Core citizenship rights in multi-level states are a key concern for the political institutions at the sub-state level. Regional governments and parliaments, for instance, have been studied as powerful actors in the production of social and political rights. At the same time, however, the role of regional institutions in the production of civil rights has remained unexplored. Starting from this gap in the literature, the paper sets out to revisit the relationship between citizen, civil rights and territorial institutions in federal and multi-level states by answering the question: when do regional parliaments politicize civil rights and when do they not? By testing the relative strength of four independent variables on three European case-studies, the paper aims to explain why and in what cases multilevel governance structures become important in the production of civil rights.
