Rosa Mulè
Biographic Data
| ID | 200775 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rosa Mulè |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rosa |
| FAMILY NAME | Mulè |
| SIGNATURE | MULÈ R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Bologna |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2506-6850 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 25 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 24 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Unequal Steps Up the Ladder in Party Organization
This paper examines gender differences in career advancement within party organizations, using Bourdieu’s theory on the role of personal capitals in upward mobility. We contribute to the literature on women’s chronic minority status in politics by testing the gender-neutrality of Bourdieu’s capital types (economic, cultural, and social). Our analysis draws on a unique dataset of 5,653 party delegates from twenty-two national congresses in Italy (…
The political drivers of antipoverty policy in Italy
This article analyses the political determinants of antipoverty policy in Italy between 1948 and 2022, providing a long-term analysis of the Italian minimum income scheme. We look for an explanation of that evolution drawing on three theoretical perspectives: veto players, gradual institutional change, and party competition. Our methodology is process tracing which involves the examination of ‘diagnostic’ pieces of evidence for our broad politica…
The political economy of Berlusconi’s tax-benefit policy
The aim of this article is to shed light on Berlusconi’s political strategy to reshape the state by examining some of the incentives for discretionary changes in the tax-benefit system during his administrations. We argue that by exploiting the typically categorical and fragmented nature of the Italian welfare system, Berlusconi’s governments engaged in the ‘art of manipulation’ within the tax-benefit framework, reflecting his efforts in social e…
The political life and times of Silvio Berlusconi 1
Silvio Berlusconi’s political life and legacy have left a profound and lasting imprint on Italian politics. Not only as prime minister but also as the leader of his party, he shaped at least two decades of Italian politics. With an ‘eccentric’ leadership style, Berlusconi approached the roles of party and government leadership in an entirely novel manner. This special issue on the Political Life and Times of Berlusconi deepens our understanding o…
The Weberian ideal type in political economy
This article highlights the analytical contribution of the Weberian ideal type to the field of political economy. Major strands of political economy have continued to integrate ideal type thinking to understand better the dynamics of national, regional and global economic systems. While there is an unbroken popularity of this methodological tool in the social sciences, we argue that it shows particular strengths and weaknesses in the interface be…
The role of the left to the path to a minimum income policy in Italy
In 2018, Italy became the last of the E.U. member states to introduce a minimum income policy. Our work helps explain why Italy was a laggard in this field by investigating the role the Italian left played, historically, in the evolution of policies to combat poverty. This is a surprisingly neglected topic. We argue that until the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Italian left focused on labour-market insiders – that is, full-time core workers – and a…
The Italian left at a critical juncture
On September 25, 2022, the Italian left faced a significant electoral setback as the centre-right coalition, led by Giorgia Meloni, secured a remarkable electoral win. Historically, the left had been represented by major parties like the Italian Communist Party (P.C.I.) and the Italian Socialist Party (P.S.I.). Their demise in the 1990s, for various reasons, gave rise to new left-leaning ‘umbrella’ entities such as the Ulivo and the Democratic Pa…
The belief system of the Italian Democratic Party
This article aims to explore why the ‘demolition’ of values promoted by Matteo Renzi had profoundly different effects on the factions within the Partito Democratico (Democratic Party, PD). While several studies have examined the PD’s political culture, few have investigated the changing attitudes of its factions. We help fill this gap in the literature by analysing the PD’s intraparty divisions on the main dimensions of party competition in the n…
Varieties of capital and gender party office in Italy
This article advances a new approach based on ‘varieties of capital’ to explain gendered upward mobility in political parties. Research on gender political advancement unduly neglects women delegates to national party congresses. Our work seeks to redress the imbalance by drawing on data gathered from 5,122 questionnaires issued to national party delegates at 20 national conventions that took place between 2004 and 2013 in Italy. To analyse the d…
The political economy of subsidiarity in labour market reforms
This article seeks to contribute to the literature centred on the principle of subsidiarity by highlighting the way in which political actors apply different dimensions of subsidiarity, horizontal versus vertical, in the field of labour market policy. It compares labour market reforms in Britain and Italy in the wake of international economic crises, shedding light on the role of subsidiarity dimensions. It shows that Britain applied the principl…
