Social planning and local welfare. The experience of the Italian area social plan

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the Italian experience of planning and governance in local welfare systems, after the adoption of a specific planning instrument called the ‘Piano di Zona’ (Area Social Plan), which has reached its sixth triennial review. Our goal is to explore the relationship between governance and performance by examining under which circumstances the social planning is successful, that is one Area Social Plan is preferable to another. Our research is based on the empirical observation of the nine Area Social Plans in the Province of Pavia which involves 188 municipalities. Our results demonstrate the fundamental role of public administrations and the negative effects that horizontal multi-level forms of governance may have on the planning of the Area Social Plan, almost as though there were a sort of path dependence from previous/pre-existing governance relationships.

KEYWORDS:

• Area Social Plans
• local government
• social welfare
• public administration
• governance relationships

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Pietro Previtali http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0768-986X

Eugenio Salvati http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2067-8698

Notes

1. Altogether, 1,948 Italian municipalities have a population of fewer than 1,000 inhabitants; 2,131 municipalities have a population ranging from 1,001 to 2,500 inhabitants; 1,604 municipalities have a population ranging from 2,501 to 5,000 inhabitants; and 2,409 municipalities have more than 5,000 inhabitants.

2. Properly speaking, it is properly the concept of political network and of institutions that work in strict cooperation, one of the main reflections of the neo-institutionalist approach (March and Olsen, 1989) to the role of the governance and of its main features (Osborne and Baebler 1992; Rhodes 1997; Ansell 2000).

3. To be honest, we agree with Bifulco (2014) as – maybe due to the crisis which has had variable negative effects both in terms of the transformation of the demand for social protection and in terms of the supply of welfare supports – ‘too much hope has been placed in territorialization as a means to generating innovation for citizens’, and the results of partnership arrangements, central-to-local responsibility devolutions and/or participatory processes have produced mixed results in different countries.