1. State expenditure on social assistance fell from 4.88 per cent of GNP in 1990 to 4.16 per cent in 1994 (Commission for the investigation on poverty, 1997).
2. According to a recent research (Ranci and Costa, 1999), there are a total of 4,200 IPABs operating in Italy with around 80,000 employees.
3. In many local authorities, setting up joint planning is hindered by the difficulty in coordinating a large number of small organizations in meetings with state institutions. The problem of resources, on the other hand, concerns the fact that only big organizations have planning capacities and time available to intervene effectively at discussion tables, while organizations with fewer resources play only a marginal role.