Politiche per il Mezzogiorno e riforma amministrativa

The well known researches made by Putnam three decades ago indicated a strong difference in institutional performance between Southern Italian Regions, on the one hand, and the Centre-North ones, on the other. Since 1997, the Department of Development and Cohesion (Dps) in Rome begun to formulate new policy choices concerning European structural funds. One of such choices was that of «rewarding» Southern Regions with ad hoc funds if they implemented some national administrative reforms that they should have implemented anyway. The way such rewards were actually managed is unsatisfactory. Southern regions were required to show mostly a formal allegiance to national rules. Therefore, what they have possibly «learnt» is that it is not important to modify in depth bureaucratic features: it is sufficient to exhibit the appearance of innovation. Another weakness is that today it is clear that the original economic objectives of the «new» development policy were not reached. Nevertheless, the Dps did not admit it, but rather begun to shift policy objectives towards other fields, notably social ones.