Institutional ‘legacies’ and the shaping of regional governance in Hungary

Article is part of a special issue entitled 'Learning from abroad: Regionalization and local institutional infrastructure in cohesion and accession countries'.

Abstract:

This article focuses on the regionalization process in Hungary in light of the increasing Europeanization of regional policy. Its underlying assumption is that, although the Europeanization process plays a crucial role in the transformation of the domestic governance structures, the adaptation process is significantly dependent on the learning capacity of the pre-existing institutional infrastructure. In that respect it evaluates the learning capacity of the domestic regional policy network by concentrating on the structure of the state and the centre-periphery relations, the presence of veto points and resistance to change, the level of social capital and cooperative culture, and the role of non-state actors - namely the private sector, experts and NGOs - in the policy process.