Understanding European cross-border cooperation: a framework for analysis

European integration has had a dual impact on border regions. On the one hand, borders were physically dismantled across most of the EU’s internal territory. On the other hand, they have become a fertile ground for territorial co-operation and institutional innovation. The degree of cross-border co-operation and organization achieved varies considerably from one region to another depending on a combination of various facilitating factors for effective cross-border co-operation, more specifically, economic, political leadership, cultural/identity and state formation, and geographical factors. This article offers a conceptual framework to understand the growth and diversity of cross-border regionalism within the EU context by focusing on the levels of and drives for co-operation

Medium of instruction ideologies: accommodation of multilingualism in the bilingual regime of Navarre

The management of bilingualism in the Spanish autonomous community of Navarre is a source of tension. The implementation of English medium of instruction in the public educational system has clashed with attempts to break with the linguistic territoriality regime by promoting Basque schooling. This paper brings together ideologies on English and minority languages and explores how political practice is intertwined with language policy and planning and language ideology. More specifically, it examines the institutionalization of language ideologies through language policy-making in education and, particularly, through medium of instruction. The paper begins with a description of the bilingual regime in Navarre and an examination of how ideologies have shaped and legitimized language policy in education. It then moves on to an analysis of both Basque and English medium of instruction ideologies that inform policy-making. This paper shows that the dynamics introduced by multilingualism in education have had a reinforcing effect on previous language ideologies on bilingualism and, ultimately, have aggravated the language dispute. Finally, it discusses how medium of instruction serves as a terrain for language competition and as part of a broader struggle for language policy and institutional power

Does cross-border cooperation empower European regions? The case of INTERREG III-A France - Spain

In this paper we investigate the impact of the implementation of EU programmes on substate actors, and more specifically regional ones. We focus on the case of the INTERREG crossborder initiative in France and Spain between 2000 and 2003, and whether INTERREG succeeded in empowering regional governments and local authorities as it initially claimed to. Our analysis puts to the fore that this programme has not evolved from being 'a policy for the regions to a policy by the regions' as many expected, but that its implementation rather reveals a wide range of configurations. Indeed, the execution of INTERREG facilitated the transition from a state-centric scheme to a regionalised one only in those territories where a previous decentralisation policy had been realised at the domestic level and where a consistent regional leadership had emerged during earlier versions of INTERREG

The multilevel politics of accommodation and the non-constitutional moment : lessons from Corsica

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