The Italian Administrative Reform of Small Municipalities. State-of-the-art and Perspectives

The present paper explores the state-of-the-art of the Italian administrative reform, which encourages all small municipalities to develop inter-local service agreements. By adopting an empirical approach, we survey 136 small municipalities. The survey results suggest a state of ?collaborative inertia?. Small municipalities have signed inter-local service agreements for just a few services that have a small impact on their organisations and citizens. In spite of the efforts by the Italian government, the results thus show that this administrative reform has not yet taken off.