Abstract Over the past 10 years, feminist scholarship has made important contributions to the new institutionalism in political science. This literature has developed into two directions. Some scholars have sought to gender existing approaches, resulting in feminist historical institutionalism, feminist sociological institutionalism, feminist discursive institutionalism, and even feminist rational choice institutionalism. Others have tried to sketch a feminist institutionalism on a par with, and as an alternative to, the classic approaches. Through an analysis of eight recent books, this review asks which direction shows the most promise.
{"title":"Feminist institutionalism(s)","authors":"Matthijs Bogaards","doi":"10.1017/ipo.2022.15","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ipo.2022.15","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Over the past 10 years, feminist scholarship has made important contributions to the new institutionalism in political science. This literature has developed into two directions. Some scholars have sought to gender existing approaches, resulting in feminist historical institutionalism, feminist sociological institutionalism, feminist discursive institutionalism, and even feminist rational choice institutionalism. Others have tried to sketch a feminist institutionalism on a par with, and as an alternative to, the classic approaches. Through an analysis of eight recent books, this review asks which direction shows the most promise.","PeriodicalId":43368,"journal":{"name":"Italian Political Science Review-Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41459986","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract While various types of lobbying regulation continue to be devised in different political systems in the world, some questions remain relevant from both a scientific and practical point of view. How can we define a lobbying regulation? What are the principles and the practices that should be pursued by a policy of lobbying regulation? And what is the lobbyists' stance on this matter? We propose a wider definition of lobbying regulation, aiming to overcome the traditional exclusive attention to formal pieces of legislation dedicated to lobbyists and lobbying activities. We refer to the philosophies of open government and deliberative democracy to expand the view on the principles of lobbying regulations, pointing out the macro-dimensions that can be encompassed for a more fine-grained understanding of lobbying regulations, considering not only transparency (as commonly done by most analyses thus far), but also the (fair) equality of access of stakeholders to policymaking and the public accountability of policymakers. On the empirical plan, we test our conceptual framework through an analysis of the perspective of the professional lobbying consultancies enrolled in the lobbying register of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, using in-depth semi-structured video interviews to investigate how such specifically relevant players assess lobbying regulation, and what principles and rules/institutional practices are most significant in their view, finding strong support for measures that aim to pursue the other two principles pointed out beyond transparency.
{"title":"Beyond transparency: the principles of lobbying regulation and the perspective of professional lobbying consultancies","authors":"A. Bitonti, C. Mariotti","doi":"10.1017/ipo.2022.16","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ipo.2022.16","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract While various types of lobbying regulation continue to be devised in different political systems in the world, some questions remain relevant from both a scientific and practical point of view. How can we define a lobbying regulation? What are the principles and the practices that should be pursued by a policy of lobbying regulation? And what is the lobbyists' stance on this matter? We propose a wider definition of lobbying regulation, aiming to overcome the traditional exclusive attention to formal pieces of legislation dedicated to lobbyists and lobbying activities. We refer to the philosophies of open government and deliberative democracy to expand the view on the principles of lobbying regulations, pointing out the macro-dimensions that can be encompassed for a more fine-grained understanding of lobbying regulations, considering not only transparency (as commonly done by most analyses thus far), but also the (fair) equality of access of stakeholders to policymaking and the public accountability of policymakers. On the empirical plan, we test our conceptual framework through an analysis of the perspective of the professional lobbying consultancies enrolled in the lobbying register of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, using in-depth semi-structured video interviews to investigate how such specifically relevant players assess lobbying regulation, and what principles and rules/institutional practices are most significant in their view, finding strong support for measures that aim to pursue the other two principles pointed out beyond transparency.","PeriodicalId":43368,"journal":{"name":"Italian Political Science Review-Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46729128","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Vittorio Emanuele Parsi, The Wrecking of the Liberal World Order London, Palgrave MacMillan, 2021, p. 325.","authors":"Leonardo Morlino","doi":"10.1017/ipo.2022.14","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ipo.2022.14","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43368,"journal":{"name":"Italian Political Science Review-Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47353128","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This article sets the scene for the Special Issue ‘Reaching for allies?’ by setting out the research questions and structure of the Special Issue. Specifically, this introduction reviews the state of the art of dialectics interweaving International Relations and Area Studies. Specifically, it focuses on tracing the genealogy of these debates, identifying the actors engaged with them, as well as, mapping those sites where such transdisciplinary knowledge is produced and circulated. We also provide an assessment of the interaction between the two disciplinary traditions as scholarly disciplines by reviewing the field as it had developed in the last decade since 2013. In order to do so, we present data on the brokers of this dialogue by analysing top-ranked Journals across regions, dedicated Special Issues on the matter as well as main international conferences and participants. Overall, this article provides a threefold contribution: first, we provide an account of the globalization of knowledge production and circulation that has also increasingly decentred, valuing local peculiarities and epistemological traditions beyond the Western academia(s). Second, we assess and discuss how Western and non-Western academics have contoured concepts which demand and entail site-intensive techniques of enquiry, exposure to complexities on the grounds, ethnographic sensitivity, and, at the same time, comparative endeavours going beyond area specialisms. Third, by looking at international and regional policy-making milieus with attention to context-specificity, we believe critical policy-relevant implications can be discussed, specifically in relation to local ownership and bottom-up approaches.
