The Europeanization of Regions as ‘Spaces for Politics’: A Research Agenda

Abstract

Through its collective regulation, the European Union (EU) has institutionalized as a critical space for public action. Yet, frequently regions are considered ‘objects’ of EU politics, rather than ‘subjects’ of its daily government. Moving away from dominant narratives on the relationship between the ‘region’ and the ‘EU’, we propose a new research agenda which draws on sociological applications of the Europeanization literature and re-frames the problematic towards studying regions as ‘spaces for EU politics’. Significantly, this approach identifies actor political usages of social representations of ‘territory’ as critical in explaining regional actors’ transformation from ‘objects’ to ‘subjects’ of EU government.

Keywords:

• European integration
• spatial power
• sociological institutionalism
• Europeanization
• regional political capacity

Notes

By which we mean rules and norms.

See also Bourne (2003), who identifies a ‘no impact’ account of these relationships, which we do not discuss here.

The first of these were set up in 1984 and 1985 by the city of Birmingham and the regions of Hambourg and Sarre. By 1993, there were 64 regional offices, 118 by 1997 and more than 244 by 2002.

Two types of association have been identified: those serving primarily a representative function and those that are ‘issue-based’.

The role of the EP is not always acknowledged in this narrative.

See, particularly, the study of Clarence Stone (1993), who defines urban regimes as “a capacity to govern”, i.e. the capacity of actors’ coalitions (private and public) to produce collective regulation over the long term.