European Cross-Border Regions as Policy-makers: A Comparative Approach

This paper aims to quantify and compare the 177 European cross-border regions (CBR) according to their policy activity between 1959 and 2012. Different variables (number of cross-border regional partners, legal status, physical border effect, cross-border regional growth, domestic product per capita, level of territorial autonomy, integrated governance, and geographic location) were tested in order to analyze their impact on the CBR’s policy activity. It is demonstrated that only three independent variables have a significant effect on the policy activity of CBR: their period of creation, the socioeconomic level of participating members, and the integrated governance of the CBR.