Regions, states and the European Union: Modernist reaction or postmodern adaptation?

Abstract

How is European integration best conceptualized? How and why are relations between regions, states and the European Union changing? This article combines theoretical and empirical analysis of recent developments, especially the partial ‘unbundling’ of state sovereignty and the growth of sub‐state regionalism in response to intensified global competition. It explores the uses and limitations of ‘postmodern’ and ‘new medieval’ conceptualizations of territoriality; the possibility that globalization is producing a fundamental shift in the underlying time‐space of territorial politics; and the increasing need to differentiate between the various roles of the state, as globalization impacts very unevenly on different policy areas. The European Union has been characterized as the world's ‘first truly postmodern international political form’ and the empirical analysis confirms significant ‘unbundling’ of territorial sovereignty. Sub‐state regionalism is encouraged by some of the central institutions of the EU and by forces within the regions themselves responding to the Single European Market. However, more ambivalent and contradictory stances are taken by the member states, especially the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland which are among the most centralized and ‘anti‐regionalist’. Supra‐state and sub‐state developments continue to be crucially conditioned by the power of states; and analogies to the very different circumstances of medieval Europe have to be substantially qualified, not least because the differences are as revealing as the similarities. This perspective helps steer a path between underestimating and exaggerating contemporary changes.

Keywords:

• European integration
• globalization
• territorial sovereignty
• regionalism
• ‘new medievalism’
• ‘postmodernity’