Fabrizio Di Mascio
Biographic Data
| ID | 641693 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Fabrizio Di Mascio |
| GIVEN NAMES | Fabrizio |
| FAMILY NAME | Di Mascio |
| SIGNATURE | DI MASCIO F |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Turin |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6165-6335 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 116 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Transparency or Access? E‐Procurement's Two Paths to Integrity: Evidence From Italy
This paper examines whether e‐procurement adoption is associated with procedural competition and transparency, two core components of procurement integrity. Using award‐level microdata for Italian regional contracting authorities (2019–2023), we analyze a period preceding the legal obligation of full‐cycle digital procurement, when the use of e‐procurement tools remained discretionary across authorities. We construct three procedure‐level indicat…
Studying the shrinking and expansion of civil society space in Europe
Various studies have highlighted a worrying trend: many regimes – including established democracies – increasingly adopt legal provisions that curtail civil society organizations’ (CSOs) capacity to survive, operate, and perform key tasks, i.e. provisions that delimit CSOs’ room for manoeuvre or, as we call it, legally defined civil society space. This article presents a new dataset covering annual change in CSO regulation across 12 European coun…
Populism and the Strength of Freedom of Information Laws: Insights From European Countries (2000–2022)
This paper investigates whether populist parties serve as a corrective to democratic deficiencies by enhancing access to information, or if they represent a threat to transparency, thereby undermining democratic accountability. The research employs a dual‐method approach that combines quantitative and qualitative analyses. The quantitative analysis draws on a novel dataset measuring the strength of Freedom of Information (FOI) legislation across …
Public Administration in Italy in Political and Historical Context: The Craft of the Italian State
Upstream and downstream implementation arrangements in two‐level games. A focus on administrative simplification in the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan
The onset of the European NGEU program represented for European member states a formidable opportunity for post‐pandemic recovery and yet a significant challenge at the same time: to receive and retain EU funds, each state had to promptly draw up a National Recovery and Resilience Plan—NRRP) and commit to a pressing timetable for its implementation. Regarding this challenge, the Italian government's response is a case in point: first, Italy is by…
Implementing the NRRP from the Draghi government to the government of Giorgia Meloni: Italian public administration under the pressure of too large a volume of resources
The Italian public administration was called upon to spend the largest proportion of the funds made available by the European Union within the framework of the post-pandemic economic recovery programme NextGeneration EU. At the end of 2022, implementation delays drew the attention of the new ruling coalition led by Giorgia Meloni to the lack of administrative capacity, a risk factor that the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan had fores…
The Draghi Government put to the Test by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan
The political and institutional trajectory of Italy was clearly punctuated by the economic upheavals of the pandemic. The articles in the special issue aim to assess the character of the institutional change prompted by the economic response to the pandemic, and in particular by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), in different policy areas. Three contributions analyse the reform dynamics related to the strategic axis of the Italian …
Administrative reforms in the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan: A selective approach to bridge the capacity gap
The article investigates the impact of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, complemented by changes in the composition of government at the domestic level, on the patterns of administrative reforms in Italy. We draw on research arguments that rest on historical institutionalism, which constitutes an established approach to the study of administrative reforms. We elaborate on how history has connected well-established patterns of administrat…
Exploring FOI publicity patterns: The case of Italian municipalities
The Role of Regulatory Agencies in Agenda‐Setting Processes: Insights from the Italian Response to the Covid‐19 Infodemic
International organizations such as the WHO have worked to raise awareness of the massive infodemic that accompanied the COVID-19 outbreak and made it hard for people to find trustworthy sources of information and reliable guidance for their decisions. Our contribution focuses on the Italian case, where the Communications Regulatory Authority (AGCOM) was able to act as first mover in its field so as to strategically frame the problem of disinform…
Islands of Good Government: Explaining Successful Corruption Control in Two Spanish Cities
