Governance across regional borders: which models are best suited to Central and Eastern Europe?

Abstract

The need for efficient and effective cross-border cooperation is apparent in many policy fields. Increasingly, regional local and local authorities in Europe have become involved in cross-border cooperation schemes. Apart from political advantages, the main rationale for such cooperation is better policy delivery. However, the more diverse regions and their policies are, the more challenging it is to establish adequate governance systems across borders that ensure this outcome. This paper puts forward a typology of governance models for cross-border cooperation, largely based on multi-level governance literature. This typology is tentatively applied to Central and Eastern Europe.