Abstract

The contribution analyzes the effects of the direct election of territorial monocratic bodies on the Council and the public administration. The direct popular legitimation of the Mayor and regional President, in fact, in recent years has produced an overexposure of these figures which has not only had consequences in relation to the relationship with the Councils (municipal and regional); this personalization of municipal and regional political life, in fact, could not fail to have reverberations also in the relationship with the entities closest to the elected body: the Council and the public administration. In fact, on the one hand the fiduciary element that binds the monocratic body to the councilors is so basic that it then has consequences regarding the relationship with the collegial body itself, whose members, no longer deriving their legitimacy from the Council appointment, suffer from a subordination towards the Mayor and the President of the Region (subordination which has become increasingly stratified in practice over the years); on the other hand, the concentration of political responsibility on a single subject, directly elected by the citizens, produces an instinctive drive to maintain a firm grip on the administrative machinery, since the latter constitutes the means to meet the programmatic commitment undertaken with the voters and to maintain their consensus.