ICT policies, the Mediterranean tradition and the Italian diet of discontinuity

Abstract

The article investigates the ICT policies of characteristically political instable Italy in the wake of the (dis)continuous flood of government reforms that began in the early 1990s. Using the case of the Italian digital agency, the research amplifies the scope of the current discussions on national e-Government trajectories, providing evidence for the interrelated dynamics between policy outcomes, implementation mechanisms and administrative landscape. The article shows that the discontinuity of Italy’s Digital Agenda is attributable to the merry-go-round nature of governments with divergent views of modernization – resulting in the digital agency’s multiple, even conflicting mandates – and to the misalignment of the ‘original agency model’ with the embedded culture of the public machinery. The article provides illustration of these arguments from the historical institutionalist perspective and maintains that insights into these phenomena are essential for contextualizing and understanding ICT policies.