The government's choice of bureaucratic organisation: An application to Italian state museums

Italian state museums are characterised by a rigid bureaucratic structure and are almost completely financed by government transfers. In this paper we develop a simplified two-stage model in an attempt to explain how the government's preferences for differentiated museum functions may affect museum organisation. The model shows that the government prefers that complementary functions (e.g., conservation and scientific research) be produced by a single museum, whereas it prefers that substitutable functions (e.g., conservation and access by the general public) be produced by two museums. We use this prediction for an empirical analysis of the organisational structure of Italian state museums. On the basis of the unique ISTAT census of the Italian museum system, we test with two separate probit models the probability of observing in a state museum the concentration of either scientific activities of conservation and research or promotion activities for education and the general public. Higher classes of centralisation for the state museums are also considered by means of an ordered probit model. The results seem to suggest that the Italian state museum structure, as surveyed in the early 1990s, fully reflected the traditional policy model viewing museums as institutions devoted to conservation, scientific research and education. © Springer 2006.