Elsa Tulmets Chair

Amelie Kutter Discussant

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Beyond the classic centre-periphery dichotomy: dependence, commitment and new boundaries in policy design in Italy

As in many contexts in Europe, much of the Italian territory is organised around "minor centres", small hubs that guarantee their residents only limited access to essential services. The specific features of these territories represented the starting point for a wider reflection on rural/mountain areas development in 2012 and informed a policy-making process which resulted in the launch of the "National Strategy for Inner Areas" (SNAI) and is partially linked to the EU Cohesion Policy 2014-2020. The Strategy aims at finding an integrated approach that could help the inhabitants of such territories to access basic services more easily. This paper shows how the policy language developed in the SNAI planning documents re-shaped the understanding of what is a peripheral area, thereby changing the game that is involved in local policy design and the definition of problems and relevant objects of intervention. In addition to creating a new definition of what is peripheral and what is not, the Strategy established borders where before there were none (i.e. between municipalities inside and outside the defined inner areas), but also partnerships where, previously, there was fragmentation. By adopting a circular approach that moves from cultural anthropology and social statistics to a more comprehensive approach of content and document analysis, the paper reveals that the concept of ‘distance’ and the ambivalence attached to it in the SNAI documents was instrumental in that reformulation. The paper concludes that ‘distance’, rather than the classic centre-periphery dichotomy, suggests itself as a theoretical concept for grasping the set of power relations that influence policy-making strategies and identity-building between local areas.

Maria Giulia Pezzi

Gran Sasso Science Institute, L’Aquila

Gabriella Punziano

University of Naples, Federico II

 

Polarised Cohesion? Exploring the workable limits of transferrable policy concepts

This paper is about the use of ideas and models of intervention in (subnational) regional development policies, and their consequences for peripheralising areas in Central and Eastern Europe. It claims that in these places, 'polarised cohesion' has become entrenched as an unacknowledged policy regime – i.e. the expectation that policy designs focused on growth and efficiency that produce results in and around urban cores may reasonably be deployed in rural peripheries too. In a first step, the paper reconstructs the normative underpinnings of polarised cohesion. It traces back how territorial cohesion thinking, an integral part of the EU's Cohesion Policy, has been applied to urban, rural, and regional policy designs for peripheralising settings. It shows that three core normative claims underpin such thinking: cohesion, competitiveness, and governance. In a second step, the paper analyses how this set of normative claims translated into regional planning discourses in two NUTS2 regions, one in East Germany and one in Romania. To this end, it analyses storylines of strategic development found in documents related to three policy instruments (Regional Development Plans, LEADER Regions, and Integrated Urban Development) and in interviews conducted with actors that are key to the implementation of these instruments. The analysis reveals how policy-makers address persisting disparities and make sense of uneven development in the face of peripheralisation. The paper concludes by pointing out the limits of transferred policy concepts, while also emphasising the misfit between idealised policy objectives and 'on the ground' circumstances that afford and/or constrict development.

Alexandru Brad

Leibniz Institute of Regional Geography, University of Leipzig

 

Identical Goals, Conflicting Results: The European Union’s Impact on Good Governance in Post-Communist Europe

When states with authoritarian roots accede to a democratic international organization (IO), to what extent do they continue to respect IO requirements? Focusing on the European Union (EU) and Central and Eastern European (CEE) states, I present the first systematic analysis based on longitudinal data suggesting state performance varies across indicators of governance: While there is a general trend of backsliding in corruption control, the findings reveal no such tendency regarding ethnic minority rights. Statistical analyses suggest the EU’s political leverage as a key determinant: Before accession, the EU offers electoral incentives to opposition parties in CEE and mobilizes them to pressure governments to fight corruption. Yet, following accession, parties move away from EU-induced policies. Regarding minority protection, opposition parties seeking to maximize vote share among minorities maintain pro-minority preferences and push governments accordingly even after accession. Importantly, such discrepancy in opposition party behavior is due to a key difference between the two issues: Corruption control is a public good, which is costly for political elites to provide. So political parties usually have no interest in paying the costs. Minority protection, however, is a private good for minorities and pro-minority parties, which have incentives to continue to promote non-discrimination even after accession. The findings are supported by analyses of governance reforms in Romania since 1989 and by 11 face-to-face interviews (with members of the European Commission, Council of the EU, European governments as well as non-governmental organizations) conducted in Europe in 2017 and 2018.

Mert Kartal

University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point

 

Who Pays the Piper Calls the Tune. Explaining the Variety of Local Government Performance. The Case of Romania

The current economic crisis has put countries’ performance and government capacities in the spotlight. A serious gap in this developing field is the lack of reflection on the sub-national government performance, even though subnational governments are crucial for the implementation of reforms and policies. Many cities outperform their regions and countries in the quality of their institutions and economic growth, while others are lagging behind. What are the causes of this variation in government performance across different cities in old and new democracies? This paper aims to fill this gap by bringing the attention to the local government performance in South Eastern Europe, focusing mainly on corruption, and public services delivery. It asks why some cities outperform their regions and countries in the quality of their institutions and public goods provision while others are lagging behind. To what extent subnational party dynamics and economic models play a role in increasing the subnational disparities? This project hinges on the relationship between local business strength and (lack of) political competition as explanatory factors for this variation. In order to test this argument, the paper employs a mix method approach combining quantitative analysis of local government performance in almost 300 Romanian municipalities and a case study that will illustrate the mechanism. Romania is a country that despite administrative centralization and strong redistributive mechanisms has one of the highest rates of inequality and extraordinary variation in local government performance.

Eliska Drapalova

Hertie School of Governance