Papers by Edoardo Altavilla
Italian Journal of Planning Practice, 2019
A strategic infrastructure project in Rome, Italy, and namely the Metro C line, is presented here... more A strategic infrastructure project in Rome, Italy, and namely the Metro C line, is presented here for scrutinising how institutional frameworks and governance arrangements shape megaproject implementation. On the one side, we look at legal endowments and institutional reforms related to a still incomplete territorial rescaling; on the other side, at routines and practices among actors in project management. More precisely, we develop these two fundamental acceptations of the institutional, reconstructing the management of the project and the path of Italian downscaling reform still underway (that has implications for the governance of projects too). Both these realms have been affected by the advent of the Legge Obiettivo, the special law that for fifteen years has been governing strategic projects in Italy – Metro C included.
Via a review of regulatory measures, relevant theoretical constructs
in the fields of governance and project studies, and with the help of
a number of interviews conducted in 2016 and 2017, we delve into
the main reasons that explain the Metro C implementation failure as
to cost overrun and delivery delays, and found the primary causes
of these latter in the fragmented public client role that cannot
guarantee the project’s governability
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Scienze Regionali, 2016
Climate change and transition towards sustainability represent global challenges. The urgency of ... more Climate change and transition towards sustainability represent global challenges. The urgency of abandoning traditional fossil fuels, on one hand, and the progressive devolution in the European context of energy legislative powers to subnational polities, on the other hand, make the regional energy planning process a subject worth studying. Energy planning is one of the most important tools for addressing climate change-related issues on both small and large scales, and it particularly tests the ability to decide of local governances. Under a newly established political class, in 2007, the Italian region of Apulia provided itself with an energy plan that attracted much attention nationally, for both its ambitious objectives and the inclusive decisional process put in place before and after its approval. This paper aims to assess suspected inconsistencies in this decision-making process and to verify two selected plan objectives. The methodology chosen for this study includes a mostly quantitative collection of statistical data and an analysis of policies and strategy documents. The findings show that 1) during the decision-making there had been a lack of rationality in translating the advice of the actors’ network into plan objectives; 2) the micro-generation of photovoltaic power was an unmet objective; and 3) the enhanced share of photovoltaic power over the total regional electricity generation in 2013 had been widely over-achieved and produced one major consequence – the extensive coverage of mainly agricultural, regional land.
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Drafts by Edoardo Altavilla
GSSI Working Papers, 2017
La lettura che il pluralismo classico ha dato della realtà politica è rimasta egemone fino alla c... more La lettura che il pluralismo classico ha dato della realtà politica è rimasta egemone fino alla critica economicista sviluppatasi tra gli anni ’50 e ’60 del secolo scorso.
Analogamente, il ruolo dei gruppi di interesse nel processo politico è stato rivisitato alla luce di tale critica. Il lavoro di Mancur Olson La logica dell’azione collettiva: i beni pubblici e la teoria dei gruppi (Olson, 1965; trad. it. 1983), è stato tra i più influenti contributi ‘economici’ alla scienza politica, recuperando il valore della razionalità individuale nella risoluzione del dilemma dell’azione collettiva. Secondo Olson, il successo dei gruppi di interesse in termini di lobby è condizionato alla risoluzione del problema del parassitismo (free riding) che aumenta all’aumentare della dimensione del gruppo. La coercizione e la messa in opera di incentivi selettivi sono le uniche due opzioni a disposizione dei grandi gruppi latenti per trasformare i loro interessi in pressione attiva, e per far sì che tutti gli appartenenti a quella collettività contribuiscano al raggiungimento degli obiettivi comuni.
La rilettura di questo classico della letteratura di scienza politica offre spunti importanti per la comprensione delle dinamiche della fornitura di beni pubblici di stato (ma è un discorso valido ad ogni livello di polity), e una chiave interpretativa per il problema della rappresentanza dell’interesse collettivo nel processo decisionale.
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Conference Presentations by Edoardo Altavilla
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Books by Edoardo Altavilla
ROMA IN TRANSIZIONE. Governo, strategie, metabolismi e quadri di vita di una metropoli, 2018
The city of Rome displays a marked infrastructural deficit, if compared to other fellow European ... more The city of Rome displays a marked infrastructural deficit, if compared to other fellow European cities. The difficulty to organise a sound and capillary urban railway network in Rome is evident, and it is generally associated with archaeological and geological issues in the city’s underground.
The ‘Metro C’ project – the case study of this research – is the name of the third underground line of Rome, now under construction. The implementation of this important transportation project (nearly 4 billion euros of public money to this day) has been so far slow, over budget, and over time.
Urban projects of this sort are outstanding elements for investigating institutional change and continuity in the government of mega-projects. The aim of this chapter is to highlight the defects inherent to the regulative framework applied to the Metro C project – the Legge Obiettivo. This ‘exceptional’ regulative regime (now abrogated) aimed at strengthening the power of the private contractor (hollowing out that of the client) in public projects’ management. Such approach, though, can lead to two different consequences: on the one hand, it might invest the private company with higher pressure for innovative solutions and overall performances, or it can, on the other hand, trigger a domino effect of opportunistic behaviour, if responsibilities are not re-allocated coherently and strategically.
