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The new regionalism: re-imagining sovereignty in an age of globalisation
Michael Keating

The post-war western European nation state was the outcome of a centuries-long process of integration of social, cultural, economic and political systems, and provided a model that has since been exported to the rest of the world. However, this model has sometimes been difficult to imitate in other contexts, and in recent years has been challenged in its birthplace.

The old European nation-state model was characterized by fixed boundaries and strong state institutions with a high capacity for social and economic intervention. The state was sovereign both internally and externally, and functioned as the main actor in the international system. Over time, states integrated their constituent territories to forge national identities and shared cultures. They established the frameworks for national economic systems and economic management. Shared national identity provided the basis for trust and hence for liberal democracy. Common nationhood underpinned the social solidarity that allowed the development of welfare states. Fixed borders bound capital and labour to the same territory, and encouraged social compromise. The high point was the period of Keynesian welfare states in the decades following the second world war.

The nation state helped secure liberal democracy and social solidarity, but its rise was not without costs. The national and cultural pluralism and openness that had characterised earlier periods of European civilisation was lost in some states as they defined themselves as a nation. The rise of nationalism and the growth of nation states also led to civil and international wars on a new scale and intensity.

Although these wars caused destruction, they did not lead to a rejection of this model. The process that has perhaps had the greatest impact on the idea of the nation state is globalisation. The term globalization is broad and sometimes unduly stretched, but it does point to a number of changes in the role of the nation state. Borders have not been abolished, but they have been increasingly penetrated. Capital, goods, services and, to a lesser extent, people are mobile and cannot be contained within state boundaries. New technologies are breaking the links of production to specific places, as is the rise of knowledge industries. The rise of a global culture makes efforts to protect national cultures and languages look increasingly futile. National governments have largely abandoned regional policies aimed at securing balanced development across their territories, as capital can choose its sites for investment on a global scale. There is a whole new literature about the end of territory and the borderless world. In Europe, these processes are intensified with the consolidation of the internal market, monetary union and the construction of a new supra-national polity.

Yet de-territorialisation is only one part of the story. We are also seeing a re-territorialisation of cultural, economic, social and political life, but on two different scales. Confusingly, both are described as "regional", referring respectively to inter-state regions and sub-state regions. These are connected in complex ways. Europe has emerged as a significant level for the regulation of economic, environmental and, to a lesser degree, social and cultural matters. The main entity is the European Union but this itself is a complex and diverse set of institutions. There is also the Council of Europe, with its role in the promotion of human rights, together with Nato (with its broader Atlantic coverage) and a host of other bodies. Below the state, we are witnessing the emergence of new political spaces at the regional and local levels.

Two dimensions of this territorial rescaling are particularly striking: the economic and the cultural. While the process of economic change increasingly responds to global and European demands, it also takes highly localised forms as specific territories adapt to the challenges of global change. These new economic regions are not the consequence of traditional geographical factors such as the presence of raw materials or the proximity to markets. Rather, in advanced and high technology sectors, they reflect the presence of research institutions, innovation capacity and the dynamism of local societies, which have learnt how to combine competition and cooperation and to keep adapting continuously. Culture, too, may be global but it is also local as traditional cultures are revived and modernised while official state cultures weaken. Again, there is a connection between the local and the global, since it is those traditional cultures that have their own institutions, including educational systems and public services, together with a dense and everyday network of communication, that thrive in modern conditions. Communications technology may mean that we can share ideas with people across the globe, but the production of culture remains local.

These are the drivers of the new regionalism; the rise of sub-state and transnational regions, far from contradicting the supranational effects of globalization and European integration, is increasingly recognised as a complementary process. The phenomenon is highly diverse. Regions may be economic spaces, cultural spaces, political spaces or spaces of social solidarity. In some cases, these meanings coincide, producing a strong sense of territory; in other cases regions are economically significant but without a cultural meaning. In some places, the large region is the focus of activity, while in other cases it may be a large city or city-region.

Historic regions or stateless nations have reemerged in the new conditions with renewed demands for autonomy in the new order. States have responded in a variety of ways, but all the large European countries and some of the smaller ones have established a tier of intermediate or regional government between the centre and localities, to manage the emerging system.

