A shallow rationalisation? ‘Merger mania‘ and side-effects in the reorganisation of public-service delivery

This article focuses on the mix of reorganisation measures recently adopted by Italian governments in the delivery of public services in four policy sectors that are (co)managed at different levels of government, but all mostly delivered locally. The aim is twofold: to understand whether a single, coherent approach to rationalisation can be identified in the policy provisions; and how – and how much – the onset of austerity affected governments’ choices. Little attention has in fact so far been paid to the task of providing an overall, cross-sectoral analysis of the changes that have been made to the organisation of public intervention at the local level, and especially those bodies actually providing public services to citizens. The empirical evidence adduced shows that the recent changes in the Italian administrative geography have been the effect of a cost-cutting-oriented, recentralising trend reflecting a one-size-fits-all solution for each and every policy sector: consolidation through ‘merger mania’ or upscaling. Moreover, the reorganisation measures described for the various policy sectors have had side effects with significant political implications, especially as far as centre-periphery relations are concerned.