IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/eeupol/v17y2016i4p638-659.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Explaining the allocation of regional Structural Funds: The conditional effect of governance and self-rule

Author

Listed:
  • Nicholas Charron

Abstract

What regional factors can explain the heterogeneity in Structural Funds distribution to European Union regions? Past studies have shown that aside from the level of economic development and rates of unemployment, other political, and economic factors systematically explain why certain European Union regions receive greater funding than others, in particular where there is room for bargaining. In this article, a novel theory is posited which argues that the determination of Structural Funds is based on an interaction between a region’s formal institutions (the level of a regional autonomy) and informal institutions (its level of quality of government). In cases of low regional autonomy, member states and European Union level actors prefer to allocate greater levels of Funds to regions with lower quality of government in order to increase cohesion. Yet in cases of high regional autonomy, risks associated with absorption failure in lower capacity regions lead states to strategically allocate greater levels of transfers to regions with higher quality of government. The theory is tested on data for 171 European Union regions for the 2007–2013 budget period. The results show robust empirical support for the theoretical claims.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicholas Charron, 2016. "Explaining the allocation of regional Structural Funds: The conditional effect of governance and self-rule," European Union Politics, , vol. 17(4), pages 638-659, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:eeupol:v:17:y:2016:i:4:p:638-659
    DOI: 10.1177/1465116516658135
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1465116516658135
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1465116516658135?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Simona Milio, 2007. "Can Administrative Capacity Explain Differences in Regional Performances? Evidence from Structural Funds Implementation in Southern Italy," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(4), pages 429-442.
    2. Staffan Andersson & Paul M. Heywood, 2009. "The Politics of Perception: Use and Abuse of Transparency International's Approach to Measuring Corruption," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 57(4), pages 746-767, December.
    3. Becker, Sascha O. & Egger, Peter H. & von Ehrlich, Maximilian, 2010. "Going NUTS: The effect of EU Structural Funds on regional performance," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(9-10), pages 578-590, October.
    4. Andres RodrIguez-Pose & Ugo Fratesi†, 2004. "Between Development and Social Policies: The Impact of European Structural Funds in Objective 1 Regions," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(1), pages 97-113.
    5. Sandy Dall'erba & Julie Le Gallo, 2008. "Regional convergence and the impact of European structural funds over 1989–1999: A spatial econometric analysis," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 87(2), pages 219-244, June.
    6. Roberto Ezcurra & Andr�s Rodríguez-Pose, 2013. "Political Decentralization, Economic Growth and Regional Disparities in the OECD," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(3), pages 388-401, March.
    7. Bo Rothstein, 2014. "What is the opposite of corruption?," Third World Quarterly, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(5), pages 737-752, May.
    8. repec:bla:jcmkts:v:48:y:2010:i::p:501-528 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Nicholas Charron & Lewis Dijkstra & Victor Lapuente, 2015. "Mapping the Regional Divide in Europe: A Measure for Assessing Quality of Government in 206 European Regions," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 122(2), pages 315-346, June.
    10. Dimitrova, Antoaneta & Toshkov, Dimiter, 2009. "Post-accession compliance between administrative co-ordination and political bargaining," European Integration online Papers (EIoP), European Community Studies Association Austria (ECSA-A), vol. 13, December.
    11. Nicholas Charron & Lewis Dijkstra & Victor Lapuente, 2015. "Erratum to: Mapping the Regional Divide in Europe: A Measure for Assessing Quality of Government in 206 European Regions," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 124(3), pages 1059-1059, December.
    12. Achim Kemmerling & Thilo Bodenstein, 2006. "Partisan Politics in Regional Redistribution," European Union Politics, , vol. 7(3), pages 373-392, September.
    13. Anwar Shah, 2005. "Public Services Delivery," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 7424.
    14. Maaike Beugelsdijk & Sylvester C.W. Eijffinger, 2005. "The Effectiveness of Structural Policy in the European Union: An Empirical Analysis for the EU‐15 in 1995–2001," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(1), pages 37-51, March.
    15. Florence Bouvet & Sandy Dall'Erba, 2010. "European Regional Structural Funds: How Large is the Influence of Politics on the Allocation Process?," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(3), pages 501-528, June.
    16. Adam William Chalmers, 2013. "Regional Authority, Transnational Lobbying and the Allocation of Structural Funds in the European Union," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(5), pages 815-831, September.
    17. Nicholas Charron & Lewis Dijkstra & Victor Lapuente, 2014. "Regional Governance Matters: Quality of Government within European Union Member States," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(1), pages 68-90, January.
    18. Nicole Bolleyer & Lori Thorlakson, 2012. "Beyond Decentralization--The Comparative Study of Interdependence in Federal Systems," Publius: The Journal of Federalism, CSF Associates Inc., vol. 42(4), pages 566-591, October.
    19. Jale Tosun, 2014. "Absorption of Regional Funds: A Comparative Analysis," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(2), pages 371-387, March.
