The Breton model between convergence and capacity
Résumé
Are States in contemporary Europe driven to enforce new forms of territorial convergence under the impact of economic crisis, enhanced European steering and international monitoring? Or is the evolution of sub-national governance driven fundamentally by divergent domestic pressures? Are convergence and divergence best considered as part of agency driven processes of adaptation and as strategic choices exercised by actors in regional governments? These very significant research questions get to the heart of contemporary European States through a focus on the interplay between territorial capacities, domestic veto players and exogenous constraints. The papers in this panel engage with questions of policy convergence and divergence in a period of economic crisis and ongoing political decentralisation. The empirical data underpinning the papers is focused mainly on sustained empirical investigation of sub-national governments and governance communities in four regions (Andalusia, Brittany, Wales and Wallonia), where data was collected over an 18 month period from November 2012 to May 2014. The central argument is that converging pressures have been intensified by the context of the fiscal and sovereign debt crisis since 2008. In no case, however, did economic crisis alone undermine existing action repertoires, or empower alternative economic and territorial models. Economic crisis strengthens existing collective action registers, while undermining the territorial capacities of second order strong identity regions.