Managing the political field: Italian regions and the territorialisation of politics in the second republic

In large parts of the media and even within certain sections of the academic community a perception has grown that the pressure for devolution in Italy has been very much a bottom-up process, fed by a grass-roots resentment at the domination of local and regional politics by ‘Rome’ and articulated by a new generation of localist politicians predominantly, but not exclusively on the right who see an opportunity to renegotiate the division of power between centre and periphery in favour of greater regional autonomy. However, if we take Fabbrini and Brunazzo’s distinction between regionalisation (‘a process of decentralisation supported by the central states to rationalise their activities’) and regionalism (‘a process of devolution requested by local electorates and leaders to increase regional autonomy’) we can determine that the process of regionalisation has been more in evidence and has been more sustained because it enjoys both national and supranational institutional support. On the other hand, regionalism represents a highly contested set of values and policy goals, few of which, it will be argued, correspond to the aspirations of most local voters, but rather are configured by Italy’s local and regional elites in order to lend legitimacy to what are often non-territorially specific political agendas. Regionalisation has its origins in the early years of the Italian Republic when four autonomous regions—the islands of Sicily and Sardinia, and the border regions and provinces of Trentino-Alto Adige, Val d’Aosta (and later Friuli Venezia-Giulia) were created. The so-called 15 ‘ordinary regions’ covering the remainder of the national territory were not established until 1970, and remained largely devoid of effective powers and finance until the latter half of the 1970s. The delay in instituting regional government except in the special regions where the national leftist parties have very little presence has often been attributed to the cynical determination of the Christian Democrats to exclude their political