digital technology. Variabili stimate sono le competenze e le abilità trasversali alle discipline, i fattori cognitivo-emozionali del successo scolastico, l’autostima. Valutazione bio psico-sociale che si oppone alla valutazione bio-medica prevalente in Italia. Osservare tutti gli allievi, trasformare la risposta speciale in normalità, misurare le variabili del contesto scolastico favorevoli all’inclusione può contribuire a migliorare, in Italia, l’efficacia di investimenti pubblici stimati nel 2013 in € 4,7B. Qui si costruisce un modello, il cui disegno sperimentale impone metodologie riconosciute a livello internazionale ed europeo come l’evidence based education (EBE), necessarie per confrontare i risultati e replicare il modello in un contesto sovranazionale. I risultati entreranno a far parte del progetto pilota dell’European Agency For Special Needs avviato in tre paesi, tra cui l’Italia, e che verrà concluso nell’ottobre 2016.Parole chiave: inclusione, organizzazione inclusiva, metodologie didattiche, evidence based education Abstract: What is inclusive education? How you can support the development of a system that favors the inclusion in the daily school reality? On a sample of 162 students, aged 8 to 16 years, they want to measure the effects of effective teaching methods such as feedback, formative evaluation, collaborative learning, digital technology. Estimated variables are the skills and abilities to cross disciplines, cognitive-emotional factors of academic success, self-esteem. Rating bio psychosocial which opposes the prevailing bio-medical evaluation in Italy. Observe all students, to transform the special response in normal, measure the variables of the school environment favorable to the inclusion in Italy improves the effectiveness of a welfare amounted to € 4,7B. Here we build a model, whose experimental design requires methodologies recognized at international and European level as the evidence-based education (EBE), necessary to compare the results and replicate the model in a supranational context. The results will become part of the pilot project of the European Agency For Special Needs started in three countries, including Italy, and which will be concluded in October 2016.Keywords: inclusion, inclusive rules, educational methods, evidence based education, EBE

How much does job autonomy vary across countries and other extra-organizational contexts?

This paper integrates the study of contextual influences on job autonomy as a key workplace practice with the growing literature on intra-country variation (ICV) versus between-country variation (BCV) in international HRM. While contexts such as industry and country are widely recognized to affect workplace practices such as job autonomy, the influences of different extra-organizational contexts are seldom examined simultaneously or their relative influence systematically compared. Similarly, while much research considers the importance of BCV vis-à-vis ICV in international HRM, little attention is paid to variation that occurs between sub-national or supranational contexts. To move forward on both these counts, we use multilevel analysis and empirically assess the comparative importance of industry as a sub-national context and politico-institutional clusters as a supranational context in addition to country context as sources of differences in job autonomy. Results indicate that inter-cluster variation can be substantially larger than inter-country variation, but that inter-industry dissimilarities tend to exceed both inter-cluster and inter-country dissimilarities. Hence, the main finding of our analysis is that dissimilarities in job autonomy associated with crossing country borders are not exceptionally large as employers and employees face larger dissimilarities in job autonomy when they move across industries. Implications of this finding both for international HRM and for international business and cross-cultural management more broadly are discussed.

Solidarity in the European Union in Times of Economic Crisis

Abstract The present special issue of Perspectives on Federalism reflects on the nature and characteristics of solidarity within a supranational context, it explains what solidarity has meant so far in the EU, how much solidarity we had during the crisis, what type of solidarity is needed and how to build it. It focuses on the new economic governance and its solidarity mechanisms during and after the economic crisis but tackles other related fields such as its impact on services of general economic interest or the European budget, as well as other areas where solidarity is also discussed such as the free movement of persons. This monographic issue has its origin in the International Conference “Solidarity in Hard Times. Solidarity and the European Social Model in times of economic crisis” organized by the University Institute for European Studies (IDEE) on 11-12 June 2015 in Madrid, within the Jean Monnet Network MoreEU (“More Europe to overcome the crisis”).

A New Start for Perspectives on Federalism

Abstract Perspectives on Federalism is closing its seventh year and its issue 2/2015 confirms the interdisciplinary nature of this intellectual enterprise. This issue is a very rich one, as it includes legal, historical and philosophical contributions. In spite of the evident diversities of these articles, we can identify three main connecting themes: latest developments in EU law, history of thought and European integration, and constitutional developments in national and supranational contexts.

