When Romania met the Cohesion Policy. Regional governance in-between national conventions and European ideals

Abstract

This article is about the practice of territorial governance emerging at the junction of European Union-sanctioned ideals and Romanian development-planning traditions. On the one hand, the European agenda emphasises a smart, inclusive, sustainable model of economic growth. However, the persisting centralised workings of the Romanian state significantly alters the scope of regional interventions. As such, while core cities grew their economies swiftly, peripheral places were left in an unrelenting stagnation. My first aim is to provide a theoretical ground for a practicecentred approach to understanding territorial governance. Second, by drawing on Romania's regional policy context as an example, I give an insight into how practices of partnership and competition fare in a context of ongoing territorial polarisation. I conclude by emphasising the need for a regional redistributive policy mechanism, one which should enable and assist non-core areas to access capacities for defining and implementing development projects.

Understanding and Going Beyond the Regional Policy Paradox: Conceptual Contributions to Studying Socio-Spatial Polarisation in Europe

“…Concepts that ignore spatial variety and the need for institutional capacity building and fail to involve local actors fall particularly short in CEE (Brad 2018;Loewen 2018; Cebotari and Mihály in this volume). Instead, development policies should be 'solidly grounded in theory and evidence, combining people-based with place-based approaches, and empowering local stakeholders to take greater control of their future' offering the most realistic and viable options for peripheralised regions (Rodríguez-Pose 2018, 206; see also Iammarino et al 2017).…”

“…The cases of Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Slovakia and Romania show that the centralised EU regional policy cannot fulfil its objectives when there is a lack of capacity in localities and regions. Even national regional policy programmes are now too centralised and ultimately favour the development of urban cores (Raagmaa et al 2014;Brad 2018; ESPON 2017; Loewen 2018; Špaček 2018; Loewen and Schulz in this volume).…”