Behind the Cancellation of Green Refinery Cooperation Between Pertamina and Eni

Pertamina and Eni faced double strike problems. The Italian government did not grant the license for building Indonesian crude palm oil (CPO) based green finery to Eni-Pertamina as most Indonesian CPO producers do not possess RSPO certificates and the EU restricts the use of CPO. The policies resulted in opportunities loss for Pertamina and Eni in 2019. This qualitative paper examined the logical reasons behind the Italian government decision by two levels of analysis, domestic and regional locus. The finding shows that domestically, political circumstances among parties and figures, other than CPO commodities farmers, played a significant role in the cancellation. The historical instability in Italy domestic political situation also brought it closer to revocation. On another level, the ups and downs of Italy-the EU relations before and during Conte I and Conte II government were a regional reason behind it.

How political choices shaped Covid connectivity: The Italian case study

The importance of implementing new methodologies to study the ever-increasing amount of Covid-19 data is apparent. The aftermath analysis of these data could inform us on how specific political decisions influenced the dynamics of the pandemic outbreak. In this paper we use the Italian outbreak as a case study, to study six different Covid indicators collected in twenty Italian regions. We define a new object, the Covidome, to investigate the network of functional Covid interactions between regions. We analyzed the Italian Covidome over the course of 2020, and found that Covid connectivity between regions follows a sharp North-South community gradient. Furthermore, we explored the Covidome dynamics and individuated differences in regional Covid connectivity between the first and second waves of the pandemic. These differences can be associated to the two different lockdown strategies adopted for the first and the second wave from the Italian government. Finally, we explored to what extent Covid connectivity was associated with the Italian geographical network, and found that Central regions were more tied to the structural constraints than Northern or Southern regions in the spread of the virus. We hope that this approach will be useful in gaining new insights on how political choices shaped Covid dynamics across nations.

Trauma in Children during Lockdown for SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic. A Brief Report

Purpose: The national lockdown established by the Italian government began on the 11th of March 2020 as a means to control the spread of SARS-CoV-2 infections. The purpose of this brief report is to evaluate the effect of the national lockdown on the occurrence and characteristics of trauma in children during lockdown. Methods: All children admitted to our paediatric orthopaedic unit with a diagnosis of fracture or trauma, including sprains and contusions, between 11 March 2020 and 11 April 2020, were retrospectively reviewed. Their demographic data, type of injury, anatomical location and need for hospitalisation were compared with the equivalent data of children admitted for trauma in the same period of 2018 and 2019. Results: Sixty-nine patients with trauma were admitted in 2020, with a significant decrease in comparison with 2019 (n = 261) and 2018 (n = 289) (p < 0.01). The patients were significantly younger, and the rate of fractures significantly increased in 2020 (p < 0.01). Conclusions: Home confinement decreased admissions to the emergency department for trauma by shutting down outdoor activities, schools and sports activities. However, the rate of fractures increased in comparison with minor trauma, involved younger children and had a worse prognosis.

How Active Aging Policies Evolved in Italy? A Systematic Review of National and Regional Policies

In recent years, active aging became a concept progressively considered by policy makers in Italy. A national project for creating a multilevel and co-managed coordination of active aging policies was launched in 2019 by the Italian Government and the National Institute of Health and Science on Ageing (IRCCS INRCA). A systematic review of active aging policies was conducted at both national and regional level. Results showed that national policies still reflect the general categorical fragmentation of Italian welfare system, although substantial developments were found in some sectors, i.e. prolonging working life, supporting families, social inclusion, and healthy ageing. Ten out of twenty-one regions have approved laws dedicated to active aging, although in most cases these laws are too recent to show impact. National and regional policy makers still need to overcome several cultural, coordination and fragmentation challenges for improving active aging policies and harmonise them with societal needs.

Italian parents’ perception about learning practices and educational effectiveness of remote schooling during the first lockdown

The abrupt interruption of face-to-face educational activities imposed by the Italian Government in response to the Covid-19 emergency required a rapid switch to remote schooling to guarantee continuity in education. This paper explores the family’s perception about the organization of remote schooling and its impact on learning. In particular, the authors investigated the technology used and the strategies adopted by the teachers to face the challenges posed by this rapid change in the educational paradigm through an online survey carried out between May and June 2020. More than 19,000 families answered the survey for a total of 32,000 children, highlighting a favorable evaluation from the parents. The analyses confirm that several factors linked to the technology used and instructional learning design signif icantly impacted the parents’ evaluation.

A Root Which Never Grew

Prior to the Second World War, Malta appeared vulnerable to fascist influence due to the connections between the Italian Fascist regime and Malta’s irredentist political movement, then led by Nerik Mizzi. In part this Fascist influence was present in cultural propaganda promoting irredentist ideas such as the ‘Mare Nostrum’, which Mizzi and his conservative political party, the Partito Nazionalista, helped propagate. However, previously unseen British documents also reveal significant financial support by the Italian government to Mizzi and his political activities. Mizzi never disclosed this, including the financial support he was granted by Mussolini after having met him personally in Rome on 30 November 1936. Mizzi never openly expounded fascist views, although he consistently supported an irredentist vision of Malta and openly campaigned for Malta to fall under Italy’s jurisdiction. Meanwhile, support for domestic fascist organisations was negligible. At the onset of the War, the Imperial Government started to clamp down on the irredentists, eventually exiling Mizzi and most of his collaborators. The author argues that Mizzi’s dalliance with fascism was not just a convenient relationship for a greater cause, but also a direct acceptance of fascist politics given that making Malta part of Italy’s jurisdiction would also have meant accepting fascist rule.

