La rilevanza delle spese per organi di governo nei comuni italiani medio-grandi fra possibilità di efficienza e recupero di legittimazione politica

The size of political expenses in the medium-large Italian local authorities be-tween efficiency and political legitimation The phenomenon identified as "the cost of politics" is becoming increasingly wide-spread and in order to investigate it without falling into clichés, the present work has the purpose to detect and observe the size of this phenomenon to give a support to control activities and provide food for thought in terms of transparency and cutback policy. In a sample of 95 Italian local authorities a comparative method has been used on the annual report item related to political costs. The analysis shows the amount of these expenses in absolute values, that their variability leads to some re-flection on the nature of the items accounted under the political costs and that their percentage is not particularly high (leading to some reflection on financial cutback decisions).