| In the globalization era, regionalization comes to be one of the most prominent institutional characteristics of world economic and political development. During their interplay, regionalization is subordinate to globalization; however, it is concrete form and practice of regionalism that drive the regionalization process. With the confines of regions increasingly blurred, international and domestic bounds gradually shrinking, economic, political and social-cultural interaction greatly intensified, regionalization attaches great importance to globalization process and the construction of global order on the up way, at the same time, it correlates closely with national, local and individual actors on the down way. In a word, regionalization constitutes one of the primary impetuses for figuring the international and domestic relations structures. Therefore, it is regionalization that provides a fertile social soil for the rise of governance.According to the consensus, Governance is a universally-used term usually identified as a process in which different interests are conciliated through incentive, sanction, supervision and control, for the purpose of governing the relationships between the state and civil society, between the complex network of political institutions and the realm of the social activities. Under the globalization circumstance, global governance rise to be a brand-new social paradigm independent from sovereign state and state governance system. In contrast with the absence of world authority and effective countermeasures at global level, addressing regional issues and even achieving collaborative development increasingly depend on the advocacy, design and implementation of regional cooperation. With the emergence of regionalism, regional cooperation has been elevated onto a more important position, and consequently leads to progress towards regional governance. In a word, regional governance is indeed a new approach for advancing regional common welfare, order and value by means of regionalism practice.Arising from the facts of regional development disparities, regional coordinated development not only closely relates to industrial structure, resource allocation and income distribution, but more importantly, concerns political development and social stability. With globalization and regionalization introducing more and more entrenched and enduring interconnectedness, requisites of production and social resources enjoy free flow and mutual share in wider scope; regional institutional arrangements and regionalism practice are considerably more robust. For these reasons, the economic-cultural links wins further intensification, no matter for different regions within state or cross-boundary region, but also for diverse member-states within regional community. On the other side, the lasting expansion of market mechanism also brings some negative effects. For the differences of natural resource gifts and economic-cultural bases, the development gaps among different countries and regions are wider than ever before. What’s more, the unbalanced development also leads to social disorder and political instability, and further exerts in-neglected influences upon the domestic, regional and international orders. As a result, endowed with the new significations of economic-social cohesion, regional competitiveness and sustainability, the traditional regional coordinated development has experienced new changes in both connotation and denotation, and its visual field also start to transcend over traditional national boundaries.Continental Europe experiences integrated regional history and mature regionalism practice, the deepening European integration actually constitutes a model for regional coordinated development. As to the microcosmic dimension, sub-national and local entities compose the social base of EU’s regional coordinated development; as to the macroscopic and intermediate dimension, European regional integration and European sub-regional process form the base. Anyway, European regional coordinated development can be deemed as the history of integration development. Currently, EU’s regional coordinated development policy process has gradually evolved into new regional development cohesion with endogenous, integral and comprehensive features. This sort of "governance turn" aims at promoting healthy competition and close cooperation within certain area, constructing an advanced-stage optimization sustainable structure in line with the principles of the complementarities of each other’s strengths, reciprocity, mutual benefit and common development. Just in the macroscopic framework of "governance turn", EU’s regional coordinated development has achieved the transformation towards the governance-oriented approach. To some extents, this "governance turn" rises out of the structure of government pattern and inter-governmentalism, leads to the re-figuration from state-centralism to multi-layered network, the move from state government to collaborative governance, and also experiences the rise of inter-regionalism.Concretely speaking, the governance turn of EU’s regional coordinated development are embodied in the governance architecture, mechanism and course, including static power structure and institutional norms, as well as dynamic policy processes. To sum up, there reveals a holistic vision of governance organically composed by governance architecture, institution and course.In the first place, we need to explore the re-figuration of the governance architecture of EU’s regional coordinated development. Multi-level governance suggests that there exists a double shift of decision making away from the nation-state to the regions and individuals, and from the