    20. Staffan Andersson & Paul M. Heywood, 2009. "The Politics of Perception: Use and Abuse of Transparency International's Approach to Measuring Corruption," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 57, pages 746-767, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cerciello, Massimiliano & Agovino, Massimiliano & Garofalo, Antonio, 2019. "The caring hand that cripples? The effects of the European regional policy on local labour market participation in Southern Italy," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    2. Chmieliński, Paweł & Faccilongo, Nicola & Fiore, Mariantonietta & La Sala, Piermichele, 2018. "Design and implementation of the Local Development Strategy: a case study of Polish and Italian Local Action Groups in 2007-2013," Studies in Agricultural Economics, Research Institute for Agricultural Economics, vol. 120(1), April.
    3. Roberta Arbolino & Raffaele Boffardi, 2017. "The Impact of Institutional Quality and Efficient Cohesion Investments on Economic Growth Evidence from Italian Regions," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(8), pages 1-17, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bachtrögler, Julia, 2016. "On the effectiveness of EU structural funds during the Great Recession: Estimates from a heterogeneous local average treatment effects framework," Department of Economics Working Paper Series 230, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    2. Paweł Charasz & Jan P Vogler, 2021. "Does EU funding improve local state capacity? Evidence from Polish municipalities," European Union Politics, , vol. 22(3), pages 446-471, September.
    3. Mindaugas Butkus & Alma Maciulyte-Sniukiene & Kristina Matuzeviciute, 2020. "Heterogeneous growth outcomes of the EU’s regional financial support mediated by institutions with some empirical evidences at NUTS 3 level," Review of Regional Research: Jahrbuch für Regionalwissenschaft, Springer;Gesellschaft für Regionalforschung (GfR), vol. 40(1), pages 33-66, April.
    4. Julia Bachtrögler, 2016. "On the effectiveness of EU structural funds during the Great Recession: Estimates from a heterogeneous local average treatment effects framework," Department of Economics Working Papers wuwp230, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Department of Economics.
    5. Juan Cándido Gómez‐Gallego & María del Rocío Moreno‐Enguix & María Gómez‐Gallego, 2022. "The relation between the index of economic freedom and good governance with efficiency of the European Structural Funds," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 101(2), pages 327-349, April.
    6. Julia Bachtrögler & Christoph Hammer & Wolf Heinrich Reuter & Florian Schwendinger, 2019. "Guide to the galaxy of EU regional funds recipients: evidence from new data," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 46(1), pages 103-150, February.
    7. Nicola Francesco Dotti, 2016. "Unwritten Factors Affecting Structural Funds: The Influence of Regional Political Behaviours on the Implementation of EU Cohesion Policy," European Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(3), pages 530-550, March.
    8. Andrés Rodríguez‐Pose, 2020. "Institutions and the fortunes of territories," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 12(3), pages 371-386, June.
    9. Gianluigi Coppola & Sergio Destefanis & Giorgia Marinuzzi & Walter Tortorella, 2021. "Regional policies and sectoral outputs in the Italian regions. A multi-input multi-output counterfactual approach," Discussion Paper series in Regional Science & Economic Geography 2021-08, Gran Sasso Science Institute, Social Sciences, revised May 2021.
    10. Lionel Vedrine & Julie Le Gallo, 2021. "Does EU Cohesion Policy affect territorial inequalities and regional development?," Post-Print hal-03327693, HAL.
    11. Lisa Maria Dellmuth & Michael F Stoffel, 2012. "Distributive politics and intergovernmental transfers: The local allocation of European Union structural funds," European Union Politics, , vol. 13(3), pages 413-433, September.
    12. Albanese, Giuseppe & Carrieri, Vincenzo & Speziali, Maria Maddalena, 2021. "Looking for a Star: Evaluating the Effect of the Cohesion Policy on Regional Well-Being," IZA Discussion Papers 14521, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. bouayad-agha-Hamouche, salima & turpin, nadine & védrine, lionel, 2012. "Fostering the potential endogenous development of European regions: a spatial dynamic panel data analysis of the Cohesion Policy," MPRA Paper 65470, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Cerciello, Massimiliano & Agovino, Massimiliano & Garofalo, Antonio, 2019. "The caring hand that cripples? The effects of the European regional policy on local labour market participation in Southern Italy," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    15. Chiara F Del Bo & Emanuela Sirtori, 2016. "Additionality and regional public finance – Evidence from Italy," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 34(5), pages 855-878, August.
    16. Jale Tosun, 2014. "Absorption of Regional Funds: A Comparative Analysis," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(2), pages 371-387, March.
    17. Cristian Incaltarau & Gabriela Carmen Pascariu & Neculai‐Cristian Surubaru, 2020. "Evaluating the Determinants of EU Funds Absorption across Old and New Member States – the Role of Administrative Capacity and Political Governance," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(4), pages 941-961, July.
    18. Alexandra Sotiriou & Maria Tsiapa, 2015. "The asymmetric influence of structural funds on regional growth in Greece," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 33(4), pages 863-881, August.
    19. Jan Fidrmuc & Martin Hulényi & Olga Zajkowska, 2019. "The Elusive Quest for the Holy Grail of an Impact of EU Funds on Regional Growth," CESifo Working Paper Series 7989, CESifo.
    20. Marco Di Cataldo, 2016. "Gaining and losing EU Objective 1 funds: Regional development in Britain and the prospect of Brexit," LEQS – LSE 'Europe in Question' Discussion Paper Series 120, European Institute, LSE.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:eeupol:v:17:y:2016:i:4:p:638-659. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.