The Europeanization of Regions as ‘Spaces for Politics' : A Research Agenda

Through its collective regulation, the European Union (EU) has institutionalized as a critical space for public action. Yet, frequently regions are considered ‘objects’ of EU politics, rather than ‘subjects’ of its daily government. Moving away from dominant narratives on the relationship between the ‘region’ and the ‘EU’, we propose a new research agenda which draws on sociological applications of the Europeanization literature and re-frames the problematic towards studying regions as ‘spaces for EU politics’. Significantly, this approach identifies actor political usages of social representations of ‘territory’ as critical in explaining regional actors’ transformation from ‘objects’ to ‘subjects’ of EU government