Public Administration and Creeping Crises: Insights From COVID-19 Pandemic in Italy

The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that a new and unforeseen threat easily outmatched political-administrative systems currently in place. Our commentary on the Italian case contributes to the call for public administration scholars to incorporate crisis management into the main research agendas of the field. We focus on regulatory capacity that is needed to tackle the effects of COVID-19. Under crisis conditions of radical urgency and uncertainty, the Italian regulatory policy has been based on temporary, fast-track procedures. The latter have been regularly applied when Italian governments confront with natural disasters and prompt action is ensured by a repertoire of extraordinary measures running in parallel to burdensome ordinary procedures. We discuss the implications of this “two-track” approach for governance capacity and legitimacy. We also extrapolate existing trends and engage with projection of future developments.