Gambling Laws

The aim of this paper is to identify possible regulatory, policy and program measures to address gambling harm to bingo players and their communities, and in doing so extend existing public health approaches to gambling to better include bingo. Study design: This was a qualitative case study of three populations in Victoria, Australia where bingo was popular and structural disadvantage common: Indigenous people in the state's east, Pacific people in the north and older people on low or fixed incomes in the capital, Melbourne. Methods: Our study investigated experiences of bingo, including gambling harm and recommendations for change. Data were generated through interviews with 53 bingo players and 13 stakeholders as well as 12 participant observations of bingo sessions. Results: Five broad drivers of and influences on harm to bingo players are identified: technological, regulatory and commercial changes eroding bingo's protective factors; bingo being used to bolster other forms of gambling; promotion of gambling interests over people's wellbeing; not recognising experiences of different communities and; external structural influences such as racialised poverty. We identify recommendations from bingo players and stakeholders to address harm arising from bingo involving wagering. Based on these recommendations and available evidence, we propose five sets of measures to mitigate against gambling harm to bingo players and their communities, and so extend existing public health approaches to gambling to better encompass bingo. These sets of measures are: safeguarding bingo's protective features; delinking bingo from the gambling ecosystem ; dismantling political protection of the gambling industry; tailoring strategies for sub-populations and preventing oppression and abuse. Conclusions: In the face of significant regulatory, commercial and technological changes to bingo that risk increasing and intensifying harm, a public health approach to bingo could help mitigate gambling harm.

Recent research on morality policy has focused on policy change, morality framing and the presence of favourable cultural opportunity structures (COSs). The resulting literature describing various aspects of morality policy has failed to discuss the impact of multilevel dynamic in this field. This contribution examines gambling policy in Italy, applying a multilevel approach to detect the presence of favourable COSs, and whether policymakers frame policies morally. Italy offers a particularly fertile field for the study of morality policy, featuring a liberal national approach versus local restrictive policy. By applying a methodology based on semistructured interviews and secondary sources, we examine the national and local political spheres, demonstrating that morality framing, when detected, is more likely to be found at the local level where the influence of experts and interest groups on legislators may result in the transformation of a health policy based on paternalistic considerations.

The principal legal systems have almost always recognized that gambling is a danger to society. The combination game-bet/wager-money – which brings the human being’s instincts for game playing to fever pitch, only to degrade subsequently into social problems – moved the ecclesiastical and civil authorities to institute severe controls. It will be shown here how, throughout the fourteenth century, the norms – both “positive” and “negative” – taken to logical extremes, did actually have an effect on games of chance that was contrary to the intended one. On the other hand, in the second half of the fifteenth century, and throughout the sixteenth, on the basis of norms inspired by philosophy, theology and tradition, the humanist men, offered a remedy to the “anti-game,” by showing the proper purpose of game playing and setting forth its nature as principally recreational and social.

The article analyzes some features of De ludo preaching, transmitted by the sermonaries of Bernardine of Siena and James of the March. The study of the homi-letical production on the conception of playful activity makes it possible to trace its manifestation in the denunciation of gambling, under three aspects: analysis of the sins deriving from games of chance; the singular Bernardinian concept of the game of chance as a kind of devil worship; finally, reflection on lawful games and on forbidden ones, with the recognition of the legitimacy of a ludus honestus, characterized by bodily recreation that refreshes the mind and soul, too.

The Politics, the Policy and the Polity of (anti)Gambling
Chairs: Matteo Bassoli,Marco Pedroni

Recent decades have seen the progressive legalisation of gambling in many nation states, leading to the generation of an industry capable of influencing State policies (Pedroni 2014). Italy is, for many reasons, a crucial terrain of investigation in attempting to understand the transformation of gambling into a mainstream leisure activity (Pedroni 2018, Reith 1999) and the consequent challenges for society. From a regulatory standpoint, Italy is an international landmark. The State maintains regulatory control but the gambling activities are organised by private concessionaires within a competitive market. The State is thereby contemporaneously a monopolist and a promoter of a market which generates or favours excessive or pathological behaviours.
Gambling and anti-gambling policies are often the terrain for intense and complex public debate. Local politicians, the national government, citizens, non-profit organisations and market players are actors in a fundamental political confrontation over values.  Early studies on this issue focused on the politics of morality rather than policies per se (see Mooney 1999, Knill 2013), otherwise they have a strong focus the exploitation of moral frames to increase political gain (Mucciaroni 2011).
In the socio-political literature on gambling little role has been given to the issue of multilevel governance, event though the vast cost-benefit analysis suggests this features should be carefully taken into consideration: the social costs and the economic burden is carried by the local level, while the fiscal revenues are treasured by the national one. Therefore the most profound consequences of the increasing role of gambling and betting have landed in urban environments.
Italian municipalities, supported by social movements and third sector organisations, have taken the lead in the rebellion against the national approach to this issue. The capacity to complement (or contradict) national gambling policy in a variety of way limiting time consumption or place of offer. On this regards, little research has been done as regards policy rescaling, multi-level governance and civil society activism.
This panel welcomes papers to develop that address the political and societal consequences of the contemporary gambling, with a specific attention to the roles played by the different level and the different actors involved.
This panel aims to explore issues from such perspectives as:
•    The relevance of ideological categories in the agenda setting / in the framing of the issue
•    Impact of morality in framing the issue
•    The consequences of social movements for local policies 

•    The connections between social movements, private concessionaires in the cities 

•    Tensions between local and national political elites
•    Multi-level governance of gambling policies
•    Rescaling of gambling policies

The list is only for illustrative purposes; papers related to other aspects of the politics of local government – either comparative or single case studies – are very welcome.
Papers can be submitted in either English or Italian.

In our submission, we:  draw on qualititative research we conducted into bingo between 2018 and 2020 which included participant observation at Crown Melbourne and interviews with people who played bingo at Crown Melbourne;  describe bingo provision at Crown Melbourne, provide an example of gambling harm to bingo players at Crown Melbourne and highlight Crown's practice of 'loss leading', whereby no-charge bingo is used to draw people into the casino;  outline provisions in the Gambling Regulations Act 2003 governing bingo operations in Victoria, observing that it is unclear which provisions cover bingo as provided by Crown Melbourne;  noting that bingo in Victoria is treated in regulation as a fundraising mechanism for community and charitable organisations (CCOs), question whether Crown Melbourne's provision of bingo is in keeping with the Act, in particular whether provisions requiring bingo in this context to be run without those doing so receiving financial benefit to do so, and whether the provision of bingo by a large gambling corporation such as Crown is consistent with legislative intent;  suggest that that Crown Melbourne places bingo players at risk of gambling harm by using bingo to entice them to gamble on EGMs;  note that community bingo-providers cannot compete with the prizes Crown offers;  express our view that it is not in the public interest for Crown to provide bingo in Victoria.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate, however briefly, the influence that the pathologies linked to games of chance may exercise upon the intellectual and vo-litional capacity of the parties to the celebration of the sacrament of marriage, hence upon the matrimonial consent that they express. The suggestion is that, in relevant trials on petitions for declaration of marriage nullity, the inquiry be based, not so much on indications and supporting circumstances pointing to disorders associated with poor impulse control, but rather on the evidence showing there to have been a latent or actualized addiction disorder.