1 Definition of Regions and their sorts. 2 1. WHAT IS A REGION? The word ‘region’ stems from Latin region, which denotes “direction, point of the compass”,

Presentation on theme: "1 Definition of Regions and their sorts. 2 1. WHAT IS A REGION? The word ‘region’ stems from Latin region, which denotes “direction, point of the compass”,"— Presentation transcript:

1 1 Definition of Regions and their sorts

2 2 1. WHAT IS A REGION? The word ‘region’ stems from Latin region, which denotes “direction, point of the compass”, but later develops by association with regere, to direct or rule. Region was defined as the territory controlled by a regent and his regiment, so it should not come as a big surprise that a region had indeterminate boundaries. While this points at a potential essence of ‘region’, it is impossible to assert any original meaning to concept as its particular connotations have varied greatly over history and across different cultural contexts.

3 3 What, then, is a region? It’s a simple question, yet one that defies a simple answer. The term ‘region’ means different things to different people. Regions can be defined variously by geography, economic integration, institutional or governmental jurisdiction, or by social or cultural characteristics.

4 4 Problems of DEF. : “Regions are subjective artistic devices, and they must be shaped to fit the hand of the individual user. There can be no standard definition of a region, and there are no universal rules for recognizing, delimiting, and describing regions. Far too much time can be wasted in the trivial exercise of trying to draw lines around ‘regions’”. This quote, given by Hart in 1982 states well that “there is no standard definition of a region”. Regions are not preordained, given or natural, and a region is not a formal organization.

5 5 Regions are not somewhere ‘out there’, waiting to be discovered. Rather, they are constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed through interactions between various actors in response to changes in their internal and external environment on the basis of what is most appropriate for the pursuit of their commonly held goals. z. B.: “The Mediterranean country Italy became a member of a regional organization called North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)” - was certainly determined by geography, - but was due to an act of political imagination and a subsequent political process. Today the location of a Mediterranean state in the North Atlantic is not any longer considered as something ‘odd’.

6 6 The construction of regions is part of the perpetual transformation of the international system, in which regions emerge, subsist and eventually cease to exist. Or, what we might label the process of regional integration and disintegration. This also means that regions are not unitary or homogeneous units, they overlap and come in plural.

7 7 Although regions are not naturally constituted geographical units, they cannot exist without having a physical reality. Thus, territoriality is a sine qua non of regions. The territorial shaping of a region implies that regions require some kind of boundaries. After all, a territory can be defined as ‘a cohesive section of the earth’s surface that is distinguished from its surroundings by a boundary’.

8 8 Boundaries have a dual role in the creation of a ‘sense of place’, namely the establishment of who is ‘inside’ and who is ‘outside’. Regional borders are the products of a continuous process of construction and deconstruction, which implies that regional borders are mutable. z. B.: Changing perceptions of a region is the change from regarding the border of Europe as falling between East and West Germany to including all the former Eastern European countries as potential members of the EU.

9 9 2. INTERNAL DYNAMICS OF REGIONS Regions have their own internal dynamic: they may become vehicles of power, shaping the spaces of governance, economy and culture. However, it should not be neglected that each region forms a part of the global system, and thus, needs to be understood in a global perspective as well.

10 10 3. GEOGRAPHIC AND NON-GEOGRAPHIC REGIONS While regions are most defined in terms of geographic proximity, it is equally possible to opt for a non-geographic definition. For instance, ‘currency’ region, a group of states, which rely on one member’s currency and whereby these states are not necessarily located in close proximity.

11 11 If we take a closer look at the geographical contiguousness of some of the formal regions (APEC; ASEAN; EU; MERCOSUR; NAFTA), then almost all the regions pass the geographical test. The exceptions include EU, SADC, APEC and ANZERTA. z. B.: Mauritius is a member of SADC, but is separated from the others by both sea and a non-member country. APEC stretches from the west coast of Malaysia to the east coast of the USA, and is as outstretched as the WTO.

12 12 Geography does not identify which country should be included in a region. Thus, geography is at best an indicator, a sort of stating point. But, as Katzenstein formulated: “Regional designations are no more ‘real’ in terms of geography than they are ‘natural’ in terms of culture”. For instance, if we talk about the ‘West’, it encompasses now Western Europe, the US, Canada, Australia, and Japan. The ‘Islamic world’ is by to Nigeria and Northern Africa. Thus, as products of culture and economics, history and politics, geographically defined regions change over time.

13 13 4. DEFINITION OF REGION The fact that there is a multitude of possibilities to approach the problem of ‘region’ suggests that the best way to define it is an eclectic and plastic way. If it is crystal clear that regions necessitate a geographical dimension, the question is then, how to recognize a particular area as a region. The point is that regions define themselves’ they are only identifiable post factum.