Between 2012 and 2018, Spanish public opinion has been shaken by a seemingly endless series of corruption scandals, to the point that corruption has become one of the main long-term concerns of the Spanish population, according to nation-wide surveys. Despite the sharp rise in corruption scandals within local authorities, there are Spanish cities that have managed to limit corruption and build a transparent and efficient government, which stand o…
Corruption Control in the Developed World
Conventionally considered a developmental trait that would tend to disappear with the increase of wealth and the stabilization of democracy, corruption is rampant not just among developing countries and recent democracies, but also in mature democracies and developed countries. This editorial introduces the thematic issue and considers what the contributions tell us about new approaches to corruption control in the developed world. It also outlin…
National regulators, regulatory networks, and European agencies: Connecting the dots
This introduction to our special issue discusses the challenges related to the cooperative and competitive interaction between national regulators, regulatory networks, and European agencies within increasingly complex EU regulatory regimes. In this context, a special attention is given to the dynamic nature of multilevel processes. After presenting an overview of the contributions to the special issue, we conclude by offering three insights on p…
Public Administration and Creeping Crises: Insights From Covid-19 Pandemic in Italy
The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that a new and unforeseen threat easily outmatched political-administrative systems currently in place. Our commentary on the Italian case contributes to the call for public administration scholars to incorporate crisis management into the main research agendas of the field. We focus on regulatory capacity that is needed to tackle the effects of COVID-19. Under crisis conditions of radical urgency and uncert…
Exploring the Dynamics of Delegation Over Time: Insights from Italian Anti‐Corruption Agencies (2003–2016)
According to classical literature on delegation in the regulatory state, independent regulators are established to enhance the credibility of regulatory policies. In that regard, anti‐corruption agencies (ACAs) are peculiar not only because they deal with extremely salient issues, but also because they receive delegated competencies from the government as the “principal” while, at the same time, the government is their regulatory target. How do g…
Too big to fail? The dynamics of EU influence and fiscal consolidation in Italy and Spain (2008–2016)
The article studies the dynamics of fiscal consolidation and public sector reforms in Italy and Spain under the EU governance that took shape as a reaction to the Eurozone crisis. We show how three types of EU pressure – fiscal and economic coordination rules, conditionality, and back-room diplomacy have operated in conjunction. We also show that Italy was more willing than Spain to resist EU pressure. Based on a Two-Level Game framework, we argu…
The political origins of transparency reform: Insights from the Italian case
This research contributes to the expanding literature on the determinants of government transparency. It uncovers the dynamics of transparency in the Italian case, which shows an interesting reform trajectory: until the late 1980s no transparency provisions existed; since then, provisions have dramatically increased under the impulse of changing patterns of political competition. The analysis of the Italian case highlights that electoral uncertai…
Conflict of interest regulation in European parliaments: Studying the evolution of complex regulatory regimes
The growing complexity of parliamentary ethics regulation adopted over the last decades makes the systematic examination of its nature and the rationales underpinning regulatory choices an important endeavor. In this paper we introduce conceptualizations and measurements of conflict of interest (COI) regulation directed toward assuring the impartial and unbiased decisionmaking of national parliamentarians. We distinguish the strictness of rules, …
Learning-Shaping Crises: A Longitudinal Comparison of Public Personnel Reforms in Italy, 1992‒2014
This article analyses the attempts to reform public administration, notably personnel management, in Italy between 1992 and 2014, with a focus on implementation and the period following the multiple crises that have unfolded since 2008. By untangling the policy learning processes between multiple crises, past reform attempts and domestic and European “contexts in motion”, the article finds that efficiency-oriented reforms have floundered regardle…
Ministerial advisers between political change and institutional legacy: The case of Italy
Fiscal Retrenchment in Southern Europe: Changing patterns of public management in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain
The vulnerability of the four south European countries (Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain) to the global financial turmoil makes the analysis of their responses to the fiscal crisis particularly interesting for the assessment of the implications of fiscal austerity for public management. Drawing on the historical institutionalist approach, our analysis reveals a picture of variation in the impact of crisis on patterns of public management across …
The implementation of administrative burden reduction policy: Mechanisms and contexts in the study of Europeanization
Austerity and Public Administration: Italy Between Modernization and Spending Cuts