Regions have increasingly gone outside state boundaries to secure their economic, cultural and political goals. Cross-border cooperation has expanded as territories with common economic or cultural interests come together to resolve problems or exploit opportunities. The European Union has elaborate programmes to encourage this. Regions have engaged in "para-diplomacy", forging links with regions, cities and even states elsewhere in Europe and the world, not in imitation of traditional state diplomacy, but to promote the external dimension of their domestic economic and cultural aims. Some worries have been expressed about the new regionalism. Rather than being managed within national economies, regions are now encouraged to compete in European and global markets, especially to attract investment and high-technology production. Wealthy regions complain about the burden imposed by poorer regions and the need to share with them, as we see notably in Germany, Italy Spain and Belgium. Social solidarity is threatened by the emphasis on competition and the need to attract investors. The European Union has put in place its own regional policy to help poorer regions compete in the single market, but this represents a small amount compared with investment flows in the modern economy.

On the other hand, the new regionalism may help with the management of national and cultural diversity. Now that the old model of the nation state is in trouble, it is less attractive for potentially secessionist minorities. Even the classic competences that have defined statehood are in question. States in the eurozone no longer have their own currencies or monetary policies, while their macro-economic and fiscal policies are highly constrained. Defence is largely collectivised under the EU and Nato, while borders are regulated by European norms. Economic development, as we have noted, is a matter of local and regional capacity for innovation. Social solidarity is still expressed at the state level, but there are emerging communities of solidarity at the local and regional level, especially where there is a common identity and history. Consequently, many movements for stateless nations and national minorities have abandoned secessionism or irredentism, to concentrate on the possibilities for mounting their own cultural, economic and political projects in the new global and continental order.

European integration encourages this move, by introducing ideas of shared power and sovereignty. The "post-sovereign" perspective argues that the very concept of sovereignty has been transformed in modern conditions, so that it no longer adheres uniquely to the state but is diffused through various levels, the state, the supranational and the sub-state. Such ideas chime with historic traditions in many parts of Europe, where the strong notion of absolute state sovereignty has never been entirely accepted, such as Scotland or the historic nationalities of Spain. The idea also has roots in central and eastern Europe, with its history of imperial order only very recently swept away in favour of the nation-state model. Europe, by taking key matters up to the supranational level, also permits greater asymmetry within the states, allowing recognition of the national claims of some territories, while others settle for the status of regions, or do not make autonomy claims at all. The United Kingdom, with its very different arrangements for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, is the most striking example. The growth of a minority rights regime, deployed across the European Union, the Council of Europe and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, gives hope that national minorities can get cultural protection and recognition without having to move state borders.

Liberal democracy itself has been rethought to take account of cultural and national pluralism. So rather than citizenship being identical throughout the state, as implied by the "Jacobin" or centralist concept, it takes diverse forms. The right to a distinct culture is recognised alongside traditional individual rights. New and re-emerging political spaces are recognised as places in which democratic practices can be developed and deepened.

These are positive prospects, but the outlook is not entirely optimistic. Western European states have accepted a great deal of territorial pluralism but there is still resistance to the idea that sovereignty has shifted and must be shared. Central and eastern European states, having only just recovered their sovereignty, are even more reluctant to see any of it go, despite their real loss of power. European minority rights norms are often applied in an inconsistent way. There is an effort to limit them to the rights of individuals rather than groups, and western European countries still seem to see them as a measure for transition countries in the east rather than a benchmark that could operate across the whole European space, and thus also apply to them. The latest phases in the European project, including the Lisbon Treaty, emphasise the division of power between the European Union and the states, and the vision of a Europe of the Regions, with its recognition of a "third level" of governance, has faded.

Elsewhere in the world, we see the same shift in the relationship of territory to economic change, culture and political systems, and the challenge to the nation state. New territories are emerging below and across state boundaries and territorial competition is increasing. States are restructuring their systems of territorial government. There are interstate cooperation arrangements in many parts of the world and these provide an opportunity for sub-state regional cooperation and cross-border programmes.

These inter-state regional systems tend, however, to be confined to economic matters without the broader political and institutional reach of the European Union. Such systems, it is feared, may exacerbate regional disparities and inequalities within the regions (as those best equipped to compete win out) and thus render the management of diversity more difficult. As Europe has discovered, economic integration does need a political counterpart if it is to cope with cultural and political diversity while retaining an element of social solidarity. Many states in inter-state organisations such as Asean balk at notions of shared power and post-sovereignty, but the EU, which is so often perceived simply as an economic model for inter-state organisations worldwide, may in fact present a more significant political model for the challenges posed by global social and cultural forces.

MICHAEL KEATING is professor of political and social sciences at the European University Institute.