14 14 There is no use in looking for one universal criterion that defines a region, nor to come up with a ‘catch-all’ cocktail of criteria. It is true process of regionalization, that eventually defines the region, or in other words regions become ‘visible’ by patterns of interaction, such as discursive practices occurring within geographical, historical, cultural, political and economic variables.

15 15 One can define regions as territorially based subsystems of the international system. They ‘exist’ as they occur in discourses. This definition implies that there are many varieties of regional subsystems with different coherence. Regions can be found at al territorial levels. There are regions within nations-states, cross-border regions on a sub-national level, as well as regions above the nation-state.

16 16 5. A TYPOLOGY OF REGIONS Regions can be classified according to many criteria. In this module, we use the following – widely spread – typology : Micro regions Cross-Border regions Macro regions Sub-regions

17 17 (1) MICRO-REGIONS “We are and more Tuscans, Sicilians, Walloons and Welshmen, and less and less Italians, Frenchmen and Englishmen, or in other words we are becoming more and more Europeans.” A micro-region can be defined as a territorial area that is smaller than a state to which it belongs, but larger than a municipality. Typical examples of such micro-regions are provinces, districts, departments or even mega-cities. A special case of a micro-region is one that spreads across different states (cross-border region).

18 18 Micro-regionalism is related to macro-regionalism in the way that the larger regionalization (and globalization) processes create possibilities for smaller economically dynamic sub-national or transnational regions to get direct access to the larger regional economic system, often bypassing the nation-state and the national capital, sometimes even as an alternative or in opposition to the challenged state and formal state-led regionalisms.

19 19 An example of where the typology of micro-regions are commonly used is the Assembly of European Regions (AER): The phrase “ A Europe of the Regions” is nowadays an established expression in “European”. In 1985 the Assembly of European Regions (AER) was founded, and this political organization of the regions of Europe became the spokesperson of the interests of the regions at the European and the international level.

20 20 Due to the AER, the role of the regions in Europe has been considerably strengthened. One of the many achievements is the institutionalization of the participation of the Territorial authorities (regions and communes) in the construction of Europe and by the establishment of the Committee of the Regions of the European Union. The latter being set up by stipulations included in the Maastricht Treaty (1991). For the first time the contribution of regions to the EU policy process was recognized by Brussels.

21 21 In particular the federal member states, such as Germany and Belgium, had pushed very hard for the creation of the Committee of the Regions, however their original intention was to found a committee comprised of regions with legislative powers, evidently the more centralist member states, whose regions do not have legislative powers, could not agree with this point of view.

22 22 The ensuing compromise resulted in a committee of delegates who represent a very broad range of regions, from the powerful German Lander to the small Luxembourg municipalities. The great variety in local government denominations makes defining a European ‘region’ extremely difficult. Geographically some regions are vast, Norrboten and Vasterboten make up the North Sweden Region and cover an area of 154,312km2, while some regions are small, such as the city of Vienna, the lander of Bremen, the Capital Region of Brussels.

23 23 Some regions have a population which is larger than most of the member states’ populations. Some regions elect their own parliaments and possess quite significant legislative power, while others have just a very small amount of autonomy. According to the definition of the AER a region is the level directly under that of the state.

24 24 “The region is the territorial body of public law established at the level immediately below that of the State and endowed with political self-government. The region shall be recognized in the national constitution or in legislation which guarantees its autonomy, identity, powers and organizational structures.” (Declaration on regionalism in Europe 1996)

25 25 Based on this definition, a further typology can be established. AER TYPOLOGY Based on the definition of regions of the Assembly of European Regions, it is possible to identify six types of situations in Europe: * regions having a state – like nature (for instance Germany, Austria – Lander; Switzerland – Cantons; the Russian Federation – Republics or Oblasts or Krajs;…) * politically independent regions with a strong administration (Spain, Italy, Portugal, UK, Georgia, Denmark – autonomous regions); * regions of decentralized states (Holland – provinces, Poland, France (4 level government – regions);

26 26 regions having a district of ‘department’ or county-like nature (Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Greece, Lithuania, Norway, Romania, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine (3 levels of government) regions based on country delegation (highly centralized state) (Ireland: 8 regional authorities under 2 county delegations), and non-regionalised states (Albania, Andorra, …). The AER has currently 250 member regions from 26 European countries and 12 interregional organisations.

