Paper prepared for the ICPP5 Barcelona –9 July 2021. Panel T01P10 The Narrative Policy Framework: Taking Stock of New Developments

Narrative and meta-narrative strategies and policy subsystems: a comparative study of labour and education reforms in Italy

Maria Tullia Galanti, University of Milan ([email protected])

Giovanni Barbato, University of Milan ([email protected])

Giliberto Capano, University of Bologna ([email protected])

draft version, June 2021 – comments are very welcomed, please do not circulate

Abstract. In the policy narrative framework, actors purposefully shape the content and form of their narratives to achieve policy change. While congruence among the ideas between the narrator and the recipient may determine the success of the narrative, narrative strategies aimed at expanding the conflict and/or addressing the causes of the problem may also be crucial. We propose a focus on how the same political coalition—and, in particular, the political leader inside that coalition—uses narratives to promote reforms in two different policy sectors—labour policies and education policies—ultimately bringing about policy change only for labour policy. Our main hypothesis is that successful actors need to shape the content and form of their narratives based on the characteristics of the policy subsystem, particularly considering the variety of ideas and the cohesiveness of subsystem components. We propose the testing of this hypothesis with a qualitative analysis of a dataset of the policy narratives that emerged in the main national newspapers during the formulation and adoption of two major reforms in Italy—the Jobs Act and the Good School Reform Act— promoted by the same political actors between 2014 and 2015.

1 1. Introduction

Policy reforms involve complicated processes for political actors. The theories on the policy process offer different explanations about how reforms succeed or fail. Nevertheless, the role of policy leadership in shaping reforms has rarely been explicitly theorized or specifically investigated in empirical research (Capano and Galanti 2018). This is also true concerning the role of political leaders in the steering of the policy process towards a change in (or stability of) key policy components, from goals to instruments and from ideas to policy solutions. In contemporary mediatized democracies, political leaders deploy not only political, financial and relational resources to shape coalitions but also ideational and communicative resources to incorporate their preferred policy solutions into a piece of legislation (t’Hart and Rhodes 2014; Bennister 2016). In other words, the use of policy narratives by political leaders is crucial for the achievement of policy success. At the same time, a successful political leader must consider the characteristics of the policy subsystem, with its typical constellations of actors and ideas that enter the public debate. Therefore, an interesting research question is as follows: How do political leaders shape their policy narratives by taking into account the characteristics of the different policy subsystems to be successful in the adoption of their preferred policy solutions?

To answer this research question, this paper compares the narratives of the same political leader aimed at promoting a reform (broadly intended as a set of policy solutions that are not in line with the status quo) in two different policy sectors—labour policies and education policies—in Italy. The political leader acting as the main narrator in both processes is Mr. Matteo Renzi, secretary of the centre-left majority party Partito Democratico (PD; since December 2013) and President of the Council of Ministers (from February 2014 to December 2016). Mr Renzi is known in Italian politics as “the scrapper”1 for his rhetoric against the “old” political class and for his determination in terms of reforms (Piattoni 2016). Renzi’s government reforms on the labour market and schools were formulated, discussed, and adopted between March 2014 and July 2015. The reform of the labour market, the so-called Jobs Act (JA), was adopted by the Italian Parliament without significant modifications with respect to the main policy solutions proposed by Renzi in December 2014, representing “a structural change” in the status quo (e.g., in the work employment legislation; Sacchi 2018) and ultimately great success for the government. Conversely, the reform of education policies, the so-called Buona Scuola—Good School Reform Act (GS)—finally adopted in July 2015, represents a political defeat in terms of the capacity to innovate the school system and, most importantly, in terms of political consent (Capano and Terenzi 2019, 272). In fact, the law approved

1 See for example: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-25265945: 2 in July 2015 ignored one of the main innovations promoted by Renzi (the managerialization of the school system with the empowerment of school principals and in terms of the introduction of a merit- based bonus for teachers) while being considered very damaging in terms of political support for the Renzi government thereafter.

To put it simply, this paper investigates why Renzi proved to be more successful in terms of the JA than in terms of the GS. Our main argument is that successful narratives have to be shaped upon the policy subsystem to achieve successful reform outputs. At the same time, we propose that the set of political goals and values may represent a meta-narrative that affects the whole process. We demonstrate that the same political leader could be either successful or defeated in promoting a policy solution because of his/her narratives—considered not as a unique explanation but in combination with other institutional or processual variables. In fact, Renzi controlled many key resources to positively steer the reform process: he was highly reputed at the international level (also by the European Union, which was strongly pressing Italy for reforms), his party gained high electoral consent in 2014, his popularity was high until spring 2015, and he could deploy financial resources to compensate for losses (especially in the school system through the hiring of teachers into permanent positions). Despite these strong points, he was not a member of Parliament when he was appointed Prime Minister and faced serious internal opposition inside his own party, so his political strategy was also aimed at strengthening the political legitimacy of his government (Capano and Lippi 2018). In the end, Renzi’s style as a political leader—in terms of not only negotiations but also communication—activated powerful opponents both in the subsystem and in Parliament: we attempt to demonstrate that this was also due to his use of the abovementioned narratives.

The narratives in these reforms are analysed thorough the lenses of the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF)—the most comprehensive framework for the theoretical and empirical study of the influence of narratives in the policy process (Shanahan et al 2017; Jones et al 2014; Shanahan et al 2013; Shanahan et al. 2011; Jones and McBeth 2010). In our view, the focus on the narratives of political leaders represents value added for the NPF, as it allows us to uncover how the strategic framing of narratives by political leaders can facilitate (or hamper) policy change. This paper will compare the narrative elements and content emerging at the meso analysis level (i.e., at the subsystem level). We follow a qualitative strategy of inquiry aimed at testing some expectations about how a political narrator shapes his/her narrative to be successful (O’Bryan et al. 2014) under the general assumption that he/she will need to adapt his/her narratives to the characteristics of the policy subsystem (e.g., level of cohesiveness and type of policy core beliefs) and to the external environment (e.g., events happening outside the policy subsystem such as international crises, external pressures, or exogenous shocks; Shanahan et al. 2017, 188).

3 The comparison is also aimed at showing that the matching of narrative elements (in terms of characters, morals of the stories, and plots) and content (in terms of strategies and policy beliefs) works differently in fragmented and cohesive subsystems. In a fragmented policy subsystem, narratives aimed at expanding conflict and advocating for the support of actors that are external to the policy sector (e.g., external legitimacy) may lead to the successful achievement of the desired policy outputs. Conversely, in closed and cohesive policy subsystems, narratives must be able to mobilize supporters that are internal to the subsystem (e.g., internal legitimacy).

The remainder of this paper proceeds as follows. In the next section, we draw on the NPF and on political leadership to develop a theoretical framework and some expectation of the use of narratives by political leaders. In the next section, the research design, data sources and coding of the narratives according to the NPF (Shanahan et al. 2018) are illustrated. Expectations are tested by comparing evidence about the different narrative elements in the session about the findings. The final section offers a discussion of the findings and some concluding remarks.

2. Narrative Policy Framework and political leaders: shaping policy subsystems

Narratives define problems and provide meaning to policy solutions, thus acting as a powerful device to connect ideas and instruments (Radaelli 1995; Stone 2012). As acknowledged by both scholars and policymakers such as Renzi, the power of narratives is derived from their nature as social constructions that can shape people’s realities and emotions, thus pushing them to act or to react (Shanahan et al. 2017, 173). The NPF offers researchers theoretical and operational instruments to detect the influence of narratives in the policy process (Shanahan et al. 2018).

