Bulletin n. 2/2008
September 2008
CONTENTS
  • Section A) The theory and practise of the federal states and multi-level systems of government
  • Section B) Global governance and international organizations
  • Section C) Regional integration processes
  • Section D) Federalism as a political idea
  • De Frantz Monika
    New Regionalism Top Down: Mobilizing National Minority Culture
    in Regional and Federal Studies , Volume 18 Issue 4 ,  2008 ,  403 - 427
    New regionalism has discovered culture as a political instrument for promoting economic development. But where local traditions have come to be associated with failure, backwardness and conflict, these negative images can become a burden for regional development. In addition to its political and economic peripherality, the Austrian province of Burgenland is characterized by a multi-ethnic heritage that has long been threatened by national assimilation. But the transition in neighbouring Central Eastern Europe has motivated Burgenland's politicians to mobilize the fragmented minority culture as an asset for regional development. Despite its weak civic traditions suffocated by political party clientelism, Burgenland illustrates a successful case of a culture-based new regionalism driven by a regional government that is strongly embedded within Austria's centralized federalism. In the absence of endogenous claims for regional autonomy, the government's policy has helped to overcome ethnic divisions by designing intercultural legitimacy from the top down. But cultural new regionalism also entails winners and losers, even in a civic field that has been as little politicized as Burgenland's national minority heritage. The regional elites still face the problem of how to integrate the various civic organizations in the minority field and thus base the regional vision within a bottom-up movement.
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