Archivio istituzionale della Ricerca - Bocconi
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Business-government networks in small states: the emergence and evolution of Luxemburg global mutual fund industry, 1945–1988
No full textThis research reconstructs the business dynamics behind the evolution of the European mutual fund industry, which led Luxembourg to become its main international gateway since the 1960s. We analyze the local mutual fund industry to understand how political and financial élites influence the economic specialization of small states. We argue that a closely-knit community of local professionals and politicians, well-versed in corporate and European legislation, leveraged the Grand-Duchy’s small state status within the nascent European Community to become a financial hub specializing in mutual funds within an emerging network of international financial centers. This position was achieved through bifurcation of sovereignty strategy based on two main premises. First, on the systematic acceptance of conflicts of interest within local financial and political leadership, comprising overlapping roles, revolving-doors, and familial ties in business relationships. Second, on regulatory engineering practices such as dynamic interpretation of laws and strategic planning of directives assimilation to advance Luxembourg’s interests as opposed to its EU counterparts. The analysis uses archival material from nine archival collections and oral history interviews
Why Comparative Public Law is no Longer a Neglected Discipline: A Tribute to Andrew Harding
No full textUsing Andrew Harding, ‘Comparative public law: A neglected discipline?’ in Ian Edge (ed), Comparative Law in Global Perspective (Ardsley, 2000) as a starting point this chapter explains AH's impact on the development of Comparative Public Law as a discipline
Trust, but verify: control mechanisms in multiparty governments
No full textThis chapter explains why coalition governance creates a distinctive “control” problem and reviews the institutional tools parties use to manage it. Coalition cabinets are common in parliamentary democracies, yet much classic research focused on how coalitions form and end; the chapter instead centers on what happens in between—how partners enforce policy compromises while still competing against one another electorally.
The core argument is that coalition politics is a mixed-motive game: parties must cooperate to govern, but also have incentives to differentiate themselves for voters. Delegation to portfolio-holding ministers magnifies this tension because ministers and their bureaucracies enjoy informational and procedural advantages in drafting and implementing policy. This combination creates the risk of “ministerial drift,” where policy in a minister’s jurisdiction moves toward the ministerial party’s preferences rather than the coalition compromise.
The chapter distinguishes two broad ways coalitions can mitigate drift. One is to raise the political costs of reneging, for example by publicizing intended compromises. But written agreements often provide limited enforcement on contentious issues and tend to emphasize dispute-resolution procedures rather than guaranteeing compliance. The second approach is to build mechanisms that allow partners to detect and correct drift by developing expertise and creating opportunities to amend proposals.
It then surveys key institutions. Inside the executive, cabinet/coalition committees can help but are hard to use systematically given the sheer scope of policymaking. More targeted tools include “watchdog” junior ministers who shadow partners’ ministers—especially in divisive jurisdictions—and the deliberate creation of overlapping ministerial responsibilities so that multiple parties shape drafts in sensitive policy areas.
A central emphasis is on legislative institutions—especially committee systems—that enable information-gathering (expertise, documents, testimony) and amendment (redrafting or credible amendment rights), particularly when agenda-setting rules do not choke off debate and changes. Evidence reviewed in the chapter shows that strong “policing” institutions increase scrutiny and amendment on internally divisive bills and can shift policy outcomes from minister-dominated to coalition-wide responsiveness; it also notes that oversight institutions may strengthen where coalition governance is frequent and ideologically diverse
The impact of budget cuts on individual patient health: Causal evidence from hospital closures
No full textPublic finance constraints following the 2008 financial crisis in Europe often affected the hospital sector. This paper investigates i) the causal health impacts of reduced hospital supply, and ii) possible mechanisms to explain these. Using a staggered difference-in-differences framework, we study the effects of hospital closures on outcomes of all heart attack patients admitted to an Italian hospital between 2008 and 2015. Results show that closures increased in-hospital mortality by 10 % and length-of-stay by 0.3 days, but had no impact on readmissions. We explore potential mechanisms using different estimation approaches, and show that increased travel time following closures explains most of the mortality effect
Cours constitutionnelles et communication : une transformation en cours
No full textIl contributo descrive le trasformazioni in corso nelle corti costuzionali per disegnare nuove modalità di comunicazione che consentano loro di ampliare il pubblico destinatario di contenuti che non sono solo quelli strettamente giuridici delle loro decisioni. Si sofferma in particolare sul percorso della Corte costituzionale che si è dotata di utilizzare nuovi strumenti comunicativi anche in virtù degli sviluppi tecnolgici approtati dai nuovi medi
L'evoluzione verso la mobilità sostenibile passa dal settore marittimo-portuale
No full textIl settore del trasporto marittimo registra una costante crescita su scala mondiale ed è in continua evoluzione dal punto di vista organizzativo, regolatorio e tecnologico, con una serie di specificità del contesto di mercato in Italia. Queste specificità sono alla base di questo studio di approfondimento, che attraverso un’analisi di tipo bottom-up analiz-za le strategie e le iniziative degli operatori nazionali pubblici e privati. Infatti, la ricerca ha l’obiettivo di far comprendere i trend in grado di incidere in modo significativo sul settore, con specifica attenzione ai temi di sostenibilità ambientale e ai riflessi sulla ne-cessità di investimenti pubblici e privati nel contesto nazionale per rispondere in modo efficace a questi complessi driver del cambiamento
A Contrario Arguments
No full textThis chapter analyses a contrario (or e contrario) arguments as legal justification techniques that infer normative consequences from what authoritative legal texts do not say, i.e., from legislative silence. Against the traditional distinction between “strong” and “weak” a contrario reasoning, the authors argue that legal practice actually deploys several distinct argumentative operations and therefore propose a more fine-grained typology. They reconstruct two core models: the first model captures the “strong” version of the argument, where the legal provision is interpreted biconditionally and thus implicitly regulates unmentioned cases in the opposite way; the second model captures the interpretive move that the text regulates only the mentioned case and therefore does not determine the unmentioned one. Building on the second model, the chapter distinguishes a minimal a contrario argument (establishing a genuine legal gap) and a weak a contrario argoment (concluding for the default outcome because no sufficient grounds—e.g., by analogy—exist to fill the gap), while also discussing the potential addition of a disanalogy variant. The chapter finally articulate justification conditions for each version and relate a contrario reasoning to interpretive practices and pragmatic assumptions about legislative communication. The chapter is part of a collective research volume that brings together the leading scholars in the theory of legal argumentation
Prove, decisione, motivazione
No full textDiscutendo l'opera di Cordero, il saggio sostiene che: l’attività probatoria ha aspetti inferenziali ma anche aspetti ostensivo-percettivi; la decisione giudiziale come atto giuridico si distingue dal corrispondente atto o processo psicologico, ma non è ragionevole trascurarne completamente gli aspetti psicologici; un modello di giustificazione della decisione giudiziale deve tenere conto non solo della cosiddetta “giustificazione interna” della decisione ma anche della sua “giustificazione esterna”, ossia degli argomenti che giustificano le premesse da cui la decisione logicamente discende
