Multi-level governance - the eastern versions: emerging patterns of regional developmental governance in the new member states

Abstract

This article deals with emerging configurations of developmental regionalism and different patterns of multi-level governance in the Central and East European countries, using examples from the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. EU conditionality and pre-accession programmes linked to the idea of a Europe of the Regions played a considerable role in the changing-and in the case of some of the aspiring member countries, in the creation-of regional institutional landscapes. While later the same programmes became instigators of (re-)centralization and re-nationalization, the interaction between uniform EU conditionality and diverse domestic conditions resulted in various emerging versions of multi-level governance and different configurations of regionalism.