Interest Groups in the Regions: Economic, Organizational, and Institutional Approaches

On the final day of 1992, the European Union celebrated the "completion of the single market". The removal of non-tariff barriers to trade was projected to increase incomes in the Union by an average of five percent. The increase, of course, is not distributed evenly across regions and sectors. Economic integration implies high potential costs to less competitive producers, many of whom are concentrated in lagging and declining regions. Are outcomes inevitably unfavorable for these economic actors- or can they affect who "wins " and who "loses " from economic integration? And how do they attempt to do so? Because the success of economic integration depends on widespread political support, these questions are of considerable importance to the European Union. They are also the questions which underlie this paper. Adjustment to European economic integration takes place not just in Paris, Rome, and the other national capitals, but in regions and towns throughout the European Union. Unfortunately, the existing literature on economic adjustment in Europe neglects the sub- national level, and misses an interesting and essential part of adjustment politics. From the other direction, case studies of cities, states, and regions all too frequently treat the sub-national entity as a self-contained unit of analysis, failing t