Industrial development by poles? The special economic zones in Italy and in the NRRP

Special economic zones (ZES) are an industrial policy instrument aimed at creating, in specific territories, particularly advantageous establishment conditions for companies in terms of tax and financial benefits, infrastructures, agglomeration economies. The goal is to generate institutional and contextual factors capable of attracting investments and facilitating business activity. The SEZs, although present for a long time in many countries, were formally established in Italy only in 2017 in the southern regions and, after a long process of regulatory changes and reduced operations, were included in the reform plan and in the investments program of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP): they are therefore about to enter their full implementation. This paper analyzes the criticality and potentials of this policy tool. The most evident critical points are the lack of a theoretical-conceptual framework within which to place this intervention policy and the choice of an overly simplified and centralizing governance, as well as the absence of a critical evaluation of the experiences and models of territorial development that have characterized the economic history of our country over the last fifty years. A critical evaluation of the lessons deriving from the experiences of policies and instruments implemented in the past, and in other areas of the world, but above all a careful diagnosis of the current scenario characterized by strong geo-political, institutional and market changes, and the definition of a clear conceptual framework, however, could be extremely useful elements to look at the future of the ZES from a less uncertain perspective