This article analyzes the Italian government's response to the sovereign debt crisis. Given the severity of the fiscal crisis affecting Italy, this article provides insights about the crisis's implication for public administration in such a politically sensitive environment where drastic and far-reaching measures had to be taken by the government. Drawing on the historical institutionalist approach, the impact of the crisis is not considered in i…
Analysing the role of ministerial cabinets in Italy: Legacy and temporality in the study of administrative reforms
The article explores the transformations which have occurred in ministerial cabinets as entrenched advisory structures in the Italian executive since the early 1990s when the party system collapsed and a permanent cycle of public management reforms was introduced. It examines how ministerial advisers have acquired a greater role in executive coordination filling the void of governing capacity left by the failed institutionalization of the new par…
Exploring the link between patronage and party institutionalization: An historical-institutional analysis of the Italian transition
This article analyses party patronage transformations in Italy since the early 1990s, a time when political parties and the party system entered a phase of continuing change. It examines how the interaction between the temporality of party system restructuring and historical legacies rooted in the nature of public bureaucracies reproduced patronage practices aimed at capturing state resources. The article employs a historical institutionalist app…
The Ghost of Crises Past: Analyzing Reform Sequences to Understand Italy's Response to the Global Crisis
Using a process sequencing approach, this article shows how Italy's response to an earlier fiscal crisis has shaped the response to the current one in two public sector areas that are especially susceptible to fiscal constraints: the budget process and personnel policies. Substantively, it shows the extent to which Italian policymakers have used the repertoire of solutions of the past and the pressures of the current crisis to freeze the expendit…
Exploring the Dynamics of Delegation Over Time: Insights from Italian Anti‐Corruption Agencies (2003–2016)
According to classical literature on delegation in the regulatory state, independent regulators are established to enhance the credibility of regulatory policies. In that regard, anti‐corruption agencies (ACAs) are peculiar not only because they deal with extremely salient issues, but also because they receive delegated competencies from the government as the “principal” while, at the same time, the government is their regulatory target. How do g…
Public Administration and Creeping Crises: Insights From Covid-19 Pandemic in Italy
The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that a new and unforeseen threat easily outmatched political-administrative systems currently in place. Our commentary on the Italian case contributes to the call for public administration scholars to incorporate crisis management into the main research agendas of the field. We focus on regulatory capacity that is needed to tackle the effects of COVID-19. Under crisis conditions of radical urgency and uncert…
Conflict of interest regulation in European parliaments: Studying the evolution of complex regulatory regimes
The growing complexity of parliamentary ethics regulation adopted over the last decades makes the systematic examination of its nature and the rationales underpinning regulatory choices an important endeavor. In this paper we introduce conceptualizations and measurements of conflict of interest (COI) regulation directed toward assuring the impartial and unbiased decisionmaking of national parliamentarians. We distinguish the strictness of rules, …
Ministerial advisers between political change and institutional legacy: The case of Italy
Changing political parties, persistent patronage: The Italian case in comparative perspective
Upstream and downstream implementation arrangements in two‐level games. A focus on administrative simplification in the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan
The onset of the European NGEU program represented for European member states a formidable opportunity for post‐pandemic recovery and yet a significant challenge at the same time: to receive and retain EU funds, each state had to promptly draw up a National Recovery and Resilience Plan—NRRP) and commit to a pressing timetable for its implementation. Regarding this challenge, the Italian government's response is a case in point: first, Italy is by…
Exploring the link between patronage and party institutionalization: An historical-institutional analysis of the Italian transition
This article analyses party patronage transformations in Italy since the early 1990s, a time when political parties and the party system entered a phase of continuing change. It examines how the interaction between the temporality of party system restructuring and historical legacies rooted in the nature of public bureaucracies reproduced patronage practices aimed at capturing state resources. The article employs a historical institutionalist app…
Analysing the role of ministerial cabinets in Italy: Legacy and temporality in the study of administrative reforms