nation-state to the supranational level. Now it is widely accepted that EU constitutes a typical system of multi-level governance, Supra-national, sub-regional, national, sub-national and individual actors are all involved in the European integration process, during which they re-shape their own identities and functions as well as redefine their mutual relationships. In a word, EU is indeed a multi-level and inter-institutional network rather than a "Sandwich" system. The re-figurations of governance architecture are manifested in the following ways: the transition from inter-governmentalism to supra-nationalism on the up way; the revival of sub-nationalism on the down way; and the rise of inter-regionalism on the external way.Secondly, we should review the change of the governance institutions of EU’s regional coordinated development. Practically speaking, regional governance is a durative dynamic process rather than a suit of static regulations; the basis of governance is communication and coordination rather than control; what governance depends are the interactions of formal institutions and informal institutional arrangements rather than purely written laws. Actually, the governance institutions of EU’s regional coordinated development include three origins:the fundamental EU laws and treaties as substantive norms; the decision and operation procedures as procedural norms; and some general principles as soft norms. To be on those bases, these governance institutions concurrently conform to the certain democracy principium, showing a mixed feature mainly through Community Method with Social Partnership Procedure (SPP) and Open Method of Coordination (OMC) subsidiary.Last but not least, observation for the governance course transformation of EU’s regional coordinated development is also in need. Regional governance is an innovative design of political operational pattern, which should be realized by specific and microcosmic ways. Governance functions across different levels, sectors and scopes, instead of through linear, hierarchical and bureaucratic system. Till now, the governance turn of EU’s regional coordinated development has rose out of the structure of government pattern and inter-governmentalism, supra-national organization, member-state, sub-national entities and social individuals jointly forms a multi-dimensional interaction through partnership. For the purpose of achieving "good governance", the policy process of EU’s regional coordinated development consists of a whole set of policy network of decision, implementation and supervision, equipped with appropriate policy instruments. Furthermore, an integrated system combining official assessment and marketable response along with civil participation is also built for evaluating the policy performances. Hereby, a complete policy circle comes into being. However, during the whole courses, the relationship among diverse actors is a flat, transparent and nonexclusive new partnership instead of hierarchical one. Herewith, an open policy course comes into existence.In conclusion, EU is a community of interests and values; consequently, how to share the "bonus" of integration is of great significance. For balancing diverse interest and value claims of different actors, promoting the harmonious development and promising upgrade of integration, probably it is the only practical and effective solution for EU to construct a multi-level, institutional and open regional governance framework. Actually, EU governance is also entrusted the elementary mission of reducing the regional disparities, advancing regional cohesion and achieving regional harmony. Looking back to its successful experience, we held a strong confidence that EU’s governance turn for regional coordinated development has grown up to be a unique governance model with exceptional features. The practice of EU’s regional coordinated development governance constitutes the concrete demonstration and annotation for EU governance paradigm, while the paradigm essentially roots in the certain European political civilization. The core values embedded in European political culture——Justice, Cohesion, Unity in Diversity——reflect themselves in the European regionalization process, so as to figure the specific policy courses and impose far-reaching influences upon the community. From the more macroscopic angle, as an international actor with powerful competitiveness, EU successfully attempts to win the great progress for regional coordinated development. The value orientations, operation philosophies and basic experiences of EU governance are probably reckoned as prior references for the rest of world; in the meantime, this paradigm does represent the human-being’s future orientation to some extent, its contribution to the universal development in large scope is definitely worth expecting.When it mentions to EU’s implications for China, it is undeniable that we could draw a lot of references for use from EU’s success. Confronted with large amount of similar or even more serious regional development issues, China should share a great deal of constructive wisdoms and experiences with EU. Accordingly, to make overall planning for urban-rural, eastern-western and internal-external coordinated development is a pressing agenda deserving our urgent attentions. For this reason, it is necessary for us to perfect the mechanism of domestic regional coordinated development, promote the "governance turn" of regional public administration and impel the cross-boundary collaborative governance. As the Chinese ancient saying goes, "A stone from other hills may serve to polish the Jade of this one", we are totally convinced!... |
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