Proposal for a measure of regional power in EU15 in the 2007-2013 bargain

This paper presents an analysis with the aim to investigate the EU regional policy and in particular to consider how it has impacted on national states authority. The original point of this work consists in constructing an index to rank the power of regions in each state that consider the total Regional Policy funds allocation in the sample 2000-2006 and the indicative financial allocation for the sample 2007-2013. The idea behind this index is that powerful regions will be able to protect their interests in the allocating process. Thus, we can “measure” the power of regions, indirectly, by mean of the loss bore by them in the re-negotiating process. At this purpose it is important to underline that enlargement had as concomitant result that the regional disparities have doubled, so that the challenge for each region (and each state) is becoming very strong. Thus, the power of region (where and if it exists) has to emerge with particular evidence in this context. In this work I propose an analysis that may be thought as divided into two main parts. The first one with the aim to provide a synthesis of the main results achieved in literature about this issue and in particular the debate between Multilevel-Governance and State Centric literature. In a second part, as I said before, I investigate the empirical evidence concerning the EU model of governance with particular attention to the EU regional policy. The empirical evidence here considered is consistent with some assertion provided by Multilevel Governance literature.