Labsus — Laboratorio per la Sussidiarietà
Labsus — the Laboratory for Subsidiarity — has spent two decades developing and advocating for "amministrazione condivisa" (shared administration), a framework in which citizens and local government enter formal collaboration pacts to co-manage common goods: parks, cultural spaces, social services, confiscated mafia properties, and other shared resources. The model is grounded in the Italian constitution's principle of subsidiarity and has been adopted by hundreds of municipalities, producing what Labsus calls a parallel governance layer — not replacing representative institutions but supplementing them with structured citizen co-management.
The organisation runs a university-accredited higher education course in shared administration (enrolling for 2026–2027), publishes a journal and research papers, and held the second edition of its Festival of Shared Administration in Assisi in March 2026. Labsus occupies an unusual space: neither a civic-tech platform nor a deliberative practitioners' network, but a legal-institutional innovation organisation — one that changed the law and the administrative practice, not just the conversation.
Links
- Website: labsus.org
See also
History
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2005-01-01
Founded in Rome as the Laboratory for Subsidiarity, pioneering shared administration in ItalyFounding of the organisation
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Il Progetto Labsus, il Laboratorio per la sussidiarietà, ha un obiettivo ben preciso
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2026-03-26–2026-03-28
Hosted the second edition of the Festival dell'Amministrazione Condivisa in Assisi, drawing 350+ participantsFlagship annual festival, second edition
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Anche quest’anno ci siamo ritrovati ad Assisi per la seconda edizione del “Festival dell’Amministrazione condivisa dei beni comuni”, dal 26 al 28 marzo, con l’obiettivo di creare e rendere sempre più solide le relazioni fra cittadini, istituzioni, enti pubblici e privati, Terzo settore e organizzazioni collettive.
Translation: "This year too we gathered in Assisi for the second edition of the 'Festival for Shared Administration of Common Goods,' from 26 to 28 March, with the goal of building and strengthening relationships between citizens, institutions, public and private bodies, the Third Sector, and collective organisations." Over 350 people attended from across Italy, promoted jointly by the Municipality of Assisi, Labsus, and the University of Perugia's Department of Political Sciences.
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