RISULTATI RICERCA

The aim of the paper is to reconsider the Italian transport policy. First, the six main transport policies implemented in Italy since the sixties are deeply analysed: building of infrastructure; supply of public services; promotion of competition; reduction of external costs; internationalisation; promotion of innovation. Then, they are compared using four Kuhnian paradigms of state intervention in the economy. Finally, two conclusions come out: 1) the today prevailing competitive paradigm is not adequate to promote and to make viable the creation of new transport systems; 2) there is a need to explicitly refer to structural and dynamic paradigms as the theoretical foundations of an entirely new transport policy.

Due to the Growth and Stability Pact, Local and Regional governments face an hard budget constraint, thus they have to levy taxes to finance their expenses. This paper measures the incidence of the fiscal policies levied in Marche Region on income. We run the analysis using a biregional CGE model, Marche vs Rest of Italy, which let us evaluate the impact of regional taxes (regional additional on IRPEF and IRAP), of local taxes (comunal additional on IRPEF and ICI) and of tariff (gas, water and waste) on income. Comparative static exercises show that the impact on income comes mainly from regional taxes. The overall effective tax rate shows an U shape with respect to income. The U shape depends on two regional taxes: on the strong progressivity of regional additional on IRPEF applied by Marche explains the high pressure on higher income; and on the effective tax burden of IRAP which affects the workers with lower income and not firms that legally pay it.

There is abundant evidence of a relationship between socio-economic variables, such as income, wealth or labour position, and a variety of health outcomes, in terms of mortality and morbidity. Recently, some scientists have tried to prove that is not income itself, but inequality in income, that causes negative effects on health. This kind of approach is named relative income hypothesis, in contrast to the absolute income hypothesis. Another approach, held mostly by academic economists, denies the existence of a causal link between income and health, and supports the opposite causality relationship, which considers the initial stock of health as the determining factor of individual income and wealth. The first part of the paper provides an overview of the existing literature on the connection between socio-economic variables and health in industrialized countries. The second part is devoted to comment on the existing debate between the absolute income and relative income assumptions, and on the analysis of the different health policy measures that each approach implies.

In recent years changes of regulation in European electricity industry have been oriented towards a gradual liberalization of the sector, stressing the issue of energy provision for selling in the open market. Within the Italian regulatory framework, since local public firms cannot compete against other bigger operators in auctions for energy CIP 6/92 and for the import rights, they have addressed themselves towards upstream integration, i.e. in the generation stage. In this study we analyze the cost efficiency of vertical integration, by estimating a translog multiproduct cost function for a sample of 14 local electric utilities operating in both generation and distribution during the period 1994-2000. The empirical evidence suggests the presence of widespread cost complementarities between the two stages and points to vertical integration as a crucial success factor for local public firms. Thanks to the cost savings it enables, vertical integration allows electric local utilities to reach both the minimum production capacity and the efficiency that are required to compete in the open market.

The debate on the compatibility of Islam and democracy has dramatically intensified in the latest years, particularly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Among the innumerable contributions, this paper singles out those elaborated by a group of Muslim (at least by origin) scholars (Ahmad Moussalli, Abdulaziz Sachedina, Fatima Mernissi, Khaled Abou El Fadl, among others), writing in English in order to defend Islamic culture from other scholars’ allegations, and to demonstrate to the western colleagues and public opinion the resources Islam can display in order to build democratic systems. Their writings are examined in relation to four major issues often posed about Islam: the connection between religious and political spheres; the presence of concepts compatible with democracy in its political theory; the shariah and its interpretations; the human rights conception. The paper provides no conclusion, but the ascertainment of the advisability of taking more into account some precious ideas and concepts, elaborated by Islamic thinkers both in the past and today.

Among the good definitions of democracy Bobbio used to say that he preferred the one which says that democracy is «public power in public ». Systematic lying which has characterized the so called war on terrorism and «rogue states », fought by the world superpower and its allies in the name of freedom (of the market) and democracy poses many questions to moral and political philosophy. This essay takes into consideration three of them: a) from a normative pointy of view, are there reasons good enough to justify lying by democracies? b) from a historicalpoint of view, systematic lying by democracies may be a consequence of the deadly embrace of global capitalism? c) in any case, can democracy be distinguished from other regimes by applying the criterion of transparency in the exercise of power?

