Anna M. Olsson
"Regional Identity, Representation, and Support for Integration in the European Union"
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Abstract
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Who are the greatest supporters of the European Union (EU)? The 2005 referenda on the European Constitution show that public support for European integration is essential, both for the democratic legitimacy of the EU, and for enabling any further integration. Recent research shows that the greatest support for the EU increasingly comes from sub-state regions seeking to bypass their national governments to achieve their policy goals at the EU level—a surprising shift from their traditionally protectionist policies. Inspired by this puzzle, my research empirically tests this assumption, while shedding light on the relationship between the quality of representation of regional interests at the EU level and positive citizen attitudes towards the EU. In particular, it seeks two potential explanations for cross-regional variation in the relationship between Euroskepticism and representation: (1) a cultural explanation, embodied by a difference in the nature and quality of representation between regions that are linguistically distinctive and regions that are not; and (2) an institutional explanation, embodied by a difference in the nature and quality of representation between regions from federal and non-federal member states. In short, my research will produce findings that help shed light on the growing interest in a “Europe of the Regions,” while at the same time providing a new regional-level perspective on the study of Euroskepticism. In the long run, it supports suggestions that states will gradually fade away in favor of regions as the main actors within an EU characterized by strong sub-state identities.
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