Local Public Services in Italy: Still Fragmentation

Reforms inspired by NPM have affected local public services in Italy for over two decades by aiming for rationalization and efficiency. Local governments and services have long been managed as a complex, incoherent ‘puzzle’ across multiple levels of authority; and this complexity has long called for a huge effort of coordination, integration and control, as well as simplification and rationalization. Against this backdrop, the chapter provides an assessment of the reforms and their effects in two key domains, namely public utilities and social services, concluding that disjointed incrementalism affecting institutional reforms, the lack of a coherent and binding central regulation or political vision, as well as the present economic crisis, have severely limited the impact of the numerous attempts made since the early 1990s to rationalize and give greater efficiency to local service management and delivery.