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REGIONAL AND TRANSNATIONAL REGIMES: MULTI-LEVEL GOVERNANCE PROCESSES IN NORTH AMERICA and EUROPE

Susan E. Clarke

University of Amsterdam (Spring 1999)

University of Colorado at Boulder

claries@colorado.edu

Amerika InstituutUniversity of Colorado

Plantage Muidergracht 12CB 333

1018 TV AmsterdamBoulder CO 80309 USA

31 20 53 11 343 303 492 2953

ECPR Workshop, Regionalism Revisited. Territorial Politics in the Age of Globalization,

Mannheim March 1999

The research for this paper was partially supported by grants from the Canadian government

and the University of Colorado.

ABSTRACT

Many scholars (e.g. Pierson,1996; Marks, 1996; Wallace, 1996) argue that multi-level

governance processes are emerging in response to gaps in the ability of national governments

to control global and transnational economic processes. These gaps--stemming from the logic

of new competition and production processes at a global scale and limited national

sovereignty--allow other actors to influence how politics and economic forces play out at

subnational levels. In Storper's terms (1997), this prompts efforts at different scales to

coordinate actors and to channel decisions in the face of interdependence, indivisibilities, and

uncertainty--efforts characterized here as governance processes. Viewing these processes as

the social and political construction of a new scale of political interaction (Beauregard, 1995;

Delaney and Leitner, 1997) allows us to move away from geological metaphors of nested

scales and to focus on the new political spaces created by globalization and economic

restructuring. This more nuanced approach opens up a perspective on scale as socially

constructed by actors and institutions (Beauregard, 1995: 239). Places become linked, not

necessarily in a hierarchical structure mirroring their status in a world system or federal

structure, but through the interests and influence of actors at different scales--that is, through

political processes. From this actor-centered perspective, the appropriate focus for theorization

of governance processes is not reified spatial scales but the strategies through which actors

create, differentiate, and reconstitute scale--or what Horan (1997) identifies as the politics of

spatial advantage.

Analyzing new governance mechanisms in North America from the perspective of

European experiences with multi-level governance processes is the focus of this paperi. The

goal is to provide an empirical analysis of emerging governance processes in the Pacific

Northwest region in North America. I conceptualize regional governance capacity as the ability

of diverse actors to mobilize resources and coordinate purposive strategies at the regional

scale. In line with Storper (1997), I view the construction of multi-level governance processes as

contingent on both conventions and relations; that is, these territorial linkages are shaped

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by conventions--ideas and expectations-- as well as calculations by actors and organizations of

materials gains and economies of scale. That is, governance capacity is a product of the ideas

that frame different ways of understanding problems and their solutions as well as of the

networks and regimes mobilized for collective action through these new frames. By recognizing

the importance of ideas, interests, and institutions (Heclo, 1993), attention is directed to the role

of problem-oriented policy communities in generating alternative policy paradigms that set

boundaries for political action, create channels for dialogue and decision, and establish the

grounds for collective action among diverse interests. In this sense, ideas, interests, and

institutions have causal roles in contributing to regional governance capacity.

The paper is organized around three objectives:(1) To analyze the social construction of

the idea of regional, multi-level governance arrangements as a solution to disjunctures in the

“Cascadia” region in the Pacific Northwest, (2) to identify the range of actors, governance

strategies, and mechanisms--"the repertoire of existing institutional responses" (Sbragia, 1992,

267)-- engaged in mobilizing collective projects in Cascadia, and (3) to assess the conditions

shaping regional governance capacity in Cascadia. The paper draws on Fall 1998 interviews

with local and state officials and participants in new organizations and institutional structures in

Cascadiaii. Along with consideration of newspaper and archival materials

iii, these interviews

provide a microfoundation for analysis of the motivations of participants in multi-level

governance processes rather than inferring policy and institutional preferences from post hoc

analysis of policy decisions (Pierson, 1996).

Briefly, I find that building regional governance capacity in Cascadia is hampered by

competing problem definitions advocated by different policy communities, the sporadic

availability of political and business leadership on regional issues, and tensions between

regional advocates and city interests. There is some evidence, however, of the emergence of

regional governance capacity on transportation issues: transportation initiatives are constructed

as regional solutions to environmental and economic competition concerns, there is a coherent,

bi-national policy community active on regional transportation issues, institutional and political

leadership in Canada and the United States find common ground on cross-border

transportation corridors, side payments for regional and transborder cooperation are available

through the US TEA-21 transportation legislation, and regional and cross-border cooperation on

transportation policy allows for restructuring the distributive benefits associated with

transportation policy at different scales.

I. INTRODUCTION

Globalization trends have produced disjunctures, indeed, non-congruence, of scale

between politics and economic activities. Economic activities increasingly are conducted at

transnational and global scales while political decision making authority remains situated in

national and subnational settings. These scale incongruities produce familiar governance

issues in North America and Europe and elicit similar responses: establishing regional and

transnational decision making structures and civic organizations to deal with the structural

tensions of relations between transnational, national, state, and local governmentsiv. As

Wallace (1996, 11) puts it, the governance issue involves construction of policy responses at

multiple levels of government, between public and private sectors, and possibly across borders.

As characterized here, this entails the political and social construction of scale (Beauregard,

1995; Delaney and Leitner, 1997; Horan, 1997). A. Regional Governance Capacity

The argument that regional governance capacity will be associated with a distinctive

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policy agenda is an empirical question to be tested through comparative and longitudinal

analysesv. The prior question, addressed here, is accounting for differential stocks of regional

governance capacity over time, space, and issue areas. The regional governance concept

centers on political processes and decisional capacities; it begins with the proposition that a

new political space is emerging at the regional level--in response to the incentives of the

European Union and/or broader impacts of globalization and economic

restructuring--characterized by complexity, fragmentation, interdependence, ambiguity, and risk

(e.g. Jacobs, 1997; Jessop, 1995; LeGales, 1998. The governance issue is under what

conditions actors at this scale, in this political space, mobilize and coordinate resources

sufficient to act purposively and collectively on mutual interests.

In line with Storper (1997), I argue that the construction of multi-level governance

processes is contingent on both conventions and relations; that is, these territorial linkages are

shaped by conventions--ideas and expectations-- as well as calculations by actors and

organizations of materials gains and economies of scale. In the following discussion, I analyze

regional governance capacity as a product of the ideas that frame different ways of

understanding problems and their solutions as well as of the networks and configurations

mobilized for collective action through these new frames. By recognizing the importance of

ideas, interests, and institutions (Heclo, 1993), attention is directed to the role of

problem-oriented policy communities in generating alternative policy paradigms that set

boundaries for political action, create channels for dialogue and decision, and establish the

grounds for collective action among diverse interests. Ideas are preconditions for successful

mobilization and formation of coalitions capable of selecting policies involving the “restructuring

of distributive relationships,” sometimes through more cooperative solutions at different scales

(Blyth, 1997; Hall, 1993). In this sense, ideas, interests, and institutions have causal roles in

contributing to regional governance capacity.

Bringing ideational and cultural factors into the analysis of regional governance is not

intended to privilege them as causal factors in a constructivist process where material factors

have no independent existence outside the interpretations of them (Berman and McNamara,

1998). Although some might see regional governance capacity as a direct function of the

degree of regional identity, regional cultural values, and other ideational and cultural factors, it

is important to ground these factors in material conditions. But regional governance capacity is

not determined--much less explained-- by the networks, partnerships, and other governance

arrangements found in some areas and not others. Ideas can be used to cloak self-interest but

there are many instances where policymakers are seeking solutions rather than merely

pursuing interests; here, the play of ideas is as important in shaping outcomes as the weight of

political influence (Hall, 1993, 289). Thus, we can not analyze the role of ideas, interests, and

institutions as independent and distinct political processes; rather, they are interdependent and

the most important political questions--including the prospects for regional governance

capacity-- have to do with the intersect of these factors (Heclo, 1994). Treating any as residual

categories leads to incomplete understandings of important political processesvi.

To analyze the conventions and relations involved in the social and political construction

of scale and regional governance capacity, I examine a North American region displaying

relatively vibrant efforts at constructing regional governance capacity: the Pacific Northwest. By

selecting an area where regional and transborder interests, ideas, and institutions are

flourishing, it is possible to ask whether certain ideational and contextual features are

necessary conditions for mobilization of regional governance. B. The Reinvention of Cascadia

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The commonality and interdependence of environmental interests in the Georgia

Basin-Puget Sound bioregion ("one forest, one waterway, one airshed") is prompting the

creation of new institutional structures to protect the quality of life in "Cascadia" and adapt to a

changing global economy (Artibise, 1995; Economist 1993; Kaplan, 1998). The Cascadia

bioregion runs from Eugene OR along the Cascade Range up to Vancouver BC, distinguished

by a temperate coastal rainforest and a vast watershed. Cascadia is promoted as the tenth

largest economic center in the world with an economic base including high-tech firms such as

Microsoft, McCaw Cellular and Boeing along side logging, fishing, farming, and tourism. Claims

that a Cascadia region could constitute a giant high-tech trading bloc, with major bulk-shipping

ports in Portland and Vancouver and container-shipping ports in the Seattle-Tacoma area

(Kaplan, 1998, 58) exemplifies predictions that "in the 21st century, economically integrated and

cooperating regions, rather than nation-states or individual enterprises, will be the greatest

generators of wealth" (Gold, 1994: 14). Trade within the region is strong historically but with the

advent of NAFTA , the North/South trade links through Cascadia increased: British Columbia

exports 40% of its goods to the Pacific Rim and 50% to the United States (Kaplan, 1998).

These North-South flows contrast sharply with the traditional Canadian pattern of East-West

interior trade.

These North-South ties spurred the growth of binational alliances and multiparty groups

and forums: the Cascadia Project , a regional alliance coordinating growth management and

strategic planning efforts in Alaska, British Columbia, Yukon, Alberta, Oregon, Washington,

Montana, and Idaho; the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region group formed (1989) by 60

British Columbia and North American legislators; the British Columbia/ Washington

Environmental Cooperation Council (1993) to bring together regional government groups for

cooperation on environmental and growth management strategies; the Pacific Corridor

Enterprise established (1990) by over 200 British Columbia, Alberta and North American

business leaders; and the Cascadia Planning Group of planners and policymakers among

others.

