Elite locali e governo della trasformazione urbana. Il caso dell’Alto milanese.

The relationship between economic and political elites and the governance of local development has been gaining a remarkable place in the agenda of Italian sociology (Segatori 2009, Bagnasco 2009). This paper intends to contribute to this debate, presenting the findings of a research on the economic and urban transformations which have been occurring in the Alto Milanese area in last 20 years. The article aims at integrate the literature on power at the city level, ─ including the debate between elitists and pluralists (Hunter 1957, Dahl 1961, Bachrach e Baratz 1963) ─ with the urban political economy studies, which underline the mechanisms of urban growth and the role played by rent seeking interests in this phenomenon (Logan e Molotch 1987, Mossberg e Stoker 2001). The research is grounded on the hypotheses that the local development outcomes within the territory are the product of a mixture of supralocal and external economic and political factors with factors more endogenous to the transformation process, related to local elites ability in identifying and building up collective good for territorial competitiveness (Crouch et al 2004). Through a mixed positional/reputational technique, integrated with interviews with main local social and political actors, are analysed the patterns of aggregation and cooperation in local elites, as well as their core ideas of local development and their relation with external supralocal elites. Final findings seems to suggest an elite fragmentation, and a subsequent weakening of their ability to manage local economic and urban transformations.