The multilevel governance of income support in Italy and the role of municipalities. The case of the new Social Card

The paper analyses the changing role of municipalities in income support policy in Italy as an effect of both the policymaking at national level and the growing relevance of local third sector organizations. By recourse to the empirical observation of the case of the city of Turin, the research focuses primarily on the impact of the introduction of a national income protection scheme, the so-called New Social Card (NSC), planned at national level by the government but implemented at local level by municipalities together with non-profit organizations. Due to its genuinely “multilevel” nature, this policy offers precious insights to both vertical (national-local) and horizontal (public-third sector) relations. The analysis highlights the tensions between formal entitlements and the actual “room for manoeuvre” that local government enjoys. It will be argued that, despite the ongoing decentralization process, the structure of multilevel governance deeply narrows the freedom and the agency of the Municipal Authority. Two critical aspects of the Italian model of multilevel governance of income support will then be underlined, namely the lack of attention for existing local policies in the political and public discourse, and contradiction between explicit and implicit forms of decentralization