New local leadership: the level of policy

The level of local government in Italy, for about twenty years, is the scene of profound changes in both politics and policy-making. The reforms of the 90s were inserted in a framework of political opportunity-weaknesses that had the most sensational extrication in directionalism: the crisis of the parties and the tools of political mediation; the personalization and the spectacularization of politics; the fiscal crisis of the state; the need to activate accountability processes. These dynamics have also had a significant impact on the level of policy-making. The paper, besides groped a more systematic definition of symbolic policies, analyzes the potential impact of the type of leadership as a possible independent variable of the effectiveness of the policies in question. In particular, the hypothesis to be developed in the first puts emphasis on the socio-politicalprofessional background of the mayor as a variable that can explain the level of success of symbolic policies