The Administrative Departments and Public The unification of the Italian administration is specially shown in the bureau cratic and departmental organization. All the offices of the government are united by a chain of obedience which mounts gradually from the lowest to the highest, from the local to the central government, up to the supreme head of the administration, i.e., the Icing. The admin istration, except in certain very unusual cases, is bureaucratic, i.e., consists in paid individual responsibility of public functionaries who are at the same time professional employees. In Italy there is no general law on the judicial status of employees. There are, however, sev eral special laws and a ltngthy and complex series of special regulations, forming, as one may say, a species of common law regarding public employment. The appointment of public employees is generally through competitive ex amination, and in this way the various grades do not depend on the arbitrary whim of their superiors. The exceptions to this rule are in the case only of certain official positions that are pre-eminently political, and especially that of prefect.
Local The antecedent history of the Italian government gave rise from the first to a spirit of mistrust of the local autonomies, ill concealed by purely exter nal and formal recognition of an auto-admin istration to a great extent democratic. This led to the breaking down of all connection with those great natural divisions of territory which in Italy were formed by regions many of which had a real and true geographical auton omy (such as the large islands of Sicily and Sardinia), and others a parallel in antecedent history in the usages, customs, dialect (as in the ancient kingdom of Naples, in Tuscany, Pied mont, etc.). The whole territory of the king dom was instead divided symmetrically into communes which were given a uniform gov ernment, without any judicial recognition of the difference between large cities and small com munes, between industrial and rural centres, etc. An aggregation of communes constituted a province (which is at the same time the cir cumscribed section under the local authority of the prefecture, as has been previously men tioned). There are 69 provinces, and the aver age population of each of these amounts to about 500,000 inhabitants, but in actual fact the number and density is variable. Only occasion ally the province is identical with the region (for example, Umbria and Basilicata) ; in gen eral, every region comprises several provinces (Sicily, seven; Sardinia, two; Tuscany, eight ; Piedmont, four, etc.).
Thus the communes which the provinces may juridically retain as self:governing bodies are territorial corporations of which the gov ernment makes use as organs of its administra tion; while, at the same time, they represent and take charge of the collective interests of the corporation itself. It follows that these corporations, as far as their activity in the field of public administration is concerned, have never any original rights of their own, but act in virtue of a delegated legislative authority, and use the powers transmitted to them by the government.
The legal limit of their autonomy is found in the normal functions of vigilance and con trol which the government (through the in strumentality of the prefectures and the Min istry of the Interior) exercises over the local bodies, reserving to itself the right of annulling in these communities such enactments as might prove contrary to the laws and outside the limits of their right (competenza). By certain enactments (but not as a law), the govern ment exercises a real guardianship over the communal administrations, looking into their very actions with the consideration of their expediency and utility. The organ of this guardianship is a college of seven members, partly honorary, partly official functionaries, called the Giunta Provinciale Amministmtiva (Provincial Administrative Assembly).
The communes and the provinces, according to a general law, do not exercise any of the activities of political organizations, but only the economic and social institutions, particularly transportation, public instruction, hygiene and local police, and the assistance of the poor. Some of these services are made obligatory on them by law; others may or may not be in stituted at discretion. An insuperable obstacle to this theoretical liberty is doubtless, however, the lack of financial means. The local Italian administrations have no true and individual financial autonomy: the principal income from taxes is the exclusive appurtenance of the gov ernment, which leaves to the communes only a quota of the amount within certain limits. A law of 1903 permits the communes to assume the direct management of commercial or indus trial enterprises that have a bearing on public interests and constitute to a certain extent natural monopolies (aqueducts, public and pri vate lighting, tramways, telephones, mills and furnaces, public baths, etc.).
As regards the constitution of the com munal representative bodies, the Italian law is sufficiently comprehensive and democratic. In all communes there is a deliberative body which sets forth the will of the community in matters of serious importance, and the com munal council (in the provinces, the provincial council) composed of a number of citizens (from 80 to 15, according to the population of the commune) nominated by the popular vote of the majority. All citizens are entitled to vote if they pay into the commune any kind of legal tax, provided they know how to read and write, and those who, having their domicile in the commune, shall be absolved from the obligation of elementary instruction. As a rule no direct interference by the assembly or by popular vote was permitted in the manage ment of communal affairs; but, lately, the law on the municipalization of the public utilities insisted that the deliberations of the communal council which resolved to assume the service should be put to the vote of the electors of the communes (referendum).