Regional Policy Implementation in the Italian Education System

In this paper we would like to present a case study regarding the raising of a new form of governance of education policy in a province of the south of Italy. The research has been focused on the constitution and the implementation of a new instrument of governance, the “Conference of zone”, promoted by a local authority (a province). The conference is a collective actor that involves all the relevant stakeholders of the local arena within the educational planning processes. Since the late 90s the italian education system has been increasingly restructured after a long period of non-decision making (Benadusi, 1984). The italian reforms can be placed within a broader reforming trajectory that involves many OECD countries and is driven by institutional isomorphich processes (Powell, DiMaggio, 1991). The rhetorics of educational reforms (Edwards, 1997, Derouet, 2000, Ball, 2005) conveys the necessity of changing the governance of educational field, moving from a rule-governing perspective (the dominant mode of organizing of that organizational field in welfaristic model) to a objective-oriented approach (to be considered more attuned to post-welfaristic approach). This passage implies the re-balancing of the main organizations of the field where, at least in principle, the ‘centralistic and bureaucratic mode’ is replaced by a ‘devolved environment’ with an increasing relevance attributed to local authorities (municipalities, regions, and so on) (Rhodes, 1997), and the establishment of “locus” of dialogue and coordination between the organizations working in the same field. In Italy the education system has been changed along two different paths: on the one hand schools have become autonomous. On the other hand a relevant part of the “old” Ministry of Education competencies have been decentred towards local authorities such as regions, provinces and municipalities, who become central actors in the local regulation processes of education. As a consequence of these reforms, the field of the education policy has deeply changed at the macro as well as at the meso level and new local policy arenas have been “constituted”: the steering approach has become less centralized; new forms of governance have arised; new actors are taking part to the decision-making processes. The case of the province analyzed in the paper is widely considered an example of best practice in the italian national scenario. The province has classified its territory in districts, creating a “conference of zone” for each of them, a “collective actor” leaded by the province involving all the relevant stakeholders of the educational field in the domestic decision making processes regarding educational planning and scholastic building. In order to qualify the mode of governance emerging in the reshaped local educational arenas taken into consideration and in order to understand the role of the conferences as new emergent collective actors, we have chosen to adopt ideas drawn by Giddens theory of structuration (Giddens, 1976; 1979; 1984) and new institutionalism approach (Powell, DiMaggio, 1991; DiMaggio, 1991; Barley, Tolbert, 1997). The analysis of the interactions within the conferences and in the other “locus” of the local educational governance will be conducted in terms of signification (meaning production), dominance (power relations) and legitimation (norms production). It will allow us to highlight the role of the conferences as points of trasformation of the structural properties (Giddens, 1984) of the local educational system. The analysis of the modalities of structuration will be carried out through the classification of the scripts recurring during the interactions (Barley, 1986; Barley, Tolbert, 1997). Specific objects of analysis will be the strategic conduct (Giddens, 1979) of the different actors involved in the interactions, the developing of the dialectic of control and the unintended consequences of the different conducts (Giddens, 1984). The analysis will show how the conferences represent an instrument for Province’s actors to put themselves as an obligatory point of passage within the new “circuit of power” (Clegg, 1987) of the local educational governance. At the same time the conferences constitute a new kind of “front region” (Giddens, 1984) where decision making processes are revealed and submitted to intersubjective control of the educational arena. This duplicity of the conference implementation process implies an increase of the accountability for all the actors involved as well as the return of some core issues regarding the education policy to the “back regions”, typical of the bureaucratic mode of regulation.