Governance and transportation policy networks in the cross-border metropolitan region of Luxembourg: A social network analysis

Abstract

Two major processes have increased the need for cross-border public transportation policies in European metropolitan regions in the recent past: the imperative of a region’s accessibility within the inter-urban competition and the aspired EU-wide regional harmonization and de-bordering process. Governing such multifaceted issues in cross-border regions requires the implementation of suitable and efficient organizational solutions. In the example of the cross-border metropolitan region of Luxembourg, we discuss the contradicting ‘border effects’ of a complex cross-border governance network. Such flexible policy networks are supposed to make the proclaimed economic, socio-cultural, and spatial European integration work on the very local level. We suggest that the governance typology of Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks offers a useful guiding heuristics for function-specific governance arrangements in cross-border regional contexts. We utilize a method mix of a quantitative social network analysis and a complementary qualitative survey to illuminate structural notions of the policy network relations to relate our empirical results to the conceptual debate on governance structures in the politically proclaimed de-bordering regions within the EU.