Does the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region (EUSBSR) mobilize the municipal level? City twinning in Northern Europe

ABSTRACT

Over the last two decades city-twinning became quite popular in Northern Europe. This form of coining transborder communality took place particularly in the Nordic countries with their long-standing cooperative experience but included also the Baltic States and Russia. Twinning is viewed by many North European municipalities as an instrument available for both solving local problems and ensuring sustainable development. In some cases it has amounted to a kind of local foreign policy (paradiplomacy).This contribution aims at a critical examination of city twinning through four examples (Tornio–Haparanda, Narva–Ivangorod, Imatra–Svetogorsk, and Valga–Valka). It is argued that city twinning can bridge the ‘trust gaps’ that have traditionally existed at the boundaries of nation-states, and create shared spaces across national borders. In particular, the study seeks to explain whether the causal mechanism behind the examined phenomena is the agency of the cities themselves, or whether these phenomena merely reflect the wider policies of the states to which these cities belong. City twinning is also examined in light of the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region.

KEYWORDS:

• City twinning
• Baltic Sea Region
• European Union
• EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region (EUSBSR)
• municipalities
• northern Europe

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the Norwegian Research Council’s NORRUSS Arctic Urban Sustainability project, St. Petersburg State University, Latvian National University, University of Stockholm, and University of Helsinki.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Norwegian Research Council’s NORRUSS Arctic Urban Sustainability; St. Petersburg State University; Latvian National University; University of Stockholm; University of Helsinki.

Notes on contributors

Alexander Sergunin

Alexander Sergunin is Professor at the St. Petersburg State University and Higher School of Economics. He holds a Ph.D. (history) from Moscow State University (1985) and a Habilitation (political science) from St. Petersburg State University (1994). His recent books include Contemporary International Relations Theories (Moscow, with Valery Konyshev et al., 2013) and Military Strategy of the Contemporary State (St. Petersburg, with Valery Konyshev, 2012).

Pertti Joenniemi

Pertti Joenniemi is Senior Researcher at the Karelian Institute of the University of Eastern Finland. He has focused on various aspects of Europeanization and regionalization, including Nordic, Baltic Sea-related, and Arctic issues. Recent publications deal with the Karelian question in Finnish–Russian relations, city twinning in northern Europe and twinning as a form of local foreign policy.