Cross‐border regionalisation in the ‘New Europe’ ‐ theoretical reflection with two illustrative examples

Bibliographic Data

ID7785155
AuthorsJouni Häkli (0000-0002-3033-2976, Tampere University, corresponding author)
Year1998
Volume3
Issue3
Pages83-103
Publication date1998-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueGeopolitics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1465-0045 • E-ISSN: 1557-3028
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14650049808407629
OpenAlexW2009751347
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited44

Regionalisation has recently become a catchword both in political practice and academic discourse. Even if the idea of the ‘Europe of the Regions’ is no longer uncritically accepted, regional imagination still frequently informs the analysis of the European political order. This article seeks to chart alternative ways of understanding political change in Europe. It first outlines the current understanding of the role of regions in Europe, and seeks to put contemporary ideas into historical perspective. The article then examines the standard way of analysing regionalism, the ‘top‐down, bottom‐up’ metaphor. By looking at the scales of politics from a social constructionist perspective the article shows that this widely‐used metaphor does not adequately capture much of the political history of region building, nor is it able to identify the relations of power involved in regionalisation in the era of expanding trans‐boundary linkages and networks across state borders. By illustrating cross‐border regionalisation with examples from Karelia and Catalonia, the article seeks to assess some of the tensions that arise between the new deterritorialised forms of trans‐regional governance and the traditional democratic practice, which is still tightly connected to areal political spaces both institutionally and in terms of the inhabitants’ collective identity. The article argues for a heightened awareness of the relational social power characteristic of network governance and potential leaks in the ‘territorial containers’ of democracy

Corporate governance · Democracy · Economics · Epistemology · Metaphor · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Regionalisation · Sociology · Cross-Border Cooperation and Integration · European Union Policy and Governance · Law · Political Systems and Governance

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