The article explores the transformations which have occurred in ministerial cabinets as entrenched advisory structures in the Italian executive since the early 1990s when the party system collapsed and a permanent cycle of public management reforms was introduced. It examines how ministerial advisers have acquired a greater role in executive coordination filling the void of governing capacity left by the failed institutionalization of the new par…
Implementing the NRRP from the Draghi government to the government of Giorgia Meloni: Italian public administration under the pressure of too large a volume of resources
The Italian public administration was called upon to spend the largest proportion of the funds made available by the European Union within the framework of the post-pandemic economic recovery programme NextGeneration EU. At the end of 2022, implementation delays drew the attention of the new ruling coalition led by Giorgia Meloni to the lack of administrative capacity, a risk factor that the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan had fores…
Exploring FOI publicity patterns: The case of Italian municipalities
The implementation of administrative burden reduction policy: Mechanisms and contexts in the study of Europeanization
Austerity and Public Administration: Italy Between Modernization and Spending Cuts
This article analyzes the Italian government's response to the sovereign debt crisis. Given the severity of the fiscal crisis affecting Italy, this article provides insights about the crisis's implication for public administration in such a politically sensitive environment where drastic and far-reaching measures had to be taken by the government. Drawing on the historical institutionalist approach, the impact of the crisis is not considered in i…
The Role of Regulatory Agencies in Agenda‐Setting Processes: Insights from the Italian Response to the Covid‐19 Infodemic
International organizations such as the WHO have worked to raise awareness of the massive infodemic that accompanied the COVID-19 outbreak and made it hard for people to find trustworthy sources of information and reliable guidance for their decisions. Our contribution focuses on the Italian case, where the Communications Regulatory Authority (AGCOM) was able to act as first mover in its field so as to strategically frame the problem of disinform…
Islands of Good Government: Explaining Successful Corruption Control in Two Spanish Cities
Between 2012 and 2018, Spanish public opinion has been shaken by a seemingly endless series of corruption scandals, to the point that corruption has become one of the main long-term concerns of the Spanish population, according to nation-wide surveys. Despite the sharp rise in corruption scandals within local authorities, there are Spanish cities that have managed to limit corruption and build a transparent and efficient government, which stand o…
The political origins of transparency reform: Insights from the Italian case
This research contributes to the expanding literature on the determinants of government transparency. It uncovers the dynamics of transparency in the Italian case, which shows an interesting reform trajectory: until the late 1980s no transparency provisions existed; since then, provisions have dramatically increased under the impulse of changing patterns of political competition. The analysis of the Italian case highlights that electoral uncertai…
Populism and the Strength of Freedom of Information Laws: Insights From European Countries (2000–2022)
This paper investigates whether populist parties serve as a corrective to democratic deficiencies by enhancing access to information, or if they represent a threat to transparency, thereby undermining democratic accountability. The research employs a dual‐method approach that combines quantitative and qualitative analyses. The quantitative analysis draws on a novel dataset measuring the strength of Freedom of Information (FOI) legislation across …
The Draghi Government put to the Test by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan
The political and institutional trajectory of Italy was clearly punctuated by the economic upheavals of the pandemic. The articles in the special issue aim to assess the character of the institutional change prompted by the economic response to the pandemic, and in particular by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), in different policy areas. Three contributions analyse the reform dynamics related to the strategic axis of the Italian …
Sociology of the stumbling-block: A profile of Alessandro Pizzorno
‘But he has nothing on!’ Throughout his career, the Italian sociologist Alessandro Pizzorno's sophisticated and penetrating sociological analysis has laid bare the shortcomings of the theoretical ‘new clothes’ woven by methodological individualism out of concepts of ‘individual’, ‘interest’, ‘decision’. As well as articulating Pizzorno's critique, this article aims to draw attention to the substantial and skilfully designed suit of theoretical cl…
The Ghost of Crises Past: Analyzing Reform Sequences to Understand Italy's Response to the Global Crisis
Using a process sequencing approach, this article shows how Italy's response to an earlier fiscal crisis has shaped the response to the current one in two public sector areas that are especially susceptible to fiscal constraints: the budget process and personnel policies. Substantively, it shows the extent to which Italian policymakers have used the repertoire of solutions of the past and the pressures of the current crisis to freeze the expendit…
