1/4«From a methodological perspective, the broad set of behaviors, defined in the context of each specific sciential attempt, can be divided into different subsets depending on whether scholars analyze behavior: (1) through controlled (laboratory) experiments (theoretical-experimental languages with rigorous and strict verification); (2) through only partially controlled experiments (theoretical, experimental languages with partial or stochastic verification); (3) through partially controlled experiential analyzes (theoretical, experiential languages with partial or stochastic verification); (4) based on suppositions or constructs whose semantic interpretation does not derive from control methods (abstract theoretical languages without verification).» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Metodo galileiano e analisi del comportamento: il comportamentismo [Galilean method and behavior analysis: Behaviorism], p. 76)

2/4«Economics is an example of the intersection between the third and fourth subset; Chomsky linguistics is an example of the fourth. In both cases, we can raise the question of whether and how economic and linguistic invariants can be verified, even if their semantic interpretation does not depend on whatever type of verification. In this regard, we can formulate only two hypotheses: either the invariants result from a biological evolutionary process, or they result from a more or less generalized learning process.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Metodo galileiano e analisi del comportamento: il comportamentismo [Galilean method and behavior analysis: Behaviorism], p. 77)

3/4«Defining behavior in scientific terms requires assigning it a precise meaning by identifying specific minimal units of analysis as primitive predicates. At this level, only the Pavlovian and the Skinnerian research methods allow to define behavior, or more precisely, the relations (functions) explicating behavior in univocal terms, compatible with the experiment. The conditions for the validity of scientific language are thus satisfied, namely: (a) the logical-syntactic consistency at the different abstraction levels expressed as partitions and inclusions; (b) the interpretation resulting from the experiment, which must guarantee the semantic homogeneity, in principle; (c) the seamless traceability of theoretical predicates to experimental predicates.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Metodo galileiano e analisi del comportamento: il comportamentismo [Galilean method and behavior analysis: Behaviorism], pp. 77-78)

4/4«We must credit Pavlov with a robust use of the experimental method that conforms to the rigorous criteria of the natural sciences and Skinner with an equally well-grounded use of the experiment, even if Skinnerian procedures allow for some gray areas, especially with reference to the interpretation of experimental data and the related theoretical elaboration. It is, therefore, perplexing that the reference point in the current state of psychological disciplines (and corresponding professional careers) is a “normal science” (in Kuhn’s meaning) that considers behaviorism a page to forget or, at best, to temper (or to correct) with strong doses of cognitivism, which distort the meaning of behaviorism. Perhaps we need to rethink Verplanck’s admonition that “A purely descriptive system is never popular,” an admonition that reminds behaviorists of their responsibilities.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Metodo galileiano e analisi del comportamento: il comportamentismo [galilean method and behavior analisis: Behaviorism], p. 79)

1/17«If the phenomena concerning humans and society are strictly related to each other, it appears difficult to justify the disjointness among economics, psychology and sociology. The disjointness, besides preventing the construction of a unitary theoretical reference paradigm, supports within the different disciplines such extensive “degrees of freedom” in research methods, theoretical schemata, and language tools that their languages often are not in accordance with the criteria for scientific (experimental) explanation (explication).» 

(G. Bolacchi, A new paradigm for the integration of the social sciences, p. 316)

2/17«The language of science must be logically consistent, in accordance with the more or less advanced processes of knowledge. When the language is totally or partly axiomatized, consistency is quite evident. Seeing that a scientific language necessarily implies a strict and univocal (experimental and/or statistical) semantic interpretation of its syntactic terms, consistency concerns, in the final analysis, semantic interpretation too, since the latter determines those properties to which the syntactic relations refer.»

(G. Bolacchi, A new paradigm for the integration of the social sciences, p. 318)

3/17«The reference paradigm is a strong one when the scientific language is constructed using the Galilean method of controlled (laboratory) experiment. In this case, the intersubjectiveness of the scientific language is guaranteed, together with its operativeness, because the scientific language is susceptible to experimental verification.»

(G. Bolacchi, A new paradigm for the integration of the social sciences, p. 319)

4/17«The scientific method imposes a clear-cut distinction between repetition time and evolution time, respectively related to reversibility and irreversibility. Every natural (physical), biological or behavioral phenomenon is characterized by evolution time, but the latter has to be considered as a parameter if one wants to explain the phenomenon in strict reversibility terms.»

(G. Bolacchi, A new paradigm for the integration of the social sciences, p. 321)

5/17«In spite of this axiomatization (now a basic reference point for which all other social sciences should aim), within economics many problems referable to the uniqueness and global stability of equilibrium remain unsolved. But even more critical problems (perhaps including the first two) exist. They concern the semantic interpretation of the theory and are closely associated with the exclusion of the psychological and social variables by economic analysis.»

(G. Bolacchi, A new paradigm for the integration of the social sciences, p. 322)

6/17«All these experiments suggest that the instability of the transitivity of preferences, i.e., the assignment of value by a subject to his own behaviors over time, derives from the processes of learning (reinforcement). Therefore, it should be social variables that determine preference ordering and its reversal, with special reference to the transitivity of the “is not preferred to” relation.»

(G. Bolacchi, A new paradigm for the integration of the social sciences, pp. 324-325)

7/17«Although economists tend to undervalue the set of other social behaviors that lie outside the language of economics, it is plain that if the assumption that all behaviors are, in principle, economic behaviors is rejected, then it is necessary to conclude that the set of factors distorting economic equilibrium is by definition exogenous to the economic system. It, therefore, becomes necessary to analyze the specific relations between the two sets and to define the functions between economic and other social operant-behavior sets, so as to enlarge the economic system by inserting specific variables external to the system without them losing their primary characterization (i.e., without making them endogenous according to the schemata currently used by economists.»

(G. Bolacchi, A new paradigm for the integration of the social sciences, pp. 325)

8/17«This situation will remain muddled until the relations between economic variables (which are endogenous to the system) and other social variables (which are exogenous, since they belong to the external system) are exactly specified. This is pointed out in the theory of interest, which shows that Cartesian products between subsets of social behavior can exist; so specific functions can have both economic variables and variables belonging to the power and/or cooperation subsets.»

(G. Bolacchi, A new paradigm for the integration of the social sciences, pp. 325-326)

9/17«I.P. Pavlov and B.F. Skinner operated on the experimental level by totally isolating the system from the outside. However, this fact did not obstruct the finding of the basic laws of behavior; on the contrary, it helped. Nevertheless, modern Aristotelians seem not to follow the lesson of science. They persist in doing experiments that contradict the scientific method, and do not keep under control the stimuli that conditioned the past history (learning as an irreversible process) and that condition the current behaviors (learning as a reversible process) of the experimental subjects. Only “frictions” can emerge from these experiments, i.e., the behaviors clashing with the laws that should be verified.»

(G. Bolacchi, A new paradigm for the integration of the social sciences, pp. 326-327)

10/17«From the perspective of science, we can suppose that behavioral laws “exist,” but these latter are only learning laws and must not be confused with the environmental contingencies (i.e., the “contents” of reinforcement schedules) on which also economic behavior depends.»

(G. Bolacchi, A new paradigm for the integration of the social sciences, p. 329)

11/17«Perceiving states of consciousness as prime causes of behavior brings about a radical distortion of the knowledge humans have about themselves, as it leads to concentrating attention solely upon internal processes (that cannot be submitted to an intersubjective, quantitative and experimental scientific analysis) and building up a cultural context and a pseudo-explicative language in conformity with this representation.»

(G. Bolacchi, A new paradigm for the integration of the social sciences, pp. 329-330)

12/17«All possible types of social interaction have to be explicated in terms of reinforcement, because the reinforcing stimuli for one subject’s social behavior sequences are, by definition, the behaviors of other subjects. As stated above, the set of social stimuli (the social environment) does not replace or remove the set of natural stimuli, but it widens the extent of control on behavior, determining a further constraint on the execution of instrumental sequences: in order that the subject can complete his sequence with the consummatory behavior, it is necessary that the instrumental behavior is compatible not only with the physical environment, but also with the social environment. In short, these are the basic reference points for the experimental analysis of social behavior.»

(G. Bolacchi, A new paradigm for the integration of the social sciences, p. 332)

13/17«One of the most important problems in the field of social studies is how to overcome conflict (negative involvement of interests). In fact, negative involvement expresses a situation of perfect social inertia, since neither of the two subjects is able to carry out autonomously his own operant sequence as the other subject, bringing into action the opposite operant sequence, blocks him (bars the reinforcement of the other subject’s instrumental sequence).»

(G. Bolacchi, A new paradigm for the integration of the social sciences, p. 338)

14/17«The explication of exchange within the theory of interests proves that the “is not preferred to” relation, which is the only one economists take into consideration, is coupled with the “is instrumental to” relation. As stated above, both the “is instrumental to” and the “is not preferred to” relations derive from the experimental analysis of behavior. Within the theory of interests, they are expressed by the instrumentality degree and the intensity level, respectively. Therefore it can be confirmed that economic behavior is a subset of social behavior.»

(G. Bolacchi, A new paradigm for the integration of the social sciences, p. 342)

15/17«This interpretation can be used to explicate the concepts of preference and utility within the more general behavioristic language. Preference expresses the order of intensity levels [of interests], whereas utility, in a general sense, does not express a property of one interest, but rather an instrumentality relation between two interests, one of which is sacrificed in order to gain the satisfaction of the other one. The utility of one interest is determined by the instrumentality of the sacrifice of another interest.»

(G. Bolacchi, A new paradigm for the integration of the social sciences, p. 344)

16/17«The organization is explicated in scientific terms by the positive involvement, with specific reference to the essential condition of the reciprocal complementarity of the two distinct instrumental interest sequences carried out by each subject. This reciprocal complementarity among instrumental interests belonging to different fields of interests is such that, in principle, each instrumental interest defines an organizational role and each tole, thus differentiated, is assigned to either subject whose interests are positively involved.»

(G. Bolacchi, A new paradigm for the integration of the social sciences, p. 348)

17/17«The free rider’s behavior can be generalized in a more abstract perspective within the theory of interests, as an element of the more general set of behaviors realized by the subjects who profit (without any positive involvement) by positive involvement among other subjects’ interests. With reference to the free rider, no cooperation can exist in the sense of immediate (direct) positive involvement.»

(G. Bolacchi, A new paradigm for the integration of the social sciences, p. 352)

1/7«In short, research about man and society has to be redefined by overcoming the obstacles and the presuppositions of philosophical ideology and common sense. The so-called world of spirit (mind), which prevents us from building an experimentally based explanatory language of man univocally defined and implies in principle a multiplicity of often mutually contradictory perspectives, must be replaced by the world of behavior.»

(G. Bolacchi, On “social sciences” and science, p. 467)

2/7«Two kinds of histories of science, therefore, exist: (a) socio-psychological history concerning all the research methods, in whatever manner carried out, and the socio-psychological conditionings to which the researchers have been subjected in the social context where they worked; and (b) history, purified from socio-psychological connotations, concerning the research methods conforming to the constraints and to the cumulative results of science, i.e., the history of the deepening and widening of the domains of application of scientific language only.»

(G. Bolacchi, On “social sciences” and science, p. 469)

3/7«The history of scientific thought (and the Galilean revolution) shows us that “a shift in attitude that allows us to be more flexible” is by no means sufficient to construct, to widen, and to deepen the language of science, and even more the language of the social science. It is necessary to break the science away from the common sense; that is, to bear in mind the constraints settled first by Galileo and Newton.»

(G. Bolacchi, On “social sciences” and science, p. 470)

4/7«Controlled experiment entails a real methodological revolution (a revolution in the research methods) compared to the Aristotelian pre-scientific idea that still persists as a philosophical view of science and is seriously detrimental to the development of an actual social science. This revolution is founded on the rise of the Galilean and Newtonian concept of a closed or isolated system.»

(G. Bolacchi, On “social sciences” and science, p. 471)

5/7«A particular violation of the semantic homogeneity criterion occurs in the field of psychology when behavioral variables and inner variables (expressing cognitive-type or, more specifically, emotional-type states) are related by pseudo-functions. The introduction of so-called intervening variables and hypothetical constructs, despite MacCorquodale’s and Meehl’s (1948) efforts, paves the way for a sort of anomalous functions (pseudo-functions) that do not conform to the semantic homogeneity criterion and are seriously prejudicial to scientific knowledge.»

(G. Bolacchi, On “social sciences” and science, p. 476)

6/7«Likewise, in economics the set of cognitive variables (upon which the explanation of choice is based) and the set of behavioral variables are mixed up, leading to a duplication of concepts and preventing the translation of all the economic predicates into strictly behavioral predicates, which could have important repercussions on economic analysis as a whole and on so-called experimental economics. Moreover, this situation produces an anomalous dissociation between the logical–syntactic characterization of choice (which is identified with cognitive–rational choice) and the experimental–semantic characterization of choice behavior (behavioral choice), which is not considered at all by economists and cognitivists (with the obvious exclusion of cognitive-type “experiments”).»

(G. Bolacchi, On “social sciences” and science, p. 477)

7/7«The languages of neuroscience and behaviorism are characterized by completely different semantic interpretations, although they use the same syntactic structures founded on functions. It follows that, because of the lack of semantic homogeneity between the two disjoint languages, no functional relation can be given, by definition, between neuroscience and behaviorism.»

(G. Bolacchi, On “social sciences” and science, p. 477)

1/33«Economics, starting from the mid-nineteenth century, became independent of political philosophy. It constructed a language characterized by the same mathematical syntax of the natural sciences, even if it presents explanatory difficulties in terms of dynamics and the semantic interpretation of its postulates. The social sciences are still moving in a muddle in which ideological positions, poor methodological understanding, in short, manifest or latent prejudices towards science applied or applicable to humans, prevent a systematization that alone could justify a dialogue with economics.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Politiche di sviluppo, innovazione, parchi scientifici e tecnologici [Development policies, innovation, science parks], pp. 69-70)

2/33«Unlike economic growth models, so-called development theories contain an amalgam of social and economic variables, negatively affected by the latent assumption of a presumed causal relation between the two types of variables or, more often, of an unspecified, vague interdependence between them.

More properly, economic growth models attempt to make social (cultural) variables endogenous by explaining them in strictly economic terms (as may be done for every behavioral repertoire), i.e., by transforming social variables from social predicates into economic predicates.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Politiche di sviluppo, innovazione, parchi scientifici e tecnologici [Development policies, innovation, science parks], p. 71)

3/33«The concept of technical progress within the social “sciences” is entirely different from the concept used within economic models. In the social “sciences” field, it expresses technological innovation, which is a function of given social variables (such as forms of learning and teaching, educational processes, generalized scientific reinforcers in the social context, reference groups, science-oriented mass media) and, in turn, can be an independent variable in relation to other social variables. In economic models, it simply expresses a form of investment in learning by doing, in the production of new knowledge (by sacrificing a share of consumption), or in processes directly oriented to human capital. Making technical progress endogenous to economic language means, in general, turning it into investment.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Politiche di sviluppo, innovazione, parchi scientifici e tecnologici [Development policies, innovation, science parks], p. 71)

4/33«Given the postulate of disjunction, it can be stated, using a language to be explained (explicandum) and not a scientific explicative language (explicatum), that the social variables, and social development in general, are a precondition (or a prerequisite) for economic growth. In fact, it follows from the postulate of disjunction that social (cultural) variables are not causes of economic growth, but necessary (even if not sufficient) conditions for economic growth (which depends on economic variables).» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Politiche di sviluppo, innovazione, parchi scientifici e tecnologici [Development policies, innovation, science parks], p. 71)

5/33«C. Clark (Growthmanship: a study in the mythology of investment) [...] takes into consideration cultural variables (what he names human factors) as exogenous variables with respect to economic variables expressed in a (neoclassical) logic of market competition. However, a restrictive connotation is given to these exogenous variables, given the assumption that that they can progress only at a relatively slow, albeit uniform, pace and that any action aimed at abruptly forcing that pace does risk wasting resources and slowing it down. It means society (like the market) should have its own internal dynamics guaranteeing the equilibrium, and the latter would be reachable spontaneously.

Clark’s notion that it is possible to extend equilibrium dynamics to human factors, i.e., to cultural variables (exogenous with respect to economic variables), is still very popular, even if it rests on a false generalization that does not distinguish between exchange and market interactions (the subject of economic analysis) and other and different types of social interaction.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Politiche di sviluppo, innovazione, parchi scientifici e tecnologici [Development policies, innovation, science parks], p. 73)

6/33«Clark’s perspective is proposed again by Hirschman (The strategy of economic development), with closer attention to social variables. However, the limitations of all these analyses remain. As a matter of fact, although a distinction between cultural (socio-psychological) variables from economic variables is made, it is not based on a more abstract unitary paradigm that subsumes the two subsets (one referring to economic behaviors and the other referring to socio-psychological behaviors), but rather on the assumption that everything that cannot be traced back within the domain of economic concepts is residually considered sociological or psychological.»

«In a later work, Hirschman (Exit, Voice, and Loyalty) attempts to formulate a unitary paradigm [...]. However, the framework he proposes (which in this book is broader) remains ambiguous and generic, being social facts defined as forces external to the market, i.e., as a complement to the set of market forces.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Politiche di sviluppo, innovazione, parchi scientifici e tecnologici [Development policies, innovation, science parks], pp. 73; 75)

7/33«In the classic expression by Rosenberg, technological progress still represents a “black box” not yet fully explored. Nevertheless, the close interconnection between technological dynamics and innovation cannot be denied: technological progress is such as it incorporates and expresses a set of innovative activities.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Politiche di sviluppo, innovazione, parchi scientifici e tecnologici [Development policies, innovation, science parks], p. 75)

8/33«N. Rosenberg (Perspectives on technology; Inside the black box: technology and economics) shows how technological research activity and innovation occur at all stages of industrial production, overcoming the Schumpeterian perspective on innovation as a unique and unrepeatable act. The latter reflects a point of view on scientific progress that favors the moment of the great theoretical systematizations or the related great discoveries rather than the subsequent moments of slow and continuous expansion of technology through the progressive widening of its borders to increasingly specific fields of application.

