Giorgia Nesti

1. Over the last few years, ‘lab-like entities’ (Wellstead, Gofen, and Carter 2021, 194) have been spreading as policy-making practices to address complex issues, such as environmental sustainabili...

The Citizen Income (Reddito di cittadinanza—RdC) is the most extensive program to fight poverty ever adopted in Italy. RdC is a Minimum Income Scheme that grants a cash amount to beneficiaries but obliges some specific groups to participate in active measures and in social inclusion programs. After 4 years of implementation, RdC seems not to have fully achieved its goals and scholars blame policy legacies as one of the main causes of its failures. Drawing on the literature on policy feedback, the paper proposes an analytical framework that identifies the mechanisms related to resources, incentives, and meanings affecting policy actors (public administration, organized civil society, and citizens). The framework is then applied to the case of RdC to detect through what specific mechanisms deriving from past anti‐poverty, active, and social policies impacted on the implementation of the RdC. The paper is moreover aimed at advancing the debate about policy legacies and their effects on current policies through the elaboration of a framework specifying the mechanisms through which policy feedback produces change or stability.

EU member states have adopted Minimum Income Schemes (MIS) to prevent destitution and ensure a minimum standard of living through means‐tested income support combined with Active Labor Market Policies (ALMPs). However, the effectiveness of MIS has been hindered by limited coverage, low take‐up rates, inadequate cash transfers, strict conditionalities, and the limited impact of ALMPs. Public opinion is polarized, leading to potential policy changes. Pilot projects have emerged as a strategy to address implementation barriers, facilitate evidence‐based policy making, and improve stakeholder relationships. This paper investigates the political conditions under which pilots are promoted and the effects these policy decisions have on scaling up through a qualitative analysis and comparison, using two exemplary cases—B‐MINCOME in Barcelona and Weten Wat Werkt in Utrecht.

Finding the right balance between a well-paid, satisfying job and family life is the challenge most highly educated women around the world are facing. Claudia Goldin in Career and Family analyses t...

Les villes intelligentes représentent une nouvelle approche en matière de développement urbain, qui s’appuie sur l’utilisation intensive des technologies de l’information et de la communication et sur la promotion de la durabilité environnementale, du développement économique et de l’innovation. Notre article vise à examiner si l’adoption de cette approche basée sur la ville intelligente suppose une transformation des structures institutionnelles et des pratiques administratives existantes. À cette fin, nous analysons quatre cas de villes intelligentes européennes : Amsterdam, Barcelone, Turin et Vienne. Nous allons décrire leurs modèles de gouvernance, étudier le niveau de transformation qu’ont subi leurs structures gouvernementales, décrire les principaux inconvénients et identifier les liens éventuels avec le paradigme émergent de la nouvelle gouvernance publique. Remarques à l’intention des praticiens Dans le présent article, nous examinons de manière approfondie la façon dont la gouvernance intelligente est mise en œuvre dans la pratique. Nous décrivons le modèle de gouvernance urbaine fondé sur la ville intelligente, un modèle qui est le fruit d’objectifs bien précis, de relations spécifiques entre les parties prenantes, de styles politiques et d’outils stratégiques bien déterminés. La gouvernance intelligente suppose l’adoption d’une nouvelle approche basée sur l’expérimentation, la collaboration avec les acteurs locaux et la réorganisation des structures gouvernementales existantes. Ce processus doit être dirigé par des acteurs publics et s’appuyer sur des outils adaptés afin de gérer les interactions, de favoriser la coordination, de renforcer la légitimité démocratique et l’imputabilité et de garantir des résultats tangibles pour les citoyens.

The debate on local governance and urban innovation has recently gained impetus due to the diffusion of the smart city approach. A city can be defined ‘smart’ if it adopts an innovative collaborative governance style to design urban policies aimed at improving citizens’ quality of life and at promoting environmental, economic, and social sustainability. Notwithstanding the fact that civic participation and inclusion should be distinctive characteristics of smart cities, gender inequalities are often disregarded both by academic literature and in the implementation of smart strategies. The paper is aimed at filling this gap by addressing three issues. Starting from a systematic analysis of literature the paper investigates whether, where, how and why gender discriminations could emerge in a smart city. Second, it proposes a set of tools to mainstream gender in smart city governance and possible areas of intervention to reduce gender inequalities in smart cities. Third it tries to identify main theoretical, methodological, and empirical challenges for local administrators that hamper the implementation of gender equality strategies in smart cities.

The paper addresses the problem of democratic legitimacy of smart cities as a system of governance networks. Using data collected during a 2-year research project, such as the qualitative analysis of reports and documents and semi-structured interviews with key informants, the paper elaborates an Index of Democratic Smart Governance and applies it to four European smart cities: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Turin, and Vienna. Results show that smart cities are anchored in principles of democratic representation, but the link between political institutions and the general public is not entirely developed due to the lack of mechanisms truly fostering citizens’ participation and voicing.