Suchergebnisse

Citizen participation, by now one of the main topics on the institutional agenda in many European countries, involves different fields of public action, mostly on a local level – social inclusion, urban renewal, development, the environment, health/social services, etc. It still remains, however, vague as a concept with a great variety of actors, procedures and powers involved in its practices. In this scenario, the present article asks two questions: what powers and what freedoms are involved in participation? How are they constructed and increased? The article then goes on to argue how voice is relevant for understanding the many stories of participation, referring to the classic concept of voice formulated by Albert Hirschman and the elaborations offered by Amartya Sen and Arjun Appadurai in their dialogue over capabilities and capacities.

The article focuses on some dynamics affecting the public in Italy in connection with the financial and economic crisis. The hypothesis is that, faced with a growing desire for state, processes of institutional mediation underway are further weakening. The analysis goes into depth in some Italian policy cases: university and secondary school on a national level and vocational training policies in a regional context. These cases show rather critical phenomena as far as the public is concerned: the debate on research and knowledge is impoverishing; the change in the structure of the state is teetering between the possibility of solving secular problems and the risk of further endangering a collective service; and there are many signals of privatisation of citizenship. In the conclusions, some interpretive points on the themes of public, future and democracy are developed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

As the sectors of intervention traditionally assigned to the responsibility of the State gradually become spaces of mobilization for a plurality of actors, the notion of "public" appears problematic: it is difficult to define what distinguishes the structures of governance, the actors involved, and the problems and interests treated, as being of a public nature. This article tackles these issues with particular attention given to governance of social policies in Italy. The aim is twofold: to shed light on the ambivalence of the current transformations of the public realm and to outline their implications with respect to public administration.