ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to show the importance of wind energy in the development of Italian rural areas. The frame in which to pursue this objective is twofold: on the one side, there is the literature on regional or local development; on the other, the shift towards more flexible forms of administration. The two perspectives can perhaps be unified into the broad idea of the governance of local development (Bardhan 2002). This means the inclusion of private and non-profit organisations in the management of public goods like the environment and localities. Wind energy is a suitable test case with which to understand such a process. It arises at a time when local development policies have exhausted their main ‘assets’, such as inter-sector interventions (van der Ploeg 2009) and place identity promotion (Ray 2002), and when political trends are moving towards the decentralisation and outsourcing of administrative functions (Pollitt and Bouckaert 2011). Thus, wind energy should be a new source of revenue for rural areas, and management of its development should be assigned to local authorities or to mixed agencies. But the ways in which renewable energies are happening in rural areas are various. The theoretical ‘glue’ will be exchange: this category should clarify the more symmetrical relationships that are replacing the command and control principle typical of public administration. Moreover, it would enable better specification of the purported process of the energy colonisation of rural areas.
