Abstract

The article presents an interpretation of the Europeanization of Italian regional policy, developed through an analysis of the domestic impact of EU policy on the policies and strategies for regional development of the Italian state. "Europeanization " refers to the mechanisms and dynamics of national response to supranational policy inputs, with specific attention to factors of resistance and change in domestic institutions and policies. In these terms, Europeanization research underlines the specificity of modes of adaptation and change in defined policy areas and, in particular, their largely policy-driven nature. The Europeanization of regional policy is an exemplary expression of this, as it affects a re-articulation of relationships between national and sub-national actors and institutions, in a context of policy-making that is increasingly subtracted to rules of territorial sovereignty. For national-state actors and institutions, this implies an urgency to redefine criteria for effectiveness and legitimation of their own role in territorial development policies, in response to two fundamental directions of change: - in the relationships between decision-making arenas, marked by multi-level rearticulation of intergovernmental practices; - in the relationships between scales of governance and regulation, marked by a process of "re-territorialization" of politics. A remarkable result of this is the centrality taken by a re-thematization of the meaning of territoriality, putting "locales" central as both objects of national policies and as subjects of their enactment.