Governing through networks and projects: A mixed methods study of three Italian cities
Speaker: Lorenzo Mascioli (EUI)
Confronted with rising territorial inequalities, people and organizations leverage public policy to foster change in the local community, yet these efforts are constrained by existing policy technology. Partly out of necessity and partly by political design, contemporary local policies are typically designed and implemented through governance systems spanning multiple places, territorial levels, and societal sectors. These systems organise policies into projects with defined scopes, geographical boundaries, and timeframes. This article explores how local communities construct governance systems to implement policy projects. It presents a comparative case study of three medium-sized Italian cities – Lecce, Trento, and Reggio di Calabria – selected for their distinct geographical features, socioeconomic structures, and multi-level governance frameworks. For each city, I collect data on actors involved in local projects planned under Cohesion Policy and Next Generation EU, model the local governance system as a network, and contrast the resulting networks in terms of structure and composition. I enrich these findings with semi-structured interviews with local public authorities, businesses and trade associations, third-sector organizations, and universities. The study contributes to research on urban politics and governance, bridging the fields of political science and urban studies.
Social Justice in the 21st Century Welfare State
Speaker: Aziz Bagadirov (EUI)
The core objective of the social investment approach (SIA) is to enhance ex ante individuals’ opportunities and capabilities to resolve the social risks typical of post-industrial societies; highlighting the gendered life-course perspective and multi-dimensional nature of social risks, the SIA thus distinctively focuses on the prevention of disadvantages at crucial points of transition between life stages. But what normative vision, what idea of social justice, underlies the SIA? Taking into account the developments in social policy and building on the latest paradigm shift in political philosophy in how we should understand equality and justice, in this paper, we aim to provide a sketch of a conceptualisation of social justice that can serve as a normative basis of the SIA. This conceptualisation will help us rethink our assumptions about what constitutes individual wellbeing (and ill-being) in contemporary democratic societies, expanding our ideas about social exclusion and inclusion, the value of care, and shifting our understanding of freedom and equality towards more positive and relational ideals.
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