Europeanization of sub-national governance in unitary states: Estonia and Finland

Abstract:

The Europeanization of sub-national institutions has been on the research agenda for some time. There are arguments both for presuming a growing power of regional actors, a gradual weakening of the nation states, and for emphasizing the continuous importance and renewal capacity of the states. The mechanisms by which this process takes place are less well known and there is a scarcity of comparative empirical studies presenting evidence for either of the above arguments. In order to shed light on the influencing factors in the process, this article analyses and discusses the Europeanization process in two unitary Member States, Estonia and Finland. The policy area in focus is regional policy. The results suggest that the Europeanization process is not straightforward, but is conditioned largely by domestic policy practices and institutional constellations. In the Estonian case, the brief period of independence has been characterized by institutional turbulence, which has eventually led to a centralized style of regional policymaking. In the case of Finland, the EU impact was accommodated by new institutional and processual practices, but these arrangements proved much too weak to challenge the domestic actors, who were not prepared to play the game by the European rules.