The PNF defines policy narratives as story devices featuring at least one character and containing some public policy referent (Shanahan et al. 2013, 457). The form of the policy narrative is derived from the combination of these elements (with the first two being necessary components):

• characters: the actors on the stage of the policy, typically represented as victims, villains, or heroes who solve problems; other characters include the beneficiaries of a policy outcome, allies and opponents (Shanahan et al. 2017) • moral of the story: this gives purpose to the characters actions and motives and is equivalent to the policy solutions that must be pursued (and that are preferred by narrators). Often, the statements concerning policy problems anticipate the preferred policy solutions • setting: the physical space and time where the story takes place or, in terms of the PFN, “the stage setting for a theatrical play” (Shanahan et al. 2017, 176). The setting consists of policy

4 phenomena such as legal and constitutional parameters, geography, economic conditions, and social norms, which are basically taken for granted by all actors in a policy area. • plot: it presents the characters, their relationship and the moral of the story. It can be told as a story of decline or as a story of taking control over a problem (Stone 2012). Additionally, the plot is defined as a story device that links characters, settings, causal mechanisms and policy solutions (Shanahan et al 2013, 459).

At the same time, the variations in narratives can be studied by looking at the content of the narratives, conceptualized in terms of policy beliefs and narrative strategies:

• Policy beliefs are a set of values and beliefs that orient a group or a coalition (Shanahan et al 2013, 459). Being stable elements in the policy subsystem, they can be evocated as ideas, values, symbols or metaphors that are meaningful to all the actors in the subsystem. • Narrative strategies are arguments that aim at influencing the policy process; they are ways in which actors wield narrative elements to either expand or contain a coalition (Shanahan et al 2013, 458) by manipulating the perception of the costs and benefits of the policy solutions. The PNF conceptualized different types of strategies (Shanahan et al. 2017, 178): o the scope of conflict: aimed at issue expansion or at issue containment o the causal mechanisms: to assign responsibility and blame for the policy problem, with the possibility that the problem was caused by intentional, inadvertent, accidental, and mechanical causes (Stone 2012) o the angel-devil shift: the extent to which the narrator identifies the opposing narrator as a villain and himself/herself as a hero.

The assemblage of these elements into policy narratives can be analysed at the meso level by looking at the policy subsystem and at the characteristics of these elements (Figure 1). In modern days (“agora narrans”), narratives affect policy subsystems by influencing the composition of the coalitions and the translation of policy beliefs and preferences into discrete policy outputs, such as the approval of a law or the decision about an infrastructural installation. As represented in the figure, this conceptualization emphasizes the importance of the external context that may interact with both the narratives and the policy outputs. At the same time, this representation does not specify the specific contribution of political leaders in the shaping of narratives that are successful either in promoting innovative policy solutions or in securing the status quo.

5 Figure 1 - The model of policy narratives at the meso level in the PNF. Source: Shanahan et al. 2017, 188.

While the NPF does not directly address what the narratives should look like to successfully achieve policy change, the role of political leadership in shaping the policy narratives and in triggering coalitional dynamics clearly emerges in the policy process, as acknowledged by other frameworks, such as the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF). Beyond the distinction between rhetoric and narratives, there is no doubt that the way political leaders frame problems and solutions is able to affect the policy outputs of reforms (Bennister 2016). Political leaders engage in public debate with one clear purpose: to gain public support for their preferences and policy solutions and to expand their coalition by mobilizing not only material resources but also symbolic resources (Nye 2008; Masciulli et al. 2009; Stiller 2009). While policy leadership can be conceived as a collective effort to steer the policy process towards change or stability (Capano and Galanti 2018), in regard to the debate about a specific policy decision, the individual also plays a decisive role in actively shaping his/her narratives to affirm his/her preferred policy solutions.

In this paper, we propose that focusing on the role of single individuals, like political leaders, and their narratives could add theoretical scope to the NPF by showing how political leaders can shape their narratives to reshuffle the opposing coalitions and achieve change as a policy output.

6 We try to contribute to the NPF by elaborating on the theoretical expectations of how political leaders must shape their narratives to be successful. We explore these issues starting from two broad assumptions.

The first assumption is that the characteristics of the policy subsystem (such as the level of openness of the subsystem to external actors or the level of ideational cohesiveness inside the subsystem) matter for the success of the narratives. The second assumption is that the narratives do not operate into a vacuum but are only one among many variables that affect the policy process. Policy narratives also interact with crucial events occurring in the external environment (such as pressure from international actors, economic crises, and political elections).

From these assumptions, we derive our theoretical expectations about how political leaders should take into account both the policy subsystem and the broader context and shape different narratives accordingly to be successful.

A first expectation relates to the idea that political leaders should behave strategically. Consequently, they should adapt their narrative style to the main characteristics of the policy subsystem to be successful. In other words, we expect that the same political leader will adopt different “narrative styles”—intended as a set of characters and morals of the stories—in different policy subsystems. Narrative styles are also characterized by a political dimension. Although narrative styles are shaped according to the policy object, we also expect that political leaders will design their policy narratives according to not only the characteristics of the policy subsystem but also their own political goals and symbols. We define this set of political goals and symbols as political meta-narratives that contribute to the narrative style of a leader. Political meta-narratives may emerge from the representation that the political leader gives of himself/herself in the narratives, for example, by picturing him/her as a character in the narrative (for example, as a particular type of hero).

A second expectation is that the plot of the narratives of the political leader has to focus on the characters who are the main policy targets of the proposed reform (i.e., the policy actors who are touched by the substantive content of the reform) to gain their support. In other words, the successful narrator should not adopt a plot where the policy target is framed in the narrative either as a villain or as a marginal character in the narrative. This careful consideration of policy targets will be particularly useful for passing structural reforms that require a radical “shift” in the life conditions of powerful actors in the policy subsystem (such as teachers in the school system).

A third expectation is that the narrative strategies deployed in closed and ideationally cohesive policy subsystems have to seek both internal and external legitimacy to avoid the mobilization of powerful actors against the preferred policy solutions. In other words, the successful political leader should

7 shape his/her narrative strategies not only to expand the conflict only outside the subsystem—by seeking the support of external actors such as society, of the electorate and of powerful international actors—but also to secure internal support from powerful actors inside the subsystem. At the same time, the narrative strategies should not play the “devil’s shift” against powerful internal actors who might oppose the change unless there is no strong internal or external counterforce that could balance this opposition.

3. Research design

In this paper, we focus on the meso level of analysis to understand how the same political leader may shape his/her narratives while promoting reforms in two different policy sectors. We develop a qualitative comparison of the narratives used by the President of the Council of the Ministers, Matteo Renzi, in the fields of labour market and school policies between December 2013 and July 2015.

For case selection, this paper compares the policy narratives in two policy sectors. The logic of comparison recalls the most similar case comparison. While the policy outputs of the reforms were somewhat different in the two cases—as Renzi managed to fully adopt his policy solutions in the case of the labour market and only partially in the case of schools (see infra)—the variables that might have affected this result are similar. The main narrator of the policy reform was Renzi himself in both cases. Renzi was the head of a composite centre-left coalition; his political capacity strongly benefitted from the stunning electoral victory of his party in the European elections held in 2014, but he has been continuously facing internal opposition from his party. Furthermore, the contextual conditions during the formulation and adoption of both reforms were very similar: Italy was still under the conditionality of the European Union and of the European Central Bank (ECB), urging for structural reforms (Sacchi and Roh 2016; Sacchi 2018), while it was condemned by the European Court of Justice for the high proportion of fixed-term jobs in the school system. One significant difference lies in the features of the two policy subsystems in the last twenty years. While the subsystem of labour policies was quite fragmented both in terms of policy instruments and policy actors (with a considerable number of interests groups and veto points), the subsystem of school policies experimented with stable policy solutions and, most importantly, was dominated by the traditional actors in the school system (the trade unions, representing 60% of the teachers and the ministerial bureaucracies). These similarities and differences are better discussed in the following section, which is aimed at reconstructing both reforms (Section 4).

