Europeanization of turkish subnational administrations

2.2. EUROPE DES PATRIES VS EUROPE DES RÉGIONS: TOWARDS A MULTI-LEVEL MODALITY?

The concept of subnational mobilisation in the EU went hand in hand with the speculation regarding the role of states in the integration process. The speculation is what happens if states find themselves in a position in which their role as gatekeepers is in decline and they are not any longer able to resist the presence of SNAs in the European arena. In addressing this, Anderson (1990: 419-420) conjectured three possible outcomes. One involves the maintenance of the status quo; a second increasingly popular scenario envisions a Europe of Regions emerging from the eroded position of member governments; and the third points out that changes in gatekeeping capacities of nations will be non-existent in some countries, modest in others and quite substantial in still others. One may argue that the variations described by Anderson are reasonably convincing and can be interpreted through the triad of integration theories; intergovernmentalist, supranationalism and multi-level governance.

Two rival IR-dominated integration theories, liberal/intergovernmentalist and supranationalism, have analysed the impact of European integration on the member states; the mushrooming of SNAs on the European arena; and the state of SNAs in the EU integration process²³. While the former puts the states at the centre of EU policy making, the latter, on the other hand, emphasizes the increased role of supranational and domestic groups. This contradictory picture between intergovernmentalist and supranationalist suggests two extreme sides of the story: the nation state triumphant represented by the ‘Europe des Patries’ (expressed by Charles de Gaulle), and the withering away of the nation-state characterized by Europe des Régions (expressed by Jacques Delors).

For the liberal/intergovernmentalist, European integration strengthens the national governments against other domestic actors and supranational developments and therefore national governments monopolize and ‘gatekeep’ the access of domestic actors to the European level (Moravcsik, 1995; Pollack, 1995). Moravcsik (1995) considers that SNAs need to rely entirely on their national government if they want to pursue their interests in the European arena. By giving limited room for a direct territorial representation, the state-centric tradition maintains the idea that national institutions and practices determine the degree and nature of subnational mobilisation (Hooghe, 1995:177; Marks et al., 1996), not top-down (supranational) or bottom-up (subnational) pressure. This understanding also approximates to the notion of path dependency proposed by the historical institutionalist (see Chapter 1). It is indeed a common case for many SNAs particularly from unitary states because they usually avoid challenging their respective national governments during their presence in Brussels. This correspondingly reveals the hierarchy between SNAs and the member states, in which selected national officials have a say on behalf of SNAs rather than broader political and social actors.

For supranationalists (Sandoltz & Sweet 1998), the supranational level and SNAs would become increasingly influential since each integrative step caused governments to challenge the pressures of integration (Bache, 1998:17). For instance, Haas (1958) argued that ‘... erstwhile ties with national friends undergo deterioration’. The new ties between subnational and supranational levels have led to ‘a Europe of the regions’ (Loughlin, 1996) in which the former can challenge the states over territorial interests and representations (Goldsmith, 2003:115). As Hooghe (1995:177) described, in this model, the relationship is an example of the contested hierarchy, in which the supranational arena is expected to be on the side of the subnational level. Several SNAs thus gather around the supranational institutions in Europe to gradually develop an uninterrupted and uniform subnational political tier. This gradual process finally demolishes the uneven pattern of subnational mobilisation where other SNAs from the unitary states become stronger vis-à-vis national constraints (ibid: 178).

Taking both integration theories together, despite their significance in terms of grasping the fundamental changes in the EU integration process, they still lack conceptualizing the current situations of SNAs in the multi-level system of the EU. To begin with, they generally explain the process of European integration rather than policy-making. However, in the context of exploring the differential impact of European integration on member (and candidate) states, which is closely related to this research, IR-centric integration theories are insufficient for in-depth analysis of daily politics in the EU. As Börzel (2002) remarks, the main puzzle for integration theories is the explanation of dynamics and outcomes of European integration rather than domestic effects. Bache (2008:28) furthers this claim by discussing that the Single European Act (SEA) of 1986 could be seen as a turning point regarding mounting regional initiatives and changing policy-making processes within the EU and members of the EU (see Chapter 4). Nevertheless, he considers that both theories ignore the implementation process, which is where SNAs usually engage in the policy-making process²⁴.

The effects of the SEA on the process of integration and, in turn, on the nature of the EU as a political system prompted a new wave of theories challenging the dominant intergovernmental versus supranational debate. As Hix (1994) suggests, tools and approaches from the study of domestic and comparative politics could be utilized in order to fill the gap left by the early integration theories. Hooghe (1996: 1) adds that member states have distinctively different institutions, practices and patterns of interest mediation moulded by distinct trajectories of state-building that present a formidable challenge for integration theories. Accordingly, studying and theorizing the domestic impact of the EU integration process on member (and candidate) states have shifted from IR dominated integration theories and comparative politics approaches²⁵, towards modes of analysis that are rooted in policy study approaches focusing on multi-level governance (Marks et al., 1996; Hooghe & Marks, 2001) and the Europeanization of subnational governance (John, 2000; 2001; Goldsmith, 2003).

In surveying the decentralization and regionalization research on the new Eastern European member states of the EU (EU-10) between 1997 and 2007, Pitschell and Bauer (2009) highlight the importance of the subnational governance approach. For them, scholarly interest in regionalization and decentralization as indicators and outcomes of state transformation and (less so) EU conditionality is waning. What they observe, instead, is the emergence of a subnational governance approach rooted in a policy-analytical perspective. True, the governance approach aims to study the daily governance structures of the EU and how it works as a decision-making system. These have been largely neglected by traditional conceptions of the European polity as they (i.e. intergovernmentalist and supranationalist) focus mainly on the role of member states and supranational institutions. Seen this way, the relationship between Europeanization and multi-level governance (Bache, 2008) may help one understand the changing governance structure in member (and candidate) states as well as unveil the subnational mobilisation derived from the domestic impact of Europeanization on a given national jurisdiction.

To put it briefly, the shift in theorizing the subnational level in the EU through the Europeanization and domestic politics lenses mainly derived from the following points. Initially, there have been ongoing efforts to study the connections between developments within member states and those at the EU level (Bulmer & Lequesne, 2005: 2). Secondly, the institutional configuration of the EU, especially the traditional first pillar, started to be treated as a ‘sui generis’ political system (Kohler-Koch & Eising, 1999:3) in which domestic politics lenses draw insights both from IR theories as well as comparative and/or domestic politics approaches. Finally, the EU governance has mostly been acknowledged as a multi-level polity (Gualini, 2004; Caporaso, 2007: 27) thereby the multi-level governance approach has become useful to identify connections between regional and other actors within states and the dynamics of the EU (Marks et al. 1996; Kohler-Koch, 1996; Eising, 2007). The research therefore argues that the most promising way forward is to link the notion of MLG with the concept of subnational mobilisation and (functional) territorial interest representation in the EU.