Italian local government groups and governance issues: some empirical findings

Entrusting most local public services to local government entities has led to proliferation of public groups and, consistently, to greater complexity of the governance dynamics of local authorities. This work tries to investigate some governance issues of public groups, basing on a sample of Italian local governments. The empirical findings highlight a gap between the presence of the conditions for defining a group governance structure and the adoption of a group approach by the parent local government together with the implementation of governance operating tools. The authors try to suggest how to bridge this gap