Riformismo/i: un'introduzione
Salvatore Lupo
Riformisti di qua, conservatori di là? Contro il riformismo unico
Maurizio Franzini
Reformists here, conservatives there! Against «one reformism fits all»
The debate on how to reform the italian economis system in order to improve
its performances, especially in terms of economic growth, is almost monopolized
by the idea that what is needed is a more market oriented culture. The exact
meaning of this recipe is not at all clear. However its hard core can be singled out:
it is the idea that insecurity, both in the labour market and in the social protection
system, is by now a necessary condition for economic growth. The strength of
this model is quite often considered to be the fact that it performed very well in
some other contry. The main purpose of the essay is to show the weak foundations
of such a claim and to offer an alternative conception of economic reformism
that takes into account the distinguishing features of the italian economic
system and the most prominent obstacles to its further development, so to
avoid the mistakes in the idea that others’ models can be successfully replicated
thanks to some structural reform. The paper addresses also other questions related
to the idea that a sort of «neutral reformism» independent from the values, that
should distinguish different political sides, is possibile.
La globalizzazione e il mutamento della socialdemocrazia
Mark Blyth, Jonathan Hopkins
Globalization Didn’t Make You Do It! Party Politics
and the Transformation of European Left Parties
Blyth and Hopkin analyze why, when the parties of the «left» were in power
all over Europe during the late 1990s, there was arguably very little «left» about
the policies such parties pursued. The conventional answer stresses three factors:
The globalization of product and financial markets, the new fiscal environment of
permanent austerity, and the changed «tastes» of European voters. The authors
contest all three explanations and instead offer an explanation of party and party
system change that stresses how parties shape their electoral (and thus policy) environment
is as important as how the environment forces parties to shape their
policies. Expanding upon previous work on the transformation from catch-all to
cartel parties, Blyth and Hopkin argue that factors internal to all political parties,
not just those of the left; financing, the decreasing utility of members, professionalization,
and the dynamics of party competition: particularly voter turnout and
volatility, have together forced parties to truncate the policy space they operate
within such that what is not offered to voters becomes as important an issue as
what is offered. Left parties across Europe have reduced their policy commitments
in order to control for these endogenous factors, and have formed tacit cartels
with other leading parties in an attempt to control for their attendant costs.
l riformismo e il discorso sul «welfare»
Elena Granaglia
The new discourse on welfare
The new discourse on welfare is characterized by two central ideas: enabling
opportunities should be enhanced at the expense of ex post compensations and active
citizenship should take the place of welfare dependency. While sharing the
importance of opportunities and active citizenship, the paper aims at highlighting
the plurality of conceptions that these values may take, warning against the risk
that the new discourse on welfare favours a version strongly reducing the rights
of citizenship. More specifically, the risk is that of embracing a meritocratic conception
of equality of opportunity that, even though conceived in substantive
terms, is indifferent to many dimensions of disadvantage and a contract-based
conception of citizenship, blind to the differences between the duties governing
market exchanges and those based on social justice.
La democrazia manomessa: riformare, deformare, conformare
Alfio Mastropaolo
The violation of democracy: reforming, deforming, conforming
The project of radical reform of the 1948 Constitution has formed part of the
Italian political landscape since the mid-1970s. Over the last three decades, however,
the issue of «constitutional reform» has more often than not resembled an
interminable political soap opera. The initial reason for the proposal was very
simple: the political system was too unstable and too inefficient to fulfill the needs
of a large and advanced democracy. The only way to overcome this problem
therefore was to reduce the number of parties by means of constitutional and
electoral engineering. Of course, there were also other less explicit and less noble
reasons. In particular, constitutional reform reflected the ambitions of a number
of actors to change! the rules of the game, thus improving their prospects of electoral
success. In addition, some saw in the project the possibility of forcing Italian
politics down the path of neo-liberalism, which, as things stood, was impeded
by the veto-powers attributed by the Constitution and the electoral laws to a
wide range of actors. This article has three main purposes: (1) to elucidate the gap
between public arguments and unavowed projects; (2) to underline the unexpected
effects of the various reforms that have been approved; (3) to demonstrate the
continuity between the anti-democratic and anti-political ambitions of the
Berlusconi government’s reform proposals and those proposed and approved by
the centre-left during its time in government from 1996 to 2001.
