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Introduction
In the last four decades, decentralisation reforms have swept across Europe deeply transforming states that were once strongly centralised. Despite these reforms providing lower levels of government with substantial autonomy, welfare states tended to be cautiously guarded by central levels of government. In the 1990s, a significant shift began to take place as central levels of government, not only in European countries, but in many areas around the world (e.g., Argentina, China, United States), embarked upon decentralisation of many social policy competencies (Jütting et al., 2004; Giraudy, 2007). This downward trend has been especially marked for active labour market policies (ALMP).1
The literature on the governance of activation has brought to light these decentralisation trends by noting that increasing regional and local flexibility and autonomy are distinct features of the new service provision models being introduced in the context of activation, as well as the spread of New Public Management ideas (e.g., van Berkel and Borghi, 2008; Kazepov, 2010; Weishaupt, 2010; Büchs and López-Santana, 2012). Despite pointing out that common governance reforms are being implemented in heterogeneous ways across Europe, scholars have not specified distinct intergovernmental (central-regional) models of ALMP decentralisation.2This article contributes to the aforementioned body of work, as well as the literature on the territorial organisation of the welfare state (e.g., Ferrera, 2005; McEwen and Moreno, 2005; Obinger et al., 2005) by: (1) drawing attention to state structures and focusing on the institutional design of active welfare states, and (2) exposing the manifestations and potential implications of distinct decentralisation models in regionalised states.3More specifically, by engaging with the literature on comparative decentralisation and federalism, we specify two 'ideal' types of intergovernmental models and then apply them to two regionalised countries - Italy and Spain.
Italy and Spain have recently transferred ALMP competencies to their regions, but have re-organised power-sharing structures in very different ways. In Italy, the decentralisation of ALMP, which is characterised by horizontal intergovernmental arrangements, is linked to salient institutional variations within the territory - a noteworthy issue when we take into account the extensive inequalities between the Northern-Central regions and the more deprived Mezzogiorno. In contrast, in Spain, a country that has not been explored in detail by the literature on...