Unlike Finland, Italy does not have a strong tradition in working in partnerships;
according to Scassellati (1998), no real culture, tradition, and practice of local development exists in Italy; as a result, it needs to be built. All Italian culture between the 1950s and the 1980s has focused on development guided and induced from the center, while the principle of subsidiarity lacks a literature in the Italian language. In Italy community development has not had much space, unlike the experience in the United States where a proper methodology of process has been established. Beyond some isolated socio‐cultural movements including the experience and social engagement of Adriano Olivetti, or the Catholic culture that dealt with the Mezzogiorno and the agrarian reform (De Rita 1998), Scassellati (1998) continues by arguing that attention to local development in Italy has always been paid only in emergency situations, including the aftermath of the war, when villages needed to be rebuilt, or in the presence of earthquakes, when solidarity starts to emerge, although this solidarity is often used for political and economic goals.
According to a survey conducted on participatory practices on behalf of the Department of the Public Function of the Presidency of the Ministries’ Council in 2007, it emerged that in some cases participatory processes are rarely a collective undertaking; rather, they are linked to the personal initiative of representatives of the politico‐institutional world, and as such do not seem to have solid roots in the administrations, in the executive bodies, in the councils, and in the political parties. Participation still appears to be weak in Italy at the political level, and it remains at the margins of the public debate (Bobbio 2007).
On the other hand, similarly to the arguments by De Rita (1998), Bobbio (2007) claims that participatory practices have never been a completely ‘alien’
phenomenon within public administration (for instance, the neighbourhood committees of the 1970s, or in the same period the birth of joint organizations in schools); furthermore, in the last ten to fifteen years, discussions on partnership and collaboration started with the diffusion of theories of bottom‐up development and the idea of local development (often imported from Northern Europe, or more recently, from Latin America) (see Bobbio 2007; Bozzini 2009, 62).
Based on the Italian literature, different forms of partnerships can be identified. The industrial districts represent a particular socio‐economic system in the center and the northeast of Italy, and they are characterized by contiguous and limited territory, the small size of business activities as well as economic and financial cooperation among enterprises. Other partnerships for local development are provided by the territorial pacts and area contracts, which are very similar to each other and are based on the agreement between public and private actors for the promotion of different local development actions (Campennì & Sivini 1999). On the basis of the concept of ‘industrial district’
devised by Becattini, and developed by many Italian regional economists, the term ‘rural district’ emerged as early as the 1990s in the agricultural economic literature. The ‘rural district’ concept is a wider version of the ‘industrial district’, since it involves not only networks of enterprises and civil society (which are the basic characteristics of the ‘industrial district’), but also the natural environment. A key characteristic of the ‘rural district’ is “the particular relationship between local actors and the environment that is embodied in their
‘contextual knowledge’, which lies at the foundations of practices that produce and reproduce cultural landscapes, typical food, and rural heritage” (Brunori &
Rossi, 2007, 186). Because of its success at the academic level, and due to the increasing interest in relocalization of agricultural production and endogenous development, the Italian Agricultural Act (Legge di orientamento) (decree 228 of April 2001) gave regional governments the possibility of establishing ‘rural districts’, defined as “local production systems characterized by a homogenous historical and territorial identity due to the integration among agriculture and other local activities and to the production of very specific goods or services, coherent with natural and territorial traditions and vocations”. The ‘rural district’ has thus been utilized as a concrete initiative at the territorial level, by establishing partnerships which aimed to define and implement rural development strategies (Brunori & Rossi 2007).
According to Bozzini (2009, 62), although the partnership tool is increasing in importance in the Italian context, it is still limited in scope. From the interviews collected within the project “Social Network for Sustainable Rural Development” promoted by the Ministry of University and Research (Cofin 2004), Bozzini (2009, 63) argues that although the interviewees recognize the importance of partnerships, strong difficulties still exist in aggregating interests in Italian rural areas. For instance, civil servants at the Ministry of Agriculture claim that the multiplicity of diverging interests and the inability to put them together in a holistic manner is one of the main problems in LEADER implementation.
The LEADER Programme in Italy is implemented through 21 regional programmes. Regional administrations and the Autonomous Provinces of Trento and Bolzano/Bozen are the managing and paying authorities, and they are also responsible for selecting the local action groups. The latter have the responsibility of choosing the individual projects. Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry policies have a coordinating role in implementating LEADER, in particular the department Direzione Generale per le Politiche Strutturali e lo Sviluppo Rurale (POSR) (INEA 2006). The ministry does not have any direct link with the various local action groups; the offices of the ministry cooperate mostly with the regional authorities, gathering all the data for evaluation as well as verifying the implementation of the programme (Bozzini 2009, 61). The regions from the center‐north are the most virtuous in regard to implementing Local Development Plans; most Italian regions located in the south have encountered
difficulties in spending the minimum amount of funds necessary to avoid their disengagement as governed by Regulation 1260/99, and the reallocation of those funds to efficient administrations (Petrella 2009). Within the Italian rural context, a researcher from INEA6 (interview 26) argues that the role of the local action groups is marginal both from a financial point of view, and in terms of their capacity to engrave on the dynamics and processes of development; however, they have a very strong role in triggering those processes and determining the links between sectors which are often separated from each other.
In order to better grasp the discussion on partnerships as a ‘located’
experience, it is essential to investigate the analytical dimension of the ‘territory’
concept; the territory can be considered the essential ‘platform’ from which to interpret criteria of spatial differentiation, including rurality, as well as regional analysis.
6 The National Institute of Agrarian Economy (Istituto Nazionale di Economia Agraria or simply INEA)
is an institution which supports the activities of the Italian Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Forestry Policies. It carries out activities of research, analysis, and forecast within the agro‐industrial, forestry, and fishing fields. In recent years the activity of the Institute has included supporting the public administration for the implementation of agrarian policies, particularly European Union policies (INEA 2010).
4 Constructing Territory and Rurality
4.1 TERRITORY AND TERRITORIAL DIMENSION OF