Urbanities,
Vol. 3
·
No 2
·
November 2013
© 2013
Urbanities
33
Under the Messina Bridge: Conflict, Governance and Participation
Enrico Sacco and Ivano Scotti
(University of Naples Federico II)
–
Governmental decisions to build any kind of infrastructure inevitably seem to trigger social conflict between the
Public Administration and the local civil society. These conflicts could be considered a crisis of political
legitimacy and the analysis of these social struggles might help to understand the issues of the ‘governance’ and
the ‘participation’ in contemporary society. The Bridge over the Strait of Messina seems to represent a
characteristic case on the Italian way of governance and its difficulties to meet local interests and social
legitimacy about infrastructural policies. Using some of Habermas’ key-concepts, we analyse the counter-
arguments and the strategies employed by local social movements against the Bridge. The study of the dynamics
of the social conflict around the Bridge suggest how the widespread social opposition that has stopped its
construction has been a social reaction to the closure of the negotiations, making it impossible for the local social
actors to have a say in this project. It is argued that engaging local actors through a collaborative participation on
the policy agenda is conditional to avoiding hard social conflict. Also, a reformulation of Italian legislation
seems to be necessary in order to achieve this goal.
Keywords:
Civil Society, governance, participation, social movements.
Introduction
In this article we present the results of an exploratory research regarding the Messina Bridge
project, linking Sicily to Calabria in Southern Italy.
1
Using key-concepts in the Habermasian
framework, we attempt to offer an explanation of the dynamics of the social conflict around
the Bridge project and to identify how and when participation of the local actors in
infrastructural projects can help to avoid disruptive social conflict over Government policies
and to produce more democratic policy decisions.
Often governmental decisions to build infrastructures seem to inevitably trigger
conflict between the public administration and the local society, especially when grassroots
participation is limited. From this viewpoint, these conflicts could be seen as a crisis of
political legitimacy, and their analysis may help to understand the issue of
governance
and
participation
(Pardo and Prato 2011). Although these conflicts may delay the realization of
the planned infrastructures, sometimes they lead to positive changes in the initial plans. This
seems to happen because diverse
reasons
emerge from the social conflicts and literally invade
the space of the policy. In short, social local movements can create an advocacy coalition that
offers in the public sphere an effective alternative, infrastructural solution to the proposed
governmental projects.
1
What follows is the result of a joint effort. However paragraphs 1, 2, 3 were written by Ivano Scotti,
while paragraphs 4 and 5 were written by Enrico Sacco. The conclusion was written jointly. This
article is an updated version of a study carried out as part of a research project coordinated by Patrizio
Di Nicola (Sapienza, University of Rome). Some results of that research were published in Fontana
and Sacco (2011). We wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for
Urbanities
for their valuable
comments, which helped to improve the manuscript. We are also grateful to Italo Pardo for the
opportunity to present our research at the International Interdisciplinary Conference on ‘Issues of
Legitimacy: Entrepreneurial Culture, Corporate Responsibility and Urban Development’
that was held
in
Naples, Italy, between 10 and 14 September 2012 and to Paola De Vivo for her encouragement
through the process of writing this article.
