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Abstract
The negotiating powers of regional authorities in the European Union (EU) have become more evident, especially with decentralization and regionalization happening across Europe. This empirical case study of regional interest representation offers a comparative analysis of the negotiations for the 2007–13 and 2014–20 EU Structural Funds. Based on qualitative interviews with German subnational officials, this paper explores how the German federal states (Länder) represented their interests at the federal and supranational level. It will be shown that the modes of interest representation changed which can largely be attributed to social learning. This article contributes to existing literature by illustrating the move towards co-operative interest representation with intra-state subnational mobilization.
Acknowledgements
Michaël Tatham deserves much credit and many thanks for help with this paper, be it with the title, the research design or later revisions. The author would also like to thank Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks for their impetus as well as three anonymous reviewers for their comments.
Notes
1. All translations from German to English were done by the author.
2. The author would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for valuable comments on the role of the reform commissions.