EURA 2026 – Emerging Scholar Award

EURA 2026 Emerging Scholar Award

Paper Title:

Amalgamation, Promised Decentralisation, and the Politics of “Uniqueness”: Local Narratives and Reform Legitimacy in Armenia

Abstract
Armenia’s amalgamation and decentralisation agenda promised efficiency and improved service delivery, yet reform trajectories in the EU’s wider Eastern Neighbourhood often hinge less on formal design than on how communities experience change. This paper analyses citizen narratives of municipal “uniqueness” as a missing piece in explaining reform uptake and legitimacy.
Using interview and focus-group data from diverse Armenian municipalities conducted in 2023, the paper inductively codes claims to distinctiveness — including geographic remoteness and border status, cultural-historical identity, socio-economic profiles, standout service sectors, and leadership reputation — and examines how these claims shape support for, or resistance to, amalgamation and decentralisation.
The paper shows that perceived uniqueness conditions which autonomy levers are prioritised locally, whether visible service gains convert into broader satisfaction and trust, and why identical institutional templates yield divergent outcomes across municipalities. Situating Armenia within CEE/EaP reform debates, it argues that uniqueness narratives operate as a causal pathway linking place to policy, bridging literatures on decentralisation, performance-based legitimacy, and identity politics.
The contribution is both theoretical and empirical: it proposes a typology and mechanism for incorporating place-based narratives into models of reform success, while offering evidence from an under-studied EaP case. The paper concludes that standardisation must be paired with negotiated, place-sensitive autonomy packages to avoid legitimacy cliffs in consolidated localities.

Congratulations once again to the winner, and thank you to all emerging scholars who participated in the conference and submitted papers!

The prize is a €1,000 honorarium/travel grant that will allow the winner to participate in a future EURA or Urban Affairs Association conference.

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