Abstract

A questionnaire was administered to the two hundred mayors of municipalities in Lombardy with fewer than ten thousand inhabitants. The purpose of the survey was to assess the propensity of the municipal political class to accept local institutional changes, and in particular the merging of municipalities. Since the early 1990s, in fact, reform of local autonomies has placed especial emphasis on the consolidation of local institutions, both as the merging of two or more small municipalities and as a cooperative union among them for the joint management of services. In the conviction that the attitudes of mayors are of central importance for understanding the current situation of small municipalities undergoing change, the author analyses the results of the questionnaire in terms of subjective judgements, perceptions and expectations as well as of the political-administrative action effectively prompted by the reform.