The failure of regulation: Work, environment and production at Taranto’s ILVA

The article focuses on the case of the largest steel plant in Europe, located in Taranto (Italy), to argue that its current crisis is not simply dictated by technological or managerial failings. Rather, the article contends that its problems stem from a regulatory crisis and, specifically, from the failure of the deregulation model pursued after the industry’s process of privatization. Such a model has hinged upon the logic of a big private firm that, on the one hand, has sought to disembed itself from the socio-institutional context and, on the other, has set and followed its own rules with disruptive effects on the local society and environment, as well as on the plant’s economic viability. Such a model entered a crisis when the other socio-institutional actors started to react to the disastrous situation existing in Taranto. To use Polanyian language, a ‘double movement’ has emerged: disruptive pressures have triggered defensive reactions.