Societal Regionalisation in Eastern and Western Europe
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Societal Regionalisation in Eastern and Western Europe (Workshop Proposal) by Jürgen Dieringer (Central European University, Budapest, Hungary) and Roland Sturm (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany) Outline of the topic: This workshop is a proposal from the Standing Group on Regionalism. It is in an area in which that group has identified a priority for research, and it is not a topic which has been covered in recent ECPR meetings. The workshop has three major aims (1) it brings together current research on regions in Eastern and Western Europe ;(2) it concentrates on the social and political consequences of regionalisation and therefore debates the dimension of regionalisation behind institutional change and (3) it discusses regionalisation in the context of the Europeanisation of regions. Relation to existing research: Existing research has highlighted processes and dynamics of regionalisation mostly in Western industrial societies. There is a rich comparative literature which traditionally excluded Eastern Europe. Only recently have some collected volumes been published which concentrate on Eastern Europe. What is still lacking, however, is both the analysis of cases in Eastern Europe in the same depth which exists for Western Europe and a theoretical framework of analysis which allows us to look at European cases not along geographical lines, but oriented towards more explicit research questions. For Eastern Europe - but also to some extent for the West European cases - there are many examples of research which does not go beyond the debate of regionalisation, i.e. institutional reform, in the narrow sense. Successful regionalisation is, however, more than political reform. It changes societies. Party competition, interest group activities, patterns of political careers, cultural change, the relationship between region and central state - all depend on the social embeddedness of regionalism. The social embeddedness of regionalism is the topic of the workshop. The literature on the social embeddedness of regionalisation which deals with the West European experience has developed research questions which have shed light on regional civil societies mostly with regard to their contribution to the relative economic success of regions (social capital hypothesis). Research has also produced insights into regional political cultures and politics of identity. It has been shown that regional identities can be constructed and instrumentalized. Research guided by historical institutionalism has shown the path dependency of the forms and values connected with the formation of regional identities. There is even talk - also in other disciplines (geography, history) - of a „spatial turn“ following/ and or accompanying the „cultural turn“ in the social sciences. Whether or not we need a change of paradigms to understand the relative importance of regionalism in societies is a topic under dispute. So far, we can only assume that in Eastern Europe processes of regionalisation parallel to the better researched West European experience are at work. Formal regionalisation in Eastern Europe was mostly stimulated by the transfer of the acquis communautaire into national realities. Still, East European societies are not without historical and functional regional dimensions. So the question arises whether regional reform, which is not unknown to Western Europe (Britain, Spain, Belgium, France etc.), in any way (or in a way similar to the West European experience) connects the social demand for regional representation and participation with the new institutions. Research on the German Länder has argued that artificial boundaries of regions are 1 not in itself a problem, they can over time form a new political space which finds widespread acceptance in the regional population. If we find a misfit of societal and institutional regionalism in Eastern Europe, is this a situation comparable to the German experience or are other consequences more likely? There is a rich literature on interest intermediation between regions in West European nations, and between those regions and their central states. Even cross-border regional cooperation is well researched. It is an open question, however, wether these research results will help us to understand how regions in Eastern Europe interact with their central states, and how they organize their representation (creation and role of political elites) of regional societies vis-a-vis their nation states. The social embeddedness of regionalism is today no longer only a national phenomenon. With the enlargement of the EU and the role the EU plays for the development of its regions social embeddedness has a marked European dimension. This is another new variable which needs to be included into the research design. Again there is research literature on Western Europe, also literature which offers theoretical insights, on the Europeanisation of regions. What we do not know so far is whether the hypotheses developed here will survive the test in Eastern Europe and whether they are flexible enough to cover also the social embeddedness of regionalisation. Europeanisation as such has many dimensions. There is for example the formal acceptance of European imperatives by legislation and institution-building, there is imitation by policy-learning and institutional isomorphism, there is the constructivist view that mind maps of political elites change and adapt to the new realities and there is the game theoretic perspective of multi-level games, which explains preference building and the shift of responsibilities as well as the competition of decision-making arenas. For all these approaches we find literature which develops theories and uses them for understanding processes of Europeanisation. What can these approaches contribute to our effort to bring the experience of Eastern and Western Europe together, and is there a chance to create a fruitful theoretical synthesis, which also allows us to concentrate on the social reality of regionalism and therefore look behind the realities of regional administration? Participants: We plan to invite participants from Eastern and Western Europe who do research work in the field described above. We can rely on a network of contacts, but there is no closed group involved. Among those invited could be Laszlo Bruszt (European University Insitute, Florence/ CEE Budapest), Michael Keating (EUI), Ovidiu Pecican (Cluj Napoca), Brigit Fowler (Birmingham), Sean Loughlin (Cardiff), Petra Zimmermann-Steinhart (Erlangen-Nürnberg), Michèle Knodt (Mannheim), Mario Caciagli (Florence), Sabine Kropp (Düsseldorf), Frank Delmartino (Leuven), Dieter Freiburghaus (Lausanne), Roman Szul (Warsaw), Pierre Kukawka (Grenoble), Nicole Lindstrom (CEE), Sabine Menu (Science Po, Paris), and Tanja Börzel (Heidelberg). The workshop will, of course, remain open for a significant group of other participants. Type of paper: We would like to attract three kinds of papers. Our first preferences are comparative papers and papers which develop the theoretical concept of „societal regionalism“. All the papers should try to bridge the gap between research on regionalism in Eastern and Western Europe. This can be done by theoretical efforts 2 and/ or East-West comparisons which lead to theoretical insights. We will also accept case studies, especially with regard to cases of regionalism which are so far underresearched, but only if they situate themselves in the broader context of societal regionalism shaped by the Europeanisation of regional societies and institutions. Funding: For some of the East European participants we can provide funds from a research project funded by the VW foundation. We will also apply for additional funding to the Hanns-Seidel Foundation, München (Germany) and the Central European University, Budapest (Hungary). German participants can approach the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for support. Given the quality of the papers we aim at, there are several possibilities to publish them, for example in Sean Louglin‘s or Michael Keatings‘s book series, in the book series of the „European Centre for Research on Federalism“ or in the CEU series. Biographical note: Roland Sturm is Professor of Political Science at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany. He is head of the interdisciplinary research unit „Europe‘s regions“ of this university‘s „Centre for regional studies“. Roland Sturm is also affiliated to the European Centre for Research on Federalism of Tübingen University and a member of the ECPR standing group on regionalism. He has published widely in the field of regionalism and federalism and on European politics, regularly in the Jahrbuch des Föderalismus and most recently for example in the Handbook of Federal Countries and on German federalism in: Ludger Helms: Institutions and Institutional Change in the Federal Republic of Germany (Macmillan 2000). The latest book in the field of regionalism was „Föderalismus in Deutschland“, München 2003. Roland Sturm and Jürgen Dieringer are currently responsible for a research project on the societal regionalisation of Romania, Hungary and Poland which is funded by the VW-Foundation (grant: 248.300 Euro). Jürgen Dieringer is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Andrássy University, Budapest, and also staff member at the Central European University. He has published comparative work on Central and Eastern European politics and regularly on the regionalisation of Hungary, also in comparison with other countries of Eastern Europe. 3 .