Tommaso Vitale

Contracting for Welfare Services in Italy

The 1990’s witnessed the spread and broadening in Europe of different types of relationships between public administration and private organisations (both profit and non-profit), derived from the two main categories of contracting out and accreditation. These models, linked to the process of developing new modes of governance, also focus on forms of contracting between providers and users of services. This contractual configuration of local welfare systems appears to encourage ‘civil society’ and recipients to play a more active role in designing interventions and putting them into practice. Nonetheless, several questions still remain to be answered. Mainly concerning the different position adopted by the beneficiaries in the case of intervention theoretically aimed at ensuring or increasing their ‘freedom of choice’, this article sets out to analyse these questions with specific reference to the implementation of the Italian legal reform of social services. The field of observation covers interventions based on economic benefits looking to promote recipients’ independence. Our intention is to focus on whether and how the present structures incorporate and elaborate this impulse towards change, with particular reference to the new configuration of the users’ own position.

Explaining How Political Culture Changes: Catholic Activism and the Secular Left in Italian Peace Movements

Political cultures have usually been studied as static and perhaps monolithic. If any attention has been dedicated to how political cultures change it has been devoted to exogenous factors. In recent years, however, some authors have advocated exploring the role of endogenous factors. In this article, we reflect on the advantages of a comprehensive approach to explaining how political cultures change, embracing endogenous and exogenous factors. We look at peace mobilizations in Italy as a case study, which allows examination of the interactions of the two political cultures of Marxism and Catholicism. Our work suggests some provisional theories about the dynamics that lead to hybridization between different political families. These dynamics can be understood through the genealogy of a ‘grammar of responsibility’. We argue that the factors that condition change in political culture relate to both the national and the international political context. We also show how these processes of change occur as a result of collective action, although individuals also perform important functions of co-ordination, brokerage, leadership, and subversion of codes. Moreover, we show that change in political cultures does not occur in a linear manner but follows a shifting course, which alternates periods of innovation and of involution or regression.

Law as weapon of the weak? A comparative analysis of legal mobilization by Roma and women's groups at the European level

ABSTRACT This article is interested with the legal mobilization of transnational interest groups at the European level (European Union and Council of Europe). It compares the legal and political lobbying strategies of two umbrella organizations – the European Womens Lobby (EWL) and the European Roma and Travellers Forum (ERTF), which seek respectively to promote the rights of women and those of Roma – focusing on their interactions with European institutions and law. The article analyses the contrasted relationship of these groups to legal mobilization as a rights advancement strategy, shedding new light on how law can be strategically used by both strong and weak civil society actors. Beyond classical factors linked to organizational characteristics and identity, the differential usages of law by the two groups are explained by the role of strategic actors who adapt to the specificities of the system of governance in the two policy sectors – gender equality and anti-discrimination.

Conflitti urbani nei percorsi di cittadinanza degli immigrati. Una introduzione

Immigration is a main political topic. In Western Europe social conflicts, party systems and political parties have been restructured around an emerging cleavage between integration and demarcation. At the urban level, conflict among immigrant groups and native ones and contention between immigrants and the local authorities are major political dynamics. Main literature has explained why do we observe clashes between immigrants and natives in some locations, but not in others; and what accounts for change in immigrant conflict within locales over time. Not a lot has been written about the outcomes of these conflicts and their impact on citizenship. An emerging literature is measuring important effects in terms of political inclusion, but other effects on civic and social citizenships remain partially unexplored. Empirical researches collected for this special issue stress the dimension of agency of immigrant contentious politics, and show the heuristic value of new approaches in the theory of action, taking into account recognition as well as institutional and normative constraints.

Comment on Andrew Abbott/3

Abstract: Reacting to the original papers outlining the importance of “social mechanisms,” thispaper contrasts two views of the social process, the mechanismal and the relational. In the sourceshere analyzed, the mechanismal perspective is largely based on methodological individualismand generally presupposes rational, or at least intentional, action. A fundamental assumption ofthis approach is that the meaning of an action is given in itself. The relational view by contrastholds that the meaning of an action arises only from its relation to other actions, both temporallyand structurally. The relational view takes not actors but interaction as primitive and focuseson the scene (context) of action rather than the intentions of actors. The paper investigatesthese differences by examining the Elsterian mechanisms of “endowment” and “contrast,”both theoretically and through the example of application of students to institutions of highereducation in America. Keywords: legitimacy, relational explanation, identity, institution, convention.