The supranational dimension of voting in national elections across six european democracies: rethinking albert hirschman’s exit, voice and loyalty

This article examines Albert Hirschman’s exit, voice and loyalty hypothesis within a supranational context. It makes use of an original 2012 data set drawn from ‘The Europeanisation of Everyday Life: Cross-border Practices and Transnational Identities among EU and Third Country Citizens’ (EUCROSS) project, which was conducted across six European Union (EU) democracies. The article finds that supranational loyalty to an entity other than one’s own nation state enhances citizen participation in national elections, while greater transnational mobility has no significant impact on national voter turnout. These findings have two important implications. First, supranational loyalties do not always discourage individuals from honouring their national political commitments. Second, member state nationals who are loyal to the EU may not show up at the supranational ballot box if national institutions are perceived to be more powerful to influence decision-making in Brussels.

Like a Fraction of Some Bigger Place—The “Creative Industries” in a Peripheral Zone: Reflections from a Case Study

This article questions the notion of “creative industries” while contributing to the analysis of mediations between the cultural sphere and capitalist relations of production. Research pertaining to the “creative industries”, as well as contributions to the political economy of cultural industries, have often focused on central and metropolitan areas. By contrast, the case study that these reflections are based upon was conducted in a peripheral zone, the Shetland Isles, marked by specific socio-economic, historical, political and cultural features. This study considered the importance of local cultural policies, over the past 35 years, and how they are presently facing a significant revision. However, the rise of “creative industries” discourse, and its applications in public policy can only be understood within a wider national and supra-national context. Moreover, I argue that these evolutions are linked to an extension of cultural industrialisation and commoditisation. By analysing the adaptations and limits that the “creative industries” doctrine encounters in a peripheral zone, this article firstly completes existing critiques of the notion. Secondly, it illustrates how an apparently exceptional terrain magnifies certain key aspects of relations between ideological / cultural superstructures, and the socio-economic infrastructure of contemporary capitalism. In particular, it is concerned with the increasing artificiality of the economic basis of Western societies, and the complex ways in which this phenomenon is translated within the cultural sphere.

Where Do We Go From Here? Is Responsibility Sustainable?

In this special issue we have brought together a veritable‘‘dream team’’ of thought leaders, and rising stars, fromacademia, consulting and the c-suite to address the ‘‘Leader-ship ImperativeforSustainabilityandCorporateSocialRespon-sibility.’’ Clearly,thedecisions andactionsofindividualleadersmatter to the social performance and long-term viability oftheir organizations. Ultimately, activities such as formulatingsustainability policies, engaging in community outreach pro-grams, supporting social causes, or seeking alternatives todisruptive layoffs are the result of managerial decisions, andso are activities that are widely considered unethical, such asbribery, fraud, environmental pollution, and employment dis-crimination. While corporate executives are constrained intheir ability toengageinthese activities bycorporate govern-ance regulations, company policies, and the law, they havesome degree of discretion in their choices. David Waldman, anoted leadershipscholar,putitsuccinctly:‘‘Firms donotmakedecisions pertaining to responsibility or CSR; leaders do.’’It isstriking,then,thatrelativelylittleisknownabouttheethical dilemmas and leadership challenges facing businessleaders in the CSR and sustainability arenas as well as thefactors that promote and constrain their decision-makingwith regard to CSR, sustainability, and organizational ethics.The goal of this special issue is to fill this void by exploringsustainability and responsibility at multiple levels (indivi-dual, group, organization, as well as the national and supra-national context) and from various angles (e.g., corporategovernance, organizational ethics, and shared leadershipperspectives). The topics addressed range from how tostructure volunteerismprogramstoshiftexecutivemindsets,to how to design organizations for sustainable effectiveness,to grounding our current thinking in the historical roots ofCSR, to best practice governance mechanisms, to the specialneeds of emerging markets. The common theme thatemerged is that it all boils down to leadership. But this begsthe question, ‘‘what is leadership?’’

A Comparative Approach to the Regulation on the European Citizens’ Initiative

the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) is a very unique expression of participatory democracy in a supranational context. Nevertheless, we could better understand its legal design and its political significance by assessing the similarities and divergences with analogous popular initiatives in national constitutions. This article will analyse the procedures and conditions laid down in Regulation 211/2011/EU of the European Parliament and the Council of 16 February 2011 on the European Citizens’ Initiative, establishing a comparison with the relevant rules governing national popular initiatives from Member States. A comparative approach to the ECI will help to identify best practices in issues concerning the signatories and the organisers of the citizens' initiatives, the territorial distribution of signatures, the rules regarding the registration and the decision on the admissibility, the collection, verification and certification of the signatures, and the final submission of the citizens' legislative demands.

