Implementing Risk Management in the Italian Public Sector: Hybridization between Old and New Practices

Though Risk Management (RM) entered the public sector, the way RM is introduced within organizations is not empirically explored. Analyzing the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) case study through the theoretical lens of institutional perspective, the paper responds to the call for more organizational studies of RM: nature and dynamics of RM are investigated, offering a valid contribution to the debate on practice of public management related to work practices and knowledge systems. The results show that RM is now embedded in ISTAT activities, processes, culture and individual behaviors, confirming the opportunity to improve both organizational performance and learning.     

Are Terrorists Courageous? Micro-Sociology of Extreme Left Terrorism

This article contests the affirmation—based on common sense—according to which terrorists simply need courage. The typical terrorist act can be considered part of the sociological category known as “vile violence” that is the act of striking out at a victim after having placed him or her in a desperate situation that does not allow for any escape. This article is based on primary and secondary sources, such as the analysis of thirty-five homicides committed in Italy by six terrorist units of the extreme left; interviews with extreme left terrorists; interviews with victims of extreme left terrorists; autobiographies of extreme left terrorists; autobiographies of victims of extreme left terrorists; video interviews of extreme left terrorists; and written statements of the investigating magistrates.     

China's new order and past disorders: A Dialogue Starting from Wang Hui's analysis

Abstract

This dialogue develops a series of reflections on contemporary Chinese politics starting from Wang Hui's analysis of the role that the repression of the spring 1989 movement played in the acceleration of China's neoliberalist economic policies, and more in general about the peculiar forms of intervention of the party-state in the implementation of capitalist forms of economy. Four major issues are discussed: some probings of the political value of the Tiananmen movement; the suppression of the agricultural people's communes; the parallel transformation of the industrial danwei system; and the rise of Deng Xiaoping's strategy as a form of reactive subjectivity toward the political experiments of the late sixties and early seventies. The authors argue that the major consistency in the Chinese state today is the process of harsh depoliticization of subjectivities deployed during the Cultural Revolution, and retrospectively throughout the entire twentieth century in China. On the other hand, this process of depoliticization shows a weakness in consistency, since it basically depends on a “radical negation” and, in the end, lacks autonomous subjective strength.     

Violent behavior and the factors associated with the decision to report it: a retrospective study

An ample volume of research evidence supports the conclusion that severe mental illness is correlated with violent behavior. While episodes of violent behavior are included in medical notes, not all episodes of violent behavior are officially reported to the police, even when they are actual crimes. We conducted a retrospective study on the already existing clinical files of four public psychiatric outpatient facilities, based in Southern Italy, in order to assess how many cases of violent behavior are actually reported and which variables are more frequently connected with the decision to report. The data shows that the episodes known to the health services, in number and seriousness, vastly outnumber the complaints actually made towards their patients.     

Iniuria Migrandi: Criminalization of Immigrants and the Basic Principles of the Criminal Law

In this paper I am specifically concerned with a normative assessment, from the perspective of a principled criminal law theory, of norms criminalizing illegal immigration. The overarching question I will dwell on is one specifically regarding the way of using criminal law which is implied in the enactment of such kinds of norms. My thesis will essentially be that it constitutes a veritable abuse of criminal law. In two senses at least: first, in the sense that by criminalizing illegal immigration criminal law puts a ban on (certain categories of) persons, rather than on their actions/omissions, in a way in which a principled criminal law should not do; and—second—in the sense that the criminalization of illegal immigrants represents a perversion of the criminal law, being a case in which criminal norms are (unjustifiably) used as means to attain extrapenal aims.     

Incomplete antitrust laws and private actions for damages

Our purpose in this paper is to identify some of the implications that derive from the incompleteness of antitrust laws. Since with regard to certain anticompetitive conduct, the law remains substantially incomplete up to the first relevant court judgment, in terms of policy it is worth concentrating on stand-alone claimants who, not relying on earlier judgments, face very high evidentiary requirements, while generating large positive (information) externalities for potential follow-on claimants. The paper is structured as follows. In Sect. 2, we introduce the notion of incompleteness of the laws and address the process of production of evidence in antitrust lawsuits. Sect. 3 provides a survey of EU national case law and our summary of the results puts emphasis on incomplete laws, evidentiary requirements and stand-alone lawsuits. Sect. 4 presents a framework model to distinguish the decision-making processes for stand-alone and follow-on claimants in the presence of incomplete antitrust laws. In Sect. 5 we introduce a vector autoregressive model that we test with reference to the US antitrust law enforcement regime. Sect. 6 discusses some policy options and concludes the paper.     

What drives the university use of technology transfer offices? Evidence from Italy

Over the last 20 years, universities have made steady progress in their efforts to foster the process of technology transfer through collaboration with industry. The establishment of technology transfer offices (TTO) has become routine for supporting the commercialization of academic research. However, the literature shows that there are many factors that affect the efficiency and effectiveness of these offices. Based on original data from interviews with 197 university departments in Italy, this paper investigates the determinants of universities university use of TTOs. We take account of the effects of universities’ and TTOs characteristics, of research and geographic indicators.