1,721,005 research outputs found
Political Science in Italy. The achievements and challenges of a small, but significantly proactive, discipline
No full textIt has been not easy for political science to become institutionalized in the country of Machiavelli, Mosca and Pareto, three scholars who are internationally recognized as among the founding fathers of modern political science. Indeed, the consolidation of this discipline has been a very difficult enterprise, and we are greatly indebted to those colleagues (Giovanni Sartori at first, followed by Giorgio Freddi, Alberto Spreafico, Paolo Farneti and others) who since the 1960s have been fighting to get recognition for the empirical study of politics in Italy.
This task has been a very hard one because of the complex array of interwoven obstacles hindering the advancement of Italian political science, namely: the cultural prevalence of anti-empiricism and normativism in the study of politics; the delayed penetration of democratic theories due to the Fascist regime; the ideological nature of the elite who guided the transition to democracy after the World War II; Italian universities’ historically-rooted pluralistic conception of politics; and the evolution of the notion of State. These factors have combined diachronically to proffer structural resistance to the emergence and development of modern, empirical political science.
In this paper we examine the state of Italian political science, focusing in particular on the transformation that has taken place during the past twenty years. Our concern to this question has led us to identify, and critically analyse, the current challenges facing Italian political scientists during this rather delicate phase of re-organisation of the Italian academic system, within the context of a more demanding, increasingly competitive environment largely created by globalisation, international mobility and European Integration. In the second section we’ll focus on the quantitative dimension of political science in Italy; in the third section the relevance of political science in the overall universities’ curricula will be presented and assessed; in the forth section the research topics and outputs of the discipline are presented and discussed. The conclusions are devoted to a general assessment of the institutionalization of Italian political science
The presence of political science in the Italian university curricula
No full textAs it is well known, Italy was the first country to begin implementation of the “Bologna process”. The new system of university curricula was established by government in 1999, and is currently being re-styled, although the cornerstones of the new system have been preserved. As we have already mentioned, the traditional university degree (laurea) was replaced by a two-level curriculum: a first-level diploma is awarded after the third year of study (diploma di laurea), while the advanced-level diploma (the laurea specialistica, and since 2008 the laurea magistrale) requires a further two years of study. Another important change to be recalled is the decision to grant each university substantial freedom to choose the names and curricula of degree-courses. Prior to 2001, the names of university courses and degrees were decided by the Ministry, and were the same for all the universities, while each university was only granted a limited degree of freedom when it came to defining course curricula. Since 2001, however, each university has been free to choose the names of its courses and degrees from a wide framework of 42 types of bachelor’s degree groupings and of 104 types of master’s degree groupings2. Although certain standard minimal requirements have to be met in terms of subject distribution within each grouping, universities are now allowed to shape their curricula, thus varying the content also within the same category of degree. For example: while a standard degree grouping has been established (e.g. the national bachelor’s degree programme in Political Sciences and International Relations), unlike in the past, when all universities had to use the same name for this kind of degree (and basically adopt the same list of courses), universities may now choose from a variety of titles (Political Sciences and International Affairs, Politics and International Affairs, International Affairs and Diplomacy, and so on), and curricular content offered may now vary considerably from one programme to another.
The 1999 reform provided a real policy window for the discipline, since political science courses were now required as basic or supplementary subjects in 16 of the 42 national bachelor’s degree groupings, and in 32 of the master’s degree groupings. This is an impressive result if we consider that prior to 2001, only the degrees in Political Sciences, International Relations and Public Administration required subjects in the discipline of political science.
The question now is: what impact has this radical reform of the university teaching system had? Or, to put it another way: how has this ‘policy window’ been transformed into reality? Have political scientists been able to extend their presence beyond the traditional confines of political science faculties? In attempting to answer to these questions, we will analyse some data about the presence of the discipline in the context of the Italian university system today. More precisely, we will look at the concentration of political science courses at the two level above mentioned – the diploma di laurea and the laurea magistrale
Il ceto parlamentare ai tempi del populismo
No full textIl capitolo si propone di inquadrare i principali elementi di novità che le elezioni 2018 hanno portato nel quadro del personale politico-parlamentare, per poi produrre alcuni spunti di riflessione interpretativa, in particolare sulle conseguenze che il successo elettorale di forse politiche "populiste" ha prodotto sulla rappresentanza parlamentare
VERSO IL CETO POLITICO DELLA «TERZA REPUBBLICA»? LA RAPPRESENTANZA PARLAMENTARE NELLA XVI LEGISLATURA
No full textIl capitolo analizza il profilo della classe parlamentare della XVI legislatura emersa dalle elezioni del 2008. In particolare si offre una risposta alla domanda sul "quantum" di rinnovamento realizzato con questa tornata elettorale, caratterizzata da una forte quanto inaspettata riduzione della frammentazione del sistema partitico e dalla formazione, per la prima volta dopo molti decenni, di due gruppi parlamentari a chiara vocazione maggioritaria. In particolare si analizzano le dimensioni e le modalità di turnover parlamentare, con la rilevante esclusione dei gruppi della sinistra radicale; il profilo anagrafico e di genere, caratterizzato da una sostanziale diminuzione dell'età media e dal record di presenze femminili; il grado di coesione interna ai gruppi dei due maggiori partiti; ilredicamento territoriale degli eletti
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