The Ghost of Crises Past: Analyzing Reform Sequences to Understand Italy’s Response to the Global Crisis

Using a process sequencing approach, this article shows how Italy’s response to an earlier fiscal crisis has shaped the response to the current one in two public sector areas that are especially susceptible to fiscal constraints: the budget process and personnel policies. Substantively, it shows the extent to which Italian policymakers have used the repertoire of solutions of the past and the pressures of the current crisis to freeze the expenditure of the public sector. Previous New Public Management-inspired reforms have been sidelined but not completely extinguished.