‘Lonely’: education policies and their reception, between indigestible carrots and demands for proper regulation

Italy’s education policy prioritized two main areas of action during the second year of the Covid-19 pandemic: mitigating the health impact of the crisis on students and educators, and implementing public policies that ensure the proper functioning of the country’s education system in view of a return to normalcy. In this article, I analyse education-policy decisions and non-decisions with a focus on their reception by the school personnel system. The analysis engages with the classical literature on public policy, distinguishing between ‘carrots’ and ‘sticks’ as instruments for policy change. I argue that the health crisis has revealed structural weaknesses that underlie the country’s education policy and politics. Through an analysis of the policy actors’ reactions to those decisions (and non-decisions), I show that a pattern of prolonged oversight by the national government has provoked an appetite not only for financial measures, but also for more policy regulation. The analysis underscores the dual need for 1) well-defined rules and policy regulations that allocate a clearer division of responsibilities, and 2) greater involvement by the national government in the area of post-pandemic education reform.

After the "honeymoon", what is next? COVID-19 policies in Europe beyond the first wave.

This special issue is the sequelto the issue on COVID-19 policies published in European Policy Analysis in fall 2020, which focused on the European countries' early responses to the pandemic. The collection aims to go beyond the "honeymoon" phase of the outbreak, that is, the first wave. The selected cases-Sweden, Greece and Cyprus, Germany, Turkey, Hungary, and the Eurozone-provide a variety of national features in terms of political systems, institutional structures, and policy styles. The featured articles adopt different theoretical perspectives and are authored by scholars from a variety of disciplines, who pursue both interpretative and explanatory goals by focusing on policy adoption, policy perception, and learning opportunities, but also on local pandemic management and policy outcomes. A fil rouge unites the featured contributions: they all show the importance of analyzing change over sufficiently long timeframes, to capture the complexity of existing trends.

Este número especial es la continuación del número sobre las políticas de COVID­19 publicado en European Policy Analysis en el otoño de 2020, que se centró en las primeras respuestas de los países europeos a la pandemia. La colección pretende ir más allá de la fase de "luna de miel" del brote, es decir, la primera ola. Los casos seleccionados (Suecia, Grecia y Chipre, Alemania, Turquía, Hungría y la Eurozona) brindan una variedad de características nacionales en términos de sistemas políticos, estructuras institucionales y estilos de políticas. Los artículos presentados adoptan diferentes perspectivas teóricas y están escritos por académicos de una variedad de disciplinas, que persiguen objetivos interpretativos y explicativos centrándose en la adopción de políticas, la percepción de políticas y las oportunidades de aprendizaje, pero también en la gestión local de pandemias y los resultados de las políticas. Un fil rouge une las contribuciones destacadas: todas muestran la importancia de analizar el cambio durante períodos de tiempo suficientemente largos, para capturar la complejidad de las tendencias existentes.

Evidence-Based Policymaking in Times of Acute Crisis: Comparing the Use of Scientific Knowledge in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy.

This article studies how different systems of policy advice are suited to provide relevant knowledge in times of acute crisis. The notion of evidence-based policymaking (EBP) originated in the successful 1997 New Labour program in the United Kingdom to formulate policy based not on ideology but on sound empirical evidence. We provide a brief overview of the history of the concept and the current debates around it. We then outline the main characteristics of the policy advisory systems in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy through which scientific knowledge-in the form of either person-bound expertise or evidence generated through standard scientific processes-was fed into policy formulation processes before the COVID-19 crisis. Whereas EBP takes place in the form of institutionalized advisory bodies and draws on expertise rather than on evidence in Germany, the system in Switzerland focuses more on the use of evidence provided through external mandates. Italy has a hybrid politicized expert system. The article then analyzes how this different prioritization of expertise vs. evidence in the three countries affects policymakers' capacity to include scientific knowledge in policy decisions in times of acute crisis. The comparison of the three countries implies that countries with policy advisory systems designed to use expertise are better placed to incorporate scientific knowledge into their decisions in times of acute crisis than are countries with policy advisory systems that relied primarily on evidence before the COVID-19 crisis. Supplementary Information: The online version of this article (10.1007/s11615-022-00382-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Evidence-Based Policymaking in Times of Acute Crisis: Comparing the Use of Scientific Knowledge in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy Evidenzbasierte Politikgestaltung in Krisenzeiten: Ein Vergleich der Verwendung von wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnissen in Deutschland, der Schweiz und Italien

This article studies how different systems of policy advice are suited to provide relevant knowledge in times of acute crisis. The notion of evidence-based policymaking (EBP) originated in the successful 1997 New Labour program in the United Kingdom to formulate policy based not on ideology but on sound empirical evidence. We provide a brief overview of the history of the concept and the current debates around it. We then outline the main characteristics of the policy advisory systems in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy through which scientific knowledge—in the form of either person-bound expertise or evidence generated through standard scientific processes—was fed into policy formulation processes before the COVID-19 crisis. Whereas EBP takes place in the form of institutionalized advisory bodies and draws on expertise rather than on evidence in Germany, the system in Switzerland focuses more on the use of evidence provided through external mandates. Italy has a hybrid politicized expert system. The article then analyzes how this different prioritization of expertise vs. evidence in the three countries affects policymakers’ capacity to include scientific knowledge in policy decisions in times of acute crisis. The comparison of the three countries implies that countries with policy advisory systems designed to use expertise are better placed to incorporate scientific knowledge into their decisions in times of acute crisis than are countries with policy advisory systems that relied primarily on evidence before the COVID-19 crisis. Supplementary Information The online version of this article (10.1007/s11615-022-00382-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Conflict in decision making and variation in public administration outcomes in Italy during the COVID-19 crisis.

Italy has been heavily affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. National and subnational authorities have introduced several measures to tackle the resulting crisis, including social distancing and restrictions on economic activities. However, as we will show in this contribution, such measures have sometimes resulted in uncertainty concerning the allocation of decision making powers along the central-local government continuum and regarding the exercise of administrative tasks by public authorities, thus producing conflict and variation within the policymaking and policy-delivery processes in Italy. To show this, we review the relevant events that occurred during the pandemic in the country in light both of the literature on centralization and discretion and of the principles shaping the Italian legal system. Our analysis, based on a dialogue between political science and public law, allows us to read the Italian case as a mix of inadequate institutional coordination and insufficient and unclear central guidelines which ultimately produced uncertainty, which together had a direct impact on policymakers, policy-deliverers, and citizens in general.

Italia se ha visto muy afectada por la pandemia de COVID­19. Las autoridades nacionales y subnacionales han adoptado varias medidas para abordar la crisis resultante, incluido el distanciamiento social y las restricciones a las actividades económicas. Sin embargo, como mostraremos, tales medidas en ocasiones han sido portadoras de incertidumbre en cuanto a la asignación de poderes de decisión a lo largo del continuo gobierno central­local y el ejercicio de tareas administrativas por parte de las autoridades públicas, produciendo así conflictos y variaciones dentro de la política. y procesos de ejecución de políticas activados. Para mostrar esto, reconstruimos los hechos relevantes ocurridos durante la pandemia a la luz de la literatura sobre centralización y discreción, así como de los principios que configuran el sistema legal italiano. Nuestro análisis, basado en un diálogo entre ciencia política y derecho público, nos permite leer el caso italiano como una mezcla de coordinación institucional inadecuada y claridad de directrices centrales insuficiente que finalmente produjo incertidumbre, afectando así a los responsables políticos, a los responsables de las políticas y a los ciudadanos. en general.