WORKING PACKAGES

The research project has two main aims:

1) To identify the determinants of the failure and success of different regional policy strategies and tools, in different phases, and in different territorial contexts, with a focus on the EU Cohesion policy and the South of Italy.

2) To draw lessons and contribute recommendations for a more effective regional policy architecture, at the EU, national and local levels.

To achieve these aims the research projects is articulated in seven Working Packages (WPs), each coordinated by one of the four Research Units (RU) involves. Scholars from the different RUs all provide theoretical, methodological and research contributions, according to their disciplinary specialisations.

WP0. Coordination and management (Coordinator: University of Reggio Calabria)

WP1. Regional policies in Europe (Coordinator: University of Bari)

WP2. Regional policy in the Mezzogiorno (Coordinator: University of Reggio Calabria)

WP3. Regional trajectories in five Southern regions (Coordinator: University of Napoli)

WP4. In-depth local case studies (Coordinator: University of Catania)

WP5. Lessons and policy recommendations (Coordinator: University of Reggio Calabria)

WP6. Dissemination and valorisation (Coordinator: University of Reggio Calabria)

WP0 and WP6 are ‘transversal’ WPs, which aim at ensuring the efficient implementation and valorisation of the project.

WP1, WP2, WP3, and WP4 represent the core of the project’s research. They aim to achieve the first objective of the project, by investigating the implementation of regional policies and the socioeconomic transformations – over the two main policy regimes identified – at different, ‘nested’, spatial scales, progressively ‘zooming in’ from the European scale, to the Italian, the regional and the local scale. The ultimate aim of these comparative (space- and time-wise) analyses is to identify the main determinants – macroeconomic factors, policy design factors, and endogenous factors – that have conditioned the economic, social and territorial evolution of places, enhancing or triggering virtuous development processes in some and, conversely, hindering them in others.

The second aim of the project is fulfilled in WP5. In this WP, the lessons drawn from the comparative assessments carried out in the previous WPs are examined, in order to put forward an articulated frame of recommendations for improving the regional policy architecture at the EU, the national and the regional levels, with particular attention to regions and places that seem unable to exploit Cohesion policy opportunities and overcome negative path-dependencies. For these regions, a more ‘place-tailored’ and more effectively subsidiary policy approach is advocated.