Regional diversity in experiences of cohesion policy: The cases of Emilia-Romagna and Calabria

This paper aims to provide new evidence on the role played by the local contexts in the implementation of Cohesion Policy, by means of a comparative analysis of the experiences of the Italian regions of Emilia-Romagna and Calabria. Through a deep examination of the 2007–2013 programming period, focus groups with the Cohesion Policy practitioners complemented with document analysis, this work shows how political (in)stability, political entrepreneurship and administrative (in)capacity shaped the patterns of Cohesion Policy implementation in the two regions, thus supporting the idea that institutional arrangements of Cohesion Policy should better account for the diversity of local contexts.