Rescaling Interests

The nation-state has historically been the container of social and economic interests. Policy communities were organized within state boundaries. There has been a rescaling of policy systems, upwards to the transnational level and downwards to the sub-state level. European states have established meso-level or regional governments. We hypothesize that interest representation and policy communities will rescale in accordance with this. In practice, adaptation is highly variable, depending on functional, institutional and political factors and the characteristics of each state and each territory. Function and territory interact in complex ways to determine the composition of policy communities.