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Europe as a multilevel federation

Michael Keating (University of Aberdeen)
Michael Keating (University of Aberdeen)

Amid growing pressures of Europeanization, many scholars have cast doubt on the state prevailing as a dominant marker of territory. Identifying a process of de-territorialization of economic and social systems, however, would be at odds with what we can actually observe in the European polity, says Michael Keating. Instead, we have witnessed a re-territorialization of such systems, as functions, political articulation and competition have relocated to new levels above, below and across states. How do we make sense of such an increasingly complex polity? In his article “Europe as a multilevel federation” published in the Journal of European Public Policy, Michael argues that a federalist perspective allows us to analyse and appraise the EU as an order characterised by an emerging regional level below and across states, if federalism is considered “a general principle of order, combining unity with diversity.”