Régis Dandoy et al. - Patterns of regional democracy 125 7 Patterns of regional democracy Government forms and performance in federal and decentralized West European countries Régis Dandoy, Giulia Sandri and Lieven De Winter Introduction During the last 40 years, the combined processes of decentralization and Europeanization have strongly strengthened the regions in Europe as systems of representation, delegation and political accountability, endowed with specific parties and party systems, with directly elected assemblies, executive powers and with their own public services. Today, many European regions can be conceived as fully-fledged democratic political systems and thus allow an analysis of their institutional configurations through comparative research and an assessment of classic democratic enquiries similar to those used for comparing countries. The aim of this chapter is to develop specific methodological and analytical instruments for evaluating how democratic regions have developed different institutional structures and how these variations can impact on their public policy capabilities. In his seminal work Patterns of Democracy (1999, 2012), Arend Lijphart concludes that the institutional design may shape not only the democratic performance of a polity, but also its socio-economic public policies. This chapter applies Lijphart’s analytical approach to the regional political systems of federal and decentralized countries in Western Europe. The research design we develop in the chapter is based on this conceptualization, but it considers also the critiques that have been formulated over the years. We have also added some variables specifically linked to the regional political phenomenon. In this context, it is relevant to question not only the validity of Lijphart’s conclusions on the quality of democracy at regional level, but also to assess the impact of institutional configurations at national level on regional democratic functioning. We thus develop a research design for assessing to what extent regional institutions and processes vary within countries and across countries and, to what extent regional institutions correspond to the ‘majoritarian versus consensus’ model elaborated by Lijphart almost two decades ago. Our main normative argument is that the institutional form of West European regions has an impact on their performance not only in terms of democratic processes, but also in terms of public policy achievements.