Contenu du sommaire : L'administration italienne aujourd'hui

The Italian Administrative System, or the Art of Accommodation As an antithesis to the weberian model of administration, the Italian model is not based upon legal and rational bases, but on a system of contracts and conventions. Because of the system's rigidity, the State has added a peripheral sector — called para-statal sector — which is a mixture of organizations of public and private law. The natural tendency to compartmentalization is reinforced by the absence of a core group of higher civil servants. The Constitution gives no clear position to administration. In order to live with such an administrative system, society has only one possibility, that of using a very ancient Italian art : the art of accommodation

The Crisis of the Ministerial System and the Development of Autonomous Public Bodies and Independent Administrative Authorities The organization of ministerial departments is quite different from the principles laid down in the “Cavour Act”. The tendency to concentrate the services within ministries has been reversed as soon as the beginning of the XXth century. Eventually, public administration has become multi-organizational : the ministerial departments have progressively lost their role as an organizational centre to the benefit of other institutions. A quest for unity has become unrealistic, but new rules and organizations have to be defined.

The Civil Service, Towards Privatization Since a long time, the evolution of Italian administration has been under the alternative influence of a hierarchical model (bureaucracy) and a business model (management). The Italian civil service has not escaped the consequences of this phenomenon : it was mainly based upon the hierarchical model and has resisted until recently to different attempts of modernization inspired by the business model. However, there seems to be a radical turn with the Legislative Decree n° 29/1993 — so-called privatization decree — which reforms dramatically the regulatory framework of public employment by decreasing the scope of legislative regulation and favouring collective agreements between unions and public employers. Another phenomenon is increasing : the “southernization” of the civil service is caracterized by a shortage of personnel in the North and a growing distance between administration and society.

Finance, Budget and Public Accounting The Italian system of public finance has a set of specific characteristics. The administrations in charge of taxation are separated from those in charge of budgetting. The accounting regulations are very detailed and normally apply to all state organizations. But in order to cope with the rigidities of the system, a number of derogations have been established. The biggest part of income collected by central administration is transferred to local authorities and state field administrations. The delays in adopting the budget have led parliament to rationalize the budgetary procedure. However the budget, which is difficult to read, is not a reliable tool for management, and there is a clear lack of programming as far as credits are concerned.

Controls — the Rule of Inefficiency ? In Italy, controls on administration are greatly inefficient. Internal controls hardly exist and external controls suffer a lack of coordination and a more or less important dependence towards political and administrative power. This inefficiency is partly due to the age of the controlling system which goes back for its greatest part to the middle of the nineteenth century and has not been adapted to transformations during the last fifty years (there have been no more than three important Acts of Parliament in that period). Nevertheless, some recent initiatives try to find remedies, in the field of local authorities amongst others. The influence of the European Union on the future evolution of these controls, and especially on a possible redefinition of the functions of the Court of Auditors, is still difficult to measure.

Administrative Decentralization and Local Autonomies The Constitution of 1948 gives a great importance to administrative decentralization under various forms ; it is even considered as one of the fundamental principles of the Republican State. But the implementation of these principles has been very slow. The regional reform, launched in 1970, has led to an important transfer of administrative powers to the regions, with a predominance of political upon administrative guidance. A reform of the organization and functions of other local authorities has had to wait until 1990. But there is a dramatic lack of reforms of ministerial departments and field services of state administration.

Administrative Procedure and Open Government The change from a unitary model of administrative organization to a multi-organizational model and the change in the relationships between government and private persons have led to a number of reforms in the functioning of government and administration. In this framework, the Act n° 241/1990 has innovated by giving full weight to the principles of participation and open government. In practice, administrative procedure is not only geared towards taking into account public interest, but has also become a major element for reconciling administrative efficiency and the protection of private interests.

