Cross-border cooperation: a global overview

Abstract

This article is a review of regional cross-border coordination and cooperation around the world. Two questions are raised: when trade dominates, does economic or functional interdependency result in cross-border linkages? Second, when politics and institutions mediate cross-border relations, do economic relations intensify? Specifically, do local-central networks of government actors and institutions mediate such processes when they emerge? To investigate those two questions, this work focuses on cross-border relations in various parts of the world primarily focusing of the role trading relations or local-central relations would play in developing cross-border networks spanning an international boundary. In an era of globalisation, increased trade across regions of the world seem to have led to a specific increased cross-border cooperation, however, taking different forms from intense trading relations to resulting cross-border institutionalisation. Those forms of cross-border cooperation in the various regions of the world, however, do not result from the same drivers: For the purpose of a comparative analysis of cross-border relations, the argument developed here is that regional drivers determine types of relations from no relations to intense trading and government-like forms of cooperation. However, in most cases as suggested below, the prime drivers of cross-border relations, trade, do not necessarily translate into increased border spanning governmental activism, and government cross-border institutionalisation does not necessarily transmute into increased economic integration.

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