The reform’s first failure came even before the turn of the century, during its gestation, when it proved politically impossible to extend the new rules on high civil servants to the “regalian” administrations. The resistance on this point was insurmountable. One reason for this is that while prefects and ambassadors are officers in important administrations, they are also representatives of the Government and have tasks and duties bordering on those of the political authorities. In addition, the authoritativeness, professionalism and esprit de corps of the regalian bureaucracies were, by themselves, more than enough to oblige the politicians to use their formal powers very sparingly. Even excluding the regalian administrations, however, the reform was applied spottily and poorly. Some examples of best practice were seen, but by and large the political authorities showed little interest or ability in translating their decisions into strategies, objectives and target results while they did display a keen reluctance to cease time- honoured practices of meddling in administrative questions and using administrative structures for patronage purposes. Consequently, only in rare cases were precise, quantified objectives set, backed by suitable perfor mance indicators and benchmarking to other government departments in Italy and abroad, or were adequate systems put in place to monitor and assess results, administrative units’ productivity and executives’ performance.