{"title":"Reaching for allies? The dialectics and overlaps between international relations and area studies in the study of politics, security and conflicts","authors":"Silvia D’Amato, M. Dian, A. Russo","doi":"10.1017/ipo.2022.13","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ipo.2022.13","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article sets the scene for the Special Issue ‘Reaching for allies?’ by setting out the research questions and structure of the Special Issue. Specifically, this introduction reviews the state of the art of dialectics interweaving International Relations and Area Studies. Specifically, it focuses on tracing the genealogy of these debates, identifying the actors engaged with them, as well as, mapping those sites where such transdisciplinary knowledge is produced and circulated. We also provide an assessment of the interaction between the two disciplinary traditions as scholarly disciplines by reviewing the field as it had developed in the last decade since 2013. In order to do so, we present data on the brokers of this dialogue by analysing top-ranked Journals across regions, dedicated Special Issues on the matter as well as main international conferences and participants. Overall, this article provides a threefold contribution: first, we provide an account of the globalization of knowledge production and circulation that has also increasingly decentred, valuing local peculiarities and epistemological traditions beyond the Western academia(s). Second, we assess and discuss how Western and non-Western academics have contoured concepts which demand and entail site-intensive techniques of enquiry, exposure to complexities on the grounds, ethnographic sensitivity, and, at the same time, comparative endeavours going beyond area specialisms. Third, by looking at international and regional policy-making milieus with attention to context-specificity, we believe critical policy-relevant implications can be discussed, specifically in relation to local ownership and bottom-up approaches.","PeriodicalId":43368,"journal":{"name":"Italian Political Science Review-Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45485523","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This article undertakes a critical revisitation of mass–elite congruence on EU matters, taking stock of 30 years of research and addressing durable ambiguities flagged by recent scholarship. Its specific contribution leverages EUEngage elite and mass survey data gathered in 2016 in 10 European countries. Examining congruence at both the country and the party level, we carry out an uncommon multidimensional analysis that encompasses general European integration and certain key sub-dimensions. At both levels, we perform a distinctive systematization of multiple approaches to the assessment of EU issue congruence, probing the substantive consistency of ensuing results. The findings qualify and soften the conventional wisdom of a chasm between pro-European elites and lukewarm citizens. While most countries exhibit pro-EU elite bias in terms of averages and proportions alike, mass–elite alignment is the rule when the general dimension and its sub-dimensions are understood as binary. Party-level analyses display different outcomes, depending on whether party positions are derived from elites' self-placement or their voters' perceptions, yet discrepancies are generally lower than in past assessments. Altogether, ‘constraining dissensus’ chiefly emerges along sub-dimensions concerning decision-making authority, as opposed to sub-dimensions evoking solidarity and burden-sharing. The layered panorama of congruence and incongruence implies a dependence of mass–elite interplays on context and sub-dimensions, drawing attention to the mediating role of critical junctures and elite entrepreneurship.