For data and sources, this paper reconstructs and qualitatively compares the narratives deployed by the main narrator of both reforms (and of the counternarratives of his main opponents) during the

8 period of the formulation and parliamentary discussion (December 2013 – September 2015). During this period, the government obtained the approval of the legislative decrees for the JA (December 2014 and June 2015) and for the GS (in particular, law 105, approved in July 2015). The narratives are extracted from a database of 200 newspaper articles for the JA and 167 articles for the GS. Articles were initially gathered through the open archive of one of the main Italian newspapers, La Repubblica. The articles were gathered by using the name of the main policy makers, political parties and interest groups plus the conventional name of the reform (either the “Jobs Act” or “Buona Scuola”). While one author was the main author responsible for the coding process, the results of the coding operations were initially cross-checked by the other two authors to reach an agreement on the coding procedure. The coding followed different steps: a) each article was read by two of the authors by isolating the verbatim declarations of the narrators (the unit of coding), b) the authors checked if the sentences identified contained the necessary narrative elements (characters + moral of the story), and c) we applied the PNF research protocol detailed by Shanahan et al. in 2018 to isolate the different elements of the narratives (characters such as victims, villains, and heroes; morals of the stories; and plots) and the main content (narrative strategies and policy beliefs). For the narrative strategies, we tried to code stories aimed at influencing the size of the coalition in terms of PNF strategies (issue expansion, devil or angel shifts, and causal mechanisms attributing blame) and in terms of internal or external legitimacy as new categories. These operations produced a database of Renzi’s own declarations, codified into 152 rows for the JA and 148 rows for the GS2. The subsequent analysis of the database was done qualitatively by isolating the relevant portions of the text with filters related to the main policy actors, their narrative elements and the policy instrument for the two reforms.

4. A tale of two reforms: the formulation and adoption of the JA and the GS

In this section, we provide an account of the process of the two reforms, focusing on the policy content, outputs, main policy actors and coalitions, and characteristics of the external context. Table 1 and Figure 2 summarize this section.

4.1. The reform of the labour market: policy goals, process, actors and preferred policy solutions

Renzi’s cabinet reform of the labour market, known as the JA, was inspired by a blueprint presented by the prime minister Matteo Renzi during a political convention in December 2013. The reform aimed to tackle historical and structural issues of the Italian labour market, such as (i) the segmentation and rigidity of the labour market, visible in a multitude of types of employment

2 Nevertheless, during the coding process, the narratives of others key policy actors have been analysed, for a total of 624 rows for the JA database and 595 rows for the GS database. 9 contracts and heavily bureaucratic procedures; (ii) the precariousness of youths’ contracts; (iii) the prevalence of passive policy interventions, e.g., through the wide use of short-term work (STW); and (iv) the weak role and impact of active labour market policies (ALMPs; Scarano 2019). These issues even intensified as a result of economic crisis.

Therefore, in contrast to previous legislative acts, the JA intervened simultaneously in different fields of labour market policy. The policy goals illustrated in the JA were largely driven by the so-called ‘embedding flexibilization’ according to which a greater liberalization of the labour market in terms of employment protection legislation (EPL) is compensated by an expansion of workers’ social rights (Picot and Tassinari 2017; Sacchi, 2018). While the rationalization (and extension) of unemployment benefits as well as the reconfiguration of STW aimed at expanding social rights and the reorganization and simplification of work contracts intended to increase the degree of liberalization of the labour market.

For the purpose of this paper, we focus only on the second set of policy instruments provided by the JA. In this regard, the most important policy instrument advanced by the JA was the introduction of a new type of permanent work insertion contract (‘contratto a tutele crescenti’), which would have replaced several other varieties of open-ended contracts. The novelty introduced lies in the rules on illegitimated dismissal, that is, when an employer terminates the employment relationship without subjective or objective justified reasons. With this type of contract, the newly hired workers no longer had the right to be reinstated but only to receive an economic compensation that grows with increasing length of service, ultimately affecting the legal protection provided by Article 18 of the Statute of Workers (law 300/1970). In this way, the legislator aimed to decrease and reduce the uncertainty of the firing costs, thus providing incentives to employers to hire new workers on a permanent basis (Scarano, 2019). The underlying idea of the JA was thus to fight youth precariousness by providing flexibility and simplification. This policy recipe was informally recommended by the ECB in September 2014 since Article 18 was considered an old-fashioned and unnecessary element of rigidity of the labour market. In contrast, almost all the main trade unions (the CGIL and UIL) strongly contested, through general strikes (e.g., December 2014), the abolition of Article 18, which was considered one of the milestones of employment protection legislation (EPL) in Italy. Unions equally contested the ‘disintermediation strategy’ adopted by Renzi’s cabinet, visible through their refusal of the historical social concertation, which usually entailed an active role of external stakeholders, especially unions, in policy development (Sacchi 2018; Pritoni and Sacchi 2019). Finally, the liberalization of the labour market was considered a break with the traditional closeness of the PD as the main Italian leftist party. For this reason, the JA was also contested by the PD minority and other minority left-wing parties.

10 Nevertheless, the legislative path from the approval of delegating law n. 183 in December 2014 to the adoption of the eight legislative decrees proved to be quite rapid (April 2014- June 2015), with the initial policy solution proposed by Renzi adopted with only minor revisions to meet the requests of the PD minority. Two factors undeniably contributed to this successful adoption of the JA. On the one hand, the timing of the reform was important: Renzi’s government enjoyed strong political legitimacy as a result of victory in the European elections in May 2014. On the other hand, the influence of the EU on recommending specific policy solutions, namely, the liberalization of the labour market, granted additional external legitimacy to the government’s proposal (Sacchi, 2018). Finally, the opposition to the JA proved to be ineffective because of internal divisions across both political parties (the main opposition right-wing parties supported the reform to a certain extent) and unions, with the CISL partially diverging from the CGIL and UIL concerning the abolition of Article 18.

4.2 Reform of the school system: policy goals, process, actors and preferred policy solutions

The reform of the school system, named the GS, was initially proposed by Renzi’s centre-left cabinet (February 2014 - December 2016) at the beginning of September 2014. According to the first programmatic document, the GS was intended to finally tackle the policy issues that previous reforms ultimately failed to address effectively, namely, the organizational autonomy of schools and the long- term precariousness of teachers’ employment contracts (Capano and Lippi, 2018).

Concerning policy solutions, at least based on the first programmatic document, the reform significantly strengthened the powers of the principal to the detriment of collegial bodies. The principal was granted the authority to develop and plan educational activities without requiring the approval of the school collegial body, to directly select tenure teachers assigned to school districts and to distribute merit-based bonuses for teachers. All these instruments were considered crucial elements to finally give schools that organizational autonomy that was never fully made possible by Berlinguer’s reform in 1997. Furthermore, to address teachers’ precariousness, for which Italy was condemned by the European Court of Justice3 in November 2014, the GS advanced a twofold policy solution. On the one hand, an exceptional plan of recruitment of approximately 100,000 temporary teachers (September 2015) was developed to hire those teachers who were part of the so-called ‘Graduatorie ad Esaurimento (GaE)’, which was one of the main rankings from which teachers were annually recruited by schools through temporary contracts, waiting for a permanent position. On the

3 The European Court of Justice asked to the Italian government to hire those workers working in the public sector (in this case, teachers) who have already achieved more than 36 months of temporary contracts. 11 other hand, the GS intended to change the path to becoming a teacher by integrating the attainment of teacher qualification and the path to be hired as a permanent teacher through a mix of training and a period of paid internships within schools.

