Abstract

Italy in the last ten years has witnessed the rise of new instruments of government: the Independent Administrative Authorithies. This paper deals with the rapidity of their growth and their indigenous development. Is the institution of these new administrative arenas due to the crisis of party government? Is it our generation's answer to the inadequancy of the traditional instruments of State regulation? The author remarks that two tendencies combined and interacted each upon the other: the tendency to reshape the traditional parties gatekeeping, and the tendency to find new legitimation for policy making. These two tendencies would represent the next step of the Italian democracy stabilisation process. The growing pressure for efficiency and effectiveness has produced a new localization of responsibility and new regulatory methods no more related to a legalistic approach to limitations upon authority but to particular policy areas or issues. The chief virtue of this tendency toward delegation of power to Administrative Authorities seems to be the combination of regulatory and enforcing functions to make effective the policies that were being demanded. From this standpoint the institution of significant administrative agencies such as the Antitrust, the Garante per l'Editoria and the Authority for public utilities is related to a new politics of policy making and, finally, to a new concept of pluralistic democracy. The paper concludes that empirical researches on the impact of Independent Administrative Authorities' decisions on the political and economic systems cannot be delayed any more.