Fledgling social partnership in the Irish Border Region: European Union ‘Community Initiatives’ and the voluntary sector

Cross-border and local co-operation on the island of Ireland: An economic perspective

“…The net result was that manufacturing employment and investment in Northern Ireland was actually sustained at a higher level than that in the UK as a whole over the 1971-96 period (Fielding, 2003: 514). Arguably, however, the economy of border regions in the North suffered disproportionately from the troubles, such that by the mid-1990s this led McCall and Williamson (2000) to characterise the area as follows: "Economic inertia has been exacerbated by negative social factors including, most notably, a concentration of violent conflict in the region and by the subsequent divisive effect on communities … on both sides of the border there is a dearth of social capital and associational activity".…”

“…EU-wide initiatives such as Interreg, initially introduced in 1989, have been supported by specific initiative such as the Special Support Programme for Peace and Reconciliation (SSPPR)-colloquially known as Peace I and Peace II-introduced in 1995 following the republican and loyalist ceasefires (O'Dowd et al, 1995;McCall and Williamson, 2000), as well as elements of the Northern Ireland and the Republic's BMW region operational programmes. The main emphasis of each of these programmes was directed at the social and community sectors, with the aim of building social capital and cohesion and the creation of a cross-border region, in the sense defined by Perkmann (2003)-"a more or less institutionalised collaboration between contiguous sub-national authorities across national borders".…”

Border region studies: the structure of an ‘offbeat’ field of regional studies

“…Although this discussion is not restricted to Europe, the main concerns of papers on Europe are the impacts of EU enlargements, and cohesion policies, on regional (economic) development in the border regions of the new member states and non-member countries (Knippschild & Wiechmann, 2012;Krätke, 2002). In line with the studies on cooperation and integration, this research has involved analyses of the role of Euroregions, Interreg and other EU programmes in the economic development of border regions (McCall & Williamson, 2000). Additionally, the importance of transportation and border-crossing infrastructure, i.e., accessibility (Lundquist & Winther, 2006), in the economic development of border regions has been highlighted (Nelles & Sutcliffe, 2013).…”

European Union Cross-Border Cooperation and Conflict Amelioration

“…Indeed, EU cross-border cooperation has been criticised in the past for its excessive bureaucracy and public sector dominance (Scott, 1999). The Third (voluntary and community) Sector has gained a more secure foothold with each successive cross-border programme (McCall and Williamson, 2000;McCall and O'Dowd, 2008). However, the inclusion of the Third Sector in the governance of programmes may only serve to further complicate their implementation.…”