{"title":"Caught between sovereignty and solidarity? A multidimensional revisitation of EU mass–elite congruence","authors":"Andrea Pareschi, M. Giglioli, G. Baldini","doi":"10.1017/ipo.2022.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ipo.2022.10","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article undertakes a critical revisitation of mass–elite congruence on EU matters, taking stock of 30 years of research and addressing durable ambiguities flagged by recent scholarship. Its specific contribution leverages EUEngage elite and mass survey data gathered in 2016 in 10 European countries. Examining congruence at both the country and the party level, we carry out an uncommon multidimensional analysis that encompasses general European integration and certain key sub-dimensions. At both levels, we perform a distinctive systematization of multiple approaches to the assessment of EU issue congruence, probing the substantive consistency of ensuing results. The findings qualify and soften the conventional wisdom of a chasm between pro-European elites and lukewarm citizens. While most countries exhibit pro-EU elite bias in terms of averages and proportions alike, mass–elite alignment is the rule when the general dimension and its sub-dimensions are understood as binary. Party-level analyses display different outcomes, depending on whether party positions are derived from elites' self-placement or their voters' perceptions, yet discrepancies are generally lower than in past assessments. Altogether, ‘constraining dissensus’ chiefly emerges along sub-dimensions concerning decision-making authority, as opposed to sub-dimensions evoking solidarity and burden-sharing. The layered panorama of congruence and incongruence implies a dependence of mass–elite interplays on context and sub-dimensions, drawing attention to the mediating role of critical junctures and elite entrepreneurship.","PeriodicalId":43368,"journal":{"name":"Italian Political Science Review-Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44103630","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Italy's controversial decision to sign a Memorandum of Understanding for collaboration on the Belt and Road Initiative with China in 2019 has been widely debated. This article seeks to break new ground by offering a theory-informed contribution investigating the rationale behind Beijing's own commitment in the negotiations leading to the signing of the BRI MoU. It argues that the Chinese government accepted the risks involved in the process for the sake of promoting an accelerated advancement in China's positioning in the international status hierarchy through negotiation of deference against agency with Italy. The article empirically probes the extent to which such a strategy of status enhancement on China's part is sustainable over time. Based on a content analysis of all China-related political stances expressed in ordinary non-legislative policy-setting acts tabled in both Houses of the 18th Italian Parliament, from March 2018 through to August 2021, the article suggests that China's strategy is hardly sustainable. In fact, the steady deterioration of China-related sentiment among Italian Members of Parliament as a consequence of Beijing's policies towards Hong Kong, the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) outbreak, and Xinjiang matches the expectations of previous scholarship on international status as it confirms that social closure mechanisms discussed in the literature prevail over foreign policy consistency when the status-seeking actor is perceived as crossing critical normative thresholds.
{"title":"China's pursuit of international status through negotiated deference: an empirical analysis of Italy's parliamentary attitude","authors":"Giovanni B. Andornino","doi":"10.1017/ipo.2022.12","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ipo.2022.12","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Italy's controversial decision to sign a Memorandum of Understanding for collaboration on the Belt and Road Initiative with China in 2019 has been widely debated. This article seeks to break new ground by offering a theory-informed contribution investigating the rationale behind Beijing's own commitment in the negotiations leading to the signing of the BRI MoU. It argues that the Chinese government accepted the risks involved in the process for the sake of promoting an accelerated advancement in China's positioning in the international status hierarchy through negotiation of deference against agency with Italy. The article empirically probes the extent to which such a strategy of status enhancement on China's part is sustainable over time. Based on a content analysis of all China-related political stances expressed in ordinary non-legislative policy-setting acts tabled in both Houses of the 18th Italian Parliament, from March 2018 through to August 2021, the article suggests that China's strategy is hardly sustainable. In fact, the steady deterioration of China-related sentiment among Italian Members of Parliament as a consequence of Beijing's policies towards Hong Kong, the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) outbreak, and Xinjiang matches the expectations of previous scholarship on international status as it confirms that social closure mechanisms discussed in the literature prevail over foreign policy consistency when the status-seeking actor is perceived as crossing critical normative thresholds.","PeriodicalId":43368,"journal":{"name":"Italian Political Science Review-Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44178291","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract The so-called practice turn in International Relations (IR) has established a new paradigm that puts practitioners' quotidian doings front and centre of IR theorizing. It is proving to be an influential development also for area studies (AS) that share much of IR's scholarship and objects of study. This is certainly the case for European studies (ES) where the works of International Practice Theory (IPT) scholars has greatly contributed to raise attention to situated, mundane, and everyday practices of EU institutions. This article reviews the contribution of IPT scholars to ES to assess the added value of this research agenda and its potential to become a ‘trading zone’ where IR and ES/AS scholars can advance understanding of how the local and the global connect. It also identifies two challenges that have not been adequately addressed in the extant literature: (1) finding ways to theorize and empirically observe the transition from the level of situated practices to EU-wide doings (generalization challenge); and (2) assessing the exact role of interaction in structuring and transforming both the global and the local (challenge of relationism). The article ends by calling for a global practice theory as a way to tackle these two challenges.
