Institutional Capacity for Territorial Cohesion

Abstract: Territorial cohesion has its legal basis in the Treaty of Lisbon and is one of the overarching goals in the 2007-2013 Cohesion Policy instruments. Still the definition of territorial cohesion can be characterized as a ‘moving target’ - each EU Member State and region conceptualizes the policy goal in as befits the specific regional challenges and opportunities of the territory. The thesis examines the concept of territorial cohesion as a normative goal that is intended to be implemented at various territorial governance levels. The point of departure of the thesis is that it is important for institutions, as formal and informal ‘rules of the game’, to have the capacity or potential mobilization resources to plan for and achieve territorial cohesion and regional development. Institutional capacity is operationalized by use of a general framework consisting of knowledge resources, relational resources and mobilization capacity. The thesis is built on six papers that each deal with an issue (EU enlargement, climate change adaptation and mitigation, innovative capacity and cores and peripheries) that has territorial impact at three levels - the international or EU level, the transnational or macro-regional level and the local/regional level. The papers use primarily qualitative methods and each paints a very different picture of the potential role of institutions in understanding territorial cohesion.A cover essay links the articles analytically, building the question of how territorial cohesion is conceptualized on multiple levels through different theoretical and policy ‘lenses’. Synthesized results of the papers confirm that there are two quite different logics of action informing the way territorial cohesion is used as a goal or a means at the three levels. Applying the institutional capacity framework to cases working towards territorial cohesion at different levels has concluded that knowledge-building resources are most important for EU-level institutions, relational resources are most important at the transnational or macro-regional level, and mobilization capacity is key for local/regional institutions in efforts towards place-based development. The thesis has shown that there is added value in using the same framework of analysis at very different territorial levels. Scaling up or scaling down analytical levels appears to provide some added substance to a coherent picture of territorial cohesion even if there is a risk that it increases complexity.