These initiatives correspond to the social construction of "Cascadia" as a political project

at a particular historical moment (Ritaine, 1998, 76). These organizations mobilize regional

identities and interests for collective projects and, on occasion, they represent regional interests

in negotiations with Canadian and American national, provincial, and state governments.

“Cascadia”, therefore, appears to be more than a myth or marketing device: it suggests a

regional "institutional fix" emerging in response to global competition and interdependence. To

planners and citizens groups, these new institutions were essential: traditional structures of

government appeared less effective in dealing with issues of interdependence and coordination

and in responding to the demands of global competition. Their networked, coalitional form

characterizes North American efforts to overcome coordination problems with a horizontal

"fourth tier" of governance. Over time, and independent of the (unlikely) establishment of formal

regional government arrangements, it is likely these emerging institutional arrangements will

shape new transnational interests and ideas. The idea of Cascadia thus becomes

institutionalized and influences future choices by shaping interests and worldviews as well as by

creating institutional incentives and disincentives steering future policy choices.

II. MULTI-LEVEL GOVERNANCE PROCESSES: ANALYZING CONVENTIONS AND

RELATIONS OF REGIONAL GOVERNANCE IN NORTH AMERICA

The reinvention of Cascadia seems to exemplify (e.g. Pierson, 1996; Wallace, 1996;

Jessop, 1997; Keating and Loughlin, 1997; LeGales and Lequesne, 1998) responses to

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apparent gaps in the ability of national governments to control global and transnational

economic processes. In Storper's terms, these gaps prompt efforts to coordinate actors and to

channel decisions in situations of interdependence, indivisibilities, and uncertainty--what is

characterized here as governance capacity.

Viewing these processes as the social and political construction of a new scale of

political interaction (Beauregard, 1995; Delaney and Leitner, 1997) offers fresh insights and a

more nuanced approach. Moving away from geological metaphors of nested scales opens up a

perspective on scale as socially constructed by actors and institutions at different scales

(Beauregard, 1995: 239). Places become linked, not necessarily in a hierarchical structure

mirroring their status in a world system or federal structure, but through the interests and

influence of actors at different scales--that is, through political processes. Furthermore,

globalization is situated in specific places through production activities linking jobs, firms, and

households involved in the many processes constituting globalization--not just producer and

financial services in the formal economy or in global cities (Sassen, 1996). This more nuanced

view redirects attention to state and community, particularly the legal, financial, and social

infrastructures created at different scales that enable "the work of globalization" to take place

(Sassen, 1996; Beauregard, 1995). The range of local and regional responses to the new

space economy, therefore, is broader than merely "mediating" global forces. From this

perspective, the appropriate focus for theorization of multi-level governance --and

understanding the Cascadia process-- is not reified spatial scales but the strategies through

which actors create, differentiate, and reconstitute scale--or what Horan (1997) identifies as the

politics of spatial advantage. A. Using a Multi-level Governance Perspective for Empirical Research

If we begin with the proposition that governance processes are contingent on both

conventions and relations-- that is, ideas, interests, and institutions--a concrete empirical

analysis of the Cascadia case depends on robust conceptualization of cross-jurisdictional and

transborder cooperation processes. One of the few theoretical approaches to encourage

consideration of the intersecting relations of interests, ideas, and institutions in the politics of

scale is the multi-level governance perspective developed primarily in the context of European

integration processes. The European experience with these processes provides a template for

anticipating and understanding incipient North American trends, particularly the "regional policy"

agenda of the past decade (Barnes and Ledebur, 1998: 170).

In both the North American and European context, this notion of cross-jurisdictional,

multi-level policy negotiations challenges state-centric paradigms, particularly when it features

subnational government activities and non-governmental actors (Marks et al., 1996). In

state-centrist approaches to policy-making, sovereignty is seen as a unitary entity residing in

the nation-state, the primary actor in transnational policymaking. In the policymaking processes

of "high" politics, national governments are considered autonomous and engaged in rational

behavior seeking to maximize their interests and preferences. These interests and preferences

generally include autonomy and sovereignty relative to other national actors but also

encompass domestic concerns. From the perspective of multi-level governance approaches,

sovereignty is "perforated" (Duchacek, 1990; Soldatos, 1990) and issue-based: different entities

such as supranational, national, regional and subnational groups can possess sovereignty

across issues and over time (Fountain, 1997: 2). Thus there are multiple levels of government

and diverse political actors engaged in governance processes that vary by issue area. Even

though national governments may remain the sovereign participants in certain areas such as

treaty processes, such functions are less and less representative of significant and "ongoing

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process(es) of institution-building" (Marks, 1993). Instead, “vertical” cooperation among

different government levels emerges from networks of influence and information linking them

together.

1. Limitations of the Multi-level Governance Perspective. Although the multi-level

governance model is widely used, there are some limitations to bear in mind. For one, it is a

very general model of governance processes that encompasses both vertical and horizontal

cooperation but does not clarify the dynamics of these patterns. Although there is an explicit

argument to focus on actors rather than institutions, there is a tendency to reify scale and levels

of government. Furthermore, as Jeffrey points out (1997), the attention given in the European

context to subnational mobilization outside the nation-state framework tends to give a skewed

sense of these processes and a presumption of their effectiveness. He sees such efforts as

limited and marginal relative to the significance of subnational mobilization and negotiations

within national governments over extra-national issues. Thus subnational governments are

more likely to seek a share in extra-national decisions along side of national policy processes

(emphasis in original) and based on their local competencies. This restores attention to the

intra-state arena and the extent to which the national government has a policy monopoly over

extra-national decisions. Also, in the multi-level governance perspective, an expanded

emphasis on interests and governance arrangements can slight the ideational or ideological

aspect (Lefevre, 1998) of these governance processes. Finally, inadequate conceptualizations

also hamper empirical investigation of multi-level governance processes; this requires

improving on our ability to: 1) identify different governance capacities and forms, 2) track the

discourse--the ideas or conventions-- legitimating “perforated sovereignty” and the diffusion of

regional governance notions over different issue areas, and 2) conceptualize governance

relations --the actors, strategies, and mechanisms--constituting the webs and networks of

public and non-state actors. 1. Empirical Analysis of Governance Capacities

Analyzing "the politics of scale" (Delaney and Leitner, 1997:95) by drawing on theories

of governance centers the analytic focus on purposive struggles to mobilize and coordinate

resources to pursue collective solutions to shared problems. Eventually, this means being able

to make meaningful statements about “more” or “less” governance capacity at different times

and places. But it also requires an ability to differentiate different governance mechanisms

drawn on to create and articulate this capacity: to Cox (1997), governance strategies include

coalition-building, top-down rule-setting, and representational activities. The urban regime

literature tends to focus on community---the coalitions and networks created from the bottom

up. Coalitional governance strategies emphasize what Savitch and Vogel (1996) define as

mutual adjustment processes. Viewing multi-level governance processes solely from a

coalitional perspective, however, slights the role of institutions and the importance of

institutional frameworks (Keating and Loughlin, 1997, 12). While coalitional strategies are

familiar subnational efforts in North American cities (and, Hardy argues (1994), increasingly in

European cities), many analysts (Cox (1997; Leo, 1998; Foster, 1997; Lefevre, 1998) indicate

that rule-setting strategies, particularly legal mandates and incentives, are important in

promoting regional outcomes. This appears especially likely regarding natural resources and

infrastructural issues promising mutual fiscal benefits but with high capital costs, economies of

scale, narrow range of consumer preferences, and strong externalities. In many instances, the

use of rules and creation of new rule-setting bodies at different scales internalizes the costs

associated with land use, infrastructure, and economic projects perceived as regional

development strategies.

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Finally, the prospect of representational governance strategies highlights regions as

"political collective actors in the making" (IJURR, 1998; see also LeGales and Lequesne, 1998).

One of the key debates on subnational entities in EU policy formation is whether they engage in

"constituent diplomacy" (Duchacek, 1990) to influence "interstate bargains independent of the

national government" (Fountain, 1997: 5) or rely on influencing EU policy through lobbying

internally with their central governments. In the North American context, we might anticipate

common lobbying by subnational governments on regional and transnational issues rather than

solely relying on state legislative representatives or Congressional representatives to craft

acceptable solutionsvii

. Even though territorial representation ensures that subnational

governments can make their views heard in national policy debates, this is only one voice

among many powerful functional interests demanding locationally neutral policies to promote

international trade and economic growth. Furthermore, the negotiations and decisions on

transnational issues in the United States in the past decades have shifted from Congressional

arenas to the Executive branchviii

. Subnational entities, therefore, may discount the existing

internal structures of interest representation in favor of constructing new paths. 2. Empirical Analysis of Ideas and Conventions

"Scale matters": arguments about scale, and the consequences of different

constructions of scale, are used strategically to bring about desired changes (Delaney and

Leitner, 1997: 94). Thus the legitimacy and necessity of multi-level governance arrangements

must be promoted through dialogic channels and the "solution set" of multi-level, transnational

governance arrangements must be articulated as an appropriate and viable solution to the

problems identified in causal stories. The salience of these conventions underlies the prospects

in any particular area and policy arena for the regional coordination of economic actors

(Storper,1997: 43) anticipated by multi-level governance processes. The presence of certain

conventions--mutually coherent expectations, routines and frameworks enabling reflexivity and

learning--- allows for new relations, such as nonmarket forms of coordination across

jurisdictional boundaries. Scholars of European multi-level governance underscore the

significance of these linkages based on mutually understood conventions rather than formal

political relations. In contrast to arguments that the presence of certain contextual imperatives

or factors promotes regional outcomes (Foster, 1997), this approach stresses how the framing

and interpretation of those conditions and factors is a resource for political mobilization on

regional projects.

