RICERCA ITALIANA     

Multi-level Governance and multicultural Integration in the european Experience: Institutions and Rights

Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza"

Abstract

• The major changes of contemporary society not only bring about the coming out of new rights and values, but also shift the centre of social, economic and political life from the State/national level to other levels. The globalization of culture, economy and communication requires, on the one hand, a first level of protection of rights at the supranational level and on the other hand, the establishment of new subjective positions. This process creates two different scenarios: first, the multi-level legal protection of those rights, second, the introduction of new multi-level forms of legal protection.
• Study of implementation of common policies at local level, both in Italy and abroad. This kind of analysis has become central in the current law systems because it represents the result of a common process (with an “endogenous” and “exogenous” nature) to most of those countries belonging to the European Union. In this point of view, the double tension that the States are submitted and that materialises, on a side, in the progressive centrifuge boost represented by internal revolutionary processes and on the other side, in the emersion of a transnational constitutionalism, of which the process of European integration is the principal element, brought a significant reorganisation of the role of the State; reorganisation that as already been mentioned in another specific section, bringing serious consequences at different levels and particularly in welfare policies.
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Principal Investigator

Giuseppe Morbidelli Università degli Studi di ROMA "La Sapienza"

Research Objectives

Against this background the notion of integration is referred to the construction of supranational institutions and the adoption of new rules which enable the convergence process and the achievement of the goal –cohesion.
The analogy with the federal orders allows us to identify the tension between cultural diversity and solidarity. This tension is shared by the supranational and some federal experiences (see f.e. Canada and Switzerland) and the problematic relationship between cultural integration and solidarity policies.
An accurate analysis of the case law will allow establishing whether – and by how much – or not, principles are the basis for those decisions. The second phenomenon that will be treated is the multiplication of sources protecting new rights. Until the last decades, it was commonly thought that fundamental rights should only find their place within the constitutional charter of a State, whose recipients are the citizens. This analysis is now outdated. The most relevant examples of that are new documents with no constitutional nature, as the Charter of Rights of Nice. Although it is not the only supranational document of its kind, it is the first one that makes no distinction among different generations of rights but, on the contrary, lists them all together. Such documents represent the basis for innovative, albeit often clashing, claims for protection of rights. For instance, the right to procreate, the right to life, to no-life, to healthy >>>

First Results

• An observatory will be established, capable of monitoring the developments of these new rights. Even through less orthodox sources break the traditional closed system of sources, civil society views them as a more effective and legitimate response.
• The comparative research on the municipal welfare can offer particularly interesting answers and shows the change in fieri of the welfare system and the social rights
• It is also possible to appreciate the importance of flexible and dynamic forms of governance within the context of such mechanisms (see the Social Union Framework Agreement f.e.) and their impact on the Forms of State of these legal orders (that is relationship between centre and periphery; marginalization of the Parliaments; improvement of the Executives).
• This flexibility and absence of a clear legal status is typical of other federal Social models:
• If we look at the Canadian example, we can appreciate the importance of the fiscal and informal procedures for the development of the constitutional integration.
Against this background the notion of integration is referred to the construction of supranational institutions and the adoption of new rules which enable the convergence process and the achievement of the goal –cohesion.
The analogy with the federal orders allows us to identify the tension between cultural diversity and solidarity. This tension is shared by the supranational and some federal experiences (see >>>

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

In the last decades, jurists have identified and studied the process that links the cultural and technological evolution of modern societies to the rise of new rights and subjective positions for individuals and social groups. While society is becoming increasingly complex - and its evolution keeps gathering momentum - new questions, interests and values arise in the world of law requiring legal qualification or protection, thus creating the necessity of a constant update of the current catalogue of rights. In such a context, public law scholars face different problems. On the one hand, they have to fit some aspects of the old generation rights in the new social and technological framework and carefully adjust the rights that already recognize it. On the other hand, they need to face situations that, unlike the others in the past, are to a great extent new and do not fit in any of the existing legal categories. These innovations concern not only the objective profile (types of rights and their phenomenology), but also the subjective profile. In many cases, the number of subjects enjoying traditional and new rights increases, while in other contexts, we observe the rise of brand new subjects.
ITC evolution shows that the rise of subjective positions is associated not only with negative but also with positive claims, which require the State to intervene in order to remove obstacles and foster development.
It is not sufficient nor it is possible to explain their >>>