Towards operationalisation of ‘Europeanisation’ at the sub-national level: a review and proposal of indicators

The concept of ‘Europeanisation’ principally refers to the process by which the domestic policies, legal frameworks, and institutional structures of nation-states are adapted and reshaped to align with the European Union norms and requirements. Less attention has been paid to local and regional development policy actors in European multi-level governance (subnational governments and their territorial associations, including cross-sectoral partnerships such as Local Action Groups). In this paper, we propose to operationalise the Europeanisation concept to enable the quantitative measurement of the degree or level of Europeanisation of subnational entities. Based on a comprehensive critical review of literature, we develop a conceptual framework for developing quantitative indicators to assess the level of top-down, bottom-up, and horizontal Europeanisation. Our work takes a key step towards the implementation of comparative regional research to facilitate studies of European cohesion.