Conference Agenda

Participation is the main frontier of a rethinking of housing services notion. The paper aims to address the principle of participation as a pivotal principle in the functioning of new forms of housing, in which the participation and contribution of service beneficiaries is the most important resource for the full and effective fulfilment of the social right to housing. The paper, therefore, moving from the classic studies of participation in the administrative procedure to the analysis of the principle in service delivery activities, and tends also towards a study of concrete experiences that take place on the territory, both Italian and European, and in which possible solutions and critical issues to be resolved emerge. The special profiles of community-led housing models will therefore be analysed. In these models a relationship between the public actor, the private one and the community of service beneficiaries is established. One of most interesting models is Community Land Trust, with his US origins and his possible applications in different legal contexts. The classic model is a trust-based form of ownership that is organized around three elements: land, trust, community. It is configured as a nonprofit organization, which is based on a membership relationship and is formed for the purpose of maintaining and managing land for public purposes, such as ensuring access to housing for families in the vulnerable economic bracket. From the study of his peculiarities and his practical applications, his flexibility and adaptability clearly emerge and make possible its export and implantation attempt in a different legal context, like the Italian one. The paper aims to design this model and describes the variants to the classic model, to make it consistent with the requirements of multi-participant management of the service and the preservation of housing, and to ensure the circularity of the service.

Pro-women institutions (PWI) are defined as policies, agencies, and official entities created or adopted by governments to meet social gender demands, such as protecting women against violence (Gomes and Avellaneda 2021). These institutions channel specific community demands, elaborate on public policies, provide justice, health, security, and other kinds of services, deliver material support, disseminate information to society through media campaigns, furnish physical facilities, among other services (Gomes and Avellaneda 2021). Several empirical studies (Chattopadhyay and Duflo 2004; Iyer et al. 2012; Córdova and Kras 2019; Gomes and Avellaneda 2021; Arvate et al. 2022) provide evidence, reinforcing the importance of these institutions in any level of government.

The study will investigate five types of pro-women institutions: (a) municipal councils for women’s rights – a permanent collegiate body with government and civil society representatives, created by law with the aim of proposing, monitoring, and evaluating public policies; (b) municipal plan for women’s rights – a planning and coordination instrument between different municipal bodies, also created by law; (c) women’s issues executive body – a secretariat or some other autonomous body of the municipality that deals exclusively with matters relating to women’s rights; (d) reference center for women – places that offer psychological, social, legal assistance to women; and (e) shelter for women experiencing domestic violence.

We rely on data derived from the 5,665 Brazilian municipalities over three administrative terms (2009/2012, 2013/2016 and 2017/2020). This data configuration resulted in a balanced panel with 16,717 observations. Our independent variables capture women’s political representation at the municipal level. We control local socio-demographic, economic, and political factors, like previous research (Yodanis 2004; Flood and Pease 2009; Devries et al. 2011; Kerman and Betrus 2018). In general, findings show no correlation between female mayors and the existence of pro-women institutions, but we do see positive relationships between female councilors and these institutions.

The study makes several contributions to the theory of women’s political representation. Previous studies (Chen, 2013; Ennser-Jedenastik 2017) mainly have explored the substantive effects of female representation at the state and national levels. This study tests the tenets of the theory at the local level, where elected leaders govern closer to their constituents. Further, the most extensive research on the effects of women’s political representation (Escobar-Lemmon and Taylor-Robinson 2014; Heath, Schwindt-Bayer, and Taylor-Robinson 2005; Matland 1993, 1998; Tripp and Kang 2008) has been generated from developed and consolidated democracies that tend to rely on two-party systems. According to Park (2020, 1), “the empirical evidence for gender differences,” including women’s political representation, “are mixed, sometimes conflicting, and largely focused within the context of the United States.”

This research tests the theory in a transitional economy with a young democracy and a multi-party system. In this setting, politicians’ behavior and motivation may deviate from their counterparts, thus calling for further tests to understand theory generalizability. Lastly, understanding the substantive representation of female representation may shed light on the policy effects of the political representation of other minority groups (e.g., indigenous, people with disabilities, elderly, etc.).

Effective anti-corruption strategies require reliable measures of corruption incidence. However, measuring corruption effectively is a complex challenge, sparking ongoing debate. A key point of contention is whether to use objective data, like procurement records, or subjective data, such as public perception surveys. Another, often overlooked, aspect concerns the level of detail needed. While traditional corruption indices focus on national averages, recent research emphasizes the importance of subnational measures, recognizing that corruption varies within countries. We contribute to this emerging literature by developing a new disaggregated corruption measure using firm-level data from all available World Bank Enterprise Surveys. This measure offers broad country coverage, a long historical perspective, and sector-specific corruption estimates, providing a more detailed picture of governance quality. We provide a first application of our new index to demonstrate that a given firm is more corrupt when corruption is an endemic practice in the economic sector in which it operates, even when controlling for individual firm-level characteristics. These findings hold important policy implications, suggesting that anti-corruption interventions should focus on sector-level practices. Our new dataset also contributes to the field by offering a more robust and granular tool for studying the causes and consequences of localized corruption.