Inconsistencies in the Governance of Interdisciplinarity: the Case of the Italian Higher Education System

Abstract Interdisciplinary research is widely considered pivotal to addressing the challenges of modern societies. Accordingly, interdisciplinarity has become prominent in policy discourse for science and higher education (HE). However, little research has explored how interdisciplinarity is considered in governance arrangements of HE systems. This article contributes to this stream of literature by studying the governance of interdisciplinarity at the system level, considering the policy portfolio in a continental European context. Particularly, we investigate whether the policy portfolio in the Italian HE system is consistent towards interdisciplinarity, defining three types of inconsistency: ambiguity, conflict, and incompatibility. Four governance domains are analysed: i) universities’ internal organization, ii) institutional research assessment exercise, iii) doctoral education, and iv) academic recruitment/careers. We find that although some elements favouring interdisciplinarity have been introduced, a disciplinary rationale still dominates system governance and that the interdisciplinary target is hindered by policy inconsistencies within and between governance domains.