Social scientists have regularly proclaimed the end of territory under successive waves of modernization, yet it continually re-emerges as a key principle of social, economic, and political organization. Rather than a de-territorialization we are witnessing a rescaling of social life as functional systems, identities, and political expression migrate to new levels. This is not new, but is a recurrent feature of the European state. States have sought to reassert control over these new spaces, while political and social movements have sought to politicize them and open them up to popular influence. The result has been the emergence of the meso-level or region as set of contested spaces, and increasingly as a level of government. Social and economic interests are refracted at these new territorial levels to reshape the policy agenda and create new social alliances and conflicts. Regions have emerged as spaces for public policy, with significant divergences over economic development, welfare policies, public services and environmental issues. Rescaling poses important normative questions about self-determination and social solidarity. These cannot definitively be resolved but are reframed, with new forms of self-government being possible and social solidarity emerging at new levels. Competitive regionalism has become a dominant theme but there is no generalized race to bottom as regions respond to the challenge in multiple ways. Regions are not going to replace the nation-state as they remain loosely-bounded and contested spaces but territory continues to reshape European polities. Drawing on a rich interdisciplinary literature and on original research, the volume provides a fresh and engaging analytical approach to the understanding of territory and power in contemporary Europe.

Reconfiguring European States in Crisis offers a ground-breaking analysis by some of Europe's leading political scientists, examining how the European national state and the European Union state have dealt with two sorts of changes in the last two decades. Firstly, the volume analyses the growth of performance measurement in government, the rise of new sorts of policy delivery agencies, the devolution of power to regions and cities, and the spread of neoliberal ideas in economic policy. The volume demonstrates how the rise of non-state controlled organizations and norms combine with Europeanization to reconfigure European states. Secondly, the volume focuses on how the current crises in fiscal policy, Brexit, security and terrorism, and migration through a borderless European Union have had dramatic effects on European states and will continue to do so.

The nexus between globalization and digitalization presents unprecedented opportunities and complex challenges in today's rapidly evolving digital landscape. As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, there is a pressing need to understand how these forces interact to shape our economies, societies, and environment. However, existing knowledge gaps hinder our ability to harness their full potential for sustainable development. Developing Digital Inclusion Through Globalization and Digitalization addresses this critical issue by comprehensively analyzing the relationship between globalization and digitalization. This book serves as a roadmap for policymakers, industry leaders, academics, and international organizations seeking to navigate the complexities of the digital age and leverage globalization and digitalization for sustainable development.

This book addresses the making and transforming of regions and territorial organisation, which are significant activities for policy makers and planners. It focuses on the regional, intermediate scale and gathers contributions by researchers from various European universities, especially at a time when there is a renewed interest for regions, regionalisation and regional planning. The different chapters in this edited volume deliver insightful theoretical approaches and documented empirical case studies. The recent reform that redrew and reorganized regions in France is of particular interest. Other contributions enrich the reflection about territorial reforms and changes by analysing situations in Italy, Poland, United Kingdom – notably the issue of planning city-regions or metropolitan areas. This volume provides a comparative view of the impact of territorial reforms on planning policies and explores the evolution of regional settings in Europe. It also confirms region as a fundamental scale and an essential instrument to organise and develop societies and territories. The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal European Planning Studies.

The study of territorial politics has enjoyed a renaissance in the last thirty years. Scholars have questioned the state-centric assumptions upon which mainstream social science has been built, pointing to the territorial (re)distribution of power across and within states. This Handbook brings together leading scholars to demonstrate how territory has shaped institutional structures, public policies, elections, political parties, and identity across the world. Offering theoretical, comparative and empirical insights, this book provides a comprehensive overview of the impact of territory on modern political, economic and social life.

This authoritative Handbook presents a comprehensive analysis of the spatial transformation of the state; a pivotal process of globalization. It explores the state as an ongoing project that is always changing, illuminating the new spaces of geopolitics that arise from these political, social, cultural, and environmental negotiations.

Despite the fact that virtually all urban growth is occurring, and will continue to occur, in the cities of the Global South, the conceptual tools used to study cities are distilled disproportionately from research on the highly developed cities of the Global North. With urban inequality widely recognized as central to many of the most pressing challenges facing the world, there is a need for a deeper understanding of cities of the South on their own terms. Locating Right to the City in the Global South marks an innovative and far reaching effort to document and make sense of urban transformations across a range of cities, as well as the conflicts and struggles for social justice these are generating. The volume contains empirically rich, theoretically informed case studies focused on the social, spatial, and political dimensions of urban inequality in the Global South. Drawing from scholars with extensive fieldwork experience, this volume covers sixteen cities in fourteen countries across a belt stretching from Latin America, to Africa and the Middle East, and into Asia. Central to what binds these cities are deeply rooted, complex, and dynamic processes of social and spatial division that are being actively reproduced. These cities are not so much fracturing as they are being divided by governance practices informed by local histories and political contestation, and refracted through or infused by market based approaches to urban development. Through a close examination of these practices and resistance to them, this volume provides perspectives on neoliberalism and right to the city that advance our understanding of urbanism in the Global South. In mapping the relationships between space, politics and populations, the volume draws attention to variations shaped by local circumstances, while simultaneously elaborating a distinctive transnational Southern urbanism. It provides indepth research on a range of practical and policy oriented issues, from housing and slum redevelopment to building democratic cities that include participation by lower income and other marginal groups. It will be of interest to students and practitioners alike studying Urban Studies, Globalization, and Development.

Discussing what we may learn from thinking about the EU in federal terms represents a two-fold challenge. It is on the one hand a matter of establishing ‘how federal’ the EU is (the EU’s federal challenge). On the other, the EU has federal features but is not a state, thus raising the question of whether federal theory and practice may have to be adapted to take proper account of the EU (the EU’s challenge to federalism). The contributions to this collection supplement and extend existing scholarship through focusing on two important lines of inquiry. The first focuses on the relationship between federalism and democracy, with particular emphasis on how federal systems respond to and deal with citizens’ interests and concerns, within and outside the political system. Representation is explored both in the process of federalization, and as a feature of established systems. The second line of inquiry places the emphasis on the relationship among the governments of federal systems. The focus is on intergovernmental relations, and the particular merits that emanate from studying these from a federal perspective. This book was originally published as a special issue of Journal of European Public Policy.

This Handbook covers all major aspects of EU Cohesion policy, one of the most significant areas of intervention of the European Union. Over five parts, It discusses this policy’s history and governing principles; the theoretical approaches from which it can be assessed; the inter-institutional and multi-level dynamics that it tends to elicit; its practical implementation and impact on EU member states; its interactions with other EU policies and strategies; and the cognitive maps and narratives with which it can be associated. An absolute must for all students of the EU.

This topical book analyses the practice of negotiating constitutional demands by regional and dispersed national minorities in eight multinational systems. It considers the practices of cooperation and litigation between minority groups and central institutions in Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, Italy, Spain, and the U.S. and includes an evaluation of the implications of the recent Catalan, Puerto Rican and Scottish referenda. Ultimately, the author shows that a flexible constitution combined with a versatile constitutional jurisprudence tends to foster institutional cooperation and the recognition of the pluralistic nature of modern states