The innovation of the GS equally lies in how the entire policy process was coordinated by the government. The GS was indeed characterized by strong mediatic exposure, marked identification with the prime minister and marked unilateralism in its development. Matteo Renzi personally and constantly promoted the reform, e.g., by announcing and illustrating the main points of the reform through social media (Argentin and Barone, 2016). Moreover, just after the public presentation of the first programmatic document, the prime minister launched a two-month public online consultation (with almost 200,000 participants) together with 40 official events and approximately 2,000 debates with citizens, families, and teachers and without the unions (Capano and Pavan 2019). This process was an absolute rupture in traditional policy making in school reforms in Italy, where the intermediation of unions has always been crucial (Argentin and Barone, 2016; Capano and Lippi, 2018).

Both the innovative policy solutions proposed by the government (i.e., the strengthening of the principal’s power and the introduction of a merit-based system of evaluation for teachers) and the unilateralism in the policy process rapidly generated a strong opposition to the reform by both unions and political parties, including a minority in Renzi’s own party. Unions, which largely represent teachers, contested their exclusions from the policy process and the reduction in teachers’ rights that would have resulted from the new principal’s power. This opposition resulted in several general strikes carried out throughout 2015. Moreover, although the extraordinary plan of recruitment of precarious teachers was welcomed by unions, strong protests arose as a result of the interregional mobility requirements that teachers should have accepted to eventually be hired. Similarly, the PD minority and other minor left-wing parties strongly opposed the GS, claiming its intrinsic managerialistic ideas. This intense opposition eventually softened the original shape of the GS when it was approved in July 2015 (law n. 107) (Capano and Terenzi, 2019). For example, the role of the principal was initially conceived as free of the conditionings of the collegial bodies both in relation to the development of the plan of educational activities and the direct selection of teachers. However, the approved version of the law stated that the plan of education activities is first elaborated by collegial bodies based on the managerial/strategic indications of principals, whereas later, these principals were asked to cooperate more with collegial bodies during the selection of new teachers, ultimately weakening the original ideas presented in September 2014.

12 Table 1 – Policy content and subsystems in the Jobs Act and in the Good School Reform Act

Jobs Act (JA) Good School Reform Act (GS) • Consolidation of schools’ • Reduction in youth precariousness organizational and teaching autonomy Policy goals • Flexibilization and liberalization of the • Introduction of merit in teachers’ labour market career advancement • Reduction in teacher precariousness • Strengthening of the principal’s powers • Introduction of a new type of • Introduction of an evaluation merit- permanent work insertion contract with based system linked to teachers’ salary Policy lower fiscal costs for employers • Plan of recruitment for approximately instruments • Modification of normative or 100,000 temporary teachers illegitimated dismissal (abolition of

Article 18 of the Statute of Workers) • New training path for becoming teachers

• Egalitarian careers and salaries for Policy beliefs in teachers • Safeguard of fix-term jobs the subsystem • Democratic procedures and collegialism

• Renzi’s cabinet [for JA] • Renzi’s cabinet [for GS] • Association of the industrial Italian • Students, families, principals, and Main national employers (Confindustria) [for JA] teachers (involved in public policy actors • Centre-right parties [for JA] consultations) [for GS] and coalitions • PD minority and M5S [against JA] • PD minority and M5S [against GS] • Trade unions (CGIL, CISL, UIL) • Trade unions (CGIL, CISL, UIL), [against JA] [against GS] International • European Commission (EC) and • Court of Justice of the European Union policy actors European Central Bank (ECB) [for JA] [for GS] Legislative From April 2014 to June 2015 From September 2014 to July 2015 timeframe • Long-term economic crisis • Long-term economic crisis External • EU conditionality and EU semester • Renzi’s popularity decreases after the context • Renzi’s popularity increases after Regional elections in May 2015 electoral victory in May 2014 The final legislative text differs from the original The final legislative text is approved according policy proposal particularly in terms of Policy outputs to the original policy proposal principals’ power and the merit-based evaluation system

13 Figure 2 – Process and timing of the JA and the GS

5. Findings

5.1 Expectation 1: The political leader will adopt different narrative styles

The comparative analysis of what type of characters and morals of the stories are identified by Renzi in the two reforms reveals some interesting similarities.

In terms of the characters, Renzi identifies the same categories of actors as victims, villains and heroes. In both the JA and the GS, victims are the young generations, defined as precarious young workers when talking about labour and defined as the students and their families when talking about the schools.

In the JA, the youngest individuals who are left outside the job market are the victims of a system that safeguards only the insiders of the job market: fixed-term employees: “The numbers of youth unemployment are hallucinating. That is why the JA will be our priority” (Renzi 01/03/2014). At the same time, Renzi identified unions that protect only fixed-term employees as villains as well as the political class and former governments: “Italy is a gridlocked country, and employment is our priority. There is a division between those who have rights and those who do not. The unions defend the former” (Renzi, 1/3/2014).

14 Indeed, Renzi and his government are represented as heroes, in opposition to unions: “At last, politics (i.e., the government – ed.) combat the job precariat and not the precarious workers” (Renzi, 20/12/2014); “Landini (i.e., a unionist leader – ed.) wants to occupy the fabrics, and we want to open them” (Renzi, 9/10/2014); and “We (i.e., the government -ed.) are taking care of all the workers, and you (i.e., the unions – ed.), only of some” (Renzi, 19/09/2014).

In the GS, the victims are again the country at large as well as young students—“our sons and daughters”—and, most importantly, teachers. Teachers are plagued by job precariousness, while students are grouped in “chicken coop classes” that deprive them of their educational needs while causing social disruption: “the unavoidable goal of the GS is to put teachers into the classes by hiring them to stay and not just for one year. The GS wants to defeat the decennial evil of precariousness” (Renzi 4/3/2015); “our aim is not only to comfort precarious teachers: we are hiring them because making teachers live in continuous uncertainty damages the pupils” (Renzi 23/02/2015).

The villains are both the state and the (past) governments, which have betrayed the teachers by taking away financial resources from the schools, and trade unions, which worsened job precariousness by blocking the country: “Schools belongs to the families and to the pupils, not to the unions. It is ridiculous to strike against the first government that gives money to the teachers and that eliminates job precariousness by a huge hiring plan, never seen before in the schools” (Renzi 21/04/2015); “listening to everybody does not mean that a decision has to be made, otherwise, we are in the swamp: this attitude (of the unions) is the same that has blocked the country for twenty years, and we will not allow this to last” (Renzi 22/02/2015). The hero is again Renzi’s government: “We want to stop job precariousness in schools and the disease of teacher supply. The first goal of our reform is an extraordinary plan to hire new teachers” (Renzi 3/09/2015); “we are putting money into the schools: the previous governments were cutting it” (Renzi 13/05/2015).

The morals of the stories are also similar: there is the idea that a fast and decisive action has to be taken to inject movement and competition both into the job market and into the school system. Furthermore, there is the idea that traditional policy instruments constrain the vital forces of both the market and society. The proposed policy instruments aim at the liberalization of the job market and at the managerialization of the school system that is steered by the central government.

