Territorial development and Governance: Third Sector Organizations

The object of this paper is to indeep some aspects related to the relationships between Third Sector and Public Sector, and in particular to underline the open problems related to the realization of the Governance process and the effective participation of Third Sector organizations to this process, to programming and realizing actions for a territorial sustainable development. The administrative decentralization process in Italy, active since decades, hasn't defined yet the role of territories in relation to rights and duties of citizens, to the relationship between central and local administrations, and between this last one and the other social components. Recent laws (an example Law n. 328/2000) have clarified the role of Third Sector in the field of actions of social security and welfare of the entire community. The general problem about the Third Sector's development as a form of social capital (a fundamental element of territorial intelligence) of a specific territory is understanding if these organizations pertaining to Third Sector are looking for a "role" or a "responsibility", or if they are more looking for an integration between these two aspects. From the analysis of the problems about interaction between public and private institutions, and of the peculiar characteristics of Third Sector in the territory, we should state that Third Sector is looking for a role of mere implementation: they do not participate in the process of governance, but only in the phase of redaction and implementation of projects. The interaction between Public and Third Sector, which is expression of participation, can't be considered an "arena of dispute", serving to represent things to "say" and not to "do", because of the break between the politics (institutional decisions makers) and the civil society; therefore, regardless of the representative level of different subjects, the participation, as today is intended, should close with actions of external relevance supported by transparent procedures and visible positions, in which are clear roles and responsibilities and the behaviour of all the actors involved, in a way that their behaviour will be considered "reliables" by the community. The next challenge the Third Sector has to face is to assure the plurality of citizens' voices (politically not represented or badly represented) expressing their needs in the politic arena: these organizations, have not to cover only one role in the achievement of development goals; they have to carry out the actions' responsibilities to promote and qualify the partecipative research-actions taking into account the common goods and rights of all citizens.