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Thesis Chapters by Edoardo Altavilla
The city of Rome suffers a marked infrastructural deficit, if compared to other
fellow European c... more The city of Rome suffers a marked infrastructural deficit, if compared to other
fellow European cities. The difficulty to organise a sound and capillary urban
railway network in Rome is evident, and it is generally associated with
archaeology problems in the city’s underground.
The Metro C – the case study of this research – is the third underground line in
Rome, now under construction. Its implementation has been so far slow, over
budget, and featured suspect relationships among the actors involved.
Urban projects of this sort are outstanding elements for investigating decisional
logics, institutional change and continuity, and ultimately the political economy
of major cities. The aim of this thesis is to shed light on the reasons why the
implementation of this important urban project (nearly 4 billion euros of public
money to date) suffered so much for being implemented.
The multi-faceted explanation has been narrowed down to three main focuses.
The case, as a consequence, is relevant for three disciplinary domains: decisionmaking,
project management, and urban political economy.
Through a research approach inspired by the phronetic method of inquiry, and
making use of in-depth interviews with key actors, the research gets to three
main findings (developed autonomously in three papers). Firstly, the decisional
process of the Metro C has been characterised by path dependency logics mostly
evident in the choice to include the project in the Legge Obiettivo framework.
Secondly, as a consequence of that key decision, the institutional environment
in which the project was embedded gave as a result a fragmentation of the
public actor in the governance and an over-sovereignty of the general
contractor in the project management. Thirdly, and ultimately, I reckoned that
the whole rationale behind the project’s decision-making and institutional
arrangement was to be researched in the preferential relationships between
politics and economy in Rome. Through the analysis of the project’s tender, the
third paper argues that the case of the Metro C can suggest the existence of a
particular form of ‘urban regime’, namely the ‘maintenance regime’: a type of
alliance between the administration and local constructors aimed at the
preservation of the status quo.
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Papers by Edoardo Altavilla
Via a review of regulatory measures, relevant theoretical constructs
in the fields of governance and project studies, and with the help of
a number of interviews conducted in 2016 and 2017, we delve into
the main reasons that explain the Metro C implementation failure as
to cost overrun and delivery delays, and found the primary causes
of these latter in the fragmented public client role that cannot
guarantee the project’s governability
Drafts by Edoardo Altavilla
Analogamente, il ruolo dei gruppi di interesse nel processo politico è stato rivisitato alla luce di tale critica. Il lavoro di Mancur Olson La logica dell’azione collettiva: i beni pubblici e la teoria dei gruppi (Olson, 1965; trad. it. 1983), è stato tra i più influenti contributi ‘economici’ alla scienza politica, recuperando il valore della razionalità individuale nella risoluzione del dilemma dell’azione collettiva. Secondo Olson, il successo dei gruppi di interesse in termini di lobby è condizionato alla risoluzione del problema del parassitismo (free riding) che aumenta all’aumentare della dimensione del gruppo. La coercizione e la messa in opera di incentivi selettivi sono le uniche due opzioni a disposizione dei grandi gruppi latenti per trasformare i loro interessi in pressione attiva, e per far sì che tutti gli appartenenti a quella collettività contribuiscano al raggiungimento degli obiettivi comuni.
La rilettura di questo classico della letteratura di scienza politica offre spunti importanti per la comprensione delle dinamiche della fornitura di beni pubblici di stato (ma è un discorso valido ad ogni livello di polity), e una chiave interpretativa per il problema della rappresentanza dell’interesse collettivo nel processo decisionale.
Conference Presentations by Edoardo Altavilla
Books by Edoardo Altavilla
The ‘Metro C’ project – the case study of this research – is the name of the third underground line of Rome, now under construction. The implementation of this important transportation project (nearly 4 billion euros of public money to this day) has been so far slow, over budget, and over time.
Urban projects of this sort are outstanding elements for investigating institutional change and continuity in the government of mega-projects. The aim of this chapter is to highlight the defects inherent to the regulative framework applied to the Metro C project – the Legge Obiettivo. This ‘exceptional’ regulative regime (now abrogated) aimed at strengthening the power of the private contractor (hollowing out that of the client) in public projects’ management. Such approach, though, can lead to two different consequences: on the one hand, it might invest the private company with higher pressure for innovative solutions and overall performances, or it can, on the other hand, trigger a domino effect of opportunistic behaviour, if responsibilities are not re-allocated coherently and strategically.
Thesis Chapters by Edoardo Altavilla
fellow European cities. The difficulty to organise a sound and capillary urban
railway network in Rome is evident, and it is generally associated with
archaeology problems in the city’s underground.
The Metro C – the case study of this research – is the third underground line in
Rome, now under construction. Its implementation has been so far slow, over
budget, and featured suspect relationships among the actors involved.
Urban projects of this sort are outstanding elements for investigating decisional
logics, institutional change and continuity, and ultimately the political economy
of major cities. The aim of this thesis is to shed light on the reasons why the
implementation of this important urban project (nearly 4 billion euros of public
money to date) suffered so much for being implemented.
