How Museums Co-produce: the Case of Italian Autonomous State Museums

This thesis uses semi-structured qualitative expert interviews aiming to tackle the central research question: how do the autonomous museums implement co-production in Italy? Through the further three sub-questions which better structured the analysis. The thesis explores the extent and manifestation of the autonomy given to the institutions after the Franceschini reform of 2014. It looks at whether this autonomy has facilitated co-production initiatives and what this translates to in terms of efficiency. The research also pays an underlying attention to its relevance in comparison to the broader European policy objectives, used as a benchmark. Through the expert interviews of 6 autonomous museums' directors and 1 administrative officer, three emerging themes were identified: Partial Autonomy, Co-production as a Core Strategic Practice and Relative Efficiency. These themes provided clear insights into the complex interplay between the three central macro-dimensions of autonomy, co-production and efficiency within Italian autonomous state museums. The findings highlight how reforms were quite beneficial to their institutions, specifically through the greater autonomy given to their decision-making processes and in terms of financial budgeting. There was an increase in co-production initiatives which brought about positive externalties for the institutions themselves and the other local stakeholders. On the other hand, other limiting factors such as the heavy bureaucratic barriers and lack of autonomy on the choosing of personnel was found to be detrimental to the efficiency of these institutions. This thesis aims to contribute to the recent growth in cultural heritage and museum literature focused on finding new ways to both sustainably conserve and valorize cultural heritage, through the notion of co-production and its potential implication for a more sustainable and democratic governance system. The results thus highlight a number of systemic flaws which limit the potential of autonomous cultural institutions in the Italian case. Uniquely, this thesis also suggests to partially solve these inefficiencies through the role of people and their participative collaboration.