Tra partecipazione e privatizzazione: i discorsi della programmazione sociale in quattro grandi città italiane

This article analyzes the discourses contained in the documents of social planning of four Italian big cities: Genova, Milano, Roma and Torino. These documents are explicitly aimed at facilitating the participation of the entire citizenry to the decisions concerning social policies. Nevertheless, apart from the intentions declared by the authors of the documents, the kind of participation promoted by these Plans seems to be reserved to a scarce number of stakeholders more than open to all the citizens. This article, therefore, aims at showing how the rhetoric of participation contained in these documents could facilitate the process of privatization of social policies in as much as it is not supported by tools suitable for the involvement of the entire citizenry.