"The geography of conventions and relations" (Storper, 1997:43) can be conceptualized

as unfolding through policy communities. Policy communities embrace nongovernmental actors

and representatives of different institutional scales sharing an interest, here, in transnational,

regional governance arrangements. These policy communities articulate the ideas and

interests associated with reframing of problems in regional and /or transnational terms and also

advocate policy paradigms prescribing solutions for these redefined problems. These regional

governance policy paradigms include a range of programmatic and institutional alternatives to

deal with the difficulties of interdependent decision making. Involvement in these networks may

reconfigure subnational officials' understandings of transnational interdependence as well as

their governance preferences (Wallace, 1996). Since these conventions and policy paradigms

are constructed through cognitive, dialogic, and interpretive processes, these processes and

the stock of such conventions will differ by policy area--and locality. Although there is a

tendency to conceptualize policy communities as “de-territorialized” (Keating and Loughlin,

1997) horizontal webs operating at national and supranational scales, the availability of and

engagement with subnational policy communities promoting new paradigms and solution sets

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may be a critical determinant of why some regions are more likely to build regional governance

capacity.ix In the last decade, the notable re-emergence of national and subnational policy

communities advocating multi-level governance solutions to coordination issues in the United

States reinserts a territorial dimension to the politics of globalization.

3. Empirical Analysis of Relations in Multi-level Governance

Despite the federalist rhetorical legacy of European integration, some observers argue

that a network metaphor is a more apt depiction of the emerging EU political system and the

disjuncture of policymaking and political institutions( Keating and Loughlin, 1997; Keohane and

Hoffman, cited in Sbragia, 1992, 261). While the network concept is a useful heuristic for

escaping state-centric assumptions and bringing economic processes and political processes

into the same analytical space, (Low, 1997), it is relatively static and descriptive. According to

Dowding (1995) network concepts are merely metaphors: they do not provide a strong

foundation for understanding the conditions under which such networks emerge or fail to form

nor for anticipating the direction of policy change likely from these arrangements. At worst, he

sees them as deducing decision outcomes from the properties of members and the networks

themselves rather than from analysis of the power dynamics. And, as Keating and Loughlin

note, networks in the absence of a regional institutional framework lack a power dimension

(1997, 12).

A regime perspective on multi-level governance relations could redress some of these

concerns. It proposes an actor-oriented model in a political economy structure: the uncertainty

and tensions marking state and market relations are overcome through informal governance

strategies aimed at bringing about desired results. Regimes are purposive and engaged in

mobilization around collective projects (“hegemonic” projects, to the regulationists). These

relations operate outside of formal institutional structures through cross-sectoral, primarily

horizontal decision ties (John and Cole, 1998: 387). Stone (1989) argues that governing

coalitions seek sufficient scope to encompass and coordinate the actors and groups necessary

for generating "enough cooperation" to carry out governance activitiesx. This perspective directs

attention to the actors, strategies, mechanisms, and issue contexts; the focus is

middle-range---the conditions under which regional governing regimes emerge, consolidate,

and transform.

From a regime perspective, understanding the politics of spatial advantages is actor

oriented: it means looking at the actors, strategies and mechanisms engaged in producing the

cooperation necessary for coping with spatial disjunctures (Stone, 1989).xi Neither regime nor

regulationist perspectives are particularly useful, however, in specifying the types of

configurations likely to occur other than coalitions. The configurations of multi-level relations

may range from regional coalitions arrangements to a "regionalized state" (Keating and

Loughlin, 1997) sensitive to interdependencies and the need for regionalized coordination and

cooperation. Other than listing a range of possibilities--public/private partnerships, regionalized

regulation, regional corporatism, quasi-public agencies, alliances, interlocal or transnational

agreements, forums, and other organizational forms etc.--there are as yet no clear arguments

or empirical evidence for why some configurations emerge and with what consequencesxii

.

B. Analyzing Regional Governance Capacity in Cascadia .

I consider regional governance capacity in Cascadia by assessing the roles of policy

communities contesting the construction of the Cascadia identity through competing policy

paradigms, the creations of regimes--informal arrangements-- of diverse actors at different

scales, and the governance strategies used to mobilize resources and coordinate efforts in

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different policy areas. Regional regulation and governance is likely to vary by issue context; by

focusing on a particular policy arena, the complex patterns of regional and transborder

multi-level governance processes can be analyzed more carefully and precisely. The larger

project examines regional governance capacity across three policy arenas: trade,

transportation, and tourism.xiii

In this paper, I limit the analysis to efforts to promote a regional

transportation project in Cascadia, which required mobilizing a regional regime and negotiating

as collective political actors with the relevant national governments. III. REGIONAL AND TRANSNATIONAL DISCOURSE: POLICY COMMUNITIES AND THE

POLITICS OF IDEAS

From a constructionist perspective on scale (Delaney and Leitner, 1997; Smith, 1992;

Lefevre, 1998), rhetoric and discourse are critical elements in the processes contributing to

multi-level governance conventions and relations. Storper (1997) posits that strategic

assessments of the virtues of coordination are contingent on talk, trust, confidence, and the

availability of precedents and analogs. This emphasis on discourse corresponds to the

argument (Clarke and Gaile, 1997; cf. Stone, 1989) that our understanding of globalization and

regionalism is shaped by the causal stories that different groups and organizations use to

politicize issues linking the local and the global, to seek new institutional venues, and to

promote some solutions over others. These causal stories about regionalism and globalization

are generated by policy communities at the state, provincial, and national levels. A. The Regionalism Policy Community

Tracking the evolution of the regionalism "paradigm" and the role of a national policy

community in North America is an important and intriguing analytic task. Policy communities

supply information, expertise, and the entrepreneurial energy to link transnational, regional

institutional solutions to disjuncture problems. In the 1990s, there has been a revival of interest

in the United States in regional solutions to fragmentation and interdependence (Foster, 1997;

Swanstrom, 1996); Lefevre also dates the "renaissance" of metropolitan governance in Europe

from this period. The resurgence of regionalism rhetoric is a reminder of the plasticity of the

idea: it is linked to interests and political struggle that find new life and rationales in the "new"

problem of spatial disjunctures. In North America, the transnational version of this notion

predates the NAFTA agreements; the domestic trade debates culminating in the Omnibus

Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988 (OCTA), a bill seen as a more comprehensive

approach to trade policy folding many policies, such as education, into the concern with

competitiveness prompted broader thinking about the role of localities and regions in a global

economy.

There now is a flourishing national policy cg. Neil Peirce, former HUD Secretary

Cisneros) and organizations (e.g. National League of Cities) encouraging regional alliances and

coordination among cities. The idea of regionalism is in "good currency," bolstered by the

advocacy of this community and the resurgence of intellectual interest in local and subnational

economic roles (Kanter, 1995; Clarke and Gaile, 1998). The conventions--the ideas,

expectations, routines, frameworks---supporting regional coordination and cooperation are

packaged as a solution set to urban governance dilemmas stemming from spatial disjunctures.

Information on city experiences with these new arrangements is available from diverse

publications, including NLC materials, Governing, and The Economist; indeed, many of the

analysts, journalists, policymakers, and association leaders identified with this viewpoint are

listed as governing members of Neil Peirce’s The Citistates Group organizationxiv

.

To some, this is a matter of political expediency as political support for federal aid to

cities declined; arguments about the interdependence of cities and suburbs seem to offer a way

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to reframe proposals to restore funding to these beleaguered areas. But there is also an

economic rationale behind the new regionalism argument: this economic justification portrays

cities as engines of growth and cultural centers of critical importance for regional growth and

prosperity. It is echoed in recent arguments that we are entering the era of "citistates," one

where healthy cities power the national economy and contribute to the United States'

international competitiveness (Peirce, Johnson, and Hall, 1993) .

But as Barnes and Ledebur point out, this is about "federalism, not feudalism" (1998:

177). They also begin with the problem of dissonance between political and economic

boundaries and argue for a perspective that recognizes the salience of regional economies.

Ideas matter: they argue for a paradigm shift that recognizes local economic regions as the

basic, functional economic units of a spatially differentiated national economy. To underscore

their regional and local orientation, they use the metaphor of the "U.S. Common Market" to

refer to the linked common market of regional economies. By nurturing these regional economic

commons, the well-being of the larger national common market is enhanced. To Barnes and

Ledebur, these regional political economies are the appropriate focus of national, state, and

local economic development efforts. A "horizontal federalism" (161) linking locales and regions

--perhaps in regional economic commons (REC)--is promoted as more congruent with the new

spatial economy than the vertical structure of political federalism. They recognize that this

political reconstruction will shift conflicts and coalition building into new channels rather than

reduce it--what is described here as the politics of spatial advantage--but also create new forms

of civic and social capital. B. Reinventing Cascadia

Classifying the factors associated with why some regions are more likely to achieve

regional outcomes (structures and processes) and capacity (Foster (1997: 376) is a necessary

but insufficient step. These conditions must be translated into stories, frames, and arguments

about regional identity and the prospects for cross-jurisdictional alliances in order to affect

policymaking.xv

This means the rhetoric and discourse essential to creating a regional identity

must also be linked to shifting power relations, agendas, and agency. Thus ripe contextual

conditions and even “windows of opportunity” are not enough for regional governance to build:

there must be causal stories and policy paradigms available that indicate appropriate responses

to these changing conditions.

1. Mental Maps. The stories and policy paradigms employed in constructing a regional

identity in Cascadia are viewed here in strategic terms, as a means of facilitating new

institutional arrangements and policy agendasxvi

. Whether groups will come together and

mobilize around collective projects is contingent on their perceptions of the incentives and

disincentives associated with new multi-level governance arrangements. This assumes that

stakeholder acts do not mechanically reflect "objective interests" but incorporate beliefs/ values/

perceptions--what Wolman and Ford (1996) describe as their "assumptive worlds". To

understand policy choices necessitating cooperation, particularly those also involving shifts in

authority, it is important to gain some sense of the subjective understandings stakeholders have

of the world--their mental maps or schemas of how the world is organized and their causal

stories about the problems to be solved by “Cascadia” .

