On the 5th of November, I spoke at the Public Library of Faro, a lecture on Administrative Regionalization and local development”, invited by the civic association CIVIS. I bring to readers the main topics of this lecture and the discussion that followed (1st part).
1. The first note
The subject that brings us here is not an easy task and a lot has happened in the last 20 years since the 1998 referendum on administrative regionalization. History has accelerated and, to that extent, changing your mind is still, I think, an act of intelligence.
I went looking for some writing of mine before the referendum and found this leaflet from 1998. It is a reprint from a local administration magazine and the article is called “European Integration and Administrative Regionalization”.
I have never – and this is the first note I wanted to leave you with – separated the two themes, European integration and administrative regionalisation.
In fact, in my last book on European issues, entitled “The European Contingency”, this relationship is also present. I am talking, in particular, of multi-level governance or, if you like, of the contribution of the various levels of government and administration to the resolution of a problem.
In this regard, I am referring to the Europe of Regions, Euroregions and Eurocities, very interesting topics that I consider to be part of the solution in the near future.
I read this 1998 article again and I must, in all sincerity, that, while maintaining the same position, I have much more doubts than before, despite still thinking, as Álvaro Café says, that we committed a crime of wrongdoing. homeland because there is an unconstitutionality by omission that has lasted for many years.
Indeed, seven or eight revisions of the Constitution have already been made and no one has had the courage to withdraw the legal provision on administrative regionalization from there.
The unconstitutionality by omission continues in 2016 and, happily, we even already have a substitute for administrative regionalization, the intermunicipal communities, a sub-regional creation that will generate a lot of territorial cacophony, a lot of background noise and some misunderstandings in between.
As the movement of municipal associations does not like administrative regionalization and prefers a soft substitute, a soft Portuguese, it created inter-municipal communities.
It is a kind of marriage of convenience that the municipalities made among themselves. Let's see if this is an effective substitute. This is, therefore, the first note I want to leave you. Later I come back to her.
2. The second note
I often say that the way you look at a problem is the problem or is an important part of the problem.
For example, when architect Ribeiro Telles looks at the problem of regionalization, he sees 25 natural regions. When Dr. Álvaro Café looks at the problem of regionalization, what he sees are legal-administrative limits and limitations, fixed jurisdictions, attributions of competences, jurisdictional conflicts, etc. This is all part of so-called legal certainty and it is understandable.
Twenty years ago, all this was true: the limits, the borders, the stock of attributions and competences, the fixed geometry jurisdictions.
However, twenty years ago, the problem is no longer the starting point. The problem is the arrival point and, nowadays, with the arrival of the immaterial factor or factor i, as a result of new information and communication technologies and the expansion of digital and virtual culture, everything or almost everything passes over the limits and borders. We went from the structure and the stock for the network and the flow. It is the dematerialization promoted by factor i.
Notice the coincidence: internet starts with an i, information starts with an i, intelligence starts with an i, innovation starts with an i, imagination starts with an i, invention starts with an i, intuition starts with an i, investigation starts with an i i. Well, that's right, asshole starts with an i too, idiot starts with an i too.
What does this mean? Henceforth, the distinctive signs of a region are no longer just its material resources, but also the immaterial signs that are present there, its icons, its immaterial value, its iconography.
Henceforth, the value chain of a region is related to the intangible and immaterial factors that easily cross borders and territorial limits.
So what should we do to apprehend this new reality? When we talk about regionalization, from this more virtual perspective, I am talking more about multifunctional regionalization than administrative regionalization.
In other words, I'm thinking more about interconnection, interrelation, interdependence, interaction, everything with (i), than properly defined territory, with a border, with a hierarchy, with vertical power.
To this exact measure, the power is much more lateral. This is also a great opportunity if territories know how to cooperate and collaborate with each other.
3. The third note
Factor (i) and lateral power, this is my hope, a real promise, even though the road is still long. Álvaro Café a while ago said autarchy – I don't like the word autarchy. He said regional autarchy, I don't like the expression regional autarchy. It reminds me of regional autarky and vertical power.
For the rest, nobody talks about regional autarchy. Today we hear about the union of parishes, associativism, intermunicipal community and network communities, what I call network territories. See the expressions? Union, association, community and network. This is the future of regionalization.
We are in 2016. It is an interesting year, a very curious year. We are celebrating the forty years of the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic. In 2016, we also celebrate thirty years of European integration. And in 2016 we also celebrate twenty years of CPLP. It's a coincidence with a high symbolic meaning.
Now why do I bring all this to the collation? Because these three entities – Portugal, European Union, CPLP – are three very different examples of regionalization.
There are other formulas, other formats, international and cross-border, that have a lot to do with regionalization, let us say, cosmopolitan.
The Peninsular Northwest, the so-called Atlantic axis of the Peninsular Northwest, joining Galicia and the north of Portugal, is also regionalization. If we create here (south of the peninsula) the Euroregion of the three AAA (Alentejo, Algarve and Andalusia), – in fact, it already formally exists –, this is also a form of regionalization.
It is not a classic administrative region, conventional, legal, in the traditional sense, it is new formulas and new formats of regionalization. When I wrote about administrative regionalization, I said, in 1998, that it was relatively simple, at that time, to create administrative regionalization.
Why? Because the Portuguese State held, almost in its entirety, the sovereign powers to constitute it, that is, the country was relatively closed, the border protected, let us say, the creation of the regions themselves.
The Portuguese State had in its possession, in its hand, the policy instruments to make the administrative regions work. But twenty years later, that sovereign Portuguese state no longer exists.
(continues next Thursday)
Author António Covas is a full professor at the University of Algarve and a PhD in European Affairs from the Free University of Brussels
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