ABSTRACT
It is the overall aim of this study to explore the diffusion of highly rationalized principles and practices of regional development to sub-national areas in contemporary Europe. Accordingly, we will explore and specify the enormous (world-)cultural drive of regional mobilization in the following on the basis of a comparative case study of sub-national regions. The regions that were selected for this analysis – Lower Silesia (Dolnośłąskie), the Lublin region (Lubelskie) and the Sub-Carpathian region (Podkarpackie) – are 3 of 16 administrative regions of the Republic of Poland (see Map 6.1). 1 These ‘voivodships’ (województwa, in Polish diction) were only created about a decade ago, in January 1999, as part of a larger administrative reform. Hence, the following analysis provides a good opportunity to study the construction and constitution of ‘regional agency’ and new world-cultural regional actor-identities in Europe of today almost in ‘real time’. In fact, the study of regions which only came into existence about a decade ago should contribute to a more detailed exploration of both the intellectual underpinnings as well as the institutional logics of diffusion. Territory of contemporary Poland and geographic location of the three selected cases. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203126936/959fdd33-b5bb-450e-be3f-e53a213d2c90/content/map6_1_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
