European Union membership status and decentralization: A top-down approach

Abstract

Despite state resilience and the waning of the “Europe of the Regions”, European integration continues to shape subnational actors. Lobbying offices, regionalist parties, and multi-level engagement persist. Using quantitative regional-authority data and case studies of France, Poland, and Spain, the study finds that EU candidate and member states experience higher degrees of decentralization compared to non-EU states, indicating a state-level motivation toward decentralizing under the influence of Europeanization.,