Political-institutional responses to the first wave of Covid-19 were more effective in Italy than in other parts of the world. Not so, at least in part, during the second wave. Precisely for this reason, it is urgent to have a greater awareness of the reasons for the success of the collective action to deal with Covid-19 in the first six months of 2020. The essay aims to analyze the “governance” of the first wave, observing four different circuits that had government action as their center: the government-regions circuit; the government-organized interests circuit: the government-experts circuit; the government-media circuit. Given the exceptional nature of the moment, it was not possible to activate the normal parliamentary debate, where, especially in the work of the committees, both territorial and sectoral interests are represented. However, when parliament is inhibited from acting, someone has to assume the responsibility of the decisions, otherwise the latter would be taken without adequate deliberative scrutiny. Cooperative federalism and neo-corporatism seem to have been the two new patterns of decision-making that emerged from this suspension of the parliamentary life. These patterns, which allowed the government action to succeed in the first wave of Covid-19, could nevertheless constitute a possible solution to the evils of our centralism and regionalism.
