The Impact of EU Area-based Programmes on Local Governance: Towards a 'Europeanisation'?

In the context of the on-going debate on 'Europeanisation' as a result of adaptation pressure on domestic structures emanating from the EU level, the article sets out to describe the particular characteristics of the 'European turn' in the urban politics of the cities of Graz and Dortmund. Special attention is given to the effects of Structural Funds programmes on local government structures with regard to 'new urban governance'. The conclusions point to different types of path-dependent adaptation to EU policies and norms, to the relevance of mediating local factors to explanations of variation between the cities and to the inevitably different trajectories of 'Europeanisation' in cities across the EU. The article contributes to theoretical debates around the utility of historical/sociological institutionalist approaches in research on governance, notions of 'download/top-down' and 'upload/bottom-up' Europeanisation as well as the conceptualisation of the scope (the 'deepness') of the EU impact.