Regions – between History and Social Construction

The study aims to give a comprehensive explanation on how regional construction took place in the European history related to the state-building processes and how the historical heritage of the European state-construction influences today the social construction of the regions. With regard to the state-building processes, the study started from Hechter’s model of ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ state and his interpretation on the relationship between core regions and peripheries. This model operates with the centralizing power of the state, but from the last decades of the 20^th century it was proved via the ‘new regionalism’ that social construction processes became more relevant in shaping new subnational regions. This last aspect is described by Paasi, and the study argues for a new concept of regional identity as a territorial ‘product’ of interacting governance and local society.