Italy: The changing boundaries of inter-municipal cooperation

Abstract

In Italy, inter-municipal cooperation has to face the historical fragmentation of the political and administrative system of local authorities. The country is essentially formed of small - and extremely small - municipalities (communi) that were, in the 1990s, required to tackle very important administrative and constitutional reforms and crucial policy changes in different sectors of public policy. As a consequence, Italian local authorities assumed leadership in the functioning of the political system. But in this role they encountered a significant obstacle: the fragmentation of Italian municipalities. The progression of inter-municipal cooperation is becoming an important, operative solution. In this chapter, after a short reconstruction of the historical origins of the problem of Italian intercomunalità (section 1), we will describe the main variables explaining the growing need for inter-municipal cooperation during the 1990s (section 2). The next section will develop a model showing the different forms of inter-municipal cooperation described from an institutional and organizational perspective (section 3). The forms shown in the model will be analyzed according to their regional differences (section 4), bringing us to various conclusions (section 5) and enabling us to identify possible different development perspectives for intercomunalità in Italy. © 2007 Springer.