EU OCH UTFORMNINGEN AV REGIONALT SJÄLVSTYRE EU i självstyrelselagrevideringar, fallet självstyrelselagen för Åland

Abstract

It’s widely accepted that the EU has affected its regions – some argue that the EU has restricted the regions’ possibilities to choose their own paths by introducing new laws and rules, while others state that informal possibilities have made it easier for regions to directly contact and affect the EU instead. Nevertheless, not many studies have focused on discussion about EU in legislative processes of regional autonomy acts. Thus, it’s not clear how the EU affects argumentation in processes where formal structures of regional autonomy are formed. In this study, I focus on discussion about the EU in the two latest revisions of Åland’s Autonomy Act to widen the understanding about changes in autonomy discussion after a regional autonomy becoming a part of the EU. The results of a qualitative content analysis on consultation responses show that the combination of the theories Europeanization and Multi-Level Governance can be used to explain the legislative processes of regional autonomy acts to some extent, even if they can’t explain all variation among and between regional and national actors’ argumentation, respectively. The regional autonomy arrangements are distinctive in relation to each other, and there’s a need for further studies on the subject.