FRONTIER REGIONS IN WESTERN EUROPE
FRONTIER REGIONS IN WESTERN EUROPE
Edited by
Malcolm Anderson
First published 1983
By Frank Cass Publishers
Published 2013 by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright 1983 Taylor & Francis
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Frontier regions in Western Europe.
1. Europe - Politics and government
2. Europe - Frontier troubles
I. Anderson, Malcolm
320.94 J94.A922
ISBN 13: 978-0-714-63217-9 (hbk)
This group of studies first appeared in a Special Issue on Frontier Regions in Western Europe of West European Politics, Vol.5, No.4, published by Frank Cass & Co. Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher.
Contents
Malcolm Anderson
Sven Tgil
John Coakley
Pierre-Marie Dupuy
Stuart Sayer
Xavier Boos
Charles Ricq
Rudolf Lill
Raimondo Strassoldo
Malcolm Anderson is Professor of Politics and Acting Director of the Centre of European Governmental Studies at the University of Edinburgh.
Sven Tgil received his D.Phil in History from Lund University and has been Professor of Empirical Conflict Research at Lund since 1975. His fields of interest are international history and conflict research and his most recent books are Studying Boundary Conflicts (1977) and Sweden in World Society (1980).
John Coakley is Lecturer in Politics in the Department of European Studies at the National Institute for Higher Education, Limerick. He is author of articles on Irish and comparative politics in Administration, Etudes Irlandaises, Europa Ethnica, European Journal of Political Research and Parliamentary Affairs.
Pierre-Marie Dupuy is Professor of International Law, University of Paris 11. A specialist in international law of the protection of the environment, he has since 1975 been legal expert for OECDs Environment Committee and for UNEP. He has written several articles on the international legal protection against transfrontier pollutions and a book, La responsabilit internationale des Etats pour les dommages dorigine technologique et industrielle (1977).
Stuart T. Sayer is Lecturer in Economics at the University of Edinburgh. His recent publications include Macroeconomic Policy Rules versus Discretion: Some Analytical Issues in the Journal of public Policy (1981) and An Introduction to Macroeconomic Policy (1982).
Xavier Boos works at the OEDA (Organisation dEtudes de Dveloppement et dAminagement de lAlsace) a state authority mainly interested in regional development. He has a multi-disciplinary approach and his particular interest is in the industrial economy and the economy of the environment.
Charles Ricq is a Professor at the Institut Universitaire dEtudes Europiennes, Geneva.
Rudolf Lill is Professor, Lehrstuhl fr neuere Geschichte, University of Passau.
Raimondo Strassoldo is Professor of Urban and Rural Sociology at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Trieste. He has long been associated also with the Institute of International Sociology, Gorizia. He has authored and edited many publications in the area of border problems and regionalism such as Boundaries and Regions (1973) and, with G. Delli Zotti, Co-operation and Conflict in Border Areas (1982).
The contributions of Malcolm Anderson, Pierre-Marie Dupuy, Rudolf Lill, Charles Ricq, Raimondo Strassoldo and Sven Tagil were originally given as papers to a symposium in Florence on the problems of frontier regions in Europe under the joint chairmanship of Vincent Wright and Yves Mny. The editor wishes to thank the European University Institute for making this symposium possible and for undertaking the translation of the papers of Pierre-Marie Dupuy and Rudolf Lill.
Malcolm Anderson
The problem of defining a frontier region is a leitmotiv of this collection of articles but each perspective requires its own definition. The definition of regions has long been controversial and the attempt to define a sub-set of them frontier regions according to precise geographical or socio-economic criteria can be useful only for limited purposes as, for example, in the study of transfrontier labour markets. A frontier region clearly is an area adjacent to an international boundary, whose population is affected in various ways by the proximity of that boundary. Quantitative ecological analysis could produce a systematic profile of some of these international boundary effects but an essential first step is to establish hypotheses about their nature. The contributors to this volume share common ground in agreeing that the study of these effects is essential to the understanding of the development of the European state system. But these effects vary a great deal depending on time and place and only limited generalisations can, therefore, be made about them.
Most of the political issues in frontier regions of contemporary noncommunist Europe are sui generis. There are, however, four potential sources of political difficulties which relate particularly to frontier regions as a result of their geographical location. These are boundary disputes, subversive activities across the international boundary, the problems of peripheral location within the state and the interpenetration of activities with neighbouring regions in other states.
Boundary disputes have become an insignificant feature of European politics. Only one country, the Republic of Ireland under Article II of its Constitution, lays claim to part of the territory (the six counties of Northern Ireland) of another state. For the time being at least, other contested boundaries such as the Italian-Yugoslav boundary (agreed by the Treaty of Osimo in 1976) and the South Tyrol question are not matters of serious controversy. The period of calm in boundary disputes, since the Second World War, has also been one during which transboundary subversion has been relatively insignificant. Autonomist struggles such as those in the Spanish Basque provinces and Catalonia have had only minor transboundary implications. Frontier populations have not, except in the marginal cases of the Slovenes of Carinthia, played a role in the ideological clash between communism and the West. The forms of nationalism and sectarianism, on which transboundary subversion has been based, have seemed fossilised remnants of former historical periods. Winston Churchills comment on the Ulster question at the end of the First World War epitomises the attitude of almost everyone who is not directly involved:
The whole map of Europe has been changed. The mode of thought of men, the whole outlook on affairs, the grouping of parties, all have encountered violent and tremendous changes in the deluge of the world, but as the deluge subsides and the waters fall we see the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone emerging once again. The integrity of their quarrel is one of the few institutions left unaltered in the cataclysm which has swept the world.1
