Blurring Political and Functional Representation: Subnational Territorial Interests in European Multi-Level Governance

Globalization has triggered competition not just among individuals and firms, but among territories as well. Regional and local (subnational) authorities are now struggling not just to retain or attract jobs, but also to represent the many interests of their citizens in the new complex structures that are created at the EU and at the global level. In this activity, they are helped (but also prodded along) by functional interests and by civil society organizations that also claim to represent the interests of European citizens at the regional and local level. The (already complex) division of labor between electoral representation through political parties and functional representation through interest groups is further complicated by the growing presence of civil society organizations and public interest groups claiming to stand for widely held values and ideas among the populace, worthy of being fully represented and acted upon in EU policymaking. Finding themselves at the cross-roads of many pressure streams, subnational authorities try to mediate between partisan imperatives, functional interests and value orientations both by collaborating with different collective actors (interest groups and civil society associations) in multi-level governance structures and by taking on board the concerns and the modes of interaction of these latter in their activity of preference formation at the regional and local level and of functional and territorial lobbying at the EU level.