From laissez-faire to supranational planning: the economic debate within Federal Union (1938–1945)

This article focuses on the early years of Federal Union (FU), the leading British federalist association created in 1938. It sets out to demonstrate that FU members heavily disagreed about the economic powers of the future Federation and that these divisions weakened the appeal of the federalist cause. Archival evidence suggests the organisation shifted from economic neutrality, favoured by allegiance to nineteenth-century liberalism, which emphasized the benefits of free trade while keeping a minimum of centralized force in order to prevent interstate rivalries from boiling over into war, to a radical advocacy of supranational planning, aimed at enforcing social rights and welfare entitlements granted to all the citizens of the member-states. This swing to the Left had several implications, including abandoning the prospect of an Anglo-American union, developing a more sympathetic attitude towards the Soviet system, and breaking ties with influential members of the British establishment who had initially lent support to FU, such as Lionel Curtis and William Beveridge. By pointing at the tension between the models of ‘Federation Pure and Simple’ and ‘Federation Plus’, this article also highlights the supple and muddled nature of federalism as an ideology.     

Research,knowledge transfer,and innovation: The effect of Italian universities’ efficiency on local economic development 2006−2012

We test whether there is a link between the performance of universities, measured through a concept of efficiency, and the economic development of the regions in which they operate. Indicators of teaching, research, and third mission are considered as outputs. To handle endogeneity problems between the efficiency of universities and economic development, a system generalized method of moments and then an instrumental variable approach are used. Our findings reveal that the presence of efficient universities fosters local economic development. Knowledge spillovers occur to areas that are in close geographical proximity to efficient universities. Results are robust to different estimation strategies.     

Columbanus in Europe: the evidence from the Epistulae

The continental career of Columbanus has long attracted the attention of scholars because of his achievement as a writer, monastic founder and reformer, and political actor. His Epistulae are one of the most important pieces of evidence in understanding his attitudes and purposes during his twenty‐year sojourn on the Continent, and they emphasize the importance of his ecclesiastical and secular relationships. However, the Epistulae have seldom been analysed independently and together, as their study has often been focused on single letters or specific aspects of the collection. This paper looks at the Epistulae in a more general way, to point out what they tell us about Columbanus's theological and ecclesiastical positions, and the connections he established on the Continent.     

Italian religious historiography in the 1990s

Abstract

This article examines Italian religious historiography of the past decade, taking into account the difficulty of this national limitation, given the increasingly frequent arid profitable exchanges among the diverse European traditions. The review first examines some general works and then focuses on certain themes that mark the historiographical trends: ecclesiastical institutions, with particular reference to the period of the Reformation and the Counter‐Reformation; religious complexity, with special reference to heterodox movements, to Jewish culture and to the Islamic presence; and people's religious experiences, with particular emphasis on those of women, in their interaction with both cultural production and social history.     

The case of specialized towns in Guangdong,China

The illustration of some preliminary results of an ongoing research on the industry in Guangdong, China, is the core of this article. In particular focus is on the so called ‘specialized towns’ and the industries that characterize them as complex actors of Chinese industrial development. The evidence on these specialized towns is quite interesting as such, being not yet well acknowledged in the international literature. However, it is also believed that an investigation of these realities may contribute to the understanding of new engines of industrial development in the context of contemporary global economic relations—what is called the ‘new industry’. Furthermore, some light is shed on the nature of the competitive challenge that China poses to traditional European industry: it is not only cheap labour, cheap land, dumping, and the like. In the new emerging China government visions, policies and industrial organization architecture seem to play a central role. In this context, the authors conclude proposing a framework of questions relevant to some of the most industrialized areas of Europe, that is the Italian regions characterized by a great diffusion of industrial districts.     

Book reviews

Emilio Franzina (1995) Gli italiani al nuovo mondo; L'emigrazione italiana in America 1492‐1942 (Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore), pp. 1‐644. 65,000 lire, ISBN 88‐04‐35977‐3.

Marta Petrusewicz (1996) Latifundium. Moral Economy and Material Life in a European Periphery, translated by Judith C. Green (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press), pp. i‐xx, 1‐289, ISBN 047‐2103423 hardback.

H. James Burgwyn (1997) Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period, 1918‐1940 (Westport, Conn.: Praeger), pp. i‐xx, 1‐246, ISBN 0‐275‐94877‐3 hardback.

Lutz Klinkhammer (1997) Stragi naziste in Italia. La guerra contro i civili (1943‐44), translated by Suzanne Meyer (Rome: Donzelli), pp. i‐xii, 1‐165, 18,000 lire; Paolo Pezzino (1997) Anatomia di un massacro. Controversia sopra una strage tedesca (Bologna: Il Mulino), pp. 1‐243, 26,000 lire, paperback.

Mabel Berezin (1997) Making the Fascist Self: the Political Culture of Interwar Italy (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press), pp. 1‐267, ISBN 0‐8014‐8420‐9 paperback; Simonetta Falasca‐Zamponi (1997) Fascist Spectacle: the Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini's Italy (Berkeley and London: University of California Press), pp. 1‐314, $40.00, ISBN 0‐520‐20623‐1 hardback.

David Ward (1996) Antifascisms: Cultural Politics in Italy, 1943‐46. Benedetto Croce and the Liberals, Carlo Levi and the ‘Actionists’ (Madison, NJ: Farteigh‐Dickinson University Press), pp. 1‐244, ISBN 0‐8363‐3676‐4.

David Forgacs and Robert Lumley (eds) (1996) Italian Cultural Studies: an Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 1‐368, $19.95, ISBN 0‐19‐871509‐9 paperback.

Maurizio Degl'lnnocenti (1995) La società unificata, Associazone, sindacato, partito sotto il fasdsmo (Manduria: Piero Lacaita Editore), pp. 1‐216, 25,000 lire, paperback.

Nello Ajello (1997) Illungo addio, intellettuali e PCI dal 1958 al 1991 (Rome‐Bari: Laterza), pp. 1‐425, 35,000 lire, ISBN 88‐420‐5323‐6.

Tom Behan (1997) The Camorra (London and New York: Routledge), pp. i‐vii, 1 ‐225, ISBN 0‐415‐09987‐0 hardback.

Sandro Setta (1995) La Destra ndl'Italia del dopoguerra (Bari: Laterza), pp. i‐xi, 1‐242, 35,000 lire, ISBN 88‐420‐4591‐8.

Manuela Gieri (1995) Contemporary Italian Filmmaking: Strategies of Subversion ‐Pirandello, Fellini, Scola and the Directors of the New Generation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press), pp. 1‐301, ISBN 0‐8020‐0556‐X hardback; ISBN 0‐8020‐6979‐7 paperback.     

The Groin Vaults of St. John Hospital in Jerusalem: An Experimental Analysis on a Scale Model

The St. John Hospital is part of a larger complex of buildings known as the Hospitallers Quarter, located south of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. At present, the hospital looks like an irregular volume both in height and in plan; it is covered by ten groin vaults resting on very stocky pillars. Each vault is formed by intersecting double curvature surfaces. In order to verify the effectiveness of continuous carbon fiber reinforced polymer sheets reinforcement, bonded at the extrados of vaults, laboratory tests were carried out on a 1:5 scale model, built with materials and construction techniques similar to those of the real building. Experimental tests were performed on the unstrengthened and strengthened vault. The experimental results shown that the strengthening system is able to increase the collapse load of the vault, without substantial variation of the initial stiffness.