A Gattopardo approach to reforms: the case of the Italian Central Government
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Il presente lavoro si propone di discutere se e come le idee di New Public Management (NPM) ev Public Governance (GOV) abbiano sostituito o integrato quelle tradizionali legate al paradigma di Pubblica Amministrazione (PA) analizzando, mediante una discourse analysis, il caso delle riforme contabili pubbliche italiane negli ultimi due scorsi decenni. Nonostante vi siano stati numerosi tentativi di introdurre logiche e strumenti di tipo NPM e GOV, i risultati evidenziano una sostanziale stabilità delle logiche PA. Il complessivo processo di riforma analizzato sembra lontano da un’evoluzione lineare verso un modello manageriale o di governance. Inoltre, più che una sostituzione di idee nel tempo, l’analisi mostra la coesistenza di molteplici discorsi con una significativa e duratura prevalenza del tradizionale modello di PA. I risultati suggeriscono che NPM e GOV, lungi dall’essere nuovi paradigmi rivoluzionari, possono essere descritti come tendenze (o mode) che non lasciano una traccia significativa nella retorica delle riforme. The paper explores, through a discourse analysis of the main Italian Central Government accounting reforms documents over the last two decades, whether and how New Public Management (NPM) and Public Governance (GOV) arguments replaced, supplemented or integrated traditional Public Administration (PA) ideas. The findings highlight a substantial stability of PA arguments, notwithstanding the multiple attempts at introducing more NPM- and GOV-like accounting ideas and tools. In Italy, the overall reform process analysed seems far from being linearly evolving towards managerial or governance models. The analysis shows that, more than a replacement of ideas over time, there has been the coexistence of multiple discourses with a lasting and significant predominance of the traditional PA one. The results suggest that NPM and GOV, far from being new revolutionary paradigms, can be described as (more or less) fashionable trends that do not leave a significant trace either in the practice or in the rhetoric of reforms.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.016 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".