The New Economic Constitution The state-economy relationships in Italy can be briefly described as follows : a traditionally powerful and vast public sector ; an essentially finalistic regulation of the economy, i.e. a control of complete sectors by public bodies according to government priorities. During the last twenty years, government intervention in the economy has shrunk as well in its extension as in its intensity. The privatization of bodies and activities which were previously run by the public sector has been accompanied by a reshuffling of public control on private economic activities. Furthermore the process of european integration has led to a reduction of national regulations and to the introduction of uniform minimal rules for all economic actors.

Privatizations in the Industrial Public Sector In Italy the rare cases of direct transfer of public enterprises to the private sector have not been decided by government, but by the public bodies which owned their capital, in view of reinforcing their own position. The privatizations which have been programmed by government have mainly been targeted to the legal form of enterprises, without changing their direction and control, which remain public. Because they have followed two different paths, the Italian privatizations have not had the same consequences as in other countries, namely an increase of government regulation of private activities, a reinforcement of capital market and a decrease of government debt. The latest program of transfer of public companies which has been presented by the Italian Cabinet does not bring any major innovations in this field.

The Influence of European Integration European integration influences the Italian administration in three ways, directly or indirectly. Taking interests in account strengthens the organic links between national and community administrations ; it also leads, functionally, to the development of complex procedures which go through both levels — national and supranational. The role of public authorities in the economy is being modified : numerous old schemes and direct modes of intervention have been replaced by indirect ones. Centre-periphery relationships have changed too : a new system of competences — exclusive and concurring — is being set up, with numerous structural adaptations, new instruments, new interventions and objectives to be coordinated between various levels of government.

The Citizen and Administration The birth of the republican state and the adoption of the Constitution of 1948 have led to a more balanced relationship between citizens and administration. The implementation of certain constitutional principles, which only started in the sixties, has progressively led to a general change of the framework of citizen/administration relationships, which were previously dominated by the opposition between authority and liberty. Since twenty years, a number of elements have accentuated this evolution : a better protection of the citizen against administration, the participation of citizens, the development of contractualization, the evolution of social rights and the growing influence of private and EC law. This has led — at least partially — to a redefinition of the concept of citizen.

Administrative Justice Italian administrative justice is undergoing a crisis concerning as well its field of jurisdiction (based upon the distinction between subjective interests and legitimate rights) as its functioning. This phenomenon is particularly clear in view of the average time needed for court cases to come to an end, and the number of cases still to examine. Even more important : the system for protecting citizens has only a limited effectiveness, probably because it is still centered on squashing the decisions of administration. There is a pathological addition of the control of criminal courts which are more and more often the last possible instance. Will a reform be able to correct these flaws resulting from an accumulation of different layers of administrative justice regulations ?

Reforming Public Administration In Italy, public administration is submitted to a set of contradictory constitutional principles which underline the lack of a global approach. The evolution of public administration has not been coherent, according to predetermined lines of development, but by piling up institutions and adding up systems. Contrary to common understanding in public opinion, Italian administration has undergone numerous changes in recent years, even if the transformation process has not been a straight one, because of a lack of global political orientation.

A Statistical Profile of Public Administration Statistical analysis helps isolating a few significant aspects of Italian administration. First, the abundance of legislation, which is a consequence of the sectorial character of numerous Acts and of an important production of emergency measures. Second, Italian administration is “multi-organizational” because the increase and complexity of functions have led to fragmentation and differenciation of structures. The analysis of personnel data illustrates this evolution : it reveals an increase in numbers, a “southernization” and a feminization of personnel. Public finance are characterized by a continuous increase of resources and expenses. The extraordinary increase of the number of administrative court cases is also a striking characteristic of the last fifteen years.

A Few Frenchman's Views on Italian Administration The reasons as well as the consequences of Italian maladministration cannot be ignored, and are partly due to bureaucracy itself. But, by making it a scapegoat for all problems of Italian society, one neglects the responsibilities of the political class itself : explosion of regulations, clientelism, accommodation, sprinkling with subsidies ; one also neglects the responsibilities of society : contempt, search for external solutions. Yet if the problems are numerous, one has to take into account that the flaws of Italian administration are different according to functions and geography.