Between EU Requirements, Competitive Politics, and National Traditions: Re-creating Regions in the Accession Countries of Central and Eastern Europe (original) (raw)
2009
The author provides an analytical model to capture mechanisms of supranational impact on national public administrations. The aim is to understand how we can perceive a European administrative space given the persistent diversity between member states. In face of the overly complex subject matter, it is argued that a typology that presents ideal types of interaction modes between supranational and national levels of administration provides in fact a suitable pragmatic approach to understand the potential impact of European integration on national civil services. Scrutinizing which mechanisms of possible influencetaking the European Union (EU) invokes shows that administrative integration does actually not suggest overall convergence. Instead the shared administrative space works precisely because it preserves statesensitive diversity. Only in the context of enlargement did the EU need to present a single model to the candidate states and thus the notion of an ever more converging single administrative space was invented.
Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 2007
This edited volume looks at recent changes in the systems of local government across a broad spectrum of advanced industrial democracies. More specifically, the introduction states that the aim of the book is to explore whether a shift from local government to local governance is widely noticeable or just a British peculiarity. The editors present Comparing Local Governance as an attempt to overcome the limitations of single-author volumes on similar subjects by drawing on the expertise of specialists from numerous countries (page 9). Although the richness of the case studies is surely enhanced by this approach, a price seems to be paid in terms of the comparability of the country reports and the emergence of a clear theoretical argument. In part these issues are a result of the structure of the book. This volume largely consists of individual chapters covering experiences in one specific country. The exception to the rule is the contribution by Rose and Sta® hlberg, which presents a comparison between Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Sweden. This country-based structure allows the individual cases to be presented in a coherent way, but limits the comparative element of the volume to the introductory and two concluding chapters. Although these general chapters draw the country experiences together in a coherent fashion, the body of the book reads more like a collection of case studies than a comparative work. In my opinion, a volume like John's Local Governance in Western Europe (2001), which is organised around challenges and elements of change rather than cases, invites the reader to engage in a more continuous between-country comparison. To aid case comparability the editors of this volume have set out a number of key trends and challenges to be addressed in each of the country-based chapters. Although the introduction briefly establishes this framework, it is unfortunately not developed very thoroughly. The complex challenges posed by socioeconomic and political macro trends, such as urbanisation, globalisation, and Europeanisation, receive only very brief attention. Likewise, the changing nature of demands on local government, in particular in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, and citizen participation, are described in broad terms and scarcely linked back to the macro trends developed in the previous section. Since these are the organising principles of the comparison, more attention could perhaps have been devoted to exploring these trends and the challenges they pose for local government. Furthermore, the country experts have received a fairly large level of discretion, both in terms of the content and presentation of their contributions. As a result, the trends and challenges set out in the introduction are at times difficult to distinguish within the country-based chapters. Another issue that comes up as one progresses through the book is the relatively limited attention paid to the concept of governance. Although other developments in local government may indeed be more interesting in many cases, the title of the book creates expectations of a more thorough treatment of this subject. Despite the attempt to draw together the evidence in the concluding chapters, the reader cannot escape the feeling that he or she is reading a series of country studies on recent developments in local government, of which a move towards governance is one, rather than a comparative study into the emergence of local governance in Western democracies. Again, John's book, though relying more heavily on secondary literature, seems to provide a much more focused and truly comparative analysis of the emergence of the local governance phenomenon. In my opinion, the charm of this volume therefore lies not so much in its international comparison, but in the insight it gives into recent changes in local government in a broad range of advanced industrial democracies. Unlike the book by John, this volume includes one of the new member states, Poland, as well as three non-European countries, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, in the analysis. Each chapter provides a knowledgable overview Reviews
Europeanization of regional policy in Bulgaria – the establishment of a regional level of governance
2015
The study has intended to analyze the Europeanization of the institutional structure for regional policy in Bulgaria after the first programming period of the country as a full-fledged member state of the EU. Bulgaria joined the EU in 2007 as part of the so called ‘Eastern Enlargement’ that was characterized by power asymmetry and strong conditionality. The study employs two research methods – document analysis of key policy documents and legislation, as well as qualitative interviews with key respondents with involvement or experience in the field of regional policy and development in Bulgaria. The analysis is underpinned by the concept of Europeanization and historical institutionalism which complement each other in order to explain the changes and the reasons for them. The main findings show that the EU requirements are only ‘accommodated’ in the already existing institutional structure of Bulgaria and real transformation has not occurred. The established regional level still doe...
