This concluding chapter of the third of a set of three interconnected volumes dedicated to the study of public administration in Italy provides a broad historical perspective, to then discuss the ideational foundations of the reforms of the public sector that occurred over the decades since the 1990s. The chapter examines at first the historical legacy, that is, the initial configuration of the Italian administrative system, which can be ascribed to the cluster of the ‘Napoleonic’ tradition in public administration. It then traces the ideational bases of the reforms of the public sector since the early 1990s, to then analyse the lasting impact of the multiple crises that hit the Italian system over the same period. The chapter also provides an assessment of the capacity of the Italian system to handle the effects of the ‘mega-trends’ that are reshaping society and government at a global and European level. The concluding section discusses the contribution of this collection of books to the interdisciplinary study of public administration in comparative perspective.