Cascadia in Comparative Perspectives: Canada-U.S. Relations and the Emergence of Cross-Border Regions

Abstract

This paper draws on findings from research on the Canadian-American border led by the Policy Research Initiative (PRI) since 2004 and on the recent PRI survey of Canadian-American leaders, as well as on the author’s fieldwork on multilevel governance issues arising from the emerging cross-border regions in Europe and North America. Relying on four analytical lenses—the economy, local and central politics and policies, and local cultures—this paper examines how emerging cross-border regions, and particularly the Cascadia region, are changing Canadian-American relations. Specific attention is given to the varied forms of co-operation across policy fields in order to detail (1) the general and specialized and (2) the formal and informal relations and (3) the emerging border regions. This paper underlines the importance of understanding cross-border relations at the sub-national level in order to understand Canada-U.S. relations. The overall argument is that the appearance of cross-border regions indicates a progressive emergence of policy parallelism in a multitude of policy arenas, particularly, a specifically North American form of integration.