Community welfare and collaborative administration. A pathway to active citizenship

In recent years, the Italian welfare system has been called upon to respond to new social vulnerabilities determined by a strong connection between new risks relating to the working-life cycle, labor market dynamics, and globalization. The “certainty of uncertainty” (Bosco and Sciarrone 2006) as the pandemic crisis and the Russian-Ukrainian conflict demonstrated, has also reopened the debate on new welfare models and in some cases has led scholars to speak of a new economic phase no longer attributable to the Keynesian model nor to the neoliberal one (Morel et al. 2012) but dictated by the paradigm of Social Investment (Esping-Andersen et al. 2002; Hemerijck 2018; Ciarini 2020). In this context, Italy could have, in the race to the global transition to the green economy and the implementation of the PNRR, an advantage over other States due to the historic territorial associative presence that could act as a manager on behalf of the public sector. Many authors stressed the importance of the local dimension of political decisions: Today the territories and the actors involved and active in it are the privileged dimensions in which “social innovation” is experienced and from which the most significant impulses for sustainable development come out (Becattini 2016; Ferrera 2008; Kazepov 2010; Arlotti 2009). Based on this process that pushes towards the promotion and dissemination of “community welfare”, the paper will analyze the co-programming and co-planning practices of local authorities (regulated by the Italian “Third Sector Code” - TSC) and other forms of active citizenship in support of social needs, regarding the challenge of urban regeneration. The research question is to define if the collaborative governance is in charge to foster a new welfare model in Italy, and, eventually, how far has it gone. Furthermore, analyzing this hypothesis, related theoretical and empirical questions will be examined.