La revisione della spesa pubblica "made in Italy"

The control of public spending in Italy started to be experienced in the Eighties and it has evolved into a process of spending review characterized by a variety of approaches and a number of key figures appointed to implement such policy interventions. The main consequence of the heterogeneous nature of these spending review exercises was a difficult achievement of the efficiency targets in public expenditure revision. The experience of the Italian spending review was also notable for substantial linear cuts to the public budget and for the attitude to frequently assign "outside" - often beyond the political boundary - the guidance of the spending review process. On the one hand, this approach has been justified by the will of exploiting high technical skills on that ground. On the other hand, it has often undermined the assumption of political responsibility by governments on specific areas of intervention and on the identification of the best tools to achieve the political objectives related to the re-allocation and rationalization of public spending in Italy.