Diseguaglianze e discontinuità nel governo delle grandi metropoli. Un’agenda di ricerca

Il saggio suggerisce che la connessione tra la governance metropolitana e le disuguaglianze consente di considerare queste ultime non solo come un esito delle politiche ma anche come componente del modo in cui le stesse vengono implementate. Superando una visione razionale o positivista della governance, sosteniamo che i processi di governo delle citta non siano mai ne completi ne lineari: sono in continua costruzione e producono significative differenze nelle diverse citta e nel corso del tempo. L’analisi sistematica della letteratura mostra la necessita di descrivere e documentare in modo sinergico 1) il modo in cui i processi di governance agiscono in relazione ai progetti di sviluppo urbano e all’implementazione delle politiche pubbliche e 2) cosa questo comporti in termini di disuguaglianze

Comment on Loris Caruso/4. Territorial Conflicts and New Forms of Left-Wing Political Organization: from Political Opportunity Structure to Structural Contexts of Opportunities

Empirical studies of territorial conflicts in Italy show the aversion of local movements against left-wing political parties. The closure of political opportunities structure does not explain the emergence of mobilisations, but it shapes the relational field of contention and has consequences on the political polarisation. In the first section I discuss the actuality of the concept of structure for sociological research; the second section is focused on the kind of historicism developed in contextual political analysis; the third section copes with sociological theory centred on opportunities and not only on constraints. The last section introduces the prominence of considering structural parameters of the population to improve the sociology of territorial conflicts, precisely around three main types of variation in a population (heterogeneity, inequality, and consolidation) to study and test hypothesis related to the political effects of social structures.

Regulation by Incentives, Regulation of the Incentives in Urban Policies

Abstract The Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) Framework developed at the University of Indiana is very promising for advancing comparative urban studies. Ostroms “Grammar of Institutions” is useful for addressing urban allocative conflicts. Such conflicts are valuable entry points to better grasp urban politics, especially in comparative research. This paper introduces a theoretical and conceptual framework to analyse the role of monetary and non-monetary incentive schemes in the field of urban policies. The incentives to consider in urban policies can be divided into four categories: (1) direct financial incentives; (2) indirect financial incentives; (3) non-financial incentives; (4) broader social incentives. Direct and indirect financial incentives are well studied by public choices theorists in urban economics; non-financial incentives are considered in some forms of planning theory, while broader social incentives are especially stressed by urban sociologists. This paper stresses the relevance for urban theory of configurations that articulate the four kinds of incentives conjointly, from both a bottom-up perspective and a top-down perspective. Taking into account of incentives, and not only of single incentives (one by one), it is a promising advancement. It is hypothesized that this could sustain relevant development in comparative urban research.

Da strutture a processi: servizi, spazi e territori del welfare locale

In line with what can be observed at a European level, the re-ordering of social assistance recently approved in Italy establishes directives for change centring on three main criteria: integration, activation, localization. Taken as a whole, these criteria point to the affirmation of an emphasis on the social policies processes, in particular of the processes of integration between sectors and actors and the processes of empowerment of recipients. This paper presents the results of a research on social services for children and the elderly in two Italian metropolitan areas, Milan and Naples, in order to analyse how these directives take concrete shapes in the organizational practices. More precisely, we observe the organizational space of the social services and its potential as generative factor. Indeed, as other symbolic components of organizational life, space is a medium of sense-making processes: it influences relationships, it conveys and creates meanings and it enacts action contexts. Firstly, we refer to the organizational theory in order to focus on the potential of organizational space to act as a generative factor. Then, taking as our basis the research carried out, we analyse how some spatial variables affect organizational practices, in order to understand if and how the relevance of processes takes place, or fails, in particular concerning the practices of territorial integration and the empowerment of recipients.

Migrants in the public discourse: Between media, policy and public opinion: New Contexts and Challenges in Europe

The chapter focuses on public and political discourse about ‘migrants’ in Europe, which frames the relationship between migrants and trade unions, and offers an overview of the main issues at stake. The authors develop an original analysis of European citizens’ attitudes towards migrants using ESS data. These data show that hostility towards immigrants is related primarily to individual attitudes, characteristics and behaviour, namely, to age, education, residential area and, especially, political affiliation as well as the level of commitment and engagement in associations and charities. Therefore politics, political cultures and political behaviour are key factors to understand racism and intolerance. The chapter focuses on the factors influencing migration policy-making, including the role of the mass media in shaping interpretations and policy instruments. The authors subsequently explore how migrations are framed in the public domain and policies. Finally, they examine how migrants are imagined as members of society, exploring the main narratives used to talk about their integration.