How institutional design and leadership sustain collaborative public sector innovation: the case of administrative simplification in Italy

Institutional design and leadership are expected to spur collaborative public sector innovation by creating a framework for empowered participation and facilitating alignment, learning, and joint decision‑making. However, an empirically derived understanding of the interaction between institutional design and leadership over time is still lacking. To fill this gap, the article tracks the evolution of administrative simplification in Italy over the period 1993‑2024. Findings highlight that institutional design has been hardly significant in ensuring collaborative public sector innovation in the absence of leadership. Findings also show that previous experience in the field of administrative simplification, strong ties with the network of experts and relationships of trust with the prime minister constituted key conditions for effective leadership in Italy.