Equal Rights and Opportunities During the COVID-19 Pandemic, in Consideration of the Huge Difference between Big Cities and Small Towns

The current pandemic has imposed the need to apply protective measures to prevent the spread of the virus. These include, in particular, restrictions on freedom of movement, with all the ensuing consequences. In some states, governments have chosen to impose total lockdowns for a certain period, which is useful for lowering the levels of contagion, while others have preferred to adopt semi-lockdowns. The Italian government, for example, in recent months, has chosen to divide the regions into colors: red, orange, yellow and green, depending on the needs and severity of the conditions within each territory. The decisions that have been made, however, do not take into account the important differences between regions, given that some of them offer more opportunities than others, nor they have considered the differences between cities and towns. In fact, there is a huge difference between people who live in big cities with all the conveniences that allow them to live comfortably for some time within their own municipalities, and people who live in small towns, where there are no opportunities for recreation or where, more generally, the same opportunities do not exist. Therefore, stopping people, for many consecutive days, from moving between one municipality and another, as happens for those who live in red and orange regions, means violating the principle of equality and other fundamental rights related to the expression of personality. In situations of extreme emergency, such as the current one, therefore, it is important to consider the idea of ​​revising cities and towns, adapting services to actual needs, in order to balance the protection of public health with the right of the citizens to live in dignity. The government restrictions of fundamental rights should never be discriminatory, but always proportionate, according to the context in which they are applied. When it becomes difficult for mothers to even reach hospitals to give birth to their babies, or for people to access essential services due to restrictions, it becomes necessary to ask how the space of the actual cities should be reviewed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Robbery Made the Kingdom of Italy, Misery Will Unmake It”

This contribution analyses the nineteenth-century debate on one of the most hotly debated topics of Italian history: public debt and taxation. Starting in the 1850s, fiscal policies were weaponised by liberal nationalist elites and their opponents alike to promote their contrary worldviews by arguing over the merits of national unification and a parliamentary system on the basis of their fiscal outcomes. First Piedmont, then unified Italy, were eagerly expected by Catholics and Bourbon legitimists to default on their debts as a result of their moral and fiscal profligacy, while liberals were concerned about popular support for the national cause in a context of rising taxes. Southern Italy in particular was very vocal in denouncing its perceived fiscal mistreatment by the Italian government, an accusation the North rejected by portraying Southerners as unpatriotic tax evaders. Today, these narratives are re-emerging not only in public debates questioning the Risorgimento as the nation’s founding myth but also in the discourse about European integration.

“Everything Will Be All Right!” National and European Identification as Predictors of Positive Expectations for the Future During the COVID-19 Emergency

During the first national lockdown imposed in a Western country to reduce the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, many Italians tried to boost their spirits by hanging hand-drawn rainbows with the slogan “Everything will be all right” from their windows. To understand which processes might have nurtured their positive views about the future during the pandemic, the present study (N=846), building upon social identity research, examined the relationships among Italians’ identification with their country and with the superordinate entity of the European Union (EU), trust in the main institutions in charge of managing the crisis (i.e., the Italian government, the EU, and the scientific community), and beliefs that the COVID-19 crisis would eventually result in the improvement of society. Structural equation modeling analyses showed that identification with Italians and Europeans had positive direct associations with positive expectations about humankind. Identification with Europeans was also directly related to positive expectations about Italian leaders and the strengthening of the EU through the crisis. Trust in the Italian government and, to a lower extent, trust in the EU mediated some of these associations. These findings suggest that governments should actively promote national and European identification to help citizens counter the negative psychological impact of the pandemic and maintain positive views of the future.

Spatio-Temporal Spread Pattern of COVID-19 in Italy

This paper investigates the spatio-temporal spread pattern of COVID-19 in Italy, during the first wave of infections, from February to October 2020. Disease mappings of the virus infections by using the Besag–York–Mollié model and some spatio-temporal extensions are provided. This modeling framework, which includes a temporal component, allows the studying of the time evolution of the spread pattern among the 107 Italian provinces. The focus is on the effect of citizens’ mobility patterns, represented here by the three distinct phases of the Italian virus first wave, identified by the Italian government, also characterized by the lockdown period. Results show the effectiveness of the lockdown action and an inhomogeneous spatial trend that characterizes the virus spread during the first wave. Furthermore, the results suggest that the temporal evolution of each province’s cases is independent of the temporal evolution of the other ones, meaning that the contagions and temporal trend may be caused by some province-specific aspects rather than by the subjects’ spatial movements.