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Christopher Hill, Sara Silvestri, and Elif Cetin

The migration crisis is analyzed here in the context of the challenges that Italy faces as a country of immigration during a period of recession. It is argued that there has been no serious debate in Italy on multiculturalism or on religious freedom, despite the growing sociocultural and religious diversity arising from population movements and international conflict. The analysis begins with the Italian government’s attempts in 2015 to deal with migration and diversity and the associated domestic conflicts at the levels of both party politics and civil society. The external dimension of Italian politics is examined in terms of Rome’s impatient calls for EU help and the weak political position of Italy in relation to the root causes of migration. After discussing the meaning of the Christian/Catholic identity of the country in its present state, the chapter concludes that Rome has little choice but to develop a more long-term view with regard to diversity and integration.

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Manuela Moschella

This chapter investigates the reforms of some important and distinctive sectors of the Italian financial system: the banche popolari and the fondazioni bancarie. These reforms are particularly relevant in the list of events that have marked the year 2015 because they are inextricably intertwined with revisions in the EU supervisory and regulatory architecture and because they are an integral part of the broader government plan to revive economic growth after the fiscal crisis. In particular, the chapter analyzes the long- and short-term factors that set the stage for the reforms to take place. These include transformations in the large cooperative banks and the inaction of key parts of the domestic financial sector with regard to legislative and structural changes; competitive pressures deriving from the buildup of European financial integration; and the backing of domestic and international regulators such as the Bank of Italy, the IMF, and the EU Commission, among others.

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Fabrizio Di Mascio and Alessandro Natalini

The modernization of the public administration has been one of the main objectives pursued by the Renzi government. What distinguishes the reform cycle launched in 2015 is the emphasis on centralization, unification, and the reduction of institutional fragmentation in the public sector after a long period in which autonomy and the organizational pluralism of administrations and government levels were enhanced. This reform strategy is consistent with the underlying trends of transformation in the political and institutional systems, in which the power of the prime minister has gradually increased. The actual impact of these reform measures, however, depends on concrete organizational instruments of subsequent implementing legislation in a context characterized by persistent spending cuts, which are necessary to maintain financial stability.

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Sergio Fabbrini and Marc Lazar

This chapter discusses Renzi’s leadership with regard to his party and the government. The main argument is that Renzi was able to use his party to support the government through his double role of secretary (of the party) and prime minister (of the government). However, the support of the party for the government’s actions has been regularly contested by an internal left-wing faction and has been weakened by the disaggregation and political autonomy of the local and regional party organizations. The chapter describes and analyzes the divisions within the national party, the difficulty of controlling local and regional organizations and leaders, and the parliamentary achievements of the government, which came about due primarily to the popularity of the prime minister. The personal leadership of Renzi has been a resource for promoting governmental reforms, but a leadership unsupported by a party will have difficulty facing future political and policy challenges.

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Carlo Barone and Gianluca Argentin

In July 2015, the so-called Good School reform was approved. This measure introduces several novelties in the school sector, including an increase in resources. The reform was strongly promoted by Prime Minister Renzi, who has simplified the traditional processes of engagement with the teachers’ unions. The aim is to empower school principals and teachers in a meritocratic framework, to overcome the lack of job stability for teachers by establishing new mechanisms of recruitment, and to open schools to extracurricular activities and vocational experiences. These important innovations, which are needed to improve the existing state of affairs, sound more like announcements rather than concrete commitments. In fact, there is a gap between the communication dimension of the reform, which is very effective, and its actual design, which in many aspects is approximate. There is therefore a real risk that the future implementation of the Good School reform might be less substantive than originally perceived.

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Patrik Vesan

This chapter analyzes some of the major labor reforms implemented by the Renzi government in 2015 in relation to youth employment, with reference to the Jobs Act. The strategy pursued by the executive has been to concentrate on combating the segmentation of the labor market by liberalizing individual and collective dismissals and by introducing a new type of contract, which offers a generous incentive for new permanent hires. The main goal of this strategy is to decrease the divisions between insiders and outsiders in the hope that this measure will encourage employers to stabilize workers, especially the younger ones, and invest in the development of human capital. Such a strategy, however, rests on weak foundations, which might call into question its effectiveness and with it the stability of Renzi’s leadership.

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Editorial

Brexit, Sustainability, Economics, Companies’ Responsibilities, and Current Representations

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Empire and Economics

Decolonising Colonialism and Its Legacies in Africa

Edited by Lawrence Hamilton

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Humanosphere Potentiality Index

Appraising Existing Indicators from a Long-term Perspective

Takahiro Sato, Mario Ivan López, Taizo Wada, Shiro Sato, Makoto Nishi, and Kazuo Watanabe

Abstract

This research presents the Humanosphere Potentiality Index (HPI), developed to address current global potentiality from a long-term perspective. The HPI presents a different way to envision the current condition of the world, one that is compatible with a strong sustainability paradigm approach and demonstrates the significance of tropical countries for global sustainability. A comparison between HPI and the Human Development Index (HDI) reveals a dominant developmental paradigm that justifies the HDI perspective, and comparisons between HPI and four popular environmental indicators provide insights into how human society should engage with the natural environment. This research argues that the worldview from HPI presents a perspective that asks us to pay more attention not only to development but also to global potentiality from a long-term perspective.

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Introduction

Concepts of Emotions in Indian Languages

Margrit Pernau

ABSTRACT

At first glance, a conceptual history of emotions appears counterintuitive. Unlike the concepts of democracy or liberalism, emotion concepts seem to refer to stable objects, rooted in the genetic heritage of the human race. However, answers to the question, “What is an emotion?” vary widely across time and space. It cannot even be taken for granted that our analytic concept of emotion is matched by corresponding concepts in the sources: the very question might be untranslatable. In the first section, the introduction will discuss the challenge a conceptual history of emotions faces from psychology’s perception of affective phenomena as objects that exist independent of their representation. The aim of this section is to clear the theoretical and methodological ground for an investigation of emotion concepts in South Asian traditions, which will be the central focus of the second section of this introduction.