Major innovations have a character of generality that, by definition, overshadow the multiple analytical contents, which must be progressively recovered through a continuous expansion of the more abstract research towards operational-type experimental fields. The progressive analyticity of the fields of application of science and technology identifies the flexible boundary between a more abstract area of research, which could be defined as pure science, and a much more analytical, specific and sectorialized area of research, which could be defined as applied science (or technology) and that is susceptible to operational insertion into the productive combination.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Politiche di sviluppo, innovazione, parchi scientifici e tecnologici [Development policies, innovation, science parks], pp. 78-79)

9/33«Characterizing the innovative process as a continuum means considering innovation as an entrepreneurial core activity, a modality typical of physical (technological) capital and human (organizational) capital. In advanced societies, physical and human capital are combined in the enterprise not in purely repetitive terms but with an innovatory approach. There is a difference, indeed, between the routine entrepreneur, whose attitude is not to innovate but only stably manage a combination of factors of production, and the deviant entrepreneur, who shows an innovative attitude towards physical and human capital in every segment of the production chain.

In this respect, the difference between developing and developed areas is that, in the former, the routine is generalized within enterprises and society, whereas, in the latter, the innovative attitude is generalized. A generalized entrepreneurial innovation must replace the generalized entrepreneurial routine to activate a real development process. Development processes and economic growth require innovation to be widespread and not only activated at the level of individual and specific entrepreneurial activities.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Politiche di sviluppo, innovazione, parchi scientifici e tecnologici [Development policies, innovation, science parks], p. 79)

10/33«The characteristics of innovation identified by Rosenberg (Perspectives on technology; Inside the black box: technology and economics)–such as the continuous adjustments and progressive changes in each stage of the production process, the close correspondence between innovation and dissemination, the capacity to generate substitute innovations expressed by the social context in which innovation is generalized, the congruity between technological innovation, the capital goods industry and the influence of expectations of future change on the behavior of economic agents–are indeed just as many social factors affecting the processes of development and economic growth. The “social determinants of a society’s ability to generate technical progress in the first place” are social preconditions for economic growth, i.e., specific features that must characterize innovation so that the development process can occur.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Politiche di sviluppo, innovazione, parchi scientifici e tecnologici [Development policies, innovation, science parks], p. 79)

11/33«Technological dynamics must be endogenous, i.e., internalized and diffused in the social context, to produce effects within that context. Continuity in innovation, as opposed to discontinuity, is essential for the innovation to manifest itself as a widespread and generalized social attitude (innovation culture); only under this circumstance does innovation become an active factor in socio-economic dynamics. When a given social context does not directly express a set of innovative attitudes and behaviors, i.e., an innovation continuum, single and segmented innovations have limited effects within the system, and the system is unable to produce innovation on innovation internally. On the contrary, if the social context expresses generalized innovative attitudes and behaviors, the innovation processes will have multiplier effects starting from the innovation produced at first.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Politiche di sviluppo, innovazione, parchi scientifici e tecnologici [Development policies, innovation, science parks], p. 79-80)

12/33«The innovation culture and the market culture can both have (each in its domain of application) different degrees of internalization. Assuming a range from 0 to 1, the value for the set of economic (market) behaviors and the set of innovative behaviors can be more or less close to 1; namely, these sets can be more or less large subsets of an individual’s or a group’s set of operant behaviors. Moreover, a correspondence between the subset of economic behaviors and the subset of innovative behaviors may exist, which concerns all elements of the two subsets or a part of these elements.

The preconditions for development indicate the degree of internalization (and generalization) of the market culture (i.e., the rules of the game on which the market is based) and the degree of internalization (and generalization) of the innovation culture that must qualify the socio-economic context so that the market can be characterized as an innovative market.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Politiche di sviluppo, innovazione, parchi scientifici e tecnologici [Development policies, innovation, science parks], p. 80)

13/33«When the scientific and technological dynamics is purely repetitive, the market may express a (competitive) equilibrium in the allocation of resources, but it is static in terms of innovation in the contents of processes and products. In short, here, the market achieves its primary objective, which is the Pareto optimum, but it has no cumulative dynamics. The latter is exogenous to the market, by definition, but qualifies it historically as depending on the culture characterizing the society within which the market works. In particular, the cumulative dynamics depends on the more or less extended scientific and technological innovative component characterizing a given culture.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Politiche di sviluppo, innovazione, parchi scientifici e tecnologici [Development policies, innovation, science parks], p. 80)

14/33«Ever-expanding scientific and technological dynamics currently characterizes advanced industrial societies. The resulting innovative and competitive market tends to globalization; therefore, all socio-economic systems have to confront and compare to societies with positions of economic leadership. It follows the need to fill the relative-development gap by correctly identifying not only the economic variables but also, and above all, the social variables determining that gap.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Politiche di sviluppo, innovazione, parchi scientifici e tecnologici [Development policies, innovation, science parks], p. 81)

15/33«In simple terms, the market workings can be explicated by making innovation an endogenous variable within the economic language. That means expressing innovation in terms of entrepreneurs' R&D investment choices based on the private cost-benefit ratio of those investments; here, innovation spreads mainly through the set of competitive relations between firms based on knowledge-based and imitative learning. Through this process, the effects of innovation go beyond the private benefits deriving from entrepreneurial R&D activities and spill over into the entire economic system (the competing producers and the consumers), resulting in several induced social benefits.

The market, therefore, plays a decisive role in the dynamics of innovation: the greater its enlargement and consolidation and the more articulated and generalized its competitive structure, the greater the possibility that innovation has spillover effects and brings about an innovative continuum extended to all levels of research, production, and marketing.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Politiche di sviluppo, innovazione, parchi scientifici e tecnologici [Development policies, innovation, science parks], p. 81)

16/33«More or less pronounced imbalances in the dynamics of innovation can occur within the market, where constraints hinder and prevent its diffusion. [...]

The first type of constraint is the fact that those activities that lead to induced social benefits exceeding private benefits (externalities) are under-dimensioned by the market, in terms of resource allocation, compared to the socially desirable level (corresponding to the maximization of the social rate of return). The extreme case is the production of public goods, whose (social) benefits are so diffused that no firm operating in the market (according to the maximization of the private rate of return) is willing to invest in that production.»

«The second case concerns those systems characterized by discontinuous (discrete), or null, innovative facts (factors) and, correspondingly, by a more or less high degree of inertia of technological accumulation processes. In these systems, the dynamics of innovation is weak or absent. One can speak of either economic lag (referring to socio-economic systems characterized by some degree of internalization of the market culture) or underdevelopment (referring to socio-economic systems that diverge from systems that express a generalized market culture).» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Politiche di sviluppo, innovazione, parchi scientifici e tecnologici [Development policies, innovation, science parks], pp. 81, 83)

17/33«Both the R&D-related positive externalities (even in case of high degrees of internalization of the innovative-market culture) and the low degrees of internalization of the innovative-market culture (and hence the almost total absence of R&D-related positive externalities) do bring about imbalances in the innovation process. On the one end, they result in a reduction in the system competitiveness and gaps in the economic growth processes; on the other, they result in a persistent static situation of the system and the consequent impossibility of starting a development process.

In either case, albeit in different ways, public measures and interventions are necessary to govern and strengthen the dynamics of innovation in relation to development and economic growth. These interventions must be specified in analytical guidelines, corresponding to the types of constraints that limit the dynamics of innovation. These constraints differ between the innovative market of advanced industrialized areas (characterized by both market culture and innovation culture) and the non-innovative market of the underdeveloped or developing areas (lacking both a market culture and an innovation culture).» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Politiche di sviluppo, innovazione, parchi scientifici e tecnologici [Development policies, innovation, science parks], p. 83)

18/33«The fixed social capital consists of territorial infrastructures, organized into networks, which have a continuous presence throughout the environmental context (transport, communications, pipes), and punctual infrastructure (equipment, facilities). Punctual infrastructures can have multiple objectives, all qualified as service objectives. The latter can be divided into two subsets:

1) one set is characterized by those services satisfying interests related to the current state of the socio-economic context. Here, the service is part of the structural schema of social needs and is not strictly oriented towards socio-economic development;

2) the other set is characterized by those services satisfying interests related to the future state of the socio-economic context and is strictly oriented towards development. Here, the service marks the transition from a current state to a future state and is part of an evolutionary schema of social needs. It also brings about spillovers (positive externalities) directly affecting the development and economic-growth processes, either through the market or by boosting market culture and innovation culture.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Politiche di sviluppo, innovazione, parchi scientifici e tecnologici [Development policies, innovation, science parks], p. 85)

19/33«Insofar as it can be defined as a punctual infrastructure characterized by development objectives, a science park activity can focus on two social factors strictly related to the development and economic growth:

1) the technological factor considered as endogenous production of technological innovation (susceptible to transformation into physical capital and corresponding human capital) and consequent dissemination of the innovative technologies implemented;

2) the cultural factor considered as endogenous production of an innovation culture and market culture (susceptible to transformation into organizational and entrepreneurial human capital referring to all possible social roles) and consequent spread of the culture of the innovative market through the generalization (to the whole social group) of socially shared positive attitudes (and behaviors) towards innovation, competitive market, and active entrepreneurship.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Politiche di sviluppo, innovazione, parchi scientifici e tecnologici [Development policies, innovation, science parks], p. 86)

20/33«As an expression of the needs typical of highly industrialized societies, science parks presuppose a culture strictly compatible with the competitive market, a dynamic production system, a high innovation potentiality, innovative research centers and high-tech companies, universities actively interacting with the business community, and skilled workforce. Their primary objective is to maximize the social rate of return on innovation related to R&D activities carried out within the business environment and the ensuing spillover. Indeed, even though these activities bring about positive external economies for the whole socio-economic context in which the firms operate, they tend not to adapt to the socially desirable level, as innovative firms measure their R&D investments against their private (market) rate of return, which is generally lower than the social rate of return.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Politiche di sviluppo, innovazione, parchi scientifici e tecnologici [Development policies, innovation, science parks], p. 87)

21/33«The effectiveness of public interventions to correct those market anomalies resulting in under-dimensioned R&D activities depends on the type of external economies (spillovers), the relation between private returns and social returns on innovation, and the relation between private resources and public resources in terms of the possible crowding-out effects.

These aspects have been analyzed by A. B. Jaffe (Economic analysis of research spillover: implication for the advanced technology program, ATP’s Economic Assessment Office, 1996).» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Politiche di sviluppo, innovazione, parchi scientifici e tecnologici [Development policies, innovation, science parks], p. 87)

22/33«The social rate of return on public spending differs from the social rate of return on R&D. The latter is indeed a function of the level of investment in R&D and the type of funded research activity (and the consequent spillover effect), but it does not depend on the crowding-out effect (i.e., on the makeup of the investment in terms of private and public resources). [...]

Therefore, public investment choices about R&D activities (including those carried out as part of the actions implemented by science parks) should be based on the identification of those factors making the social rate of return and the private rate of return diverge and should favor R&D activities with the greatest spillover effect.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Politiche di sviluppo, innovazione, parchi scientifici e tecnologici [Development policies, innovation,science parks], p. 89)

23/33«Public intervention in the field of R&D must be characterized by a relation of complementarity with the market (not a relation of substitutability). That is because it should aim at restoring the more basic research activities, i.e., the pre-competitive level of research resulting in higher induced social benefits. [...]

In short, the partnership between public and private investments oriented toward innovative technological research (or whichever relation between research institutions and private companies) finds in the market, and in the positive externalities (spillover) it brings about, an indispensable space for their enlargement and dissemination. Where such effects are not achieved, public investments become welfarist constraints slowing down and obstructing development and growth processes, rather than accelerating and promoting them.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Politiche di sviluppo, innovazione, parchi scientifici e tecnologici [Development policies, innovation, science parks], p. 91)

24/33«In developing socio-economic systems, the maximization of the social rate of return on innovation cannot be directly pursued, in principle, because there is no competitive market in these areas that may lead to the dissemination of the benefits from innovation. Therefore, it is not possible to talk about a private rate of return on R&D investments, nor about a spillover effect, and no economic-growth process strictly consistent with the optimal use of the given resources can take place.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Politiche di sviluppo, innovazione, parchi scientifici e tecnologici [Development policies, innovation, science parks], pp. 91-92)

25/33«One cannot think of technological research (and, more generally, of technical progress and public R&D investments) as a variable that alone can change attitudes towards the innovative market, turning them from negative to positive. Indeed, research processes, which are perforce localized and sector-based because of the scarcity of public resources, cannot activate the technological continuum underlying development when the preconditions for development are lacking, namely, if the innovative enterprise culture is not internalized and generalized. Only then do the innovation processes occur in every segment, however analytical, of the technological operational chains at all levels, from research to final production, referring to both physical technologies (process and product innovations) and organizational technologies (social innovation).» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Politiche di sviluppo, innovazione, parchi scientifici e tecnologici [Development policies, innovation, science parks], p. 92)

26/33«In the analyses of economic processes from an evolutionary perspective, the enterprise is considered to be a place where knowledge accumulates, whose development is influenced by the original technological matrix and the set of routines implemented to coordinate the activities. Throughout its evolution, an enterprise produces knowledge and innovative opportunities beyond those workable internally due to the stringency of routines or incompatibility constraints with preexisting activities. It is possible to take advantage of these overabundant innovations only by incorporating them into a new enterprise.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Politiche di sviluppo, innovazione, parchi scientifici e tecnologici [Development policies, innovation, science parks], p. 94)

27/33«To pursue the objective of favoring the convergence between innovative technological research (and the public or private institutes carrying out it) and local enterprises, orienting both the former and the latter towards development and economic growth extended to the entire system, it is necessary to consider and make compatible not only the production factors of the innovative physical capital but also the production factors of the innovative human capital. The innovation dynamics, in fact, directly relates both to the dynamics of physical capital and to the dynamics of human capital.

These dynamics, which follow different paths and are rooted in R&D activities as to physical capital and training activities as to human capital, should find in the system of enterprises operating in a particular socio-economic context a congruence point compatible with development and economic growth processes.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Politiche di sviluppo, innovazione, parchi scientifici e tecnologici [Development policies, innovation, science parks], p. 95)

28/33«Carrying out innovative processes (which are, moreover, also sector-based and stand-alone) or technology-oriented specialist training does not entail any change in the negative attitudes towards innovation that may be present in the social context. It is one thing to put in place operational intervention to realize innovation; another is to put in place operational measures to change social attitudes towards innovation. Still another thing is to identify the relations between these different types of operations to make their implementation more effective, always considering that innovation-based development logically presupposes a high degree of innovation generalized in the social context.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Politiche di sviluppo, innovazione, parchi scientifici e tecnologici [Development policies, innovation, science parks], p. 96)

29/33«Like R&D investments, also investment in training brings about positive externalities, which means the social rate of return on training activity is higher than its private rate of return (that is, the benefits for the direct enjoyers of the training, be they individuals or enterprises, who bear the related costs). Indeed, training activities carried out by enterprises operating in the market benefit not only those enterprises that bear the cost of training; they also benefit both the workers who are trained and the other enterprises as the supply of skilled labor increases. From the enterprise’s viewpoint, investing in training is moreover risky, as trained workers could leave the enterprise; the greater the usability of professional qualifications in the labor market and the smaller the size of the enterprise, the greater the risk.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Politiche di sviluppo, innovazione, parchi scientifici e tecnologici [Development policies, innovation, science parks], p. 96)

30/33«An enterprise tends not to carry out training or to carry out only very specialized training (strictly connected to specific products and production processes); it excludes basic training because of its greater generality, from which higher social rates of return directly follow (as with basic and pre-competitive research). The lower (i.e., more specialized) the training level, the lower the social rate of return on training activity and, hence, the positive externalities (spillover) it brings about, namely its induced social benefits.

For this reason, public intervention is necessary to modify the market allocation of resources in training in a way consistent with the socially desirable level. In the absence of public intervention, training activities carried out within the market would bring social benefits far below the socially desirable level in relation to the activation of innovation processes (and to the social benefits of disseminating innovation throughout the market) and, hence, to the activation of processes of development, economic growth and competitiveness within the socio-economic context in which the training takes place.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Politiche di sviluppo, innovazione, parchi scientifici e tecnologici [Development policies, innovation, science parks], p. 97)

31/33«Furthermore, should training activities only be managed from a private market perspective, the possibility of accessing training would depend on the spending capacity of individuals and groups. Because of income discrimination, knowledge resources not uniformly distributed would thus be produced, which would alter the principle of increasing marginal returns of new knowledge. Therefore, to allow for a private training market accessible only to certain income classes, it is necessary to have concurrently training activities supported by public intervention policies, which enable merit-based transmission of knowledge to all income classes.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Politiche di sviluppo, innovazione, parchi scientifici e tecnologici [Development policies, innovation, science parks], p. 97)

32/33«In developing areas, the need to provide public incentives for training is even more pressing. As a matter of fact, in the absence of an innovative competitive market, there is not even a network of companies expressing a demand for high-level professionals, to which a corresponding private training system could refer. An offer of high-level training services, managed privately on the market and based on income discrimination, cannot be congruent, by definition, with a demand for medium or low-level professionals. In such a case, training activity would produce positive externalities within socio-economic systems exogenous to the system where training occurs; within the latter, only private benefits would be produced. The induced social benefits would all fall back on developed areas, thereby increasing the training gap (human capital endowment) between the two types of socio-economic systems.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Politiche di sviluppo, innovazione, parchi scientifici e tecnologici [Development policies, innovation, science parks], p. 97)

33/33«In socio-economic contexts devoid of widespread industrialization, generalized R&D activities among enterprises, a qualified workforce, universities able to interact actively with the business community, and a generalized propensity to innovation and entrepreneurship, the production system is or tends to be static (with no innovation continuum), the research centers operate merely by transferring knowledge (since their propensity to innovation depends on the degree of generalized innovation existing in the system, which in this case is so low as to strengthen repetitious research activities), the culture is ultimately stationary and familistic and the conflict levels prevent collaborative relations (network externalities) functional to innovation processes. Given this kind of socio-economic context, pretending to pursue the maximization of the social rate of return on innovation without considering targets for activating pre-conditions for development would mean relating that objective to a hypothetical reference context (the industrialized market and it  innovation dynamics) not existing at all.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Politiche di sviluppo, innovazione, parchi scientifici e tecnologici [Development policies, innovation, science parks], p. 99)

1/8«The persistent prejudices on the human-nature dualism, and the resulting research tools marked by the inability to extend the method of natural sciences to the study of social phenomena, have severely hindered the development of a unitary explicative language referring to humans and society. Research activity is associated with an attitude that considers the multiplicity of different viewpoints not as a negative indicator of the lack of intersubjectivity (a primary requirement for scientific analysis) but rather as a positive indicator of vitality and development.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il concetto di organizzazione secondo il paradigma scientifico [The concept of organization in the scientific paradigm], p. 274)

2/8«The scientific analysis of behavior is opposed by a widespread type of research on organizations (and on social facts) defined by a commonsense method, devoid of constraints that can guarantee its intersubjectiveness. Here, the scientific explication is replaced by a set of explanations whose predominant reference points are descriptive and evaluative elements. However, merely describing whatever phenomenon in commonsense terms is not equivalent to explicating it. In such cases, the analyses oscillate between social philosophy and hypotheses based on purely experiential (not experimental) premises.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il concetto di organizzazione secondo il paradigma scientifico [The concept of organization in the scientific paradigm], p. 283-284)

3/8«The organizational functionality, which corresponds to the organization's effectiveness (where the efficiency concerns, instead, the organization complying with the economic paradigm), rests on the reciprocal complementarity of the instrumental sequences carried out by the individuals in their exercise of organizational roles. Such complementarity is guaranteed not by the presence or absence of discretionary roles but solely by the existence of a positive involvement relation.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il concetto di organizzazione secondo il paradigma scientifico [The concept of organization in the scientific paradigm], p. 285)

4/8«Whereas Simon’s hypothesis attempts to make explicit the system of exchanges inside the organization, Williamson’s theory places the problem of the organization within the more general problem of the market exchange and the transaction costs, which would characterize the market exchange on a more abstract theoretical level. Nevertheless, to state that organizations are more efficient than the market when dealing with complex and uncertain transactions, in that the transaction costs would be lower via the organization rather than the market, does not mean defining, much less explaining, the concept of organization. The latter is considered as an indefinite primitive predicate in this case, too.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il concetto di organizzazione secondo il paradigma scientifico [The concept of organization in the scientific paradigm], p. 287)

5/8«When the organization is studied according to the paradigm of maximization of results or minimization of costs (organizational efficiency), the analyses are necessarily circumscribed to the issues of market exchange. However, the attempt to explain the concept of organization only by the predicate of exchange posits that the latter is the sole relation characterizing all social interactions, none excluded. From this perspective, there cannot be any set of social behaviors not susceptible, by definition, to inclusion within the more general set of exchange behaviors.

