Port governance reform and institutional plasticity: insights from the Italian case

Port governance reform, which re-shaped institutional settings in numerous countries, has attracted the attention of both academics and practitioners. Nonetheless, conventional studies mostly propose de-contextualized models, which overlook the embeddedness forces of ports in specific institutional and economic domains. To overtake such a gap, this paper challenges traditional models of port governance reform, and proposes an alternative contextualization of governance schemes in local territorial contexts. Therefore, the manuscript analyzes institutional trajectories in port governance, by advancing knowledge on the risks of the reform processes implemented in rigid institutional frameworks, reluctant to conjugate global challenges with local claims. Institutional divergence may emerge between the objectives set at governmental level and the claims at regional / port level, by causing a delay of the implementation stage. For this purpose, the study addresses the Italian port context, as a meaningful empirical case. The paper adopts an original theoretical frame, by encapsulating the well-established notions of intended and emergent strategy within the construct of institutional plasticity applied to public organizations. The Italian case unveils that the ongoing national reform process is still partially inadequate to capture some urgent local requirements. The lack of a bottom-up perspective and local adaptation may constitute a dangerous drawback of the new governance settings. Indeed, a sort of “glo-cal” paradox emerges as, in given circumstances, local actors appear capable to interpret global challenges more accurately than national institutions.