Michaël Tatham

Going Solo: Direct Regional Representation in the European Union

This article seeks to map out routes of direct regional interest representation in the European Union. It identifies six main opportunity structures available to regions: the Committee of the Regions, the Council of Ministers, the Commission, the European Parliament, regional Brussels offices and European networks and associations. Using original interview material, the article analyses how and under what conditions each route can be most efficient for regional interest representation. It concludes that though these opportunity structures have not triggered the emergence of a ‘Europe of the Regions’ as some of the literature in the 1990s had predicted, they do represent important channels of access that regions can use in an attempt to influence the EU policy process. These regional para-diplomatic activities bypass EU member states and consequently challenge liberal intergovernmentalist assumptions regarding the nature of EU politics.

‘With or without you’? Revisiting territorial state-bypassing in EU interest representation

Both the number and the powers of sub-state entities in the European Union (EU) have grown. These sub-state entities represent their European interests using both intra- and extra-state channels. The increasing use of the latter has encouraged scholarly literature to focus on the emerging ‘paradiplomacy’ of these entities. Sub-state paradiplomacy, however, can be both conducted in tandem with its member state or bypassing it. This article seeks to better understand such patterns of interaction between state and sub-state interest representation. Using original survey data, it tests five different hypotheses about the determinants of state bypassing and non-bypassing. It argues that devolution of powers and party politics are relevant factors explaining the frequency of bypassing and co-operative interest representation. Other factors, including size, financial resources and length of exposure to the integration process do not seem to play a role.

Devolution and EU policy-shaping: bridging the gap between multi-level governance and liberal intergovernmentalism

This paper argues that the impact of devolution has been largely misperceived in both Liberal Intergovernmentalist (LI) and Multi-Level Governance (MLG) accounts of European Union (EU) politics. To address the shortcomings of both LI and MLG, a new dataset measuring institutionalised regional involvement in the domestic EU policy-shaping process in the EU-27 is presented. Analysis shows that the relationship between devolution and institutionalised regional involvement is overall positive but non-linear, with a strong threshold effect which is best captured by a quadratic function. The causal nature of the link between devolution and institutionalised regional involvement is ascertained through qualitative means using process tracing and Mill’s Method of Difference. The article concludes to the necessary updating of MLG and LI frameworks to account for the impact of devolution on EU policy-shaping.

Territorial interest representation in the European Union: actors, objectives and strategies

When studying the ever increasing mobilization of territorial authorities in the EU context, the literature has used the term ‘subnational’ as shorthand for very different actors, with the most typical distinction made between regional and local government. In this article we propose an alternative dichotomy. We suggest that ‘stronger’ regions actually share much in common with ‘stronger’ associations of local governments, while ‘weaker’ regions exhibit a number of similarities with ‘weaker’ associations and individual local authorities. We illustrate our findings using evidence gathered from a survey of 103 regional offices in Brussels as well as interview data of 149 officials working in five different European countries. We draw on existing research in this field, as well as our own data, to take stock of key understandings around territorial interest representation and present a series of propositions concerning (1) the objectives of subnational actors, distinguishing financial from regulatory mobilization, and (2) the strategies and representation channels used by these authorities.

Paradiplomats Against the State Explaining Conflict in State and Substate Interest Representation in Brussels

Literature on substate mobilization in Europe has provided some useful insights into the factors and mechanisms shaping territorial interest representation in Brussels. Although recent studies have enhanced our understanding of the determinants of cooperative and bypassing paradiplomacy, those underpinning conflict have remained rather obscure. Using a new data set with information on more than 100 substate offices in Brussels, this article sheds some light on the determinants of conflict between member state diplomacy and substate paradiplomacy. It argues that they are very different from those of bypassing and cooperation and that resource richness and diplomatic accreditation significantly affect its frequency. These findings not only are robust to multilevel modeling and nonparametric bootstrapping but also are of theoretical import as they highlight that devolution and party political incongruence fail to affect the frequency of conflict in Brussels.