In the JA, the problem is identified with the rigidities of the job market, and the solution to its flexibilization is to remove outdated policy instruments that distract national and international entrepreneurs from investing in and hiring the youngest individuals. For example, Article 18 states that “It’s a ‘70’s rule and we are now in 2014. It’s like taking an iPhone and then asking: where should I put the token? It’s like catching a digital camera and striving to insert the roll. The Italy of rolls is

15 over” (26/10/2014). “Article 18 is an ideological totem around which you can see dancing the usual subjects who do not worry about real issues but only make ideological discussions (19/12/2015); “having a job is a constitutional right, not Article 18” (Renzi, 29/9/2014).

In the GS, the morals of the stories describe how the solution is the realization of school autonomy due to the decisive financial investment of the government in education for the purpose of hiring teachers, empowering school principals and introducing a merit-based system for teachers: “the new model for school is the realization of the autonomy that remained only on paper. Each single school will develop planning based on its specific needs: the school principal, like a coach, will decide who is going into the classes to stay. This system will also end the evil mechanisms of classrooms as chicken coops” (Renzi 13/03/2015). “One point has to be clear: the choice of school autonomy is decisive (Renzi 28/04/2015)”. “Autonomy means removing and deleting the power of ministerial guidelines that using a bureaucratic language, decide the future of our kids and asking schools to open themselves to the surrounding environment and cultural realities” (Renzi 13/05/2015). “This government finally realizes school autonomy (…). The responsibility (and consequently the evaluation) of the school principal is reinforced. Principals are not sheriffs, but rather prims inter pares in the educational community” (13/05/2015). “Unions claim, ‘let’s hire the teachers first, and then, we will see’: this mechanism is wrong because it would transform the issue of job precariousness into a large social security benefit issue of schools” (15/05/2015).

In sum, Renzi adopted the same narrative style in both reforms. He presented the young generations, the teachers and the country at large as the victims of a dramatic situation. This drama was caused by the long-term actions of past governments and of the unions as the main villains. Renzi also presented his government as the hero in both instances. The morals of the stories pointed to a liberalization of the job market and the school system from the constraints of the past. The first expectation, i.e., the leader should adapt the components of his narratives to the different subsystem, seems disconfirmed.

Regarding the first expectation, we have also proposed that political leaders could design their narratives according not only to policy goals but also to their own political goals and symbols, due to the use of political meta-narratives. Renzi’s political meta-narratives seemed to emerge either when he talked of the JA or when he talked of the GS. He declared that his political goal was to break the rules of the past to free the country from the swamp of veto powers by both politicians and unions. He also pictured himself as the hero who was going to save the young generation and society at large from the chains that have been being tightened by both the political class and the unions. Regarding the JA, “You know why they (the unions – ed.) are blaming us? Because we are taking power from them. (...) the truth is that we are doing a revolution in the country, and we are also obliging the unions

16 to change” (Renzi, 4/5/2014); “I have a problem with the unions that engage in politics. They should better take care of those they never cared about (the young and the precarious workers – ed.)” (Renzi, 4/11/2014). Regarding the GS, “No government has never made such investments in education. We, as Blairian, want education, education and education, which in Italian translates to ‘future’” (21/01/2015); “After long years where the government has done nothing, I prefer taking the risks rather than being trapped in a swamp” (Renzi 19/04/2015); and “We are the first government that puts 3 billion into the schools (...) if we believe in this reform, then we will change Italy; otherwise, we are going nowhere” (Renzi 5/5/2015).

In other words, Renzi’s political meta-narratives presented young unemployed individuals and teachers as victims and himself as the hero that saved the victims from the unions (the main villains). This meta-narrative was aimed at widening his political consent in the general electorate and, thus, outside the subsystem. However, at the same time, this meta-narrative was particularly problematic for the school system: Renzi narrated the teachers as characters who were separate and dethatched from the unions, while in the Italian school subsystem, over 60% of the teachers belonged to a union.

5.2 Expectation 2: plot and focus on policy targets

Regarding the plot, the analysis of Renzi’s narratives again showed similarities between the JA and the GS. He basically told a story of decline (“the bleeding of jobs” for the JA and “twenty years of betrayed promises to the teachers” for the GS) to dramatize the situation and call attention to it; he also shaped stories of taking control and of rising, but with different targets. In the JS, the story of rising involved the young unemployed individuals themselves and the country while presenting his government as the hero that finally “takes away any excuses from entrepreneurs who don’t want to hire the youngest”. In the GS, the story of rising was more focused on society at large, families, students and principals. While being framed as the main victims, teachers never become the heroes of the reform.

In the JA, Renzi and the government emerged as the heroes of the story according to the plot: “The situation (of unemployment – ed.) is dramatic. The solutions of the past failed. We have to run: the country calls upon us” (Renzi 1/4/2014). The idea is that the government was able to “awaken Italy, the sleeping beauty”. Here, Renzi plotted a story of rising where the hero was Renzi himself: “The year 2014 was a Copernican revolution: we (the government) have changed the rhythm of politics (...). Now, I want to change the mood of Italians who are addicted to mistrust, to fear. Italy was restarted: in 2015, the challenge was to run” (Renzi, 29/12/2014).

17 In the GS, society emerged as a central character in terms of the future of the country as a whole: “The school is the place where we either change the country or remain in the swamp: Italy can be a cultural authority, and now, we have the opportunity to build a future for our children; wasting it would be a bad mistake (Renzi 14/05/2015). “If we will be able, in the next year, to rethink how Italy should invest in school, then we will then lay the foundations of growth for the next 20 years and provide an opportunity of educational beauty for our children and families. We want to fund schools because school is not a cost but an investment for our children, for the future of Italy. He who loves Italy equally loves school” (Renzi 03/09/2014).

Nevertheless, teachers never become saviours but remain those who have to be saved. “For several decades, political institutions have allowed an unjustified and hateful precariousness among teachers. (…). Being considered postal parcels to be shipped in different provinces and waiting for the summons in August is a humiliating and agonizing ritual. With the GS, we have put an end to this outrageous mechanism. I want to be clear: we have done only our duty, nothing more. We have invested in education, more money for teachers, and more teachers for our kids to contrast the intolerable philosophy of classrooms as chicken coops (11/11/2015)”.

Other heroes of the change in schools are identified as school principals rather than teachers. Principals are presented as coaches that reward (or downgrade) teachers, who are seen as players—a divisive image for the egalitarian and collegial nature of the school system in Italy: “Let’s leave the sheriffs in the western. The principal becomes now an educational leader, a person who comes from the school context that put himself/herself at the service of the educational world with instruments and powers that allow him/her to finally take decisions” (Renzi 03/04/2015).

Therefore, the real “heroes” of the story in the GS narratives are Renzi’s government and the principals, while teachers remain the victims who must be saved. Moreover, teachers play the role of a particular kind of victim: teachers receive long-awaited fixed-term positions and have to accept evaluation by principals, an idea that goes against the deep-rooted conception of egalitarian careers and salaries for Italian teachers. In Renzi’s narratives, teachers should change their attitude from demanding rights to being responsible: “We have ultimately hired the precarious teachers from the GaE. This was a right that has not been respected for 20 years. Today, after this extraordinary phase, every teacher will know that being hired is not only a worker’s right but also a responsibility, a gift, an opportunity” (Renzi 21/01/2015). “We give more money to teachers, and the word ‘merit’ is not a swear word: we cannot grant the same salary increase to everybody. The principal’s shouting at some unions’ demonstrations, based on which ‘nobody can judge me’, is longer valid” (Renzi 14/05/2015).

