Italian Municipalities and the Management of Covid-19 Emergency: a Kaleidoscope Effect

Crises like Covid-19 represent a test for the government capacity of manage uncertainty. Unlike other crises, Covid-19 has tested this capacity by requiring the simultaneous activation of all levels of government. In a fragmented system such as the Italian one, a relevant obstacle has been represented by the different level of cognition among the actors involved, that is the capacity to recognize the degree of emerging risk to which a community is exposed and to act on that information. Although the redundancy of the Italian local government cannot be considered as an explicit strategy, it has resulted in enhanced capacities associated with system resiliency. Fragmentation and heterogeneity in leadership styles at the local level have certainly absorbed part of the crisis management capacity, but at the same time they have created, with significant exceptions, margins of flexibility and adaptation of public action, by also activating synergies and collaborations with other local actors. The Italian experience facing Covid-19 confirm that in crisis management that there is no optimal formula for harmonizing competing interests and tensions or for overcoming uncertainty and ambiguous government structures.