ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to comment on the problems deriving from analysing two judicial organizations with a rather similar historical tradition but operating in two different political and institutional environments. More specifically, the chapter tries to assess the management of public prosecution in France and Italy, with an eye to the way the related problems of prosecutorial discretion and political responsibility are dealt with. The analysis - realized in part through a reassessment of a set of interviews carried out in the two countries in the 1980s - will allow us to inquire into the role of legal culture in the process of institutional and organizational change.