Changing political parties, persistent patronage: The Italian case in comparative perspective
Analysing the role of ministerial cabinets in Italy: Legacy and temporality in the study of administrative reforms
The article explores the transformations which have occurred in ministerial cabinets as entrenched advisory structures in the Italian executive since the early 1990s when the party system collapsed and a permanent cycle of public management reforms was introduced. It examines how ministerial advisers have acquired a greater role in executive coordination filling the void of governing capacity left by the failed institutionalization of the new par…
Exploring the link between patronage and party institutionalization: An historical-institutional analysis of the Italian transition
This article analyses party patronage transformations in Italy since the early 1990s, a time when political parties and the party system entered a phase of continuing change. It examines how the interaction between the temporality of party system restructuring and historical legacies rooted in the nature of public bureaucracies reproduced patronage practices aimed at capturing state resources. The article employs a historical institutionalist app…
Austerity and Public Administration: Italy Between Modernization and Spending Cuts
This article analyzes the Italian government's response to the sovereign debt crisis. Given the severity of the fiscal crisis affecting Italy, this article provides insights about the crisis's implication for public administration in such a politically sensitive environment where drastic and far-reaching measures had to be taken by the government. Drawing on the historical institutionalist approach, the impact of the crisis is not considered in i…
Fiscal Retrenchment in Southern Europe: Changing patterns of public management in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain
The vulnerability of the four south European countries (Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain) to the global financial turmoil makes the analysis of their responses to the fiscal crisis particularly interesting for the assessment of the implications of fiscal austerity for public management. Drawing on the historical institutionalist approach, our analysis reveals a picture of variation in the impact of crisis on patterns of public management across …
The implementation of administrative burden reduction policy: Mechanisms and contexts in the study of Europeanization
Learning-Shaping Crises: A Longitudinal Comparison of Public Personnel Reforms in Italy, 1992‒2014
This article analyses the attempts to reform public administration, notably personnel management, in Italy between 1992 and 2014, with a focus on implementation and the period following the multiple crises that have unfolded since 2008. By untangling the policy learning processes between multiple crises, past reform attempts and domestic and European “contexts in motion”, the article finds that efficiency-oriented reforms have floundered regardle…
Ministerial advisers between political change and institutional legacy: The case of Italy
Conflict of interest regulation in European parliaments: Studying the evolution of complex regulatory regimes
The growing complexity of parliamentary ethics regulation adopted over the last decades makes the systematic examination of its nature and the rationales underpinning regulatory choices an important endeavor. In this paper we introduce conceptualizations and measurements of conflict of interest (COI) regulation directed toward assuring the impartial and unbiased decisionmaking of national parliamentarians. We distinguish the strictness of rules, …
Too big to fail? The dynamics of EU influence and fiscal consolidation in Italy and Spain (2008–2016)
The article studies the dynamics of fiscal consolidation and public sector reforms in Italy and Spain under the EU governance that took shape as a reaction to the Eurozone crisis. We show how three types of EU pressure – fiscal and economic coordination rules, conditionality, and back-room diplomacy have operated in conjunction. We also show that Italy was more willing than Spain to resist EU pressure. Based on a Two-Level Game framework, we argu…
The political origins of transparency reform: Insights from the Italian case
This research contributes to the expanding literature on the determinants of government transparency. It uncovers the dynamics of transparency in the Italian case, which shows an interesting reform trajectory: until the late 1980s no transparency provisions existed; since then, provisions have dramatically increased under the impulse of changing patterns of political competition. The analysis of the Italian case highlights that electoral uncertai…
Islands of Good Government: Explaining Successful Corruption Control in Two Spanish Cities
Between 2012 and 2018, Spanish public opinion has been shaken by a seemingly endless series of corruption scandals, to the point that corruption has become one of the main long-term concerns of the Spanish population, according to nation-wide surveys. Despite the sharp rise in corruption scandals within local authorities, there are Spanish cities that have managed to limit corruption and build a transparent and efficient government, which stand o…
Corruption Control in the Developed World
