Using Europe: Territorial Party Strategies in a Multi-level System

This book explores how regional political parties use Europe to advance their territorial projects in times of rapid state restructuring. It examines the ways in which decentralization and supranational integration have encouraged regional parties to pursue their strategies across multiple territorial levels. This book constitutes the first attempt to unravel the complexities of how nationalist and statewide parties manoeuvre around the twin issues of European integration and decentralization, and exploit the shifting linkages within multi-level political systems. In a detailed comparative examination of three cases – Scotland, Bavaria and Sardinia – over a thirty-year period, the book explores how integration has altered the nature of territorial party competition and identifies the limits of Europe for territorial projects. In addressing these issues, this work moves beyond present scholarship on multi-level governance to explain the diversity of regional responses to Europe. Instead of having a uniform effect across territories, the author argues that European integration is interpreted differently, often inversely, in different contexts and at different times – either as a set of opportunity structures or constraints for realising territorial interests. The book thus offers an original actor-based perspective to topical debates on European integration, multi-level governance and territorial politics. By providing important new insights and empirical research on the conduct of territorial party politics, and an innovative model of territorial mobilization in Europe, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of comparative politics, European studies, regionalism and federalism, political parties and devolution.

Dr. Eve Hepburn is Leverhulme Fellow at the School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh.