Papers by Giuseppe Montalbano
Housing, Theory and Society, 2023
Are there common features among housing market and policy trends across countries? How can they b... more Are there common features among housing market and policy trends across countries? How can they be classified and compared? A relevant stream in the literature answered these questions by developing the concept of “housing regimes” as a tool to investigate similarities and differences across countries in the housing sphere. Yet, the ways in which the housing regimes have been identified and used have led to variegated and often contrasting results in the analysis of real-world housing dynamics. Are housing regimes really useful, in the end?
In this paper, we assess the use of such concepts through the first systematic review of the housing regime literature. The review thus provides a thorough mapping and evaluation of housing regime classifications adopted in the literature, highlighting their merits and shortcomings in the academic debate. We conclude that housing regime approaches have an enduring analytical and theoretical relevance in comparative housing research, as long as they are entrenched and developed in a historically situated perspective.
Handbuch Lobbyismus, 2022
This contribution provides a comprehensive and systematic review of the main debates and empirica... more This contribution provides a comprehensive and systematic review of the main debates and empirical evidence of interest groups’ lobbying in Italy. The insufficient academic attention on interest groups in Italy mirrors the enduring lack of a public regulatory framework of lobbying. The main legislative projects and sparse policy outcomes are reviewed, suggesting some explanations for the absence of a national regulation and transparency register as of mid-2022. The dynamics of party-interest group relationships are then scrutinized from the period of the so-called ‘First Republic’ (1948–1994) up to the profound transformation in the Italian political system in the early 1990s and the contemporary scenario, characterized by the rise of bureaucracy as the new fundamental target for lobbying and influence. Based on the data of the Comparative Interest Group Survey, the contribution thus offers a reconstruction of the main patterns of interest groups’ institutional access to the governmental, parliamentary, and bureaucratic arenas in recent years. Lastly, the main empirical results from an in-depth analysis of lobbying influence in recent policy processes (2005–2017) are discussed. In conclusion, the possible and desirable directions of future research on lobbying in Italy are outlined.
A Neo‐Gramscian approach to the analysis of EU integration and policy-making. Mapping the partici... more A Neo‐Gramscian approach to the analysis of EU integration and policy-making. Mapping the participatory channels in the EU economic and financial policy-making. The formation of the European post‐crisis regulatory agenda. The reform of Basel II and the Capital Requirements’ package. The reform of the Lamfalussy process and the European supervision of the financial markets. The Single Supervisory Mechanism and the path towards the Banking Union. The debate on the Banking Structural Reform: a view on the on going negotiations.
Ventunesimo Secolo. Rivista di Studi sulle Transizioni, 2021
This essay intends to offer an alternative interpretation of Germany's role in the European crisi... more This essay intends to offer an alternative interpretation of Germany's role in the European crisis, based on a critical approach to international hegemony. Beyond the assumptions of the realist and liberal models, in fact, an analysis inspired by neo-Gramscian literature allows us to reset the problem of hegemony in analytically more complex and theoretically more productive terms, focusing on the socioeconomic dimension of conflicts in the European arena. This critical approach will be used to give a new interpretation of the role of Germany in Europe, from the construction of the Emu to the Eurozone crisis. With reference to the latter, the construction of the Banking Union will be considered as a case study, since it represents an exemplary case of clash and mediation between conflicting hegemonic projects, responding to different coalitions of social and political interests, and in which Germany and its economic elites play a major role in defining its institutional building and structural weaknesses
A. Polk, K. Mause (eds.), Handbuch Lobbysmus, 2022
This contribution provides a comprehensive and systematic review of the main debates and empirica... more This contribution provides a comprehensive and systematic review of the main debates and empirical evidence of interest groups’ lobbying in Italy. The insufficient academic attention on interest groups in Italy mirrors the enduring lack of a public regulatory framework of lobbying. The main legislative projects and sparse policy outcomes are reviewed, suggesting some explanations for the absence of a national regulation and transparency register as of mid-2022. The dynamics of party-interest group relationships are then scrutinized from the period of the so-called ‘First Republic’ (1948–1994) up to the profound transformation in the Italian political system in the early 1990s and the contemporary scenario, characterized by the rise of bureaucracy as the new fundamental target
for lobbying and influence. Based on the data of the Comparative Interest Group Survey, the contribution thus offers a reconstruction of the main patterns of interest groups’ institutional access to the governmental, parliamentary, and bureaucratic arenas in recent years. Lastly, the main empirical results from an in-depth analysis of lobbying influence in recent policy processes (2005–2017) are discussed. In conclusion, the possible and desirable directions of future research on lobbying in Italy are outlined.