Conventionally considered a developmental trait that would tend to disappear with the increase of wealth and the stabilization of democracy, corruption is rampant not just among developing countries and recent democracies, but also in mature democracies and developed countries. This editorial introduces the thematic issue and considers what the contributions tell us about new approaches to corruption control in the developed world. It also outlin…
National regulators, regulatory networks, and European agencies: Connecting the dots
This introduction to our special issue discusses the challenges related to the cooperative and competitive interaction between national regulators, regulatory networks, and European agencies within increasingly complex EU regulatory regimes. In this context, a special attention is given to the dynamic nature of multilevel processes. After presenting an overview of the contributions to the special issue, we conclude by offering three insights on p…
Public Administration and Creeping Crises: Insights From Covid-19 Pandemic in Italy
The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that a new and unforeseen threat easily outmatched political-administrative systems currently in place. Our commentary on the Italian case contributes to the call for public administration scholars to incorporate crisis management into the main research agendas of the field. We focus on regulatory capacity that is needed to tackle the effects of COVID-19. Under crisis conditions of radical urgency and uncert…
Exploring the Dynamics of Delegation Over Time: Insights from Italian Anti‐Corruption Agencies (2003–2016)
According to classical literature on delegation in the regulatory state, independent regulators are established to enhance the credibility of regulatory policies. In that regard, anti‐corruption agencies (ACAs) are peculiar not only because they deal with extremely salient issues, but also because they receive delegated competencies from the government as the “principal” while, at the same time, the government is their regulatory target. How do g…
The Role of Regulatory Agencies in Agenda‐Setting Processes: Insights from the Italian Response to the Covid‐19 Infodemic
International organizations such as the WHO have worked to raise awareness of the massive infodemic that accompanied the COVID-19 outbreak and made it hard for people to find trustworthy sources of information and reliable guidance for their decisions. Our contribution focuses on the Italian case, where the Communications Regulatory Authority (AGCOM) was able to act as first mover in its field so as to strategically frame the problem of disinform…
The Draghi Government put to the Test by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan
The political and institutional trajectory of Italy was clearly punctuated by the economic upheavals of the pandemic. The articles in the special issue aim to assess the character of the institutional change prompted by the economic response to the pandemic, and in particular by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), in different policy areas. Three contributions analyse the reform dynamics related to the strategic axis of the Italian …
Administrative reforms in the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan: A selective approach to bridge the capacity gap
The article investigates the impact of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, complemented by changes in the composition of government at the domestic level, on the patterns of administrative reforms in Italy. We draw on research arguments that rest on historical institutionalism, which constitutes an established approach to the study of administrative reforms. We elaborate on how history has connected well-established patterns of administrat…
Exploring FOI publicity patterns: The case of Italian municipalities
Implementing the NRRP from the Draghi government to the government of Giorgia Meloni: Italian public administration under the pressure of too large a volume of resources
The Italian public administration was called upon to spend the largest proportion of the funds made available by the European Union within the framework of the post-pandemic economic recovery programme NextGeneration EU. At the end of 2022, implementation delays drew the attention of the new ruling coalition led by Giorgia Meloni to the lack of administrative capacity, a risk factor that the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan had fores…
Public Administration in Italy in Political and Historical Context: The Craft of the Italian State
Upstream and downstream implementation arrangements in two‐level games. A focus on administrative simplification in the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan
The onset of the European NGEU program represented for European member states a formidable opportunity for post‐pandemic recovery and yet a significant challenge at the same time: to receive and retain EU funds, each state had to promptly draw up a National Recovery and Resilience Plan—NRRP) and commit to a pressing timetable for its implementation. Regarding this challenge, the Italian government's response is a case in point: first, Italy is by…
Political science (23 works) · Public Administration (17 works) · Law (16 works) · Politics (15 works) · Economics (14 works) · Law (14 works) · Public Administration (14 works) · Government (linguistics (9 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (9 works) · Business (8 works)