Recent changes within European telecommunications (and related) policies suggest that southern Europe can be defined as a ‘delayed policy space’. Beyond economic and statistical data attesting to this developmental lag, such an interpretation can be backed up by three types of enquiry. First, the fact that Europe-level policy making has provided southern Europe with specific policies allows us to investigate the extent to which the delay in their implementation is due to institutional factors. Secondly, the reasons for southern delay in the achievement of policy goals can also be sought in the high density of politicized interest groups. Thirdly, new research into patrimonialism (relations of patronage between the state and elite groups) seeks to define a common pattern of networks in southern European public policy, in order to avoid the pitfalls of both a rigid statistical construction of reality and problems in interpreting ‘politicization’. This article discusses the validity of patrimonialist network analysis, and assesses its contribution to the more general analysis of relations between public policy and interest politics.