Local authority versus local public utilities: a governance issue

Governance issues are fundamental in Local Public Utilities (LPUs) management. In recent decades, organisations providing Public Services in European countries are experiencing key changes in their governance system. At the same time, local authorities need to keep their control over LPU services in order to ensure coordination between different actors with different aims. Moreover, the complexities and dynamics of public service delivery require discretionary power, interaction, capacity building and trust. To this end new arrangements and new governance tools are required. The paper contributes to the overall debate on governance mechanisms in local public utilities in several ways. Firstly, we contribute to the debate on corporate governance in local public utilities by analysing the state of the art of the Italian context. The results highlight the need to strongly improve governance tools, which are at an embryonic stage. Secondly, they show that currently choice of governance tools employed is left to the initiative of each single administration and they are applied in a fragmentary and unsystematic way.