18 In sum, Renzi adopted similar plots, but the plots in the GS always include the main policy target— teachers (who ultimately sustained both the benefits and costs for the proposed changes)—as victims. Teachers never became the heroes of the school system. Instead, heroes are the principals, according to a logic of vertical leadership that is strongly considered by Renzi’s opponents (the PD minority and the unions) a dangerous authoritarian drift in school systems.

5.3 Expectation 3: the narrative strategies should seek both internal and external legitimacy in more cohesive policy subsystems

Shaping the narrative strategies according to the context means that the leader must consider subsystem characteristics. In more fragmented subsystems, narratives that legitimize the reform mainly from the outside of the policy sector could prove to be successful, especially when relevant events occur in the external context (such as an economic crisis or international pressures). Instead, in more closed and cohesive subsystems, the narratives also have to trigger internal legitimacy to avoid the countermobilization of powerful actors against the reform. Renzi’s narrative strategies mainly sought legitimacy outside the system of the labour market and school policies by arguing that it is society, young generations, families, and international actors that require the rigidities of the past to be eliminated and for labour and schools to be unchained. In doing so, Renzi’s narratives also discarded usual practices in the intermediation: the reforms could be designed and approved without the input of employers’ associations and the unions and by directly asking citizens.

In the JA, Renzi first sought external legitimacy. He used the strategies of issue expansion and angel shift to justify that the JA is the only solution to save the country, to attract new investments from abroad, and to gain credibility (and financial resources) from the EU: “Data related to unemployment are dramatic. The country is asking us to run; otherwise, it will be too late. We are losing 1,000 jobs every day” (Renzi 01/04/2014). “The purpose of the reform is also to attract new investments. Without new investments, we will never have new jobs, and the number of unemployed will ultimately increase” (20/09/2014). “We know very well that it is not going to be a rule on employment contracts to reverse the negative data on unemployment. However, our task is to simplify and make firms free of excessive bureaucracy. We must give stability and certainty to employment relationships, as Europe asked us to do” (04/06/2014). “If we want to create new jobs, then we must get our confidence back. If there is no confidence in Italy, then entrepreneurs will not invest here, and we actually need private investments, foreign investments, and public investments” (Renzi 04/06/2014). “I challenge multinational corporations to visit, invest and innovate in our country. They are welcome, and in this regard, we are currently reducing labour costs (17/09/2014).

19 While pointing towards external legitimacy, Renzi also claimed that reform was needed for some categories of actors that were internal to the labour subsystem. He suggested that the legitimacy of the reforms comes from young precarious workers who are excluded from the safeguards of permanent positions and from entrepreneurs: “It is not the regulation that creates the jobs: it is the entrepreneur” (Renzi 8/01/2014). “In Italy, we inherited an apartheid of jobs, between those who have a permanent position and those who have not. The JA gives rights to the young and opportunities to the new generations” (Renzi 31/03/2015). “With the JA, we recognized the right to work to an entire generation. Things such as ‘paid vacations’ and ‘loans’ (to buy their own houses – ed.) enter in the vocabulary of one entire generation of young people who were excluded from those rights in outrageous ways” (Renzi, 20/02/2015).

This legitimation strategy is coupled with the angel shift narrative that pictures Renzi’s government as the reckless hero that is ready to act against conventions: “We will ask for a vote of confidence on the reform if it will be needed. What really matters is to keep the confidence of those who create jobs in Italy (the entrepreneurs and the investors – ed.). We are not dealing with the personal destinies of some politicians but with the destiny of the entire country, which is much more important” (Renzi 03/11/2014). “Investors appreciate our reforms, as we can see from Standard and Poor’s judgement, but they present doubts on our capacity to approve them. Therefore, while parliament would like us to slow down, Europe and investors have asked us to hurry up, and we are fully convinced about accelerating” (07/12/2014).

Renzi also became the hero in the narratives of the employers’ association Confindustria: “The jobs act is a legislative act with strategic relevance and characterized by a strong break with the past” (Confindustria 06/05/2015). “The prime minister proved to have a strong determination according to Article 18. We look with faith to this process. Not having Article 18 will encourage foreign investors and small firms to grow” (Confindustria 08/03/2016).

At the same time, unions are presented as devils, being themselves the causes of the problem: “Where were the unions when the biggest injustice of our times came about, that between those who hold a job and those who don’t? (...) (this happened – ed.) because (the unions ed.) have thought to fight only ideological battles and not the problems of the people’ (Renzi: 19/9/2014). Renzi disregarded social concertation as the usual way of developing labour policies “with” the unions. He played a disintermediation game, presenting, in his narratives, the unions as intentionally blocking the country with their vetoes: “We are here if unions want to open a discussion. If they want to fuel an argument, then they can do it; we can go ahead even without unions. We are available to listen, but they should stop such veto power” (Renzi, 06/05/2014).

20 Renzi also challenged the unions on the ground of their internal cohesion, being aware of the fragmentation in the labour subsystem: “By angering those who contest us (the unions – ed.), we make everybody go forward, in particular, the youth, the industries and the temporary workers, even at the cost of displeasing the trade unions or a political party minority” (Renzi 22/09/2014). “Our country has been too often blocked by vetoes. We would be a much more competitive country today if the reform had been implemented when Schroeder and Blair did the same in Germany and the UK. In contrast, Italy had to wait until 2015 for its cabinet (to achieve these reforms – ed.). For this reason, we do not allow trade unions to block this reformative project. It is legitimated to think differently, but it is a duty for us to decide and go forward” (Renzi 21/11/2014). “The unions have a heavy responsibility in this drama because they stand only for the insiders (the permanent workers – ed.). We, as the Democratic Party, have to be sincere with the unions, to make it better for them” (Renzi, 29/9/2014).

In the GS, Renzi initially sought legitimacy both outside and inside the school system. His narratives aimed at expanding the conflict outside the system: he argued that it was not only European institutions but also Italian society and families who were urging the government to act. “We are making the school reform for our kids not to hire 200,000 people, for our students not as social benefits” (Renzi, 08/06/2015). “The school reform we are developing might also not be the best reform in the world. However, we must change the current situation for the good of the country; we cannot turn our backs on it” (19/02/2015). “After years of precariousness in school, this is the biggest recruitment made by a government of the Republic. In addition, it is not true that it is the European Court of Justice that imposed us to do so: we did it ourselves” (13/05/2015).

Initially, Renzi also pointed to internal legitimacy by saying that the investments in schools made by his government were an amendment to the long betrayal of teachers perpetuated by previous governments. At the same time, he tried to picture the teachers as autonomous from both the ministerial bureaucracies and the trade unions: “The choice of school autonomy is decisive. This means that schools are not in the hands of ministerial regulations and unions but in those of teachers, families, and students (Renzi 28/4/2015).

Later, he used narratives that were clearly divisive for the values shared in the Italian school system (e.g., egalitarianism among teachers), such as the need to introduce merit and competition among teachers through the empowerment of the principal’s leadership, which goes against the internal beliefs system: “We give more money to teachers, and the word ‘merit’ is not a swear word: we cannot grant the same salary increase to everybody. The principle claimed in some unions’ demonstrations, based on which ‘nobody can judge me’, can no longer be valid” (Renzi 14/05/2015).

21 The external legitimacy strategy then emerges as predominant. The narrative strategy of external legitimacy presents the need to design reforms away from the ministry and the social concertation and towards society, due to an innovative public consultation: “The method (i.e., of public consultation – ed.) is revolutionary since such a spread of public consultation has never been carried out in Italy. We have dedicated all our efforts so that the country could rethink the educational model of our kids” (Renzi 13/12/2014). “It is going to be both a difficult and an exciting experience to be confronted with tens of thousands of contributions that have arrived because of our request to comment, integrate, and contest the new proposals of school reform. We need people who are in love with school to help us build the reform, and we want to develop it with students, families and teachers (Renzi 13/12/2014).