Rivista italiana di politiche pubbliche, 2021
The so-called «Recovery Fund» represented a perhaps unrepeatable opportunity for Italian interest... more The so-called «Recovery Fund» represented a perhaps unrepeatable opportunity for Italian interest groups to see their own requests transformed into public policies. This article focuses on how the most important organized interests mobilized and contributed to the public debate on the Recovery Fund by attempting to answer three main research questions: which interests have received greater media visibility with respect to the RF ? Which issues those same interest groups brought to the attention of public opinion? With what consequences (if any) to the main contents of the plan itself? We focus on the 20 most important Italian interest groups, reconstructing their lobbying activity and public frames through the coding of their media interventions and press coverage from September 2020 to the end of April 2021.
Journal of Economic Policy Reform, 2022
This contribution investigates the conditions and dynamics of a public-private regulatory partner... more This contribution investigates the conditions and dynamics of a public-private regulatory partnership in the making of the Capital Markets Union. According to our argument, structural interdependence and the strategic use of market narratives in a low salient policy domain allowed the EU financial industry to frame their interests as a solution to Europe’s missing recovery. Under the pressures of the Eurozone crisis and the EMU constraints, the goals of critical financial industry sectors and EU policy-makers met together, leading to a renewed regulatory cooperation. Such a mechanism is unveiled through a process-tracing case-study analysis on the EU covered bonds framework.
This book investigates the role of banking interest groups and lobbying in the making of the Euro... more This book investigates the role of banking interest groups and lobbying in the making of the European Banking Union. Facing the politicization of financial regulation in the wake of the crisis, core players of the European banking industry managed to adapt and re-orient their lobbying resources and strategies to influence the reform process. This work advances an original Critical IPE approach, which combines structural power, the collective agency of key socio-economic groups and the issue salience as critical determinants to explain corporate influence in policy-making. The explanatory framework is applied to a comprehensive analysis, tracing the Banking Union’s development within the broader context of the EU post-crisis banking regulation. An in-depth scrutiny of the interest groups’ preferences, coalitions and attainments is thus provided on the pillars of the Banking Union, covering banking supervision, resolution, deposit insurance, as well as the reform of the banks’ prudential requirements and the failed project of an EU banking structural reform.
Globalizations, 2021
The so-called Amsterdam School has been a pioneer in developing a theoretical framework for the t... more The so-called Amsterdam School has been a pioneer in developing a theoretical framework for the transnational class dimension of the hegemonic world orders based on Gramscian core concepts and moti...
Partnerships in International Policy-Making, 2016
This chapter investigates the various factors that enable competing corporate and non-corporate o... more This chapter investigates the various factors that enable competing corporate and non-corporate organized interests to gain access to the European Commission’s policy-definition venues. It hypothesizes that, while economic relevance and lobbying resources ensure privileged access for business representatives at large, and in particular for the large European associations and firms, non-corporate organized groups improve their chances of access when the policy issues they address—together with the objectives they strive for—gain a sufficient degree of public and political salience. In order to test this hypothesis, the chapter focuses on the expert groups, stakeholders’ consultations, and grant programmemes for civil society organizations in the DGs Fisma and Trade, addressing two policy areas that came to the fore between 2008 and 2015.
World Review of Political Economy, 2015
International Critical Thought, 2021
As many commentators highlighted, a distinguishing feature of Arrighi’s notion of hegemony lays i... more As many commentators highlighted, a distinguishing feature of Arrighi’s notion of hegemony lays in its Gramscian background. However, an in-depth analysis of the uses and problems of the Gramscian concept of hegemony in the work of Arrighi is still missing. The aim of this contribution is thus to fill this gap, by showing how the interpretation and use of Gramsci’s ideas of hegemony by Arrighi looks far more problematic than himself admitted. The main argument here defended is that the Gramscian definition of hegemony constitutes at the same time a veritable cornerstone and the weakest point in Arrighi’s general theory.
