The Role of Citizens in the Municipalities' Risk Management Process : an Overview in Italy

Risk Management (RM) themes have a central role in private and public administration, improving its performance and resilience, as affirmed by many authors in recent years. The involvement of citizens in public processes derives from the New Public Governance influences, and the evolved consideration from citizen, to partner and customer. However, few authors have investigated whether and how citizen participation is involved in the RM process. This paper aims to cover the gap on the citizens' role in the RM process of public administration organizations, with a focus on corruption risk. In particular, the analysis focused on Italian municipalities and was conducted on a sample of 110 provincial capitals. Though the analysis of the Italian legislation, we discuss whether access requests (ARs) are a useful tool for citizens through which to exercise their control activity, thus participating in the RM process of the municipality. [Publisher's text].