Social innovation and institutionalisation in the cognitive–cultural economy: Two contrasting experiences from Southern Europe

The purpose of this article is that of analysing institutionalisation processes of professional activities linked to cognitive and cultural sectors in two different urban contexts: Milan and Barcelona. Similarities with and differences between respective outcomes will be underlined. The process is observed also in relation to the deep economic crisis that the two cities, and their national and supranational contexts, are facing. The analysis aims to understand, from a sociological perspective, how workers in creative and artistic professions try to promote their own inclusion in the labour market by creating associations and through the professionalisation of their activities while, at the same time, they continue developing a creative or artistic job. The local governance structure and the different paths of inclusion in public negotiation will be taken as the main factor in the analysis of their outcome and (re)configuration in the wake of financial crisis.

Multinational enterprises and climate change: Exploring institutional failures and embeddedness

This paper explores how climate change affects multinational enterprises (MNEs), focusing on the challenges they face in overcoming liabilities and filling institutional voids related to the issue. Climate change is characterized by institutional failures, because there is neither an enforceable global agreement nor a market morality. Climate change is also a distinctive international business issue, as its institutional failures materialize differently in different countries. As governments are still highly involved, MNEs need to consider carefully their strategies to cope with non-market forces, including their embeddedness in multiple institutional settings. Using some illustrative examples of MNE responses to climate-related components in stimulus packages, we explore MNEs’ balancing act concerning their institutional embeddedness (or lack thereof) in home, host and supranational contexts as input for further research on the dynamics of MNE activities in relation to climate change.

International Conventions and the Failure of a Transnational Approach to Controlling Crime Business

The article argues that without a realistic understanding of criminal enterprise located against the commercial forces shaping contemporary market contexts, then domestic, bi-lateral, regional and international control initiatives are not only likely to fail in their regulatory objectives, but the premises on which they are constructed may heighten the market conditions for crime business profitability. The international convention-based approach to regulating transnational and organised crime is the framework from which a critique of non-market-centred law enforcement control concentrations is developed. This critique reveals the transposition of flawed normative control considerations from domestic to supra-national control contexts, and shows how this in turn constrains and is constrained by organised crime research. The article suggests the need for a novel methodology to reveal and understand crime business in its specific market realities and conditions. The analysis calls for a shift away from the normative ascription to supply-directed regulatory emphasis. In conclusion, conventional crime control perspectives and directives can usefully be critiqued from their international as well as their domestic frames, enabling the creation of a refined and more holistic legal response at each level of criminal enterprise that is supported and not retarded by business-grounded and market-reliant research understandings.

Europaisierung wider Willen. Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland in der Agrarintegration der EWG 1955-1973

For a long time the historiography of European integration was dominated by traditional diplomatic history accounts of the intergovernmental negotiations of ‘national interests’. More recently, some contemporary historians have studied transnational relations as one way of overcoming the conceptual and methodological limits of the state-centric approach. In his book, Kiran Patel uses the somewhat related concept of Europeanization—defined here as ‘alterations to the political system’ (Veränderungen im Bereich des politischen Systems) at national level resulting from European integration—to study the role of the Federal Republic of Germany in the creation of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) from the negotiations leading to the formation of the European Economic Community in 1957/58 to its first enlargement in 1973. Based on a variety of sources of state and non-state actors including the European Commission, the West German government and the farmers’ organization (Bauernverband), Patel seeks to understand German policy-making within what he calls (following Putnam) the ‘two-level game’ of policy formation in one member-state and its interaction with other state and non-state actors in the new supranational context in Brussels.

Language management and the East African Community

Within the emerging discourse of language management, there is an increasing realisation of the strategic role that language plays in multinational and supranational contexts. The article discusses the strategic role that language can and should play within the East African Community (EAC). The discussion is presented in four parts: the first presents an exploratory discussion on the theory and practice of language management. The second provides key statistics on the EAC, including the language profiles and language policies of EAC member states and the language policy of EAC organs. Part three discusses some language management issues within the EAC. The final part of the article argues for the centrality of language management within the EAC.

Separatism and Sovereignty in the New Europe - Party Politics and the Meanings of Statehood in a Supranational Context by Janet Laible

Separatism and Sovereignty in the New Europe - Party Politics and the Meanings of Statehood in a Supranational Context by Janet Laible

Tracing British cultural policy domains: contexts, collaborations and constituencies

This paper draws on a larger research project that investigates the networks and institutions shaping cultural policy across national, international and supranational contexts. Taking Britain as its touchstone, it identifies and maps some of the operational relations between culture, governance and nation shaping the development and orientation of contemporary cultural policy. It thus highlights key formal and informal domestic relationships and contexts within which Britain's local, regional and national cultural policy initiatives are situated. The British context – in which England figures strongly for historical, political and demographic reasons, and so draws a corresponding resistance across other constituents of nation – is shown to be both internally differentiated along various lines, and also embedded in the larger sphere of the European Union that redraws the boundaries of cultural policy and governance. In tracing the contours and interrogating the constitutive elements of Britain's domains of cultural policy, we seek to provide a foundation for understanding the intersections and influences that exist between fields of cultural governance, and their interdependence and fluidity.

