How scholars break down “policy coherence”: The impact of sustainable development global agendas on academic literature

Literature on policy coherence (PC) has been expanding particularly since the diffusion of the 2030 Agenda to better understand intersectoral policymaking and steering governance complexity in sustainable development, environmental and climate policies. Through research domain analysis (RDA), this article gives systematic evidence regarding the rise of PC literature; moreover, via content analysis, the research highlights the most relevant topics addressed by PC articles published over the last 20 years. Our analysis pinpoints that policy coherence has been studied regarding some research areas, such as sustainable development, environment, climate change, and the increasing transboundary governance concerns. Thus far, PC has been scrutinized mainly by addressing the implementation phase. Evidence suggests that, within the 2030 Agenda framework, future research and theoretical efforts should consider neglected dimensions of the policy process and incorporate them in a process-oriented analytical framework.