The role of subnational authorities in the implementation of EU directives

'Studien zur Rolle von Regionen in der EU-Politik konzentrierten sich bislang hauptsächlich auf die politische Aushandlung und Implementation von Strukturfonds. In diesem Beitrag möchten die Autoren diese Schieflage durch eine Untersuchung der formalen Rolle subnationaler Verwaltungen bei der Implementation von EU-Regulierungen, insbesondere bei der Umsetzung von Richtlinien, zurechtrücken. Subnationale Verwaltungen spielen eine zweitrangige, aber zunehmend wichtige Rolle bei der Anwendung dieser Maßnahmen. Ihr Einfluss ist relativ groß in der Umwelt- und Sozialpolitik, ebenso bei der Verhinderung von Korruption bei der Vergabe öffentlicher Aufträge. In dezentralen Staaten zeigt sich eine höhere Stufe subnationaler Einbindung, allerdings verringert sich durch die Beteiligung der Regionen an der nationalen Politik und durch eine hohe Anzahl an regionalen Verwaltungsbehörden die Wahrscheinlichkeit, subnationale Umsetzungsinitiativen zu finden. Außerdem ist die subnationale Einbindung stärker in Staaten mit regionalen Gebieten, die sowohl über eine gewählte Regierung als auch über eine spezielle Vereinbarung zu ihren EU-Beziehungen verfügen. Schließlich kann subnationale Einbindung zu einer Verlängerung des Umsetzungsprozesses führen.' (Autorenreferat)'Studies on the role of regions in the EU policy process concentrate mainly on policy formulation and implementation of regional funds. In this article, the authors redress this bias by investigating the formal role of subnational authorities in the implementation of EU regulatory policies, specifically in the transposition of directives. Subnational authorities play a secondary, but increasingly important, role in the application of these measures. Their impact is greater on environmental and social policies, as also on public contract legislation. More decentralized states display higher levels of subnational involvement but, in these states, regional participation in national policymaking and a high number of regional authorities decrease the likelihood of finding subnational measures of transposition. There is also more subnational involvement in states with territories that have both an elected government as well as special arrangements regulating their relations with the EU. Finally, subnational involvement tends to prolong the process of transposition.' (author's abstract)

Does rising economic inequality create a representation gap between rich and poor? Evidence from Europe and the United States

Economically powerful individuals are assumed to have greater capacity to influence politics than those with lower incomes. This might imply that as economic inequality increases, we should see a growing representation gap between rich and poor. Yet as Derek A. Epp and Enrico Borghetto explain, previous research has produced a mixed picture, with lobbyists that have the most financial backing often failing to secure policy victories. Drawing on a new study, they suggest the influence of inequality may be more visible when it comes to keeping issues off the political agenda: they find evidence that higher levels of inequality are associated with less legislative attention being directed toward the policies most likely to generate a downward redistribution of wealth

Virtual Parliament in Italy: if not now, when? The debate about a virtual Parliament during the pandemic emergency

The emergence and spread of the Covid-19 emergency in Italy, as in the rest of the world, required parliaments to balance two priorities: ensuring the continuity of parliamentary work and protecting the health of their members and staff. If, in some legislative assemblies, the difficult balance between the right to health and the functioning of parliamentary institutions has been pursued through the implementation of measures that contemplate the use of remote participation and voting, the choices made by the Italian chambers have been more conservative, never coming to favor such solutions, at least in the plenary. This paper contributes to the debate on the digitization of parliamentary assemblies by analyzing the political reasons behind the decision to maintain the status quo in Italy, a country where the containment measures to limit the spread of Covid-19 were among the strictest in the world

Virtual Parliament in Italy: if not now, when? The debate about a virtual Parliament during the pandemic emergency

The emergence and spread of the Covid-19 emergency in Italy, as in the rest of the world, required parliaments to balance two priorities: ensuring the continuity of parliamentary work and protecting the health of their members and staff. If, in some legislative assemblies, the difficult balance between the right to health and the functioning of parliamentary institutions has been pursued through the implementation of measures that contemplate the use of remote participation and voting, the choices made by the Italian chambers have been more conservative, never coming to favor such solutions, at least in the plenary. This paper contributes to the debate on the digitization of parliamentary assemblies by analyzing the political reasons behind the decision to maintain the status quo in Italy, a country where the containment measures to limit the spread of Covid-19 were among the strictest in the world

