Subsidiarity and the New Governance: Reflections on the Lombard Experience

Abstract

This brief report is intended to offer a preliminary assessment of the model of governance developed in the Lombard region of Italy during the past fifteen years.1 More specifically, the report focuses on the extent to which this model has served its avowed goal of advancing an approach to governance embodied in the concept of subsidiarity (Colombo and Mazzoleni, 2007). To do so, his report proceeds in three steps. First, it identifies a number of distinguishing features of the “Lombardy model” of public problem-solving that became at least partially apparent in the course of this preliminary review. Second, it calls attention to several potential tensions in what turn out to be three somewhat different conceptual impulses underlying the Lombard approach. Finally, it outlines a series of features that a true “subsidiarity-inspired” model of governance could be expected to exhibit, and preliminarily assesses the extent to which they seem to be present in the Lombard case.