Globalizations, 2021
The so-called Amsterdam School has been a pioneer in developing a theoretical framework for the t... more The so-called Amsterdam School has been a pioneer in developing a theoretical framework for the transnational class dimension of the hegemonic world orders based on Gramscian core concepts and motives. Surprisingly, however, a dedicated analysis and assessment of the use of Gramsci’s key concepts by the School of Amsterdam still lack in the available literature, including the most recent comprehensive reviews. This contribution thus aims at adding a missing piece in the mosaic of the Neo-Gramscian approaches. As it is maintained here, a lacking conceptualization of the relationships between political power and transnational class agency constitutes the main shortfall in the Amsterdam School’s approach. A critical engagement with the Prison Notebooks’ hegemonic theory is thus needed to recast the Neo-Gramscian conceptualization of the transnational and to overcome the dichotomy between the globalization and inter-State approaches, by resolving the main theoretical flaws of the Amsterdam School theorization.
Rivista Italiana di Politiche Pubbliche, 2021
The so-called «Recovery Fund» represented a perhaps unrepeatable opportunity for Italian interest... more The so-called «Recovery Fund» represented a perhaps unrepeatable opportunity for Italian interest groups to see their own requests transformed into public policies. This article focuses on how the most important organized interests mobilized and contributed to the public debate on the Recovery Fund by attempting to answer three main research questions: which interests have received greater media visibility with respect to the RF ? Which issues those same interest groups brought to the attention of public opinion? With what consequences (if any) to the main contents of the plan itself? We focus on the 20 most important Italian interest groups, reconstructing their lobbying activity and public frames through the coding of their media interventions and press coverage from September 2020 to the end of April 2021.
Business and Politics, 2019
According to most of the literature available so far, international and European cross-border ban... more According to most of the literature available so far, international and European cross-border banks and investments firms are considered the primary beneficiaries of the CMU and related revitalization of securitization. Nevertheless, an in-depth analysis of the transnational financial industry lobbying and influence, in the light of the final agreement on the securitization reform package, is still missing. This paper intends to fill this gap in the story by assessing if, and to what extent, the alleged industry beneficiaries played an active role in shaping the regulatory agenda within the CMU project and its related outcomes. An in-depth analysis of corporate lobbying in the securitization reform is thus provided, by looking at the interactions between structural and political contextual factors in shaping private/public coalitions along the different stages of the EU policy-making process. As it is argued here, the policy entrepreneurship of the European securitization industry has been the key factor to explain the emergence of the EU regulatory approach and its legislative outcomes.
To improve the financing of our economy, we should further develop and integrate capital markets"... more To improve the financing of our economy, we should further develop and integrate capital markets": with these words, the candidate to the presidency of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, presented to the European Parliament in July 2014 a pillar of his political agenda. The Capital Markets Union (CMU) promised to unlock financial market-based funding to the real economy and deepen the integration of the Single Market in financial services. As the emerging literature variously highlighted, the plan for a revitalization of capital markets signaled a return to pre-crisis like -or at least a less distrustful -approach towards financial industry interests. In line with these arguments, Dorn originally conceptualized the CMU as an unprecedented case of "cohabitation" between public and private actors in financial policy-making (Dorn, 2016a). Other studies addressed the structural and ideational determinants of such a rapprochement between key supranational policy-makers and financial market incumbents to explain the CMU rationale. However, none of them responded to a crucial underlying issue: when and how did the financial industry and the EU policy-makers influence each other in the policy-making processes leading to the CMU policy initiatives? By building on recent studies in the CMU and the Critical IPE literature, the aim of this contribution is thus to investigate the mutual conditioning between public and private actors in the most recent stage of the EU financial regulation. According to the argument here developed, key representatives of the EU financial industry were able to advance their preferences by framing them as a solution to the policy-makers' pressing problems. On their part, the European policy-makers promoted business initiatives capable of unlocking market-based financing in a context of bank lending shortage and restrained fiscal capacity at the national level under the austerity-based response to the sovereign debt crisis. Under the structural pressures of the EMU and dominant post-crisis EU approach in the economic governance, the demands and goals of critical European financial industry sectors and policy-makers met together, leading to a public-private regulatory partnership. This contribution thus aims at enriching the theoretical and empirical debate on the CMU by focusing on a specific initiative: the harmonization of covered bond markets in the EU. Covered bonds represent a critical financial market segment in Europe, whose harmonization has been a central policy initiative in the CMU agenda and one of its main achievements so far. Thus, it constitutes a relevant and still unexplored case study to investigate the political dynamics of the CMU. The paper is structured as follows. The first section briefly reviews the existing literature on the CMU by highlighting its merits and shortcomings. Then, a Critical theoretical framework for the analysis of privatepublic regulatory partnership is introduced. The subsequent sections are dedicated to the empirical analysis of the policy-making process, from the agenda-setting to the final regulation on covered bonds. Lastly, the conclusion briefly recaps the main findings of this research.