The role of regional and local authorities in EU development strategies. SRi L 2013
the Role of Regional and local authoRities in eu… development policies in the peRspective of the committee of the Regions. multi-level goveRnance Revisited in the times of cRisis Summary: Regional and local authorities today face a twofold challenge of delivering locally responsive policies in accordance with EU development goals. For this reason they need to align their development strategies with European guidelines. This paper determines the drivers and hindering factors behind the effective involvement of local and regional authorities in drafting and implementing EU policies with territorial impact. It evaluates several examples of multi-level governance operating in the institutional context of the EU and identifies its most important weaknesses such as lack of regional administrative capacities; insufficient Europeanization of subnational elites and inadequate communication between EU, national and regional levels.
The impact of European institutions on local and regional development
2019
A united Europe is the sum up of how different regions live together and find common perspectives. This does not fit only as a political, social or philosophical idea, but since the creation of the European Union, regional development remains one of the most important cornerstones of the institutions of EU. Different legislative acts of EU institutions refer something in specific about regions policy, regional development etc, but since 1994 the issue of the regions in Europe has been treated throughout a specific institution: European Committee of the Regions. On the other hand, the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, Council of Europe is established to make sure that the principles of the European Charter of Local Self-Government are observed through systematic monitoring and regular dialogue with the governments of the Council of Europe member states. Member states of European Union are also member states of Council of Europe. This paperwork aims to: - Find concrete impa...
This paper sets out a programmatic approach to the study of the congruence between processes of European integration, on the one hand, and processes of regional governance, on the other. First, we present a critical overview of two existent 'narratives' on the effects of 'Europeanisation' on regional governance -narratives which, we argue, lend credence to a particular vision of the multi-level polity which fails to capture the significance of new centre-periphery dynamics. Second, we argue that European integration produces complex dynamics of 'ex post Communautisation' and 'ex ante Europeanisation' at the regional level, dynamics which can be researched through a refined application of institutionalist tools developed within the Europeanisation literature to the regional level. To move research beyond deterministic approaches, we propose a framework for the generation of new comparative research. In so doing, we give prominence to the 'ideology of EU polity-building' as a variable in the Europeanisation of the regions and thus place territorial beliefs at the heart of our analysis.
European Integration Reconsidered: Redistribution of Authority in European Union Member States
An arena in which the implications of increased subnational authority are particularly important is the European Union. In addition to the decentralization process experienced throughout Europe, the EU states also are undergoing the simultaneous process of supranational institution-building. We see increasing interest in regions and other subnational govemments and groups on the part of the EU, such as the long-standing importance placed on regional/structural policy and the recent creation of the Committee of the Regions in an advisory capacity. In turn, the emergence of subnational entities with increased political and economic power has potentially important consequences for European integration. The current paper first critiques the disparate literature that studies the transfer of governmental authority to a lower level within the nation-state. It then argues that an altemative conceptualization, "redistribution of authority", based on the institutional capacities, fu...
The paper provides an analytical narrative of Bulgaria's changes in regional policy-making structures in relation to the country's joining the EU. The country has undergone several important stages in its regional policy framework and structure since the beginning of its transition to market democracy. First, local self-government is exercised only at the municipal level, with the mezzo-level always representing a de-concentration of central government powers. Second, the mezzo-level of government has been reformed twice, going from 28 districts to 9 regions, and then to 28 districts under 6 planning regions, with the planning regions also undergoing a major revision once so far. This dynamic indicates a regional policy-making structure which is in a state of flux. Over the last decade the single major shaper of these changes has been EU candidacy and membership, mainly through the requirements for NUTS2 regions in relation to cohesion policies. The goal of the paper on Bulg...
2007
This paper deals with emerging configurations of developmental regionalism, different patterns of multi-level governance in the CEE countries using examples from the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. EU conditionality and pre-accession programmes linked to the idea of a Europe of the Regions played considerable role in the changing, and in the case of some of the aspiring member countries, in the creating of regional institutional landscapes. While later, the same programmes became instigators of (re)centralization and re-nationalization, the interaction between uniform EU conditionality and diverse domestic conditions resulted in various emerging versions of NMG, different configurations of regionalism
Europeanisation of Territorial Governance in Three Eastern/Central European Countries
2009
The current study attempts to find correlations between the Europeanisation of national and territorial public administrations and the requirement system of Structural Funds' management. The paper introduces the development of territorial administrations and the system of regional development policy management in three member states (first of all in Hungary based on our own research experience and relying on less detailed literature and information from Poland and Slovakia). The analysis of processes affecting territorial public administrations and the analysis of the driving forces will point out the conflicts of the administrations' Europeanisation and the barriers of adapting external models in a Central or Eastern European region lacking real traditions of decentralisation and similarly regional identity. The future of the Structural Funds beyond 2013 is an even more open question. However, this fact does not exempt the CEE countries from the responsibility of treating the mesotier decentralisation.