Reforming the judiciary through standards: agency empowerment and centre (re)building in Italy, 2001–2015
| Author | Daniela Piana |
| Published date | 01 December 2017 |
| Date | 01 December 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0020852315592022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
International Review of
Administrative Sciences
2017, Vol. 83(4) 757–772
!The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0020852315592022
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International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
Article
Reforming the judiciary through
standards: agency empowerment
and centre (re)building in Italy,
2001–2015
Daniela Piana
University of Bologna, Italy, and Institut des Hautes Etudes sur la
Justice, France
Abstract
The Italian judiciary has been under the spotlight for more than two decades. The key
criticism addressed to it has been the lack of organizational capacity, which is reflected
in the trial time frame. After 2000, European institutions launched a new and compre-
hensive policy stream, targeting the administrative and organizational capacities of
courts and public prosecutor offices. The pivotal policy instrument is represented by
standards and soft law in general. By referring to four case studies, analysed in depth on
the basis of a qualitative approach, this work engages in a critical appraisal of the New
Public Management-inspired judicial policies and the way in which they have been imple-
mented in the judicial sector in Italy.
Points for practitioners
This article makes a point about the structural and institutional conditions that turn out
as pivotal factors to ensure an effective and efficient governance by standards. In other
terms, the argument deployed herein concerns the function of a regulative agency,
which might have the shape and the format of a ministerial unit, where the uniformity
and the equality of the services delivered by a public institution or a network of public
institutions are the outcome of the implementation of legally binding and non-legally
binding norms. This is a key point, then, for public officers serving not only in the judicial
sector.
Keywords
accountability, good governance, international organizations, networks, public
management
Corresponding author:
Daniela Piana, Dipartimento di scienze politiche e sociali, Universita
`di Bologna, Strada Maggiore, 45 I-40100
Bologna, Italy.
Email: d.piana@unibo.it
Introduction
The growing interest granted by scholars to court management goes hand in hand
with a comprehensive process of standard-setting that has been taking place
since the early 1990s in the European area (Frydman, 2007; Langbroek, 2010).
For more than two decades, a vast repertoire of instruments, such as checklists,
recommendations, assessment tools, benchmarks and so on, has been developed
and subsequently diffused across the countries that adhere to the European insti-
tutions, such as the European Union (EU) and the Council of Europe (CoE).
Judicial networks, particularly those created in the frame of the CoE and
awarded with the responsibility of discussing and setting standards of the rule of
law, have been instrumental to this process. During the judicial networks’ meetings,
domestic representatives (in some cases appointed by the national governments; in
other cases appointed by judicial institutions, such the judicial schools or the coun-
cils for the judiciary) embark on data collection, benchmarking, assessment and
standard-setting with respect to several key dimensions of the judicial system: trial
time frame, access to courts, communication with the broader public, resource
allocation, training and professionalism.
1
The image reflected in the judicial networks’ reports reveals an unquestionable –
even if somehow obstructed – move made by the European judicial systems towards
the incorporation of New Public Management (NPM) tools of governance
(Bouckaert, 1993; Rosenbloom 1998, Bogason, 2000, Christensen and Laegreid,
2001). One may safely label them as a set of policy instruments rooted in a user-
oriented concept of justice administration. Domestic judicial reforms inspired by a
user oriented concept of justice administration joined and somehow influenced the
transnational debate focused on the quality of justice. Despite the emphasis attached
to these tools and the political commitment to what should be considered a new
European policy stream (Pauliat, 2007;), scholars should not avoid investigating
further the mechanisms that have been triggered by this stream. As a matter of fact,
no one at the transnational level holds formal authority and sufficient legitimacy to
reform domestic court systems. Court administration is a strict prerogative of
national states. Therefore, given the proliferation of standards, the increasing
importance of comparative analysis of European court systems – that is, a key
point on the judicial networks agenda – and the progressive attention devoted to
the quality of justice as something more than the mere impartial application of the
law, it would not be insignificant to pose the following questions: how are user-
oriented concept of justice administration-based tools incorporated into the domestic
judicial reforms? Is standardization an effective avenue to improve the quality of just-
ice, despite the soft power it relies upon? Can we acknowledge the creation of new
winners and losers in the institutional game that runs between the transnational and the
domestic level shaping judicial reforms, taking into consideration transnational stand-
ards of the quality of justice? Finally, are citizens supplied with better justice once these
standards are adopted and applied in the courts’ daily practice?
These compelling questions deserve further scholarly investigation. In this art-
icle, the author makes some steps in this direction by disentangling the key
758 International Review of Administrative Sciences 83(4)
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