Abstract

Vocational education and training (Vet) has a central role in Social Investment (SI) strategies aiming at increasing the stock of human capital and facilitating the flow into the labour market of young people. In the article, we compare Vet multilevel governance structures in Italy and Austria, considering both the national and sub-national (regional) scales of governance, to draw important insights on the contribution of Vet to SI employment outcomes and its territorial variation in respective national and local contexts. Given the relevance of sub-national variation in skills systems, we focus on the regional cases of Vienna and Lombardy within their countries’ framework, as multilevel structures interact with territorial contexts and give origin to specific practices and outcomes at the local level. The dimensions of comparison are drawn by literature on coordination and rescaling, looking in particular at the horizontal and vertical axis of coordination of policy provision in multilevel governance structures