Il Patto di Stabilità Interno e l'orientamento della gestione al breve periodo. Alcune osservazioni in ottica aziendale sugli effetti tra i Comuni italiani

The Italian ‘Internal Stability Pact’ (ISP) has been introduced in 1999 in order to involve and enhance responsiveness of local governments towards the European ‘Stability and Growth Pact’ (1997) and its constraints. Since then the Italian Pact has been progressively reinforced and tightened up. This article aims to analyze the effects of the formal respect of the ISP through the lens of Italian Business Economics and its fundamental principles. It is based on the examination of the existing literature, and especially on the analysis of the official financial statements (2002-2006) of a representative sample of Italian municipalities.This investigation confirms that the compliance to the ISP caused some relevant consequences on Italian Municipalities: not only in terms of preferences and policies concerning accounting, debt, investments and expenses, but also on choices concerning internal and external management and local governance. It encourages the adoption of initiatives aiming to reduce public expenses and waste and to enhance the efficiency, effectiveness and economy in Municipalities’ management and in public services’ offer; but similarly it seems to induce a general embitterment the underlying institutional hostility between local and national governments, and the adoption of some opportunistic or ‘risky’ decisions.Furthermore this control system tends to accentuate, and sometimes to stimulate, Municipalities’ inclination to focus management decisions to the short term, despite their sustainability and inter-generational equity, and it exacerbates general difficulties in long-term planning and in the management of extraordinary events.Finally ISP seems to generate a critical trade-off between: the control of public expenses and deficit, the enhancement of the Italian Municipalities’ autonomy after devolution and Constitutional reforms, and finally the improvement of the efficiency and the effectiveness in internal and external management and in the local governance.