ABSTRACT
This chapter describes power shifts that have occurred in flood risk management in Italy, with the main objective of understanding how institutional arrangements and negotiation between central and local forces have contributed to policy development in this sector. It discusses a pluralist approach to power – unlike elitists who argue that power is extremely centralised – and regards power as distributed throughout society. The chapter deals with both the representation in critical decision-making processes and the actual capacity of a political actor to influence decisions regarding flood mitigation schemes and interventions, flood risk zoning and expenditure allocation. It explains the inherent relationship formed between the configuration of spatial scales, for instance the notion of ‘national’ and ‘regional’, and the distribution of power among actors applied specifically to flood risk management. The emergence of the Civil Protection Department as an important player in the flood risk management discourse belongs to the political game.
