The involvement of subnational actors in EU politics has become an increasingly recognized facet of European integration. However, this highlights an interesting puzzle: subnational authorities in unitary and centralized polities usually lack the formal competence and have limited resources to engage beyond their territorial limits. Why, then, do they engage at the European level? This article addresses this question by exploring their motivations for participation in European transnational networking. These motivations are assessed against a Europeanization framework, exploring whether subnational authorities adopt the ‘logic of consequentialism’ or the ‘logic of appropriateness’ when engaging in transnational networking. The article argues that subnational authorities are rational actors, maximizing the opportunities presented by the EU without subscribing to its normative aims. In a context marked by financial pressures and Brexit, these findings provide a useful foundation for analyzing the on‐going EU–local relationship, and for explaining changes to subnational authorities’ approaches to European engagement.
Brexit and the future of UK fisheries governance: learning lessons from Iceland, Norway and the Faroe IslandsBrexit presents significant challenges and uncertainties for the future governance of policy areas currently managed by the EU. This is especially the case with fisheries policy. The UK government has stated an ambition for post-Brexit fisheries policy to be based on sustainability and the use of scientific evidence.Yet how these aims will be achieved and formalised into post-Brexit governance structures remains to be seen. This article investigates fisheries governance arrangements in three non-EU countries: Iceland, Norway and the Faroe Islands.These cases offer lessons for the UK on governance and institutional arrangements for fisheries post-Brexit. However, none of these cases account for devolution and division of fisheries policy competences across multiple territories. This places significant limits on the potential for direct policy transfer from these countries to the UK.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.