Carolina Pacchi, DiAP Politecnico di Milano Krakow, SMART-IST. INSTITUTIONAL CAPACITY FOR TERRITORIAL DEVELOPMENT

a. Objectives - identifying the institutional factors explaining the efficiency of public institutions in designing and implementing successful territorial development strategies and policy in the framework of EU Cohesion Policy; - developing a common and transferable methodology to be used for recognizing and assessing these institutional factors and enhancing institutional efficiency, through the identification of practices and tools Project Background 2

Background: Conceptual Framework 3 Territorial development Structural variables economic, socio- demographic, territorial factors >(“institutional thickness”) Capacity building programmes (in the framework of National and EU cohesion policy) NPM; Governance Institutional capacity planning capacity implementation capacity assessment capacity co-operation capacity

b. Project Questions - how and to what extent does institutional capacity impact upon territorial development? - how and to what extent does capacity building programmes influence institutional capacity? - how and to what extent do path dependent conditions (such as institutional thickness and structural conditions) influence capacity building programmes and territorial development? c. Project partners: Lead Partner DiAP Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy; DITer Politecnico di Torino, Università di Torino, Turin, Italy; IGOP Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain; Istituto per la Ricerca Sociale, Milan, Italy; Sciences Po, Université de Lyon, Lyon, France Project Background 4

1. Alsace: Decentralization of the management of the Operational Programme to the Regional Authority 2. Aquitaine: Policy interventions in the field of innovation and cooperation between the Managing Authority and the Regional Authority 3. Rhone Alpes: Design and implementation of multi-regional programs, in the fields of management of river basins and urban development 4. Apulia: technical bodies (Nuval) supporting the administrative structures in the assessment and selection of programmes and projects 5. and 6. Toscana and Sicilia: territorial integrated development programs 7. Apulia: reform processes and sectoral planning in the field of water, waste management and soil protection 8. Lubelskie Voivodship: the impacts of the Polish decentralization of the EU Structural Funds framework in the programming period Dolnoslaskie voivodship: the relations between strategic planning and mid- term programming instruments Main Results: first draft of 9 case studies 5

1. There is a relevant difference between the Institutional Capacities (IC) needs of the wealthiest regions (the French regions and Tuscany) and those of Convergence regions (the southern Italian and the Polish regions) 2.Therefore, the Capacity Building (CB) policies tend to be different: more top down in the latter case, more networking in the former 3.A common denominator, however, is the need to come to terms with the European rules and procedures 4.There is a widespread consensus that IC makes better policies and hopefully better outcomes 5.Sometimes the best CB policies are the ways in which the European policies are structured and implemented (e.g. PIUSS in Tuscany, NUVV in Apulia, sub-delegation in Alsace) 6.In any case CB policies should be adapted at the level of administrative capacity of the "receiving" administration (basic training is useless for senior experts) 7.Staffing is a very relevant part of CB policies Main Results: key lessons 6

The final product of the research will be: an inventory of the different “mechanisms” found in the selected cases that can be used to identify the possible steps (tools, practices, etc) to be taken in the next programming period with regards to capacity building programmes The identification of mechanisms that explain the success in different stages of the policy making process will allow the formulation of transferability hypothesis in other contexts Main Results Envisaged 7

A relevant aspect, to be further elaborated and investigated by the project team, is to establish a stricter relationship between the results achieved so far and the policy debate about the possibilities for strengthening the performance of cohesion policy through conditionalities Experience of the Project 8