27 27 (2) CROSS-BORDER REGIONS Since the end of the eighties, cross-border region building processes have gained momentum. A cross-border region is actually a special case of a micro-region, whereby the micro-region spreads across different states. An example of a dynamic cross-border region in North America is the so-called “Cascadia”, at the western edge of the US-Canadian border.

28 28 Cascadia, in fact, is presented as a rather flexible notion. Depending on the interests and agendas involved, different ‘boundaries’ of Cascadia are constructed. Mappings of Cascadia range from a conceptualization that includes only the watershed of the Georgia Basin and Puget Sound to one called “Main Street”, running from Vancouver south through Seattle to Portland and Eugene; to a depiction of a two-state, one province agglomeration of British Columbia, Washington State and sometimes even Oregon; to a much larger approach envisioning the cross-border entity as a “Pacific Northwest Economic Region”, including five states, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Alaska, and two provinces, British Columbia and Alberta.

29 29 Some scholars state that these presentations of variously scaled partnerships are not geopolitical in the sense that they represent areas of influence or conflict, but are rather geo-economic framings of the region.

30 30 (3) MACRO-REGIONS Macro-regions, sometimes called international regions or world-regions, refer to large territorial units comprising different states. A former definition of macro-region is: ‘A limited number of states linked together by a geographical relationship and by a degree of mutual interdependence’ (Joseph Nye). This is a valuable definition, but seen the increasingly interdependent world, a more accurate definition is the one provided by Barry Buzan: “A spatially coherent territory composed of two or more states”.

31 31 Typical examples are the ‘Pacific region’ or the ‘Mediterranean region’. These entities are often characterized by their formal level of integration (cf. the European Union in Europe, Mercosur in Latin-America). From a geographical perspective one can distinguish the following regional ‘realms’ in the world: Europe Russia North America South America North Africa/Southwest Asia Sub-saharan Africa South Asia East Asia Southeast Asia Austral Realm Pacific Realm

32 32 4. SUB-REGIONS Within the realms of Macro-regions one can also identify smaller regional entities, sometimes called ‘sub-regions’. In Europe for instance, one can refer to sub-regions that reflect old historical formations such as the Swedish, Baltic Empire, the Habsburg Empire … But not only notions, also micro-regions can form a sub-region. The old Hanseatic project in Europe seems to be revitalized today as Hamburg/Bremen develops more links with Baltic states in response to the Southern German growth pole centred on Munich that in turn forms a ‘growth-triangle’ with Milan and Barcelona.

33 33 However, setting the boundaries of some of these realms is a daunting task, because they are susceptible to different interpretations. This is especially the case with Europe. Talking of ‘Europe’ can mean different things to different people. “There is today much more to identifying ‘Europe’ than looking on a map: politics is more important than geography. How people choose to define Europe will have a significant impact on how they think both about security (in a broad sense) in Europe and Europe’s relations with the outside world. The chosen definition will provide the basis of the answer to the crucial question: who is ‘us’ ad who is ‘them’ politically speaking?”

34 34 For instance, to many people Europe means simply the European Union, thus, they are referring to the area covered by the EU member- states, or what in geography is called Western Europe. However, the impending wave of accessions will inevitably lead to a broader interpretation frame of Europe. Sometimes, Europe is used to describe the area stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals, which refers to the “whole” of Europe and, thus, includes two former Soviet Union Republics and a part of the Russian Federation.

35 35 Another interpretation of Europe is the one, which refers to the area stretching from Poland to Portugal. The well-known argument of some famous Eastern European authors, such as Milan Kundera, Gyorgy Konrad, goes as follows: “Our East-Central European countries belong to Europe, in fact, they are culturally and historically among the most important parts of Europe.”

36 36 The reference to Europe in the designation already states the fact that East and Central European countries form part of Europe. These kind of arguments were especially ventilated during the period prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall and placed the major dividing line between the Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries. But Europe can also be seen as the European Security Area, represented by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe and whereby Europe stretches from Vancouver to Vladivostok. This security Europe includes states, which do not belong to the geographic Europe.

37 37 Europe is, however, not an exception. A similar story can be told about the Middle East. There is no single agreed definition of the political and geographical boundaries of the Middle East. For instance, in some parts of Asia the region is referred to as West Asia, however, this does not include Egypt, the Sudan, and the Magreb, which are located in Africa but are generally conceived as countries of the Middle East.

38 38 During the nineteenth century the European powers considered the East as the Eurasian region, which started where the Western civilization ended, namely the African continent and the Ottoman Empire. In those days, the Eastern Question was the term to describe the great strategic competition among Britain, France, Russia and Germany for access to and control over this region. And as the influence of the West expanded further into Asia, a distinction between the Near East and the Far East was made.