Substate Regionalism

Regionalism is an ideology and political movement that seeks to advance the cause of regions. But it is necessary to distinguish two quite different meanings of the term region. In international relations theory, it refers to a group of countries, such as Western Europe, the Western Balkans, or Southeast Asia, that are linked by geography, history, or economic features. Used in this sense, regional integration refers to attempts to reinforce the links between these countries. Today, the foremost example of such an attempt is the European Union (EU). In the second meaning of the term, region refers to a territory that is located within, or sometimes across the borders of, a nation-state. In this sense, different kinds of regions may be distinguished: political regions, which usually possess some form of elected regional government; administrative regions, which are geographical entities created for the purpose of administering a service such as a health region or an electricity region; geographical regions, which refer to a geographical feature, such as mountain regions, island regions, coastal or maritime regions; and, finally, economic regions, such as agricultural, industrial, or declining industrial regions. As a general rule, the political or administrative regions refer to levels of government or administration immediately below the national level. But, in some cases, as in the Netherlands, it refers to a level located between the provincie (county) and the gemeente (municipality). In Sweden and Finland, what are sometimes translated as regions—the län— are what would be called counties in the United Kingdom. Furthermore, the two experimental regions in Sweden, Västra Götaland and Skåne, which were established by amalgamating existing counties, are, constitutionally, simply counties. In some countries, as in Spain and Italy, there is a hierarchical relationship between the region, or autonomous community, and local authorities, while in others, such as France and Sweden, there is no hierarchical relationship. The difficulty of comparing across states is illustrated by the EU's classification of subnational levels of government and administration for statistical purposes, called N.U.T.S. (nomenclature des unités[Page 940]territoriales statistiques). N.U.T.S. 1 is the level below the central state. In some countries, such as Belgium, the regions below the central state are N.U.T.S. 1 level, while in Finland, the regions are N.U.T.S. 2.

A final distinction may be made between regionalization and regionalism. Regionalization is a topdown process emanating from central governments or the EU to either set up political or administrative regions within a state or to implement regional policies. It is a policy or administrative process aimed at a territory, the formulation and implementation of which does not necessarily involve the inhabitants of that territory. Regionalism, on the other hand, is both an ideology advocating the setting up of political regions within nation-states and a political movement through which the population of a territory seeks to achieve this end. Regionalist demands may be based on the affirmation of linguistic or cultural identity or both, on perceptions of oppression by the nation-state, on the demand for political or economic equality, or on a combination of all these elements. These two distinctions are sometimes called top-down regionalism and bottom-up regionalism, but the distinction used previously is clearer in that it uses a different word for what is, in reality, quite a different phenomenon.

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