Europeanizing Sub-national Governance: Partnership in the Implementation of European Union Structural Funds in Poland

Dabrowski M. Europeanizing sub-national governance: partnership in the implementation of European Union Structural Funds in Poland, Regional Studies. The legacy of centralism, lack of traditions in collaborative policy-making and weakly institutionalized sub-national authorities prompt questions about the transferability of the European Union's cohesion policy partnership principle to Central and Eastern European member states, which are the main recipients of cohesion funding. What is the impact of partnership at the sub-national level? What are the mechanisms of the sub-national actors' adjustment to this European Union-imposed practice and what is the scope for its institutionalization? By investigating sub-national partnership arrangements in Poland, this paper sheds light on these under-researched issues and contributes to the debate on the future of European Union cohesion policy.