Introduction
Scholarship on subsidiarity conducted since the nineteenth century has developed two strands of interpretation suggesting competing models of social organisation as far as the potential location of decision-making power is concerned. While this intellectual effort has mainly concentrated on political experiences in continental Europe, and gained further traction with the principle’s recognition in European Union law, the institutional architectur…
Attitudes and opinions of Italian middle-level elites in the new millennium. Adaptation, innovation, or persistence
The literature on party politics has generally conceived of party change as party adaptation. Building on the theories of institutional change based on critical juncture analysis, our work contributes to the literature in two ways. Theoretically, by unpacking the concept of party change in three dimensions: adaptation, innovation, and persistence. This multidimensionality has been unduly neglected in the literature, too exclusively focussed on pa…
Barriers to Entry in Italian Political Parties
Why are some party governments suspended and replaced by technical governments? There are surprisingly few answers to this important question in the literature. This article contributes to the literature by analyzing the demographic profiles of the parties’ most committed activists, the party delegates. There is very little in the way of comparative, synchronic and diachronic research that seeks to explore similarities and differences in the demo…
Coping with the Global Economic Crisis
This article contributes to the debate on governing the global financial crisis, focusing on the regional governance of emergency social shock absorbers in Italy. The article seeks to make two related contributions. First, it argues that subnational governments have been the main drivers of change in labour market policies. Second, it shows that state–local governance elicited a path-altering system by ‘patching up’ a hybrid administrative struct…
The Democratici di Sinistra
Over the past decade, the DS underwent a process of momentous change. This change was the outcome of a complex interplay between party evolution on one side and the radical transformation of party system and political institutions on the other. Such sweeping transformation brought about a dramatic decline in the party’s vote share. Our paper focuses on party politics and organizational development. On the first point, we argue that the dual struc…
The Shape of Politics to Come? Intra-European Migration in a Rural French Community
The European Social Agenda and the ‘Ideas Gap
Political Parties, Games and Redistribution
Factional Alliances, Trade Union Bargaining Power and Social Policy in Australia
In explaining why party leaders may alter social security policy, the globalization literature highlights the limits governments face in implementing programmes supportive of social protection. This article calls for greater attention to the role of agency and political leadership in manufacturing social policy changes. Although international competition may set new and complex parameters within which party leaders interact, agency choice is cruc…
Political Parties, Games and Redistribution
This book explores the impact of political parties on income redistribution policy in liberal democracies. Rosa Mulé illustrates how public policy on inequality is influenced by strategic interactions among party leaders, rather than responses to social constituencies. Using game theory in detailed case studies of intraparty conflicts, Mulé evaluates her findings against a broad range of theories - political business cycle, median convergence, 's…
New Institutionalism
The efflorescence of work on new institutionalism has encouraged scholars to build bridges between various schools of thought. Such cross-fertilisation enlivens the debate but runs the risk of erecting bridges on shaky foundations. My article seeks to minimise this risk by going back to basics. It narrows the field of inquiry to the economic and the sociological institutionalist tradition represented by Williamson on one side, and the collaborati…
Does democracy promote equality
The linkage between liberal democracy and income inequality has been the subject of considerable empirical research. However, the literature has largely ignored advances in the techniques for measuring income distribution which help to improve and strengthen the robustness of research findings in this field. By drawing upon recent developments in data collection and formal analyses, this paper explores inequality trends in selected Western democr…
Explaining the Party-Policy Link
Scholarly work on the party-policy link has produced fundamentally different interpretations. The main theoretical division within this field is drawn between the view centred on the role of a party as vote maximizer and the view based on the role of a party as representative of social interests. This paper provides a step towards relaxing the standard dichotomy between these two separate schools of thought, apparently unable to communicate with …
Electoral behaviour in Italy
Explaining the Party-Policy Link
