Paper Titles & Abstracts

The relationship between the EU and subnational governments varies significantly across the member states. The constitutional and political position of local and regional authorities within national government arrangements determines their role within the European integration process. Domestic gate-keepers do not only affect the top-down impact of EU policies and legislation on local government, but more importantly they frame local engagement with the EU.This paper highlights the asymmetries in local-supranational relations by comparing local authorities in England and Germany within the EU's multilevel compound. Whilst England represents a highly centralised state, in which regional governance and local governments are subject to constant change and equipped with weak political powers, the federal system of Germany guarantees its regions and local authorities strong political autonomy through constitutional provisions. This leads to different strategies and rationales of subnational engagement with European policies and politics within both regions.In order to compare subnational governments of both member states, the paper deduces five indicators from the fusion literature. Fusion provides a pormising approach to understand the logic of integration from the viewpoint of sectoral actors complementary to national governments. Thus, the paper links the empirical study of subnational government to the wider context of European integration theorising. Moreover, it applies five indicators to investigate fusion dynamics within the North West of England and North Rhine-Westphalia: 1) the top-down impact of EU legislation and policies; 2) the awareness of local actors towards EU legislation and policies; 3) institutional adaptation processes within politico-administrative arrangements of local authorities; 4) vertical mobilisation towards higher levels of government in order to promote local interests, and horizontal cooperation with other authorities through transnational networks; 5) local actors' attitudes towards European integration based on a pragmatic, performance related mentality.