Research activities

The Centre primarily focuses on organizing the second-level master's program in Parliament and Public  Policies, launched in 1987 by Professor Paolo Ungari as a preparatory course to legislative carriers. The coruse has also been organized by Professor Andrea Manzella and Professor Carmela Decaro. Since 2006-2007, the program has been under the direction of Professor Nicola Lupo.
In 2009 Prof. Andrea Manzella, Director of the Centre, was awarded by the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency of the European Commission an ad personam Jean Monnet Chair on Democratic Principles in the EU. On the basis of this experience, the Centre developed further research programs that have been funded by the same Agency:

• "Parliamentary democracy in Europe", Jean Monnet Module 2012-2015 (leader: Nicola Lupo), which started the activities - within the School of Government - of the Summer School in "Parliamentary democracy in Europe";
• "Parliamentary accountability and technical expertise: budgetary powers, information and communication technologies and elections", Jean Monnet Module 2016-2019 (leader: Cristina Fasone), that now continues the Summer School in "Parliamentary democracy in Europe";
• "Legislative drafting in implementing EU law in Italy, Jean Monnet Module 2016-2019 (leader: Giovanni Piccirilli), which is a part of the Corso di Perfezionamento in Drafting legislativo, held in the School of Law;
• "Understanding EU representative democracy", Jean Monnet Chair 2018-2021 (leader: Nicola Lupo).

The Centre has taken part in the following research programs:

• Structure of the State, territorial decentralization of powers and constitutional transformations: from the UK devolution to the processes of regionalisation in Italy and other European States (PRIN 2004)
• Parliamentary Assemblies as channels of communication of contemporary constitutionalism: tools and institutions of dialogues among Parliaments (PRIN 2006), in the framework of the national project on  the circulation of models to the dialogue between legal systems: the channels of communication of contemporary constitutionalism
• The governance of natural parks in Europe: Best practices and problematic issues in France, Spain, UK, Austria and Germany granted by the Ministry of Environment (2009)
• EU-Oceania Social Science Inter Regional Consortium EUOSSIC, granted by the European Commission in the framework of the Erasmus Mundus key activity 1 (2009-2013)
• Pademia, Parliamentary democracy in Europe, network consisting of 56 academic institutions in 31 countries, funded in 2013-2016 by the EACEA.