Introduction

This chapter analyses the past decade of transport policy in Italy. It explains the present change in policy-making patterns by contrasting the ideal types to specify the contradiction between Italian policy traditions and the new international and European developments. The chapter explains why discontinuous second-order change has to be considered improbable. Policy-making patterns are institutionalised; that is, they shape the perceptions and preferences of the actors and are difficult to reverse. The chapter presents some of the hypotheses about why change due to international factors takes place. It focuses on a nation-state within the European Union. The transition from the Keynesian welfare state to the competition state in the service sector inextricably involves regulatory reform of considerable scope. The chapter develops two conflicting hypotheses: the first one arguing that policy transfer within the European Union has to be understood as a process of coercion; and the second arguing that policy transfer is a process of voluntary emulation.