Regionalization in Central and Eastern Europe: Limits and perspectives of an externally driven process

This chapter focuses on the process of regionalization of powers taking place in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) in the period following the fall of communism . Two aspects are considered: on the one hand, the influence of domestic and non-domestic legacies on this process; on the other hand, its main institutional outcomes. First, the aim is to analyze to what extent a series of factors (endogenous and non-), such as the historical background, EU conditionality or economic pressures, have affected the decentralization process in this area. Furthermore, the chapter will describe the institutional arrangements at subnational level examining procedures and outcomes of both administrative and political reforms. It will emerge quite clearly that no effective regionalization took place in this area in the last twenty years, as the core product (with few exception, such as Poland) has been the establishment of statistical or functional regions set up mostly in order to meet EU requirements for accession than to give an answer to internal problems. This contribution mainly relies on the findings included in the book Regional Dynamics in Central and Eastern Europe. New Approaches to Decentralization, edited by Francesco Palermo and Sara Parolari (Leiden: Brill, 2013), though further reflections have been added.