Sabino Cassese

Hypotheses on the Italian administrative system

Why is the private economy in Italy thriving, while the public sector is so poor? This article spells out the general characteristics of the structures and procedures of the public sector and outlines the criteria on which to judge its efficiency in order to proceed to the presentation of four explanatory hypotheses. The first hypothesis is an economic one: the private sector may have exploited the public sector, which bears costs that are to the direct advantage of the private economy. The second hypothesis is social: the public sector is poor because it is a means of taking on labour from the underdeveloped South, becoming in this way a social buffer. The third hypothesis is political: the administration is used to secure political support for the ruling parties (and in particular, for the Christian Democratic Party). The fourth hypothesis is historical: the administration is badly run because, as a result of the Fascist experience, Italians fear any form of ‘Bonapartism’: and it is badly organised beca...

Is There a Global Administrative Law

We are currently engaged in a very important intellectual exercise-no less important, indeed, than that undertaken by the 19th century “founding fathers” of public law, such as Laferriere in France, Gerber, Laband and Mayer in Germany, and Orlando and Romano in Italy. Scholars in New York, Rome, Heidelberg and elsewhere are working on a new area of legal theory and practice: that of global law. This scholarly work has three main features. It is, firstly, a truly global effort. Jurists from all over the world are engaged in such research, some providing in-depth analyses of individual global regimes, while others seek to deduce from the many and varied governance experiences a body of common principles and rules.

In praise of Mauro Cappelletti

This article examines the legacy of Mauro Cappelletti, the great Italian legal polymath who was internationally renowned for his vital contributions to numerous diverse legal fields. The author, who was personally acquainted with Cappelletti, first gives an overview of the celebrated jurist’s life. He then proceeds to discuss Cappelletti’s work, which—permeated as it was with a strongly “outward-looking” perspective, a sense of legal systems as members of a larger and “communicating world”—was all the more groundbreaking in light of the highly dogmatic approach predominant in the study and practice of law in his times, according to which the law was largely “self-contained” in both scientific and national terms. The author then considers Cappelletti’s heritage today, detailing his remarkable prescience in preferring a “contextual,” universalistic methodology, emphasizing the law’s tendencies toward and aptitude for convergence, registering the rise in constitutionalization, internationalization, socialization, and judicialization, and promoting equality as a crucial element of justice.

Taming Honey Birds? The Regulation of Global Indicators

Indicators are today critical to governance, national and global, because they consolidate power in the hands of those with a particular kind of “knowledge”. Furthermore, indicators have been considered “per se” regulatory devices, intentional or unintentional. As a consequence, some commentators argue that legitimacy of global indicators can be enhanced only by developing a robust regulatory framework to oversee the production and use of these devices. This paper addresses these issues by analyzing the process of regulating global indicators. In particular, we claim that indicators can display an intrinsic “regulatory” nature, but that not all indicators require insertion into regulatory frameworks to ensure legitimacy and accountability: the determination as to whether or not a framework is needed depends on several factors, such as the type of indicator at issue, characteristics of the indicator-producing entity, and the kinds of users involved. Thus this paper purports to set out a taxonomy of different types of indicators, in order to distinguish cases in which indicators serve as tools for holding governments accountable from those in which indicators, as accountability-enhancers, themselves require oversight by a legitimate authority. Section 2 will provide some general observations about the spread of global indicators, taking into account both “good” and “bad” indicators. Section 3 will focus on the regulatory implications of global indicators, and it will propose a taxonomy of indicators according to their geneses and uses. Lastly, section 4 will examine different approaches to regulating indicators and controlling their creation and use.