sphere of administrative activity should arouse some understandable interest, particularly if such a hypothesis were to be introduced and tested in one of the sectors such as those analysed in this work connected with the entitlement to goods of life so primary, irreplaceable and limited. This perspective takes on even greater significance if we consider that, in recent years, the issue of water waste has gained renewed prominence at the European level, first with the adoption of the Drinking Water Directive and subsequently with the Water Resilience Strategy (COM/2025/280). Through these measures, the European Commission has set out a firm course of action, making clear that by 12 January 2026 Member States must conduct an initial monitoring of leakage levels, in order to comply by 2028 with a maximum threshold. It is precisely this further layer of regulation, in addition to the goals discussed in the previous paragraph, that vividly illustrates how crucial it is, in this context, to place the factor of time at the very centre of political and legal questions For if it is true, as it surely is, that time here stands as the key variable of that necessary gentle nudge, then on the one hand the State must manage with efficiency and effectiveness the administrative operations required for the realisation of the public interests underlying the reduction of waste; and, on the other hand, citizens must, without any reservation, come to perceive as indispensable the compliant alignment of their behaviours with the regulation of the sector.116 If this is the case, the advantages—by no means secondary—that may derive from the application of both the more static nudge theory and, even more so, the dynamic hypernudge strategy117 to the administrative process are evident. One cannot fail to recognise that the public administration weighs interests, and in this its inherent function it cannot but assess—especially in a resultsoriented perspective—how such weighing may lead to performative choices aimed at realising the public interest and, more generally, at inducing citizens over time to adopt conduct consistent with and functional to the pursuit of the selected interest. This is not according to an authoritarian model, as is typical of control and command, but in the spirit of a different, more collaborative model, such as that exemplified by shared administration. 116 The reference text on this subject is due to R. Thaler, C. R. Sunstein, Nudge. La spinta gentile. La nuova strategia per migliorare le nostre decisioni su denaro, salute, felicità, Milano, 2008. 117 Tells us about it suggestively and former professor K. Yeung, Hypernudge: Big Data as a mode of Regulation by design, in Information, Communication & Society, 2017. 452 FRANCESCO GASPARI | LUIGI CAMERIERO
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