1,721,087 research outputs found
Preventing children’s death by heatstroke: How alternative accident theories affect policy design and evaluation
No full textWhen public policies are designed from scratch, with no or limited possibility of learning from past experience, decision makers rely on their creativity and lateral thinking to counterbalance cognitive biases. One of the crucial issues for both evaluators and policy makers in such situations is not only to elaborate a sound theory of the programme but also to be aware of the existence of competing theories to solve the same problem. Being able to detect such theories constitutes an essential step to avoid ‘Type III errors’, that is, enacting the right solution for the ‘wrong’ problem. Reflecting on the analysis of two programmes aimed at preventing the death of children by heatstroke, this article illustrates the implications of alternative ‘accident theories’ for the evaluation of safety policies
Alitalia, or the inability to align regulation with industrial policies
No full textThis article aims to frame Alitalia’s crisis in the processes that have
characterized the regulatory and industrial policies of the aviation
industry over the last twenty years. The reasons that led to Alitalia’s
state of insolvency, which have been widely documented, will only
be surveyed here. Instead, this work highlights the ‘public policy’
dimension of Alitalia’s failure, that is to say the key strategic decisions,
their coherence over time, and the choices made in other countries
for similar cases. If the Alitalia crisis is essentially a business crisis that
not concern the national airline industry, this does not necessarily
mean that the public and regulatory choices that have been made in
Italy over the last twenty years have not influenced discernible
managerial choices and cases of poor management. The interpretive
hypothesis followed in this article concerns the ability to coordinate
and integrate regulatory policies and industrial policies. The first
section of the article introduces the main theoretical and empirical
works on the theme of market-building policies and their implications
for civil aviation policy. The second section deals with the story
of Alitalia from 1997 to date, focusing on strategic decisions and key
policy actors. The last two sections reconstruct European regulatory
choices and their implementation in five European countries with
a focus on changing ownership structures and the strategies of key
market players
Did Elitists Really Believe in Social Laws? Some Epistemological Challenges in the Work of Gaetano Mosca and Vilfredo Pareto
No full textThe epistemological standards of contemporary social sciences refute ‘functional’ and ‘law-like’ explanations, whereas mechanism-based causal explanations have become widely accepted in various fields of inquiry. The paper supports the hypothesis that authors Vilfredo Pareto and Gaetano Mosca, despite their deference to positivist epistemology, significantly anticipated these developments. Indeed, with their emphasis on history, contexts and agents, elitists ushered into the debate of their time some arguments that realist epistemology fully developed, emphasising the role of context-specific and, often, not directly observable explanatory features. To illustrate the ante litteram epistemological realism of elitist thinkers, the paper reconstructs the positions of Mosca and Pareto concerning two major themes of that time, in which elitists challenged the mainstream ideas and values of most of their peers with epistemological arguments that refuse a linear notion of causality
Gli ambiti di servizio nel trasporto pubblico locale: scoperta e traslazione di uno strumento di policy
No full textMultilevel policy implementation and the where of learning: the case of the information system for school buildings in Italy
No full textThe paper builds on the case of the design and implementation of the National Information System for School Buildings in Italy. The project is one of digitalisation of the public sector and involves several layers of territorial governments (the State Department for Education, regional and local governments) and ICT experts, and is becoming a tool for policy making in the field. Nonetheless, the programme was initially designed with a top-down approach immediately stuck. Its effective implementation only took place some years later by downsizing policy design and allowing regions to implement those digital solutions which, in the meanwhile, had been designed and implemented from the bottom-up. The paper draws from the case study theoretical considerations about the importance of where policy learning happens and the strategies that policy makers may adopt in case of policy failure in order to re-establish the conditions for effectiveness
Varieties of regulation? Implementing the regional governance of local utilities in Italy
No full textRedefining the national economic interest. Regulation of industrial property rights as a public policy
No full textHow do States define and protect their «strategic» industries? After more than three decades since the waves of privatization begun in Europe, States did not entirely give up their willingness and capacity to define some economic sectors as strategic. Instead, they have devised strategies to protect industries operating in such sectors, either limiting the possibility of foreign acquisitions or regulating how companies acquired by foreigner entities should operate. Yet, analyses of how European states define such interests and vigilate over them are scarce. This article identifies a specific policy domain consisting in the regulation of property rights and more specifically in the powers enabling governments to define strategic industries and interfere in the transactions regarding them. Empirically, the paper provides evidence on the varieties of institutional arrangements and policy strategies emerged in the four largest economies of the region such as France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. Two macro-patterns seem to emerge: on the one hand, the scope of state regulation of France and Italy has been broad and the policy tools more intrusive than in Germany and the UK. On the other hand, we found that agency matters in determining specific policy outcomes
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