Rivista Internazionale di Studi Europei, 2019
Le condizioni di vita e le prospettive di lavoro dei dottorandi di ricerca risultano tanto ibride... more Le condizioni di vita e le prospettive di lavoro dei dottorandi di ricerca risultano tanto ibride e variegate nel contesto europeo, da costituire un punto di vista privilegiato per indagare la frammentazione dei sistemi dell’università e ricerca nel Continente, unitamente alle politiche dell’Unione per la promozione della ricerca. Secondo l’ADI, solo il 9,5% dei dottori di ricerca in Italia riuscirà ad accedere a una posizione strutturata nell’università anche dopo 12 anni di contratti precari. Nel 2017, la percentuale di PIL dedicata a R&S nel bel Paese si fermava allo 0,50%, al di sotto della media europea (0,65%). Questa mancanza di investimenti ha favorito anche la cosiddetta fuga di cervelli: si stimano circa 30mila ricercatori in meno nel decennio 2010-2020. Il sottoinvestimento italiano e le contraddizioni delle politiche europee negli ambiti della ricerca costituiscono dunque due facce della stessa medaglia. Entrambe concorrono a un modello disfunzionale di sviluppo che lega la ricerca a un sistema di “libero mercato” che spinge all’oligopolio di élite “eccellenti” sempre più ristrette nella desertificazione crescente del più ampio “ecosistema” della ricerca, all’impoverimento di intere aree geografiche e settori disciplinari, alla cristallizzazione di un mainstream a scapito di una pluralità della ricerca scientifica. Un problema che ha caratteristiche e peculiarità legate al contesto italiano, ma che non può essere compreso a fondo se non nel quadro di un approccio europeo che contribuisce a rafforzarne gli aspetti più deteriori.
Business and Politics - forthcoming, 2019
The aim of the proposed paper is to explain the reform of the securitization regulatory framework... more The aim of the proposed paper is to explain the reform of the securitization regulatory framework in the EU as a cornerstone of the Capital Markets Union. According to most of the literature available so far, international and European cross-border banks and investments firms are to be considered the primary potential beneficiaries of the CMU and related revitalisation of securitisation. Yet, an in-depth analysis of the transnational financial industry lobbying and influence, in the light of the final agreement on the securitization reform package, is still missing. This paper intends to fill this gap in the story by assessing if and to what extent the alleged industry beneficiaries played an active role in shaping the securitisation regulatory agenda within the CMU project and its related outcomes. I will respond to the above questions with an in-depth analysis of the corporate lobbying, looking at the interactions between structural and political contextual factors in shaping private/public coalitions along the different stages of the EU policy-making process. My argument is that the policy entrepreneurship of the European securitization industry has been the key factor to explain the emergence of the EU regulatory approach and its legislative outcomes.
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Papers by Giuseppe Montalbano
In this paper, we assess the use of such concepts through the first systematic review of the housing regime literature. The review thus provides a thorough mapping and evaluation of housing regime classifications adopted in the literature, highlighting their merits and shortcomings in the academic debate. We conclude that housing regime approaches have an enduring analytical and theoretical relevance in comparative housing research, as long as they are entrenched and developed in a historically situated perspective.
for lobbying and influence. Based on the data of the Comparative Interest Group Survey, the contribution thus offers a reconstruction of the main patterns of interest groups’ institutional access to the governmental, parliamentary, and bureaucratic arenas in recent years. Lastly, the main empirical results from an in-depth analysis of lobbying influence in recent policy processes (2005–2017) are discussed. In conclusion, the possible and desirable directions of future research on lobbying in Italy are outlined.
In this paper, we assess the use of such concepts through the first systematic review of the housing regime literature. The review thus provides a thorough mapping and evaluation of housing regime classifications adopted in the literature, highlighting their merits and shortcomings in the academic debate. We conclude that housing regime approaches have an enduring analytical and theoretical relevance in comparative housing research, as long as they are entrenched and developed in a historically situated perspective.
for lobbying and influence. Based on the data of the Comparative Interest Group Survey, the contribution thus offers a reconstruction of the main patterns of interest groups’ institutional access to the governmental, parliamentary, and bureaucratic arenas in recent years. Lastly, the main empirical results from an in-depth analysis of lobbying influence in recent policy processes (2005–2017) are discussed. In conclusion, the possible and desirable directions of future research on lobbying in Italy are outlined.