The regional offices in Brussels: from 'push and pull' to 'people and place'.

Greenwood, Justin

Abstract

The potential of 'people and place' is assessed as a means to broaden research about regional political actors into key questions about their role in European integration, largely dormant since the European Commission's 2001 White Paper on Governance raised the potential for territorial authorities to bridge EU institutions with territorial civil society. Interviews were conducted with a subset of executives from EU liaison offices performing leading roles in the formation and maintenance of a cluster of cognate networks. A key driver involves differences in their working constraints, assessed by a dual typology of offices in conjunction with literature applied to lobbyists in outreach contexts. A tendency to 'go native' over time, coupled with the opportunities for long-time post holders to control their own working agendas, may lead to activities orientated toward bringing the EU to regions, rather than just promoting their regions in EU institutions.

Citation

GREENWOOD, J. 2014. The regional offices in Brussels: from 'push and pull' to 'people and place'. Regions and cohesion [online], 4(3), pages 1-16. Available from: https://doi.org/10.3167/reco.2014.040301

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Dec 1, 2014
• Online Publication Date: Dec 1, 2014
• Publication Date: Dec 31, 2014
• Deposit Date: May 4, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: May 4, 2018
• Journal: Regions and cohesion
• Print ISSN: 2152-906X
• Electronic ISSN: 2152-9078
• Publisher: Berghahn Journals
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 4
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 1-16
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.3167/reco.2014.040301
• Keywords: European integration; Networks; Policy actor socialisation; Regional liaison offices
• Public URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10059/2898