The Europeanization of Cities – A preliminary Assessment of Romanian Cities Competing for the 2021 European Capital of Culture Title
The Europeanization of Cities – A preliminary Assessment of Romanian Cities Competing for the 2021 European Capital of Culture Title

Summary/Abstract: Within the context of Multi-level European Governance, cities were given a new political space to exploit. This paper presents various forms of top-down and bottom-up dynamics of Europeanization, such as participation to urban networks, accession of territorial cooperation funds and participation to twinning agreements. These indicators of Europeanization are verified in the case of Romanian cities competing for the 2021 European Capital of Culture (ECoC) title, as an initial assessment of the ongoing national competition. Without having the pretention that this assessment has any predictive purpose, given the complexity of the ECoC competition, the results of this study confirm mostly the shortlist of Romanian finalist cities issued in December 2015. This analysis shows that the ECoC title is disputed by the most Europeanized cities, even if they are ex-communist cities, latecomers to the process of European integration.

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