December 27, 2013

Democracy in the Twenty-first Century

Giovanni Allegretti

The aim of my Thesis is to explore how the staffs of Local Administrations promoting new governance's actions (re)think on the modes of conceiving and carrying out organisational functions. Participatory processes are one of the possible outcomes of new governance models, which aim to include citizens into intervening planning on territories and/or policy making processes. My research is actually based on the exploration of the possible "paths of change" constructed by the Back Offices, by approaching the change not as a dimension per se, but rather as an outcome of developing relations toward transformative objectives in specific contexts. Hence, my interest is to deepen if and how diverse types of governing development, within the transformations drawn through new governance devices, are potentially promoted. Here it is a reference to organisational contexts intended as both settings and frames wherein symbolic representations - i.e. shared interpretations of the reality - construct the meanings of such actions.
In the Administrative scenario, civil servants are essential part of the administrative machines that carry on new governance's devices. They actually represent the connection-point between the continuity of the Administrative apparatus and innovative endorsed dimensions. In addition, they are in the very middle between the pronouncement of a political thought and the pragmatic implications with it. Through the study - sustained by psychosociology and sciences of organisations' theories - of symbolic representations of the civil servants directly engaged with participatory processes' management, is possible to point out knowledge about shared organisational cultural patterns in order to innovatively think on the integration of effective governing functions.
My methodological hypothesis is that creating conditions for civil servants to develop into aware about symbolic shared representations makes possible to (re)orientate organisational performance in compliance with transformative objectives. The scientific aim is to construct useful knowledge in order to assume research/intervention gathering with specific cases. In the long term, it could possibly improve counselling functions for the changes of Local Administrations in relation with innovative governing devices, such as participatory processes. It means to construct reading patterns and methodological hypotheses about the ways civil servants experience participatory processes and, more broadly, the ways Back Offices work with new governance's devices in Local Administrations.