Abstract
The paper focuses on the interaction between the provincial financial autonomy and participatory democracy instruments. To this extent, the subnational constitutional framework is addressed with the aim to sketch out the foundations of the financial regime paying due attention to its criticalities and major recent developments. The adopted perspective puts these issues into the discussions held within the participatory bodies instituted in the Provinces of Trento and Bolzano/Bozen for reforming the Autonomy Statute. This, in order to test the functioning of innovative democratic tools in decision-making processes on highly technical issues such as financial and fiscal autonomy. The internal debates of the participatory bodies raise serious criticism with regard to the adequacy of such instruments in effectively improving the quality of the financial system as a whole. In fact, the highly technical nature of this policy field turns out to be a barrier for those who are not expert in the field.