Which silos first? Analysing the Italian case through the study of Tuscany Region’s government

This paper proposes a public policies analysis of the Tuscany region’s government (Italy) during the current legislature with the aims of (1) selecting the stronger silos, at the regional level, preventing the achievement of the SDGs and (2) proposing a possible solution of multilevel governance in order to comply with policy coherence in elaborating a national strategy for the Sustainable Development. This bottom-up approach (from local to national level) wants to launch the idea that concrete initiatives can start from territories and local administrations, breaking down silos-thinking, thanks to the involvement of different departments in local projects, with the allocation of funds in an inter-sectorial perspective. This is a first attempt to provide a methodological framework for studying the implementation of the SDGs at local level. Through the lens of the Comparative Agenda Project and the Comparative Manifesto Project, we analyse the case of Tuscany region during the current legislation (2015-present) in implanting the SDGs through the involvement of different departments in local projects. Afterwards, we identify the “strong silos” to be broken on the basis of the low level of department differentiation in the allocation of funds. More precisely, we aim to investigate whether a relationship between the local government’s intentions as stated in the manifestos and its actual commitment over spending programs exists. Evidently, the policy agenda is not only about what is being discussed by political actors and their electoral purposes, but also about what they actually do once in office, where a number of institutional factors and political dynamics intervene. In the second part the paper focuses on the relationships between the regional and the national level assessing coherence with the national strategy for the Sustainable Development as described in the Voluntary National Review presented by the Italian Government at the High Level Political Forum 2017.