Scientific Committees, Government and the Management of the COVID-19 Emergency in Italy. Some Empirical Insights Drawn from the Study of the Decision-Making During the “First Lock-Down”

The role of expertise in the policy process has been traditionally linked to the relevance of contextual knowledge for the decision. In the case of the management of the COVID-19 emergency in Italy, the effect of externalization of the expertise was shown by the growing influence of professionals from the medical environment on the institutional decision-making bodies. To investigate this phenomenon, an analysis of the decision-making arena during the first wave of the pandemic crisis (February-May 2020) was conducted resorting to the minutes of the meetings of the Technical Scientific Committee (TSC), appointed by the Civil Protection Department (CPD) of the Italian Government. The resulting analysis revealed an ‘actor constellation’ which included the TSC, the Government, and some agencies. This ‘actor constellation’ pivoting on the TSC centralized the decision-making and exercised a permanent influence on the Government, while the circuit of the political representation (national legislature, regional and local government) resulted marginalized.