Remembering Gianfranco Sabattini and his passion for economic research

By Lorenzo Bona

In December 2020, Gianfranco Sabattini has passed away.

Former Professor of Political Economy at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Cagliari, in Sardinia, Italy, he was a scholar who has devoted much of his time to research.

Until the last days of his life, he continued – tirelessly and with extraordinary passion – to study and share the fruits of his analyses, exchanging ideas and writing articles, essays, commentaries and books.

Sabattini in his many writings has been able to transfer a wide array of cultural interests, which, as regards to the field of economics, finds one of its main reflections in a vast interdisciplinary research plan.

Suffice here to consider his research interests around the need of closer interdisciplinary interactions between economics other social sciences, like experimental psychology and behavioral sociology (see, for example, Sabattini’s preface to the 1976 Italian edition of George C. Homans' volume entitled “La natura delle scienze sociali”; original title: “The Nature of Social Science”).

Thinking a lot about him these last few weeks, having had the good fortune of having him as teacher and mentor, I came across the review I had the opportunity to do, years ago, for his book entitled “I limiti delle politiche meridionalistiche. Il caso Sardegna”, which is here translated as ‘The limits of the policies for the Italian southern regions. The Sardinia case’.

If I am recalling correctly that review – written in Italian – appeared on two online publications, Democraziaoggi and Aladinpensiero, with which Sabattini had a long-lasting collaboration with frequent writings.

But still seeing today all the relevance of the ideas he expressed in that book for a better economic performance in a region of Italy that is very special to me, I feel urged to write a new version of my book review, and offer it here below as a small contribution that aims at keeping alive the memory of Gianfranco Sabattini, his passion for economic research, and his civil engagement in favor of a constant progress in Sardinia and – more generally – Italy.

The publisher Tema, in 2015, has released the book “I limiti delle politiche meridionalistiche. Il caso Sardegna” (here translated as ‘The limits of the policies for the Italian southern regions. The Sardinia case’). The book exposes readers to a stimulating point of view about possible remedies to the economic gap between the richer North of Italy and poorer parts of the country, like the island of Sardinia and other southern regions.

The author of this volume is Gianfranco Sabattini, an influential Sardinian economist – recently passed away – who was also highly esteemed for his vast knowledge in disciplines related to economics, such as history, methodology, political science, sociology and social psychology.

This multiplicity of interests finds also a clear reflection in this publication, which in many ways is also drawing on fruitful perspectives emerged in the realm of economics that pay special attention to the economic role of legal and social norms. 

The book, focusing on the Italian island of Sardinia, outlines an interpretative approach to some weaknesses in the major economic policy measures that have been adopted in the insular regions (Sardinia and Sicily) and the southern part of Italy, from the days of the national unification up until today.

This way the book helps analyze the problematic evolution of special economic policies that have been implemented in favor of the Italian southern regions – at first – from 1861 to the years immediately after the second world war, and subsequently, from the reconstruction phase of the country onwards.

In doing this, the book introduces the idea according to which two strategic moments – sequentially connected to each other – would have been neglected in the main measures in support of economic growth and development in the Italian southern regions (from now on referring to also Sardinia and Sicily): a first one, consisting in designing a social structure where new and more favorable motivations to change and innovation are able to emerge; a second moment, concerning the identification of key productive sectors that can best receive economic development policies, in functional ways to the activation of increasingly evolving dynamics of the economic structure.

Expanding the analysis and recalling key results of the extraordinary post-World War-II economic measures, which have been interrupted only at the beginning of the 1990s, Sabattini’s book also underlines some of the main counterproductive effects of those very same results. For example, the fact that these measures have gradually acquired a bureaucratic character, in ways that progressively turned out to be instrumental to situations of political competition for the capture of the most votes possible, and consequently to this, to planning procedures that appear unable of promoting fully desirable levels of economic dynamism in the Italian southern regions.

The main question that these observations suggest is about how to help these regions accelerate their pace of economic growth and development.    

In this regard, the response outlined in the book is essentially anchored on the call for institutional reforms inspired by federalist principles and criteria of distributive equity, so as to favor a more effective decentralization of planning decisions in this part of Italy, within the wider national community.  

Such reforms – according to the analysis presented in this volume – would help minimize the distance between citizens and institutions, in order to encourage greater levels of responsibility of local administrations, and stimulate therefore an improvement in the management of public resources.

Extending schemes of reasoning like these, its pages let also emerge profound reflections about the island of Sardinia, in ways that suggest that the development model implemented in this region could be considered as a mirroring image for many fragile aspects of the main policies that have characterized, more generally, most of the regional planning in the Italian southern regions.

In other words, the development model that inspired the economic intervention in Sardinia – which, as recalled in the book, was based on policies for the establishment of large industrial plants with a high capital-labor ratio – would have been for the most part directed to improving the disposable per capita income, rather than the income produced through an increased efficiency in the use of production factors. And – for this reason – Sardinia wouldn’t have been able to experience a situation of stable and growing employment opportunities.

As a possible remedy to this situation, the book suggests a sort of discontinuity with respect to past policy measures, to be primarily realized – as regard to this insular part of Italy – on the simultaneous launch of three phases.

One, essentially economic in its nature, connected to the reorganization of the prevailing model of growth and development, in terms more largely directed at enriching entrepreneurial opportunities and encouraging greater levels of economic dynamism for productive activities that are present in Sardinia at local levels. Another one, primarily reflecting a sociological content, concerning the preservation of historical elements and cultural identity aspects of the various communities of this region. And a third one, linked to institutional design aspects, consisting in the reformulation of the regional statute, in order to reinforce citizens’ participation in decision-making processes, through the establishment of new relationships between the state and the region, and between this latter one and its local administrations within a broader federalist reform of the Italian institutional framework.

Unfolding economic analyses that reveal an uncommon attention toward the relevance of socio-institutional factors, Sabattini’s book appears as a valuable and stimulating invite to a thorough rethinking of main economic measures that have influenced – perhaps until today – the evolution of Sardinia’s economy. At the same time, the book offers helpful insights that might help organize more rational approaches to the problem of how to generate faster economic growth and development in this region and, more generally, in other southern parts of Italy.