How to Pass a Smoking Ban in a Difficult Country
A sound political strategy enacted by a political entrepreneur able to learn from previous failures is at the base of the unexpected success of the smoking ban in Italy, Valentina Mele and Amelia Compagni (assistant professors at the Department of Institutional Analysis and Public Management) write in Explaining the Unexpected Success of the Smoking Ban in Italy: Political Strategy and Transition to Practice: 2000-2005 (in Public Administration Vol. 88, No. 3, 2010: 819-835).
Italy used to be an unlikely candidate for being the first large EU country to pass a comprehensive smoking ban. The approval (in 2003) and enforcement (in 2005) of the ban have thus been viewed as an unexpectedly successful example of policy change.
Mele and Compagni analyze two policy cycles with different outcomes: in 2000-2001 the attempt to introduce a ban by the then health minister Umberto Veronesi came to a halt when the government fell; whereas in 2001-2005 the new minister, Girolamo Sirchia, brought the ban to approval and enforcement.
The starting point of the failed proposal was a law actually prohibiting smoking. Prohibition was to be considered the default situation, and the possibility of smoking only an exception. The hard stance didn't pay. The proposal got mired in never ending parliamentary negotiations and the discussion of 110 amendments absorbed many months, till the government's fall.
Sirchia adopted a lower key political strategy in order to minimize the political conflict. He soon reframed the theme, substituting the prohibition issue with one of non-smokers' protection and minimized the normative bearing of the ban by proposing not a law, but a single article to be included in a broader law on public administration and attached to the annual finance bill.
Sirchia also made a strategic use of polls and surveys showing a rising support of Italian people for the ban so as to negotiate with other politicians.
The minister avoided lengthy discussions on practical issues by deferring and delegating the definition of standards and further clarifications of the law to a State-Regions Joint Panel, inducing Mele and Compagni to appreciate the importance of the transition-to-practice phase, which covers the temporal gap between the passage of legislation and its implementation. "During the 'transition to practice' the general principles of the law are translated into operational instructions. At this point, although legal uncertainties have been dissipated, the policy cycle process has still the potential for being halted and undone. The fact that a number of authoritative decisions to ban smoking from public places in Italy and in other countries were never really enforced clearly confirms the associated risk", Mele and Compagni conclude.