Inside the Italian Covid-19 task forces

ABSTRACT

In the year of the pandemic, an unprecedented number of temporary advisory units (consisting of a wide range of experts) emerged in the Italian policy-making landscape to advise the government on ‘crisis management’ in different policy areas – attracting vast media attention. And yet, to date, very little is known about the actual role and composition of these bodies. Our article bridges this gap, mapping these ‘task forces’ so as to understand: i) their functions within policy-making during the pandemic; and ii) who are the experts sitting on these bodies and what expertise they bring to them. The analysis shows that the new advisory units were scarcely formalized, visible or transparent, and that (with some exceptions) they lacked influence. As for their components, a two-step cluster analysis allowed us to identify three ideal-types of experts – the mediator, the interpreter and the scientific expert – ultimately bringing a mix of skills to these exceptional advisory boards

KEYWORDS:

• Policy advice
• task force
• temporary advisory units
• experts
• skills
• Covid-19

Notes

1. Rizzo (2020).

2. By way of example, we may cite the background article in Il Sole-24 Ore, which identified as many as 15 national and regional level task forces staffed by around 400 experts: Perrone (2020).

3. The mapping was carried out within the framework of the PRIN2017 research project, ‘Who Advises What, When and How?’ Some of the missing information was obtained thanks to collaboration with the research-action project sponsored by the Scuola nazionale di amministrazione: ‘Il mestiere del policy advice’. The authors wish to thank the investigators associated with both projects for providing access to their data and are especially grateful to Simone Annaratone and Maria Chiara Cattaneo for their valuable and diligent work as research assistants.

4. The concept of visibility is used here to indicate the importance of the role played by the task forces in political debate. Visibility is a function of the presence of the task forces and their members in political debate (for example, in Parliament and within the executive) and in public debate (for example, in the media). We wish to emphasize, however, that the concept of visibility differs from the concept of transparency, and also that there is no univocal relationship between visibility and decision-making influence. Indeed, it is obvious that an actor with a high level of visibility in debate may have far less influence over a politician’s decision than one without visibility (such as, for example, a close relative or a branch of the state whose work is secret). However, it is equally obvious that in the case of bodies appointed in order to develop policy recommendations, like the Covid-19 task forces, a complete absence of visibility can undermine their credibility and so weaken the impact of their decisions.

5. The mapping exercise excluded those task forces that were the subject of journalistic discussion but for which it was not possible to locate their terms of reference, or any similar formal document. These included the task forces appointed by the Ministry of Justice to advise on prisons and the judicial system; the environment task force appointed by the minister, Sergio Costa, and the Coronavirus 2019-nCov 19 task force appointed by the Ministry of Health. In addition, we excluded from our analysis the two steering committees with the local authorities and with employers’ and workers’ representatives set up within the Prime Minister’s office, because they were staffed exclusively by politicians and had different remits. All of these entities were included in Perrone’s investigative piece, ‘15 task force per combattere il virus: ripartenza a rischio caos’, cited above.

6. By ‘bureaucratic’, we mean that the criterion for selection of the member derived from his/her affiliation with a bureaucratic organization involved in policy implementation.

7. This indicator was based on a search of the online archives of Corriere della Sera, la Repubblica, La Stampa and Il Sole-24 Ore, carried out by including the names and surnames of the chairs of the task forces among the key words inserted and noting the resulting occurrences.

8. Two step cluster analysis can be used with categorical variables and was carried out using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, SPSS.

9. At the time of writing, the new Prime Minister, Mario Draghi, had appointed as ministers four of the members of the task forces we have analysed: Vittorio Colao, Enrico Giovannini, Patrizio Bianchi and Roberto Cingolani. It will be interesting to see whether the policy advice they helped to develop will gain relevance in management of the crisis going forward.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maria Tullia Galanti

Maria Tullia Galanti Associate professor in Political Science and Public Policy; research interests in theories of the policy process, policy entrepreneurship, policy leadership, policy advice

Barbara Saracino

Barbara Saracino Senior assistant professor in Methodology of Political and Social Research and Sociology of Science; research interests in data collection and data analysis in quantitative and qualitative research; social construction of scientific knowledge; science and technology studies; public engagement with science