Reviews

Stephen White, Alex Pravda & Zvi Gitelman, eds, Developments in Soviet Politics. London: Macmillan, 1990, xvii+310 pp., £35.00 h/b, £9.99, p/b.

Jiri Valenta & Frank Cibulka, eds, Gorbachev's New Thinking and Third World Conflicts. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1990, xxxiii+352 pp., $34.95, £25.95.

John Bushnell, Moscow Graffiti: Language and Subculture. Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman, 1990, xii+263 pp., £28.00 h/b, £9.95 p/b.

Susanne Oxenstierna, From Labour Shortage to Unemployment? The Soviet Labour Market in the 1980s. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1990, 311 pp., SEK 206.00.

E. Biberaj, Albania, A Socialist Maverick. Boulder, San Francisco, and Oxford: Westview Press, 1990, viii+157 pp., £22.95.

Christopher Cerf & Marina Albee, eds, Small Fires: Letters from the Soviet People to Ogonyok Magazine 1987–1990, with an introduction by Vitaly Korotich, editor‐in‐chief of Ogonyok, and an afterword by Andrei Sakharov. New York: Summit Books, 1990, 303 pp., $22.95.     

The challenges of the European Neighbourhood Policy

Since it came back into power in May 2008, the Berlusconi government has undertaken a number of important initiatives in foreign policy, especially in relation to the European Union. Three cases concern the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, the war in Georgia and the climate change/energy package. Rather than following a pro- or anti-Europe line, it is argued that the link between all these initiatives is the development of a pragmatic foreign policy, in which the ultimate aim is to promote Italy's economic interests. This means that in some cases the Berlusconi government is supportive of the European integration process, especially when no specific Italian interest is at stake, whereas it does not hesitate to undermine it should it clash with Italy's economic interests.     

Bureaucratic institutional design: the case of the Italian NHS

We propose a model where a regional government’s choice of the number of bureaucratic agencies operating in a region depends upon the degree of substitutability and complementarity of the bureaucratic services being demanded. We show that, if the government perceives the citizens’ demand as a demand for substitutable services, it will choose provision by two independent agencies. If the government perceives the citizens’ demand as a demand for complementary services, it will choose provision by a single consolidated agency. Exogenous shocks to the number of citizens amplify these incentives. Evidence from the Italian National Health Service (NHS) supports this hypothesis. Results show a positive effect of proxies of substitutable services on the number of regional local health authorities and a negative effect of proxies of complementary services. The major immigration amnesties, taken as shocks to the number of citizens entitled to the service, magnify these effects.     

The Attlee government and welfare state reforms in post-war Italian Socialism (1945–51): Between universalism and class policies

The purpose of this article is to analyse how the Italian socialist movement viewed the social reforms of the Attlee Labour government introduced just after the Second World War. The intention is to study the extent and limits of the labour influence on Italian socialism. The Labour Party made the re-founding of a new interclass social pact, a universal matter intending to meet the needs of both the working and middle classes. The Italian socialist movement monitored the Labour government’s changes with interest, assessing them from two different perspectives. The reformist wing had a better grasp of the political–ideological implications of Labour’s approach to the welfare state. Vice versa, the majority of the Italian socialists pursued a class socialism and a strong alliance with the Communist Party, rejecting the Labour social policy model. After the split of 1947, however, the two views of Italian socialism failed to develop and implement a political programme for a welfare state based on the British universalistic tendency model. The political weaknesses of Italian socialist organizations in the field of social policy contributed to the characterization of the Italian welfare state in the post-war period and fundamentally delayed its universalistic implementation, at least until the 1960s.