The Contemporary Meaning of ‘Sovereignty’ in the Supranational Context of the EC as Applied to the Income Tax Case Law of the ECJ

In the more than twenty years that the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has been deciding income tax cases, it has become clear that Community law has had a progressively increasing impact on the direct tax systems of the Member States. On the occasion of several seminal judgments, many legal scholars have raised concerns whether the ECJ was heeding a sufficient amount of respect for the ‘income tax sovereignty’ of the Member States. Especially on the occasion of the Bosal decision of 2003, many tax scholars thought and wrote that the ECJ had started interpreting the internal market freedoms too broadly and that the Court did not give sufficient consideration to the particularities of direct taxation. In light thereof, the present article will address the following three questions: (1) What significance, if any, does the concept of ‘sovereignty’ have in the contemporary supranational environment of the European Union/European Community? (2) Within such contemporary meaning, can the quality of ‘sovereignty’ with regard to direct taxation be considered to have remained with the Member States, has it been acquired by the European Union/European Community or has it been shared by the Member States and the Union/Community level? (3) What are the normative implications of the answer to the previous question and have these normative implications been respected by the states and supra-state actors? All too often, tax scholars equate ‘sovereignty’ with the concepts of ‘competence’ or of ‘jurisdiction’. With regard to acquiring a thorough understanding of the ‘sovereignty’ concept, however, it is necessary to abolish a tax legal perspective altogether and venture into the field of political sciences. An analysis of the non-legal background of the concept ‘sovereignty’ will show that it is defendable to confer an epistemic and normative significance to the ‘sovereignty’ concept that goes beyond the strictly legal concepts of ‘competence’ or ‘jurisdiction’.

The Regulation of Geographical Indications in the Wine Sector

The paper analyzes the regulation of Geographical Indications (GIs) in the wine sector, making reference to the national (Italy, Australia, USA), supranational (European Union) and international (WTO) contexts. While Europe has created an ad hoc regime for GIs, clearly distinguishing them from trademarks, this does not seem to be the case for Australia and the USA, where such differentiation does not exist or is in its initial stage of development. The paper argues that the differences emerging at comparative level lie in the idea behind the notion of GIs. While Europe conceive them as a kind of common property strongly linked to tradition and culture, Australia and the USA look at GIs as private property rights.

Reti di informazione, governance di Internet e innovazione nella politica mondiale

World politics is currently facing challenges imposed by globalization processes to the legitimacy of policy actors and to the effectiveness of policy-making. Building on a socio-political approach to governance and focusing on global information policies, this chapter aims at developing a better understanding of the possibility of change in world politics, by critically analysing the reality and relevance of “multi-stakeholder” practices in a supra-national and trans-national context. Looking at Internet Governance debates in recent years, the authors reconstruct networks of interaction connecting actors in the virtual space, analyzing the extent to which technological, as well as process-oriented and cognitive innovation, shape actors’ orientations and the structures within which they interact in the specific context of Internet Governance.

Mapping Excellence in National Research Systems

The study of “scientific excellence” is taking on increasing importance in the development of research policies in many nations. However, scientific excellence is difficult to define because of its multidimensional and highly complex character. This work contributes to the state of the art by exploring an effective, simple, and inexpensive bibliometric methodology that further identifies “excellent” centers of research by beginning with the individual researchers affiliated with such centers. The study concentrates on public research organizations in Italy, analyzing 109 scientific categories of research in the “hard” sciences and 157 centers of excellence operating in 60 of these categories. Findings from this first application of the methodology should be considered exploratory and indicative. With a longer period of observation and the addition of further measurements, this methodology could be extended and adapted to a variety of national and supranational contexts, aiding policy decisions at various levels.

Transnational Parliamentary Assemblies: A Remedy for the Democratic Deficit of International Governance?

While international governance may improve the legitimacy of its policies by producing better outputs, it reduces legitimacy on the input side as decisions are taken further away from the citizens. This article examines transnational parliamentary assemblies and assesses whether they might add legitimacy to decision-making beyond the state. While the parliamentary route to legitimacy is often belittled within the realm of international relations, many such assemblies already exist. The study gives an overview of such assemblies and compares the European Parliament, the Nordic Council and the Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference in detail. They represent three types of transnational parliamentary assemblies: parliament, assembly and conference. The article reaches the conclusion that a parliament can further democratic legitimacy in supranational contexts, whereas assemblies can provide additional legitimacy to processes of international cooperation. The conference type does not fulfil the criteria set for democratic legitimacy.