Discussion
We will use our research questions as a guide to structure the discussion of the results. We will begin by providing an answer to our first research question: Did the public administration replicate and implement what had been decided at the national level or did it elaborate any specific strategy? The study documented that, given the large political, cultural, social, and organisational distance between the national level and the local level, it was inevitable that something was done in the established terms at the central level, while other measures were aimed often to fill the gaps or even to anticipate the decisions of the central government, and other measures deviated from the national trends in order to be more adherent to the needs of the local community.
Our second research question was as follows: Was Peccioli’s municipality able, at the local level, to exploit the potential of civic cultures? What emerged from this study suggests a limitedly positive answer, since the quarantine cancelled the public space as the dimension where citizens could play a proactive role in the management of the public good, and it also hindered the activities of volunteer associations.
The third research question was as follows: How was the pandemic management by the municipality perceived by citizens? As we expected, citizens expressed a particular harmony with the administration’s behaviours, thanks to the advantages of proximity. Although there is a margin of improvement in the communicative relationship between citizens and the public administration, the overall emergency management received a solid consensus by citizens, highlighting that the social body of the village is based on strong social cohesion. This is, of course, the merit of both citizens and administrators.
Our fourth research question was as follows: Did this new dimension of urbal somehow cooperate in maintaining a high level of social cohesion during the pandemic and in facilitating the intervention of the municipality? We can say that the dimension of urbal was able to cooperate very well in maintaining social cohesion during the pandemic. There are still many things to fully understand about citizens’ daily practices during quarantine, like the meaning of the paramount increase of communication that has emerged. This must be counted among the social changes brought about by the pandemic and that must be analysed and discussed properly at the scientific level. On the contrary, the awareness of the need for more effective use of the various communication channels, including digital media, has been consolidated. However, due to the composition (in terms of age, for example) of the Pecciolese community and its small size, face-to-face communication revealed to still be very important for both effective institutional communication and citizens’ participation.
The strong point of this study is that the approach adopted made it possible to analyse the perspective of both citizens and local administrators, which allowed us to have a more complete vision of the management of the COVID-19 emergency. The main weak points of the study are as follows: a) all the measures presented and discussed here are self-reported measures and thus may be affected by interpretative biases related to the presentation of the self and to social desirability, a limit that characterises almost all surveys, and b) the limited number of interviews with administrators.
Future research directions hopefully could further reflect on the significance of the local political experience on the part of administrators during the pandemic, also in terms of the possible innovations triggered by the management of this emergency. Furthermore, it is necessary to introduce new methodological tools to further develop the empirical part by integrating it with new approaches (e.g., gamification applied to public participation, (S)OST, etc.).