The multi-faceted explanation has been narrowed down to three main focuses.
The case, as a consequence, is relevant for three disciplinary domains: decisionmaking,
project management, and urban political economy.
Through a research approach inspired by the phronetic method of inquiry, and
making use of in-depth interviews with key actors, the research gets to three
main findings (developed autonomously in three papers). Firstly, the decisional
process of the Metro C has been characterised by path dependency logics mostly
evident in the choice to include the project in the Legge Obiettivo framework.
Secondly, as a consequence of that key decision, the institutional environment
in which the project was embedded gave as a result a fragmentation of the
public actor in the governance and an over-sovereignty of the general
contractor in the project management. Thirdly, and ultimately, I reckoned that
the whole rationale behind the project’s decision-making and institutional
arrangement was to be researched in the preferential relationships between
politics and economy in Rome. Through the analysis of the project’s tender, the
third paper argues that the case of the Metro C can suggest the existence of a
particular form of ‘urban regime’, namely the ‘maintenance regime’: a type of
alliance between the administration and local constructors aimed at the
preservation of the status quo.
Via a review of regulatory measures, relevant theoretical constructs
in the fields of governance and project studies, and with the help of
a number of interviews conducted in 2016 and 2017, we delve into
the main reasons that explain the Metro C implementation failure as
to cost overrun and delivery delays, and found the primary causes
of these latter in the fragmented public client role that cannot
guarantee the project’s governability
Analogamente, il ruolo dei gruppi di interesse nel processo politico è stato rivisitato alla luce di tale critica. Il lavoro di Mancur Olson La logica dell’azione collettiva: i beni pubblici e la teoria dei gruppi (Olson, 1965; trad. it. 1983), è stato tra i più influenti contributi ‘economici’ alla scienza politica, recuperando il valore della razionalità individuale nella risoluzione del dilemma dell’azione collettiva. Secondo Olson, il successo dei gruppi di interesse in termini di lobby è condizionato alla risoluzione del problema del parassitismo (free riding) che aumenta all’aumentare della dimensione del gruppo. La coercizione e la messa in opera di incentivi selettivi sono le uniche due opzioni a disposizione dei grandi gruppi latenti per trasformare i loro interessi in pressione attiva, e per far sì che tutti gli appartenenti a quella collettività contribuiscano al raggiungimento degli obiettivi comuni.
La rilettura di questo classico della letteratura di scienza politica offre spunti importanti per la comprensione delle dinamiche della fornitura di beni pubblici di stato (ma è un discorso valido ad ogni livello di polity), e una chiave interpretativa per il problema della rappresentanza dell’interesse collettivo nel processo decisionale.
The ‘Metro C’ project – the case study of this research – is the name of the third underground line of Rome, now under construction. The implementation of this important transportation project (nearly 4 billion euros of public money to this day) has been so far slow, over budget, and over time.
Urban projects of this sort are outstanding elements for investigating institutional change and continuity in the government of mega-projects. The aim of this chapter is to highlight the defects inherent to the regulative framework applied to the Metro C project – the Legge Obiettivo. This ‘exceptional’ regulative regime (now abrogated) aimed at strengthening the power of the private contractor (hollowing out that of the client) in public projects’ management. Such approach, though, can lead to two different consequences: on the one hand, it might invest the private company with higher pressure for innovative solutions and overall performances, or it can, on the other hand, trigger a domino effect of opportunistic behaviour, if responsibilities are not re-allocated coherently and strategically.
fellow European cities. The difficulty to organise a sound and capillary urban
railway network in Rome is evident, and it is generally associated with
archaeology problems in the city’s underground.
The Metro C – the case study of this research – is the third underground line in
Rome, now under construction. Its implementation has been so far slow, over
budget, and featured suspect relationships among the actors involved.
Urban projects of this sort are outstanding elements for investigating decisional
logics, institutional change and continuity, and ultimately the political economy
of major cities. The aim of this thesis is to shed light on the reasons why the
implementation of this important urban project (nearly 4 billion euros of public
money to date) suffered so much for being implemented.
The multi-faceted explanation has been narrowed down to three main focuses.
The case, as a consequence, is relevant for three disciplinary domains: decisionmaking,
project management, and urban political economy.
Through a research approach inspired by the phronetic method of inquiry, and
making use of in-depth interviews with key actors, the research gets to three
main findings (developed autonomously in three papers). Firstly, the decisional
process of the Metro C has been characterised by path dependency logics mostly
evident in the choice to include the project in the Legge Obiettivo framework.
Secondly, as a consequence of that key decision, the institutional environment
in which the project was embedded gave as a result a fragmentation of the
public actor in the governance and an over-sovereignty of the general
contractor in the project management. Thirdly, and ultimately, I reckoned that
the whole rationale behind the project’s decision-making and institutional
arrangement was to be researched in the preferential relationships between
politics and economy in Rome. Through the analysis of the project’s tender, the
third paper argues that the case of the Metro C can suggest the existence of a
particular form of ‘urban regime’, namely the ‘maintenance regime’: a type of
alliance between the administration and local constructors aimed at the
preservation of the status quo.