The interviews underscored the problematic and contested status of the "Cascadia"

construct (see also Blatter, 1994; Artibise, 1997). When asked to characterize their mental

map of Cascadia, respondents ranged from using geographic and geologic referents to

ecological, to economic, to cultural and lifestyle distinctions. Nearly all the respondents refer to

Cascadia as the transborder region including British Columbia as well as Oregon and

11

Washingtonxvii

. The name is traced back to Native American references to the mountains near

the Columbia River cascades; early geological maps define it by tectonic plates as well as by

water. There is a self-conscious awareness of the economic region, especially relative to other

prospective regions and especially now as it is vulnerable to downturns in the Pacific Rim

economy.

But to many in the area, Cascadia connotes an eco-cultural sense of place involving

community and culture as well as the shared physical environment linking citizens from British

Columbia to Oregon. As one American official put it "Nobody in the Pacific Northwest would

view the Canadian border as a boundary...we are ..brought up that way, not to see it as a

barrier.” Indeed, Washington and British Columbia historically constituted the same territorial

unit; British Columbia only pulled away in 1846 and belatedly joined the Canadian federation in

1871. To many, “Canada ends at the Rockies.” This sense of shared ethnic and cultural ties, a

history of migration across borders and family ties within the region is frequently alluded to,

particularly in Portland and Seattle where there appears to be a growing regional identity

articulated in terms of cultural style and quality of life concerns. There is some recognition this

often involves myth and sentimentality but It also includes lifestyle issues that feature strong

environmental sensitivities and are often contrasted with the orientations in California and the

East Coast.

It is a variable sentiment, however. Most agreed that Americans are more vocal and

enthusiastic promoters of the term than Canadians. Even though many Canadians in the

Western provinces claim to feel disconnected from rest of Canada, the seeming fragility of the

Canadian federation mutes the debate. The idea of Cascadia is more openly discussed in

Oregon and Washington than in British Columbia, according to Artibise, because the regional

concept threatens the fragile Canadian federation (Kaplan, 1998, 58). Nevertheless, there is

continual talk of new alignments and occasional mention of the "Pacifica" nation in the Western

Provinces. C. Competing Problem Definitions and Policy Communities

There is a lack of consensus on what problem Cascadia would solve. The promotional

efforts of policy communities committed to the idea of Cascadia split between those seeing

Cascadia as an ecological system,e bloc competing in a global economy, and those who use

the Cascadia notion to legitimate decentralization and greater subnational autonomy.

1. Bioregionalist Activists and the Sustainability Paradigm. To many, the character of

place in Cascadia stems from the temperate rainforest and the water, not the mountains or the

transportation corridors or economic flows. Environmental activists in the area split between

those with a more conventional focus on protecting natural resources, those advocating

sustainable development in the use of resources, and those distinguishing themselves as part

of a bioregionalist, grassroots social movement stretching back nearly 20 years. The

bioregionalist label denotes an alternative sustainable development paradigm: it incorporates a

cultural dimension linking the environment, economy, and community with political mobilization

around watershed districts as a basis for representation. They blame the free marketeers for

the dualisms of environment v. the economy, visionaries v. the pragmatists that tend to infuse

the issue. As one long-time community development organizer sees it, sustainable

development is market based and there must be a rationale for producers; in his words, rhetoric

that attacks the market is “old-hat” and working with the market is “a no-brainer”: his

organization has a stewardship ethos towards local resources as a basis for community life.

In Cascadia, the bioregionalists describe a deliberate strategy over the past 15-20

years to diffuse Cascadia symbols and rhetoricxviii

. The first university course on Cascadia was

12

taught in Seattle in 1978; an informal network of local activists met and discussed the issues

throughout the late 1970s. A webzine, the Cascadia Times, disseminates sustainable

development, bioregionalist, and citistate views. From 1985-90, North American conferences of

bioregionalists focused on Cascadia as an ecological area but 1990 is seen as the

“breakthrough” year because cultural elements and a collaborative, citizen-based, “story-telling”

approach to advocating the model was adopted. Although they claim "nobody is in charge" of

this movement, there are visible policy entrepreneurs advocating the views of this policy

community; in their view, 1990 marked a turning point for the Cascadia movement as it moved

into the bioregional mainstream. In the last 10 years, watershed advocates have gained seats

on county planning commissions and state advisory boards in several states. Nevertheless,

some will caution "don't use the B word" in discussing Cascadia since they encounter frequent

resistance to and lack of understanding of bioregional concepts. It also signifies a split among

environmentalists, both on the appropriate conventions and on political strategy; the

bioregionalists portray the mainstream environmentalists as focused on litigation and top-down

policy initiatives in contrast to their collaborative, bottom-up, grassroots orientation.

The governance prescriptions in the policy paradigm advocated by bioregionalists and,

to some extent, the broader sustainable development community, would change the rules of the

political game to incorporate collaborative decision making and territorial representation through

watershed districts. The concept of a United States organized around watershed

commonwealths goes back to John Wesley Powell’s effort in 1890 to convince Congress to set

political boundaries in the arid West “beyond the hundredth meridian” along the lines of

watersheds, or drainage basins (Philp, 1998). Although Powell was unsuccessful, the political

landscape he envisioned is realized partially by the diffusion of watershed districts as

representative political bodies in many Western states: Oregon, Washington, Idaho, northern

California, and the Yellowstone regions have these governance arrangements, providing a

modest precedent for these governance prescriptions for the Cascadia regionxix

. Other

governance precedents include several models of bi-state and transborder environmental

cooperation (Ingram, 1997; Ingram and White, 1993) although bioregionalists characterize

these as legitimating “stakeholder” representation rather than collaborative decision making.

For example, the Fraser Basin Commission is a Canadian/US organization (bi-nationally

funded) representing all First Nation/Native American groups and local governments in the

Fraser Basin watershed on environmental and economic matters affecting the Basin. British

Columbia and Washington also are signatories to several MOUs of understanding and

cooperation, including a 1992 MOU promoting industrial collaboration, environmental

technology demonstrations, and technology transfer. There are numerous examples of

multi-level governance mechanisms for environmental policy within each country, including the

Columbia River Gorge Scenic Parkway compelling joint management by Oregon and

Washington counties of the river basin as well as efforts by the Canadian Fisheries department

to move toward a partnership model for policy representation.

2. Free Marketeers and the Competition Paradigm: This geographic and ecological term

now has evolved (or been reconstructed) into an economic and political concept. To the

bioregionalists, the concept has been “hijacked” to serve the aspirations of transnational

interests in competing in the global economy. As they see it, their mobilization of interest

around the Cascadia notion--their “softening up” of receptivity to a regional identity as

Cascadia-- is being capitalized on by groups with very different prescriptive ends. In contrast to

the eco-cultural model used by bioregionalists to encourage cooperation, the free marketeers

define the problem in terms of global competition; thus they frame regionalism in an

13

international context of competitive growth (Keating, 1997, 24). They use the language of

efficiencies and markets as rationale for encouraging greater regional and transnational

cooperation. This is more familiar, less threatening rhetoric to most citizens; it is also a shared

language of businesses and investors who enjoy a common understanding of the rules of the

game, as well as patterns of trust, and reciprocity rooted in years of iterative interactions. The

newsletters of the Cascadia Institute, the Discovery Institute, and the various cross-border

organizations promote the need for strategic transborder alliances to compete in a global

economy; the launching of The New Pacific magazine in 1989 aimed at reaching a wider

audience although its publication history was short-lived.

The governance prescriptions in the policy paradigm advocated by the free marketeers

are unremarkable. They are not seeking a change in the rules of the game per se but argue for

expanding the scope and scale of deliberation and sharing of authoritative decisions to include

multi-levels of government in Canada and the United States as well as business and civic

leaders. They define the governance problem as the lack of any mechanism to coordinate the

many organizational initiatives and governmental agreements structuring regional cooperation

(Artibise, 1997; NPC, 1990). The limitations of traditional government structures in responding

to economic interdependency are well understood but there is also an awareness that the real

challenge is “to make the Cascadia agenda the agenda of traditional governments.” (Artibise,

1997, 25). To some extent, they are calling for a “regionalized state”: they have many bi-lateral

precedents and analogs to point to in rationalizing their push for regional governance capacity.

But Artibise, a key policy entrepreneur, also argues that the most effective solution to the

governance dilemma is a bi-national advisory board chaired jointly by the Oregon and

Washington governors and the British Columbia Premier and limited to 60 representatives of

government, business, labor, and nongovernment organizations (Freeman, 1997). The lack of

political leadership in promoting the Cascadia agenda within existing governments, much less

advocating new institutional arrangements is seen as critical barrier to further evolution of

Cascadia as a coherent collective actor (ibid). This “missing link” of visible political

commitment to cross-border agendas is explained in terms of the lack of electoral incentives to

do so in both the US and Canada and the wariness of the political costs of closer US ties in BC

political circles (Freeman, 1997).

3. Citistate Advocates and the Devolution Paradigm: Both Canadian and American

activists claim that national governments in Ottawa and Washington DC are too distant and

favor “one-size-fits all” policy designs. This belief that national politicians “just didn’t

understand how it is in the West” is classic "sagebrush mentality” politics but now resonates

with arguments about the hollowing out of the state (Jessop, 1997) and advocacy for greater

decentralization. As one Canadian academic put it, “the nation-state is gone in Vancouver”

(Kaplan, 1998,52) and tax revenues would be spent more wisely in Vancouver. To some, the

future belongs to citistates: they are seen as the key to organizing integrated regional

economies (Mazza, 1996; Jacobs, 1989) and the most likely arena for democratic citizenship.

Even those seeing the Cascadia rhetoric as an economic development ploy of free marketeers

note that the idea has resonance due to some sense of distinctive physical and cultural

community; so even if it has been captured by the free marketeers, it is seen as reflecting a

common core sentiment for more autonomy. As one official saw it, there is some sense

regional decision making could do better than national government on some issues; he

anticipated more cooperation over time on the transportation corridor, fisheries, energy, and

power issues.

