Nadiia Matsiuk (p), Roberto Ganau, Giulio Cainelli, Mario Pasquato, Mattia Balestra, Roberto Pierdicca

Anna Mignosa

We study the long-run effect of past sovereignty instability on current economic development at the subnational, local level in Italy. We proxy sovereignty instability through the yearly number of changes in sovereignty occurred in the period 1000–1861, and assess its effects on a 2018 measure of labor productivity defined for Local Labor Markets. We estimate a negative effect of sovereignty instability on current economic development. We propose a simple model for explaining the persistent effect of sovereignty instability, and explain the underlying mechanism in terms of civic capital. Finally, we provide evidence that sovereignty instability has become a relevant factor contributing to explain current economic development differentials only after the French Revolution, and that the negative role played by sovereignty instability has been partially overcome by institutional and administrative continuity.

Myriam Chilvers (p), Elin Cedergren

Nadiia Matsiuk

Sweden has set the ambitious goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2045. This commitment to green growth is influencing Sweden’s northern most regions and municipalities, which play a crucial role in providing the necessary land, resources, educational competence and services to implement these policies. Sweden’s Norrbotten County is expected to receive large industrial investments to develop fossil free mining and steel production. A significant proportion of these investments, around 90 million euros, are channelled through The Just Transition Fund 2021- 2030.

Recent evidence suggests that citizen participation in the design and execution of national, regional, and local green energy and climate policies—especially those with considerable territorial impact in Norrbotten—is limited. This lack of involvement is a cause for concern. Many Swedish northern regional, and local governments are currently weighing significant trade-offs between green growth opportunities, often linked to natural resource industries, and environmental protection. These decisions have far-reaching implications, potentially affecting local landscapes, culture, and social equality, and could escalate social conflict. Democratising these complex multi-level decision making processes through meaningful citizen participation is however not without practical challenges. To ensure their transformative nature, these processes must adhere to four key principles—accountability, transparency, participation, and inclusion. Moreover, they must be institutionalised at all levels of governance. Transformative participation implies that citizens have a clear impact on decisions and results in their empowerment, and well as collective learning. It should allow for a community to create collective representations of its geography, history, shared experiences and visons of the future, and allow space for a community to tell its own stories of their lives and landscapes.

This study will focus on whether and to what extent the DUST Regional Future Literary Laboratories (RFLL) method can support governments at all levels in Sweden to create transformative participation spaces for their citizens and in turn allow for deep democratization of their local community’s landscapes. The study will address the following research question:

Given Sweden’s expansive green transition, what are the opportunities and barriers for transformative citizen participation within multi-level decision making?

How do decision makers problematised the issue of citizen participation in Norrbotten in relation to national green transition?

Can RFLL create a multi-level participatory space for citizens? How do decision makers at different level envisage they could be successfully implemented? What barriers do they foresee?

What impact, if any, do these decision makers envisage RFLL would have on the local territories?

Anna Mignosa (p), Aline Albertelli

Myriam Chilvers

Western governments are gradually reducing their supervision over different sectors, leaving space for a more active role of private organisation/individuals (Dubini et al, 2012) and culture is one of the sectors affected by this process (Klamer et al, 2006). This change has been shaped by a multitude of factors such as financial needs, cultural developments and political changes. One of the government's reactions has been to steadily give cultural institutions autonomy in a process of désétatisation (Dubini et al., 2012; Throsby, 2010; Klamer et al., 2013) and/or to create tools to encourage the interaction between the public and private sector, when not fully privatize cultural institutions or activities connected to them. This process has been happening in Italy as well. Since the introduction of the first laws opening to the intervention of the private sector, the role and presence of the private sector has evolved and now attention is being dedicated to Public-Private-Partnerships (PPP) an agreement between the public and the private party aimed at the realisation of specific objectives. Because of this recent development, the Italian case constitutes an interesting example to be taken into account.
Although, the implementation of PPPs in Italy has not been without problems (Albertelli, 2022; Albertelli and Mignosa, 2023), more than focusing on the organisational aspects, this papers focuses on the changes in the political and decisional processes connected to the use of PPPs. Specifically, the paper intends to answer the following research questions: To what extent do PPPs lead to participatory decision making processes in the cultural sector?
By means of interviews and desk research, we will try to answer this question using the cases of the PPPs between Bergamo Municipality and the Teatro Tascabile of Bergamo and Officine Culturali and the University of Catania. We intend to see if these PPPs have led to decision-making processes where choices are the results of participatory processes where NPOs, communities and individuals express their preferences and are empowered to decide what type of culture and cultural projects they need. We believe that PPPs are tools to guarantee the realisation of cultural policies, where culture is perceived as a common good in line with what is stated by the Faro Convention (2005) for heritage, and that PPPs can stimulate participatory processes that prove the role of the cultural and creative ecosystem for local development.