Interpretations and Lessons for Northeast Asia

The five case studies illustrated a range of different types of European and North American CBRs. The EUREGIO illustrates the case of the

‘model’ European CBR. Being one of the pioneers of CBC as an institutional form (Perkmann 2002), it emerged as a result of the successful bottom-up mobilisation of municipalities on the Dutch-German border.

The Transmanche region represents an example of infrastructure-induced regional integration. Securing the Interreg funds from the European Council was one of the objectives of the Transmanche region. However, because of variety of cross-sea initiatives in the English Channel, the Transmanche region has to adopt a flexible approach, which in a sense poses difficulties in developing genuine joint cooperative working and therefore a stable cross-border governance structure.

The Öresund Region was presented as an example that is characterised by relative institutional variety with various actors being involved in the CBC arena. No single focal cross-border actor has emerged but it appears that this situation of institutional variety will not necessarily be an obstacle to cross-border integration as it focuses a variety of policy actors on the emerging strategic rationale of building a cross-border metropolis. On the other hand, the example shows that a scenario of a ‘disappearing’ physical border (through the land-link) does not automatically and swiftly induce widespread economic and social integration.

On the basis of this evidence from the European experience, we can suggest a tentative profile of successful initiatives:

a) A ‘technocratic’ focus: successful initiatives have a clear focus on policy measures at the expense of ideological issues.

b) A strong focal cross-border agency: Strong cross-border network brokers, such as in the case of the EUREGIO, can play a crucial role in

generating a cross-border vision and motivating other social actors to take up the cross-border game.

c) Embedding CBC into multiple policy contexts: successful CBRs manage to recruit policy actors from various policy fields on both sides of the border into the CBR project, i.e. economic policy, labour market policy, education and research, and others.

In both cases of Europe and North America, cross-border regional strategies are oriented towards economic development, infrastructure and environmental issues. European cross-border initiatives cover a more variety of topics than North American initiatives. This difference in terms of substantive focus is largely a result of the overall contexts of interstate integration. North American cross-border initiatives are primarily motivated by economic concerns in persisting national borders, whereas European cross-border initiatives are stimulated by European integration in open national borders.

Accordingly, the examples discussed above provide different characteristics of cross-border cooperation structure, which is largely affected by larger contexts wherein these regions are situated.¹⁴⁾

The examples of Ontario and Arizona-Sonora indicate that cross-border cooperation (and competition) is largely a result of free trade, whereas the example of the EUREGIO, the Transmanche, and the Öresund cross-border cooperation examples are derived from the economic integration process at the European level or the tradition of inter-state cooperation in the Scandinavian region. Both examples of Ontario and Arizona-Sonora are free trade-driven, but their mode of cooperation is somewhat different. In the Ontario example, the element of competition is relatively strong because both parts of the cross-border region have a more or less equal level of development and factor cost differentials across the border are not large. The 14) See Scott (1999) and Perkmann and Sum (2002) for the effect of regionalism (context) on cross-border cooperation.

province of Ontario in Canada provides valuable lessons for the BUG and the northern Kyushu with respect to the challenge of an anticipated free trade agreement. The Arizona-Sonora is a typical example of exploiting factor cost differentials, while combining some of assets that the two parts of the binational region have.

As Jessop (2002) correctly points out, cross-border cooperation strategies depends upon one’s understanding of the dominant mode of competition and the factors making for structural competitiveness. The vision of the Arizona-Sonora region is largely premised upon ‘factor-driven’

growth (Ricardian world of development), whereas the Öresund region seeks to pursue innovation-driven growth (Schumpetrian world of development).

The example of Ontario illustrates a case in between.

These examples also suggests an importance domestic political system:

the US and Canada are federalist countries, where states and provinces have more or less autonomy in regional economic management. However, the lack of supranational organizations at the level of North America constrains a successful operation of cross-border initiatives except for a few cases like the Arizona-Sonora. In this sense, the European examples have to be interpreted differently because of an existence of supranational organization.

Even at the national level, political systems are different, e.g., between France and Germany. German local authorities including Lander governments have more financial and decision-making power than French Department or Region. Also there exists a tradition of cooperative intergovernmental relations in Germany, which distinguishes Germany from other European countries (refer the fact that a large number of successful cross-border regions is found along the German border).

A few valuable lessons can be drawn from the experience of cross-border cooperation in Europe and North America.

First, the European case suggests the following.

