Experimentalist Governance to Foster Cooperation in the Baltic Sea Region: A Focus on the Turku Process

Abstract

Abstract:The Baltic Sea is one of the most severely polluted water bodies on earth, with stressors resulting from anthropogenic pressures of 85 million inhabitants in nine coastal countries. All are members of the European Union (EU) with the exception of Russia. This exception poses challenges for governing the Sea, as Russia is excluded as a member country from EU Baltic Sea governing policies, such as the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region (EUSBSR). This added complexity has led to the emergence of new forms of cooperation to include Russia in the governing process. One such initiative is the Turku process, an initiative by the cities of Turku (Finland), Hamburg (Germany), and St. Petersburg (Russia) to promote cooperation, especially with Russian partners. Since its emergence in 2010, there has been no study of it in the literature. This study aims to bridge this gap by analyzing the history and evolution of the Turku process under the lens of experimentalist governance. It aims to illustrate the experimentalist governance perspective through the Turku process and to present the theoretical foundations of the concept. It does the former through key informant interviews with main actors in the Turku Process and the latter with the help of the literature on experimentalist governance. This study adds to the dialogue on governance in an especially challenging time when the Ukraine crisis has negatively impacted EU-Russia relations.

An Assessment of the Baltic Sea Action Plan (BSAP) Using the OECD Principles on Water Governance

“…However, BSAP country implementation is flexible depending on local circumstances. Voluntary measures and public pressure work better for environmental forerunner countries such as Sweden and Finland, whilst legal measures are more important in Russia [31]. The BSAP has also stimulated financial measures such as the NEFCO administered Baltic Sea Fund, which has spurred innovation due to seed funding for pilot projects.…”

“…There is no regular transboundary monitoring and evaluation of water policy, nor monitoring of the extent to which policies fulfil expected outcomes and whether the water governance mechanisms are functional. This is acknowledged in the HELCOM Holas II report, which stated that the sufficiency of existing measures to improve the status of marine environment has not yet been fully evaluated [31]. It attributed this to knowledge gaps, and changes in the intensity and character of the pressures due to human development.…”

‘Experimental Union’ and Baltic Sea cooperation: the case of the European Union’s Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region (EUSBSR)

“…Thus, we treat the EUSBSR as an instance of experimentalist governance and a challenge to the (more formal) territorial cooperation of the EU's regional policy. Owing to the vagueness concerning implementation tools and power dispersed across the EU's interdependent multilevel system of governance in general, and the consensual approach characterizing EU regional policy, the EU's macroregional strategies constitute paradigmatic examples of experimentalist governance, such as, for example, the so-called 'Turku process' (Jetoo, 2018), an initiative of the twin cities of Turku, Hamburg and St Petersburg to promote municipal cooperation and 'to increase the number of Northwest Russian partners in the Baltic Sea region cooperation' (Centrum Balticum, 2018). Ultimately, their significance resides in their capacity to mobilize institutional and non-institutional actors towards central EU policy goals, and their capacity to recombine the institutional structures of the EU's multilevel governance system in order to conduct and implement policies 'in novel but fluid ways' (Plangger, 2018, quoted in Gänzle et al (2018, p. 6).…”