In Italy, territorial disparities are a long-standing issue affecting various marginalised areas such as the south, mountainous regions and rural areas. This complexity has led to fragmented policies and diverse theoretical approaches, creating a stratification of interventions and analyses. The National Strategy for Inner Areas (SNAI),identifying inner areas as a national issue, has sought to integrate different geographies into a single framework. Since 2014, with a place-based approach, the SNAI has launched a first phase characterised by a strong methodological imprint, followed by a second phase, still ongoing, which is redesigning its governance and methods. This contribution attempts to reconstruct the genesis of this public policy, highlighting its distinctive features.
