Megaprojects are increasingly common across countries and attract substantial political attention from a variety of actors. Recent studies have highlighted the need to move from an understanding of megaprojects as linear and rational processes towards a more nuanced approach that accounts for non-linear and conflictual aspects. Participatory governance is often proposed as a valuable resource in this regard. In this paper, we investigate the setting and design of two participatory venues operating in the context of the implementation of the Lyon-Turin high-speed railway megaproject: the Italian Observatory for the Turin-Lyon Railway and the French Public Inquiry. Empirical evidence shows that the Italian case featured substantial structural barriers to effective democratic participation. As for the French case, while better designed and implanted in its context, it featured important agentic limitations that undermined its democratic potential. On the basis of our case study, we therefore argue that both the Observatory for the Turin-Lyon Railway and Public Inquiry failed to promote democratic participation. We thus propose a deliberative approach to (the study of) of megaprojects. Whereas deliberative democratic ideas command growing interest across disciplines, these have found only limited application in the study of megaprojects. We contend that a deliberative democratic approach holds promise to improve the democratic and epistemic qualities of decision making on megaprojects.
This paper explores the dynamics of health system decentralization and recentralization in Italy, investigating why and how the territorial organization of the health system has changed over time. Drawing from discursive and historical institutionalism, the explanatory framework revolves around the role of ideational and institutional factors. The methods include process tracing and interpretive‐discourse analysis. Empirical material is drawn from documents and in‐depth interviews to experts and decision‐makers. Through the analysis of the reform trajectories in light of decentralization and recentralization processes, the paper shows that the territorial organization of the Italian health system has changed through a mechanism of gradual transformative change that I here call ideational and institutional bricolage, which involves the interplay between ideas, discourse, and institutions.
Pensions at the European level have been, since the sovereign debt crisis, affected by several decision-making innovations. Retirement policy has been embedded in the European Semester, which strengthened the hitherto inadequate European socioeconomic policy coordination mechanisms. Given that the additional powers bestowed upon the Commission were qualified, a supranational response followed. With the effect of strengthening its rational-legal authority, in line with neo-functionalist spillover assumptions, evidence-based standards have been progressively applied to EU retirement policy formation. This innovative turn warrants the employment of a policy analysis theoretical framework. In particular, the article applies the concepts underpinning policy evaluation to the study of pensions within the Semester. Using a mixed-methods approach, which combines case study with statistical analysis, and following a novel in-depth coding of country-specific recommendations and Country Reports, this article argues that member states’ pensions are now assessed within a structured, formal and polycentric evaluation cycle. This has been gradually constructed by increasing the coherence between the yearly interim ex post evaluations of pension policy output (the Country Reports) and the final ex post evaluations of pension policy outcomes (the Ageing and Pension Adequacy Reports) that are published every 3 years. The result is a streamlined, technocratic, knowledge-based approach to retirement policy at the supranational level. Even though the generation of technical knowledge is no substitute for toothless conditionality, greater reliance on evidence is aimed at socializing national decision-makers and may eventually influence their policy choices. The unconventional pension evaluation cycle that sprung up around the Semester may, hence, serve as a model applicable to other socioeconomic policy domains.
Despite decades of European social dialogue, little is known about the social policy preferences of EU employers’ organizations (EEOs). Building on the literature on industrial relations and the role of business in welfare state development, this article explores the preferences of key EEOs (BusinessEurope, SGI Europe and SMEunited) in vocational education and training (VET), active and passive labour market policies, pensions and work–family reconciliation. Software-based qualitative content analysis of 75 position papers and 19 joint declarations, triangulated with four elite semi-structured interviews, is employed to assess employers’ preferences along four national and two European dimensions. Largely in line with the power resources theory, EEOs favour cost containment and social investment, by strengthening labour market flexicurity and reducing skills mismatches through VET. Conflicting logics of membership and influence guide the actions of EEOs: members are wary of legislation impinging on national social policy traditions; yet, greater European assertiveness makes lobbying efforts unavoidable.
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