Marco Meneguzzo

Public Administration Reform in Italy: A Shopping-basket Approach to the New Public Management or the New Weberianism?

The literature on public sector reforms in Italy analyzes the success of the NPM model, highlighting a relevant implementation gap and areas of reform which cannot be ascribed to the NPM. The combination of these two features may be read as the adoption of a modernization framework different from the NPM called the New Weberian State. The article reviews the debate on the NPM, analyzes reforms in Italy, contrasted with the United States and other countries. Several characteristics resemble the New Weberianism in Italy, which, however, appears to be more an ex-post rationalization than a new trend and embodies NPM-learned lessons.

New development: The crisis and European local government reforms

This article highlights the main reform trajectories put in place in French, Italian, German and Portuguese local governments during the recent crisis and identifies a number of important trends: for example increasing centralization of decision-making powers away from local governments. The authors explain why local governments have an opportunity to use reforms during the crisis to strategically reposition their value proposition.

Italian City Managers: Caged Leaders?

Abstract Purpose This paper aims to explore the behaviour of city managers in the ongoing context of city leadership in Italy where there are high levels of political, economic and social turbulence. Design/methodology/approach A survey was administered to 140 Italian city managers, with a response rate of 56%. The main research questions were the following: Who are the Italian city managers? How do they spend their time? Are their actions influenced by political, administrative, management and/or governance-related pressures? Findings The results depicted Italian city managers as caged leaders. They feel like they are capable of soaring to great heights outside the boundaries of their organisations, but they are constrained by their day-to-day organisational activities. Originality/value This paper offers new empirical insights into the different leadership activities carried out by Italian city managers discussing the differences between the time devoted to some activities and the perception of their leadership style.

Higher education and stakeholders’ donations: successful civic crowdfunding in an Italian university

Can civic crowdfunding be used to improve the structures and services offered by public universities? Are stakeholders willing to make donations to such projects? This paper answers these questions by analysing a successful civic crowdfunding project in an Italian university. Stakeholders were found to be willing to engage in crowdfunding and make donations. The key to success is to ensure effective communication and to draw on feelings of belonging to the institution.

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT AND EVALUATION OF LARGE-SCALE EVENTS IN A MULTISTAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT PERSPECTIVE: THE CASE OF THE EXTRAORDINARY JUBILEE OF MERCY

Large-scale events, which are characterized by a dynamic complexity involving different national public administrations and institutional levels, require a special attention in selecting adequate project management and event management systems, and in designing and implementing multistakeholder management and engagement techniques. They also require the adoption of innovative managerial tools, as well as the introduction of performance evaluation systems linked to an inter-institutional cooperation and collaboration setting (performance management at macro level). Using a multidisciplinary approach (public management and governance, political science, administrative science), this chapter analyzes the case of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, focusing on its outcomes in terms of inter-institutional and collaborative governance, cross-sector collaboration and joined-up government.

The Co-production of Housing Policies: Social Housing and Community Land Trust

Abstract The purpose of this chapter is to analyze the evolution in the provision of public services’ delivery, with a specific focus on housing policies. New practices are being implemented, thanks to the cooperation of the public sector, private, and nonprofit actors. Rather than just providing assistance to households with income levels falling below specific thresholds, social housing addresses the broader and more complex areas of vulnerability that affect several categories, such as single parents, young students and professionals, and temporarily unemployed people. Co-production also comes into the picture, since many social housing projects require that beneficiaries contribute to the implementation of the project itself, for example by managing the buildings and common areas or by creating communities. The chapter will start from considerations on the emergence of new housing needs. It will then review the literature on the concept of co-production of public services and provide a definition of social housing. Then, examples of social housing will be analyzed based on specific criteria derived from the literature and the theoretical framework. The methodology is qualitative and based on descriptive case analysis. The chapter analyzes the evolution of public housing policies by taking into account the social and economic changes that have determined greater and more complex areas for public intervention, adopting a twofold approach of partnership and collaboration between the three sectors, and of co-production of public services by directly engaging the users.

Grassroots democracy and local government in Northern Syria: the case of democratic confederalism

ABSTRACT This paper provides a case study regarding an innovative model of grass-roots democracy, called democratic confederalism, which is currently being implemented in Northern Syria. The difference between democratic confederalism and previous experiments with grass-roots democracy is that its evolutionary pattern aims to include heterogeneous local communities living in the same territories, with the objective of becoming an administrative model for the whole Syrian country, without shattering its national constitution. In fact, the evolution of the political and administrative system and the introduction of the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria were specifically aimed at including all ethnicities and not focusing on the Kurdish population only. Following a literature review aimed at defining the theoretical background of democratic confederalism, the case study is presented. Data collection occurred through semi-structured interviews and informal talks with key stakeholders in the Kurdish movement; the findings and main implications of the model are described and analysed.

Managing Service Delivery Networks Strategically

The relationship between strategy and structure is one of the long-lasting, and rather controversial, topics in the strategy literature. It is also an evergreen and unresolved issue in the literature on public networks. Some authors have focused on structural characteristics of public networks (i.e., network integration and centrality and/or network governance structure) and their relationship with network performance (Kenis and Provan, 2009; Provan and Kenis, 2008; Provan and M il ward, 1995; Provan and Sebastian, 1998). Others have shed light on the criticality of strategies to manage public networks and of the mechanisms for strategy implementation and network partner interaction (Klijn et al, 2010), and have concluded that strategy matters (and matters even more than structure) in affecting public network performance (Klijn et al, 2010). However, just very few studies have investigated the possibility of an interaction effect among the above-mentioned factors.

Öffentlich – Private Partnerschaften: Eine erste Gegenüberstellung der aktuellen Erfahrungen in Italien und der Schweiz

Ziel dieses Beitrages ist die Darstellung der Ergebnisse eines ersten „strategischen Benchmarking“ zwischen Italien und der Schweiz zu Erfahrungen mit Projektfinanzierungen und Public Private Partnerships (PPPs).