The scientific analysis of behavior and the theory of interests (on a more abstract level) show that the approach to the organizational issues is much more elaborated and articulate and allow for mistakes, contradictions, and partial viewpoints of current research to be detected and overcome.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il concetto di organizzazione secondo il paradigma scientifico [The concept of organization in the scientific paradigm], p. 287)

6/8«Having said that, and being understood that the founding element of the organization at the most abstract level is the immediate positive involvement of interests, it could be that the access to organizational roles (defined by complementary instrumental behavioral sequences) occurs through the exchange. In this particular case, the exchange works as an implement for the acquisition or assignment of organizational roles; however, it does not qualify those roles, which only find their reference point in the positive involvement mediated by the exchange. The organization is not the exchange but rather the positive involvement; the latter may also result from an exchange as a specific modality to overcome social conflict.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il concetto di organizzazione secondo il paradigma scientifico [The concept of organization in the scientific paradigm], pp. 287-288)

7/8«The power, as explained by the theory of interests, can be used within the organization to give rise to an indirect (mediate) positive involvement. In this context as well, the founding element of the organization is not the choice (exclusive disjunction) presented to the external party (an individual) between sacrificing an interest involved negatively with the organization (being the latter characterized by the social strength given by the immediate positive involvement) and satisfying an interest with an intensity level higher than the first one. The organization's founding element is the indirect (mediate) positive involvement between the second interest of the individual and the organization.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il concetto di organizzazione secondo il paradigma scientifico [The concept of organization in the scientific paradigm], p. 288)

8/8«From a historical perspective, it is evident that either equity and efficiency objectives can be many; their number cannot be pre-defined because of the plurality of cultural factors analytically determining the situations where equity or efficiency occur. Therefore, whatever the specific hypotheses of organizational equity or efficiency (i.e., the specific typologies of organizations conforming to equity or efficiency paradigms), they all express organization's objectives, which translate into as many organizational policies. However, little or nothing they say about the more abstract characteristics of every conceivable typology of organization.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il concetto di organizzazione secondo il paradigma scientifico [The concept of organization in the scientific paradigm], p. 288)

1/40«When social ethics is controlled by an interpersonal sanctioning system, shared in a a direct or indirect  (mediate) way, it becomes a legal norm. The latter acquires a generalized compulsory characterization only when adopted by the state, i.e., by a legal order that, in principle, cannot be opposed or denied by another legal order which is itself a state; thereby, the norm is institutionalized.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], p. 9)

2/40«The fundamental property of the legal norm is not its institutionalization. It is the legitimation of the norm by an organized structure to which all the individuals belonging to a culturally defined social group delegate (with greater or lesser guarantees, or even with no guarantees) specific duties concerning those interpersonal relations which involve, in principle, all individuals (otherwise called collective interests).» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], p. 9)

3/40«Non-institutionalized legal norms legitimized within a given social group constitute a non-state legal order. The latter can manifest weaker or stronger autonomy claims (to the point of pretending to be a state), depending on the lesser or greater importance that all individuals attach to the positively involved (collective) interests legitimizing the normative system, i.e., to the lesser or greater importance they attribute to their own culture.

Therefore, there may be different types of non-institutionalized legal norms, which can have diverse characteristics. These norms can be compatible or clashing with the state norms, which means that the social legitimation of a norm may or may not coincide with the state legitimation of that norm (i.e., its institutionalization).» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], p. 10)

4/40«When a potentially deviant sub-state culture crosses the boundaries of the pre-institutional social space to give rise to an actual deviation, the level of social acceptance is very high. In such a case, the social group expressing the subculture shall not sacrifice the positively involved interests characterizing it (and underpinning its normative system) in favor of the state culture and the corresponding institutionalized norms.

Social facts of this type usually are undervalued by the hegemonic state culture, which tends to minimize the deviation, always considering it as a single deviation, according to a restrictive interpretation in line with the normative-punitive paradigm. It is a mistake that arises from explaining social facts in commonsense terms.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], p. 11)

5/40«If the consideration of social facts were based on a scientific explication of social facts, state intervention should be oriented in radically different terms, namely, towards eliminating or changing the causes of the deviation (with appropriate, joint socio-cultural and economic intervention policies) rather than punishing the effects of the deviation.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], pp. 11-12)

6/40«Besides emotional situations, a sense of insecurity and lack of confidence, and escape or defensive behaviors, the deviation can also generate or express relations of positive involvement between interests referred to more or less large social groups. In these cases, deviation becomes a social fact.

Any deviant behavior, carried out by individuals or more or less circumscribed groups, becomes a social fact when it generates or expresses collective interests in support of the deviation or, given such support, when it generates or expresses collective interests in conflict with the deviation. A deviation carried out by a more or less large group of subjects is not, for this reason alone, a social fact. It becomes a social fact when a social group, other than the deviant one, does support the deviation; here, there may also be another contrasting group that opposes the social group supporting the deviation.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], pp. 21-22)

7/40«Social facts must be defined with reference to the relations between the institutionalized legal order and the social order. That said, the legal order and the social order may be compatible with each other or not.

In both cases, there may be different degrees of compatibility (or incompatibility), which determine the extent of cooperation (positive involvement) or conflict (negative involvement) between the two orders; compatibility and incompatibility must be defined through concepts (terms) belonging to the language of the scientific sociology and not commonsense concepts, of course.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], p. 30)

8/40«The deviation is a social fact not because of the number of deviants or the typology that characterizes it. The deviation is a social fact whenever groups of individuals other than the deviants emerge (or exist) in the social context, expressing subcultures in support of deviants. These groups do not realize actual deviations (which are realized by the deviants) but rather carry out forms of deviant power (by using their public roles in favor of deviants) or, in more general terms, potential deviation against the institutionalized context to which they belong (based on an immediate positive involvement).» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], pp. 31-32)

9/40«When a subculture in support to deviation exists (and the code of silence, where widespread, is an important social indicator of it), institutionalized prevention-oriented regulatory action is unlikely to achieve generalized deterrent effects, and it is equally unlikely that the announced punishment will have deterrent effects.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], pp. 36-37)

10/40«The normative schema (static, by definition) unifies and standardizes all types of deviations, differentiating them only in terms of penalty measures (amount of punishment) to inflict. Instead, all deviations are profoundly different from each other (even those belonging to the same typology, as with kidnapping) because they depend on non-comparable social and psychological contexts.

Understanding the social variables of each specific deviation is indispensable to control the deviation not only through criminal and punitive measures and to eliminate the deviation through the elimination of its actual causes. It is indispensable not to delude oneself into eliminating the deviation by operating within simple formalistic homogenizations of a punitive type.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], p. 38)

11/40«Social facts involve everyone because each individual is a product of those facts. They involve everyone because attitudes and propensities may persist in each individual's personality, although difficult to perceive, which are residual aspects of an endogenous culture marginalized by the stratification of successive cultures but still present to some extent in the social environment.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], pp. 39-40)

12/40«Kidnapping is a type of deviant behavior that, due to its structural characteristics, needs generalized and continuous support during the entire implementation process. That is especially true when the kidnapping takes place in environments and groups where social interactions commonly involve, albeit in different times and spaces, the community at large. [...]

It does not mean that all individuals are accomplices of the kidnappers. It just means that larger social groups tend not to see and not to hear because they have internalized the code of silence (omertà) aimed at safeguarding the endogenous cultural identity, and the principles of its ethics, from behavioral models imposed from outside (from the state). The code of silence is seen not as a harmful fact for the community, but as a behavior due to the community, aimed at preserving its values and image against the exogenous cultures questioning them.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], pp. 40-41)

13/40«In its most abstract form, a society founded on the principle of retaliation regulates all relations between individuals in terms of conformity or non-conformity with the static equilibrium, which is identified in the tendency to preserve a traditionally defined social context. Any alteration of this context, either in terms of wealth imbalance between individuals or imbalance in social interactions, must be recomposed by administering to the individual who breaches the norm a penalty equal and contrary (antithetical) to the violation.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], p. 45)

14/40«Both the evolutionary social dynamics (i.e., the historical dynamics) and the structural social dynamics develop within the pre-institutional social space through continuous increasing or decreasing of the groups of individuals who recognize their interests within one or the other of the two sets of positively involved interests: institutionalized interests and opposed potentially deviant interests.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], p. 56)

15/40«If the positive involvement occurs between high intensity-level deviant interests (e.g., when a social group is quite sensitive to criteria of equity or distributive justice defined according to the cultural paradigms typical of that group), if the institutionalized interests defined by the power élite do not change according to the social needs emerging from the pre-institutional space, and if the deviant interests have a broad (or a very broad) base of acceptance, then maybe that potential deviation transcends the boundaries of the pre-institutional space and turns into actual deviation, which results in behaviors in open conflict with institutionalized interests. Here, the institutionalized sanctioning power is no longer effective against deviant interests.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], pp. 56-57)

16/40«The state can satisfy the public interest in the prevention of deviation in four ways, two of which are direct and two indirect:

1. by carrying out operational sequences aimed at modifying the social context within which deviant behavior is learned;

2. by carrying out operational sequences aimed at protecting the subjects against whom deviant behaviors may be directed;

3. by carrying out operational sequences of a purely punitive type;

4. by carrying out operational sequences achieving a generalized deterrent effect via the implementation of punishment as subtraction (or impediment to the acquisition) of an advantage (resource), not as administration of a sanction.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], p. 60)

17/40«The elimination of conflict by the power and resultant penal norm is not a real elimination; it cannot be deemed equivalent to a change in culture, but rather to a semblance of change, an illusion deriving from common sense, which considers punishment to be the sole means to change behaviors. The punitive approach does not change the personality of individuals; much less does it change cultures or social behaviors.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], p. 63)

18/40«Conflicts between diverse cultures are not and cannot be overcome only through the instruments of power (especially criminal law). Only a conflict between the state and single deviations, at most, could be (badly) resolved through the criminal law. However, when the deviation is deeply rooted in the social context, it would be better to ask why the deviation is such only for the state and not also for the endogenous culture.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], pp. 63-64)

19/40«The generalized deterrent effect of punishment can tend to zero if what the state considers deviant behavior is deeply rooted in a culture that expresses a set of interests negatively involved with the institutionalized interests. In this case, the behavior is legitimate for the non-institutionalized (endogenous) culture, albeit deviant for the institutionalized culture. In contrast, the state-protected interest is considered unlawful by the endogenous culture.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], p. 67)

20/40«In establishing an abstract norm, the legislature presupposes, by definition, the formal equality of social contexts. Namely, the legislature assumes for reasons of power that the whole (Italian) society is characterized by an indisputable cultural uniformity, imposed as the only reference paradigm in the interpretation and implementation of the norm.

Perhaps this happens in a large number of cases, but the federalist and separatist claims do not seem to confirm that fact.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], p. 71)

21/40«Kidnapping for ransom is a crime that puts the consistency of the founding principles of criminal law to the test. Given that every penal norm must rest on some public interest (i.e., an interest recognized and embraced by each individual who belongs to a specific state community), what public interest is sacrificed in the event of a kidnapping?

If the latter did not entail the “kidnapee-against-ransom” negotiation, there would be no problem: kidnapping would be a fully-fledged crime against the person. However, given that the kidnapping entails the release of the kidnapee upon the ransom payment, the crime’s object is not the person but the property; the deprivation of personal liberty to the detriment of the kidnapee (the hostage) is only a means for kidnappers to get an economic advantage.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], pp. 75-76)

22/40«The penal norm is of limited usefulness within a culture with no social deviation but only single deviations (given the uncertain relevance of the punishment in case of high intensity-level deviant interests). The penal norm is useless when one tries to enforce it within a culture heterogeneous to it, where the norm is used against social deviation.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], p. 89)

23/40«It is difficult to bring about changes in cultures by intervening through exogenous variables which are not of a normative-punitive type, especially when the political order is pluralistic and democratic. Here, the political class tends to adjust to the interests belonging to the basis of consent (consensus basis), excluding any intervention that could change existing social situations from the inventory of public interests.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], p. 100)

24/40«In short, both social preconditions and economic preconditions for development were lacking. More to the point, a misrepresented choice was made, expressing a form of deviant power typical of the political class. The latter set its consent maximization, instead of the economic (and social) development, as its goal, thereby subordinating the effectiveness of public interventions to its persistence in exercising power.

In pluralistic systems (given the weak conditioning force of ideologies), many forms of deviant power by the political class tend to resort to public welfarist interventions.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], pp. 102-103)

25/40«The crisis that hit the industrial sites in recent decades has worsened an already precarious situation, resulting in a strongly weakened industrial market culture. From the beginning, the severe dysfunctions of the political organization in terms of deviant power have spoiled the latter. Moreover, it could not be expected to superimpose the new industrialism on the endogenous culture, sic et simpliciter, without trying to change the latter contextually.

The result has been the industry crisis on the one hand and the endemic crisis of the agropastoral sector on the other; besides, the endogenous culture has not changed in front of these crises. This situation has led to severe consequences in the social context, which find in the malaise of large regional areas (i.e., in the potential or actual deviation generalized in those areas), one of the most relevant expressions.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], p. 103)

26/40«From the naïve but generalized commonsense perspective, all social issues related to deviation are exclusively criminal matters; it necessarily follows the broad role of the judiciary and magistracy. Many are today surprised by the near-total absence of boundaries for such a role. Indeed, it is only the consequence of a premise that almost everyone accepts: behavior can only be good or bad, lawful or unlawful.

As a matter of fact, humans' direct experience contributes to establishing easy-to-understand reference points. Separating good from evil is the most essential and rewarding thing to do because it would make it possible to put order into a world that appears very disordered, and people always perceive deviation as a disorder.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], pp. 120-121)

27/40«Alas, it has not yet been understood that it is not that every social phenomenon comes out of nowhere as if it were an extemporaneous manifestation of isolated personalities. It has not yet been understood that every social phenomenon is the effect of causes we must seek in the interaction processes. In short, every human behavior is the direct or indirect effect of social variables that determine it, namely, other coexisting behaviors with which it interacts.

That every human is a sort of monad, free in its choices and judgments, able to answer to nobody but itself, its conscience, or some transcendent reality representing its reference point and goal, is a very reassuring and engaging metaphysical notion. However, it is too simplistic and completely lacking in explicative capacity. It explains nothing yet comforts everyone, because it shifts the problem from a search for causes to an alleged elimination of effects.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], p. 122)

28/40«The process of national unification that has forcibly superimposed a hegemonic regional culture on a multiplicity of other cultures, also regional but less innovative, has always been set in repressive and punitive terms and has always tried to impose a unification between radically different social contexts, primary through precisely that juridical formalism which can be seen as the arrival point of a unification process, but never as a starting point or a means to achieve any unification.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], p. 125)

29/40«Cultural relativism is one of the most typical aspects representing today’s society. Faced with the plurality of attitudes and values that diversify social groups and specify their generalized models of behavior and organization, one should look at the problem of amalgamating or assimilating the various systems of social interaction from a perspective of mutual respect. The latter is, ultimately, the perspective on which the very concept of autonomy rests.

Respect for the various cultures finds an insuperable boundary: the need for amalgamation or assimilation. If the Sardinian endogenous social order were assimilated into the state culture, it would perforce have to be modified. If it were modified, somehow, it would be destroyed. Is it acceptable to destroy an endogenous social order without the generalized awareness of the social groups that internalize and express it? How could this awareness be attained?» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], pp. 126-127)

30/40«The unspoken dogma underlying the prescriptive paradigm and the very concept of legal norm, in its punitive acceptation, is to consider conflict as an ineliminable characteristic of human interaction, both on the knowledge level and the social level.

The dogma of punishment follows from the dogma of conflict. It finds in (natural and positive) law an ennobling framework, to which one usually refers when dealing with the problem of order. The latter was addressed by Hobbes, who solved it most radically by postulating the Leviathan, and Parsons, who attempted to solve it in functionalist terms.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], p. 141)

31/40«Institutionalized power becomes deviant power when it is used to obtain the persistence of a given political class, namely when the latter uses it to make its basis of consent static (on the structural level) and stationary (on the evolutionary level).» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], p. 144)

32/40«The past history, here considered with reference to the structural dynamics (hence, as a parameter) and not to the evolutionary dynamics, has been characterized not only by the persisting negative involvement between the interests of the endogenous culture and the interests of the exogenous state cultures (grounded on power) but also by the coexisting attitude to total acquiescence towards external domination exhibited by the local élites. The past history has also been characterized by the fact that the endogenous culture has never been able to express innovatively any normative state-type system manifesting an autonomous organizational capacity of the social context; it only expressed primitive forms of organization, which never went beyond the narrow confines of the extended family and clan.

