Italy: Set along a Neo-Weberian trajectory of administrative reform?

This chapter discusses the ‘effects’ of recent public sector managerial reforms in Italy. It arises, inter alia, that the country has adopted managerial tools to a significant extent, yet not up to the point to have changed in any fundamental way the overall administrative system. The portrait of the Italian public sector that emerges is one in which the layering of managerial tools and logics combine with persistent, underlying Weberian elements: this frame can be interpreted along the lines of the Neo-Weberian model as outlined by Pollitt and Bouckaert (2011). The basic idea of the Neo-Weberian model is that a layer of managerial instruments get to be systematically employed by public sector organizations, but rather than this phenomenon leading to displacing the logic of accountability and organization of the public sector (as seems to be predicted by some NPM doctrinal argumentations), this layer of managerial tools combines with the previous Weberian elements in a consistent way. The data collected through the COCOPS Top Executive Survey enable an interpretation of the Italian reform trajectory along the lines of the Neo-Weberian model which aims to show that the Neo-Weberian model may be an apt description of trajectories of administrative reform also in Southern European countries.