Law 328/2000: urban governance and public-private relations in the city of Rome from the welfare reform to today

Since the 1980s, a change in the socio-economic conditions that characterized the previous thirty years of prosperity has been registered throughout Europe. Different welfare systems have been put under various pressures and taken a range of directions in response to change: the private sector has been given an increasing role. The reform of Italian welfare - law n. 328 of 2000 - draws up a system of social policies and services based on a subsidiarity between public and private sectors. This institutional construction presupposes the public’s ability to manage the overall governance of the system - programming, direction, regulation, integration, and control - without incurring the risks prevalent in the private interests, upon the social rights of citizenship. This article intends to investigate how law 328 has been applied at the Roman city level since the time of its approval to the current day. In particular, the ability of public players to plan policies and manage the overall system of governance, along with the role of the third sector in the light of the new regulatory framework created by the reform are discussed.