Abstract

This essay analyses the "story" of the garbage emergency in Naples as a paradigmatic case situated within the Italian waste-disposal policy. This policy sub-system has been established in Italy thanks to the EU's external input, and is firmly defined by the regulations, planning and allocation of tasks between different local authorities. Interestingly, the impact of such policy appears extremely scattered from one region to another, showing a negative performance in the South that goes far beyond "emergencies" such as that in Naples. Our hypothesis is that the inherent features of the waste-disposal policy, combined with contextual political factors, tend to favour the emergence of specific clusters of local power which in the South easily translate into illegal practices, thus preventing effective policy solutions.