Bulletin n. 1-2/2014
November 2014
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
    • Joren Jacobsa, Krisztina Varró
    Rethinking cross-border Euregionalism as self-organising system
    in Space and Polity , Volume 18, Number 1 / April ,  2014 ,  1-16
    Studies of cross-border regions in the European Union have struggled conceptually with an apparent ambiguity of Euregionalism: namely that cross-border regions seem to be the manifestations of reterritorialising state governance on the one hand, but have clearly failed to substantially challenge the Westphalian state territorial system on the other. The aim of the present paper is to develop a conceptual framework that helps us understand this paradoxical nature of cross-border regions. To this end, we draw on the systems theory of Niklas Luhmann and the semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce, and propose to regard Euregionalism (and regionalisms more generally) as a self-organising system. Self-organisation entails the process in which self-referential communication, rather than a set of actors, employs spatial concepts, such as the region, to enable system-specific entanglements with physical space, either short-lived or enduring, and possibly – but not necessarily – involving governance.
    ©2001 - 2020 - Centro Studi sul Federalismo - P. IVA 94067130016