The total commitment is 180 training credits, evenly distributed over the three years of the course (60 CFU year). The training activity involves the acquisition of 20 ECTS in the first year, 16 ECTS in the second and 18 ECTS in the third, which must be achieved with the frequency of lessons in the disciplinary areas (SSD) of the individual addresses.
Each CFU is equivalent to 6 hours of face-to-face lessons.
30 ECTS in the first year and 34 ECTS in the second and 32 ECTS in the third are allocated by the Teaching Board to activities related to the specific research of individual doctoral students, including activities of participation in congresses, seminars, schools, stays abroad.
The remaining 10 ECTS for each year are allocated as Other Credits (computer and linguistic refinement etc.).
Specifically, training credits in the first two years are distributed as follows:
- individual research activity, to be discussed in the report for the transition to the years following the first (12 ECTS)
- thesis drafting (6 ECTS)
- participation in activities related to the research of the doctoral student's choice: conferences, congresses, stays abroad of the 'Erasmus' or other type (12 ECTS)
For the last year of the course 18 ECTS are attributed to the completion of the drafting, revision and final drafting of the PhD thesis and the remaining 14 ECTS are attributed to the activities of the doctoral student's choice.
Legend for the attribution of credits to the training activities of your choice
- Participation in a conference, congress or seminar (2 ECTS).
- Participation in a conference, congress or seminar as a speaker (6 ECTS).
- Research stay abroad of the Erasmus or other type (5 ECTS).
- The attendance of specialization courses or certifiable training activities related to the training and research activity of the doctoral student will be evaluated by the board of teachers of the individual address for the purpose of the attribution of training credits and its quantification.
- The publication of scientific articles in a journal, essays in volume, book chapters or monographs, for which the date of acceptance of the contribution or the publication of the volume will prevail, will be evaluated by the board of teachers of the individual address for the purpose of the attribution of training credits and its quantification.
- The tutoring activity of students in the Degree and Master's degree courses of Messina University will be evaluated by the board of teachers of the individual address for the purpose of the attribution of training credits and its quantification.
- The supplementary teaching activity will be evaluated by the board of teachers of the individual address for the purpose of the attribution of training credits and its quantification.
It should be noted that the training activities of your choice cannot exceed the total of 14 ECTS for each individual year of the course. Redundant training credits, therefore, will not be counted for the purpose of reaching the annual threshold.
The College of the PhD Course in Public Administration Sciences approves the teaching activities associated with each year of the course (Activities Plan).
There are oral checks with suitability by individual teachers. Credits related to institutional courses are specified in the Annual Study Manifesto and are valid in the year in which the course is attended.
The official language is Italian, however the courses can be held in English if foreign students are present.
Other CFUs
- Computer Improvement
- Language refinement
- Management of research and knowledge of European research systems
- Enhancement and dissemination of results, intellectual property and open access to research data and products
- Atre activities
How to choose the subject of the thesis
The College of Teachers evaluates the research projects presented by the candidates on the occasion of the admission test and, if it considers them congruent with the training objectives of the course, assigns them to the proponents, identifying, at the same time, the teacher-tutor who will follow the entire path of the doctoral student.
How to check for admission to the following year
There are oral checks with suitability by the teachers.
The thesis, to which is attached a report by the doctoral student on the activities carried out during the PhD and on any publications, is evaluated by at least two highly qualified teachers, also belonging to foreign institutions, external to the subjects who contribute to the issue of the doctorate.
The College of Teachers, also on the basis of the evaluators' proposal, decides on the admission of the thesis to public discussion.
How to conduct the final exam
The final exam consists of a public discussion, having as its theme the doctoral thesis, before a Commission, consisting of three members, appointed by the Rector of the University of Messina on the proposal of the College of Teachers. One of the professors from the College of the Docture is attended by the Commission.
Description of the disciplines in which the teaching activity is articulated
1. History of Public Administrations
The course, assuming a good knowledge of the Italian and European historical-institutional framework of the twentieth century, aims to provide doctoral students with in-depth knowledge relating to the processes of change and innovation that have concerned, in particular, the state apparatuses in Italy. The time coordinates will follow its development from the twentieth century and until the turning point determined by the emergence of the “digital era” that has invested, in a massive way, the Public Administration both in the methods of production of the acts related to its operation and in relations with the citizens, in a route not without contradictions. This path, in which the subject of the feminization of public employment will also have a place, will also take into account, from a comparative point of view, certain coven European experiences.