Given such a situation, characterized, among other things, by a tendency toward social and economic stationariness, the endogenous society could only reaffirm in anomalous and hidden forms its egalitarian values and try to realize them.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], p. 146)

33/40«The statehood of any culture is expressed not only by its organizational form but also by the principle of legitimacy underlying the organizational form being truly endogenous, namely, by the basis of consent related to the political élite identifying with the endogenous culture the élite expresses. If this does not happen, one can observe a form or semblance of a state, not a state properly speaking, because the reference points of such an organization differ from those compatible with the endogenous culture in terms of both contents and the proposed normative model.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], p. 147)

34/40«Indeed, if a system institutionalizes some socializing ethics, it must give (for the sake of consistency) a social and economic role to each individual. That is not usually the case, as the legitimized (or institutionalized) forms of acquiring roles in the social context do not guarantee equal conditions among all individuals, given the inequality in resource distribution determined by the proprietary system and the accumulation dynamics in the market system.

For the purpose of a not strictly punitive control of deviation, usually, the groups that base their institutionalized socializing ethics on social and economic roles (with particular reference to private property and the market) institutionalize the principles of individualizing ethics, too, aimed at attributing an intrinsic value to each individual. This attribution leads to inconsistencies and contradictions, particularly relevant in the kidnapping case.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], pp. 157-158)

35/40«The attempt to rewrite history (Sardinian and Italian history) based on a formalistic-juridical notion of state realizes an arbitrary separation, a split between state-form and state-culture. In Sardinia, the state form has never been related to an endogenous state culture but always to exogenous state cultures. For this reason, the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1324 and, more recently, the Kingdom of Italy did not express evolutionary stages of the same state; instead, they connoted radically different state cultures and, therefore, different states.

The evolutionary stages of a state form do not always go along with the corresponding evolutionary stages of the state culture. It may happen, on the contrary, that an original state form becomes related to some different and new state culture. In that event, the state (meant as the contextual expression of a state form and a state culture) changes.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], pp. 161-162)

36/40«The modification of interests (and the modification of the relations between interests) expresses the changes legitimated within the social context that make a dynamic equilibrium. When these changes are not allowed, the equilibrium is static (it can be altered by the deviation and recomposed by the punishment). The legal norm and the principle of retaliation, by definition, presuppose a static equilibrium (which the interpretation of the law attempts to adapt to social dynamics).» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], p. 164)

37/40«Punishment takes on different connotations and produces different effects, depending on the paradigm of reference according to which it is implemented. In principle, it could be instrumental to retaliation, social control, or educational objectives. However, that the punishment is taken into consideration (and administered) without an explicitly determined paradigm of reference does not mean that such a reference paradigm is not logically presupposed, albeit latently; otherwise, one could not even speak of punishment. It means, instead, that retaliation, social control, and education objectives are undifferentiated. The reason is that the principle of retaliation (as transposed into the legal norm, particularly the criminal law) is usually assumed as the sole paradigm of reference for punishment (and the sole objective to which punishment can be instrumental).» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], p. 194)

38/40«Rehabilitation has very high social costs compared to the benefits it brings. For this reason, deprivation of personal freedom can be accepted, even leaving aside the rehabilitation, not as a punishment but simply as a prevention and social protection measure related to a behavior’s pathology resulting from an anomalous socialization process; but this requires renouncing to interpret punishment through the principle of retaliation.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], pp. 196-197)

39/40«If the deviation is associated with rehabilitation, then the punishment must be interpreted and used in a framework of social control and not retaliation. In this regard, the antinomy of punishment suffers from the confusion between retaliation and social control.

It is difficult to change an established situation, although the debates on punishment and punishment-related rehabilitation (despite the conceptual misunderstanding they suffer) show a gradual weakening of the ideology of retaliation on the cultural (historical) level (a weakening that cannot be fully expressed from Kelsen’s formalistic perspective). However, punishment and rehabilitation are mutually exclusive concepts, as they postulate incompatible reference frameworks.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], pp. 197-198)

40/40«The lack of a deterrent effect shows that punishment has not worked as an independent variable for interrupting the deviant instrumental behavior and, with a very high probability, will not work in the future under equivalent situations.

From this perspective, given that the behavioristic relevance of the punishment is not the expiation but the interruption of the instrumental operants that realize deviation, the operativeness of punishment in relation to deviation is nil. However, although useless for the deviant, administering the punishment is useful to give real meaning to the announced punishment, namely to prevent future deviations by individuals with potential attitudes towards deviation compared to those of the actual deviant.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il sequestro come fatto sociale [The kidnapping as a social fact], pp. 199-200)

1/10«The arguments advanced to attempt to justify the sociological Aristotelianism are of two types: arguments finding their origin in epistemology and arguments relating to the image of the human being conveyed by the philosophical tradition. These arguments, which complement each other, are specified in a large set of pseudo-explanatory corollaries.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Le scatole vuote della sociologia [Empty sociological boxes], p. 49)

2/10«Arguments of the first type assume - on an intuitive basis - that every research method necessarily implies some value judgment. Consequently, these arguments deny intersubjectiveness to the scientific discourse, qualified by the functional relation between (independent and dependent) variables and by the experimental verification. Thereby, the problem of applying the Galilean method to the social sciences, considered value-based by definition, becomes meaningless.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Le scatole vuote della sociologia [Empty sociological boxes], p. 49)

3/10«Arguments of the second type assume—still on an intuitive basis—that self-consciousness determines a radical differentiation between “human being” and “nature.” Consequently, these arguments consider human behavior irreducible to any analysis based on the natural science methods, insofar as human behavior is “free,” “voluntary,” and “historicized,” that is, “aleatoric,” given the massive number of unknowable variables that would characterize it.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Le scatole vuote della sociologia [Empty sociological boxes], pp. 49-50)

4/10«Galileo contrasts intuition as the “principle of science” with the experimental method qualified by the functional relation and demonstrates how “principles” can be justified within science. To found science on the “abstractive induction,” namely intuition, means to deny science, as intuition (characterized by subjectiveness) makes different observers’ standpoints not comparable, in principle. Furthermore, the single event is of primary importance for Galileo because the controlled (laboratory) experiment refers to specific phenomena under the assumption of their accordance with the law.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Le scatole vuote della sociologia [Empty sociological boxes], p. 51)

5/10«Aristotle answers the question “what is that event” and conceives of science as knowledge by demonstration based on “causes” as “necessary essences.” Instead, Galileo answers the question “how does that event (dependent variable) work” with respect to other events and conceives of science as knowledge by relation based on causes as independent variables.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Le scatole vuote della sociologia [Empty sociological boxes], p. 52)

6/10«There is a great deal of “essences” in psychology, which are sometimes called “intervening variables” or “cognitive variables.” Psychoanalysis rests on “essences,” and maybe that is why it enjoys considerable success.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Le scatole vuote della sociologia [Empty sociological boxes], p. 52)

7/10«Sociology works on “essences” indiscriminately. Durkheim’s “social fact,” Weber’s “ideal type,” phenomenological conceptualizations, Parsons’s pattern-variables, and Merton’s “latent interest,” to name only some paradigmatic examples, are all essences. Other commonly used “essences” are: “spirit” (whence the “sciences of the spirit”), “will,” “freedom,” “family,” “State,” and “law,” conceived as universals. Formulating universals of this type often leads to considering some historical behaviors (hatred, violence, selfishness, altruism, religious sense) as characteristics of human nature.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Le scatole vuote della sociologia [Empty sociological boxes], p. 53)

8/10«The thesis of the radical separation between natural sciences and human sciences, often endorsed uncritically by methodologically ill-equipped natural scientists, is re-proposed in a seemingly non-philosophical way when it is stated that two types of science exist, both characterized, in principle, by the functional relation: the natural science, which admits experimental verification, and the social science which, not being able to admit experimental verification, should only use the statistical method.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Le scatole vuote della sociologia [Empty sociological boxes], p. 53)

9/10«The concept of statistical law in physics differs from the concept of statistical law in sociological and economic analyses. In relation to social phenomena, unlike physics, it is assumed that the application domain for the correlations between variables and empirical generalizations is limited in time and space.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Le scatole vuote della sociologia [Empty sociological boxes], p. 55)

10/10«It is attributed to the “human phenomenon,” unlike natural phenomena, the “ability” or “possibility” to “create” one’s own culture and therefore to “influence” those same “laws” that statisticians will detect in their investigations. From the commonsense intuition that the human being would “create” its own culture and behavioral models in an aleatoric way, it follows that seeking general laws such as the “laws of nature”  would be pointless in the social field, thereby arbitrarily confining the scientific analysis of human being to the study of stochastic functional dependencies concerning historically and culturally determined behavioral repertoires.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Le scatole vuote della sociologia [Empty sociological boxes], p. 55)

1/24«Development modeling presupposes a “specific development,” characterized by variables and parameters that refer, in principle, to advanced industrial societies, namely to those societies where economic rationality is widespread. What if the socio-economic fact to be explained does not conform to those characteristics, as is the case in most economic systems in the third and semi-industrialized world? Perchance, is it necessary to wait for these economic systems to become explicable on the basis of the current formalized development models? Or should we change the models, focusing on building more abstract theories? Namely, theories that would allow the analysis of underdevelopment to make that explanatory leap necessary to carry out a unifying discourse between economic and socio-psychological variables?» IT

(G. Bolacchi et al., Oligopolio e crescita economica [Oligopoly and economic growth], pp. 17-18)

2/24«In summary, the development processes are not clearly distinguished from the transition processes from underdevelopment to development. Furthermore, using methodological tools typical of the economic theory of development to deal with the transition from underdevelopment to development leads to several contradictions at the level of economic policy interventions, negatively affecting the explanatory trustworthiness of the economic approach to underdevelopment, which in the fifties had utmost credit.» IT

(G. Bolacchi et al., Oligopolio e crescita economica [Oligopoly and economic growth], p. 19)

3/24«These considerations must be systematized in the context of economic language, which, like all languages, has a logical-syntactical and a semantical aspect. [...] The logical-syntactical matter is expressed in mathematical terms; in the neoclassical hypothesis, it translates into the general equations of economic equilibrium. The semantic matter lies in the specific behavioral meanings associated with these equations, making it possible to operationalize the economic language.

Often economists do not notice this fundamental distinction. They proceed only paying attention to the mathematical-deductive development, without considering that the explicative power of economic language, as well as its scope in terms of economic “technologies” and policies, do depend on the exact semantical characterization of each function, i.e., on the proper association of specific behaviors to each set of values in the equations.» IT

(G. Bolacchi et al., Oligopolio e crescita economica [Oligopoly and economic growth], p. 27)

4/24«The extended Keynesian model used by Lewis and substantially embraced by Hirschman, Simon, and Leibenstein expresses a structural equilibrium dynamics referring to a given production factor combination (production function). The transition from underdevelopment to development expresses an entirely different dynamic relation, which does not concern a tendency toward the full employment of factors under a given combination, but the progressive modification of the factor combination, i.e., the cumulative dynamics of the production factor combination.

From this perspective, the problem of the transition from underdevelopment to development consists not so much in the ability, as Leibenstein states, to find and recruit hidden, dispersed, or misused resources and skills, given a factor combination, but in identifying the independent variables that determine the modes of variation of the production factor combination through which the accumulation and development processes occur.» IT

(G. Bolacchi et al., Oligopolio e crescita economica [Oligopoly and economic growth], pp. 30-31)

5/24«Even the approach to underdevelopment based on the industrialization-process issues falls within the theoretical schema of neoclassical equilibrium. That is why all attempts to build development models based on the injection of external resources in underdeveloped areas, with the objective of industrialization, do shape stationary situations instead of endogenous development situations. These models entail the productivity of investment to be compatible only with the economic functions of the operators outside the underdeveloped area where investments are made, whether private or public sector operators.» IT

(G. Bolacchi et al., Oligopolio e crescita economica [Oligopoly and economic growth], pp. 31-32)

6/24«The external capital inflows cannot be oriented towards the endogenous development of an underdeveloped area when external capital can be used freely in a market context.

The parameters to assess the productivity of external capital could be defined by reference to a growth function of the backward area (whose development is lagging behind) only if: (a) the external capital inflows were “donations,” pure and simple; (b) the backward area was autonomous in developing technological innovations; (c) the backward area had the political strength to negotiate market shares in an oligopolistic context.» IT

(G. Bolacchi et al., Oligopolio e crescita economica [Oligopoly and economic growth], p. 32)

7/24«An entrepreneur working in an underdeveloped area can only realize repetitive production factor combinations because no autonomous technological and organizational innovation is available, nor the political strength to negotiate oligopolistic market shares. Therefore, the entrepreneur has two alternatives: (a) renouncing to introduce, in the production factor combination, a technological factor with the same indivisibility degree as that of the combination in developed areas, thereby placing the enterprise in an extra-marginal situation; or (b) introducing in the production factor combination a technological factor with the same indivisibility degree as that of the combination in developed areas, thereby realizing an overdetermined productivity equation in relation to the market the enterprise can reach and, here too, placing the latter in an extra-marginal situation. This tendency to extra-marginality typical of the entrepreneurs working in an underdeveloped area can be defined as the antinomy of the tecnology function.» IT

(G. Bolacchi et al., Oligopolio e crescita economica [Oligopoly and economic growth], p. 34)

8/24«Locating a “vertex” (downstream) single-product factor combination in an underdeveloped area would lead to the emergence of an induced economic-technological continuum formed by instrumental enterprises to the downstream (final) factor combination of that continuum. The latter combination would thus be a “driving” force that could end the technology function antinomy. For these reasons, the single-product factor combination can also be defined as an endogenously oriented factor combination.» IT

(G. Bolacchi et al., Oligopolio e crescita economica [Oligopoly and economic growth], p. 37)

9/24«The degree of monopoly of enterprises operating in a developed area that belongs, alongside the underdeveloped area, to a market system determines the rise of market barriers to the location of endogenously oriented single-product factor combination in the underdeveloped area. Namely, it determines the rise of barriers that prevent single-product vertical integration processes within the underdeveloped area.

Therefore, the underdeveloped area must have a political negotiation strength suitable for obtaining not only the location of an endogenously oriented single-product factor combination in the area, sized to fit the technological indivisibilities characterizing the economic sector selected as the driving one. It should also obtain those results triggered by the location in the underdeveloped area of all (or otherwise the maximum number of) factor combinations working in the intermediate levels of the vertical continuum.» IT

(G. Bolacchi et al., Oligopolio e crescita economica [Oligopoly and economic growth], pp. 40-41)

10/24«In the case of the single-product vertical continuum, the market for intermediate factor combinations depends on the downstream factor combination working at the endpoint of the continuum. In the case of the multi-product vertical continuum, the market for intermediate factor combinations does not depend on the upstream factor combination working at the starting point of the continuum, i.e., it does not depend on the initial multi-product factor combination. It follows that the latter is not a driving combination like the downstream single-product factor combination.» IT

(G. Bolacchi et al., Oligopolio e crescita economica [Oligopoly and economic growth], p. 41)

11/24«An upstream multi-product factor combination located in an underdeveloped area is always oriented exogenously, in principle. The exogenous orientation derives from the fact that the factor combinations in the vertical continuum must be compatible with the technological-indivisibility standards typical of the developed areas.» IT

(G. Bolacchi et al., Oligopolio e crescita economica [Oligopoly and economic growth], p. 42)

12/24«As mentioned, the neoclassical theory cannot explicate the transition from underdevelopment to development. Assuming the constraint given by the non-correspondence between the technology function and the market as an explicative postulate of the underdevelopment within the neoclassical system means that any hypothesis of modification or elimination of this constraint is devoid of scientific meaning within that system. Such a hypothesis must be placed necessarily within a different system, where the constraint is not a postulate but a dependent variable.

Inserting this dependent variable in a functional relation raises the problem of identifying the independent variable. At this level of analysis, we can hypothesize the political function and the scientific-research function to be those independent variables.» IT

(G. Bolacchi et al., Oligopolio e crescita economica [Oligopoly and economic growth], p. 49)

13/24«It is necessary to consider the independent macro-variables relating to the transition from underdevelopment to development outside the restricted economic system within which development models have been formulated to date (be it neoclassical or Keynesian) to eliminate the oligopolistic barriers that prevent endogenous development processes in underdeveloped areas. The macro-variables that make it possible to formulate an extended economic discourse referring to the transition from underdevelopment to development could be designated, briefly, as the prerequisites for development. […]

The macro-variables that can create unfavorable situations for oligopolistic barriers in an underdeveloped area are: (a) technological and organizational innovations related to endogenously oriented single-product factor combinations; (b) external economies related to endogenously oriented downstream single-product factor combinations; (c) the political strength to negotiate the location of endogenously oriented single-product factor combinations in the underdeveloped area.» IT

(G. Bolacchi et al., Oligopolio e crescita economica [Oligopoly and economic growth], p. 52)

14/24«Establishing external economies (i.e., direct or indirect incentives to locate industrial enterprises in an underdeveloped area) is not sufficient by itself to bring about conditions for endogenous development in a market context.

When external economies are not associated with a political negotiation strength suitable for orienting induced effects and determining the emergence of a single-product vertical continuum in the underdeveloped area, they have only market-compatible effects, which are the location of exogenously oriented factor combinations in the underdeveloped area.» IT

(G. Bolacchi et al., Oligopolio e crescita economica [Oligopoly and economic growth], p. 53)

15/24«The transition from underdevelopment to development entails not so much the absence of external capital inflows to the developed area (a hypothesis that has no relevance in the context of this study). What matters is whether the parameters applied to assess the productivity of the capital employed in the underdeveloped area (external capital, in commonsense terms) relate to an endogenous or an exogenous production function. As we have said, the production function is necessarily exogenous in the neoclassical (restricted or extended) system. In the explicative model proposed in this study, the function is endogenous to the underdeveloped area.» IT

(G. Bolacchi et al., Oligopolio e crescita economica [Oligopoly and economic growth], p. 58)

16/24«It is possible to direct the external capital inflows to an underdeveloped area towards an endogenous-accumulation objective function or an objective function incompatible with the endogenous accumulation; in the latter event, a maximum-employment objective function may be pursued. In Sardinia, the economic policy interventions (hence the external capital inflows) have been oriented towards the maximum-employment objective function, and the productivity of investment has been related to exogenous parameters incompatible with the economic-growth function of the regional system.» IT

(G. Bolacchi et al., Oligopolio e crescita economica [Oligopoly and economic growth], p. 71)

17/24«The premises differ from the current explanatory hypotheses about the transition from underdevelopment to development; they take into consideration that the effects of the injection of external capital inflows in an underdeveloped area cannot be adequately analyzed if explanatory models typical of developed areas are the reference paradigm. Using these explanatory models (e.g., the more general Harrod-Domar model, which includes variables such as the income growth rate, the accumulation rate, the capital/output ratio, and internal savings) presupposes that the oligopolistic obstacles to development, typical of underdeveloped areas, have already been overcome; namely, these obstacles are considered nonexistent and, as a matter of fact, they find no place in the model.» IT

(G. Bolacchi et al., Oligopolio e crescita economica [Oligopoly and economic growth], p. 73)

18/24«The new variable introduced in the model used in this study, which has never been included in any other model developed to date, concerns the specific characterization of external capital inflows as to the production function. Usually, these external capital inflows are considered (public or private) production functions endogenous to the underdeveloped area. [...]

