Italy’s one-stop shop: a case of the emperor’s new clothes?

The setting up of municipal One-Stop Business Shops (SUAPs) plays a vital role in the Italian legislator’s work to simplify government relations with business and industry. The paper analyzes the outcome of the SUAP simplification programme launched in 1998 and, using secondary data sources, shows that not all the targets have been achieved. The paper’s findings indicate that the shortfall clearly can be attributed to the fact that the entire SUAP-centred simplification process has suffered from legislative overkill while neglecting to address the all-important practical side of implementation, and the impact of the new laws on the behaviour of the actors and the decision makers that populate the different levels of the country’s PA.