Policy-driven initiatives are more likely in contexts where a strong supranational authority – notably the European Commission in Europe – is ready to promote the emergence of CBRs and provide funding and institutional legitimacy for their operation. In Northeast Asia, macro-regional integration is at an earlier stage and is set to take a different road from the decade-long process of European Integration.

But, even in an institutionally leaner supranational environment, it might make sense to provide more institutional density on the local CBC level, and hence adopt elements of the policy-driven model. If European CBC has any lessons to offer then it will be on this aspect, i.e. the building of CBC institutions.

More specifically, there are two levels of intervention on which the lessons from European CBC might be taken into consideration.

a) Local and regional border authorities: how to build successful CBC initiatives;

b) National governments: how to provide more favourable contexts for enabling successful and institutionally dense CBC initiatives.

On the first level, Asian local and regional border authorities might want to consider the success factors for European CBRs.

A ‘technocratic’ focus: Initiatives that are clearly focused on the design and implementation of commonly agreed and generally understood policy measures are far more likely to be accepted or even supported both by central governments as well as within the local environments.

A strong focal cross-border agency: The European experience has shown CBR can best follow true cross-border objectives if they achieve a certain degree of autonomy vis-à-vis their ‘home’ authorities. The most dynamic CBRs are those that act as flexible policy entrepreneurs, and have developed an intrinsic organisational interest in cross-border issues. This means a high degree of trust and willingness to relinquish direct control must exist between the participating authorities.

Embedding CBC into multiple policy contexts: successful CBRs appear to be linked to a variety of actors in a variety of policy fields in their immediate local environment. This guarantees that they will be given the mandate to pursue activities related to the cross-border aspect of various policy issues which undoubtedly exists for most policy fields in border areas.

This means successful CBRs will have to acquire and bundle policy competence in a variety of fields, and then strictly focus on the cross-border aspects within those. This will ensure they gain legitimacy in front of other policy actors, and are given an implicit mandate to purse a cross-border agenda.

On the second level, the European experiences point to the importance of two bundles of factors: (a) territorial organisation, and in particular, municipal autonomy and (b) the impact of EU policy measures, in particular INTERREG funding. Obviously, these are structural context conditions that are more difficult to change, or even emulate, in the short and medium term.

To start with the latter, it is certainly no panacea to provide supranational funds to CBC initiatives. This is demonstrated by the difficulties the European Commission has to promote ‘genuine’ institution building.

However, the existence of a supranational programme can be important in terms of providing more widespread legitimacy to CBC, which could be achieved without spending considerable resource. In theory and practice, this could even be attempted on a bi- or tri-national scale, such as shown in the case of the Nordic Council in Scandinavia.

Two lessons can be drawn from the North American case, which may be more relevant to the Northeast Asian context. First, cross-border cooperation in the less institutionalised environment requires the participation and support of the business sector. Since the primary motive is economic development, some form of collaboration between the public and the private sector is essential to make cross-border cooperation successful. In this regard, more open-ended networks such as the Arizona-Sonora initiative have

greater appeal because of the possibility to integrate diverse interests of stakeholders within processes of strategy building. Second, local and regional authorities should seize the opportunities engendered by free trade or in general economic integration initiatives at the inter-state level. Building cross-border regions based on economic complementarities is more likely to succeed in a persisting national border environment. However, one should remember those factors cost differentials are just one source of economic complementarities.

To sum up, cities and regions in North America have less financial autonomy and mandates to carry out large-scale projects on the border than European cities and regions facilitated by supranational authorities such as EC. Cities and regions in Korea and Japan have much lesser local and regional autonomy than do their European or American counterparts. This has constrained efforts by local and regional organizations to actively seek cross-border cooperation as part of their development strategies in the past.

Furthermore, the lack of supranational perspective at the local and regional level has been the characteristic of the highly centralized government system like Korea and Japan. Although local and regional governments often adopt internationalism, they do it for the purpose of obtaining additional resources from the central government or international agencies without the real intention of building cross-border or trans-border regionalism (Rozmann 1999).

In recent years, however, there has been rising awareness among local and regional units in both countries about the need for cross-border and transnational cooperation, which is a positive sign to shift away from a purely domestic orientation of regional policy to a mixture of domestic and international oriented regional policy. Such a transnational perspective is indeed one avenue to revitalize stagnant regional economies in Korea and Japan. As alliance capitalism symbolizes, cross-border and trans-border cooperation and alliances of local and regional economies, if properly

formulated, are likely to enhance the competitiveness of local and regional economies in Korea and Japan.

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Part III

Korea-Japan Free Trade Agreement