{"title":"Turning towards practices: on the common ground of international relations and European studies","authors":"Chiara De Franco","doi":"10.1017/ipo.2022.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ipo.2022.11","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The so-called practice turn in International Relations (IR) has established a new paradigm that puts practitioners' quotidian doings front and centre of IR theorizing. It is proving to be an influential development also for area studies (AS) that share much of IR's scholarship and objects of study. This is certainly the case for European studies (ES) where the works of International Practice Theory (IPT) scholars has greatly contributed to raise attention to situated, mundane, and everyday practices of EU institutions. This article reviews the contribution of IPT scholars to ES to assess the added value of this research agenda and its potential to become a ‘trading zone’ where IR and ES/AS scholars can advance understanding of how the local and the global connect. It also identifies two challenges that have not been adequately addressed in the extant literature: (1) finding ways to theorize and empirically observe the transition from the level of situated practices to EU-wide doings (generalization challenge); and (2) assessing the exact role of interaction in structuring and transforming both the global and the local (challenge of relationism). The article ends by calling for a global practice theory as a way to tackle these two challenges.","PeriodicalId":43368,"journal":{"name":"Italian Political Science Review-Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42514402","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain went several times to the polls during the 2010–2019 decade. It was a period characterised by the strenuous effort to recover the economic situation before the onset of the Great Recession; an effort, however, often constrained by externally imposed austerity policies, and by a refugee crisis that contributed to the growing salience of the immigration issue. The article adopts an original sub-national approach to examine if and how the economic situation and the incidence of immigration affected the electoral outcomes in the four South-European countries. Adopting a theory of retrospective behaviour, the research reported in the article confirms the association between employment and immigration levels, on the one hand, and punishment of the incumbent government on the other. However, the electoral effects of immigration are conditioned by the partisan composition of the government and, under centre-right cabinets, are aggravated by a negative economic conjuncture.
{"title":"Voting between two global crises. A NUTS3-level analysis of retrospective voting in four South-European countries","authors":"M. Giuliani","doi":"10.1017/ipo.2022.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ipo.2022.9","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain went several times to the polls during the 2010–2019 decade. It was a period characterised by the strenuous effort to recover the economic situation before the onset of the Great Recession; an effort, however, often constrained by externally imposed austerity policies, and by a refugee crisis that contributed to the growing salience of the immigration issue. The article adopts an original sub-national approach to examine if and how the economic situation and the incidence of immigration affected the electoral outcomes in the four South-European countries. Adopting a theory of retrospective behaviour, the research reported in the article confirms the association between employment and immigration levels, on the one hand, and punishment of the incumbent government on the other. However, the electoral effects of immigration are conditioned by the partisan composition of the government and, under centre-right cabinets, are aggravated by a negative economic conjuncture.","PeriodicalId":43368,"journal":{"name":"Italian Political Science Review-Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48854638","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The book seeks to give a comprehensive overview of the organizational approach to the study of political parties by examining changes in Italian politics during the past 30 years. The author ’ s goal in this work is to synthesize his extensive study of political organizations and the evolution of the Italian party system. The book ’ s goal is to combine organizational theory with the literature and empirical research relating to political party organizational change. For