ABSTRACT
The ‘grand theories’ of neo-functionalism and intergovernmentalism, introduced in the previous chapter, seek to explain how the EU as a political construct has emerged and how it is evolving. Because the focus of such ‘grand theories’ is on the EU polity and thus the ‘macro level’ of European integration, they cannot provide detailed explanations for how the multi-level governance system in the EU works and how policy and decisions are made. This is the level of analysis of the so-called ‘middle-range’ theories of integration, which are more appropriate for analysis of the governance and politics of a field such as EU spatial policy. Middle-range theoretical approaches of European integration deal with aspects related to the actual workings of EU institutions, the influence of different institutional settings and actor constellations on policy outcomes, and the impact of EU policy-making and decision-making on the member states and regions, rather than trying to explain the processes of European integration as a whole.
