Atelier 2 – Environnement et territoires The

COLLOQUE INTERNATIONAL
Les instruments d’action publique mis en discussion théorique
6 au 8 janvier 2011, Sciences Po
Organisation : Charlotte Halpern (IEP Grenoble / Pacte, FNSP)
Pierre Lascoumes (Sciences Po / CEE, CNRS), Patrick Le Galès (Sciences Po / CEE, CNRS)
Atelier 2 – Environnement et territoires
Vendredi 7 janvier, 14h-19h
Sciences Po, Salle Goguel bis, 56 rue des Saints Pères, 75007 Paris
The “extraordinary administration by an external commissioner” as tool of
government and practice: the crisis of the waste collection in Campania
Alessandro Caputo
PhD in Regional Planning and Public Policies, IUAV, University of Venice
abstract
Contact mail : [email protected]
Projet rEr (Réseau État Recomposé) de l'axe prioritaire Les recompositions de l’Etat,
de l’action publique et des modes de gouvernance
Since the second half of the 90s, Italy has been pressed by a process of profound
transformation of the policies concerning the management and waste disposal, with some
help from a new legislation coming particularly by EU institutions.
While some regions in Northern Italy seem to be able to conform to the new EU directives,
the regions in the south still pay for a serious gap compared with what estimated by the
European regulations in terms of targets, industrial disposal system, new set up of the
governance. One feature that the majority of the regions of Southern Italy share is the
repeated utilization inside these policies of the institution of the extraordinary administration
by an external commissioner and the declaration of the emergency state.
The work reconstructs, through the method of the case study, the crisis of the waste
collection in the Regione Campania, drawing attention to the implementation process of the
policy in the years from 1994 to 2008.The analysis of the case of the waste crises in
Campania and some examples coming from other southern regions favours, as analytic
element of putting in perspective, the approach of the government tools as developed in
different traditions of studies about public politics in the U.S.A. and in Europe, particularly
according to the Anglo-Saxon and French tradition. The utilization of tools inside the policy
processes has always been a source of studies and reflection inside the studies of public
policies.
Inspiring to this tradition of study, the analysis of the case has favoured a view point that
recognizes a huge importance to the context in which processes of policies are developed, not
isolating the instruments and the system of behaviour nor the practices which use it. This has
contributed to highlight not only the mere single tool, its functions inside a frame of policy,
but also its functioning through the inter-playing which interacts between the process of
implementation of public policy and the government tools.
The thesis to be supported and developed is that the “extraordinary administration by an
external commissioner” can be considered a real government tool, which is a stable part of
the government tool box that, following its diffusion, has generated during the time,
important effects on the articulation of the rubbish policy, depicting an authentic model of
problem solving by the central and peripheral governments which found their actions on
wider concepts of crisis and emergency.
Finally, particular attention is devoted to the effects of the utilization of such a tool: the
reference is to the exclusion or emersion of actors in the waste policy, marked by a high rate
of social and inter-institutional conflicts; to the simplification of the political social and
procedural complexity through a wide discretional power; the clarification of the relation
governor-governed tinged with the utilization of a particular instrument in the examined
policy.