In this paper we investigate the impact of the implementation of EU programmes on substate actors, and more specifically regional ones. We focus on the case of the INTERREG cross-border initiative in France and Spain between 2000 and 2003, and whether INTERREG succeeded in empowering regional governments and local authorities as it initially claimed to. Our analysis puts to the fore that this programme has not evolved from being ‘a policy for the regions to a policy by the regions' as many expected, but that its implementation rather reveals a wide range of configurations. Indeed, the execution of INTERREG facilitated the transition from a state-centric scheme to a regionalised one only in those territories where a previous decentralisation policy had been realised at the domestic level and where a consistent regional leadership had emerged during earlier versions of INTERREG.
This article engages with questions of policy convergence and divergence in four socialdemocratic European regions (Andalucía, Brittany, Wales and Wallonia) in a period of economic crisis and ongoing political decentralisation. It develops an analytical framework, the 'States of Convergence', as a useful heuristic for understanding the interplay between convergence and divergence pressures, and processes of territorial adaptation and translation. Processes of hard and soft convergence and divergence operate in distinctive ways depending upon whether inputs, outcomes, processes or institutions are considered. Hard convergence arguments are most convincing in terms of inputs (referring to pressures of international ranking and rating, tougher EU budgetary rules, enhanced central steering and tighter controls on public expenditure). They are less cogent for understanding outputs, institutions and processes.
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