Rural place leadership across the Anglo-Scottish border: analysing the evolution, resilience and success of the Borderlands partnership

This paper explores the evolution of the Borderlands Partnership, a cross-border initiative seeking to address common challenges in the Anglo-Scottish rural periphery. Utilising a path-tracing methodology, a timeline was constructed to identify key events in the evolution of the Borderlands Partnership which created opportunity spaces for institutional entrepreneurship and generative place leadership. The study finds that effective place leadership can drive positive transformation when trust, collaborative working and resilience are maintained within a partnership. The analysis demonstrates how effective sub-national place leadership can utilise institutional entrepreneurship as a catalyst to spur alternative pathways in peripheral rural areas.