PARtTERRe

PARticipation and public policies for TERRitorial reorganization - Tools for policy-making and the quality of local democracy

The quality of local democracy depends on the development and good management of territories. The territorial reforms periodically pursued in Italy and Europe, often in conjunction with periods of crisis, directly affect territories and their populations. How best to deal with them and how to enable citizen participation in these public policies are the questions this research seeks to answer.  
It focuses on aspects that link local public policies to the territorial arrangements of autonomy and the participation of citizens in the affected communities. At a time when links between politics and citizenship have weakened and distrust of institutions and politics dominates, the research examines a public policy (territorial reorganization) that directly affects autonomies, local powers, municipal boundaries, and territorial identities, and relates it to different forms of citizen political participation in South Tyrol (AA) and in some areas that are related for historical-cultural and geographic and linguistic reasons, such as the province of Trento and the Austrian states of Tyrol and Styria. The link between citizen participation and the impact of public policies is very close: the participation of affected communities is essential for the acceptance, legitimacy, and successful implementation of policies and their reforms.