Citizens’ Initiatives and Shared Responsibilities: Open Questions From Two Italian Cities

A shared local governance approach is visible in an array of institutional arrangements loosely defined as ‘citizen participation’. The common element which characterizes such arrangements and processes is the fact that they are opened, offered, by a Local Authority to local civil society. At the same time, in many cities across Europe a series of quite interesting experiences and experimental initiatives are taking place, directly animated by citizens and citizens’ organisations in fields as diverse as cultural production, reuse of abandoned buildings, redesign and care of public space, social agriculture, alternative provision of local welfare, etc. , all connected to a new idea of ‘commons’. Impinging on a conceptual framework derived from Ostrom’s theory of the commons, as well as using empirical examples from Bologna and Milan in Italy, the aim of the paper is to investigate the dimensions of collaborative governance and shared responsibility within such initiatives, trying to understand which is the role Local Authorities do and can play in enabling and shaping them and which may be the gaps between an administrative rationality and the rationality of community production and sharing of resources and services. Looking at the identification of the role of citizens and local groups, the paper will try to understand if and in what measure they are substituting more traditional forms of public service provision or if are they offering complementary alternatives.