Limited institutional change in an international organization: the EU's shift away from ‘federal blindness’

The European Union (EU) has been through many institutional transformations since the start of the integration project in the 1950s. While much of the literature has focussed on the more dramatic changes, less attention has been paid to instances of more limited institutional change. This article maps out and then accounts for the limitedness of the EUs departure from its original ‘federal blindness’ vis-a-vis regional actors. Theories of institutional change would lead one to expect that, as integration and regionalization heightened, endogenous pressures for change would trigger greater reform than that observed. Using a novel formula to estimate the EUs aggregate regionalization levels over time, the article demonstrates that it peaked between 1986 and 2003 but has since dropped to a level below that of the 1950s. Such a finding not only corrects a widespread assumption about regionalization levels in the European polity, but also provides an explanation for the pace and scope of the observed change as well as predictions about its future sources.

Networkers, fund hunters, intermediaries, or policy players? The activities of regions in Brussels

Abstract Regions started opening offices in Brussels in the mid-1980s. Today, well over half of Europe’s regions are present there. What do they do once they are in Brussels? Are they mainly networking, chasing funding, acting as intermediaries, monitoring legislation, or trying to influence the EU’s decision-making process? No study has analysed this question apart from the pioneering work by Marks et al. in 2002. This article breaks new ground by analysing both group-level and contextual factors in a series of multilevel models. Based on a survey of regional offices in Brussels, results indicate that contextual factors, such as levels of self-government back home, matter. However, group-level characteristics, such as an office’s longevity in Brussels, seem to affect a wider range of activities. Overall, older offices are more interested in the EU policy-making process and less interested in chasing funds or networking. Conversely, offices representing regions with weaker self-governing capacities rather conceive of their role as that of an intermediary, acting as an interface between the region and the EU institutions.

Competence ring-fencing from below? The drivers of regional demands for control over upwards dispersion

ABSTRACT Powers have been transferred and delegated to varying degrees of depth and scope at both the sub- and supranational levels. The resulting competence overlap is sometimes substantial. This has driven a number of regional authorities to demand a greater say in future power dispersion movements to the supranational level, so as to pre-empt their proportional disempowerment. We investigate what drives these demands using interview data collected from over 300 senior regional officials in 60 regions and five countries. Controlling for economic and demographic characteristics, we find that the status quo institutional arrangement in place for each region, both supranationally (the Committee of the Regions) and domestically (shared rule and self-rule) significantly affects such demands. These findings have implications for our understanding of how different public authorities cope with power dispersion. They also shed some light on the factors which shape their preferences for alternative institutional arrangements.

Policy Analysis, International Relations, and European Governance: Beyond Disciplinary Boundaries

ABSTRACT The article highlights the rationale of the special issue in terms of its objectives and guiding principles. It maps different evolutions and challenges within three analytical streams (1) regarding the field of policy analysis, (2) concerning the interaction between domestic and international affairs, and (3) with regards to the transformation of European Union governance in troubled times. These three research avenues highlight how not only European governance itself has evolved in a changing world, but also how the analysis of interests, institutions, and policy-making has morphed, oftentimes transgressing disciplinary and methodological boundaries.

Same Game but More Players? Sub-national Lobbying in an Enlarged Union

Abstract This contribution builds on the insights provided by the literature on sub-national mobilization in the European Union (EU) to assess whether the 2004–2007 rounds of enlargement have changed anything in this respect. Empirical analysis uses two types of data sources. The first is a survey of over a 100 regional offices in Brussels, and the second consists of 29 semi-structured interviews with Commission officials led in the aftermath of the 2004–2007 enlargements. These data are used to answer the following two research questions: (1) is there a ‘new’ versus ‘old’ cleavage at the territorial level in Brussels? (2) Is there anything like an ‘enlargement effect’ on sub-national mobilization? Analysis reveals that, while there is fading evidence of a ‘new’ versus ‘old’ cleavage in Brussels, enlargement has nevertheless had an impact on sub-national mobilization at the EU level, reinforcing older but also newer trends.