”Shared Administration” as a New Relationship between the Public Sector and the Social Economy

The paper aims to analyze the theme of “shared administration”, recently affirmed within the Italian law reforming the third sector. This case has introduced a new mode of relationship between public administration and non-profit organizations engaged in the production of goods and services of general interest. This model introduces mechanisms of co-programming and co-design (“co-progettazione”) that are alternatives to procurement procedures based on calls for tenders. The aim of the paper is to address the possible implications of the principle of “shared administration” for the emergence of new forms of empowerment of social actors able to promote distributed models of self-determination and democratic exercise of power as an alternative to top- down bureaucracy