The governance prescriptions in the policy paradigm advocated by citistate activists

14

prescribe significant devolution of authority to the regional levels. By defining the problem as

distant government and the lack of context-sensitive policies, the solution is to change the rules

of the game. In Marks’ formulation, this shift will happen if government leaders want to do it,

need to do it, or can’t avoid doing it (Marks, 1996). Although the paradigm prescribes

substantial devolution, most citistate demands, however, are closer to the notion of a

“regionalized state” (Keating, 1997) ; this would require shifting of authority downward by

current government leaders and sharing of some policy capacity with horizontal networks of

nongovernmental actors. Here the focus of citistate politics is creating a sense of the need to

devolve authority in order to achieve other goals such as greater competitiveness, more

responsive decision processes, and more contextualized decisions. Citistates would encourage

greater social capital and democratic practice at a smaller scale within a national framework.

There is obviously overlap--common ground--between the free marketeer and citistate

paradigms; few free marketeers would see the citistate paradigm as a means of removing trade

barriers although they would support the regionalized state as a second-best option. But most

citistate activists would also support a regionalized state as a second-best option and see the

citistate paradigm as supporting more flexibility and enhanced economic competitiveness.

To some, the Canadian activists are positioning themselves to be the new political class

and regional elite emerging from the breakup of the Canadian federation. Whatever the merits

of this prediction, it is clear that the Cascadia arena provides a means for symbolic politics over

non-fiscal issues with few costs and some visibility for participants. These symbolic politics offer

leadership and career opportunities to politicians--”a political class”-- that should not be taken

lightly (Balme, 1998, 196). To others, Cascadia provides a way of framing issues that allow

citizens and policymakers to see local circumstances in a larger context; in an areas where

several cities with strong metropolitan organizations, such as Portland and Vancouver, it signals

that the region is not bounded by metropolitan issues. D. Why Cascadia--and why now?

In Kingdon’s (1995) conceptualization, policy proposals flow from networks of

experts--epistemic communities-- who wait for attention to shift to the problems they are

concerned with and for political opportunities--”policy windows”-- to open up. He argues the

important questions are not the origins of ideas but why some are more or less likely to make it

on to the agenda. As he sees it, many ideas are possible candidates but they need to go

through a softening up and recombination processes to gain acceptability. These are the tasks

of policy communities-- specialists inside and outside of government--and policy entrepreneurs

able to invest resources in advocating their proposals. Once ideas gain credibility and

consensus within a policy community, those that are “ready” are most likely to be in a position

for promotion when triggering events open policy windows.

Most stories explaining the emergence of Cascadia discourse emphasized the impacts

of globalization and economic restructuring in the region, particularly the 1980s recession; this

recession underscored the vulnerabilities of the relatively under-diversified, resource-dependent

economy in the Northwest. The more recent economic shocks from the volatile Asian

economies were also identified as “triggers” to more receptivity to regionalism in both Canada

and the Pacific Northwest. With this increased sense of international economic vulnerability,

there is greater attention to the importance of tourism (now the second largest sector in BC’s

economy) and cross-border trade as keys to economic recovery. Political developments are

also triggers: the recent increase in regionalism sentiment is also linked to the United States’

reauthorization of transportation funding (TEA-21). For the first time, this legislation allows

American domestic program funds to be spent outside the United States in support of

15

cross-border transportation planning. Regionalism activists termed this a “breakthrough” and

both Canadian and American policy entrepreneurs made it clear that the funds were contingent

on cross-border cooperation. IV. MOBILIZING REGIONAL GOVERNANCE CAPACITY

As LeGales and Lequesne admit (1998, 257), there is no systematic analysis of the

conditions and factors contributing to the construction of regional governance capacity. In

addition to the strategic role of values and identity--the discourse and conventions I’ve

described above--they argue that regional governance regimes are likely to be shaped by

relations-- interest group configurations and the fabric of civil society and social groups

(LeGales and Lequesne, 1998, 257; Keating, 1997). Given their argument that globalization and

restructuring are at least as significant as the European Union institutions in prompting

regionalism efforts, they do not dwell on the role of external political arenas in promoting

regional governance capacity but it must be included as the starting point on the analytic “list.” A. Top-Down Pressures for Regionalism

Keating and Loughlin (1997) contrast regionalism as an ideological, decentralizing

movement from the bottom-up and the emergence of regionalism in response to top down

regionalization processes. In their characterization of the increased interest in Europe with the

regionalism question, they note the spatial disjunctures and gaps described here as

encouraging the emergence of new economic regions along with EU regional policy efforts to

bring undeveloped sectors of territory and human resources into the productive cycle (7). They

also cite political developments facilitating regional orientations, including the growing

transnational character of issues such as the environment and financial services, the pattern of

devolution due to internal state processes and in response to EU structural funds encouraging

some decentralization even in the absence of constitutional change. Regionalism from the

bottom up occurs as areas seek links among regions and states to enhance their competitive

market position; as Jessop (1997) puts it, this hollowing out of the state includes a push

outward to create networks and information exchange among subnational actors.

Clearly there is nothing comparable in North America to the EU institutional framework.

The role of ERDF in working directly with subnational governments on regional equity issues

and creating policy networks encompassing subnational governments and private actors in

regions (Marks, 1992, 192) is not replicated nor is there anything similar to the Committee on

Regions bringing together regional bodies of member states for consultation on issues with

"regional implications." Supranational initiatives such as NAFTA, GATT, and the WTO are trade

liberalization strategies rather than institutional arenas. As Keating and Loughlin point out,

NAFTA establishes neither political institutions nor even political space for regional action, nor

does it create incentives for regional cooperation. In their words, it simply opens markets and

encourages place competition, producing economic integration but not the erosion of political

borders (1997, 9).

agree: few cited NAFTA as increasing their awareness of the need for transborder

cooperation but they did identify other supranational and national activities that stimulated the

resurgence of regionalismxx

. As Blatter (1996) and Scherer and Blatter (1994) point out,

analytical models of cross-border cooperation tend to overlook interactions across political

arenas--particularly incentives and funding-- and to take an unnecessarily restrictive border

focus. At the national level, Congress established the Cascadia Commission in 1992 as an

advisory panel to coordinate international and interstate cooperation on growth, environmental,

and transportation problems. But the ISTEA and the successor TEA-21 legislation are

landmarks in the North American regionalism process. In the United States, the Intermodal

16

Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA) gives the states a prominent and flexible

transportation policy role; ISTEA, however, transforms the historical federal-state transportation

partnership by requiring states to share planning for new transportation projects with

metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) (Kincaid, 1992). This shifts the political game to a

metropolitan and regional scale. It also provided for designation of 5 high speed rail corridors,

with Vancouver BC to Eugene eventually gaining designation. With the advent of TEA-21, it

also becomes a transnational game with the TEA-21 funding of transborder transportation

corridor planning. National regulatory efforts were also cited as shaping regional cooperation:

different regulatory climates encouraged more competition between ports and airports for both

cargo and passengers but also created an economic rationale for joining tourism budgets and

marketing strategies to capture the tourists who arrive in the region.

In the Pacific Northwest, state and provincial legislation also creates incentives for

regional and transborder cooperation. In Oregon and Washington, statewide land use

programs encourage inter-municipal coordination and joint planning of transportation. These

innovative programs go back to the 1960s and 1970s, however, and to some respondents the

state legislatures were “not the players you would expect.” Thanks to the effects of term limits,

state imitative and referendum processes, and growing suburban constituencies, some saw the

state legislatures (in Oregon especially) as more conservative and more oriented to minimal

government intervention. This creates a political space for policy initiatives from local

governments and other groups outside elected arenas. In British Columbia, party control of

provincial government determines regionalism sentiments and the degree of engagement in

regionalism projects. As Artibise (1997) notes, the lack of symmetry in Cascadia state-province

relations complicates cooperative efforts. Bi-lateral agreements are a familiar pattern but

expanding to include Oregon, much less Alberta, makes the political gains less obvious to

provincial politicians. B. Configurations of Conventions and Relations

As in Europe, there is little evidence of regional or transnational employer associations

or configurations of business interests in Cascadia. Indeed, the policy entrepreneurs promoting

regional and transnational cooperation often argued that the lack of business attention and

interest was a critical problem. Blatter's work in Cascadia (1996), empirical research on

transborder environmental cooperation (Ingram and White, 1993), and the recent literature on

regimes and metropolitan governance (Lefevre, 1998; Savitch and Vogel, 1996) single out the

"location" or situation of various actors relative to the problem, the involvement of service and

high-tech businesses in trans-border institutions and coalitions, and the efforts of sectoral

cross-border advocacy coalitions as important factors in formation on new governance regimes.

Some of these are evident in the Cascadia region but their engagement often appears episodic;

as a result the capacity of the regional regime to actually mobilize and carry out a regional

agenda is uneven.

1. Economic Actors. There is a relatively coherent sense of who the “movers and

shakers”, winners and losers are in the Cascadia game but little evidence that they consistently

play these roles. When asked who had a stake in more regional and transborder cooperation,

the most frequently mentioned players included AMTRAK (quasi-private national passenger

rail organization), the respective state transportation agencies and bureaucrats, the Ports, the

Transit authorities, local governments, and the latent interests of power utilities, timber, and

agriculture. The latter are characterized as possibly gaining efficiencies through regional and

transborder cooperation but not yet moving in this direction. Utilities are considered as the key

player and seen as more active; transportation is seen as the path of least resistance for

17

regional cooperation among these players. As one state official saw it, government is looking

for the private sector to act but it is slow to catch on: to businesses, "political boundaries make

a difference."

