Paper short abstract:

Focusing on town mayors entangled in a conflict over planned railway construction in the Italian Alps, this paper proposes to view local administrative institutions as dynamic sites where crisscrossing relations produce contradictory experiences and expectations of 'the state'.

Paper long abstract:

La fascia tricolore - the three-colour band of green, white and red - is the symbol worn by state officials such as mayors in Italy. But in the Alpine Valley of Susa (Valsusa), individuals wearing the fascia can sometimes be seen on barricades, facing angry policemen or getting beat up by riot cops. The mayors and other amministratori (members of the local administrations) of the many small towns in the valley have been involved in conflict over the central government's plan to build a new high-speed railway, which local residents have been opposing en masse. They are caught up in crisscrossing relations and contradictory obligations: they are the local representatives of 'the state', but also the expression of local communities; to the members of their constituencies, they are also kin, neighbours and friends. Many were local activists before becoming officials. The conflict has seen mayors play leading roles in the protests, but also abruptly shift their loyalties, strike deals with the government, and 'betray' the protesters. Drawing on thirteen months' of participant observation and interviews with mayors, activists, and local residents, I take a relational approach to 'the state' to explore these entanglements. I argue that the local institutions of public administration be seen neither as peripheral organs of a cohesive 'state' nor stable loci of resistance, but as dynamic sites of the articulation of power where heterogeneous forces converge and clash, producing contingent and unstable outcomes and shaping contradictory experiences and expectations of 'the state' among local citizens.