1,720,977 research outputs found
La torre di Babele nella ricerca politica. Formazione e trattamento dei concetti empirici secondo il metodo logico
No full textIl regresso verso la torre di Babele appare rapido e inarrestabile. La scienza politica — finora incapace di invertire la marcia — va incontro a due pericoli letali: inconsistenza e irrilevanza. A oggi, la tecnica nelle scienze sociali è tutta metodo (tecnica di elaborazione di dati, di analisi statistica) e niente logos (pensiero). Ma senza pensiero, senza concetti correttamente formati, senza un linguaggio specialistico, non c’è conoscenza. Resta soltanto una quantità di informazioni incontrollate, dunque inapplicabili. Per spezzare questa triste spirale occorre ripartire da qui: dalla formazione edall’analisi logica dei concetti
Italian parties and the European Union's response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine: A qualitative content analysis
Full text linkThis paper analyses Italian party positions on the EU’s response to the Russo-Ukrainian war, singling out the
adoption of sanctions against Russia, the provision of military support to Kiev, enlargement to Ukraine and
the welcoming of Ukrainian refugees into the Union’s territory as the four main dimension of such a response.
The paper draws on the literatures on cleavage politics, the inverted U curve and the differentiated forms of
politicisation, thereby testing theory-driven research hypotheses through a qualitative content analysis of
Italian parties’ Facebook posts in the three months following the outbreak of the conflict, combining an
inductive and a deductive approach. The findings show that party families are a good explanatory factor
behind Italian party positions vis-à-vis the EU’s response to the war outbreak as parties belonging to the
same family shared a similar stance on the four dimensions of such a response. On the contrary, the
Europeanism/Euroscepticism divide does not explain Italian party positions on the EU’s reaction to the
Ukrainian conflict as Europeanist parties split over the EU’s provision of weapons to Ukraine about as
much as Eurosceptic partis split over the adoption of sanctions against Moscow. Finally, the paper shows
that policy issues in the EU’s response to the war (such as sanctions and arms delivery) were much more salient for and contested by Italian political parties than constitutive issues (such as enlargement and asylum)
The COVID-19 pandemic and institutional change in the EU’s financial assistance regime: the governance of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF)
No full textThis article aims at explaining the establishment of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) around a new governance system of EU financial assistance in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Through a process tracing analysis and semi-structured elite interviews, the paper shows that between the pandemic outbreak and the adoption of the RRF, an ‘ideational change’ occurred about the financial assistance regime in the EU. Such an ideational change consists in two concomitant phases – a first phase of ‘ideational collapse’ of the existing governance mode (i.e. intergovernmental coordination as per the ESM) and a subsequent phase of ‘ideational consolidation’ around a new governance mechanism (i.e. limited supranational delegation as exemplified by the RRF). Based on the specific case study of the RRF, the paper discusses implications for how institutional change in the EU may take place following an exogenous shock and the relative explanatory power of ideas in determining the final form of institutional change
The Personalisation of Politics in the Age of Social Media: What Risks for European Democracy?
Full text linkThe COVID-19 Pandemic and the Establishment of the Recovery and Resilience Facility
Full text linkThe COVID-19 pandemic was an unprecedented exogenous shock for the European Union (EU) and its Member States, one that demanded a joint response at the EU level rather than several differentiated responses at the Member State level. As such, the pandemic crisis opened up a “window of opportunity” for institutional change in the EU’s financial assistance regime. This change pertains to the development of a set of rules governing the disbursement and withdrawal of funding to Member States in the context of crisis management. The paper thus aims to answer the following question: How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect the EU’s financial assistance regime? Drawing on a revisited historical institutionalist framework that allows for the examination of different types of institutional development, the paper argues that the COVID-19 pandemic constitutes a “critical juncture” for the EU's financial assistance regime, resulting in a shift from intergovernmental coordination (with the European Stability Mechanism) to a form of limited supranational delegation (with the Recovery and Resilience Facility)
Collective Policy Learning in EU Financial Assistance: Insights from the Euro Crisis and Covid‐19
Full text linkThis article examines policy change in the EU's financial assistance regime through a collective learning perspective. By defining a financial assistance regime as the set of rules governing the disbursement and withdrawal of funding to the member states in the context of crisis management, the article seeks to address the following research question: How can we explain the exact form of change in the EU's financial assistance regime between the euro crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic? The article finds that financial assistance in the EU moved from "intergovernmental coordination" with the European Stability Mechanism to a form of "limited supranational delegation" with the Recovery and Resilience Facility and argues that such a change is due to a collective policy-learning process. This finding suggests that the EU tends to learn from past crisis experiences, freeing itself from established institutional constraints, only when the next crisis becomes a concrete cause for concern. However, when the next crisis strikes, the EU is indeed able to radically alter its practices based on previous policy failures