Le privatizzazioni come mito riformista
Massimo Florio
Privatization as a reformers’ illusion
The paper suggests that efficiency considerations do not explain why privatization
policy is so appealing to the centre-left parties in Europe. Divestitures of
state owned corporations in the UK and elsewhere were implemented by right
wing parties with the over-arching objective to defeat trade unions . The producitivity
and welfare changes were modest or negligible, sometimes negative. Why
reformers of the left support privatization? The paper suggests that efficiency motivations
are weaker than usually said by a mostly biased privatization empirical
literature and by free-market apologetics. The reason lies in the nature of the privatized
coroporation, wich is very far from a competitive enterprise. The paper
conjectures that the centre-left seeks by its support to privatization to gain political
rents. This implies to surrender financial rents to the globalized financial actors,
to be paid out by political support or neutrality to centre-left governments.
This strategy is at high risk of be captured by the financial èlites and poses a threat
to democracy. A state without ownership, with a marginal role in service provision,
becomes a tax -and -transfer, law -and -order state, with little democratic legitimacy.
Public provision of services should be reformed as an explicit social inclusion
mechanism, based on clearly stated policy goals and involvement of users.
The Eu should not adopt a rigid privatization-liberalization-regulation paradygm,
and should instead build on flexible tools to achieve common goals in terms of
citizens’ access to those services that have a community-building content.
Il riformismo e le privatizzazioni in Italia
Roberto Cavallo Perin
Reformism and privatizations in Italy
The writing proposes a critical analysis of italian laws on privatizations about
public job and public utilities. The purpose of this reforms was inspired by ideological
favor of italian parliament for private undertakings rather than by indipendent
public policy. The italian history of the XIX and XX centuries shows that
the private and public enterprises become inefficient and ineffective for the lack of
public laws against the monopoly. Keeping a plurality of producers of public utilities
to check the quality of their services and to allow the customers the best
choice seems necessary. This is only possible if the regulation comes from a higher
level than the municipal one.
//Miss Governance, I presume//
Silvano Belligni
Miss Governance, I Presume
«Governance» is often seen as a remedy for State and market failures and as
an answer to the challenges to democracy. It is an inclusive bottom-up policymaking
process in which exchanges, bargaining and compromises take place between
public authorities and private interest groups, and in which decisions are
taken unanimously. Governance is normally considered to be the antithesis of
government. Government is seen as unilateral and exclusive top-down policymaking
based on hierarchic state control, whereas governance is seen as a spontaneous
and non-hierarchical order and as a higher stage of democratic development.
This dichotomy is more a reflection of ideological bias and administrative
requirements than of actual political reality. The fact is that in the real world of
democracy control mechanisms and pluralistic devices have always been mixed
and complementary. «Old governance» differs from «new governance» because
of the balance of power between public and private networks (and between the
latter) and because of the scale of the playing field, which is henceforth transnational
or global rather than national.
Alle radici della libertà umana: percorsi della biopolitica
Giovanni Ruocco
At the roots of human liberty: paths of biopolitics
In the philosophical debate currently developed, biopolitics reached a preeminent
importance. In order to underline the increasing attention paid to biological
human life by modern politics, the term has really spread out, in particular since
Michel Foucalt’s late work. This article intends to report and analyze the different
perspectives and approaches to this issue, with special reference to the Italian experience,
and tries to comprehend how biopolitics might influence political choices
of our time and determine our political future.
La politica di promozione della democrazia dell'Unione europea. La lezione della Polonia e il monito di Rousseau
Daniela Piana
The European policy of promotion of democracy.
