Cambiamenti socio-economici e rescaling amministrativo: il caso del Lazio

<em>Cambiamenti socio-economici e rescaling amministrativo: il caso del Lazio</em> ABSTRACT: This article explores the territorial dimension of institutional rescaling in Italian regional context through the case study of one of the biggest Italian region. It is argued that institutional rescaling it’s not simply devolution of powers to lower administrative levels. A dialectical relation between territorial reorganization of labour market, residential location of demographic changes and Institutional reforms, rules the way in which geographic scales intermingle with each other. In the Italian case Regions took more and more importance since Constitutional reform of 2001, but not every administrative region is also a region in a geographical sense. Lazio’s territory has the distinctive features of being divided between the periphery of Rome (a city containing millions of inhabitant by itself) and rural counties. The consequence is the over- representation of Rome in the distributions of Institutional competences and resources dedicated to social policies. The Municipality of Rome has indeed a parallel importance in Social and Activation policies and assume several additional task compared not only to other municipalities, bit to the other counties.