European Journal zyxwvuts of Political Research zyxwvut 21: zyxwvu 469-481, zyxwvu 1992. zyxw 0 1992 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Prinred in the Netherlands. Italian political science and public policies A late but promising encounter MAURIZIO FERRERA University of Pavia, Italy Political science and public policies In the Anglo-Saxon countries, the analysis of public policies has witnessed in the last three decades a tremendous expansion and is now an established and developed field of research. Although this expansion has been promoted by various disciplines (ranging from economics to sociology, law and even philosophy) (Hansen 1983), political science has also played a prominent role, not only in substantive terms, but also in academic-institutional terms: especially in the USA (but largely also in the UK), public policies are primarily researched, debated and taught within Political Science depart- ments. The Italian picture looks very different. Public policies have commanded increasing attention since the 1960s, leading to debate at both the political and the academic levels. The role of political scientists in this debate was, however, marginal until the beginning of the 1980s, and remains relatively circumscribed today. Although fairly developed in some subjects - such as the study of party competition and voting behaviour - (Mannheimer 1989; Panebianco 1989), Italian political science has lagged behind its Anglo-Saxon counterparts in fostering a ‘politological’ approach to the study of public policies. In order fully to understand this delay, one has to take into account the various ‘confining conditions’ which have generally hindered the emergence and expansion of an empirically oriented political science in a cultural context such as the Italian, a context historically dominated by both formal legalism and philosophical idealism (Morlino 1989). Two specific factors have, how- ever, further delayed the encounter between Italian political science and public policies: the characteristics and timing of expansion of Italy’s public sector, on the one hand, and the internal logic of development of political science as a discipline, on the other hand. My argument is that Italian political scientists have ‘arrived late’ - by comparison with foreign colleagues - not only due to their general weakness, but also because of a clear mismatch between the internal logic of ‘subject matter selection’ (i.e. the choice of themes worthy to be researched) and the external logic of ‘subject matter development’ (i.e. the actual evolution of public policies in Italy - l’inrer- zy venro pubblico - as a political and economic problem). The point can be