A Regional Rescue of the Nation-State: Changing Regional Perspectives on Europe

[From the introduction]. Milward’s work has been influential in the intergovernmentalist traditions of analysis of the EU. This paper is not meant in any direct sense as a contribution to the debates intergovernmentalists have had with others. The analogy with Milward is first and foremost about how governments at one level can (try to) instrumentalise the resources and opportunities available to governments at another. For Milward 'nation-state' (that is, member state2) central governments fostered and instrumentalised an emergent transnational structure of government to achieve their own interests. This paper argues that regional governments have increasingly sought to instrumentalise member state central governments as a means of achieving their interests, that is preserving the meaning of regional law-making powers. It commences with a discussion of the conditions which prompt regional 'mobilisation' (Hooghe 1995) in the EU before examining in turn the three distinct strategies through which legislative regions have sought to realise their aims in the EU