Territorial politics and the study of the European Union

Much work has been done on European regional policy and its implications for European integration. However, there has been little on what the rich literature on territorial politics could offer to the study of European integration. This is not to suggest that it has been entirely ignored, just that there is much untapped wealth which could help further our understanding of the processes involved in European integration and the nature of decision-making in the European Union. This paper considers two branches of this literature. First, it is suggested that the rise of regionalism and regionalist movements developed within national states might tell us something about the process of European integration. Second, it is suggested that the literature on inter-governmentalism within territorial politics (as distinct from the quite different school of inter-governmentalism within the study of international relations) offers further insights into the study of the European Union.