"Vittorio Bachelet" Research Center on Public Administration

Director: Prof. Bernardo Giorgio Mattarella (bmattarella@luiss.it)

The "Vittorio Bachelet" Research Center on Public Administration, established in 1992, has the purpose to study and research Public Administrations and their transformations. The research, carried out with an interdisciplinary approach, is preferably addressed to issues of interest to the Public Administrations and in view of the definition or implementation of administrative reforms.

The Center’s research areas are: the system of autonomies (regional and local); the European perspective of public administrations; the tools for the protection of citizens; issues related to some fundamental sectors of public services, primarily education, health and the environment (e.g. school system, teaching civic education, issues of health law, administration of sustainable development); digital law; the reforms that have the greatest impact on the physiognomy and formation of public management and on the relationships between citizens and administrative institutions (e.g. social citizenship, horizontal subsidiarity, administrative justice); interior administration and security; public policy analysis; citizenship, participation and civic education.

The Center carries out scientific, theoretical and applied surveys and consultancy, at the same time promoting the training of young researchers and experts from the administration and public institutions, also through study meetings, seminars and conferences, often of a comparative nature. It also organizes training activities for managers and public operators, especially in innovative or experimental sectors, with the aim of strengthening the link between administrative reforms and training or updating of managers.

Since 2001, the Center has published the online legal journal "Amministrazione in cammino" (ISSN 2038-3711), which outlines reports, notes and comments, jurisprudence on public law, economic law and administrative science.

The Center is also responsible for the publication of the "Series of studies on public administration" published by Wolters Kluwer which collects monographic studies on the main issues concerning public institutions and administrations prepared by scholars from and outside the Center.

Structures established within the Center

• @LawLab - Laboratory on Digital Law
• Observatory on Public Policies

Research activities

Training of public administration and companies' managers

The Center has progressively developed a training and refresher function for executives and managers of public administrations and companies.

This activity is mainly focused on those sectors of the public administration affected by regulatory and legal transformations, which require processes of adequate staff retraining.

The training initiatives carried out include:

• Two-year courses for school managers, particularly focused on job prospects and the new responsibilities of school heads, with a view to strengthening school autonomy and following the "privatization" of the public employment relationship
• Competition-courses for administrative and technical cadres for local authorities in the South (in collaboration with Formez)
• Courses for bank officials and executives on institutional innovations in the securities market and on the bank-local authority relationship with a view to adapting financial services to local institutions
• Refresher courses on public administration reform and the new role of managers in personnel management and trade union relations.
• Training courses for conferring managerial qualifications to school heads of educational institutions
• Training courses for INPS managers and officials (internal / external communication managers of provincial and sub-provincial structures, regional managers of external relations).

Training of young researchers

The research is conducted by young graduates, research doctors and holders of research grants, under the guidance of the managers of the Center and the university professors who coordinate the individual projects, in order to facilitate methodological learning in the study of legal-administrative disciplines.

Young researchers are also entrusted with individual study topics, the results of which are discussed in special seminars, with the participation of scholars and specialists in the sector concerned.

In this way, the Center intends to encourage the training of specialists in the field of public administrations, interested in research and / or insertion in the public administration, also by awarding scholarships.

Applied research