Cross-Border Collaboration in Economic Development: Institutional Change on the Anglo-Scottish Border

ABSTRACT

This article considers how changes in institutional structures affect the motivations of policymakers towards collaboration across borders. The Anglo-Scottish Border is used to illustrate the varied motivations for cross-border collaboration using models of partnership working. Adapting recent frameworks of analysis based on the concept of cross-border regional innovation systems, the Anglo-Scottish border is used to show how institutional changes can alter the balance between symmetries and asymmetries that tend to characterize cross-border relationships. Due to progressive devolution of functions to the Scottish Parliament since the 1990s, there are increasing contrasts in institutional settings and policy frameworks across this sub-state border. The nature of cross-border collaboration in two time periods is compared and contrasted. The first took place during 2000–2004 under the banner of “Border Visions.” This is contrasted with the more recent attempts to stimulate cross-border collaboration in the context of the Referendum on Scottish Independence in 2014. It is shown that the motivations for cross-border working can shift in response to changes in the economy and also in response to interactions between policy debates that occur simultaneously at different spatial scales.

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Regional Studies Association International Conference on “Global Growth Agendas: Regions Institutions and Sustainability”, Piacenza, Italy, May 24–27 2015.

The material used as a basis for this article was derived from research funded by the Border Visions Partnership between 2001 and 2004 and more recently, joint research conducted with the University of Northumbria funded by the Institute for Local Governance in association with Northumberland County Council.

The authors are grateful to Keith Jackson for preparing tables of data and figures.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Report to Cabinet from Director of Community, Economy and Environment, Cumbria County Council, 23 July 2001.

2. Dumfries & Galloway Council Corporate Policy Committee, October 5 2004. Paper on Border Visions, p. 3.

3. First Scotland-England cross-border summit staged—reported on BBC April 4 2014 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-26850971.

Additional information

Funding

We also acknowledge support for dissemination of research via the Seminar Series funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC Grant number ES/L001446/1).