The hypothesis of a transition from the paradigm of the rule of law to the one of constitutional rule of law has been thought of as the premise of another paradigmatic transformation of contemporary democracy. The neo.constitutional movement announces the transition from the old liberal conception to constitutional democracy. Ferrajoli has put forward a substantial definition of democracy as part of a wider law theory. Bobbio,instead, preferred to cling to a minimal, formal and procedural definition of democracy which leaves no room for a re-elaboration such as the one offered by neo-constitutionalists. In this essay the two solutions to the problem of the relationship between the rule of law and democracy are compared. Falsehood Deadly Embrace.

Thanks to his double competence Bobbio was able to link two disciplines which, just after World War II, completely ignored each other. This, Ferrajoli argues, is one of the main reasons of the originality of Bobbio’s thought. It is from this point that Bobbio’s journey from general theory of law to the theory of democracy starts. And it takes two directions: the first is the one which leads him to distinguish the different approaches, the second is the epistemological re-building of law science. Bobbio was then able to use a whole range of conceptual tools to criticize the absence of law in the philosophical-political culture on the marxian left, whose merit was anyway to teach us to look at history from the oppressed point of view. Bobbio’s journey teaches us that engagement and scientific rigour can, and perhaps should, coexist with civil passion.

This paper deals with the connections between rights and democracy in Norberto Bobbio’s theories of law and politics. The first section analyzes Bobbio’s theory of rights in the context of five general and historically representative conceptions of rights; the second section does the same with Bobbio’s theory of democracy, and with five conceptions of democracy; the third section, finally, analyzes the conceptual, historical and normative connections between rights and democracy in Bobbio’s work. Two choices, finally, characterize Bobbio’s stance in the current legal and political debate: Wertfreiheit and ethical pluralism.

The essay analyzes Bobbio’s thought with respect to its XXth century political and cultural milieu. Two aspects are stressed as original. First, Bobbio’s thought paid great attention to the « lesson of the classics». Consequently he was able to avoid the search for apparent novelties at any price which characterizes so much XXth century philosophy and he rejected the philosophy which reflected the general « positivistic» attitude which had gained so much support in the social sciences. Secondly, Bobbio’s thought is original in so far as he was able to put together, especially with respect to the theme of democracy, the normative dimension and political realism. He criticized both the marxian contempt for bourgeois freedom rights and the neoliberal one for social rights. The democratic regimes founded on either of these premises hide old and new despotisms. For this lesson, Salazar concludes, Bobbio himself should be considered a classic of political thought.

The starting point of this essay is a general analysis of the anti-Semitic imagination, furthermore it gives evidence of the fact that any kind of anti-Semitism is based on the consideration of history as a fight between Arian and Jewish, where the latter is considered either a positive moving force or the source of sorrow. The anti-Semitic imagination borrows the vision of history as a complot from the counter-revolutionary catholic thought (Barrel, etc.). Therefore philosophical as well as political consequences are unavoidable; in this way catholic conspiracy sees satanic forces in the latest revolutions, and anti-Semitic conspiracy fears a satanic domination over history. Entzauberung leads the anti-Semitic to the firm belief that God has never dwelled in the world. It is clear that anti-Semitism has a desperate consideration of history, moreover it fears that historical and political conditions may be reversed leading to the Jewish conquest of the world.

The essay analyzes the path of the words «crowd» and «mass » and the transformation in the theoretical images of collective action. Moving from the turning-point of 1830, the article emphasizes the different strategies in the conceptual construction of the crowd, from the literary depictions of Edgar Allan Poe, Victor Hugo and Emile Zola, and from the «scientific » crowd psychology of Gustave Le Bon, Scipio Sighele, Hippolyte Taine and Gabriel Tarde, to the German Massenpsychologie and the first analysis of the « lonely crowd ». In the crowd’s intellectual construction, the author sees an excellent example of the « spatial revolution» in the theoretical representation of the civil conflict between 19th and 20th century.