Under the Messina Bridge: Conflict, Governance and Participation

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 counterarguments 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.