Competitive European Peripheries

The cores and peripheries of Europe are experiencing a profound transformation. This calls for new perspectives in regional analysis. Increasingly, peripherality should be analysed in a network context. The contributions to this book claim that peripherality is being determined more by access to networks than by geographical location. A focal point is the experience of the Nordic countries. They form a particularly interesting case in assessing the prospects for the developing centre-periphery confrontation in Europe.

Contents: Competitive European Peripheries? An Introduction.- European Scene: The European Network Economy: Opportunities and Impediments.- Regional Development, Federalism and Interregional Co-operation.- Remaking Scale: Competition and Cooperation in Prenational and Postnational Europe.- Cross-Border Co-operation and European Regional Policy.- Northern Lights: Europe of Regions - A Nordic View.- Peripherality and European Integration: the Challenge Facing the Nordic Countries.- Regional Development in the Nordic Periphery.- The Fall and Revival of the Swedish Welfare Model: Spatial Implications.- Are Leaping Frogs Freezing? Rural Peripheries in Competition.- Internationalization from the European Fringe: the Experience of SMEs.- The Social Construction of Peripherality: the Case of Finland and the Finnish-Russian Border Area.