Scholarly work on the party-policy link has produced fundamentally different interpretations. The main theoretical division within this field is drawn between the view centred on the role of a party as vote maximizer and the view based on the role of a party as representative of social interests. This paper provides a step towards relaxing the standard dichotomy between these two separate schools of thought, apparently unable to communicate with …
Coping with the Global Economic Crisis
This article contributes to the debate on governing the global financial crisis, focusing on the regional governance of emergency social shock absorbers in Italy. The article seeks to make two related contributions. First, it argues that subnational governments have been the main drivers of change in labour market policies. Second, it shows that state–local governance elicited a path-altering system by ‘patching up’ a hybrid administrative struct…
The Democratici di Sinistra
Over the past decade, the DS underwent a process of momentous change. This change was the outcome of a complex interplay between party evolution on one side and the radical transformation of party system and political institutions on the other. Such sweeping transformation brought about a dramatic decline in the party’s vote share. Our paper focuses on party politics and organizational development. On the first point, we argue that the dual struc…
New Institutionalism
The efflorescence of work on new institutionalism has encouraged scholars to build bridges between various schools of thought. Such cross-fertilisation enlivens the debate but runs the risk of erecting bridges on shaky foundations. My article seeks to minimise this risk by going back to basics. It narrows the field of inquiry to the economic and the sociological institutionalist tradition represented by Williamson on one side, and the collaborati…
The political economy of subsidiarity in labour market reforms
This article seeks to contribute to the literature centred on the principle of subsidiarity by highlighting the way in which political actors apply different dimensions of subsidiarity, horizontal versus vertical, in the field of labour market policy. It compares labour market reforms in Britain and Italy in the wake of international economic crises, shedding light on the role of subsidiarity dimensions. It shows that Britain applied the principl…
The political drivers of antipoverty policy in Italy
This article analyses the political determinants of antipoverty policy in Italy between 1948 and 2022, providing a long-term analysis of the Italian minimum income scheme. We look for an explanation of that evolution drawing on three theoretical perspectives: veto players, gradual institutional change, and party competition. Our methodology is process tracing which involves the examination of ‘diagnostic’ pieces of evidence for our broad politica…
The political economy of Berlusconi’s tax-benefit policy
The aim of this article is to shed light on Berlusconi’s political strategy to reshape the state by examining some of the incentives for discretionary changes in the tax-benefit system during his administrations. We argue that by exploiting the typically categorical and fragmented nature of the Italian welfare system, Berlusconi’s governments engaged in the ‘art of manipulation’ within the tax-benefit framework, reflecting his efforts in social e…
The role of the left to the path to a minimum income policy in Italy
In 2018, Italy became the last of the E.U. member states to introduce a minimum income policy. Our work helps explain why Italy was a laggard in this field by investigating the role the Italian left played, historically, in the evolution of policies to combat poverty. This is a surprisingly neglected topic. We argue that until the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Italian left focused on labour-market insiders – that is, full-time core workers – and a…
The belief system of the Italian Democratic Party
This article aims to explore why the ‘demolition’ of values promoted by Matteo Renzi had profoundly different effects on the factions within the Partito Democratico (Democratic Party, PD). While several studies have examined the PD’s political culture, few have investigated the changing attitudes of its factions. We help fill this gap in the literature by analysing the PD’s intraparty divisions on the main dimensions of party competition in the n…
Introduction
Scholarship on subsidiarity conducted since the nineteenth century has developed two strands of interpretation suggesting competing models of social organisation as far as the potential location of decision-making power is concerned. While this intellectual effort has mainly concentrated on political experiences in continental Europe, and gained further traction with the principle’s recognition in European Union law, the institutional architectur…
Factional Alliances, Trade Union Bargaining Power and Social Policy in Australia
In explaining why party leaders may alter social security policy, the globalization literature highlights the limits governments face in implementing programmes supportive of social protection. This article calls for greater attention to the role of agency and political leadership in manufacturing social policy changes. Although international competition may set new and complex parameters within which party leaders interact, agency choice is cruc…
Does democracy promote equality
