Scholars have proposed and investigated a view of social relations as social networks and therefore the role of public policy in creating new networks and new social and economic relations. Are different incumbent institutional settings a relevant variable to explain different regional policies responses to Regionalization and Europeanization? I will address this question with regard to the regional policy that was initiated in Italy in 1950 and that represented the country’s attempt to improve its economic and geographic cohesion. The hypothesis is that, within a devolution process, different adaptation to regionalization and Europeanization pressures are correlated to “path dependence” from incumbent institutional settings. Specific attention is dedicated to the role of “paradigms” in the processes analysed. This, in turn could generate different devolution outcomes, in terms of discrepancy between formal and effective outcomes. Devolution is analysed in terms of institutional change and policy (regional policy) change. Institutional change is operationalized in terms of changes in polity and administrative variables, and policy change is investigated through variables representing formal (policy issues, i.e. design and responsibility) and effective (financial, i.e. uses and sources) dynamics under the two different pressures for change identified: regionalization and Europeanization of regional policies. The research proposed is pertinent and important in the context of European integration where national policies have been restructured due to, on the one hand, regionalization—i.e., the transfer downward to the sub-national level—of policies formerly handled at the national level and, on the other, “Europeanization” or the transfer of policies upwards to the European level. This thesis investigates the dynamics of the “paradigm and policy shift” that took place within Italian regional policy between 1950 when the policy began and 1992 when the policy was officially terminated due to a dual transfer of the policy upward to the European level with the co-financing of cohesion policy and the transfer downward to the role of the regions as management authorities for the operational programmes that were responsible for the bulk of Italian regional funds.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:550732 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Signorile, Jacopo |
| Publisher | London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London) |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/313/ |
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