New Local Leadership: The Level of Politics

Abstract

The level of local government in Italy, for about twenty years, is the scene of profound changes in both politics and policy-making. The reforms of the 90s were inserted in a framework of political opportunity-weaknesses that had the most sensational extrication in directionalism: the crisis of the parties and the tools of political mediation; the personalization and the spectacularization of politics; the fiscal crisis of the state; the need to activate accountability processes. The regulatory-structural framework in the local context, combined with new socio-political dynamics have strengthened the centrality of leadership, increasingly unbalanced on the political front of the consolidation of consensus, less and less attentive to the needs of "good administration"; in metaphorical key, prevails the model "a man alone to the command" to the detriment of the figure of the policy entrepreneur. The paper analyses the new types of local leadership in relation to the legal and political changes that have occurred in the local area since the 1990s.