Contenu du sommaire : Territoires frontaliers. Discontinuité et cohésion

A country and its frontiers. A juridical and historical approach The image which we have of the frontier is the reflection of ideas and practices inherited from the 19th century. The frontier has not always been an obstacle difficult to cross. History allows us to relativise this approach. We can make the distinction between frontier (zone) and boundary (line). The first is marked by the disappearance of enclaves and the end of the practice of mixed or jumbled up pockets of land ; the second enables us to establish the fact that we had, early on, a very precise idea of this separation. When thinking about the possibilities of frontier (boundary) crossing one should distinguish between the frontier as obstacle and the frontier as point of contact. The first is symbolized by the installation of the customs and the police along the frontier line, the second is associated with the existence of intense neighbour interaction which could well justify a difference of juridical approach.

Globalization, frontier and boundary. The frontier is not an obstacle for the territory but one of its mechanisms. Through the frontier, the capitalist system evolves, separates, differentiates and regulates. In an era of globalization, new frontiers and new divides are defined. Globalization does not imply the decline of local and regional space. On the contrary, it reinforces it.

Problems of the frontier and the development of the frontier-regions. Firstly this contribution tries to sketch a framework for the general problems of the political-institutional border aiming to show the richness and complexity of the border concept. Secondly we look at the specific problems of the economic development of border regions according to a useful typology for theoretical and empirical analysis distinguishing between : the barrier-border, the filter-border and the contact-border. In the third predictive part, we show the needed changes in the development logic during a period of transition from a filter-border to a contact-border.

The frontier, the boundary and isolation. The case of small insular economies This paper deals with isolation as a bad development factor for little insular regions. From a sample data dealing with some European regions, the regional GDP is explained by two variables which are linked with the external economic potential of the corresponding regions : population and distance from the European centre of economic gravity. The majority of islands are shown to have negative residues. Isolation (which we have to distinguish from the concept of peripherality) is thought to be responsible for this result. Isolation is not only a territorial discontinuity which hinders the island-continent relations ("external" isolation), it also refers to the state of insular society on the whole, and it has a negative effect upon its dynamics.

A conflict of representations. The case of the Oder-Neisse border. The Oder-Neisse border plays a prominent part in the restructuring process of Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic. The participants in this process work with cognitive frameworks and expectations coloured by violent historical experiments, fears and mutual hatreds. The purpose of this article is to render an account of these political border exchanges with regard to these cognitive frameworks relating to the border, and to describe the positions taken by the administrative actors. These cognitive frameworks explain the strategies of the different local and central actors and define the conflictual stakes in their border attitudes.

Development and transformation of local productive systems. Globalization and inter-regional co-operation. Local and global, are the two poles of economic development in the increasing globalization process. Local productive systems can reach competitive advantages through the use and valorisation of specific resources historically implanted in the territory. The success stories of local productive systems show the importance of economic and social transformation processes and of the introduction of innovation through social processes. With global competition, there is anyway room for interregional co-operation because the development process is not a zero sum game. Many fields for inter-regional co-operation exist between both, areas with similar economic structures and areas with different economic structures looking for solutions to common problems.

Frontiers and regional venture capital. The development of an important regional (and local) sector is one of the distinguishing features of the French venture capital industry. These decentralized companies -connected to public and/or semi public regional and local institutions -have, moreover, a more or less important mission of economic intervention which tends further to anchor them in their regions. But the fact that their powers to intervene are administratively confined within geographic limits, works badly not only at the level of their own development but also at the level of the economic development which they support within their own regions. This article presents several recent experiences of the setting up of inter-regional networks in partnership and of transfrontier co-operation along the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts, which represent a certain quantity of resources invested in response to the difficulties which arise.

Border regions, television and electronic communication. Having recalled the reader's attention to several significant elements in the scientific literature which deals with the frontier (and the boundary) and the rapport between the frontier and the regional territory, this article evaluates the quality of French frontier practices principally in the realms of electronic communication, television and the new technologies of information and communication. It concludes that there is a quasi absence of any real public policy, of any vigorous contractual actions and of any models, and thus that no "social uses" have ever been set up. However, it shows the existence of formulas for co-operation, allying the formal and the informal, capable of leading, finally and in another context, to the form of more ambitious structural apparatuses.

Transportation and inter-regional co-operation in the Alps : a modest outcome In the field of transportation, international frontiers are generally taken to be barriers which are difficult to overcome. Thus, the propositions issuing from local authorities find difficulties to take form and don't go beyond the level of general statement. These difficulties should be understood in the light of relationships between power and mobility. The transportation is a national issue because mobility has always been the major challenge to territorial control. In border regions, this gives rise to a growing gap between different scales of mobility and the rationality of transportation policies which always depend on the State or national transportation companies. Two trans-border projects are chosen as examples : the passage of a new highway across the south-west Alps (Mercantour) and a regional railway network between Northern Italy and the South of Switzerland (Varese-Lugano).

The trans-frontier co-operation between decentralized authorities along the Mediterranean coast. The aim of this paper is to analyse the several forms of trans-frontier co-operation practiced by the Mediterranean French local authorities. The decentralised transfrontier co-operation is based on diverse and rich networks of informal and personal relationships propelled by the actors' sometimes antagonistic aims. The settlement of trans-frontier co-operation bodies is, despite the recent development of important proposals, faced with difficulties. The proposed ideas, owing to various constraints, real difficult to put into operation. The solution could be a pragmatic approach.

Trans-frontier regions and the environment in the context of the Mediterranean coast In this paper we have tried to show that allowing regional autonomy to European border regions could be an efficient and costless solution to their environmental problems. This would have the advantage of avoiding bargaining between the states which control them politically. This direct bargaining between the border regions could be realised under the control of the European Union in pursuance of a subsidiarity principle applied by the Union to the border regions.