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Crisis and Regional Policy: Copernican Revolution or Nothing New under the Sun?

Sat, September 2, 2:00 to 3:30pm, Westin St. Francis, Hampton

Abstract

This paper examines the effect of the economic crisis on Italian regional policy. Regional policy, i.e. the policy targeting the reduction of territorial socio-economic disparities, has been an important policy in Italy since the birth of the Italian Republic after the Second World War. It has drawn from both domestic and EU resources, and has evolved steadily in response to endogenous and exogenous pressures. Policy results, however, have been both unclear and contested.
The paper argues that the crisis provided the framework for: (i) an alteration of policy priorities, not only to adapt the policy to new needs but also to tackle absorption challenges and thus avoid financial cuts; (ii) a change in the narrative associated with the policy, with emphasis shifting from economic indicators to wellbeing and social inequalities; (iii) a recentralisation (intended, at least) of policy competences; (iv) an increased reliance on EU resources, as a result of the effect of austerity on domestic finances, with the effect of further undermining the additionality of the policy; and (v) lastly, during the Renzi government (and in discontinuity with the pre-crisis programming approach), an explicit de-coupling of domestic regional policy from EU-funded regional policy, accompanied by a ‘political’ use, by Matteo Renzi, of domestic regional policy as a means to gain consensus in the Southern regions (which did not produce the desired political effect). The paper proposes the argument that, through the above changes, the crisis has contributed to weakening the coherence of the policy, but that it has done so largely by serving as a rhetorical device for the consolidation of changes that were mostly already underway, that have their roots largely outside the needs generated by the economic downturn, and whose rationales can be identified in a mix of path dependence, policy opportunism and, more recently, a fundamental shift in the nature of political leadership.
Methodologically, the paper stems from the author’s study of Italian regional policy in the framework of a long-term research programme on regional development across Europe and draws on: analysis of primary data and secondary sources; literature reviews; a structured programme of fieldwork research, consisting of semi-structured interviews with senior policy-makers (realised every year since 2000; next round in Spring 2017).

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