Dalla multilevel governance alla governance reticolare. Esigenze dei territori, capability e appropriatezza degli interventi

The essay traces the evolution of multilevel governance as a paradigm of European public administration and questions whether recent emergency-driven reforms — notably the Next Generation EU programme and the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) — are leading to its overcoming. After clarifying the terminological and conceptual distinction between government and governance, the author examines the consolidation of multilevel governance in EU cohesion policy and structural funds, with particular attention to the 2014–2020 programming cycle and macro-regional strategies such as EUSAIR. The analysis highlights how the pandemic and the centralising logic of PNRR implementation — through extraordinary commissioners, substitutive powers and derogatory regimes — risk compressing the vertical and horizontal dialogue that lies at the core of the multilevel model. Against this drift, Giani argues for a shift toward a network (reticular) governance grounded in subsidiarity, partnership and a place-based, bottom-up logic that values territorial capabilities, appropriateness of interventions and genuine accountability, beyond a merely economic reading of public action.