Implementing the Just Transition Fund: Patterns of Multilevel Governance

Multilevel governance has arguably been among the most prominent features of EU policymaking, especially in the context of cohesion policy, where the concept has been extensively theorized. Building on insights from long-standing scientific research on the topic, this paper explores the implementation of the recently established Just Transition Fund (JTF), focusing on the nature of the governance arrangements that member states have developed to design and implement their territorial just transition plans. Specifically, we formulate and test several hypotheses aimed to elucidate whether the JTF has encouraged the empowerment of sub-national authorities and the development of place-based strategies or, on the contrary, resulted in centralized patterns of policymaking. To answer these questions, we deploy both quantitative and qualitative methods to understand how competencies for managing this fund were distributed between the national and sub-national levels and to identify the factors that shaped more or less decentralized patterns of governance. Our results show how the regionalization of JTF management is strictly related to both policy legacy and overall country regionalization, despite national governments still playing a relevant gatekeeping function even when the management is demanded to a sub-national level.