Abstract

Over the past two decades, Italian local administrations have made increasing recourse to municipal corporations constituted and run according to private company law: this phenomenon is not limited to local utilities, and most fields of local government are involved. Based on a theoretical overview of legal aspects and of published reports of empirical case studies, the article shows how and to what extent recourse to joint-stock or limited companies has a series of consequences on local government and on its democratic accountability, due to its legal implications, on the one hand, and to the political and strategic use that is made of it by local administrations.