European Union regional policies: a convergence point of Spanish regions towards the EU

Baraibar, Javier; Arregui, Javier

European Union regional policies: a convergence point of Spanish regions towards the EU

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Baraibar, J, Arregui, J. European Union regional policies: a convergence point of Spanish regions towards the EU. 2022. handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10230/52606

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Abstract

This paper investigates the main mechanisms of Europeanization of regional policies in Spain. Drawing from rationalist and constructivist approaches we study the inputs, processes and mechanisms of Europeanization as well as the outputs produced in Spain from 1986 to 2020. As there is little systematic research on the impact of EU regional policy on the Spanish regional policies, we use a number of different research strategies to fill this gap in the literature. The added value of the paper is to, first, increase the time span of study, and second, analyze the Europeanization of Spanish regions at the polity level (i.e. patterns of governance and domestic institutional change) as well as the policy level (i.e. Spanish regional policies). In addition, we also study the Europeanization of Spanish regions and a selected number of MS looking at aggregated data. Results show that both Spanish regional polity and policy have been Europeanized, as well as some autonomous communities and countries. These findings open the way for new avenues of research that study the circumstances under which regional policies are more effective both within and between Member States.