The proposed model differs from the other models on this point. We hypothesize, in fact, that a fundamental constraint characterizes the external capital inflows injected into underdeveloped areas, which results from the fact that the specific allocation of the external capital inflows strictly relates to a production function exogenous to the underdeveloped area; namely, it relates to the production function of those public and private subjects who finance the external capital inflows.» IT

(G. Bolacchi et al., Oligopolio e crescita economica [Oligopoly and economic growth], pp. 80-81)

19/24«Despite the injection of considerable external capital inflows, the functional relations between income and investment and between employment and investment do not take place in underdeveloped areas. This fact pertains, in principle, to the oligopolistic constraint. To affirm that some backward regions may exist in which these functional relations occur is to recognize that, with reference to these regions, the oligopolistic barriers related to external capital inflows do not operate or operate to a lesser extent; these are regions that have managed to nullify the impact of the financiers’ exogenous production functions on capital inflows. The transition from underdevelopment to development also occurs by eliminating the oligopolistic barriers. From this perspective, the fact that the functional relations between income and investments and between employment and investments are verified marks the line beyond which the “backward” area accomplishes the conditions for economic growth.» IT

(G. Bolacchi et al., Oligopolio e crescita economica [Oligopoly and economic growth], pp. 81-82)

20/24«Activating a development process necessarily implies changing the demand function of developed areas. Therefore, any external capital inflow towards underdeveloped areas must be compatible with the stability of the demand function of developed areas if the latter finance external capital inflows. Where this was not the case, developed areas would act disadvantageously for themselves. This consideration has to be taken into account in the analysis of the transition from underdevelopment to development.

The external capital inflows activate a development process when the demand function of the developed areas financing these flows changes because of the external capital inflows. When the demand function of the developed areas does not change with the external capital inflows, the external capital inflows do not activate any effective development process but only a development process of consumption.» IT

(G. Bolacchi et al., Oligopolio e crescita economica [Oligopoly and economic growth], p. 83)

21/24«Introducing the distinction between public and private functions in the proposed model is crucial to make it more specific and suitable for a more detailed explication.

The public function is not compatible with the production, in principle; instead, it is characterized by a redistribution process. Thus, the definition shifts from a legal-formal level to a strictly economic level, concerning not the “public” or “private” subjects who perform the function but the performance mode of that function. Therefore, it can be said that the public function always operates as a redistribution function, whereas the private function always operates as a production function.» IT

(G. Bolacchi et al., Oligopolio e crescita economica [Oligopoly and economic growth], p. 90)

22/24«An ongoing external capital inflow, the working of multiplier effects not tied to the underdeveloped area, and the uneven trade balance (trade unbalance) identify what can be defined as a situation of dependence. Under this situation, the income levels within the underdeveloped area are direct dependent variables of external capital inflows rather than investments. In the absence of these inflows, as noted, the income levels decrease accordingly, and the underdeveloped area falls into a complete stagnation.

The situation of dependence constitutes a structural crisis for the regional system because the generalized increase in demand resulting from an increase in income does not correspond to a generalized interdependence between production functions. The system presents severe imbalances resulting from the prevailing presence of exogenously oriented production functions and the limited presence of endogenously oriented production functions characterized by the antinomy of the technology function.» IT

(G. Bolacchi et al., Oligopolio e crescita economica [Oligopoly and economic growth], p. 97)

23/24«The analysis of the transition from underdevelopment to development requires distinguishing between the most relevant and generalized external constraints (such as the oligopolistic obstacles to development that are oriented toward an increase of the demand function within the developed areas) and internal constraints, which are typical of specific economic structures characterized by a stationariness in time of the population distribution curves by rank.» IT

(G. Bolacchi et al., Oligopolio e crescita economica [Oligopoly and economic growth], pp. 220-221)

24/24«The elimination of internal constraints to development would entail, in the first place, a precise characterization of those constraints within an analytical sub-model. In the second place, it would require the launch of an intervention policy, not only on the economic level but also and primarily on the social level, to change people’s attitudes towards industrial culture and establish generalized, positive social reinforcers, promoting innovation and socio-economic dynamics.» IT

(G. Bolacchi et al., Oligopolio e crescita economica [Oligopoly and economic growth], p. 227)

1/12«The model illustrated here makes it possible to identify the elements with a negative impact on investments and endogenous accumulation and a positive impact on employment, income, and consumption. However, the generalized increase in income and consumption are circumstantial positive factors, not structural factors, as dependent variables related not to endogenous accumulation but rather external capital inflow. The external capital inflow must be ongoing for the income and consumption levels not to fall. Without the external capital inflow, the circumstantial positive factors nullify pronto.» IT

(G. Bolacchi et al., Zona di produzione franca [Production free zone], p. 32)

2/12«As mentioned, the regional economic policy interventions in favor of small and medium-sized enterprises used monetary incentives ultimately as an instrument to promote employment; i.e., they used an economic policy instrument incompatible with the objective function of endogenous accumulation. As a result, the structural anomalies of endogenously oriented production-factor combinations have been accentuated rather than removed, and the regional economic system has become increasingly dependent on the developed economic system steering and managing external capital inflows.» IT

(G. Bolacchi et al., Zona di produzione franca [Production free zone], p. 34)

3/12«The transition from underdevelopment to development cannot occur, by definition, in an underdeveloped system where those preconditions for development that should eliminate or reduce the effects of oligopolistic barriers do not exist. [...]

The preconditions for development consist of technological or organizational know-how within the underdeveloped area, which allows for introducing an innovation factor in the production factor combinations located in that underdeveloped area. In that event, the problem of transferring market shares from developed to underdeveloped areas is solved, as a new market is related to the innovative combination, in principle. The preconditions for development also consist of external monetary or real economies within the underdeveloped area. Furthermore, the preconditions for development consist of the political negotiation strength applied to locate endogenously oriented downstream single-product factor combinations in the underdeveloped area and transfer the related market shares.» IT

(G. Bolacchi et al., Zona di produzione franca [Production free zone], pp. 57-58)

4/12«In summary, we can distinguish external economies into real and monetary ones; the latter can be distinguished further into direct monetary subsidies and indirect monetary subsidies or tax incentives. Regarding the impact on managing an enterprise, real external economies usually relate to operational deliberations. External monetary economies relate, instead: (a) to locational deliberations, when they consist of direct monetary subsidies, and (b) to locational but sometimes even operational deliberations, when they consist of indirect monetary subsidies or tax incentives.» IT

(G. Bolacchi et al., Zona di produzione franca [Production free zone], pp. 59-60)

5/12«The distinction between locational and operational aspects referring to the monetary or real external economies derives from the specificity of the single development policies rather than a need for theoretical systematization. Such specificity has often led to a concept of external economies suffering from the shortcomings of development policy designed to increase employment alone. Sardinia is one of the most probative examples of such a policy, which affected Southern Italy. However, this kind of policy should not be considered a development policy but rather an income policy, being the investments directed solely towards expanding employment. In this scenario, the efficiency objective (and, hence, the development objective) is not taken as a parameter of the production factor combination because the latter is considered mainly in relation to employment.» IT

(G. Bolacchi et al., Zona di produzione franca [Production free zone], pp. 62-63)

6/12«These considerations make evident the incompatibility between policies oriented exclusively to employment and policies oriented to activating an endogenous accumulation process. The employment-oriented policies operate within a model in which the postulate of factor remuneration based on marginal productivity does not appear, or it is subject to constraints deriving from choices incompatible with it by public institutions. A model of this type should not be rejected on the sole ground that the postulate of marginal productivity for the production factors does not appear or appears negligible. Though, when such a model is used to design economic policy interventions, it is necessary to specify its limits and make explicit the elements that differentiate it from models built on the marginal productivity postulate, on which the endogenous-accumulation development policies have to be based.» IT

(G. Bolacchi et al., Zona di produzione franca [Production free zone], p. 63)

7/12«In summary, direct monetary external economies have dysfunctional effects on economic growth. First, they can be oriented toward objectives incompatible with economic growth, like when they are designed to pursue the maximum-employment objective (as in Sardinia).

Moreover, the flexibility of use of the direct external monetary economies in relation to the political steering of investments on many occasions allows for their use in terms of deviant power by the political class. When the latter adopts a distorted perspective in exercising power is in a position to impose, through direct external monetary economies, “improper burdens” on enterprises for the benefit of specific political groups.» IT

(G. Bolacchi et al., Zona di produzione franca [Production free zone], p. 64)

8/12«Talking about locational effects is not very accurate from an economic perspective. Here, we should refer not so much to geographical location issues but to the possibility for a production factor combination to operate in the underdeveloped area compared to the possibilities existing in a developed area.

The economic variable we can use to explicate these concepts in more rigorous terms is the average aggregate productivity (in the developed area) in the sector to which the driving single-product factor combination located in the underdeveloped area belongs. In this regard, it should be noted that the productivity of the driving single-product factor combination located (or locatable) in the underdeveloped area must be equalized to the average productivity of the relevant sector in the developed area, so that induced locational effects can be achieved. In this case, a situation of indifference occurs.» IT

(G. Bolacchi et al., Zona di produzione franca [Production free zone], p. 67)

9/12«The identification of these two macro-variables (i.e., the sector’s average productivity values in the developed area and the average productivity values for the single-product factor combinations in the underdeveloped area associated with the tax exemptions values, keeping the real external economies and the direct external monetary economies fixed) implies an analysis to identify, on the one hand (a) the specific sectors to which the endogenously oriented single-product factor combinations located or locatable in the underdeveloped area belong and, on the other (b) the indirect external monetary economies (i.e., the amount and the incidence of tax exemption) necessary to equalize the average productivity of the single-product factor combination in the underdeveloped area to the average productivity of the single-product factor combination in the developed area.

It means the tax exemption amount and incidence must be equivalent to the difference between the sector average productivity values in the developed area and the average productivity values of the single-product (downstream or midstream) factor combination that should operate in the underdeveloped area.» IT

(G. Bolacchi et al., Zona di produzione franca [Production free zone], p. 68)

10/12«The TE-variable (tax exemption) explicates the concept of a production-oriented free zone for endogenous accumulation. This concept presupposes connoting the free zone as an instrument of economic policy, namely as an independent macro-variable for development, as shown by the complex model formalized in this study.

Therefore, the free-zone problem cannot be solved, nor can the free zone be correctly defined, unless a reference model is taken into account in which the free zone appears as a dynamic variable. Defining the free zone means asking how it works, and determining how it works requires defining a set of variables, including the free zone, connected by dynamic functional relations.» IT

(G. Bolacchi et al., Zona di produzione franca [Production free zone], p. 71)

11/12«Based on these relations, it becomes clear the radical differentiation between the concept of a free zone as an economic policy macro-variable for the activation of an endogenous accumulation process, identified in this study, and the current concept of a free zone as a generalized tax exemption not bounded to specific endogenous accumulation objectives.

In the latter case, the tax exemption does not work as a precondition for development, no matter how it is implemented; i.e., it fails to remove the oligopolistic barriers that prevent the activation of an endogenous accumulation process. On the contrary, it is compatible with the antinomy of the technology function, hence with the persistence of a situation of dependency in the underdeveloped area. It means the free zone understood merely as a generalized tax exemption with no bound to specific development objectives, has only positive effects on exogenously-oriented production factor combinations located in the underdeveloped area.» IT

(G. Bolacchi et al., Zona di produzione franca [Production free zone], p. 75)

12/12«A conclusion of this study to be underlined shows that full employment cannot be achieved in the transition from underdevelopment to development when economic policy instruments apply within an economic system characterized by basically stationary structural dynamics. As said, it is necessary to change the fundamental functional relations characterizing the system. Namely, it is necessary to change the structure of the production functions of the system, orienting them towards development, so that an economic policy of full employment compatible with overcoming economic dependence can be implemented.

Without development, i.e., without the activation of an endogenous accumulation process, every policy of full employment turns into a policy of welfarism under a dependence regime.» IT

(G. Bolacchi et al., Zona di produzione franca [Production free zone], p. 87)

1/17«In short, being all ideologies exogenous to Sardinian culture as well as to any other local or regional culture in the entire nation, they were characterized in terms of universality, which was historicized throughout the national territory and, hence, presupposed the unitary structure of the State. The latter was ultimately the sole element of the Risorgimento tradition.

In this respect, a nation like Italy, which has been unable or unwilling to mature any culture other than the Risorgimento culture of unification in the course of its history, could not leave room for other types of autochthonous cultures, much less for those autochthonous cultures explicitly or latently opposing (by denying it) the unitary culture of the Risorgimento.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Un’autonomia in regime di dipendenza [Autonomy under a dependence regime], p. 21)

2/17«Sardinian nationalism (Sardism) was conceived not as an ideology based on the refusal of domination from an external state nor on “Sardinianness” values different and opposed to the unification values; if these values had existed, they would undoubtedly have emerged well before the end of the World War 1915-1918. Sardism was born as a movement of battlers founded, even in its more mature formulations, on a reparation claim addressed to the Italian nation for the sacrifices of Sardinians during the Great War. Namely, it was born on a revendicatory notion that, as such, did not deny but rather presupposed the national state.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Un’autonomia in regime di dipendenza [Autonomy under a dependence regime], pp. 21-22)

3/17«Sardinian nationalism (Sardism) was always encumbered by cultural and political weaknesses, even when this movement made its own participatory and reformist requests, both on the economic and the state level. Indeed, neither reformism nor participation could have been considered typical of Sardism, as almost all political movements embraced these requests throughout the entire state territory. Autonomism was not abandoned, but it was too narrow an idea to constitute an alternative to the national parties' wide-ranging social and political ideologies; it was too narrow as conceived in terms of reparation, compensation, or revindication, which ultimately presupposed the state unitary structure.

As a result, Sardism was unable or unwilling to provide itself with an ideology; it was unable or unwilling to place itself at the center of stable aggregations of interests based on cultural and social elements alternative to the great European and national ideologies.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Un’autonomia in regime di dipendenza [Autonomy under a dependence regime], p. 22)

4/17«The problem of dependence appears primarily as a problem of political dependence. The latter is a complex phenomenon, as it shows ideological-cultural aspects and more directly operational aspects related to the specific functionality of the system. However, even another type of dependence exists, which is manifestly interconnected with political dependence but also presents aspects and issues that can be subject to specific in-depth analysis: economic dependence. Political dependence and economic dependence are the two most relevant and generalized forms of social subordination; they are linked by an instrumentality relation, which usually sets political dependence as an instrument of economic dependence.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Un’autonomia in regime di dipendenza [Autonomy under a dependence regime], p. 23)

5/17«Political dependence has an ideological-cultural aspect and an operational aspect. The ideological-cultural aspect is managed according to the acquisition of consent; therefore, it is instrumental to the operational aspect concerning the specific expression of political will, namely the constraints and compatibilities of political choices. In making these operational choices, large national parties have always referred to political behavior models where the weight of regional interests, particularly Sardinian interest, was commensurate with the poor political and party strength expressed by the Sardinian social context.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Un’autonomia in regime di dipendenza [Autonomy under a dependence regime], pp. 24-25)

6/17«In Sardinia, politics was not carried out as dialectical participation and debate about the prominent national choices, which should have always positively impacted the region. It was carried out as a marginalization, an agreement on local problems without a national scope, anchored only to the geographical and cultural borders of the island.

In this way, Sardinia has not pursued its amalgamation in a national dimension; it has instead become more and more isolated. This isolation has been characterized not by regaining that cultural, economic, and political autonomy always denied but rather by a situation of instrumentality and subordination to the prominent national choices. As a result, Sardinia has been a nonessential and completely irrelevant element in national politics. That is precisely the situation of dependence characterizing not a self-propelled and innovatory isolation but fruitless and ancillary isolation from a national community supinely and uncritically accepted on a cultural and political level.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Un’autonomia in regime di dipendenza [Autonomy under a dependence regime], pp. 26-27)

7/17«Based on these premises, it is not surprising that Sardinian politics always took place through successive and repetitious phases of vain revindication and political begging addressed to the state, leading to a fragmentation carried to the excess of political action at the local level, as displayed by the regional councils that have alternated up to now. Thereby, the exclusive focus on the dynamics of deviant power characterizing the political struggle in Sardinia was strengthened, alongside clientelism at all scales in the distribution of the scarce resources available. It follows the generalized welfarism toward agriculture and industry; and aid and relief policies for the agropastoral class, with no attempt to change the production factor combination for breeding and farming activities. As a result, monetary incentives have been used as the sum of the economic policy intervention by the public sector body and as a fundamental instrument of economic dependence.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Un’autonomia in regime di dipendenza [Autonomy under a dependence regime], p. 27)

8/17«In Sardinia, the difficulties in regional planning and programming must be ascribed to these dysfunctional factors. A shattered political will, focused only on deviant power, could not but accentuate consumption as a dominant usage of monetary transfers that the region managed to obtain from the state. From an institutional standpoint, this favored the territorial subdivision of Sardinia into too many and too small areas and made it difficult to grasp the global dimension of the most relevant problems of the island.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Un’autonomia in regime di dipendenza [Autonomy under a dependence regime], p. 27)

9/17«The anomalous doom of Sardinia was to develop over the centuries, ultimately, a self-governing culture and society devoid of national self-awareness. The myriad of local cultures perfectly balanced in their being all too narrow because stereotypical and repetitive, obviously excluded the emergence of the idea of a nation, which would have entailed the leadership of one culture, with consequent assimilation of all other cultures into the local hegemonic one.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Un’autonomia in regime di dipendenza [Autonomy under a dependence regime], p. 31)

10/17«In Sardinia, there was no bourgeois class understood as a social group characterized by an interest in development and, hence, by an attitude towards entrepreneurship and innovation. The merchant entrepreneur could not find a space in a non-market-oriented subsistence economy in which the production factor combination was not related to an interest in the social division of labor but took place within the family nucleus, depending on self-consumption.