Yet the Cascadia free marketeers community includes a core group of business leaders,

academics and politicians. Much of the perceived business apathy may reflect business factions

stemming from the restructuring of the Cascadia economy, particularly the growth of

knowledge-based industries, since the 1980s recession. In Oregon, high tech employment is

now greater than the traditional forest product economy. As a result there is a movement away

from the historic East-West ties to the “Columbia economy” based on river transport to a new

“Cascadia economy” centered on North-South trade and transportation (Abbot, 1997)

Nevertheless, in this balance of the old and new economies, political privileges are still

controlled by the old economy of timber and farmers entrenched in the state legislature and

county governments. They retain substantial decision powers in the state growth management

plans and have little interest in cooperative trade or transportation initiatives.

2. State and Provincial Officials. State governments and provincial leaders would seem

to have few incentives to encourage new authoritative bodies that might threaten their control

and legitimacy; nevertheless, state legislators in Oregon and Washington (less so in British

Columbia) have been instrumental in passing legislation compelling regional outlooks and in

establishing organizations for cross-border cooperation. In Washington, state legislative

mandates encouraged some of these new governance arrangements: in 1989, state legislation

set up the Pacific Northwest Economic Region (PNWER) as a public-private association linking

4 states and 2 Canadian provinces for economic development and international trade initiatives.

The PNWER leadership is shared by bi-national representatives and public and private

representatives. Although this public-private partnership is regarded as the most visible regional

governing arrangement, critics claim it does not have its own agenda and is forced to the

middle of the fence by the very constituencies that give it a sense of legitimacy. It is subject to

boycotts when other conflicts break out (BC boycotted the 1997 meetings over a fishery

conflict) or indifference if no salient issues seem on the menu. Some state officials pay their

PNWER dues but note they are not relying on PNWER “to drive this show” and see it as

piggybacking on what is already happening. Nevertheless, PNWER played a visible role

representing transborder interests in both immigration debates in Canada and transportation

policy authorization in the United States.

The attention and leadership from Canadian officials varies with party control. BC’s New

Democratic Party is seen as “anti-American” and wary of cross-border alliances. Efforts to

establish broader governing arrangements have been scuttled by Canadian officials in the past.

When Cascadia free marketeers attempted to set up the high-level advisory commission they

envisioned as a mechanism for resolving cross-border disputes, BC Premier Mike Harcourt

killed it at the last minute.

3. Local Government Officials. Although there is an argument local officials could gain

from more cooperation, they are seen as more competitive than complementary. Of course,

there are few electoral incentives for cross-jurisdictional ties; with the growing disparities among

local jurisdictions, there is less and less likelihood of popular support for links between more

affluent and more distressed areas. Although the decentralized Canadian federal system also

exhibits local economic development competition (Reese, 1997; Garber and Imbroscio, 1996), it

is more muted; the provincial level social welfare responsibilities relieve localities of the trade-off

of developmental and social priorities. Variable local/state tax structures also make regional

governance more difficult: for example, the local reliance on occupancy “head tax” in the United

18

States means tourist destinations are competitive and a source of state revenues so

cooperative tourism arrangements are fragile.

Nevertheless, there are some efforts at creating coalitions within and between cities. In

Seattle, for example, the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce established the Trade Alliance

of Greater Seattle (1990) to promote the region internationally; it also produced a

comprehensive regional economic development plan. The Discovery Institute, a non-profit

regional think tank based in Seattle, launched the Cascadia Project for cross-border

cooperation on trade, transportation and tourism. It also advocates a “Main St” model of an

economic and transportation corridor tying together the Cascadia region. This centers on

promoting a high-speed rail corridor along the I-5 interstate freeway “Cascadia Corridor” and

streamlining border crossing issues. Each of these four major cities is also involved in the

transnational Cascadia initiative, with Seattle and Vancouver taking the lead; the Cascadia Task

Force, organized by the Discovery Institute and funded by local ports and cities, is a bi-national

working group of government and business leaders co-chaired by elected officials from the U.S.

and British Columbia. There is also cross-community organizing through the Cascadia

Metropolitan Forum, a public-private forum involving Seattle , Portland, and Vancouver although

one without a particular agenda; the high-speed rail issue currently unites the three cities and is

inspiring Seattle’s mayor to organize a Cascadia Mayors Forum uniting all transportation

corridor towns. Interestingly, smaller cities in Oregon and Washington advocate more regional

cooperation by the larger cities since they fear there would be no benefits and opportunities

available for smaller cities if the larger cities are excluded. But as one small city mayor

announced, "No larger organization ever contacted me on regional issues"; he attributed his

involvement to his personal views and claimed if you asked local constituencies, they wouldn’t

support regional activities. Or as a former state legislator in Washington put it, “We don’t use

Cascadia because it makes the hair stand on end of two-thirds of our members.” (Freeman,

1997)

4. Port Officials. In Cascadia, local competition is heightened because the major cities

are all international ports and have international airports (Tacoma and Seattle share an airport).

The ports of Portland, Seattle-Tacoma, and Vancouver BC are among the largest in the world

and key to Pacific Rim trade. But to some port officials, more cooperation would institutionalize

current positions and uneven market shares. The Port of Portland (a critical East-West transfer

point for freight), for example, has no direct representation on PNWER; while they profess to

be “curious about it”, they claim their business is in moving goods and responding to their

customer base, not in pushing a regional agenda. Furthermore, each port is embedded in a

distinctive political structure: Vancouver is a federal facility, Seattle, Tacoma, and Portland are

independent port authorities. Yet port officials and Cascadia activists are aware that other west

coast US ports--Long Beach and Los Angeles particularly-- are beginning to form cooperative

alliances in order to compete for Pacific Rim trade. This raises the visibility of the regional port

cooperation issue although there are no prescriptions for how it might work.

5. Non-Governmental Organizations. Blatter's work in Cascadia (1996), and other

empirical research on transborder environmental cooperation (Ingram and White, 1993) and

metropolitan governance (Lefevre, 1998; Savitch and Vogel, 1996) emphasize the importance

of the availability of specialized, non-bureaucratic institutions with problem-solving capacities in

facilitating cooperative arrangements. To some analysts, the Cascadia agenda is being driven

by such non-governmental actors, especially the bioregionalist policy community and the free

marketeer organizations. The institutional “thickness” (Amin and Thrift, 1995) would appear to

bode well for Cascadia advocates.

19

Nevertheless, these problem-solving organizations are primarily organized by the free

marketeer community--the Discovery Institute, the Cascadia Instituted, PACE, PNWER..

PNWER, the public-private partnership covering 5 states and 2 provinces and PACE are

relatively visible actors with some successes to claim. PACE, for example, set up the PACE

lane at the Peace Arch Border Crossing to allow noncommercial traffic paying a fee a quicker

crossing. There are few regional and cross border environmental organizations. The Canadian

EcoTrust organization takes a regional strategy on the rainforest but hasn't moved into

collective efforts yet. As one activist saw it, “fish are more likely to unite groups” (than forests)

but when the Rivers Council of WA pushed for a citizen-based local approach to watersheds,

the WA Environmental Council acted against it because didn't want to turn control over to

locals. So many environmental groups with shared core values are locked into struggles over

the validity of the litigation and legislation model. Furthermore, many bioregionalist and

sustainable development organizations insist on the idea that work must be place-based; this

means they look for local partners, rather than regional allies and essentially build a sense of

local place into the community development process. As a consequence, they share the values

of a borderless community but their community orientation makes them unlikely partners in a

regional regime. Increasingly, the discourse of globalization, competition, and

interdependence is displacing their perspective and even their “ownership” of the Cascadia

construct.

6. “The “Glue.” In the regime perspective, “small opportunities”--for discrete

benefits--are the glue holding coalitions together. One of the constraints on regional regime

formation in North America is the lack of any “glue” comparable to the EU resources for

regional initiatives. The free marketeers and the bioregionalists are characterized by their

members as long-standing communities based on friendship and shared values, with frequent

visiting and exchanges throughout the region. There are few benefits to attract new allies other

than the values associated with planning and greater cooperation. Both Oregon and

Washington have a tradition of “thinking things through”, as one analyst put it, and there is a

concern with the congestion brought about by regional growth. Dealing with the congestion

issue is seen as critical to future regional growth and quality of life; thus there is some

recognition that this is a public good and that better transportation links and multi-modal transit

systems would benefit everyone. As detailed below, transportation issues appear to offer

sufficient benefits and resources to sustain regional governance capacity in that sector. V. REGIONAL GOVERNANCE REGIMES AS COLLECTIVE ACTORS

To date, the transportation sector is the clearest expression of the emergence of

regional governance capacity. To address issues of interdependence and competition

highlighted in the free marketeers’ competitiveness paradigm, public and private actors

mobilized economic, political, and cultural resources, formed an informal regime based on

political exchange and side payments, and employed a range of governance strategies. This

included building coalitions across borders, state lines, and city limits, gaining some rule-setting

authority, and acting as collective political actors in representing their regional interests within

national political arenas. A. Mobilization Around Collective Projects: Strategies and Mechanisms for Transborder

Governance on Transportation

Transportation is a classic example of distributive politics within a national political

system but the gains from transborder cooperation are less obvious. These anomalies of

transborder cooperation are better explained by considering how ideas and institutions shaped

and redefined existing interests and created new interests as well.

20

In the Pacific Northwest, there is a strong sense that transportation conditions and

technology have changed sufficiently to make transportation potentially more seamless and

borders more transparent. Greater regional and cross-border cooperation is essential to

capturing the gains of these new conditions. Transportation planners often use ecological

metaphors to characterize the network they envision linking the Pacific Northwest as a

"seamless Green Corridor." New technologies such as Intelligence Transportation Systems

(ITS) which allow trucks with transponders to signal their weights to approaching monitoring

stations make the borders between states and nations “transparent” but they only are effective

if they are shared technologies.

