AN EVALUATION OF INSTITUTIONAL STRENGTH OF CROSS-BORDER COOPERATION STRUCTURES

This paper is premised on the observation that a view of competitive development based on ‘nation states’ may gradually have to give way to ‘contexts of development’ as an analytical framework which accounts more appropriately for the interstitial fabric of economic, as well as historical, social and cultural linkages across borders between atomized actors (countries, firms, and individuals). We attempt to identify contexts boundaries to reveal the contextual origins of a country’s competitive assets. We collect data for the three mapping dimensions: identity (geographical scale and polity), functionality (thematic focus of cross-border cooperation, policy areas), and governance (policy space, decision-making, civil society). The geographical focus consists of ten selected European regional groupings. We produce a qualitative assessment of each cooperation structure by assigning scores of institutional quality on two institutional dimensions: breadth and depth of the level of integration.