Giliberto Capano is Professor of Public Policy at the Scuola Normale Superiore, Florence, Italy, where he is the coordinator of the PhD programme in Political Science and Sociology. He is the director of the Italian Centre for Research on Universities and Higher Education Systems (UNIRES). Recently he has co-edited (with M. Howlett and M. Ramesh) Varieties of Governance.Marino Regini is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Milan, Italy, where he has served as Dean and Vice-Rector. He has been a Visiting Professor at several US universities including Harvard, MIT, Johns Hopkins, and Duke. Among his recent volumes are European Universities and the Challenge of the Market.Matteo Turri is Associate Professor of Public Management at the University of Milan, Italy. He has extensively published in journals including Research Policy, Higher Education, and Higher Education Policy.

• PART I. The Theoretical Framework.- Chapter 1. The Unintended Consequences of University Governance Reforms.- Chapter 2. Poor Policy Design and Implementation.- PART II: The Historical Evolution of Italian Higher Education.- Chapter 3. From the Post-WWII Period To The 1980 Modernization Law.- Chapter 4. Autonomy And Funding: The Reforms Of the Late 1980s to the Mid-1990s.- Chapter 5. Leading The Change In Europe: Early Implementation Of The ‘Bologna Process’.- Chapter 6. Catching Up on Institutional Governance and Assessment: The 2010 Reform and its Aftermath.- PART III. Changing Governance in Italian Universities.- Chapter 7. Changes in Funding and Assessment.- Chapter 8. The Transformation of Systemic and Institutional Governance.- Chapter 9. Conclusions: Basic Data on the Italian Higher Education System.

“This book is one of the very few analyses to carry out a comparison between the evolution of the Italian higher education system and other European systems. … this monograph analyzes with great accuracy and from an original viewpoint the basic weaknesses of a not so atypical case, which might suggest useful reflections for other HE systems at a general level.” (Roberto Moscati, European Journal of Higher Education, August, 2017)