Governing the Baltic Sea Region at critical junctures (1991–2021): How do transnational and intergovernmental organizations cope with external regional change?

ABSTRACT

Since the end of the East-West conflict, various intergovernmental and transnational organizations have collectively governed the Baltic Sea Region. Exploring key features of the organizational architecture of three such organizations – HELCOM, the Council of the Baltic Sea States, and the Union of Baltic Cities – we ask how their institutions evolved in the aftermath of critical junctures affecting the region over the past three decades. Findings show that specific-purpose organizations are robust with respect to changes than general-purpose organizations whereas general-purpose maybe less so. With growing geopolitical tensions and global turbulence, this finding holds lessons for the design of transnational cooperation in the future – and beyond the Baltic Sea Region.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical juncture
• transnational organizations
• Baltic Sea cooperation
• Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS)
• European Union
• Helsinki Commission
• Union Of Baltic Cities (UBC)
• Russia

Acknowledgments

Stefan Gänzle would like to acknowledge that research for this article was supported by the EU’s Erasmus+ Program, No. 619967-EPP-1-2020-1-NO-EPPJMO-CoE. The research by Kristine Kern and Nina Tynkkynen was supported by the Profiling Area “The Sea” (Academy of Finland) at Åbo Akademi University.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence this article.

List of interviews CBSS

1 Interview with CBSS representative (by phone) November 20142 Interview with CBSS representative January 20173 Interview with CBSS representative February 20204 Interview with CBSS representative, February 2020

HELCOM

1 Interview with former HELCOM representative, June 20192 Interview with HELCOM representative (via Skype), March 20203 Interview with former HELCOM representative (by phone), April 20204 Interview with former HELCOM representative (via Skype), April 2020

UBC

1 Interview with UBC representative (in person), 5 February 2020

Notes

1. After entry into force, the European Commission representative was replaced by a member of the European External Action Service (together with a member of GD Regio). Instead of the European Community (and its representative, the Commission), it is now the European Union who is a member of the Council of the Baltic Sea States.

2. See http://portal.helcom.fi

3. For 2020–2021, membership fees ranged from €500 for municipalities with less than 10,000 inhabitants to €7,250 for cities with more than 500,000 inhabitants. This provides around €231,000 in membership fees.

4. OSPAR is the mechanism by which 15 governments of the western coasts and catchments of Europe, together with the European Union, cooperate to protect the marine environment of the Northeast Atlantic.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Academy of Finland [315715].