Network governance and co-production of community services: the case of the interregional Italian-Swiss program D.E.A.

Over the last decades, the implementation of public networks to address social issues has become more the rule than the exception. Especially in the public sector, the interactions between different actors, and thus the activation of networks, ought to find shared solutions for problems of general interest that neither government nor other spheres of society can meet on their own. Using participative approaches, public networks reshape the traditional redistributive welfare paradigms and responsibilities in the production of social wellbeing. This paper studies the structure, roles, and performance of the network built to implement the interregional Italian-Swiss project D.E.A. (Diversità E Arti performative per una società inclusiva del terzo millennio), a European program that involves public administration, non-profit organization, universities and citizens, to promote and support the participation in civic activities of fragile people at risk of social exclusion. Using a combined approach this paper analyzes the case study both from analytical and governance perspectives: it proposes a unified theoretical framework based on the extant literature, to explore the nature and the related critical factors underlying the success of the public network under study.