The institutional arrangements of the regions to the test of the pandemic crisis

Abstract

moving from a comparison between the underlying traits of the Italian and Spanish regional systems, which highlights the differences emerging from an adequate consideration of the political element and the party system, the paper examines the Covid19 pandemic’s capacity to reveal some long-term dynamics of Italian regionalism. Attention is drawn, in particular, to the many dysfunctions – regarding centre-periphery relations as well as those between the territorial community and the local representative institutions – arising from the form of government «with an elected president» and the resulting monocratic transformation