This paper investigates the impact of the new Italian local electoral law (81/93) on local politics and gouvernement. Naples and left-wing mayor Antonio Bassolino have been chosen as our case-study because he has been the most popular mayor of this new local experiment and his terms in office have been analysed as "exemplary experience" which can have general conclusions for the whole of the local government debate. We study, in particular, the impact of his election by direct suffrage in 1993 and 1997 on two areas of political life: the relationship between the Mayor and the traditional political parties and the public policy-making process. We come to the conclusion that even if this reform has not introduced any real change in terms of quality and efficiency in decision-making, it has produced in Naples a new form of personnalisation of politics, of political behaviour and of public policy-making "symbolic politics".