The linkage between liberal democracy and income inequality has been the subject of considerable empirical research. However, the literature has largely ignored advances in the techniques for measuring income distribution which help to improve and strengthen the robustness of research findings in this field. By drawing upon recent developments in data collection and formal analyses, this paper explores inequality trends in selected Western democr…
Electoral behaviour in Italy
Electoral behaviour in Italy
Explaining the Party-Policy Link
Scholarly work on the party-policy link has produced fundamentally different interpretations. The main theoretical division within this field is drawn between the view centred on the role of a party as vote maximizer and the view based on the role of a party as representative of social interests. This paper provides a step towards relaxing the standard dichotomy between these two separate schools of thought, apparently unable to communicate with …
Does democracy promote equality
The linkage between liberal democracy and income inequality has been the subject of considerable empirical research. However, the literature has largely ignored advances in the techniques for measuring income distribution which help to improve and strengthen the robustness of research findings in this field. By drawing upon recent developments in data collection and formal analyses, this paper explores inequality trends in selected Western democr…
New Institutionalism
The efflorescence of work on new institutionalism has encouraged scholars to build bridges between various schools of thought. Such cross-fertilisation enlivens the debate but runs the risk of erecting bridges on shaky foundations. My article seeks to minimise this risk by going back to basics. It narrows the field of inquiry to the economic and the sociological institutionalist tradition represented by Williamson on one side, and the collaborati…
Political Parties, Games and Redistribution
This book explores the impact of political parties on income redistribution policy in liberal democracies. Rosa Mulé illustrates how public policy on inequality is influenced by strategic interactions among party leaders, rather than responses to social constituencies. Using game theory in detailed case studies of intraparty conflicts, Mulé evaluates her findings against a broad range of theories - political business cycle, median convergence, 's…
Factional Alliances, Trade Union Bargaining Power and Social Policy in Australia
In explaining why party leaders may alter social security policy, the globalization literature highlights the limits governments face in implementing programmes supportive of social protection. This article calls for greater attention to the role of agency and political leadership in manufacturing social policy changes. Although international competition may set new and complex parameters within which party leaders interact, agency choice is cruc…
The Shape of Politics to Come? Intra-European Migration in a Rural French Community
The European Social Agenda and the ‘Ideas Gap
Political Parties, Games and Redistribution
The Democratici di Sinistra
Over the past decade, the DS underwent a process of momentous change. This change was the outcome of a complex interplay between party evolution on one side and the radical transformation of party system and political institutions on the other. Such sweeping transformation brought about a dramatic decline in the party’s vote share. Our paper focuses on party politics and organizational development. On the first point, we argue that the dual struc…
Barriers to Entry in Italian Political Parties
Why are some party governments suspended and replaced by technical governments? There are surprisingly few answers to this important question in the literature. This article contributes to the literature by analyzing the demographic profiles of the parties’ most committed activists, the party delegates. There is very little in the way of comparative, synchronic and diachronic research that seeks to explore similarities and differences in the demo…
Coping with the Global Economic Crisis
This article contributes to the debate on governing the global financial crisis, focusing on the regional governance of emergency social shock absorbers in Italy. The article seeks to make two related contributions. First, it argues that subnational governments have been the main drivers of change in labour market policies. Second, it shows that state–local governance elicited a path-altering system by ‘patching up’ a hybrid administrative struct…
Attitudes and opinions of Italian middle-level elites in the new millennium. Adaptation, innovation, or persistence
The literature on party politics has generally conceived of party change as party adaptation. Building on the theories of institutional change based on critical juncture analysis, our work contributes to the literature in two ways. Theoretically, by unpacking the concept of party change in three dimensions: adaptation, innovation, and persistence. This multidimensionality has been unduly neglected in the literature, too exclusively focussed on pa…
The political economy of subsidiarity in labour market reforms
This article seeks to contribute to the literature centred on the principle of subsidiarity by highlighting the way in which political actors apply different dimensions of subsidiarity, horizontal versus vertical, in the field of labour market policy. It compares labour market reforms in Britain and Italy in the wake of international economic crises, shedding light on the role of subsidiarity dimensions. It shows that Britain applied the principl…
