When consultancy becomes substitute power: reflections from two planning processes in non-metropolitan Italy

This practice review reflects on two connected planning processes in northern Lazio, Italy, where an external project manager became central to coordination. Drawing on three years of university involvement, contemporaneous observation and process documents, it examines both the enabling and constraining effects of consultant-led planning. Consultant influence is interpreted as co-produced by limited public capacity, political practices and project-based funding. The expression ‘substitute power’ describes the point at which useful external coordination begins to occupy functions public institutions need to retain, while also considering the university’s own embedded and ambivalent role.