To the Cascadia Project free marketeer activists, the region’s global competitiveness is

harmed by the lack of a landside transportation system that is regional, seamless, and

integrated with air and sea systems. These linkages of ports and other transport modes rare

considered the secret to the economic vitality of regional economies in Europe and Asia; by

“Connecting the Gateways to the Trade Corridors” with an intermodal transportation system,

Cascadia advocates hope to replicate these economic successes. There are also frequent

allusions to “catching up” with the Rocky Mountain and Southwest regions’ organization of

North-South trade and transportation corridors. Since both business and government recognize

a gain in cooperation on technology and infrastructure, they have been willing to sit down at the

table to work out agreements. State Departments of Transportation have taken a leadership

role on these issues, seeing themselves sharing common problems and goals that can only be

addressed through more cooperation.

The most visible cooperation and the most likely basis for regional regime formation

centers on the Cascadia Corridor--the I5 transportation corridor running the length of the

Cascadia region. The interest in improving the “seamless links” of this North-South

transportation corridor brought together public and private interests throughout the region. The

focus is on developing high speed rail links, an issue which depends on state government and

province cooperation. By focusing on rail rather than roads, this coalition gains support from

both environmentalists as well as railroad buffs. In Oregon and Washington, rail travel fits with

the anti-freeway sentiments and concerns over congestion and sprawl. The goal is better rail

service from Vancouver to Eugene, with frequent references to the East Coast Metro transit

with hourly services. This means more upgrades and double tracks for passenger service and

electrification. In 1995, AMTRAK reinstated passenger service from Seattle to Vancouver BC

for the first time since 1981; this event created a symbolic politics and political momentum that

Cascadia activists could take credit for and capitalize on for their agendas. In the words of one

activist, it created “a larger tent” for bringing in freight and crossing issues.

Burlington Northern is supportive of this corridor since it gains materially in upgrades on

its freight routes; AMTRAK gains potential revenue as it faces the loss of its federal subsidies

by the end of the decade. But the real push has come from the state of Washington.

Transportation and rail issues enjoy bipartisan support in the state legislature; the high speed

rail is portrayed as a bipartisan issue with strong economic benefits. The state has put a priority

on investment in the corridor; the Washington Department of Transportation unilaterally

invested $200M in the rail corridor for equipment and track on the Portland-Seattle route.

Thanks to political realignments in the Oregon state legislature in 1992, Oregon has been less

willing to invest in the project even though the Portland-Eugene track is in need of upgrading.

The I5 trade corridor is seen by Oregonians as having greatest impacts on Vancouver and

Seattle impact; Portland’s “transportation shed” includes servicing the northern tier of USA,

along the Columbia river. Supporting the Gateways project meant allocating funds on an annual

21

basis even though most of Oregon is not connected directly to the I5; to state legislators, these

funds could be used in other areas of state. To transportation analysts, Oregon is now "behind"

on its commitment to the project; the Oregon legislature needs to match Washington’s

investment but there is passive resistance stemming from concerns over ridership and fiscal

conservatism. Nevertheless, high speed passenger rail is seen as matter of accord among key

regional players so analysts anticipate more concerted efforts at the state legislatures and more

exchange of legislative testimony ; these informal efforts over the last 3-4 years are now

becoming more formal.

Until very recently, British Columbia also lagged in investment but the recent infusion of

TEA-21 “trade corridor incentives” sparked the interest and attention of both Oregon and BC

legislators. The Discovery Institute and the Cascadia Institute are long-standing champions of

this measure and organized state and local transit authorities and rail interests to promote it.

Now the high speed rail issue is now seen as having momentum. The Cascadia Institute

received a contract in Fall 1998 from the BC provincial government to create a Washington/BC

Corridor Task Force to examine border/corridor economic and environmental issues. This will

institutionalize its advisory role: the Cascadia Task Forces will report to Deputy Minister and

then to the Premier. In Fall 1998, Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia signed a MOU to

recognize the I5 as a transportation and trade corridor; this agreement is prerequisite to gaining

TEA-21 funds from the US Department of Transportation. In their negotiations, there was

agreement that all in the corridor would need to agree on how a multi-modal information system

would work , on development of a business model, and providing alternative transit options.

These would most likely occur through alliances and networks, rather than new institutions

according to one participant. But the US side is more interested in formal institutions and

structures, in part to comply with TEA-21 monitoring demands. Success in capturing TEA-21

funds could eventually mean funding for purchase of equipment as well as renovation of local

stations, provision of safety crossings, and construction of bikeways and footpaths.

How to account for the development of regional governance capacity on transportation

issues? The greater success on regional and transborder cooperation on transportation issues

occurred in part because these issues were relatively well-defined and could tap into a range of

values and sentiments: increasing high-speed rail capacity resonated with environmental

concerns with providing alternatives to the auto and with small town anxieties over access to

trade and tourism developments. Blatter (1995) argues that transportation policies promising

discrete, mutual benefits are more tractable than, for example, water regulation issues that

appear to be zero sum. The former may be more amenable to coalitional strategies while the

latter may require more explicit rule-setting strategies and institutions. This may be relevant

here: in developing the I5 corridor, legislators could promise access links to interior

communities not directly benefitting from the corridor as well s alternative transit funds to those

communities in the area.

A coherent, bi-national policy community has been active on regional transportation

issues for many years; although not the sole focus on the many Cascadia organizations, these

groups spent years “softening up” the political climate for regional and transborder projects and

was ready to act when political opportunities arose. By promoting a policy paradigm

emphasizing these regional and transnational arrangements as the appropriate solution to

global competition, the Cascadia free marketeers effectively “de-mobilized” the collective action

possible around alternative paradigms advocating bioregionalism and citistate politics at smaller

scales (Blyth, 1997). They carefully folded values of sustainability and local autonomy into their

cross-border project to broaden its appeal and its constituency but the locus of authority shifted

22

to regional scales.

This policy paradigm also allowed the institutional and political leadership in Canada and

the United States to find found common ground in advocating cross-border transportation

corridors. The extensive efforts of Cascadia free-marketeers to create the competition

paradigm and a regionalism agenda allowed state and provincial transportation bureaucrats

and policy experts to capitalize on long-standing projects to improve the efficiency of their

transportation infrastructure. Although most of these “seamless links” state projects centered on

moving freight more efficiently, the Cascadia projects emphasized high speed passenger rail.

Politicians saw this as an opportunity to claim credit for dealing with environmental and

economic development concerns. It also upgraded railroad tracks primarily used for cargo for

passenger use, at the expense of the public sector.

Finally, in providing discrete and divisible benefits to a wide range of groups,

transportation policy offered the “small opportunities” and side payments necessary to hold a

coalition together. These increased dramatically with the advent of TEA-21 and the promise of

cross-border payments for cooperative efforts. The side payments for regional and transborder

cooperation available through the US TEA-21 transportation legislation brought the actors

necessary for “sufficient” regional cooperation to the table. This included elected officials,

business leaders, transportation experts, state and provincial bureaucrats, and local officials

from throughout the state and their state Congressional and legislative representatives.

Although not all would benefit directly from creating a Cascadia “Main Street” on the I5 corridor,

nearly all were promised access links, grading upgrades, more bus service, more bike paths,

and other benefits. Thus this regional and cross-border cooperation on transportation policy

allowed for “restructuring the distributive benefits” (Blyth, 1997, 246) associated with

transportation policy at different scales.

Finally, it is possible to characterize Cascadia as a collective political actor representing

their regional interests within national political arenas. This occurred in Canada and the United

States on immigration legislation affecting border crossings as well as the TEA-21 funding of

cross-border transportation planning. Here the PNWER representatives claim credit for

lobbying with Washington for inclusion of these provisions; in the absence of detailed analysis

of the TEA-21 negotiations, there is no reason not to accept their role. Thus much of the

representational activity in the transportation sector is intra-state lobbying by subnational

governments for a greater share in bi-national transportation policy; it can be seen as working

along side of and through national policy processes for transnational ends. But lobbying also

occurred through conventional political channels, relying on the seniority of Oregon and

Washington’s Congressional delegation. it is worth noting that the recent retirement of senior

senators in Oregon and Washington appeared to generate some Congressional sentiment for

rewarding his service with transit funds for his area. Thus the good fortune of Washington and

Oregon appears to come from working within traditional political channels as well as acting

collectively. VI. CONCLUSION

The Cascadia region is an unusually vibrant example of North American regionalism and

the potential emergence of regional governance capacity. Overall, I find that building regional

governance capacity in Cascadia is hampered by competing problem definitions advocated by

different policy communities, the sporadic availability of political and business leadership on

regional issues, and tensions between regional advocates and city interests. There is some

evidence, however, of the emergence of regional governance capacity on transportation issues.

There are several policy communities generating discourse and causal stories about

23

why Cascadia is a solution to the problems created by globalization and restructuring. But their

competing views on what the problems are that Cascadia will solve hamper the further evolution

of broad regional regimes. Thus although there is a “softening up” process (Kingdon, 1995)

creating a fertile ground for more regional and transborder arrangements, there is little

overarching consensus on what those arrangements should be. Given the place-orientation of

bio-regionalists and sustainable development advocates, and the territorial focus of the citistate

politicians, it is likely some hybrid version of the free marketeers model will prevail and further

demobilize those communities. But the free marketeer community acknowledges the difficulties

in gaining a sustained political voice for their views. Thus the conventions and discourse are in

place but a broad regional regime has yet to emerge.

The constraints on further regional governance in Cascadia include the tensions

between regionalism and cities. In Cascadia, there is considerable tension between regionalism

and city interests, particularly in cities’ perceptions of their likely gains or losses from particular

projects. The Cascadia agenda is stronger in bordering Washington state than in Oregon.

Indeed, formal cross-border cooperation between British Columbia and Washington goes back

to the early 80s although there was less attention to it until the rise of the Cascadia notion. The

rhetoric is less strong in Oregon, and there is some sense Seattle is better served by the new

discourse despite Portland’s significant international port and airport. Local officials in Oregon

worry that with a regional coalition the power structure would shift to Seattle and Vancouver

since they currently enjoy the strongest, largest economies and political influence. Furthermore,

any move towards a tri-city coalition is perceived as further devaluing the traditional resource

economy, especially the interior or eastern grain farmers are interested in any market rather

than a global agenda and do not see gains from a North-South transportation corridor. As

LeGales and Lequesne (1998) argue, the regionalism sentiment can obscure the growing role

of cities in regions. Given the fragility of these regional governance initiatives, it is possible that

cities are emerging as the key arenas in the Pacific Northwest as well.