Above all, the nonexistence of a bourgeois class, namely of a social group characterized by a primary interest in the marked-oriented combination of production factors, had a heavy and negative impact on the social and political development of the island. In France, meanwhile, the innovatory bourgeoisie was acquiring awareness of its social strength and, with the Revolution 1989, transformed into tiers état, leading to a radical change in social structures.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Un’autonomia in regime di dipendenza [Autonomy under a dependence regime], pp. 35-36)

11/17«It appears clearly, if we retrace the history of Sardinia from the late 1700s to the abolition of feudalism, that the rare occasions of rebellion have never involved a bourgeois social class. From the uprisings led by Angioi in 1796 to the conspiracy led by the family of the lawyer Salvatore Cadeddu in 1812, passing through the heroic sacrifice of notary Francesco Cilocco and theologian Francesco Sanna Corda who landed on the Aggius coast in 1802 to free Sardinia from the feudal rule, we face attempts that show the total absence of a base of consent (engaging, if not all, at least a part of the population) for the revolutionary instances.

On the one hand, these attempts show a minority of brave people who did not hesitate to sacrifice their lives or endure atrocious tortures to realize a revolutionary ideal in the Enlightenment mold; Angioi was for sure the most mature representative among them, perhaps the only Sardinian who understood the meaning of the French Revolution of 1789. On the other,  these attempts show the clergy and nobility closed to any modern cultural instance and unable to understand the sense of history, and the populace with no knowledge, awareness, courage, or intelligence.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Un’autonomia in regime di dipendenza [Autonomy under a dependence regime], p. 36)

12/17«The leadership of brave revolutionaries, although emerging from the social context, was carried out with no social class. All in all, the history of Sardinia can be summed up in the following basic characterizations: a classless cultural leadership who tried desperately and repeatedly to act as if a class existed; a myriad of social groups with no class consciousness, kept together only by the need to create the most favorable conditions for managing their status roles and, hence, with no public political objectives, with no awareness that social structures could have been changed by acting collectively, persuaded that the royal government was an unavoidable fact, almost like an immutable element of the natural environment.

The proneness to revindications as the only expression of group action derives from the inability to conceive collective (class) action and the aptitude to consider society and institutions as effects of the consent management culturally rooted in an exaggerated particularism to which the concept of collective interest was alien.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Un’autonomia in regime di dipendenza [Autonomy under a dependence regime], pp. 39-40)

13/17«If we had to define Sardinian culture in anthropological terms, we should presumably say that the historical constant of this culture is the Sardinians’ acquiescence (persisting passive behavior) towards the environment. [...]

Considering the environment as a datum, not a variable, has led to conceiving the production factor combination in terms of poverty equilibrium. From this standpoint, the shepherding activity, in its historical configuration, is the most rational combination possible for the given environment. This type of activity disregards the ownership structure and is carried out institutionally through the common use of the grazing factor.

The Sardinian society, whose characterizing economic form is the shepherding activity that does not incorporate the ownership structure, is a substantially atomistic society, with no social organization exceeding the boundaries of the extended family, the clan, and the village as the ultimate boundary. In a social context where the people do not respond innovatively to the environment, it is not easy to conceive a state organization as an active response to the environmental condition.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Un’autonomia in regime di dipendenza [Autonomy under a dependence regime], p. 43)

14/17«The historical idea of autonomy without dependence was affirmed in Sardinia by a small revolutionary élite that never had a base of popular legitimacy. The socio-cultural causes of this lack of legitimacy lie in the fact that the shepherding culture does not express any social organization; it is based solely on the exchange between individuals or families within the clan and between clans within the village.

The failure of the social law of exchange entails a revenge action, and the demonstration of the possibility or capacity for revenge (so-called “balentia” in Sardinian language) serves to make the relation of social exchange socially stable through punishment.

On the economic level, this exchange-based society expresses the shepherding activity, which realizes a static combination of production factors where the natural environment is considered a non-modifiable datum and the technological dynamics is rejected, in principle. This means that Sardinian shepherd society is closed to any form of cultural dynamics and, by definition, cannot express any institutionalized common interest. There are no common interests on which a convergence of attitudes and behaviors among subjects could rest; i.e., there is no conjunct interrelation, which is the fundamental social relation underlying the organization of group behavior.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Un’autonomia in regime di dipendenza [Autonomy under a dependence regime], p. 46)

15/17«Autonomy without dependence never crossed the borders of utopia because it was not supported by a social class that laid it at the foundation of its own conjunct interrelation. Indeed, a society based on exchange, not expressing any institutionalized common interest, was unable to generate any social class, meaning, by social class, a more or less vast group of individuals internalizing a common interest and establishing organizational structures instrumental in satisfying that interest. The revolutionary élite who carried forward the idea of autonomy without dependence in Sardinia was a classless élite.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Un’autonomia in regime di dipendenza [Autonomy under a dependence regime], pp. 46-47)

16/17«It was a classless élite, too, the one exercising power in a subordinate position to the various hegemonic powers that took over Sardinia throughout history. This subordinate local élite could not have any popular base of acceptance for the same reason that the revolutionary elite did not: Sardinian culture was contrary to or indifferent to any socially organized culture. That explains the relative ease with which the hegemonic powers were able, from time to time, to assert their supremacy over Sardinia without ever realizing any possibility of encounter or dialogue between their cultures and the Sardinian culture. The subordinate élite relied on this social space of indifference and lack of communication between exogenous and endogenous culture and, hence, on the inability of Sardinian society to express a state organizational model in contrast to the organizational models imposed from the outside.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Un’autonomia in regime di dipendenza [Autonomy under a dependence regime], p. 47)

17/17«This autonomy in a dependence regime was found in the island state (insularity) as the only cultural element capable of tailoring an autonomist model, fully embedded in the social and economic structures of the national state. As one can see, it is an autonomy culturally very poor and very different from the historical idea developed in the eighteenth century. So conceived, it cannot but recognize the nation-state and create economic situations of dependence, widely underlined by the anomalies which characterized Sardinian industrial development in the last thirty years and prevented endogenous accumulation, regional economic growth, and social structure development.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Un’autonomia in regime di dipendenza [Autonomy under a dependence regime], p. 48)

1/13«The fundamental feature of advertising methodologies applied to industrial-product marketing is that advertising is meant not to raise new interests but to channel general interests into specific products. Indeed, advertising finds its proper target group in those individuals who are, overall, predisposed to the message. The general interest exists in the potential recipients (i.e., the “target group” identified in the design and planning phase) before the message is conveyed through the mass media.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Problemi concernenti una campagna di promozione sociale contro gli incendi [Some issues about a social campaign against fires], p. VII)

2/13«The basic general predisposition (the interest in a class of products or behaviors) defines the group to which the advertisement should be direct; it also pinpoints the cogency of the message, namely its ability to direct the targeted-audience behavior towards previously identified objectives. It follows that an advertising message always belongs to a class of messages among which to choose alternatively. In fact, given that the message presupposes a basic general predisposition, it is susceptible to various orientations; namely, there are diverse ways to make that predisposition specific as to a determined behavior resulting from an advertising message compatible with that predisposition.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Problemi concernenti una campagna di promozione sociale contro gli incendi [Some issues about a social campaign against fires], p. VIII)

3/13«Assessing the appropriateness of an advertising message referring to a group of individuals who have not the related basic general predisposition is pointless. When a given basic predisposition pertains to a set of upper-middle-income individuals, for instance, or to a set of individuals with a certain social status or practicing specific values, the advertising message must be oriented according to the standardized behavioral repertoires typical of those groups of individuals.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Problemi concernenti una campagna di promozione sociale contro gli incendi [Some issues about a social campaign against fires], p. IX)

4/13«Social-cultural stereotypes cannot be changed through an advertisement ordinarily designed. It is necessary to identify different types of “ad hoc” messages, i.e., to implement interventions aimed not at specifying but rather at giving rise to a basic general predisposition.

The basic general predisposition is the strategic variable that enables the individuals’ selective perception of the message. Thereby, the message becomes an independent variable in relation to an individual’s field of interest and can lead, when appropriately designed, to an individual’s behavior consistent with the objectives of the promotional campaign.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Problemi concernenti una campagna di promozione sociale contro gli incendi [Some issues about a social campaign against fires], pp. X-XI)

5/13«The concept of basic general predisposition corresponds to the concept of propensity or attitude in social psychology. From this perspective, what has previously been said can be expressed by stating that advertising works by trying to change the individual’s interests (specific behaviors) and presupposes the existence of some attitudes (usually positively oriented towards a particular type of situation or product).» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Problemi concernenti una campagna di promozione sociale contro gli incendi [Some issues about a social campaign against fires], p. XII)

6/13«Attitudes develop during the socialization process, mainly in childhood and adolescence. When the personality stabilizes, the individual’s psychological field tends to become rigid, and the attitudes acquired during the socialization process become crystallized as cultural stereotypes. These latter are nothing but attitudes stabilized in the individual’s psychological field; they influence the selective perception of messages. It means that individuals only accept communications compatible with their cultural stereotypes, which are typically characterized also as biases or positive or negative propensities towards the environment.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Problemi concernenti una campagna di promozione sociale contro gli incendi [Some issues about a social campaign against fires], p. XIII)

7/13«Attitudes are fundamental in directing an individual’s behavior by establishing modes and courses (guidelines) along which behavior develops. The judgments and perceptions about others, the values to which the behavior conforms, the conflictual or non-conflictual character of inter-subject relations, and aggression and frustration depend on attitudes; in short, the individual’s approach to the surrounding world depends on attitudes. In this respect, attitudes (i.e., the cultural stereotypes characterizing the individual’s personality) influence every behavior. Attitudes express an individual’s standardized way of responding to the stimuli of the external environment; they are the “modes” characterizing how behavior occurs.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Problemi concernenti una campagna di promozione sociale contro gli incendi [Some issues about a social campaign against fires], p. XIII)

8/13«It is necessary to identify the weight of each social institution (formal or informal), which conditions attitudes by presenting stimuli, and to analyze to what extent the various stimuli are compatible or incompatible with each other. Determining the consequent resultant makes it possible to detect the most relevant stimulation in relation to those attitudes to be positively or negatively reinforced.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Problemi concernenti una campagna di promozione sociale contro gli incendi [Some issues about a social campaign against fires], p. XV)

9/13«Each child is at the center of a complex stimulation process from the groups with which the child interacts. The stimulation flows from the various groups can be continual or segmental and have greater or lesser impact force, depending on whether or not the group is regarded as a reference group. The time element and the stimulus strength are the two variables that make it possible to identify the persuasion capacity of each group towards the child, that is, the potential for an influence of single groups on the development of attitudes.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Problemi concernenti una campagna di promozione sociale contro gli incendi [Some issues about a social campaign against fires], p. XV)

10/13«The school is the only institution that the public authority can use with some flexibility to change or guide the development of childhood attitudes. However, the school presents the disadvantage of implementing a segmental stimulation flow with a low impact force, as it is not typically a reference group for the child and hence does not reinforce imitative behaviors. That happens mostly when the school seems to be an institution somehow alien to the child’s environment.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Problemi concernenti una campagna di promozione sociale contro gli incendi [Some issues about a social campaign against fires], p. XVI)

11/13«Two are the aspects peculiar to the type of culture (i.e., the institutionalized lifestyle) of the agricultural and shepherding areas where, as seen, the phenomenon of fires is most prevalent.

The first aspect is that social interactions usually are circumscribed to the primary group, such as the extended family and the clan, which includes relations between relatives and some unrelated individuals (conditionally admitted) who share long traditions of friendship or exchange relations embodying, above all, a demand or offer of silence (code of silence).» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Problemi concernenti una campagna di promozione sociale contro gli incendi [Some issues about a social campaign against fires], p. XXII)

12/13«The second aspect, strictly related to the first one, is that the conflict characterizing the relations between small groups (regarded as elementary units of the social body) has a decisive impact on the individual’s personality during the socialization process. In agricultural and shepherding societies (and, usually, in almost all underdeveloped societies), the acquisition of values is a process based on punishment, namely, in a technical sense, on the administration of negative reinforcers or the removal of positive reinforcers to control the individual’s behavior and ensure its conformity to the group values. Conditioned eliciting stimuli couple with those resulting from punitive operant behaviors, which are designed to provoke strong emotional reactions whenever some stranger individual questions or alters the extended family or clan structure. Therefore, from the early stages of their life, individuals undergo a continuing stream of frustrations emerging from exclusive punitive-type socialization.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Problemi concernenti una campagna di promozione sociale contro gli incendi [Some issues about a social campaign against fires], p. XXII)

13/13«It is interesting to note that the strict social control within the primary group, together with the scarce opportunities offered by the environment, determine an extremely rigid aspiration level in the individual, namely the inability to react to environmental and social adversities by modifying one’s field of interests (the inability to foresee alternative courses of action). This situation, coupled with the frustrations accumulated during the socialization process and subsequently reinforced by the social context, results in frustration followed by some open form of aggression.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Problemi concernenti una campagna di promozione sociale contro gli incendi [Some issues about a social campaign against fires], p. XXII-XXIII)

1/20«The principle of maximum collective ophelimity does not refer to a hypothetical resource distribution as an optimum compared to all possible distributions. Instead, it establishes the conditions under which individuals can maximize their ophelimities, given a particular resource distribution (whatever it may be). Hence, the form of the resource distribution could reflect either a marked inequality or equality of conditions among individuals. That is not relevant from the perspective of economic theory, as the latter assumes the distribution problem as settled. As a matter of fact, the resource distribution is determined by the social structures, which establish the limits and methods of appropriation of the production factors and capital on the part of individuals.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Concorrenza, collettivismo e pianificazione [Competition, collectivism and planning], p. 4)

2/20«In the collectivist system, neither a demand nor a supply exists because all individuals jointly establish how much shall be consumed and, thereby, how much shall be produced for consumption; therefore, it makes no sense to speak of reciprocal adjustments in supply and demand. The fact that the demand quantity (consumption) is equal to the supply quantity (production) results from the fact that one choice (made by the community) determines both quantities.

In the competition system, the equivalence between demand and supply quantity is an equation whose solution identifies the equilibrium price; in the collectivist system, instead, this equivalence is a mere identity.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Concorrenza, collettivismo e pianificazione [Competition, collectivism and planning], p. 6)

3/20«Pareto and Barone posit, in formal terms within the economic theory, an identification between the competition and the collectivist systems, but this identification is imprecise.

In the competition system, individuals maximize their ophelimity functions by modifying their subjective distribution of consumer goods through the exchange. In the collectivist system, instead, the needs to be satisfied are common to all individuals, and the extent to which these needs are satisfied (compatibly with the resources available) is established by unanimous agreement among all subjects. In the collectivist system, the quantities to be produced and to be consumed are determined a priori and, hence, are a datum. Therefore, the problem of consumer equilibrium does not exist for single individuals in a collectivist system. This problem only becomes meaningful when referred to one individual in relation to a set of other individuals with different ophelimity functions who maximize these functions through exchange transactions.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Concorrenza, collettivismo e pianificazione [Competition, collectivism and planning], p. 10-11)

4/20«From the sociological perspective, referring to an isolated individual is meaningless even if, as shown, the isolated individual and the pure collectivist system are equivalent from an economic perspective. The analysis of the differences between the two systems from a sociological perspective brings us back to the distinction between conjunct interrelation and disjunct interrelation between interests.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Concorrenza, collettivismo e pianificazione [Competition, collectivism and planning], p. 11)

5/20«From the sociological perspective, we can characterize the competition and the collectivist systems by considering two different types of relations between the individuals’ interests. The first type is the conjunct interrelation, such that each individual has not only an interest in satisfying its scale of needs but also an interest in all other individuals satisfying their scales of needs (which implies identity in the scales of needs). The second type is the disjunct interrelation, such that individuals have scales of needs different from each other, and each individual tries to satisfy its needs regardless of whether the other individuals can satisfy theirs.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Concorrenza, collettivismo e pianificazione [Competition, collectivism and planning], p. 12)

6/20«In investigating the social bases of the exchange system, we considered the type of relation between the interests of two individuals engaged in exchanging goods or services. A second facet should be analyzed, which is equally important to provide a sociological characterization of the exchange system. This second facet is the competition. Exchange refers to the activity carried out by the individuals who give goods (services) and receive other goods (services), so that the individual ophelimities are maximized. Competition refers instead to the activity carried out by producers, each of whom considers the other producers’ behavior. [...] The analysis of the latter relation will show the second social foundation of the exchange system.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Concorrenza, collettivismo e pianificazione [Competition, collectivism and planning], p. 29)

7/20«We have seen that in the collectivist system, the activity of the producer state rests on a set of conjunctly interrelated interests. It means that in such a system, every possible interaction between individuals always implies a conjunct interrelation of interests. We have seen that, on the contrary, in the exchange system, all possible interactions always entail interests disjunctly interrelated. The collectivist system and the exchange system, so defined, are two extreme cases.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Concorrenza, collettivismo e pianificazione [Competition, collectivism and planning], p. 37)

8/20«It is possible to define a third type of system by assuming the existence of a set of conjunctly interrelated interests (identical for all subjects) and the existence of further interests, identical or different among subjects, which may be disjunctly or conjunctly interrelated but do never involve all subjects (if this were the case, then these interests would belong to the first set). We call this third type a mixed system.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Concorrenza, collettivismo e pianificazione [Competition, collectivism and planning], p. 37)

9/20«In the mixed system, the public administration performs the same function, limited to the sphere of conjunctly interrelated interests, as the central planning office in the collectivist system with reference to all the individuals’ interests (which are the same for all individuals and are all conjunctly interrelated). Some examples of activities by the public administration are so-called public services production and the organization of justice.

The activity by the public administration should not be confused with the activity by the producer state, oriented towards exchanging goods or services.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Concorrenza, collettivismo e pianificazione [Competition, collectivism and planning], pp. 37-38)

10/20«The existence of a common and interrelated interest in the state producing a given good or service does not imply the existence of a conjunct interrelation as to the need satisfiable through that good. Conversely, if the latter interrelation exists, the former interrelation must also exist.

