Procedura o sostanza? : perché le politiche infrastrutturali sono così difficili in Italia

From the late 1980s, the so-called economic infrastructures are proven to play a relevant role in stemming development and growth, in spite of the little scientific consensus about which business model can deliver better results. The European Union has entered the debate since the early 1990s, and tipped the historically different national preferences of the Member States by furthering the adoption of specific procedural and substantive policy tools, after the belief that the policy change could lead to better infrastructural projects and economic results. However, this does not seem to be the case for Italy, where infrastructures are expensive and controversial, and economic growth is often weak. The article focuses on the Italian case and on the way domestic tools fit European prescriptions. The qualitative analysis of the tools in use and of implementation practices from 1990 to the early 2000s will argue that likely explanations of the Italian results lay less in the substantive than in the procedural fitting to the EU tools.