Anticipating a broad-based regional governance regime may be unrealistic. Instead it is

more likely that sector-specific regional regimes will be created as in the transportation sector.

As some analysts point out, the progress toward regional cooperation is greatest where it is

easiest, not necessarily where it is need most (NPC, 1990). Transportation fits this argument

quite well and also met many of the preconditions for regime formation. There were several

reasons for the greater success of mobilizing regional and transnational resources around the

cross-border transportation initiative. The “seamless link” of Gateways and Corridors meets

Kingdon’s (1995) criteria for successful ideas: they tend to be technically feasible, to have value

acceptability within the policy community, to have tolerable costs, to be seen as acceptable to

the public, and to meet the needs of elected officials. Furthermore, these transportation

initiatives could be constructed as regional solutions to environmental sustainability and

economic competition concerns, there is a coherent, bi-national policy community active on

regional transportation issues, institutional and political leadership in Canada and the United

States found common ground on cross-border transportation corridors, side payments for

regional and transborder cooperation became available through the US TEA-21 transportation

legislation, and regional and cross-border cooperation on transportation policy allows for

restructuring the distributive benefits associated with transportation policy at different scales.

24

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ENDNOTES

i.By using an analytic framework derived from the European experience to examine regional governance processes in the

Cascadia area, I explore the generalizability and reliability of the multi-level governance framework as well as identify

anomalies and differences promising theoretical insights. Further comparative analyses will provide a more analytic

grounding for identifying the necessary conditions under which regional governance capacity emerges by examining these

processes in two distinct settings. While I do not assume there necessarily are similar or convergent patterns in the evolution

of the European and the North American arrangements, comparative analyses would improve our theoretical understanding

of these multi-level governance processes.

ii.”Cascadia” refers to an ecological and economic transborder region in the Pacific Northwest, defined by a shared

watershed and temperate coastal rainforest; it centers on four North American cities: Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, and

Vancouver BC. These cities share a variety of contextual features (economic base, trade dependency, legal precedents)

seen as significant in shaping the propensity to develop regional governance capacities. All of these cities share, to different

degrees, most of these characteristics but they differ in terms of engagement in regional and transnational governance

arrangements. Vancouver, Seattle and Portland are more engaged in formal and informal transnational and regional

alliances, Tacoma less so. Portland's Metro is the only elected regional government in the United States; it was established in

1979 to manage an urban growth boundary surrounding 24 cities and sections of three counties. Metro came under attack

by tax reform advocates in 1998 challenging it as an unnecessary "supergovernment" usurping the authority of smaller

jurisdictions (Leo, 1998). On-site interviews (16) included stakeholders in multi-level governance arrangements from the

business, local government, multi-level governance organizations, and policy communities.

iii.The Fall 1998 interviews included 18 state, provincial, and local officials, port officials, organizational activists, and

analysts. The interviews addressed the problematic status of the "Cascadia" construct, the relative influence of transnational

interests and organizations, and evidence of effectiveness of regional mobilization as a collective actor in pursuit of regional

projects. They were complemented by computerized searches of the newspapers in Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, and

Vancouver for 1988-98 for articles on Cascadia and regionalism; I plan to use NUD*IST software for textual analysis of

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changing discourse and rhetoric in these news accounts over time and community. Finally, access to the archives of the

North American Institute at the University of British Columbia permitted analysis of documentary and ephemeral material on

the Cascadia initiatives. I appreciate the generosity of Rod Dobell and Justin Lingo in providing the archival materials.

iv.The terms “regional”, “transnational,” “transborder,” and “cross-border” are used in this paper to refer to an imagined

community that crosses the international border between Canada and the United States as well as several state lines. In

political terms, some see the establishment of a Cascadia region as threatening to extant regional and metropolitan

governmental structures.

v.Two problem-solving models of public policy are typical (Jones, 1994): characterizing policy processes as matters of

learning and transformational adjustments to a changing environment (Bennett and Howlett, 1992; Jenkins-Smith and

Sabatier, 1994; Heclo, 1974; Hall, 1993) and an agenda-setting focus on issues, attention, and information in pre-decision

stages (Kingdon, 1995).

vi.That said, systematic, empirical analysis of these intersecting factors is a difficult assignment although there are

important examples of such research (Hall, 1993; Adler and Haas, 1992; Goldstein and Keohane, 1993; Sikkink, 1991). A

recent workshop identified three elements of an intellectual framework incorporating ideas and culture in political analysis:

exploring how and why some ideas become prominent; why and how some ideas become institutionalized and remain

politically significant; and why and how ideas and cultural influence political life (Berman and McNamara, 1998). These

questions are not amenable to simple falsification procedures; they become persuasive if we can show that some policy

choices would not have been chosen in the absence of a particular policy paradigm (Hall, 1993) or if these ideational models

provide better explanations of anomalies than interest or institutional models (Hall, 1993; Blyth, 1997)..

vii.Lobbying has a different impact in the Canadian parliamentary system due to the lack of MP’s individual power base;

Cascadia lobbyists see lobbying as shifting power to the bureaucracies or to the Premier’s office but not to the local levels.

viii.While the recent rejection of "fast-track" authority may curtail this shift, the NAFTA and GATT negotiations set a

precedent for privileging executive rather than legislative decision arenas.

ix.The concept itself is used in a confusing variety of ways, however (Dunn and Perl, 1994; Kingdon, 1995; Wright, 1988).

It is often used interchangeably with epistemic communities although epistemic communities originally referred to experts

with an instrumental, temporally specific, shared focus on specific problem-solving interests (Adler and Haas, 1992, 371). By

assigning epistemic communities a policy coordination role, Adler and Haas contributed to this overlapping usage. Kingdon’s

policy communities are closer to Adler and Haas’ epistemic communities, acting outside of government and promoting

solution sets.

x.Regulationists (e.g. LeGales and Lequesne, 1998) would argue governance is more than a matter of coalitional strategies:

state roles and institutions need to be highlighted, including those outside local jurisdictions. The regulationist perspective

provides a more explicit global-local link and situates regionalism as a mode of political regulation. But it tends to

undertheorize local political actors and the conditions under which various governance strategies are constructed. Regime

theorists ask for more concrete--and less functionalist-- explanations of the political and institutional choices made at the

subnational level. The two approaches are not intrinsically exclusive; regime theories’ empirical focus on coalitions as

mediating structures and strategies and creating organizational capacity can inform the regulationist perspective on structural

change (Collinge and Hall, 1997).

xi.Most empirical analyses employing regime theory treat scale as an unproblematic issue: they use fixed jurisdictional

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boundaries to frame the analysis and treat urban geographic scale as part of a given, nested hierarchy rather than as a

politically constituted, transformative process (Delaney and Leitner, 1997; Smith, 1992; Beauregard, 1997; but see Leo,

1998). As a result, regime theories do not explicitly theorize coalitions incorporating regional and transnational interests

engaged in the political construction of scale. Despite the large, increasingly comparative and cross-national, literature on the

conditions for regime formation (John and Cole, 1998), there is less guidance in considering regime formation at the regional

and transnational scale.

xii.Other empirical research on cross-border cooperation highlights the importance of organizational and institutional

mechanisms facilitating the exchange of ideas and problem definitions , encouraging policy learning in a network of

authoritative policymakers, providing specialized, non-bureaucratic institutions with problem-solving capacities, and

facilitating epistemic communities (Blatter, 1995; Blatter and Scherer, 1996).

xiii.Trade issues appear inherently competitive and conflictual; nevertheless, the dominant discourse in the Pacific

Northwest proclaims that it is necessary to "cooperate regionally in order to compete globally" (Agnew and Pascall, 1997).

Similarly, tourism is one of the largest and fastest growing economic sectors in this region and globally; it links global forces

and local concerns through its effects on local industry structures and labor markets, urban space, and uneven development

(Fainstein and Judd, Forthcoming). Local officials in the Pacific Northwest characterize the $20 billion tourism industry as

involving multiple destinations and experienced travelers; they compete for putting “heads in beds” but try to cooperate on

promotional budgets.

xiv. See www.citistates.com

xv.In analyses of cross-border cooperation on environmental issues in Western Europe and North America (Blatter, 1994 ;

Scherer and Blatter, 1994: Ingram, 1997; Ingram and White, 1993 ), problem definitions, the perceived capability of

sub-regions to solve problems, as well as the facilitative role of epistemic communities were significant factors contributing

to cooperative solutions.

xvi. In Europe, mobilization and cooperation around regional identities is often analyzed as a necessary response to global

competition and national policy initiatives (John, 1996: Terhorst and Van De Ven, 1995; Van Der Wusten, 1995).

xvii.It should be noted that some see the Pacific Rim as a more compelling regional focus than Cascadia. One city official

noted that the Pacific Rim is larger, with a more diverse series of countries and markets, with more potential to work together;

although he characterized his views as a matter of sequence rather than aversion, he noted his port offered greater access

to the Pacific Rim than to Canada.

xviii.This now includes a Cascadia flag and, perhaps more significant, a Cascadia VISA “affinity card” directing a share of

VISA fees to Cascadia organizations.

xix.In Washington the state mandated formation of local watershed councils in 1998, to be administered and funded by the

state Department of Ecology. Each of the 62 Councils is granted $500,000 to devise a management plan through

consultation with representatives of local government, irrigators, landowners, Federal Fisheries agencies, irrigators, the

national Environmental Protection Agency, Native Americans, and the state on ecological restoration and economic

revitalization in the area.

xx.The creation of the North American Development Bank to fund infrastructure improvements considered necessary for

successful implementation of NAFTA, however, raised pointed comments on the lack of funding symmetry for the

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US-Canada border infrastructure as did the $364.5 million Southwest Border Capital Improvement Program funded by

Congress.