Reforming the judiciary through standards: agency empowerment and centre (re)building in Italy, 2001–2015
本文基于四个案例的定性分析，批判性评估意大利受新公共管理启发的司法政策，探讨标准与软法如何影响法院和检察院的组织能力，对公共部门从业者具有参考价值。
The Italian judiciary has been under the spotlight for more than two decades. The key criticism addressed to it has been the lack of organizational capacity, which is reflected in the trial time frame. After 2000, European institutions launched a new and comprehensive policy stream, targeting the administrative and organizational capacities of courts and public prosecutor offices. The pivotal policy instrument is represented by standards and soft law in general. By referring to four case studies, analysed in depth on the basis of a qualitative approach, this work engages in a critical appraisal of the New Public Management-inspired judicial policies and the way in which they have been implemented in the judicial sector in Italy. Points for practitioners This article makes a point about the structural and institutional conditions that turn out as pivotal factors to ensure an effective and efficient governance by standards. In other terms, the argument deployed herein concerns the function of a regulative agency, which might have the shape and the format of a ministerial unit, where the uniformity and the equality of the services delivered by a public institution or a network of public institutions are the outcome of the implementation of legally binding and non-legally binding norms. This is a key point, then, for public officers serving not only in the judicial sector.