Intergovernmental integration within supranational policymaking: the European Council's role in the EU's financial response to the COVID-19 pandemic
No full textThis article examines the European Union (EU)'s financial response to the COVID-19 pandemic. To do so, it traces the role of the European Council in the policymaking process for the establishment of two innovative financial instruments – the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) and the general regime of conditionality (GRC) for the protection of the Union's budget, both adopted through the ordinary legislative procedure (OLP) of the supranational system. Combining insights from the ‘new intergovernmentalism’ and the ‘emergency politics’ literatures, the article argues that, in times of emergency, consensus becomes the guiding norm of European integration through the leading role of the European Council even in the context of majority-based supranational policymaking. The article shows that in both cases the European Council exercised quasi-legislative decision-making powers, thereby limiting the role of other EU institutions. This contributes to turning the post-Maastricht paradox of ‘integration without supranational policymaking’ into the new paradox of ‘intergovernmental integration within supranational policymaking’
Italian party competition over the European Union’s financial response to COVID-19: a claims analysis
No full textThis article examines the positions of Italian political parties on the European Union (EU)’s financial response to the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on three key policy instruments that shaped the European public debate: Eurobonds, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), and the Recovery Fund (or Recovery and Resilience Facility, RRF). Drawing on the literatures on the inverted U-curve, the responsibility-responsiveness (RR) dilemma, and cleavage politics, the study tests theory-driven hypotheses through a ‘claims analysis’ of Italian parties’ Facebook posts in the three months following the pandemic outbreak. The findings indicate that neither the mainstream/Eurosceptic divide nor a party’s government or opposition status fully explains Italian parties’ positions on the EU’s financial response to the crisis. Instead, party family affiliation emerges as the strongest explanatory factor. Parties within the same ideological family displayed similar positions on all three EU policy instruments and framed the EU’s financial response to COVID-19 primarily in opposition to parties from different ideological families. This supports cleavage theory and underscores that ideology remains the key determinant of both national party attitudes towards the EU and patterns of party competition over European issues
The discursive framing of European integration in EU-wide media: actors, narratives and policies following the Russian invasion of Ukraine
Full text linkThis article examines how major EU-wide media discursively framed European integration in terms of prevalent actors, narratives and policy areas in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Based on the combination of theoretical insights from discursive institutionalism and the grand theories of European integration, the article performs a qualitative analysis of textual content in six of the most influential EU-wide media sources as of 2023, taking the form of a competitive theory testing. Challenging the established literature on EU-related national media coverage, it finds that, consistently with discursive neo-functionalism, the Russian military aggression of Ukraine has led to the discursive empowerment of EU supranational actors, most notably the European Commission, and to an increased salience of more European integration and transnational solidarity narratives. This has happened despite the fact that the conflict was mainly framed as falling within the realm of intergovernmental policy areas, such as energy policy, security and defence
Legitimacy and political dissensus in the implementation of the recovery and resilience facility : the case of Italy
Full text linkPublished: 26 June 2025This article examines the links between legitimacy, politicisation and the rise of political dissensus in the context of the implementation of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF). In particular, it assesses democratic, technocratic and procedural legitimacy against the vertical, inter-level relations between EU institutions and national authorities in the elaboration of the National Recovery and Resilience Plans (NRRPs), with a particular focus on the case of Italy. The article shows that the implementation of the RRF tends to centralise powers in national executives and their technical-administrative structures to the detriment of national legislatures. This gives rise to a “legitimacy disequilibrium” in the implementation of the RRF characterised by a strong technocratic and a weak democratic legitimacy. Challenging the coordinative Europeanisation literature, the article thus argues that the implementation of the RRF is potentially subject to dynamics of politicisation. As a matter of fact, the observed legitimacy disequilibrium resulting from the implementation of the RRF is open to politicisation from party actors in the member states, thus assuming salience in national public debates. Finally, the article illustrates how the politicisation of NRRPs can become a factor in the wider process of political dissensus in the EU, involving contestation by different types of actors (EU institutions, member state governments and national parties), operating at different levels (EU and national), and with different aims.This research was supported by the project RED-SPINEL 'Respond to Emerging Dissensus: SuPranational Instruments and Norms of European democracy' financed by the Horizon Europe’s project under the grant agreement 101061621
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