2. Organization of Public Administrations
The study of the organization of public administrations moves from the reconnaissance of the fundamental principles, first of a constitutional nature, which preside over the determination of the areas of competence of the bodies and the tasks of the offices. As is known, moreover, Article 97 of the Constitutional Charter requires a public organization focused on fundamental parameters of the law, aimed at pursuing the principles of impartiality and good conduct. This shows that the study of the organization and its structure is not a mere cognitive exercise, but is functionally voted for by the aforementioned values emerging from the constitutional text. It follows that there are at least two levels of study of the organization: the "structural" one, which, moving from the notions of organ and office, is able to build an organic and accomplished whole; on the other hand, an axiological profile of greater scope concerning the entire system of apparatus, as designed by the legislator, in order to allow the pursuit of public interests.
The study of administrative organization includes, then, inter-organic relations, that is, relations between organs, characterized by latitudes ranging from hierarchy to direction, coordination up to control, in an ideal scale of intensity.
The study of the organization, again, includes the history of the administration, its reforms, the emancipation of the principle of autonomy from the state shadow cone, the fundamental role of the manager, who precisely by the organizational structures must be placed in a position to achieve the intended objectives and obtain flattering evaluations in terms of performance.
An efficient organization, free of unnecessary duplications, intersections, conflicts of interest is, finally, in line with the values of transparency, now assumed as a paradigm of the very essence of administrative apparatus.
3. Criminal law of public administrations
The course aims to deepen the main profiles of intersection between criminal law and public administration, taking into regard both offences coming from ab interno (criminals of public officials), and those coming from ab externo (criminals of private individuals). The main criminal cases typed by the legislator to protect the property and interests of the administration will be interpreted in the light of the principles and institutions of the general part of criminal law. In view of the existing regulatory framework, particular attention will then be paid to the functional integration between preventive profiles and strictly sanctioning profiles within the competence of criminal law. The principles and institutions related to the responsibility of private collective bodies (including municipal companies or otherwise controlled by local authorities or other public entities), introduced by Legislative Decree no. 231/2001. The aim is to combine the scientific approach in the analysis of individual criminal rules with the deepening of the reasons underlying legislative and jurisprudential evolution, also taking into account the plurality of positions that have emerged in doctrine and application practice.
4. European Union Law
Teaching aims to deepen theoretical and, above all, practical aspects of the institutional apparatus of the European Union, with particular reference to its relations with national bodies and institutions at central and local level. The study of the sources of EU law and their interaction with the sources of the Italian legal system at national and regional level will be deepened, specifically emphasizing the role of the principle of the primacy of EU law over national law. The course will also deal with the instruments through which the Italian legal system adapts and complies with the obligations deriving from Italy's participation in the process of European integration. Finally, particular attention will be paid to the study of the European Union's litigation, with specific regard to the judicial instruments available to Member States and individuals.
5. Regulatory and administrative drafting
The teaching aims to ensure the learning of the main techniques of drafting of normative and administrative acts through the analysis of the relative drafting rules and exercises aimed at the elaboration of different types of texts. The intention is to make students become familiar with the techniques and procedures for drafting normative and administrative acts, developing the professional skills necessary to carry out the activities of officials of institutional bodies and public administrations that play an active role in the production processes of regulatory sources and administrative acts.
6. Regional public law and local authority law
The course, assuming knowledge of the basic notions of public law, aims to give students an in-depth knowledge of the territorial autonomy (regional and local), the dynamics of the functioning of regional and local institutions and the relationships between them and the central organs of the State. The teaching aims to deepen, in particular, the transformations that the system of territorial autonomy has undergone in recent decades, also analyzing the impact on it that the health emergency determined by Covid-19 has had, as well as the most recent reform proposals put forward with regard to this sector.
7. Law of the economy
The objective of teaching is to provide the necessary tools to understand the dynamics of the functioning of regulated markets and the possible forms of public intervention in the economy, also in the light of the most recent evolutionary trends linked to globalization, the economic crisis (also resulting from the pandemic) and its impact on national and European institutions. In the overall logic of deepening the relations between the State and the market, account will also be taken of the objectives of digital innovation and sustainability that connote both the performance of private economic activities and the action of public authorities.
8. Law of technological innovation
The teaching intends to deepen the main legal problems related to the evolution of new information and digital technologies that are determining important processes of transformation processes of the Public Administration, the public and private productive sectors, the economic sectors (and, in particular, the banking and financial services market). To this end, the different practical implications and the related disciplinary approach of legislators and regulators, internal and European, aimed at setting up an appropriate legal framework of reference for the new reality, will be analysed.
9. European administrative law
Administrative law is now experiencing a stage of particular importance, also with regard to the proceedings that take place before the institutions of the European Union. The principles of motivation, efficiency, timeliness of decisions, their proportionality, access to documents, the contradictory, constitute values that are summarized in the so-called 'right to good administration'. They are principles which, placed for the Member States, guide the proceedings of the euro-unitary institutions. Consequently, they constitute fertile ground with regard to the studies of administrative law for a twofold order of reasons: firstly because the principles must be transposed into the Italian legal system and it is therefore necessary to record their impact; secondly because the same principles are based in the procedures of the Euro-unitary institutions.
