Looking for the Optimal Size: Policy Reforms in Italy between Efficiency and 'New' Rationalization

During the years of the global crisis, balanced budget goal and expenditure containment were the driver of most legislative provisions and reforms promoted by Italian governments. Broad reforms in several policy sectors have been thus enhanced, mostly by merging and joining organizational units with the aim at minimizing redundancy and wastes and under the auspices of a “renewed” rationalization. Our paper will present the result of a collaborative research project aiming at mapping these reforms using a cross-sectorial perspective. Four different policy sectors have been analyzed – local government, health, judicial services, local public services (public transport, water and waste management) – with the purpose of understanding the rationale of these measures, the effects they produced on the Italian public sector and the “policy ideas” behind them. In particular, some examples of collaborative efficiency measures could be found in the recent reforms: from procurement syndicates (e.g. in the local government) to forms of one-stop-shops (e.g. in the justice sector), from shared services arrangements (with ‘back-office’ activities and function sharing) and shared infrastructure facilities (like e-gov platform) in all four sectors. From a theoretical background the evolution of the NPM ideas will be discussed as well as if and how these types of measure could be conceived as post-NPM tools. By using the policy design concept, we will then focus on hybridization and layering, which characterize the policy reform process in Italy. The implications of such collaborative measures for the organizational theory and behavior will be addressed. In particular, it seems interesting to assess if and how the above-mentioned shared and collaborative services and institutions, really bring to changes in the Italian organizational structure and culture.