Cities and Regions in Competition? Negotiations for the 2014-2020 Programming Period in the Czech Republic

Abstract

Over the past two decades, the concept of multi-level governance (MLG) has been increasingly discussed by scholars in the fi eld of European integration. While Gary Marks wrote about a four-level arrangement (supranational, national, regional, and local), over time the regional and local levels often became lumped together as 'substate actors' and so easily conceptually interchangeable. This text, however, shows the fallaciousness of this reasoning. In certain circumstances we can fi nd a competitive relationship between cities and regions, positioning themselves against each other for resources and access to national and supranational fora, especially in the context of the new regionalism. The cities have been given substantial support from the European Commission in recent years and we argue that this new constellation may have a remarkable infl uence on relations and possibly also lead to confl icts among local and regional actors in EU multi-level governance. This was possible to be clearly seen in the Czech Republic (CR) between 2012 and 2014, when heated negotiations took place regarding the implementation of the Integrated Territorial Investment (ITI), a fi nancial instrument of EU Cohesion Policy which was implemented on the substate level -i.e., in cities and regions. In the CR this competition took place in a specifi c context, which also infl uenced its outcome.

Europeanization as the Reterritorialization of the State: Towards Conceptual Clarification

“…These articles have one thing in common. Being products of a broad current in the literature on new regionalism, they narrowly focus on the establishment and operation of the new regions and on their consequences for local governance (for more about the tensions involved, not only in planning studies, see for example Allmendinger et al, ; Begg, ; Deas and Lord, ; Deas and Ward, ; Havlík and Kuchyňková, ; Havlík, ; Luukkonen and Moilanen, ; Van Der Zwet et al, ; Wheeler, ; Ziafati Bafarasat, ).…”

“…In extreme instances, adaptational pressures can take the form of naming and shaming. For instance, the Commission might highlight improper existing implementation in a member state (see the case of corruption in Czech regions; Havlík and Kuchyňková, ; Havlík, ), which might also imply an invitation (or a hint of recommendation) to implement future regional policy at a different level. This type of adaptational pressure could be expected in new member states ( cf .…”

“…Politicians are, of course, also change agents involved in the process. As case studies (Baun and Marek, ; Havlík and Kuchyňková, ) and some theoretical works (Keating, ; cf . Keating, ; Van Der Zwet et al ., ) have shown, under the right circumstances regional development priorities can become a strongly politicized issue that polarises the political spectrum.…”