When there is inadequate transparency, accountability, and probity in the use of public resources, the state fails to generate credibility and authority. As a consequence, systemic corruption undermines the credibility of democratic institutions and counteracts good governance. In the light of this approach, several policies, at national and international level, have been established in promoting public sector reforms. The mid 1990’s was characterized by a renewed appreciation of the role of the state. One of the main issues of the reform of the public sector was decentralization. Decentralizing responsibilities and resources by giving more autonomy to local governments, manage resources more efficiently, increasing the opportunities for state-society interactions. Decentralization, also, creates more opportunities for local autonomy and responsiveness at local level; but it also gives subnational governments more room to fail if specific steps are not taken to build local technical and managerial capacity. Although, the decentralization is key issue in promoting an effective service delivery, several studies have found a correlation between decentralization and corruption. According to the main literature, even in a decentralized democratic political system there is a danger of penetration of state institutions by organized crime, a phenomenon that is described as state capture. The way in which organized crime usually “captures” the state is by coopting public institutions leads to a bias in the design and implementation of public policies. In the light of this debate, the aim of this paper is to critically analyze the role of reforms promoted by local governments and its implications in Italy. The relationship between state capture and organized crime are also examined in the present study. Many contradictions emerge: more deregulation, autonomy and decentralization often are not associated to less, but more, corruption and/ or other criminal phenomena. In this paper we use a model of logistic regression to investigate if, how, and as much as a set of socio-economic and geographic variables acts on the risk of dissolution for a local administration
