'Europe of the regions' and the problem of boundaries in liberal democratic theory

The article explores the concept of culture as a criterion for political boundaries, and finds both prominent positions on the cultural criterion in contemporary liberal democratic theory-liberal nationalism and its cosmopolitan opposition-inadequate. To this end, the article compares two opposing visions of culture-based regionalism in Europe, developed by Green parties and by parties of the new far-right, respectively. The comparison indicates that the exclusionary meanings of culture as a criterion for political boundaries, typical for the new far-right, dominate the notion of culture in this context in general-despite the ecologists' efforts to appropriate the cultural criterion and reinvent it. The ensuing difficulty for the theoretical positions is: (1) an inclusive and pluralist notion of culture as a criterion for political boundaries is currently unavailable, and (2) particularities are conceptually indispensible in a theory of political borders-replacing cultural particularism by no particularism is implausible.