Regional interest representation in the EU: A qualitative intra-national comparison among German states

Regional interest representation in the EU: A qualitative intra-national comparison among German states Public Deposited

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Creator

Jaursch, Julian
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Political Science

Abstract

The guiding research questions for this paper are: What channels of direct supranational interest representation do German states use on the European level and how? If there is variance among German states, how might different channel preferences be explained? Independent variables explored are size, resources, an East-West divide and conflicts of interest with the federal level. The theoretical framework will be provided by the multi-level governance approach and research on regional authority within the EU. The qualitative empirical basis is a set of 30 semi-structured interviews conducted in late 2011 with German state officials working in Brussels and Berlin. An analysis of how German states represent their EU interests in the various channels is offered. Overall, it will be seen that there is not a lot of intra-national variance between German states in what channels they use but that socio-economic factors play a role in how they utilize these channels.

Date of publication