Introduction
Scholarship on subsidiarity conducted since the nineteenth century has developed two strands of interpretation suggesting competing models of social organisation as far as the potential location of decision-making power is concerned. While this intellectual effort has mainly concentrated on political experiences in continental Europe, and gained further traction with the principle’s recognition in European Union law, the institutional architectur…
Varieties of capital and gender party office in Italy
This article advances a new approach based on ‘varieties of capital’ to explain gendered upward mobility in political parties. Research on gender political advancement unduly neglects women delegates to national party congresses. Our work seeks to redress the imbalance by drawing on data gathered from 5,122 questionnaires issued to national party delegates at 20 national conventions that took place between 2004 and 2013 in Italy. To analyse the d…
The belief system of the Italian Democratic Party
This article aims to explore why the ‘demolition’ of values promoted by Matteo Renzi had profoundly different effects on the factions within the Partito Democratico (Democratic Party, PD). While several studies have examined the PD’s political culture, few have investigated the changing attitudes of its factions. We help fill this gap in the literature by analysing the PD’s intraparty divisions on the main dimensions of party competition in the n…
The role of the left to the path to a minimum income policy in Italy
In 2018, Italy became the last of the E.U. member states to introduce a minimum income policy. Our work helps explain why Italy was a laggard in this field by investigating the role the Italian left played, historically, in the evolution of policies to combat poverty. This is a surprisingly neglected topic. We argue that until the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Italian left focused on labour-market insiders – that is, full-time core workers – and a…
The Italian left at a critical juncture
On September 25, 2022, the Italian left faced a significant electoral setback as the centre-right coalition, led by Giorgia Meloni, secured a remarkable electoral win. Historically, the left had been represented by major parties like the Italian Communist Party (P.C.I.) and the Italian Socialist Party (P.S.I.). Their demise in the 1990s, for various reasons, gave rise to new left-leaning ‘umbrella’ entities such as the Ulivo and the Democratic Pa…
The political economy of Berlusconi’s tax-benefit policy
The aim of this article is to shed light on Berlusconi’s political strategy to reshape the state by examining some of the incentives for discretionary changes in the tax-benefit system during his administrations. We argue that by exploiting the typically categorical and fragmented nature of the Italian welfare system, Berlusconi’s governments engaged in the ‘art of manipulation’ within the tax-benefit framework, reflecting his efforts in social e…
The political life and times of Silvio Berlusconi 1
Silvio Berlusconi’s political life and legacy have left a profound and lasting imprint on Italian politics. Not only as prime minister but also as the leader of his party, he shaped at least two decades of Italian politics. With an ‘eccentric’ leadership style, Berlusconi approached the roles of party and government leadership in an entirely novel manner. This special issue on the Political Life and Times of Berlusconi deepens our understanding o…
The Weberian ideal type in political economy
This article highlights the analytical contribution of the Weberian ideal type to the field of political economy. Major strands of political economy have continued to integrate ideal type thinking to understand better the dynamics of national, regional and global economic systems. While there is an unbroken popularity of this methodological tool in the social sciences, we argue that it shows particular strengths and weaknesses in the interface be…
The political drivers of antipoverty policy in Italy
This article analyses the political determinants of antipoverty policy in Italy between 1948 and 2022, providing a long-term analysis of the Italian minimum income scheme. We look for an explanation of that evolution drawing on three theoretical perspectives: veto players, gradual institutional change, and party competition. Our methodology is process tracing which involves the examination of ‘diagnostic’ pieces of evidence for our broad politica…
Unequal Steps Up the Ladder in Party Organization
This paper examines gender differences in career advancement within party organizations, using Bourdieu’s theory on the role of personal capitals in upward mobility. We contribute to the literature on women’s chronic minority status in politics by testing the gender-neutrality of Bourdieu’s capital types (economic, cultural, and social). Our analysis draws on a unique dataset of 5,653 party delegates from twenty-two national congresses in Italy (…
Political science (23 works) · Politics (22 works) · Law (20 works) · Political economy (19 works) · Law (18 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (16 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Economics (15 works) · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism (7 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (6 works)