Abstract
Over the past 50 years, an increasing amount of political authority has been delegated to the regional government level in Europe. This paper analyses regional demands for involvement in policy-making by focusing on the preferences of top-level regional civil servants (“regio-crats”). A survey (n=347) of regio-crats in 60 regions of 5 European Union member states serves as the empirical basis for the analysis of regional demands for policy involvement in the multilevel system. The data reveal differential patterns of demands. By and large, regio-crats emerge as being conservative, incremental and modest in their wishes for greater policy involvement, except where the regional contexts are characterised by substantial emancipatory political ambitions or cultural distinctiveness. Regional demands for policy participation in the multilevel system are pragmatic, patch-worked and incremental, and more conservative than transformative.
Highlights
Over the past 50 years, regions – and especially those in today’s European Union – have been entrusted with ever greater political authority (Hooghe et al 2010)
We argue that the preferences of regio-crats represent a general estimate of subnational political ambitions to participate in the European multilevel governance system
Other studies have shown that individual opportunity structures – especially in the case of bureaucrats – are driving forces behind preference formation (Niskanen 1971; Dunleavy 1985; Searing 1991, 1994).Regarding the question of regional authorities’ policy competences, we argue that top-level subnational bureaucrats will desire the allocation of competences to the regional level if they expect some gain for themselves
Summary
Over the past 50 years, regions – and especially those in today’s European Union – have been entrusted with ever greater political authority (Hooghe et al 2010). Notwithstanding the growing political importance of regions, we know very little about the elites who run these subnational political structures, who shape regional political decisions and implement political programmes. We want to help fill this research gap by focussing on the preferences of top-level regional civil servants (“regio-crats”). We put centre stage the question of the role of regions in the European multilevel governance context. Two questions are raised: What explains regiocrats’ preferences regarding involvement in policy-making (by their respective regions) in the multilevel system and, do we need regional-level variables in order to conduct a satisfying analysis of subnational preferences regarding vertical competence allocation?
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