Regions And Regionalism In Europe

The last half century has seen the rise across Europe of a new intermediate level of government and politics, usually referred to as a region. However the term 'region' means many different things and can be approached from many different angles - geographical, historical, cultural, social, economic and political. Although it is in Europe that regionalism as a multiform phenomenon has developed furthest, the European experience resonates in other parts of the world, where some of these elements also exist. In this volume, Michael Keating has selected some of the most significant previously published articles which provide a comprehensive overview of past and current thinking on this subject.

Europe, Regions and European Regionalism examines the political role of regions and regionalism within contemporary Europe. Offering an up-to-date analysis of regionalism with a broad empirical scope, this book explores regions and regionalism in the period after the substantial enlargements of the European Union.

This collective volume shows how Ukraine can best be understood through its regions and how the regions must be considered against the background of the nation. The overarching objective of the book is to challenge the dominance of the nation-state paradigm in the analyses of Ukraine by illustrating the interrelationship between national and regional dynamics of change. The authors—historians, sociologists, anthropologists, economists, literary critics and linguists from Ukraine, Poland, Switzerland, Germany and the USA—explicitly go beyond the perspective of an entity defined by traditional political borders and cultural, economic, historical or religious stereotypes. The research project that led to the composition of the book combined quantitative (statistical surveys conducted across Ukraine) and qualitative (in-depth interviews and focus-group discussion) methods. The authors came to the conclusion that regionalism as a defining phenomenon of Ukraine is more prominent than the regions themselves. This approach regards Ukraine as a construct in flux where different discourses intersect, concur and eventually merge through the lenses of various disciplines and methodologies.

The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Regionalism - the first of its kind - offers a systematic and wide-ranging survey of the scholarship on regionalism, regionalization, and regional governance. Unpacking the major debates, leading authors of the field synthesize the state of the art, provide a guide to the comparative study of regionalism, and identify future avenues of research. Twenty-seven chapters review the theoretical and empirical scholarship with regard to the emergence of regionalism, the institutional design of regional organizations and issue-specific governance, as well as the effects of regionalism and its relationship with processes of regionalization. The authors explore theories of cooperation, integration, and diffusion explaining the rise and the different forms of regionalism. The handbook also discusses the state of the art on the world regions: North America, Latin America, Europe, Eurasia, Asia, North Africa and the Middle East, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Various chapters survey the literature on regional governance in major issue areas such as security and peace, trade and finance, environment, migration, social and gender policies, as well as democracy and human rights. Finally, the handbook engages in cross-regional comparisons with regard to institutional design, dispute settlement, identities and communities, legitimacy and democracy, as well as inter- and transregionalism.

Much has been said about the driving forces of region-building processes or regionalization worldwide, yet few systematic and comparative studies have been conducted on how regions can contribute to the building of other regions - and more concretely, how the European Union has 'pushed' for regionalization worldwide. This comparative book investigates the impact that the EU has on regionalization elsewhere through its inter-regional relations. Covering agriculture, trade, ASEAN, NAFTA, MERCOSUR and Commonwealth amongst other topics, it investigates whether the EU contributes directly, as well as indirectly, to increased regional integration in different parts of the world.

Southeastern Europe is often portrayed as an area plagued by endemic nationalisms, a view that seems to be confirmed by the break-up of Yugoslavia. However, a closer look shows that the nation is not the only territorial unit of identification. Regions play an important role as well, especially those that look back on traditions that differ from those of the national state. Thus, the end of socialism also brought forward regional movements which articulated opposition to the dominance of the centralized state. These developments are furthered by the integration into the European Union, whose policy of a "Europe of the Regions" demands strong regional centres for the administration of structural funds and for the empowerment of the regions. The contributions to this volume address the dynamics of regions, regionalism and regional identities in present Southeast Europe, but also look into the history of individual regions. They provide ample material for understanding the complex nature of territorial identification in this rapidly changing part of Europe.

This book examines why regional identities are stronger in some regions than in others, and discusses the underlying causes of the mobilization of sub-state regions in Western Europe over the past fifty years.

This book presents a new approach to studying the European Union’s regional and global relevance. It recasts into a dynamic perspective the three most significant systemic processes that define the EU as a regionalist project: its enlargement, neighborhood, and mega-regional policies. The book argues that these processes collectively demonstrate a dynamic shift of the core tenets of European regionalism from an inward-looking process of region building to an open, selective system of global interactions.

Is Europe witnessing the death of the once mighty nation-state? If it is, then two of the most powerful factors in its post-war decline have been European integration and regionalism. Both challenge the nation state's monopoly of authority - one from above, the other from below. Although it is increasingly recognized that the two are connected. This book provides a definitive examination of the new patterns of politics and policy that link the three levels of European Union, nation state, and region. Looking at each member state in turn the authors emphasize the diversity of the European experience. European integration has differing impacts on different regions. In some it is seen as a threat, centralizing power and increasing their peripherality. To others it is an opportunity to by-pass national governments and assert their personality. The authors are sceptical of the `Europe of the Regions' scenario, in which nation states fade away in favour of the other two levels. But they do show how the Maastricht commitment to subsidiarity together with the twin forces of European integration and regional assertion are profoundly changing the politics of Europe as it moves into the twenty-first century.

In reaction to the centralizing nation-building efforts of states in nineteenth-century Europe, many regions began to define their own identity. In thirteen stimulating essays, specialists analyze why regional identities became widely celebrated towards the end of that century and why some considered themselves part of the new national self-image.