Testing the «Partisan Hypothesis» Using Italian Investiture Speeches 1979- 2014

UID/CPO/04627/2013 SFRH/BPD/89968/2012 IF/00382/2014Despite variations in institutional and political settings, comparative political research is consistent in pointing to executives as the main drivers of national agendas in parliamentary systems. After presenting a new dataset coding the policy content of investiture speeches of appointed Italian Prime Ministers between 1979 and 2014, this article offers a new strategy to test the «partisan hypothesis », i.e., the relationship between ideology and the issue composition of executives' policy agendas. By comparing each pair of Italian governments' programmatic speeches through multivariate analyses, we show that the ideological distance of governments is a good predictor for agenda divergence in a multiparty- coalition political system.preprintpublishe

Government failure, opposition success? Electoral performance in Portugal and Italy at the time of the crisis. Jean Monnet Occasional Paper 05/2014

The costs of the crisis in Southern European countries have not been only economic but political. Economic crises tend to lead to government instability and termination while political challengers are expected to exploit this contingent window of opportunity to gain an advantage over incumbents in national elections. The current crisis seems to make no exception, looking at the results of the general elections recently held in Southern Europe. However, this did not always lead to a clear victory of the main opposition parties. In most of the elections, in fact, the incumbent parties’ loss did not coincide with the official opposition’s gain. The extreme case is represented by Italy, where both the outgoing government coalition led by Silvio Berlusconi – setting aside for the moment the technocratic phase – and its main challenger, the centre left coalition, ended up losing millions of voters and a new political force, the Five Star Movement, obtained about 25 per cent of votes. On the opposite side there is Portugal. Only in Portugal did the vote increase for the centre right PSD, in fact, exceed the incumbent socialists’ loss. The present work aims at exploring the factors which might account for this significant divergence between the two cases

The Hard Case of Portugal

UIDB/04627/2020 UIDP/04627/2020 PTDC/IVC-CPO/3921/2012 UID/SOC/03126/2019 PTDC /IVC-C PO/3098/2014This article asks whether and why, in a system lacking electoral incentives to cultivate personal votes, MPs might choose to signal to geographic constituents. It explores this question by analysing the number of written parliamentary questions submitted to the Portuguese parliament on two issues – unemployment and crime – between 2009 and 2015, and asking if MPs are more inclined to table questions on specific issues when their districts suffer particularly from related problems. The article finds evidence that constituency-level problem pressure does matter for the signalling activities of MPs, although policy specialization remains the main driver of their issue emphasis. This finding contributes new knowledge to the ongoing debate on the factors accounting for the representative relationship between MPs and constituents, by drawing attention to the importance of district-level problem pressure as one of the drivers of issue sponsorship in parliament.publishersversionpublishe

Government failure, opposition success? Electoral performance in Portugal and Italy at the time of the crisis

The costs of the crisis in Southern European countries have not been only economic but political. Economic crises tend to lead to government instability and termination while political challengers are expected to exploit this contingent window of opportunity to gain an advantage over incumbents in national elections. The current crisis seems to make no exception, looking at the results of the general elections recently held in Southern Europe. However, this did not always lead to a clear victory of the main opposition parties. In most of the elections, in fact, the incumbent parties’ loss did not coincide with the official opposition’s gain. The extreme case is represented by Italy, where both the outgoing government coalition led by Silvio Berlusconi – setting aside for the moment the technocratic phase – and its main challenger, the centre left coalition, ended up losing millions of voters and a new political force, the Five Star Movement, obtained about 25 per cent of votes. On the opposite side there is Portugal. Only in Portugal did the vote increase for the centre right PSD, in fact, exceed the incumbent socialists’ loss. The present work aims at exploring the factors which might account for this significant divergence between the two cases.peer-reviewe