Relational policy spaces in border regions

In European border regions, policy networks steer processes of politico-economic integration and de-bordering. Policy networks integrate actors belonging to different decisional levels and countries. Actors tend to coordinate actions and communications in policy networks to formulate common policies; however, this is subject to a long process, aggravated by the actors’ distinct policy cultures. They further have to agree on a common network space to efficiently enforce policy measures. An overrepresentation of certain network spaces due to some actors’ dominant network positions may lead to imbalanced policy decisions. By focussing on transport policies in the border regions of Basel and Luxembourg, we analyse measures of persistency of national preferences among policy actors, mapping their perceived ‘policy spaces of action’ and conceptualising these ‘policy spaces’ as relational. Based on a combination of in-depth interviews, cognitive maps, and social network analysis, we show that large spatio-cultural differences are still prevailing among network actors, thus potentially impacting decisions taken in policy networks.