Agents and Structures in Cross-Border Governance: North American and European Perspectives

In North America and Europe, cross-border governance arrangements have provided formal and informal frameworks to support cross-border cooperation. Analysing how these frameworks have emerged, the ways in which they have become institutionalized, and the processes by which they change is fundamental. Moreover, these frameworks are increasingly challenged by border securitization, thus limiting or jeopardizing decades of cross-border cooperative governance and coordinated public policies. Agents and Structures in Cross-Border Governance offers a series of case studies that explore these complex dynamics.

To understand a range of cross-border governance frameworks, this collection addresses such topics as infrastructure development and management, resource sharing, regional politics, economics, security, human rights, the environment, culture, and community. The book explains how cross-border governance schemes have sought to mitigate some of the negative consequences of border security policies, allowing readers to discern how concrete national power struggles between federal/national and subnational governments unfold in border areas. In a world increasingly impacted by climate change and more recently the COVID-19 pandemic, Agents and Structures in Cross-Border Governance sheds light on the ongoing complexity of cross-border governance and offers lessons to help mitigate these challenges.

Bruno Dupeyron is a professor at the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Regina.
Andrea Noferini is research director at the Center for International Affairs at the Universitat de Barcelona and a professor in the Department of Political Science at Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
Tony Payan is the Françoise and Edward Djerejian Fellow for Mexico Studies and director of the Center for the United States and Mexico at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, and a professor of social sciences at the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez.