Research Papers

The main aim of this paper is to analyze how peripheral Finnish-Russian borderlands have been redefined and renegotiated as a political and economic space through the activities of cross-border actors and institutions located at different levels of governance, and to assess the relevant factors that have influenced its pattern of development since the demise of the Soviet Union. Using the Republic of Karelia as a case-study, it is argued that the factors that condition the development of its border with Finland as a political and economic space, (a) the activities of cross-border actors and institutions located at the regional, local, national and supranational levels of governance, and (b) the interaction of factors pertaining to the borders’ spatio-infrastructural, economic, political and socio-cultural dimensions, have to be analysed. A key argument is that representations of space have been ‘blown open’ across the Finnish-Russian border, with political and economic cross-border cooperation having become part of today’s political reality. This process is epitomised by the emergence of border spanners as well as border-spanning institutions, which have been developing at all levels of governance across the border. These have formed networks of political, economic and social actors and institutions that have actively redefined and renegotiated the Karelian borderlands as a political and economic space. They have also developed into sites of competence but not of governance because of ‘bordering’ policies by Moscow and the EU. The paper concludes with a discussion of how border-spanning institutions that allow a regional interpretation of national interests and, at the same time, act as transmission belts between diverging national and geopolitical interests in border-regions, are a key element for developing functional border-regions in the European Neighbourhood, and an important component of the European Neighbourhood Policy.