ABSTRACT
Introduction The European Community has altered significantly the structure of decision-making in Europe. The movement toward economic and political integration has undermined some traditional state powers and has led to the emergence of new regional structures and relations. Despite these developments, most efforts to explain and interpret the contemporary European scene continue to focus on individual European states. For every question asked about the implications of largescale economic and political change for the Upper Rhine, the Iberian peninsula, or the Basque country, thousands are raised about the direction of French or German fiscal policy, the prospects for regional reform in Italy, or the future of decentralization in Spain. The dominance of state-centered perspectives is not difficult to explain; as the major political actor in the modern world, the state plays a formidable role in social and economic organization. Indeed, the state's deep involvement in the generation and dissemination of information makes it very difficult to develop analyses based on regional structures that are not at least derivative of the state. Yet a preoccupation with the state - supplemented at times with a concern for substate or suprastate regions derivative of the state - can preclude consideration of important extrastate regional forms and processes. * Department of Geography, University of Oregon, Eu-
Among the more important extrastate regional developments occurring within the European Community are the growth of cross-border regional cooperation schemes and the emergence of economic and cultural links among geographically dispersed regions within different states. These developments are shaping the spatial context within which Europeans are leading their lives. At the same time they are creating new territorial structures that will further challenge the role of the state within the European Community power structure.