10. Labour law
The teaching of Labour Law aims to provide the necessary skills to carry out research activities in this field, having regard, first of all, to the constant evolution of the discipline, both on the legislative and on the doctrinal and jurisprudential sides. The labor discipline, in fact, has undergone a profound transformation, over the last few years, also due to the overcoming of the traditional model of organization of Taylorist-Fordist work, with the gradual departure from the historical protective function of the matter.
In the new perspective taken by labour law, the activities of competence of this disciplinary area aim to allow an adequate study of the topics on the agenda of the scientific debate and, in particular, of those relating to the regulation of the labour market, the contractual types of the flexible relationship, the system of industrial relations, also in relation to the more traditional issues of the slavery.
Specifically, the study of labour law in the doctorate provides for the conduct of specialist research of an individual nature on the issues of the individual employment relationship, trade union law and those of occupational safety and social security, with a specific focus on the analysis of current law and the consideration of evolutionary and comparative profiles.
11. Science of administration
Teaching has, in the first place, the objective of providing conceptual tools useful to the study of public bureaucracies drawn from the sociology of the organization. Moving, therefore, from the study of the fundamental Weberian model of legal-rational bureaucracy, we proceed to the analysis of the organizational dimensions of public administrations. The teaching also has as its object the analysis of public bureaucracies. In this context, the fundamental concepts related to the analysis of public policies, the main models for the study of public decisions, the relationship between policy and administration and the paradigms of administrative reform will be examined. Finally, particular attention will be paid to the most recent and relevant reforms carried out in the administrative field, also to allow a more in-depth empirical knowledge of the Italian public administration.
12. Law of public contracts
Public contract law is now an almost autonomous branch of administrative law. The subject of public contract intersects, in fact, with the plain awareness that public administrations exercise their negotiating powers by leveraging their legal capacity. An essential tool is the public evidence procedure, through which the choice of the contractor is made in a context characterized by rules specific to the public sector, which, however, from the stage of the award and, in particular, of the conclusion of the contract, leave room for the principles of a private nature. The subject is strongly characterised by the repeated and significant interventions of the European Union, which is concerned with ensuring competition and market access. The repeated reforms, up to the current Legislative Decree no. 50/2016, already several times deeply revised and "corrected", since 1992 (L.n. 142/1992), follow a roud line based on the search for transparency, efficiency and achievement of the objectives envisaged. Particular role, starting from Legislative Decree no. 50/2016 is recognized to the National Anti-Corruption Authority and its guidelines, soft law tools through which the legislator has imagined to build a system of public contracts reasonably flexible and adaptable to the specific needs of the individual contract as well as the historical-political phase crossed by the system. Particularly intricate and complex is the part concerning judicial protection, where the Council of State has repeatedly had to pronounce itself in Plenary Meeting to establish, for e.g., the principle of the start of the deadline or the relevance of the criminal record of the competitors, with a view to knowing and evaluating in advance the reliability of future contractors.
13. Quantitative methods for the legal sciences
The course aims to provide innovative decision support tools for the digitization of administrative and judicial decision-making processes, while maintaining the active role of the decision-maker as the focus of the chosen models. It also aims to provide the actors involved with useful tools for defining scenario analysis for the definition of alternative solutions (agreements, mediation, arbitration, negotiation, etc.) to administrative and judicial decision-making processes.
14. International law
The international law course will be divided into two parts: the first part will focus on the examination of the sources of international law (customs, treaties, acts of international organizations) highlighting their effectiveness, their application rationae personae and rationae materiae, in the light of the case law of supranational courts, so as to allow doctoral students to acquire an adequate knowledge of these legal instruments. It will therefore examine the application of sources of international law by the bodies (legislative, administrative, judicial) operating within the Italian legal system. In particular, the case law on the merits of the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court relating to the application by the public administration of these sources in relation to Article 10 of the Cost and Article 117, paragraph 1 will be examined, with particular reference to the judgments of the Constitutional Court Nos 348 and 349 of 2007 and the subsequent jurisprudential developments and the judgment of the Constitutional Court No. 238 of 2014.
In the second part, the course will focus on the possibilities of redress that international law recognizes to individuals in the event that a violation of their rights by the public administration can be carried out. In this perspective, after an analysis of the general characteristics of the European Convention on Human Rights, the conditions of admissibility of an individual appeal, the role of the European Court of Human Rights, the value of the judgments issued by it and the obligation of enforcement by the States will be examined, also in the light of the most recent practice relating to the so-called pilot judgments. In this sense, reference will be made to the most relevant case law concerning Italy, such as the judgments on urban confiscation and expropriation for public utility.
