From local partnerships to regional spaces for politics? Europeanization and EU cohesion policy in southern Italy

This article analyses recent developments in Italian regional interest representation. The focus is on European Union cohesion policy and its effects upon regional patterns of interest representation. First, we connect debates on a changing cohesion policy to debates on changing territorial forms of interest representation and interactive processes of Europeanization. Secondly, we focus on Europeanization within four southern Italian regions, Campania, Calabria, Puglia and Basilicata. We show how through adapting to EU policies, southern regions are institutionalizing as 'spaces for politics', i.e. political arenas where decision-making processes are increasingly dependent on the preferences and strategies of regional social and political actors. © 2010 Taylor & Francis.