The Politics of Public Administration Reform in Italy

153 Pages·2020·1.949 MB·English

by  Sabrina Cavatorto, Antonio La Spina

The Politics of Public
Administration
Reform in Italy
Sabrina Cavatorto
Antonio La Spina
The Politics of Public Administration
Reform in Italy
Sabrina Cavatorto • Antonio La Spina
The Politics of Public
Administration
Reform in Italy
Sabrina Cavatorto Antonio La Spina
University of Siena Luiss Guido Carli, Free International
Siena, Italy University of Social Studies,
Rome, Italy
ISBN 978-3-030-32287-8 ISBN 978-3-030-32288-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32288-5
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C
ontents
1 Introduction: The Puzzle of Administrative Change 1
Sabrina Cavatorto and Antonio La Spina
2 Pressures to Reform and the Impact of the Fiscal Crisis 23
Sabrina Cavatorto
3 Restyling Public Management–Inspired Reforms 43
Sabrina Cavatorto
4 Fighting Corruption 75
Antonio La Spina
5 Obstacles to Performance Evaluation and Improvement 101
Antonio La Spina
6 Conclusions: Still Risking Implementation Gaps 127
Sabrina Cavatorto and Antonio La Spina
Index 145
v
L f
ist of igures
Fig. 2.1 Public employment in the Italian general government (N). For
obvious problems of definition and measurement, an ensured
level of comparison among OECD countries is that of
“general” government, which comprises state, central and local
authorities (OECD 1997). (Source: Own elaboration based on
https://www.contoannuale.mef.gov.it/) 29
Fig. 2.2 Citizens attitudes towards the PA: Italians among Europeans
(%). (Source: Own elaboration based on Eurobarometer
Interactive “PA in [OUR Country]” (11/2018)) 35
Fig. 4.1 Control of Corruption (2017) (percentile rank 0–100).
Country’s rank among all countries in the world: 0 corresponds
to lowest rank and 100 corresponds to highest rank. (Source:
Own elaboration based on http://info.worldbank.org/
governance/wgi/index.aspx#home) 78
Fig. 4.2 Favouritism in decisions of government officials (2017 (1–7
best)). In your country, to what extent do government officials
show favouritism to well-connected firms and individuals when
deciding upon policies and contracts? 1 shows favouritism to a
great extent; 7 does not show favouritism at all. Italy’s rank in
2017 was 118/137. (Source: Own elaboration based on
http://reports.weforum.org/global-competitiveness-
report-2018/) 79
Fig. 5.1 Provision of public services (2017) (%). QA1a. “How would
you judge the current situation in each of the following? The
provision of public services in [OUR COUNTRY]”. Only in
Greece a higher percentage of respondents (85%) believe that
the provision of public services in their country is “total bad”.
vii
viii LIST OF FIGURES
Seven countries follow Italy: Croatia (66%), Romania (63%),
Spain (58%), Bulgaria (54%), Portugal (53%), Slovakia and
Cyprus (50%). On the contrary, a majority of respondents think
their country’s public services are good in 19 EU member
states, with levels of satisfaction ranging from 46% in Poland
and 54% in France, to 90% in the Netherlands. Satisfaction
exceeds 80% in Luxembourg (87%), Finland (86%) and Austria
(81%). (Source: Eurobarometer Standard 88 (Autumn 2017)) 122
Fig. 5.2 Satisfaction and confidence on the national government (% of
citizens expressing confidence/satisfaction). Data for “national
government” refer to the percentage of “yes” answers to the
question: “In this country, do you have confidence in each of
the following, or not? How about national government?”
(Source Gallup World Poll). (Source: Own elaboration from
OECD Government at Glance (2013, 2017)) 122
Fig. 6.1 Compliance checks by the Inspectorate for the public function
and “severe” sanctions. (Source: Own elaboration from http://
www.funzionepubblica.gov.it/strumenti-e-controlli/controlli-
ispettorato/documentazione) 133
Fig. 6.2 Total staff employed by public administrations per year
(thousands of units). The Annual Account shows the data on
the consistency and costs of PA personnel and constitutes the
official source of information for decisions regarding public
employment. (Source: General State Annual Account 2017) 135
L t
ist of abLes
Table 2.1 Implementation of CSRs to Italy in the PA field 34
Table 3.1 “Management-” and “governance-”oriented ideas from the
parliamentary narratives 60
Table 3.2 Delegations according to law 124/2015 reorganizing the PA 68
