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Abstract: This essay aims at investigating the conflicting relationship between the governance guidelines of a Southern municipal administration, which is dutifully attentive to meeting the primary needs for subsistence of the weakest segments of its population, but which is also forced to act within an unbalanced and constraining tax and budgetary structure, and the antithetical interests of profit-minded local economic operators. The outcome of such contraposition is the continuous, necessarily ever-evolving search for balance, whose functioning mechanisms are the main object of this investigation. The specific case study, investigated in its various aspects, is that of the flour market in the town of Taranto which, despite its uniqueness, represents well the social and economic dynamics of a Southern community projected into the new and uncertain postunitary dimension.

Keywords: Taranto; Local finance; Excise Duty; Annona (Food supply); Flours.