When both interrelations exist, the state activity takes the form of public-administration activity aimed at producing goods and services which are not subject to exchange. Here, all individuals have a particular need, and a conjunct interrelation related to that need takes place, such that the need is satisfied directly by all individuals through the state activity, with no exchange between the single individuals and the state.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Concorrenza, collettivismo e pianificazione [Competition, collectivism and planning], pp. 39-40)

11/20«In summary, we can distinguish:

(a) a private sector, characterized by the production of goods and services object of exchange, carried out by individuals; (b) a public sector, characterized by the production of goods and services object of exchange, carried out by the state (be it monopolist or not); (c) a public administration sector, characterized by the production of goods and services carried out by the state, which is not an object of exchange, as it satisfies those needs common to all individuals and in relation to which a conjunct interrelation exists.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Concorrenza, collettivismo e pianificazione [Competition, collectivism and planning], p. 40)

12/20«Once the economic and sociological differences between the exchange and the collectivist systems have been clarified, it is necessary to analyze the concept of planning, the meaning of which is commonly identified with the collectivist system. This identification originates many pseudo-problems, which led some economists to think that economic theory, in Walras's formulation, has insurmountable contradictions which (according to those economists) could only be eliminated by reformulating the whole theory in completely new terms.

The difficulties of the Walrasian theory can all be related to the impossibility of coherently explaining capital accumulation.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Concorrenza, collettivismo e pianificazione [Competition, collectivism and planning], p. 40)

13/20«Let us consider a collectivist system. The individuals can, by mutual agreement, either delay the satisfaction of their needs and allocate part of the resources to the manufacture of new means of production or allocate all the resources to satisfy their needs. In the first case, the collectivist system does planning; in the second, it reintegrates (replenishes) itself sine die. It follows that planning is not an inherent feature of the collectivist system (even if planning occurs historically in collectivist systems). The fundamental feature of the collectivist system is not the planning activity but, as we have highlighted, the complete conjunct interrelation between the individuals’ interests.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Concorrenza, collettivismo e pianificazione [Competition, collectivism and planning], p. 41)

14/20«Walras-Pareto’s theory cannot provide any planning schema applicable in practice, as it only defines efficiency for the production activity, regardless of whether or not there is accumulation. When Pareto and Barone maintain that, in the collectivist system, the production is organized according to efficiency principles identical to those valid for private enterprises in the exchange system, they prescind from the fact that there is accumulation in the collectivist system or not. They do not explain accumulation because the accumulation problem is not relevant to economics, given that it pertains to cumulative dynamics.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Concorrenza, collettivismo e pianificazione [Competition, collectivism and planning], p. 42)

15/20«Based on these elucidations, the failure of classical theory to provide a satisfactory explanation of economic phenomena is understandable. This failure is due to the fact that the classical theory is an attempt to explicate cumulative dynamics; therefore, the real scientific problem of economics, which is the explication of economic action, is a problem unknown to classical economists. Economics as a science was born only when the problem of cumulative dynamics of capital was abandoned and the problem of defining economic behavior was approached.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Concorrenza, collettivismo e pianificazione [Competition, collectivism and planning], p. 44)

16/20«What economics cares about is establishing the laws that guide human action when, given certain resources, an individual tries to satisfy a given set of needs. Only by posing the problem in these terms, and regardless of the fact that the content and the number of those needs change continuously, is it possible to attain “scientific” economic laws, even if not operational ones. [...]

The choice criterion for shifting from an indefinite development process of needs to a determined structure of needs is given by an individual action, which postulates a structure of needs. It means that the scientific explication of the economic action must always assume a structure of needs as a datum and a set of limited resources through which it is possible to satisfy these needs.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Concorrenza, collettivismo e pianificazione [Competition, collectivism and planning], p. 45)

17/20«As previously noted, apart from the differences in the way consumption and production are determined in the collectivist system versus the exchange system, the efficiency conditions for production are the same in both systems. It is the first concept of efficiency, which can be summed up in the principle of minimum cost. It is worth clarifying that the definition of efficiency in the first sense can only be given within the Walrasian theory and not the Leontief model.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Concorrenza, collettivismo e pianificazione [Competition, collectivism and planning], p. 46)

18/20«The construction of models like the Leontief’s relates to the need, which emerged historically, to give an interpretation of the collectivist system. Hence, the Leontief model does not leave behind the Walrasian theory, but it is simply a schema that interprets a reality other than the competition one. The common element between the two schemata is the efficiency principle for production, which takes the same form in both. However, the different approach to consumption expresses the difference in the social structures to which the two systems can be referred. Only seemingly, the Leontief model contains no hypotheses about social structures. In point of fact, if one wants to use it as an explanatory schema, then the assumption that consumption is given shows, from the sociological perspective, the existence of a complete conjunct interrelation between the individuals’ interests.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Concorrenza, collettivismo e pianificazione [Competition, collectivism and planning], pp. 46-47)

19/20«In the exchange system (given the disjunct interrelation), consumption is a function of prices (the demand is distinct from the supply). In the collectivist system (given the conjunct interrelation), consumption is an a priori datum determined by a unanimous decision of all individuals. In the latter case, it is also possible to consider a deferral of consumption and, therefore, an accumulation pertaining to the system. [...]

However, it should be understood that the Leontief model in no way explains capital accumulation. It takes into consideration a time distribution for accumulation and formulates compatibility conditions for the whole system, but it does not explain why and how capital accumulates.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Concorrenza, collettivismo e pianificazione [Competition, collectivism and planning], pp. 48)

20/20«In conclusion, the Walrasian system and the Leontief model have in common an efficiency principle, but they differ in the assumptions about consumption. The Walrasian theory implicitly assumes a disjunct interrelation and, hence, a separation between the consumption and production aspects. The Leontief model implicitly refers to a system characterized by a conjunct interrelation, where consumption is determined a priori, and no separation exists between the consumption and the production aspects. Thus, within the Leontief model is possible to take into account capital formation, that is, an accumulation pertaining to the system.

Therefore, the two models presuppose a precise reference to the institutional framework, as each implicitly contains a hypothesis about the interrelation between interests.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Concorrenza, collettivismo e pianificazione [Competition, collectivism and planning], pp. 48-49)

1/21«The asymmetry of the teacher-student relation is inherent in the instructional-educational situation; one can change the content of the learning process but cannot eliminate the difference in roles (functions) between teachers and students. We will see, delving into the psychological analysis of the instructional-educational relation, that the teacher’s role is to program the learning phases and reinforce the student’s specific behaviors with appropriate stimuli.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Processo d’apprendimento e strutture ideologiche [Learning process and ideological structures], p. 11)

2/21«It should be noted that the distinction between the psychological-structural aspect of the instructional-educational interaction and the learning contents is of crucial importance: on the one hand, it highlights the contradictoriness of the student protest aimed at eliminating an interaction whose psychological basis can be analyzed from a scientific perspective; on the other, it allows us to figure out the real core of the problem of present educational institutions, which is the deviant power of teachers and the fact that teachers play within the school political status-roles which cumulate with educational status-roles and are usually confused with the latter.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Processo d’apprendimento e strutture ideologiche [Learning process and ideological structures], p. 12)

3/21«As seen, the punitive relation always entails a situation of frustration. Several factors characterize the concept of frustration: (a) the individual’s aspiration level, i.e., the degree of fungibility between the individual’s final interests; (b) the intensity level of the individual’s final interest corresponding to the frustrated or impeded instrumental behavior; (c) the frustrating stimulus.

When the individual’s aspiration level is rigid (i.e., the degree of fungibility between the individual’s final interests is low), the state of deprivation (the final interest) being frustrated does not disappear, despite the impediment barring the instrumental behavior. In the case of high intensity-level interests, the frustrating stimulus barring the instrumental behavior acts as an eliciting stimulus in relation to a corresponding emotional (elicited) behavior realized by the individual. This elicited behavior can be anxious or even aggressive. Therefore, the presence of an obstacle can determine emotional responses, which are manifested at the level of operant behavior.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Processo d’apprendimento e strutture ideologiche [Learning process and ideological structures], p. 21)

4/21«In current educational institutions, besides the frustration caused by exam checks, individuals may undergo permanent, or not easy to overcome, frustrations: this happens when they are socialized according to schemes dissimilar to the institutionalized ones expressed by the school. Here, the educational institution becomes an obstacle to the satisfaction of interests acquired by the individual in the environment where socialization took place, rather than a means to satisfy them. The result is a situation that, given its steadiness, can lead to openly deviant aggressive behaviors (actual deviation) against institutional structures.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Processo d’apprendimento e strutture ideologiche [Learning process and ideological structures], p. 22)

5/21«Apart from the case of the exchange, it is possible to identify a fundamental interrelation between the teacher’s and the student’s interests, particularly a conjunct interrelation. The teacher operates in a learning process by transmitting appropriate discriminative (verbal) stimuli to the student who has what we may call an interest “in learning” (I₁); correspondingly, the teacher has what we may call an interest “in enabling the student to satisfy I₁.” We denote with I’ the teacher’s interest. The teacher satisfies that interest if the student satisfies I₁: that is, the satisfaction of I’ implies the satisfaction of I₁ (and vice versa, because if the student satisfies I₁, it means that the teacher has satisfied I’). Simplifying, we can say that while the exchange relation can give rise to a learning process, the latter entails a collaborative relation between teacher and student. Instead, when the relation between teacher and student is of a punitive type, their interests are disjunctly interrelated.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Processo d’apprendimento e strutture ideologiche [Learning process and ideological structures], p. 35)

6/21«To explain the learning process unambiguously, it is necessary to specify the student’s final interest to which “studying” is instrumental. In the above hypothesis, the student’s behavior is instrumental to a consummatory behavior related to the acquisition of the primary positive reinforcer provided by the teacher; namely, it is instrumental in obtaining a positive reinforcer extrinsic to studying. In this event, the primary reinforcement related to problem-solving is lacking in the learning process.

At first glance, we can say that the student memorizes information without assimilating its content because the only final interest of the student is to obtain a given reward (which is commonly a social reward: for example, a degree conferring prestige).» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Processo d'apprendimento e strutture ideologiche [Learning process and ideological structures], p. 38)

7/21«The school learning process involves three fundamental factors:

(a) the interest in knowledge (interest in problem-solving) acquired during the socialization process;

(b) a set of instrumental behaviors, corresponding to the satisfaction of the interest in knowledge, which are related to a set of information to be learned operating as secondary reinforcers;

(c) a set of primary positive reinforcers, germane to the interest in knowledge, operating through the programming of teaching (consisting of a sequence of primary reinforcers).

Point (a) is about the deprivation state, point (b) is about the operant behavior, and point (c) is about the reinforcer.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Processo d’apprendimento e strutture ideologiche [Learning process and ideological structures], pp. 40-41)

8/21«A fundamental mistake typical of the current educational institutions is to assume that it is possible to arouse an interest in knowledge through punitive techniques, either used singly or associated with extrinsic rewards of an individual or social type. However, as we have seen, these techniques strengthen only an interest in memorizing.

The modification of educational institutions implies, as a fundamental element, replacing the interest in memorization with an interest in knowledge. This replacement entails changes in social structures that go far beyond a change in the educational structures alone. As a matter of fact, an interest in knowledge must be acquired through the socialization process.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Processo d’apprendimento e strutture ideologiche [Learning process and ideological structures], pp. 41-42)

9/21«In a pluralistic society, social structures are characterized in ideological terms; that implies that the consent on which institutionalized status-roles rest, resulting from conjunctly interrelated interests, is ideological. However, institutionalized interests can conflict with likewise ideological interests of groups of individuals acting in the pre-institutional social space. The prevalence of one ideology over the others derives from the greater social strength (consent), which legitimates the exercise of power against deviants. It is the only possible method of conflict resolution, the ideologies being subjective standpoints that cannot be rationalized and are unsuitable for empirical verification.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Processo d’apprendimento e strutture ideologiche [Learning process and ideological structures], p. 42)

10/21«In a pluralistic society, individuals are influenced by as many types of socialization as there are conflicting ideological interests. The conflict between institutionalized interests, on the one hand, and the interests of groups acting in the pre-institutional social space, on the other, is also found within educational institutions, as the school is the foremost apparatus tasked with carrying out the institutionalized socialization process. [...] Indeed, a conflict can occur within the school, as there may be students socialized outside, or contrary to, institutionalized ideological interests and teachers socialized in conformity with institutionalized interests. This conflict results in a disjunct interrelation between students who have no interest in acquiring institutionalized cultural contents of an ideological type and teachers who have an interest in transmitting information conforming to institutionalized interests.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Processo d’apprendimento e strutture ideologiche [Learning process and ideological structures], pp. 42-43)

11/21«One could argue that, within educational institutions, conflict can only concern the transmission of institutionalized values (ideological interests) and not scientific knowledge. In the latter case, even though a student may not have an interest in scientific knowledge, it would be pointless to speak of an ideological conflict between institutionalized interests in transmitting scientific knowledge and the student’s deviant interests. Nonetheless, it is important to point out that there may be a conflict between those who ask for a given scientific discourse (a specific science) to be included in the institutionalized learning process and those who have an interest in excluding that science from teaching. This conflict not only occurred with reference to the natural sciences, which were long opposed within societies founded on ideological interests until the definitive success and acceptance of the Galilean revolution; it still occurs today with reference to the social science. Within strongly ideologized cultural contexts, the opposition against social science derives from a disjunct interrelation between (institutionalized) interests in the ideological analysis of social phenomena and (non-institutionalized) interests in the scientific analysis of social phenomena.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Processo d’apprendimento e strutture ideologiche [Learning process and ideological structures], p. 43)

12/21«A severe consequence of education institutions based on punitive methods is that, by reinforcing only the memorization behavior, they tend to lead to the extinction of the interest in knowledge even in those individuals who acquired this interest during the socialization process.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Processo d’apprendimento e strutture ideologiche [Learning process and ideological structures], pp. 43-44)

13/21«Information transmission and problem-solving are inseparable in the learning process. However, as seen, the way this process takes place in current educational institutions is anomalous. Indeed, learning here is not related to an interest in knowledge (as it should be if the school functions were knowledge-oriented, i.e., oriented to the assimilation of cultural contents by students). Instead, it is related to an interest in acquiring social gratifications that allow individuals to occupy, based on their educational degree, status-roles to which they would not otherwise have access.

What happens is that the students assimilate a kind of information and learn to solve a kind of problems, which are related to the acquisition of social reinforcers (the student learns, for example, to pass exams with less effort, to curry favor with the teacher, to memorize the cultural contents transmitted).» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Processo d’apprendimento e strutture ideologiche [Learning process and ideological structures], p. 45)

14/21«In a punishment-based education system, which reinforces memorization behaviors, checking the adequacy of the information transmission with respect to the student’s abilities is senseless. Thereby the teacher activity becomes a routine activity, and even the exam becomes a routine check on memorization.

So, the social function of the education system no longer consists in satisfying an interest in knowledge but an interest in acquiring social prestige. The student takes part in the instructional-educational interaction not to learn but to have the capacity to acquire social prestige. Obtaining an educational degree becomes the students’ final interest because the culture of our societies associates that document with a certain level of social prestige.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Processo d’apprendimento e strutture ideologiche [Learning process and ideological structures], p. 46)

15/21«Such a modification of social functions of the education system corresponds to a diversion of the instructional-educational relation, which tends to become a control relation for a formal requirement (memorization) that enables access to status-roles associated with social prestige. [...] From this perspective, the so-called “right to education” does not express an interest in that everyone can learn the cultural contents transmitted by the school. Instead, it expresses an ideological interest in acquiring the social prestige that the education system confers on students when they pass memorization checks (exams). The mass schooling system thus realizes the ideology of the equal right, for all individuals, to social prestige conferred by the educational system; it does not satisfy an interest in knowledge.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Processo d’apprendimento e strutture ideologiche [Learning process and ideological structures], p. 46)

16/21«The existence of ideological interests presupposes, in principle, the possibility that these interests will be challenged, still on the ideological level. This possibility is excluded, in principle, when scientific predicates characterize social structures. In the first case, the social dynamics occur through an ideology-based class conflict. In the second case, the social dynamics occur without conflict, as the change in interests results from the possibility of empirically verifying whether interests are compatible with the body of scientific knowledge.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Processo d’apprendimento e strutture ideologiche [Learning process and ideological structures], p. 49)

17/21«The phenomenon of power characterizes the ideology-based social structures (whether pluralistic or collectivist), namely the social structures based on a conflict of values (disjunct interrelation between interests not comparable with the scientific discourse). Power is, in fact, the means through which one ideology prevails over another, as the only way to solve a conflict of values is to measure the social strength of the conflicting ideologies, not being possible to use objective (intersubjective) criteria.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Processo d’apprendimento e strutture ideologiche [Learning process and ideological structures], p. 50)

18/21«In today’s societies founded on ideological interests, be they pluralistic or collectivist, the definition of the status-roles is based on values, and individuals must conform to a particular ideological culture (i.e., to a set of institutionalized conjunctly-interrelated ideological interests) to acquire these roles. That reverberates in the educational institutions, too. They are affected by the ideological characterization of the social context, not only with regard to the memorization phenomenon but also the transmitted cultural contents. Within an ideology-based society, educational programs must conform to institutionalized ideological interests.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Processo d’apprendimento e strutture ideologiche [Learning process and ideological structures], pp. 50-51)

19/21«When the power related to a given status-role is not exercised in accordance with the institutionalized interests on the part of a group of individuals who hold identical status-roles, a conjunct interrelation between deviant interests takes place among these individuals; here, the group action is aimed at preventing the access to the status-roles based on any interest other than the ones common to the group. The fundamental conjunctly-interrelated interest of the deviant group is to preserve the discretionary scope of their status-roles; this can be achieved by ensuring that the status-roles are held by individuals who guarantee to exercise discretion in a deviant way, not in accordance with the institutionalized interests.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Processo d’apprendimento e strutture ideologiche [Learning process and ideological structures], p. 52)

20/21«The distinction between the educational function concerning the transmission of cultural contents (learning process) and the political function concerning the determination of cultural contents allows us to work out the meaning of the student protest. This protest seems baseless insofar as it tends to question the non-eliminable asymmetry of the instructional-educational interaction. However, it appears to be perfectly justifiable (within pluralistic societies with corporatist structures) when it claims participation in a political function within a system that would like to see itself as a democratic (i.e., pluralistic) one.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Processo d’apprendimento e strutture ideologiche [Learning process and ideological structures], p. 53)

21/21«The elimination of corporatist relations makes it possible to obtain the maximum functionality of the educational structures in terms of the possibility for individuals who have undergone diverse socialization processes to satisfy their interests within a pluralistic ideological system. However, it remains the fundamental limitation of the plurality of ideologies; this limitation entails the existence of societies based on conflict and competition and, hence, the renunciation of using social science to solve human problems.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Processo d’apprendimento e strutture ideologiche [Learning process and ideological structures], p. 53)

1/13«From a methodological perspective, behaviorism states that the difference between human and animal organisms is not qualitative; it is a matter of degrees of complexity. Indeed, considering human organisms qualitatively different entails resorting to metaphysical judgment factors, whereas the latter must be detected and eliminated from scientific analysis. Once acknowledged that the difference is a matter of degree, animals appear to be the most suited organisms for the experimental study of the structure of psychological processes. That allows psychology to turn from a metaphysical analysis of mental processes into the scientific analysis of behavior; it becomes an experimental science, as well as physics and biology.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, L’analisi scientifica del comportamento di scelta [The scientific analysis of choice behavior], I, p. 137)

2/13«We introduce the term “interest” as a nominal definition for the final element of an operation sequence and not as a concept explicating operant behavior. If one stated that a subject engages in a particular behavior because it has a particular interest in carrying out that behavior, then the concept of behavior would be explained in mentalistic terms. Namely, a hypothetical internal variable (interest) would be assumed to be the cause of behaviors.