Table 6.1 Turn over quotas in central PA (% of expenditure equal to
that relating to personnel who left the previous year) 135
Table 6.2 Designing PA change through EU structural resources
(2014–2020) 137
ix
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: The Puzzle of Administrative
Change
Sabrina Cavatorto and Antonio La Spina
Abstract This introductory chapter develops the theoretical framework
of the book, placing the country case study of Italy on main trajectories of
administrative change in Europe. The variety of administrative traditions
and models of innovation are at the core of our reflection about possible
new policy trends: in the way reform options have been incrementally
shaped, we examine how New Public Management (NPM)-oriented
approaches have been taken into consideration, together with the devel-
opment of post-NPM narratives. The peculiarity of an empirical science of
public administration is put forward.
Keywords Policy change • New Public Management • Neo-Weberian
state • Public governance • Implementation • Italy
1.1 AdministrAtive reforms, types of public policy
And the empiricAl science of public AdministrAtion
The adoption and implementation of administrative reforms could be
thought of as being relatively smooth. Neither they imply the huge finan-
cial costs of social policies, nor do they focus on identitarian and ideologi-
cally divisive issues. Rather, they are based on the commonsensical idea
© The Author(s) 2020 1
S. Cavatorto, A. La Spina, The Politics of Public Administration
Reform in Italy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32288-5_1
2 S. CAVATORTO AND A. LA SPINA
that red tape is excessive and public bureaucracies are rigid, tardy and
inefficient. In principle, therefore, they could easily attract some consensus
among both citizens and members of the political elite. At the same time,
for the above reasons the decision making processes leading to their
approval could be expected not to be ridden with controversies and con-
flicts. According to the seminal taxonomy of public policies proposed by
Lowi (1970, 1972), administrative reforms seem to belong to “constitu-
ent policies”, which are in fact characterized by remoteness of coercion
and low levels of conflict.1
Gustavsson (1980) combined Wilson’s (1980) and Lowi’s taxono-
mies: administrative reforms can be seen as measures with diffused costs
and diffused benefits, being to some extent able to “determine” (in
Lowi’s vein), like any type of public policy, the way political interactions
(i.e. politics) develop. This would be consistent with their supposed rela-
tive “easiness”. One might guess that all that is actually needed is the
availability of certain technical policy instruments (which could be cre-
atively devised or, more frequently, imitated), whose application can be
credibly expected to reduce or solve certain problems plaguing existing
public bureaucracies. Imitation and learning would therefore be the main
factors in order to explain why certain historical phases apparently exhibit
“waves” of administrative reforms, which expand themselves across many
countries. This is what is supposed to have happened at first with the dif-
fusion of the neo-l iberal version of new public management (NPM),
which stressed the need to cut costs and import efficient tools from the
private sector, and then with other more progressive approaches, which
rather emphasized service quality, involvement of citizens/users, open-
ness of governance and participation (the so-called “post-NPM” mod-
els). Such a picture, however, would be overly simplistic, and anyway is
contradicted by several hard facts. When they are really impactful,
1 When Lowi wrote about constituent policies, the examples he made were rather hetero-
geneous. He mentioned “reapportionment, setting up a new agency, propaganda”; then
“constituent or system maintenance policy” (Lowi 1972: 300, 310). Elsewhere, he was more
explicit in subsuming the organization of public bureaucracies under constituent policies
(Lowi 1985). When describing them, Spitzer (1987: 678, 680; see also Tolbert 2002) indi-
cated as an example of constituent policy “administrative/departmental reorganization”, or
a “agency reorganization”. Salisbury (1968) tried to fill the empty fourth cell of the taxon-
omy with self-regulation, which has to do with some of Lowi’s examples of constituent poli-
cies, but not with administrative reform.