Multilevel citizens, new social risks and regional welfare

Europeanization implies that policies are to be shaped by considerations which go beyond the formal sovereignty of EU’s member states. Claims for autonomy within the EU have been put forward not only by ‘stateless’ nations within plural and compound states, but also by regions demanding self-government. More often than not, meso-governments do not need par force the rationalising intervention of state central bureaucracies and elites. Autonomous regions enjoy additional economic and political security offered by the European Union and are gradually accommodated in a post-sovereignty era of progressive trans-nationalization.

The paper elaborates on the idea of multi-level citizenship as a ‘civility compound’ of collective attachments which favours regional territorial autonomy. Multiple identities expressed by Europeans are inserted in a variable continuum of territorial belongings and affinities grounded in values of human rights and solidarity. Both civil and political rights are being increasingly accomplished at the regional level of EU’s member states. The exercise of civil and political rights has ‘spilt over’ into social citizenship. Attention is paid to the aspirations of regions and sub-state layers of governance to carry out welfare expansion based upon arguments of optimality, accountability, legitimacy, partnership and recalibration.