Regional Policy for Productive Local System and the Role of Bridging Institutions

The main aim of the paper is to analyse the evolution of the role of Bridging Institutions to promote and establish relations in a local context between institutions and firms, in the framework of the new approach of regional policy. The first part of the paper focuses on these two items: - the main features of the current policy model supporting Southern Italy productive systems, from the early 1990s; - the importance of Bridging Institutions (BI) in order to achieve a stronger interaction between the institutional environment and the market. Their mission is not directly related to improve the link between public institution and private actors operating in an area, but it is usually related to a general set of business services. The empirical analyses, in the second part of the paper, presents some results of a survey on a group of BI located in southern Italy. The role, nature and performance of the BI observed developed through a mix of government inducements. Without a parallel spontaneous market development, the local system tends to focus on future clusters of competencies in specific public policy matter. Keywords: Regional Policy, local productive system, bridging institutions