Region-Making and Cross-Border Cooperation

This book explores the nature of regions and how they function, particularly at the local and micro-level. Whilst recent years have seen a resurgence in debates around the roles which regions can play in development, the focus has tended to be on 'macro' regional institutions such as the EU, ASEAN, ECOWAS or MERCOSUR. In contrast, this book offers a nuanced analysis of the important field of sub-regionalism and sub-national cross-border cooperation. Region-Making and Cross-Border Cooperation takes a fresh look at both theoretical and empirical approaches to 'region-making' through cooperation activities at the micro-level across national borders in Europe, Southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. The book aims to explore the role that institutional dynamics play at the micro-level in shaping local and global ties, investigate what the formal and informal integration factors are that bolster regionalism and regionalization processes, and to clarify to what extent, and under what conditions, cooperation at the micro-level can be instrumental to solving common problems. Scholars and students within politics, sociology, geography, and economics would find this book an important guide to regionalism at a micro-local level perspective.

Elisabetta Nadalutti is an IAS WIRL-COFUND Fellow under the Marie Sklodowska Curie Actions COFUND scheme, University of Warwick, UK. Otto Kallscheuer is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Global Cooperation Research, University Duisburg-Essen, Germany.

Introduction: region-making, cooperation and its normative dimension Elisabetta Nadalutti PART I: Region-making and Cooperation 1. Regionalism after Europe? A marginal question Otto Kallscheuer 2. Rethinking the links between micro-regions and macro-regions Fredrik Söderbaum PART II Evidence from four continents 3. Critical beaches: coastal erosion and geosociality in south-eastern Ghana Michael Flitner, Volker M. Heins and Johannes Herbeck 4. Outside-in region-building: the role of border integration zones in Andean regional integration Harlan Koff 5. Rethinking cross-border regional cooperation: a comparison of the China-Myanmar and China-Laos borderlands Xiangming Chen PART III: The normative dimension of region-making through cooperation 6. The European Union and challenges of Eastern Neighbourhood: regional cooperation potentials beyond realist geopolitics James Wesley Scott 7. The normative dimension of regionalism and refugee policy in ASEAN and the EU Jens-Uwe Wunderlich 8. What are the 'ethical values' that underpin border cooperation in Europe and South-East Asia? A reading of the Upper Adriatic Region and the Iskandar-Malaysia border cases Elisabetta Nadalutti Conclusions Otto Kallscheuer and Elisabetta Nadalutti