researchers, the organizational viewpoint is a crucial theoretical approach for understanding how political parties work. The importance of adopting a consistent and comprehensive perspective from an organizational standpoint was recently shown in the Political Party Database Project (see Scarrow, Poguntke, and Webb 2017), to which the author contributed. Primarily, the author aims to develop a formal organizational theory of political parties that blends neo-institutionalism with a multidimensional approach to empirical study. Tigri di Carta is an in-depth presentation and discussion of that comparative organizational approach to the study of the political parties applied to the never-ending transformations of Italy ’ s collective political actors, offering an innovative and original contribution to the ways in which scholars can understand and empirically adopt the organizational perspective. Pizzimenti initially clarifies the role of political parties, leaving little room for (mis-)interpret-ation: parties are defined as ‘ formalised physical and social structures, created as an attempt to achieve specific goals, through the collaboration and space-temporal coordination of participants, using appropriate technical instruments and exchanging resources with the environment in which they operate ’ (p. 28). The
这本书试图通过考察意大利政治在过去30年中的变化,全面概述政党研究的组织方法。作者在这部作品中的目标是综合他对政治组织和意大利政党制度演变的广泛研究。本书的目标是将组织理论与有关政党组织变革的文献和实证研究相结合。对于研究人员来说,组织观点是理解政党如何运作的重要理论方法。从组织角度采取一致和全面的观点的重要性最近在政党数据库项目中得到了体现(见Scarrow、Poguntke和Webb 2017),作者对此做出了贡献。首先,作者旨在发展一种正式的政党组织理论,将新制度主义与多维实证研究相结合。Tigri di Carta深入介绍和讨论了这种比较组织方法,该方法用于研究意大利集体政治行为者无休止变革中的政党,为学者理解和实证采用组织视角的方式提供了创新和独创的贡献。Pizzimenti最初澄清了政党的作用,几乎没有留下(错误)解释的空间:政党被定义为“形式化的物理和社会结构,通过参与者的合作和时空协调来实现特定目标,使用适当的技术手段,并与他们经营的环境交换资源”(第28页)。这个
{"title":"Tigri di carta. Debolezza dei partiti e instabilita’ sistemica in Italia (1994–2018) by Eugenio Pizzimenti, Pisa, Pisa University Press, 2020, 267 pp. 268, €19.00 (paperback), ISBN 978-88-3339-361-3","authors":"C. Fiorelli","doi":"10.1017/ipo.2022.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ipo.2022.5","url":null,"abstract":"The book seeks to give a comprehensive overview of the organizational approach to the study of political parties by examining changes in Italian politics during the past 30 years. The author ’ s goal in this work is to synthesize his extensive study of political organizations and the evolution of the Italian party system. The book ’ s goal is to combine organizational theory with the literature and empirical research relating to political party organizational change. For researchers, the organizational viewpoint is a crucial theoretical approach for understanding how political parties work. The importance of adopting a consistent and comprehensive perspective from an organizational standpoint was recently shown in the Political Party Database Project (see Scarrow, Poguntke, and Webb 2017), to which the author contributed. Primarily, the author aims to develop a formal organizational theory of political parties that blends neo-institutionalism with a multidimensional approach to empirical study. Tigri di Carta is an in-depth presentation and discussion of that comparative organizational approach to the study of the political parties applied to the never-ending transformations of Italy ’ s collective political actors, offering an innovative and original contribution to the ways in which scholars can understand and empirically adopt the organizational perspective. Pizzimenti initially clarifies the role of political parties, leaving little room for (mis-)interpret-ation: parties are defined as ‘ formalised physical and social structures, created as an attempt to achieve specific goals, through the collaboration and space-temporal coordination of participants, using appropriate technical instruments and exchanging resources with the environment in which they operate ’ (p. 28). The","PeriodicalId":43368,"journal":{"name":"Italian Political Science Review-Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47605573","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Andreas Bieler, Fighting for water. Resisting Privatization in Europe London, Zed Books, 2021, 210 pp., £67.50 (hardback), £21.59 (paperback), £17.27 (eBook), ISBN 9781786995087.","authors":"A. Cozzolino","doi":"10.1017/ipo.2022.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ipo.2022.4","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43368,"journal":{"name":"Italian Political Science Review-Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42951528","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}