Therefore, when we talk about a subject’s interests, we refer only to the final elements of given operation sequences, followed by particular reinforcers.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, L’analisi scientifica del comportamento di scelta [The scientific analysis of choice behavior], I, p. 148)

3/13«Based on the above observations, the concept of drive can be expressed in operational terms as the result of certain operations on an organism, notably deprivation operations through which a given stimulus S becomes a reinforcer S⁺. It is possible to find the appropriate operations for each primary reinforcer.

The term drive is defined thereby as a relation between a deprivation state and some reinforced behavior. This definition excludes that the drive can be considered as the cause of behaviors.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, L’analisi scientifica del comportamento di scelta [The scientific analysis of choice behavior], I, p. 152-153)

4/13«We note, again, that the analysis of reinforcement laws always presupposes a deprivation operation. Therefore, the relation between the behavior modifications and the reinforcement contingencies (given a particular deprivation state) is only one aspect of the complex reinforcement process. The second aspect is the relation between the behavior modifications and the changes in the deprivation state (given the reinforcement contingencies, which are kept constant). Hence, the reinforcement process must be explicated in terms of changes in reinforcement contingencies, but it must also be explicated considering the variations in the deprivation state.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, L’analisi scientifica del comportamento di scelta [The scientific analysis of choice behavior], I, p. 154)

5/13«We have defined the intensity of an interest based on the compactness of the operation sequences. The latter can, in turn, be considered a function of the deprivation state. We may expect that a subject with a high deprivation always carries out an operation sequence (leading to a particular reinforcer) while excluding any interference related to other operation sequences.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, L’analisi scientifica del comportamento di scelta [The scientific analysis of choice behavior], I, pp. 154-155)

6/13«Suppose that the intensity of the interest I₁ is much higher than any others. In this event, it will take much longer for interest I₁ to decrease to a level lower than some other interests. Therefore, while the alternation of operation sequences occurs straightaway in the previous case, here, where the difference in intensity between I₁ and any other interests is very high, there is no alternation of operation sequences but repetition of identical operation sequences. In this event, the subject behaves as if it had virtually only one interest, and its behavior is predictable with certainty.

In the first case, we deal with operation sequences that intersect, as the differences between the intensities of interests are tiny. In the second case, there is no intersection between different operation sequences but a single operation sequence, as the difference in intensities between one interest and any others is very large.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, L’analisi scientifica del comportamento di scelta [The scientific analysis of choice behavior], I, p. 158-159)

7/13«Saying that an organism “focuses and filters at once the potential stimuli from the external environment” is to formulate a pseudo-explanation about the fact that some interests of the subject have a higher intensity than others.

This pseudo-explanation results from the fact that starting from an analysis of phenomena showing that a subject may engage in alternating behaviors (and, hence, may have interests with different intensity levels), one wonders why organisms engage in these alternating behaviors. Thus, the problem is no longer to explicate alternating behaviors but to identify the (internal) causes that would determine the onset of such alternating behaviors. In the hypothesis under consideration, alternating behavior would be attributable to an internal process named choice. The rules of the scientific method are violated thereby: a factor that cannot be controlled is introduced in the explanation, based on a pre-scientific concept of causality according to which, given two factors, one factor should determine or give rise to the other factor (causality as a genetic relation).» IT

(G. Bolacchi, L’analisi scientifica del comportamento di scelta [The scientific analysis of choice behavior], II, p. 6)

8/13«Even though one wanted to assume the relation between an alternate behavior and a subject’s choice process as a functional relation, namely a relation between two variables, one dependent and one independent (causality as functional dependence), this would not be possible. The reason why it is impossible to establish such a relation between the two factors in question is that the choice is hypothesized as an internal variable and, hence, methodologically different from the variable represented by the behavior. In short, it is a useless duplication that leads us to conclude that the terms “choice” and “alternate behavior” have the same meaning.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, L’analisi scientifica del comportamento di scelta [The scientific analysis of choice behavior], II, pp. 6-7)

9/13«The analysis of choice behavior is usually deepened by referring to the concept of expectation. In short, it is stated that choosing is based on learned prospects, that is, expectations.

Even expectation, meant as anticipation of the satisfaction of a given interest, represents a pseudo-explanation. […] To state that forecasting an event is based on how often that event occurred in the past (its frequency) is to refer to the past reinforcements received by the subject. In this hypothesis, the concept of expectation is tantamount to saying that a subject has an interest related to a reinforcement process that took place throughout a sequence of past experiences. Therefore, the statement that the subject engages in a given behavior because it expects the satisfaction of a given interest from that behavior is mentalistic and pre-scientific. It is an expression referring to the fact that the subject carries out a given behavior because, based on its past history, that behavior will be reinforced with a certain probability.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, L’analisi scientifica del comportamento di scelta [The scientific analysis of choice behavior], II, p. 7-8)

10/13«The approach to scientific problems in structural terms eliminates the metaphysical issue of the conventionality of postulates. The methodological meaning that can be attributed to the concept of conventionality of postulates is the possibility of always inserting new postulates within the scientific discourse. However, this fact does not question the validity of the preexisting postulates within the scientific discourse; it only requires that the latter are characterized according to higher or lower abstraction levels than the new ones.

It follows that the scientific discourse is an open discourse, meaning that the postulates and, in broader terms, the predicates that constitute it do not exclude the possibility of expanding it; such enlargement never alters the validity of preexisting structures but places these structures in broader explanatory contexts.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, L’analisi scientifica del comportamento di scelta [The scientific analysis of choice behavior], II, p. 12)

11/13«The metaphysical problem of the transition from sensory data to theoretical terms, typical of Hempel’s position, must therefore be replaced by the methodological problem of identifying different levels of generalization (which entail, syntactically, the insertion of restrictive predicates) and different abstraction levels of the predicates belonging to scientific language.

This argument can be repeated about the correspondence rules, which many scholars of the scientific method have introduced to explain the alleged odd property of the theoretical language, which would make no reference to observables and, at the same time, would explicate observable phenomena. Namely, to explain the problem of the empirical nature of theoretical terms.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, L’analisi scientifica del comportamento di scelta [The scientific analysis of choice behavior], II, p. 27)

12/13«In psychology, the explanatory usefulness of intervening variables is denied by Skinner, who claims that inner conditions are useless to control behavior unless they can be manipulated. [...]

If the intervening variables have no explanatory role, then the question remains whether the same can be said of all theoretical concepts, even those of physics. On the other hand, if theoretical concepts have to be considered essential for the explication of phenomena, then it is necessary to explain why intervening variables cannot be considered theoretical concepts.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, L’analisi scientifica del comportamento di scelta [The scientific analysis of choice behavior], II, pp. 28-29)

13/13«The statement that experimental laws would have a life of their own derives from the assumption about their observability. If experimental laws differ from theoretical laws in terms of observability, then the fact that an experimental law can be incorporated into one theory or another may appear as a confirmation of the difference between the two types of laws. However, once the metaphysical presupposition of observability has been eliminated, that an experimental law can be incorporated into more than one theoretical schema does not allow for concluding that the experimental law is autonomous from the theory. It is just a matter of a change in postulates of the theory within which the experimental law is included. However, the sole effect of such a change in postulates is a reformulation of the law in terms of the new theory.

Therefore, it cannot be maintained that an experimental law has a life of its own compared to the theory because an experimental law is always expressed in theoretical terms. That is true even though, at a given stage of scientific knowledge, these theoretical terms can have a very low abstraction level compared to the higher abstraction level of a theoretical schema with a broader domain of application.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, L’analisi scientifica del comportamento di scelta [The scientific analysis of choice behavior], III, pp. 159-160)

1/20«The Weberian argument founding the value-freedom of historical-social sciences can be interpreted just in the opposite way due to its intrinsic contradiction; in fact, it strengthened all metaphysical theories which deny the possibility of a scientific, hence intersubjective, analysis of human behavior. This denial also extended to the scientific discourse at large, which accordingly would be characterized by the evaluative attitude of the researcher, whose choice among the infinite perspectives of analysis would be arbitrary, although justified by the cultural values at that given historical time.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il problema del metodo nella sociologia [The problem of method in sociology], pp. 6-7)

2/20«The causal relation, in science, entails that the analysis concerns a specified but not an individualized phenomenon, given that repeatability characterizes the causal relation. Repeatability excludes the possibility of speaking of the researcher’s choice, referring to the determination of the experimental predicates of scientific discourse, in the sense as Weber spoke of the selection of some of the infinite multiplicity of causes to establish a causal relation. The researcher’s activity is not a matter of choice, as identifying variables and (hypotheses of) relations between variables cannot be arbitrary. On the contrary, it is constrained by the hypothesized relations explicating the phenomena, namely, systematizing the phenomena within increasingly comprehensive schemata (which explain increasingly large classes of phenomena) with an increasingly high abstraction level and allowing for the verification of these schemes at the operational level.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il problema del metodo nella sociologia [The problem of method in sociology], pp. 7-8)

3/20«The historicalness of the motives and social values that guided and pushed the researcher to undertake specific research does not imply the subjectivity of the scientific discourse. On the contrary, the scientific discourse is intersubjective in that it can be operationalized and expresses properties typical of classes of phenomena rather than individualized phenomena. Scientific intersubjectiveness survives (so to speak) the cultural context within which the scientific discourse is formulated. Subsequent enlargements of the scientific discourse are not the product of new choices in a new historical context, which involve the rejection of the previous choices; instead, these enlargements represent a widening of the applicability of scientific discourse to phenomena not explained by the previous narrower formulation.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il problema del metodo nella sociologia [The problem of method in sociology], p. 8)

4/20«When the scientific discourse is considered in its intersubjectiveness, the discourse predicates are taken into account without reference to any concrete set of historically determined behaviors, such as those carried out by researchers in their research activity. The successive stages that mark the historical diversification of the scientific discourse are analyzed with reference to the abstraction levels of the fundamental postulates and of the new postulates whose insertion, replacing the previous ones, results in the widening of the domain of application of the discourse. The new postulates have a higher level of abstraction than the previous ones, which always belong to scientific discourse as special cases of a more comprehensive system; this is the case, in physics, of Newton’s theory compared to Einstein’s.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il problema del metodo nella sociologia [The problem of method in sociology], p. 8)

5/20«According to Weber, the difference should consist in the orientation of the historical-social sciences to singularity (individuality), whereas the natural sciences would be oriented to generality. Therefore, there would be two types of causal schemata: an individualizing causal schema and a generalizing causal schema; that is, causality pertaining to non-repeatable and individualized phenomena (i.e., phenomena inserted in irreversible evolutionary dynamics) and causality pertaining to classes of phenomena (i.e., a repeatable and generalized relation between phenomena expressing reversible dynamics). It goes without saying that the concept of causality is completely misrepresented compared to its explicandum within the methodological language of science.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il problema del metodo nella sociologia [The problem of method in sociology], p. 11)

6/20«Weber’s thought is vitiated by a methodological confusion between the historical perspective, regarded as an orientation to singularity (individuality), and the scientific (structural) perspective, oriented to determining a system of laws. From a commonsense perspective, social phenomena appear in their continuous flux, undergoing an irreversible change. However, this does not entail the impossibility of constructing a structural perspective comparable (at the methodological level) to the perspective of natural sciences, based on which it is possible to find out relations between social phenomena not reducing to the mere chronological order defined in terms of irreversibility. Within commonsense language (i.e., in everyday experience), the two aspects are not always consciously distinguished; however, this should not lead one to believe that it is impossible to distinguish precisely the two perspectives on the level of social theory. The sciential interest can orient the research activity towards either a structural perspective or a historical perspective (i.e.,  an analysis circumscribed in evolutionary terms). Therefore, albeit the two phenomena may appear indistinct to common sense, the scientific methodology allows us to identify two specific viewpoints which characterize two different types of knowledge.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il problema del metodo nella sociologia [The problem of method in sociology], p. 12)

7/20«Thinking about the causal explanation as identification of the total number of causes that determine a given phenomenon means considering causality in metaphysical terms. Weber did not realize this fact and, hence, did not understand that the schema of the functional explanation is valid in both social and natural sciences. It is evident, in fact, that the two concepts of causality -the metaphysical one relating to the classical model of causal explanation and the functional one- are radically different. On the one hand, the classic concept of causality is meant as a necessary relation between phenomena, namely, as an explanation intended to trace the endless number of causal relations reflecting an ontological structure of reality, which would implicate a system of general laws; it expresses a necessary determinism that translates into a system of principles which are unconditionally valid. On the other hand, the concept of functional schema presupposes the impossibility of tracing the totality of factors determining a given phenomenon; therefore, it turns out to be incompatible with a concept of causality understood as a necessary relation between phenomena.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il problema del metodo nella sociologia [The problem of method in sociology], pp. 13-14)

8/20«The metaphysical concept of causality as a relation between phenomena characterized in terms of universal order and necessity (i.e., a relation between countless factors and a given phenomenon) is an erroneous characterization of the scientific discourse (be it natural or social sciences). The structure of scientific discourse consists, in fact, of functional relations. It means methodological determinism is valid in the scientific discourse, not metaphysical determinism. Methodological determinism does not entail the attribution of a truth-value to the alternative between determinism and indeterminism as to real processes, which is a metaphysical perspective; it only expresses an adequacy condition for scientific discourse, such that the latter must be characterized by functional relations and serial order to be considered scientific. It is thereby excluded from the domain of scientific methodology any metaphysical characterization about the existence or non-existence of a necessary order among phenomena.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il problema del metodo nella sociologia [The problem of method in sociology], p. 15)

9/20«A radical difference exists on the level of scientific methodology between the evolutionary perspective, which considers phenomena in terms of irreversibility, and the structural perspective, which considers phenomena in terms of an indeterminate serial order as to the change in the content of states (reversibility). Not seeing this difference led Weber to several contradictions, which are ultimately reflected in the ideal-type theory and the definition of the object of sociology.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il problema del metodo nella sociologia [The problem of method in sociology], pp. 17-18)

10/20«Overcoming the perspective of historicist metaphysics and analyzing the behavior in structural terms make it possible to explicate human phenomena regardless of history. The latter ceases to be what Weber presumably believed it to be: the great laboratory in which the social scientist should work a posteriori. The irrelevance of the historical viewpoint for the construction of social science does not imply that events that have already occurred cannot be scientifically explicated. However, the explication is based on laws verified in the laboratory and expressed in functional terms, which is why the fact to be explicated is no longer characterized in terms of individuality (singularity) but of repeatability or reproducibility.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il problema del metodo nella sociologia [The problem of method in sociology], p. 23)

11/20«The scientific explanation of phenomena consists in identifying a set of variables and the relations between these variables. The reason why some variables are assumed as typical variables is not a problem within the language of science, as the field is always open to the identification of new variables with a lower abstraction level (restrictive predicates) or with a higher abstraction level than the abstraction level of the fundamental predicates characterizing the scientific discourse at any given time.

The only condition for introducing new predicates is that these predicates must always be related to each other according to the rules characterizing the structure of the language of science. This structure is given by the functional relation between three types of variables (dependent and independent variable, parameters) at the level of both experimental predicates and more abstract predicates: R_f (x, y; p₁, p₂, …, p_n).» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il problema del metodo nella sociologia [The problem of method in sociology], p. 24)

12/20«Whether designed from the perspective of statics or dynamics, scientific analyses are always based on the fundamental relation R_f (x, y; p₁, p₂, …, p_n). In one case, the relation is seen as an asymmetric relation expressing an interdependence between the factors taken into consideration, pure and simple; no (temporal) order of states can be derived from it. In the other case, the relation contains time as an independent implicit variable; hence, it is also seen as an order relation from which a (temporal) sequence of states can be derived.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il problema del metodo nella sociologia [The problem of method in sociology], p. 26)

13/20«We can observe that an explanatory schema of history, i.e., cumulative (evolutionary) dynamics, cannot be constructed by considering the order of time. Cumulative (evolutionary) dynamics consists of a sequence of serially ordered states, where time is considered not as an order but as a direction. Here, the states of the system are ordered by referring to the change in the content of states; namely, change is characterized in terms of evolution (cumulative process).» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il problema del metodo nella sociologia [The problem of method in sociology], p. 27)

14/20«An inverse description of the process is conceivable in both the reversibility and irreversibility cases. In the reversibility case, however, the two descriptions are structurally identical because the meaning of the relation remains unchanged in the two descriptions (it is possible to describe the process in reverse order). In the irreversibility case, on the contrary, the inverse description (description in negative time, -t) is structurally different from the original one (description in positive time, +t); i.e., the meaning of the relation differs in the two descriptions because the process can only be described in the original order (direction).» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il problema del metodo nella sociologia [The problem of method in sociology], p. 28)

15/20«In the field of social sciences, the relation R_f (x, y; p₁, p₂, …, p_n) can refer to time as an implicit independent variable, but this does not entail that the social laws can be expressed in terms analogous to dynamics in physics.

In this regard, it should be pointed out the methodological character of our analyses on the structure of scientific discourse: they concern the identification, at the semantic level, of the most abstract relations that characterize any domain of scientific discourse; hence, not only the social-sciences discourse but also the natural-sciences discourse. However, this consideration should not lead to the erroneous conclusion that it is possible to construct the discourse of the social sciences based on naïve analogies with the discourse of physics.» IT

(G. Bolacchi, Il problema del metodo nella sociologia [The problem of method in sociology], p. 29)

16/20«The above allows us to point out that it is possible to speak of dynamics analysis in the social sciences when the relation R_f (x, y; p₁, p₂, …, p_n) contains time as an implicit independent variable; but one should be aware that such a dynamics analysis has nothing to do with mechanics. Even if, on a methodological level, the functional relation is used (as in physics), it acquires a radically different meaning and relates radically different predicates (variables).

Conceiving the social dynamics in terms of equilibria and forces is sterile from the scientific perspective because these concepts have no explanatory capacity for social phenomena.» IT