The external legitimation strategy is nurtured by presenting the trade unions and the intermediation practices of the past as evil: “Listening to everyone does not mean to not do anything; otherwise, there is going to be a paralysis, which is the same behaviour that has been blocked in Italy for 20 years. We will not allow this behaviour any longer” (Renzi 22/02/2015). “The GS puts the student at the centre: in the long run, this means the nurturing of citizens to serve the collective” (Renzi, 12/3/2015). “School belongs to families and students, not to trade unions. It makes me laugh a strike against the first government that gives money to teachers and reduces their precariousness through a plan of hiring never before seen” (Renzi 21/04/2015). “Previous school minister Giovanni Berlinguer imagined the Italian school as the school of autonomy. We are available to listen to unions on everything, but the school effectively functions if it belongs to everyone (i.e., not only to the unions - editor’s note). We are not willing to stop the quality increase in the Italian school” (Renzi 12/05/2015). “If the GS is approved, then 100,000 teachers will be permanently hired. If it does not pass, then unions will continue to contest, but teachers will still be precarious (Renzi 03/05/2015). In sum, Renzi used narratives aimed at expanding the conflict outside both the labour and school subsystems to gain external legitimacy. While he nurtured the internal legitimacy of the JA by supporting the right of the young generations to have jobs, he strongly disregarded the internal legitimacy coming from the unions, which are key actors, especially inside the school system, where they represent 60% of employees. Playing against the unions was much more costly in the GS than in the JA. Table 2 below summarizes the main narrative elements and components.

22 Table 2 – Examples of Renzi’s narrative elements in the JA and in the GS

Narrative elements Examples from the JA Examples from the GS

Characters:

Victim The numbers of youth unemployment are hallucinating. That is why the our aim is not only to comfort precarious teachers: we are hiring them JA will be our priority because making teachers live in continuous uncertainty damages the pupils

Villain Italy is a gridlocked country, and employment is our priority. There is a For several decades, political institutions have allowed an unjustified and division between those who have rights and those who do not. The unions hateful precariousness among teachers. defend the former

Hero We (i.e., the government -ed.) are taking care of all the workers, and you we are putting money into the schools: the previous governments were (i.e., the unions – ed.), only of some. cutting it

Political meta-narrative* You know why they (the unions – ed.) are blaming us? Because we are No government has never made such investments in education. We, as taking power from them. (...) the truth is that we are doing a revolution Blairian, want education, education and education, which in Italian in the country, and we are also obliging the unions to change translates to ‘future’

Policy target* With the JA, we recognized the right to work to an entire generation. We have ultimately hired the precarious teachers from the GaE. This was Things such as ‘paid vacations’ and ‘loans’ (to buy their own houses – a right that has not been respected for 20 years. Today, after this ed.) enter in the vocabulary of one entire generation of young people who extraordinary phase, every teacher will know that being hired is not only were excluded from those rights in outrageous ways a worker’s right but also a responsibility, a gift, an opportunity

Moral of the story Article 18 is an ideological totem around which you can see dancing the the new model for school is the realization of the autonomy that remained usual subjects who do not worry about real issues but only make only on paper. Each single school will develop planning based on its ideological discussions specific needs: the school principal, like a coach, will decide who is going into the classes to stay. This system will also end the evil mechanisms of classrooms as chicken coops.

Plot:

story of decline The situation (of unemployment – ed.) is dramatic. The solutions of the The school is the place where we either change the country or remain in past failed. We have to run: the country calls upon us the swamp

story of rising The year 2014 was a Copernican revolution: we (the government) have If we will be able, in the next year, to rethink how Italy should invest in changed the rhythm of politics (...). Now, I want to change the mood of school, then we will then lay the foundations of growth for the next 20

23 Italians who are addicted to mistrust, to fear. Italy was restarted: in 2015, years and provide an opportunity of educational beauty for our children the challenge was to run and families.

Narrative strategies:

Issue expansion Data related to unemployment are dramatic. The country is asking us to We want to fund schools because school is not a cost but an investment run; otherwise, it will be too late. We are losing 1,000 jobs every day for our children, for the future of Italy. He who loves Italy equally loves school

Angel shift We will ask for a vote of confidence on the reform if it will be needed. After long years where the government has done nothing, I prefer taking What really matters is to keep the confidence of those who create jobs in the risks rather than being trapped in a swamp Italy (the entrepreneurs and the investors – ed.). We are not dealing with We are the first government that puts 3 billion into the schools (...) if we the personal destinies of some politicians but with the destiny of the believe in this reform, then we will change Italy; otherwise, we are going entire country, which is much more important nowhere

Devil shift Where were the unions when the biggest injustice of our times came Listening to everyone does not mean to not do anything; otherwise, there about, that between those who hold a job and those who don’t? (...) (this is going to be a paralysis, which is the same behaviour that has been happened – ed.) because (the unions ed.) have thought to fight only blocked in Italy for 20 years. We will not allow this behaviour any longer ideological battles and not the problems of the people

External legitimacy* We know very well that it is not going to be a rule on employment We are making the school reform for our kids not to hire 200,000 people, contracts to reverse the negative data on unemployment. However, our for our students not as social benefits task is to simplify and make firms free of excessive bureaucracy. We The method (i.e., of public consultation – ed.) is revolutionary since such must give stability and certainty to employment relationships, as Europe a spread of public consultation has never been carried out in Italy. We asked us to do. have dedicated all our efforts so that the country could rethink the If we want to create new jobs, then we must get our confidence back. If educational model of our kids. there is no confidence in Italy, then entrepreneurs will not invest here, The GS puts the student at the centre: in the long run, this means the and we actually need private investments, foreign investments, and nurturing of citizens to serve the collective public investments

Internal legitimacy* In Italy, we inherited an apartheid of jobs, between those who have a We give more money to teachers, and the word ‘merit’ is not a swear permanent position and those who have not. The JA gives rights to the word: we cannot grant the same salary increase to everybody. The young and opportunities to the new generations principle claimed in some unions’ demonstrations, based on which ‘nobody can judge me’, can no longer be valid

Policy beliefs It’s a ‘70’s rule and we are now in 2014. It’s like taking an iPhone and School belongs to families and students, not to trade unions. then asking: where should I put the token?; having a job is a constitutional right, not Article 18

Legend: in italics, subcategories of narrative elements according to the PNF; * indicates additional categories (such as political meta-narratives; policy target; internal vs external legitimacy) 24 5. Discussion: from policy narratives to political meta-narratives

