L'approccio italiano al negoziato : attori e logiche di un mutamento istituzionale

The European studies nowadays marshal into two alternative discourses, each supporting a special model of integration. On the one side, the 'State-centered' discourse portrays the national governments as the key decision-making actors because of their gate-keeping role for domestic interests to the European arena. On the other, the 'multi-level governance' discourse acknowledges the national governments' loss of centrality in both the supra-national and the domestic arenas, following the autonomy that the European rules allow to the subnational actors. By comparing actors, networks, roles, action logics beneath the negotiations for the 1993 and then the 2000 Structural Funds regulations reforms, this work aims to show how, for whom, and under which conditions Italy witnessed a change from the state-centric mode of inter-institutional relations to a multi-level governance. Conclusions underline that (1) European rules open windows of opportunity, but real actors have to mobilise and use them in order to make the multi-level governance real; (2) even when such an institutional change occurs, it does not necessarily mean an immediate substantial improvement of the policy process, or of its outputs.