Regional Government: The Italian Experience

This paper is a review of Italy's stuttering progress towards regional autonomy. At the unification of Italy in 1860, a centralised administrative structure was adopted, as prescribed by the Piedmontese Constitution of 1848. Centralisation of political power reached its apogee during the Fascist period. Regionalist sentiment resurfaced strongly after the last war and gained formal expression in the 1948 Republican Constitution, which provided for the creation of five ‘special’ and fourteen (later fifteen) ‘ordinary’ regions. The special regions—regions of special linguistic or political sensitivity (Valle d'Aosta, Trentino-Alto Adige, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Sicily and Sardinia)—were established between 1948 and 1963, but delays orchestrated by the Christian Democrat-dominated central government, reluctant to relinquish its power, postponed the establishment of the ordinary regions until the 1970s, when pressure from the Socialist Party prevailed. The legislative powers of the regions are of three forms: Exclusive (available only to the special regions), complementary, and integrative, the order representing progressively diminishing elements of decisionmaking autonomy. Several regions in central Italy have elected Communist regional governments. However, hopes that the regional governments would be instrumental in ending corrupt and inept government and eradicating regional disequilibria, have mostly been misplaced, although some progress has been made, especially in the northern regions, in the fields of administrative reform, social service organisation, and regional economic planning. The principal reason for lack of progress is the continuing central government control over regional government funds. In many regions considerable amounts of unspent funds have accumulated owing to a combination of political stalemate at the regional level and central government veto. Special attention is given in this paper to the relationship between regional autonomy and (1) local government, and (2) regional planning. To conclude, the present state of play represents an uneasy compromise between the two contradictory historical forces of centralism and regionalism, present since unification. Although there has been a significant departure from the rigid centralisation of the past, the retention of most of the important powers by the central government frustrates the ambitions of the regions to really organise their own affairs.