15. Public environmental law
The course intends to deepen first of all the concept of the environment as a legal good object of constitutional and legislative recognition and protection, also, and above all, in the light of the recent Constitutional Law No. 1/2022, which introduced its protection among the fundamental principles of the Constitution, amending Articles 9 and 41 of the same. Objects of study will be, then, the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court on the subject, the principles of international environmental law and of the European Union, the methods of assessment and prevention of environmental risk, the competences, powers and limits of the administrative authorities and control bodies in this area. Finally, particular attention will be paid to the impact of the PNRR on the ecological transition process.
16. Discipline of assets in relations between Public Administration and private individuals
There may be many interference between legal regimes relating to assets and the relationships between the P. A. and private individuals.
It highlights in particular these links, among the various hypotheses, the discipline of expropriation whose events, albeit with different outcomes, have always had to deal with the need for a balance between the general interest and that of the private ablate, giving rise to a discipline that is – in many ways – at the stradst of private law and public law.
Equally clear, on the other hand, is the link between the publicistic and private disciplines where particular types of goods, such as the so-called common ones, are taken into account, or rules must be dictated to regulate the use by the private sector of public goods.
17. The private law contracts of the Public Administration
The tendency to subtract the discipline of the contractual activity of the P.A. from the exercise of an authoritarian power to return it, albeit sometimes with the necessary adaptations, to the typical regime of private law corresponds to a well-established legal orientation.
In this perspective, it can be concerned, first of all, the so-called consensual exercise of administrative power, and therefore the supplementary or substitute agreements of the administrative measure and the accessive contracts.
Exemplifying the same story are also the public contracts of common law and the related legal regime which, due to its expansionary tendency, today even allows general (albeing sectoral) principles to be enuclear, which are placed in competition with those arising from general contract law.
18. Administrative justice
The system of administrative justice is the result of the stratification of numerous legislative interventions, starting from the Crispi Law No. 5992 of 1889, up to the Code of the Administrative Process of 2010.
The principles are set by the Constitutional Charter (notably: Articles 24, 103 and 113), which has appropriately recalled the fundamental active legal situations of subjective law and legitimate interest for the purpose of division of jurisdiction, replicating the previous system.
Administrative justice is linked, first and foremost, to the study of subjective legal situations and their protection, the effectiveness of which is an indispensable feature of the same judicial function.
The principle of due process completes the framework of the system, articulated on two levels of judgment and a possible third (traditionally limited to the profiles of the jurisdiction), whose characteristics have specificities and declinations that still differentiate it today from the civil process, to which, however, it is linked by an open postponement.
19. Administrative activities and public accounting
The advent of Law No. 241 of 7 August 1990 placed the theme of activity at the center of the studies, following, however, a new perspective, no longer devoted only to the theme of legitimacy, but also to that of efficiency, economy, transparency, publicity, impartiality and proportionality. The activity, that is, is no longer measured only in terms of more or less silly compliance with the normative dictate, but finds different latitudes of legal importance, which are first of all reflected in the growth of cases of administrative responsibility, extended to damage to the image, to the damage from disservice and not only to the mere compensation of the damage. Particularly relevant is the issue of the evaluation of the performance of civil servants, as well as liability for damages caused to third parties (art. 28 Cost). The activity, therefore, now knows numerous profiles through which it is subject to evaluation. At the same time, it is part of a context where there is talk of a new public-private equality and the participatory phase, binding for the purposes of the decision, exalting the underlying democratic key that has animated the administrative reforms since 1990. The anti-corruption phase, starting in 2012, has then assumed a preponderant role. From it have germinated, among other things, not only the establishment of the ANAC, but the reforms of 2013 and 2016, through which the value of transparency was strongly implemented by first civic and then generalized access (c.d. FOIA).
20. Constitutional justice and protection of fundamental rights
The course aims to deepen the knowledge of the role and functions of the Constitutional Court and the constitutional justice system in the Italian legal system, as well as to analyze the impact that the jurisprudence of the Judge of Laws has on the different areas of institutional experience, with particular regard to the dynamics of the functioning of territorial public bodies and the Public Administration and the needs of guaranteeing fundamental rights. The study will therefore focus both on the procedural profiles of constitutional justice and on some emblematic cases, through the reading and analysis of judgments of particular relevance in the sector. The study will also be carried out in a comparative key, without neglecting the repercussions of the institutes examined on the dynamics of the form of government.
21. Computer Science Applied to Public Administration
In the context of the process of profound digital transformation that is changing the way of approaching administrative processes and in the light of the extensive reforms screwed by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan in this area, the objective of the course is to provide the basic knowledge to promote the development of a digital society, in which services put citizens and businesses at the center, through the digitization of public administration. Another intention of teaching is to contribute to the dissemination of knowledge of new digital technologies, encouraging standardization, innovation in the field of public services.