The Regions And The New Europe

The contributors argue that some regions, such as Emilia-Romagna, Baden-Wurttemberg, and Rhone-Alpes, have been highly successful in launching regional development strategies. Others, such as the English and certain southern European regions lack the economic resources and institutional structures to follow these examples. The book analyses the reasons for success and failure, and considers the strategic development options open to the less developed European regions.

Regions in Europe explores the state of regional politics in an increasingly integrated Europe. It argues that the predicted rise of increased political power at the regional level has failed to materialise and is fraught with paradox. In doing so this study locates regions in relation to European integration, globalisation, the nation state, local government, and comparative and national perspectives. Using case studies of the main players in Europe including: * Germany * France * UK * Italy * Spain * the Netherlands * Belgium. the contributors show how and why European regions remain remarkably weak in European governance.

This book is the first quantitative description of Europe’s economic development at a regional level over the entire twentieth century. Based on a new and comprehensive set of data, it brings together a group of leading economic historians in order to describe and analyze the development of European regions, both for nation states and for Europe as a whole. This provides a new transnational perspective on Europe’s quantitative development, offering for the first time a systematic long-run analysis of national policies independent from the use of national statistical units. The new transnational dimension of data allows for the analysis of national policies in a more thorough way than ever before. The book provides a comprehensive database at the level of modern NUTS 2 regions for the period 1900–2010 in 10-year intervals, and a panoramic view of economic development both below and above the national level. It will be of great interest to economic historians, economic geographers, development economists and those with an interest in economic growth.

Offering a novel contribution within the growing field of regional innovation policies, this book combines recent theoretical developments and empirical contributions, with a particular focus on non-core regions. Leading academics in the field discuss the topics of regional path transformation, place-based strategies and policy learning. Also included are sections on the role of EU institutions on the promotion of regional innovation and the analysis and comparison of the innovation policies experiences of four non-core European regions.

With EU and NATO membership for the Baltic States now a reality, this volume examines the relationship of the three countries, their constituent peoples and their surrounding region to the wider Europe, both historically and in the period since 1991. In particular, the contributors seek to locate the Baltic area within the manifold debates surrounding the concepts of "new" and "old" Europe, including those occasioned by the current conflict in Iraq. Covering issues of identity, sovereignty, minority rights, security and relations with Russia the work assesses the likely contribution of this region to an enlarged Euro-Atlantic community. It will appeal to specialists and students in the fields of area studies, history, politics and international relations.

This book presents a new approach to studying the European Union’s regional and global relevance. It recasts into a dynamic perspective the three most significant systemic processes that define the EU as a regionalist project: its enlargement, neighborhood, and mega-regional policies. The book argues that these processes collectively demonstrate a dynamic shift of the core tenets of European regionalism from an inward-looking process of region building to an open, selective system of global interactions.