Abstract

While governance is normally deemed to have supplanted or supplemented the formal authority of government, it seems that in Italy things have recently gone the other way round. After the "golden age" of governance during the 1990s, there has been a sort of resurgence of the government, i.e. a progressive process of centralization, of trust in the strength of the law and authority and a growing scepticism in the capacity of networks to conveniently address social problems. The article analyses how this change happened and tries to show its illusory nature.