Europeanization mechanisms in context: metropolitan development through integrated territorial investments in Central and Eastern Europe

ABSTRACT

Europeanization affects policies in much of Europe, but has uneven impacts in different regions. The aim of this paper is to causally explain how and why actors reacted to the European Union (EU) policy. We tested the presence of social learning and coercion mechanisms and how their operation was conditioned by policy capacities (contextual factors). Europeanization is traced through integrated territorial investment (ITI) implementation, a new EU Cohesion Policy tool. The Ostrava Metropolitan Region case study in Czechia revealed that national-level actors had responded dominantly to ITI by social learning and local actors with coercion.

KEYWORDS:

• Europeanization
• integrated development
• social learning
• coercion
• policy capacities
• cooperation

JEL:

• D73
• D83
• O21
• R58

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We thank two anonymous referees and František Kubeš for their helpful comments and suggestions on the earlier draft of this paper.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Actors’ reaction to implementation process, being part of the Europeanization process (cf. Radaelli, 2004), is the dependent variable being explained. We do not focus on any other phase of the policy cycle, or else on the fulfilment of the policy long-term objectives.

2. This article concentrates on polity and policy, while outcomes in politics are mentioned rather marginally.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of Czechia under the grant ‘SMART Technologies to Improve the Quality of Life in Cities and Regions’ [grant number CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/17_049/0008452].