Cooperative governance in the Mediterranean: developing a macro-regional application model

Abstract

The European and Mediterranean territorial administrations lack transnational mechanisms that facilitate their active contribution to resolving common global issues that affect them. This situation has led subnational entities to develop their own alliances and collaborations through associations and networks. In this environment of growing cross-cutting and interdependence, concepts such as cooperative governance, territorial governance, or collaborative networks are increasingly present and, at the same time, their meaning becomes more complex. Thus, the need for a cooperative governance system that can facilitate these collaborative processes in a Euro-Mediterranean context has gained relevance. This article arises as a contribution to the need expressed by multi-level administrations at the European and Mediterranean level to define their own cooperation strategies. It presents the main results of a research work on collaborative strategies of various territorial actors (networks, subnational entities, and institutions) carried out during 2023 within the framework of the School of Public Administration of Catalonia. The main objective of this analysis is to contribute to defining an analytical tool that is useful for Euro-Mediterranean territorial cooperation, both in terms of study and policy definition.