Local Public Services in Italy: Still Fragmentation

Abstract

In Italy, the local government and public services have long been treated as a complex, incoherent ‘puzzle’ across multiple levels of authority. The chapter analyses how, and how much, the governance of public and social services in Italy has been affected by NPM-inspired reforms aimed at rationalising provision and at increasing efficiency for over two decades. The authors show that reforms in both fields have had the effect of greatly increasing power at the local level at the expense of the intermediate levels, leading to widespread fragmentation. Moreover, in the absence of sound coordination mechanisms, such fragmentation has paved the way to an unclear definition of responsibilities; and the marked decentralisation of decision-making has implied poor integration and an inefficient scale of service delivery.