Abstract
Autore:
Spalla Flavio
Titolo:
"Deframmentazione istituzionale e cooperazione sistemica locale. Comuni e province in trasformazione"
Since the abandonment of the vertical dynamics typical of the centralist model of administration, best practices have recently shown that the relations between local authorities that are most fruitful in terms of the development of local systems are above all relations of the horizontal kind. In Italy, the 1990 reform of the autonomy of local authorities opened up new possibilities of institutional cooperation and of systemic simplification, in particular concerning local municipalities (Comuni). Moreover, the local administrative system remained fragmented into 8,092 municipalities. Two administrative solutions were proposed in the existing legislation: functional associations (“unions”) and structural associations (“fusions”). Unions of local policies and services developed over the first decade of this century and today involve almost two-thousand municipalities, most of them with less than five-thousand inhabitants each. Fusions, on the other hand, still number only nine, because of local resistance, above all of a political nature. In fourteen European countries, in particular in Northern Europe, municipal fusions have shown some success. A similar pattern applies to the provinces. In Italy, the number of provinces has continually increased, eventually reaching 110. However, the recent government project of 2012, aiming at their reduction, failed for reasons similar to those applying to the municipalities.
The focus of the Italian legislator has recently shifted from the structural model to the functional one, with an enrichment of the tools for horizontal collaboration between authorities and for governance of the provision of services. But the local administrative system nevertheless requires a process of institutional defragmentation if it is to re-launch local economic development, reduce public spending, and provide local communities with more efficient services. This policy of government innovation has been excessively slow in our country in comparison to those of our European partners.
