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The European project, as an example of ‘open regionalism’ has arguably come increasingly to reflect the imperatives of neoliberal openness at the expense of social democratic alternatives. One important example of this trajectory has been evident in the vicissitudes of ‘third way’ discourse and policy. Once identified as a way of effectively modernising the European social model while maintaining the inclusiveness and democratic principles of social democracy in the face of globalisation, the third way in Europe has increasingly come to be seen as a means towards consolidating Europe’s commitment to open regionalism around the exclusionary discourses and institutions of ‘new constitutionalism’.Yet the third way remains a highly contested concept both at national and regional levels. The purpose of this paper is to explore different readings of the potentialities of third way discourse and policy specifically within the context of the dynamics of contemporary globalisation and Europe’s ‘new’ regionalism. While acknowledging the pioneering contribution and continuing relevance of new constitutionalism to the understanding of European regionalism, it seeks to extend and deepen this research programme by critically unpacking the formal policy/governance categories and institutions to which it has given rise. The paper argues for an understanding of EU governance in terms of ‘negotiated opennes’. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowhere is the gap between winners and losers in the Central and East European (CEE) transition more evident than in its subnational, cross-regional variation. Both globalization and economic integration in the European marketplace have strongly impacted the geographic and regional distribution of the benefits and costs of integrating markets. Declining activity rates and purchasing power in the less advanced CEE regions and rapidly increasing economic disparities across more and less advanced CEE regions place significant burdens on the future outlook of these less developed regions. Empirical evidence suggests that in CEE the real losers of European integration are low and unskilled workers with little education in declining regions. Variation in regional rates of economic growth and development is of course not news in the wider European Union. Despite evidence of increasing economic convergence across states, increasing regional disparities are a global phenomenon (Sala-I-Martin, 2002) and are likewise well recognized in the European context (Quah, 1996). The appearance of regional disparities in CEE however represents one of the greatest challenges both to the political and economic stability of CEE and to the Union as a whole. This is above all the case because the less developed regions of CEE have experienced some of the worst features of the economic transition.FDI has flowed far more strongly to CEE’s more developed regions, indirectly contributing to rising economic disparities across the more and less advanced regions. And economic decline in the CEE’s less advanced regions has thus far not been stemmed by attempts at creating regional support mechanisms. Central governments themselves are torn between investing in the less developed regions and cementing economic development at the national level (Ellison, 2007). Thus the question remains how best to promote the economic development of the less developed regions.What strategies should be employed to attract investment to and build employment in these regions remains controversial. This paper asks what can be done? Will EU structural and cohesion funds or the Lisbon Agenda help reverse these trends? Can more FDI be directed to the less developed regions of Central and Eastern Europe through other public policy tools? This paper will provide an empirical analysis of the factors influencing subnational regional economic development. Using data on the subnational regional distribution of FDI flows, this paper will ask what factors best explain the regional distribution of FDI flows and will further explore the impact of this and other variablesâ€"in particular New Economy modelsâ€"on the prospects for regional economic development. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]