Stakeholder participation and policy integration in local social and employment policies: Germany and Italy compared.

The majority of the European countries experienced a turn towards activation policies during the last decades. The aim of increasing employment rates of groups formerly excluded from the labour market has required closer links with training, family or social policies with employment policy. As a result of this, we can observe modifications also in regard to policy governance, particularly emphasizing the role of the local level in implementing integrated activation policies. This article aims at testing the hypothesis of whether higher levels of stakeholder participation in the policy process lead to greater policy integration. In an explorative manner, the research hypothesis will be tested with reference to two very different cases of local activation policy. Driving factors for the differential impact of participation on policy integration will be identified through the analysis of two in-depth case studies. A qualitative process-tracing method is used in order to conduct our analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]