Governing borders. Innovation in cross-border coopération in the Alps: Espace Mont-Blanc and Alpi-Marittime-Mercantour

This doctoral thesis in Geography is the following of a master thesis in mountain law. Co-directed in geography and law and conducted under joint supervision with the Universities of Grenoble-Alps and Geneva, this work is multidisciplinary.

The two main objectives are firstly crossborder governance study and secondly related social innovations and this in alpine context.

This research is based on a long field work conducted in the French Maritime Alps and Italian specifically in the Mercantour French National Park and the Italian Regional Natural Park Alpi-Marittime, and the Espace Mont-Blanc between France, Italy and Switzerland.

Even if the two cases are both emblematic and thematically close, they present many important differences in governance which are really interesting to compare and analyse.

That’s realy interesting to compare and analyse in this study.

The analysis takes into account the already developed projects, but also their specific context, especially political-legal and administrative systems in the three concerned states. This work focuses on the actors and policies available at all levels from local to European level.

The multiscalar analysis of governance processes and innovation is central in this research and help to highlight some common features such as informality, formalization and institutionalization processes, power games or actor strategy and horizontal and vertical relations (top-down or bottom-up ).

This research also focuses on the legal tools of cross-border cooperation and the territorial impacts of cross-border cooperation. These two points are closely related, since development cooperation through joint projects on both sides of a border contributes to the emergence of new project areas. This territorialization movement is accompanied by a legal institutionalization and formalization of territory.

This research is original because mountain territories aren’t traditionnally studied from cross-border cooperation perspective. Almost all studies on the subject focus on cross-border metropolitan regions due to considerable economic challenges.