| Abstract: | Recent developments in regional policy in Italy may be interpreted as outcomes of a mutual fertilization between two distinct policy discourses, concerning the reframing of regional programming in the framework of a reform of the State, and the promotion of local initiatives in a perspective of endogenous development. This paper presents a critical itinerary of the mutual evolution of these lines of discourse during the 1990s. Their provisional merging in the framework of the strategy of 'new programming' adopted in connection with the reform of the Structural Funds and with the new community support framework (CSF) for the period 2000-2006 is interpreted in light of the 'Europeanization' of Italian public policy and of the influence of its progressive embedding into transnational policy discourses. |
