Literature on policy coherence (PC) has been expanding particularly since the diffusion of the 2030 Agenda to better understand intersectoral policymaking and steering governance complexity in sustainable development, environmental and climate policies. Through research domain analysis, this article gives systematic evidence regarding the rise of PC literature; moreover, via content analysis, the research highlights the most relevant topics addressed by PC articles published over the last 20 years. Our analysis pinpoints that policy coherence has been studied regarding some research areas, such as sustainable development, environment, climate change, and the increasing transboundary governance concerns. Thus far, PC has been scrutinized mainly by addressing the implementation phase. Evidence suggests that, within the 2030 Agenda framework, future research and theoretical efforts should consider neglected dimensions of the policy process and incorporate them in a process‐oriented analytical framework.

Within interest group research, scholars following the population ecology perspective mainly look at the demographic features of populations and systems under scrutiny: density and diversity represent the main dimensions investigated. Even though, in recent years, an impressive amount of literature on this topic has been produced, there has been neither systematic analysis of, nor empirical research into, the Italian interest system so far. This article aims to address this lacuna. Following a diachronic perspective, we count how many politically active groups have populated the Italian interest system with regard to two different periods: 1984–88 and 2010–14. From 1984 to 2014 the number of interest groups almost doubled and the density of the system greatly increased; diversity, however, has remained relatively more stable.

The article presents an empirical analysis of the Italian Youth Guarantee (YG) based on the approach of the new policy design. After having reviewed the most recent literature concerning this analytical approach, it examines the rationales, actors, aims, and contextual factors, as well as the political dynamics, that characterised the design of the YG national plan and its first implementation at the local level. The article argues that the Youth Guarantee offered the opportunity to think about the reorganisation of responsibilities and operational governance mechanisms in the domain of active labour market policy. Although some innovations and discontinuities are evident, the path of reform is still largely incomplete.

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Focusing on transboundary issues contributes to highlighting how new governance modes can emerge from increasing interdependence and complexity in public policies. This article analyzes food waste as a transboundary issue that cuts across different policy subsystems (PSs), intersects multiple levels of government, and calls into question consolidated policy making for new modes of governance. The analytical framework provides a multidimensional approach and a new typology of governance arrangements to be used in empirical research. Evidence from an Italian case study and an empirical investigation of 20 regional food waste programs shows that regions can adopt different driving ideas and can activate a variety of governance arrangements and differentiated, as well as viable, modes of integration between consolidated PSs. The article argues that different tool mixes combined with different levels of governance complexity may lead to a variety of governance arrangements and a differentiated likelihood of policy integration.

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