Geographical scattering in Italian inner areas, politics and COVID-19

ABSTRACT

In recent months, the COVID-19 pandemic has been fervently considered from the perspective of various disciplines in the scientific community. Many of the proposed approaches are tied to reflections on the imminent and future effects of the pandemic. This contribution begins with a study of the recent past in Italy, analyzing the hurdles in politics that came to light due to the wave of COVID-19 infections worldwide. Particularly, the research considers the criticality of the geographical scale of reference in Italy's political actions. COVID-19 induced a need for the government to interact with people locally, especially through small municipalities in geographically central, inner areas, is emphasized. The main aim of this research is to attribute to this specific COVID-19 disaster the instrumental role of turning on the lights on the need to intervene in the inner areas of Italy, often very neglected. So the focus of the work is on inner areas and the probable catalysis of the political management dynamics that concern them, as an effect of the COVID's impacts. The pandemic is, therefore, only the contingent phenomenon which, in this case, can perhaps accelerate political interventions in inner areas. To explain the reason for this, we show how the vulnerability of inner areas, already generally risky, has become one of the weak links in the chain of protection from COVID-19 in terms of a geographical scattering phenomenon.