ABSTRACT
A key task of governance is to establish and nurture the connection with citizens' values, needs and expectations. The strength of which depends upon the observable quality of the link between political responsibility and trust and authority in the exercise of power. Spanning a reasonably large and geo-politically topical area, this chapter draws on outstanding theoretical debates on the significance of legitimacy in social, economic and political processes to complex issues surrounding the relationship between citizenship and governance. The problematic of the socio-economic and political implications of international (EU) pressure on nation-states, and the attendant deficit of legitimacy, runs through intriguingly varied routes through Prato's, Spyridakis', Delibas' and Mollica's chapters. Few anthropologists studied urban Southern Europe, and research there continued to be circumscribed to the Mediterraneanist framework, though new refreshing theoretical approaches did begin to emerge.