The comparison of the two case studies presented above shows two different decisional outputs of two policy reform processes that occurred almost at the same time and that were steered by the same political leader. Furthermore, the two policy processes were characterized by the attempt to introduce large reforms on the basis of solutions that were not new because they had been part of the previous policy debates but had never had the chance to be fixed in the governmental agenda. The relevance of the political leader, and of his narratives, was first certified by the capacity to prioritize solutions that nobody before had the willingness or political strength to seriously consider politically doable. From this point of view, in both of the analysed cases, the role of the Prime Minister was characterized by his effort to show himself as an ideational leader (Stiller 2009) with an apparent strong policy orientation: the leader was there to change things as nobody had ever done in the past. Given these similarities, why did Renzi succeed in one case and fail in the other case? What does this experience tell us in terms of the capacity of leaders to use narratives towards policy change? To answer these questions, the first point to be considered is that the political leader substantially adopted the same framework for his narrative: the narrator was the hero, who was promising a solution to long-lasting problems and very often also became an angel; the villains were the previous government and, above all, the unions (that very often were “devilized”); and the victims were the society, as well as individuals in some broad social or professional categories like unemployed young generations and precarious workers. Furthermore, there is a further similarity that can be defined as the political dimension of the narrative: the choice of disintermediation as the indispensable procedural condition to make the goals announced in the narrative obtainable. These similarities have been pursued despite the different characteristics of the two involved policy subsystems; however, if narratives are tools through which political leaders can shape beliefs and actions in a specific policy field (Stone 2012; Jones & McBeth, 2010; Zahariadis 2016), then this incoherence between the adopted narrative framework and the policy subsystem of application is absolutely relevant. In fact, this asymmetry can be a “smoking gun”, showing that leaders’ narrative is not important and that instead, what is relevant in driving the policy process and policy change is the prevailing narrative in the policy subsystem. However, we do not think that this is the case. Overall, the narrative adopted in the JA process was effective because it was capable of capitalizing on the fragmentation of the subsystem and consequently assigned the roles of villains, victims and heroes in an appropriate way by maintaining this assignment constant over time. In contrast, in the case of the GS, the narrator was not able to interpret the implications of the apparent ideational and structural cohesion of the subsystem (or, in other words, he was not capable of expanding the internal conflict) and changed the assignment of a role to teachers over time. Sometimes, they were victims, especially when the focus was on precariousness; very often, they were marginalized in the narrative, like when the narrator emphasized school autonomy as an institutional property and not as a teacher’s professional property; very often, they were indirectly blamed because, due the high level of teachers’ unionization, the continuous definitions of unions as villains or devils had an impact on the teachers themselves. Furthermore, when proposing the

25 introduction of a pay merit system, the narrator clashed with the hegemonic professional value of equal treatment and careers in the Italian school system. All in all, the adopted narrative was perceived as blaming teachers, while they were the main target of the reform: many of them were asked to transfer in other regions, thus paying the cost of the reform on their individual lives and families. Thus the reform was perceived as a “sacrifice” for teachers, despite the unprecedented financial investment to hire 100,000 precarious teachers. Here, it emerges how the narrator failed to interpret the structural characteristics of the target in the two subsystems. In the JA, the targets were the enterprises and the unemployed (mainly the young generations) rather than unions and, potentially, the employed. Thus, there was a clear divide inside the policy subsystem in terms of contrasting legitimation that helped in enlarging the scope of the conflict and in finding significant external legitimation. In the GS, the targets were teachers, both the precarious teachers (who share the same professional values as those of the tenured) and those holding a tenure position (who were in charge of dealing with the proposed increased powers of principals and with the merit pay system). In the school sector, there was no internal divide among interests, as in labour policy, and thus, the proposed narrative was unable to create internal conflict in the subsystem; in contrast, the narrative risks “villainizing” the subsystem by attacking internal hegemonic values. Thus, in the case of the GS, the narrator not only was incoherent over time but also searched only for external legitimacy, without any real attempt either to work on enlarging the scope of conflict inside the policy field, which has a certain level of diversification in terms of interest representation (Capano and Terenzi 2014 and 2019), or on containing the issue through a more calibrated communication of the potential impact of the increased powers of principals. Consequently, and as the second point to be discussed, the political leader was not strategic in building his narratives. All in all, the adopted narrative was characterized by a certain degree of rigidity and, above all, by not being truly committed to reshaping the beliefs and preferences in the two subsystems. The two narratives simply capitalized on the existing cleavages in the labour market while taking for granted the almost monolithic belief system in the school system. Here, a strategic mistake was made in considering the role of the unions as being very similar in the two subsystems, while this was not the case. In fact, while the relevance and representativeness of trade unions has been declining for a decade since the enactment of labour policy, it is still strong in the school system. Thus, the procedural choice to proceed without any kind of negotiation with unions, although it has been a catalyst of allies in terms of labour policy, has represented a powerful driver of opposition in the school system. This strategic mistake in terms of potential policy effectiveness can be justified by the political goal that has emerged to stand behind the heroic character of the narrator and his apparent policy-oriented efforts: to build up a different, from the past, political narrative that shows that personal leadership can make the difference in terms of policy effectiveness. Thus, strategic mistakes have been driven by the goal of what could be defined as a political “meta-narrative”, which can be considered the founding source inspiring the policy narratives built up in the two policy subsystems. Accordingly, the strategic mistakes made in choosing the same policy narrative should not refer to the individual characteristics of the narrators (and thus explained in terms of “superego”) but to a conscious choice to pursue a clear political goal. In addition, this goal (a different political style) 26 could be shown not only in the new ideas and solutions proposed but also, and above all, in the policy style adopted. This means that the disintermediation represents a watershed with respect to the inherited practices (public consultation in the case of the GS is a clear proof of this). Thus, the needs and goal of the political meta-narrative were more important than the content of the policy narratives. The narrator wanted to be a political hero more than a policy hero, and political change came before a policy change. Most likely, if Renzi had decided to negotiate with the major trade unions concerning the content of his reform, then he could have obtained more relevant results (for example, clearly exchanging the hire of precarious teachers with the strengthening of the institutional autonomy of schools). However, this would have shown continuity in the policy and political style, which was exactly the opposite of the goal pursued by the political meta-narrative. Finally, a third necessary point to be mentioned is that when the narrator is a top political leader, as a Prime Minister surely is, necessarily, the victims must be divided into categories (society, the young generation, elderly individuals, etc.); thus, external legitimation is a pillar of the narratives of political leaders. The choice of villains could vary according to the context. However, it is clear that if blamed actors are more powerful, then the search for external legitimation will be less effective due to the capacity of the villains not only to resist but also to enlarge the scope of the conflict and to find allies (Merry 2016). This clearly is what happened in the GS case, in which the resistance of teachers and their unions affected the parliamentary majority that consequently, imposed significant changes to the Prime Minister during the parliamentary process.

6. Conclusions

In this paper, we have focused on the narratives of political leaders as potential drivers of policy change. The focus on political leaders aspires to add value to the main assumptions of the NPF that has not paid enough attention to the role of political leaders as narrators. The empirical analysis has compared two policy processes led by the same political leader by deploying the same policy narrative that has reached different legislative outputs. The main theoretical assumption leading the empirical analysis is that political leaders should use policy narratives in a strategic way to reach the expected results; thus, they are expected to design narratives according to the structural and ideational characteristics of the involved policy subsystem. According to the empirical evidence emerging from the comparison, the fact that the policy narrative of Renzi has failed in one of the two policy fields should be considered a consequence of the lack of a tailored design of his narrative, as it has not taken into appropriate account the structural and ideational characteristics of one of the policy subsystems under investigation.

However, because the internal characteristics of the school policy subsystem are well known, the apparent lack of a strategic design of the narrative cannot necessarily be considered a superficial mistake by the leader but as a consequence of a political strategy. Thus, we have proposed taking into account that when designing policy narratives, political leaders could be oriented not only towards solving policy problems but also towards achieving general political goals. We have proposed

27 conceptualizing this as a political meta-narrative, that is, the set of basic political beliefs, values and goals that political leaders want to pursue through their political and policy actions. This conceptual proposal obviously needs more empirical research, but it is useful for better understanding the founding motivations of how political leaders select their policy narratives. We consider the focus on political meta-narratives to be very promising for better understanding how politics and top politicians act in the theatre of policy narratives and as a potentially fruitful analytical tool to grasp whether and how political leaders shape the relationships between their political and policy agendas.

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