Subnational Governance Approaches on the Rise—Reviewing a Decade of Eastern European Regionalization Research

Abstract

This article reviews the past decade of decentralization and regionalization research on the new Eastern European member states of the EU (EU-10). We classify the existing literature according to focus of analysis, explanatory programme and methodological preferences, and propose a distinction between three different research agendas: system transformation, EU conditionality and subnational governance. We argue that with respect to the EU-10, scholarly interest in the perspectives of state transformation and conditionality is waning. By contrast, the subnational governance approach is growing in relevance because it represents the cornerstone of a multi-level governance perspective that is able to integrate what have up to now been separate debates about regionalism in Eastern and Western Europe.