Abstract

Thirty years after the promulgation of Law No. 81 of 1993 regulating the electoral procedures in Italy’s municipalities and provinces, which introduced the direct election model at the local level, later to be adopted at the regional level, this article will take stock of the institutional reform of the elected mayor/president. It will therefore question (a) the existence of an Italian «transitional model» that has become a point of reference in our country, (b) the coherence or even the resilience of the institutional design of the 1993 reform, and (c) the relationship between the different levels of power when these are crossed by processes that strengthen the action of the presidents. On the one hand, it emphasizes the need to ensure that the new local leaders have administrative capacities that are consistent with the institutional framework that ensures their primacy. On the other hand, it is precisely in the relations between the centre and the periphery that we find one of the main challenge of our political system, which should have found in the mayoral reform its own ground for rebirth and the opportunity for the renewal of the political class.