Italy is a founding member state of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and, subsequently, the European Economic Community (EEC). At the time, membership meant anchoring the newborn Italian democracy, regaining international respectability after the Fascist period renewed vest internationally , and securing much-needed economic support to boost development. While in the 1950s the left side of the political spectrum vehemently opposed ECSC/EEC membership, starting with the late 1980s, European integration became the most important pillar of Italian foreign policy, an issue of shared consensus among different partiesa. The golden period for Italy – that is the phase when Italy was at the peak of its influence in the Communities - was the decade ranging from the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s,. At the time, Italian politicians such as Giulio Andreotti played fundamental roles in key moments of EEC/EU history: enlargement to the south, the single market, the Treaty of the European Union, and especially the creation of the euro are all key events in the history of the European Union which is safe to say would have never happened without the skillful contribution of Italy’s key government actors of the time. As European integration started again to be a contentious issue in domestic politics, so declined Italy’s influence. In more recent years: despite Italy’s formal status as a “big” member of the EU, Rome became less relevant than Madrid in EU decision making procedures. The parochial attitude of Italian elites, the incapacity of long-term programming, and relative government instability are all factors that have contributed to reducing the role of Italy in the EU.
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Italy and the European Union
Federiga Bindi
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Leadership and Change in the Public Sector
Jose Luis Mendez
The nature and evolution of the field of studies of public sector leadership can be understood by focusing on four theoretical orientations: institutional, transformational, collaborative, and contingent. The first one argues that, within a democracy, public sector executives do not exercise—or should not exercise—a strong leadership. The second one, on the contrary, stresses their “transformational” role. The third orientation favors more horizontal leading styles, while the last one argues that all the previous types of leadership could emerge depending on the specific conditions. Each of these four orientations takes a specific position toward change and has led to a considerable number of books and articles. This clearly shows that leadership is an important issue in the study of the public sector. It also shows the theoretical fragmentation present in this field and that there is not a fit-all type of leadership. Paradoxically, there is still a noticeable lack of research on some topics, such as the causes and effects of leadership. Thus, there is not a clear understanding yet of the extent to which leading within government makes a positive difference and, in case it does, of how to make it happen. Filling these voids would certainly help this field to gain greater relevance within the wider field of leadership studies as well as in the social sciences in general.
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Religious Regulation in Muslim States
Andrew Bramsen and Zoe Vermeer
Muslim majority states regulate religion at much higher levels on average than non-Muslim states. There are two main explanations for this. First, Muslim states are on average much less religiously pluralistic than non-Muslim states, which tends to result in less tolerant attitudes toward minority religions. Second, and more importantly, religion and politics are much more intertwined in the foundations of Islam than is the case with most other major religious traditions. Because there is this traditional connection in Islam, government regulation of religion is seen as legitimate and even as a positive good.
Regulation in Muslim states takes four basic forms. The first is a country’s approach to having an official religion, with Muslim states being much more likely to have an official religion than non-Muslim states. The second involves the degree to which government supports Islam. Muslim states support Islam in a variety of ways ranging from paying the salaries of imams to implementing sharia law and enforcing public morality. The third form deals with the restrictions on religion in general. This occurs in a variety of ways, ranging from repressing forms of Islam that deviate from the government-preferred form of Islam to limiting political manifestations of Islam that might challenge the ruling elite to imposing restrictions on worship practices and proselytizing. Finally, religious discrimination is a form of regulation that imposes different restrictions on minority religions than it does on Islam. For example, some states outlaw the proselytizing of Muslims while allowing the proselytizing of non-Muslims, or restrict the building of minority worship places while granting permits for the building of mosques. The level and nature of regulations vary widely across the Islamic world, and these variations have consequences for democracy, with Muslim states that have lower levels of regulation tending to have more democratic regimes. The two most democratic countries (Senegal and Tunisia) in the Islamic world both have high percentages of Muslim citizens and strong connections between Islamic leaders and the government but have successfully limited discrimination against minority religions, thereby providing a potential model for other Muslim states.
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The United Kingdom and the European Union
Alasdair Blair
Since the end of World War II a key question that successive U.K. governments have faced is what position the country should occupy in global affairs. Such a question stemmed from the legacy of Empire, which both offered global connections and at the same time financial demands in terms of the need to maintain a global footing. These issues came to a head when the United Kingdom applied (unsuccessfully) to join the European Community (the forerunner of the European Union (EU)) in the 1960s when the country was reappraising its position in the world. And while the United Kingdom eventually joined the Community in 1973, there remained an underlying skepticism about membership within the public at large as well as within sections of the Conservative and Labour parties. This suspicion gained more traction from the 1990s onward as the then EU appeared to be moving to a deeper level of integration in the wake of the Maastricht Treaty. This spurred on Euroskeptics in the United Kingdom to campaign for independence. To put a lid on this pressure for reform, David Cameron held a referendum on U.K. membership in 2016. His gamble that this would once and for all seal the United Kingdom within the EU by closing down the issue of withdrawal did not actually materialize, as the electorate voted to leave, which in turn set the country on a path to depart the EU in 2020. Yet, despite these developments, just as was the case in 1945, the United Kingdom is in many ways still searching for a role in the world in 2020.
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Institutionalizing Public Action: Multiple Alignments of Goods, Services, Roles, and Tasks
Ian Thynne
Public action through the organizational use of power and rules in government and governance is multidimensional in form, scope, and reach. Approaches to action, embodying differing interactions of the state, market, and civil society, include statism, state–market dualism, state–civil society dualism, and state–market–civil society synergism. The approaches are distinctive while interrelated. They concern goods and services as focuses of action involving availability, accessibility, consumption, and use. This requires the performance of roles and tasks as modes of action. The roles are owner, producer, provider, regulator, facilitator, buyer, seller, consumer, and user, with each entailing tasks of making, implementing, and reviewing decisions. The result is a complex institutionalization of action, with multiple alignments of goods, services, roles, and tasks in the public interest.
