Pubblico e governance nelle politiche ambientali

Focusing on environmental policies, the article deals with the relationship between governance and the public. Governance fosters horizontal relations and participation to the policy making. Thus it should strengthen and expand the public sphere. However this happens in such a way that it contradicts the very notion of publicity. This paradox reproduces in a new form a core antinomy of political modernity. To elaborate on this issue a notion of public is presented first, as a third party implied in social transactions. The last generation of policy instruments, based on voluntary and self-regulation, is then discussed. Their alleged advantages in terms of efficiency and publicity are brought into question by a major problem: the public is privatized within contracts, which represent the currently dominant type of relationship at policy and social level. Contractualization is at odds with publicity. The public space expands only to the extent that two conditions are fulfilled: there is neither a commitment to reciprocation nor relationships are based on closed ties, specified once and for all.