Governance / Governance
di Maria Rosaria Ferrarese
Governance can be considered a key word of our days just because of its indeterminacy: it can guide us through most of the institutional changes, shifts in the global geography of powers, and new interdisciplinary paths for the research. When used at its beginning, it might mean just a different style of power, less hierarchical, more pluralistic, participated from below, and addressed towards private actors. But governance, with its reliance on experts and theories such as monetarism and public choice, has implied as well a deep change in the political economy, and in the possibilities of democracy.

Sugli usi di governance / On the Uses of Governance di Sabino Cassese
The word “Governance” plays an important role in social sciences and politics. In modern Italian language, “Governance” has no equivalent. Despite some earlier sporadic use, it can be said that the term arises with globalization, as in the global space there is governance without government. Today, however, the term is used also to mean the action of government inside States.

Corporate governance tra contrattualizzazione e competizione regolamentare / Corporate governance between contractualization and regulatory competition
di Guido Rossi
The paper analyzes the changes that have swept the Company law in recent decades, in the name of the so-called “corporate governance”. If one considers the current framework of joint stock companies, the change from the past is impressive: we are no more in front of a unitary discipline and mandatory provisions, but of a competition among legal systems and a contractualization of Company law. Today, in fact, Company law has become a vast and ragged carpet of laws and contractual arrangements, in the wave of the “nexus of contracts” theory. This metamorphosis has destroyed its legal and judicial foundations, undisputed until a few decades ago. Also the concept of “Legal Person”, who has accompanied decades of Corporate doctrine, has been finally replaced by the indefinite and problematic concept of “corporate governance”.

Governance e anti-governance /Governance & Anti-governance
di Charles S. Maier
Two political conceptions are challenging the Western political debate: governance and anti-governance. According to the author, the anti-governance representatives are not anti-government, as they believe in a strong use of State’s power, while the supporters of governance are not mere supporters of progressist government. In fact, the word “governance” represents the aspiration to govern without politics. It is an ancient model, the one of the government of “wise men” who held a superior scientific knowledge, that nevertheless does not exclude the popular consensus. Opposed to this conception are the anti-government exponents, populist politicians who have taken possession of important issues in the political debate, such as migration and the crisis of democracy. While governance supporters have tried, over the last few years, to depoliticize the public sphere, the anti-governance ones argue that decisions should be taken by strong political leaders who talk in the name of the people.

Governance: una prospettiva interdisciplinare / Governance: An Interdisciplinary Perspective
di Peer Zumbansen
For the purpose of this paper, governance constitutes a welcome opportunity to take a step back from learned ways of understanding legal regulation, “intervention” and institutional power. “Governance” emerges as the new guest at the table, changing the conversation, prompting everyone to revisit and question seating order, choice and arrangement of silverware, and also, to grow aware, in the process, of the trajectories and ends of their conversation. In the course of the night the guest will be questioned as to her/his particular contribution, status and politics, given the ubiquitous use of governance which promises change, reform, flexibility and adaptation against on the background of a radically transformed relation between “State” and “Society” in a post-welfarestate and globalization context. In this landscape, governance captures a paradigm shift both within interested disciplines – ranging from legal studies, sociology, political science, anthropology, political philosophy, history, economics and geography – while in a connecting, intersecting manner, it suggests a more comprehensive, multidisciplinary theory of order. Seen in this light, governance gives an answer to the semantic challenge posed by a functionally differentiated (world) society.

Coordinare non basta: l’incredibile e triste storia della governance urbana e della sua Europa snaturata / Coordinating Is Not Enough: The Incredible and Sad Story of Urban Governance and of Its Distorted Europe
di Marco Cremaschi
In recent decades, scholars of urban policies have investigated the notion of governance in order to define objectives in urban planning, shared and discussed collectively. To the author’s opinion, it can be said that the concept of governance, both in Europe, and in the urban policy studies, has evolved a lot. Goal of the essay is to demonstrate that the governance model of the EU for urban policies is outdated. It could be valid in the post-industrial transition, when there were private actors who wanted to invest in innovative activities and when there was an aged urban structure to be transformed.

Ridisegnare il governo del paesaggio italiano / Re-designing the Government of the Italian Landscape
di Alberto Clementi
The essay deals with the problem of landscape protection. The author argues that, in spite of the definition of landscape as a “common good” in the Article 9 of the Italian Constitution, Italian policies of landscape protection have been unsuccessful for over 50 years. To overcome this failure, it is necessary to call into question the whole system of public government of landscape protection. Only with a better use of resources in urban planning, rather than the mere use of legislative constraints, public policies in this area might improve in the future.

Parigi: una nuova governance per il cambiamento climatico / Paris: A New Governance for Climate Change
di Toni Federico
The governance of climate changes, caused by the current economic model, requires that some decisions are taken before the environmental damage opens the way for irreversible phenomena. According to the author, the Paris agreements of 2015 on climate, despite their limitations, however enable us to understand that we are entering in the space and the time of irreversible eco-systemic changes. The only possible governance to control the risks of climate change is the international negotiation coordinated by the un. The increasing severity of the problem and the urgency of tackling climate change are now on the agendas of all the governments around the world. These policies are examined by the author moving from the historical evolution of the climate international negotiating.

Governamentalità: una ri-definizione operativa della razionalità politica / Governmentality: An Operational Re-definition of Political Rationality di Laura Bazzicalupo
The terms “Governance” and “Governmentality” are similar: both rewrite the categories of politics taking as a starting point the de-sovereignty and focusing the interdependence between institutional actors, rulers and ruled. But the link between governance and governmentality makes it something more than a new form of administration: a form of life, a new pervasive rationality that shape individual identity and social relationships (as well as the relations between states, institutions, enterprises) – therefore a true political rationality – which organizes their coexistence through the modus operandi of competitiveness.

Se la governance esce di scena. Riflessioni sul caso italiano / If the Gov¬ernance Leaves the Stage: Reflections on the Italian Case di Luigi Bobbio
While governance is normally deemed to have supplanted or supplemented the formal authority of government, it seems that in Italy things have recently gone the other way round. After the “golden age” of governance during the 1990s, there has been a sort of resurgence of the government, i.e. a progressive process of centralization, of trust in the strength of the law and authority and a growing scepticism in the capacity of networks to conveniently address social problems. The article analyses how this change happened and tries to show its illusory nature.

Il modello di governance dell’Unione: solo un’approssimazione a un government europeo? / The Governance Model of the European Union: Only an Approximation to an European Government? di Giuseppe Bronzini
The paper aims to analyse the ambivalence of the term governance within the debate on European constitutional law, as well as within the White Paper on governance issued by Prodi’s Commission in 2001. On the one hand, governance means something less than government, because of the lack of transparent and effective democratic procedures. This is a deficiency to be overcome or reduced. On the other hand, governance means a combination of more open, inclusive, horizontal public policies aiming at updating old mechanisms of parliamentary and party dominated representation. The Euro crisis and the prevalence of intergovernmental organisations on supranational ones made the first concept of governance prevailing, thus leading to the request of the constitutionalisation of the Union. Should the idea of political Europe be re-launched, the second and more innovative dimension of governance might be recovered.