Host Country Panel

• Italian politics can be interpreted as a long attempt to prevent factionalism and polarization from spinning out of control and becoming disruptive to the country.

• The Pandemic crisis led Italy towards a government guided by experts and technocrats.

• The territory should be at the center of development, the main player of sustainability and resilience.

• The Italian Recovery and Resilience Plan could generate a fruitful 'contamination' in the long run, aimed at strengthening the traditional and fundamental function of the European funds.

• The digital modernization of Italian public administration and the models of neighboring countries are one of the most important tools in the process of reshaping administrative institutions and the administrative culture.

The Host Country Panel of IIAS-EUROMENA 2022 Conference focused on the recent history of the Italian Institutions in order to understand the present and the future perspectives of the country’s Next Generation Governance in the framework of a Global Public Administration.

Professor Giovanni Orsina (LUISS University, Rome) highlighted the past political factionalism and ideological polarization that run high in Italian recent history. These factors must be considered in any attempt to explain the frailty of Italian public institutions – their instability, inefficiency, feeble legitimacy, inability to win citizens’ respect, and subservience to sectional interests. Moreover, since the end of the last century Italian politics can be interpreted as a long attempt to prevent factionalism and polarization from spinning out of control and becoming disruptive to the country. In the past decade, delegitimation occurred through populist political subjects that denied each another the right of governing the country, by arguing that it is incompatible with one or more of the values on which the public sphere is founded. The Pandemic crisis led the country out of this scenario towards a government led by experts and technocrats. A government able to address the Next Generation EU and National Recovery and Resilience Plan: a new and fundamental challenge for the public Administrations and the system of controls.

Professor Loredana Giani Maguire (European University of Rome) gave evidence of the fact that in Italy the Pandemic crisis, and especially the reactions to it, placed a greater emphasis on the relationship between authority and rights, highlighting the need to rethink the role of the administrations in order to guide the trajectories of sustainable development, ecological transition and social innovation, defining the foundations on the basis of which to identify the role of governance, and in particular of territorial governance, from a perspective that places the territory at the center of development, as the main player (along with the institutional one) of sustainability and resilience. As Professor Giani noted, the relevance of territories emerges in multiple perspectives, being the fruit of a dialectic between organisation and function that requires a reading not only in terms of sustainability but, earlier, in terms of appropriateness referred to (public) organisations and their actions. The Recovery and Resilience Plan marked a spill-over from the traditional model of cohesion funds towards a new paradigm that faces the administrations and policymakers with numerous challenges, ranging from building the framework of competencies needed to designing and implementing the actions necessary for change, to the system of evaluations and controls itself. A spill-over that could generate a fruitful 'contamination' in the long run, aimed at strengthening the traditional and fundamental function of the European funds, i.e. the growth of the Union.

Marco De Giorgi (Head of the Department for Young People Policies of the Italian Government) showed the commitment of the current government to involve younger generations in a new concept of Young Public Administration. The digital modernization of Italian public administration and the models of neighboring countries (thanks to the contribution to the Panel of Christian Vitta, State Councilor of Swiss Canton Ticino) are one of the most important tools in this process of modernization of the national Administration and in the process of reshaping the Administrative Institutions along with the Administrative culture, less legalistic and more oriented to efficiency and delivery.