Europe's Changing Geography: The Impact of Inter-regional Networks

This book provides a fresh view on this phenomenon, with a realistic approach shedding light on its complexity as well as on its ambiguities. The new macro-regions are interpreted with an approach recognizing the importance of institutionalization, but also their flexible configuration and "blurred" borders. The book also raises the issue of credibility and legitimacy, arguing that inter-regional cooperation has to be removed from the foggy realm of the exchanges between local political and bureaucratic elites in order to be clearly and concretely motivated, and functional to key strategic objectives of the regions. Finally, the authors suggest a complementarity between relations based on proximity and wider (possibly global) networks where some territories, and especially metropolises, find opportunities based on "virtual" proximity.

Europe's Changing Geography provides a substantial re-appraisal of a key phenomenon in the process of European integration today. It will be of interest both to scholars of the political economy of European regionalism and to practitioners.