Meine Cookie EinstellungenCoupling social innovation and local government: Shared administration in commons governance
Alber E, Salati C
This chapter explores how the Italian organizational model of shared administration (MSA) has been institutionalizing forms of grassroots social innovation thanks to the constitutional principle of subsidiarity. Since the pioneering experience of Bologna in 2014, more than 300 local governments started supporting civic participation through the shared governance of the commons. All of this is still largely unknown at the international level. The main aim of the chapter is to present MSA as a new mode of participatory governance (or of democratic innovations) that could be used in both urban and rural contexts. This is done by adopting a perspective at the intersection of law and political science, combining the diverse research streams of constitutional and administrative law together with studies on democratic theory, social innovation, and the commons. Through an analysis of MSA and its constitutional and legal framework, the chapter argues that the Italian model forces us to work on the institutionalization of participatory processes already taking place within society, and not instead on the abstract question of their feasibility. This chapter is particularly relevant for all those local governments willing to deal with the commons from an institutional perspective and through a participatory-deliberative approach.
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-99824-9_4