Lessons from Poland and the Rousseau’s thesis
The European Union has made pressure on the candidate countries to build
up democratic institutions and legal mechanisms to enforce the law and to respect
fundamental rights. The conception of democracy that has been endorced in this
view relies on the value of a market system, a democratic regime and the principle
of rule of law. Nevertheless, this conception does not take into account the national
context where these principles should have been integrated. The analysis of
the adaptation of Polish political system to the criteria settled up by the European
Union during the pre-accession period shows that democratic legitimacy has been
undermined by this strategy, because of the lack of attention for national legacies
and national culture. This case study seems to fit with the thesis of Jean Jacques
Rousseau. He argued that any possible formal constitution would have been legitimate
and effective only if it had been coherent and acceptable from the point
of view of the «substantial» – namely «national» – dimension of Poland.
Territori di progetto, progetti di territorio: luci e ombre della progettazione integrata territoriale in Calabria
Giovanni Soda
The Integrated Territorial Projects (PIT) in Calabria:
qualities and criticisms
In the current period of the programming of the European Structural Funds
2000-06 in Calabria, the Integrated Territorial Projects (PIT) could become a
model for public initiatives, in which the themes of local economic development
and modernisation of public adiministrations are addressed in an innovative way
and new forms of governance. The Calabria Government has created 23 PIT wich
will carry out, in next three years, many actions in different sectors of public policies:
infrastructures, education, social regeneration, economic development, technological
development, information and commmunication technologies. This paper
analyse the political, social and economic factors concerning the planning
process of the PIT in Calabria, from the point of view of public policy analysis.
Luigi Alfonso Casella e la propaganda serica in Calabria
Angelina Marcelli
Luigi Alfonso Casella and the silk promotion in Calabria
This article aims at pointing out the figure of Luigi Alfonso Casella (1865-
1945) within the ruling class of Calabria. He devoted most of his work (from
1911 to 1934) to the management of the Sericultural Institute in Cosenza and was
engaged in the development of silk production in Calabria and the other Southern
areas. He attempted to promote the interaction between the national economic
policy and the local interests. During the early XX century, Italian sericulture began
to show some weakening signs due to the Asian production. The government
planned a project in order to support one of the most important field of Italian
economy involving technicians in order to encourage production and productivity
in the local areas, mainly in the silkworm breeding sector. Using unpublished
sources, together with a careful analysis of some little known aspects of Italian
sericulture, the author critically restores the outcome of this promotional project
in Calabria, by pointing out the considerable results achieved, mostly thanks to
Casella’s specific intervention. Such results were forgotten due to the decay of
sericulture after the 1930s.
Cucinare il moderno
Francesco Benigno
Povertà e disuguaglianze nel mondo. Le cause dei cambiamenti negli ultimi 25 anni
Grazia Ietto-Gillies
Poverty and inequalities in the world.
The causes of changes in the last 25 years
This article starts with an extensive review of Rapporto su povertà e disuguaglianze
negli anni della globalizzazione by N. Acocella, G. Ciccarone, M.
Franzini, L.M. Milone, F.R. Pizzuti and M. Tiberi, Rome 2004: Edizioni Colonnese,
l’ancora del Mediterraneo, Pironti. The article first summarises the following
issues dealt with extensively in the book: definition and quantification of key
concepts such as globalization and poverty; the role of global public goods in
world inequalities; the role of international financial institutions and of the state;
policy suggestions. The article then goes on to discuss the possible causes of globalisation;
it uses Keynes’s concept of causa causans to try and get to the root causes
of globalisation and related policy implications. Prominence in this analysis is
given to the role of technological and organisational innovations; the latter leads
to a discussion of the role of transnational companies in the globalisation process.
The article concludes that, though much of the popular literature equates globalisation
with liberalisation and «marketisation», the equation should not be accepted.
It is possible to have globalisation with a human face and dimension; without,
therefore, the excesses of «marketisation».