Abstract
During the times of the COVID-19 pandemic, nations have issued unprecedented border closures around the world, yielding abrupt impacts on the movement of goods and people. This has heavily affected the quality of life in border regions, which are often found to be at a disadvantage when compared to other regions in terms of employment, accessibility, social services and economic growth. Based upon developing threads in the literature concerning the untapped potential for development in border regions, we argue that the Mission-Oriented Approach (MOA) can fit well with the ambitious goal to revitalize those territories in the aftermath of the pandemic. Despite the surge of MOA in discourses on innovation policy, we seek to implement it in a regional development perspective, pursuing both economic and social policy objectives. The authors unravel the policy concept of MOA into three main aspects: (I) address a sound societal challenge; (II) Research & Development (R&D) regional agenda embedded in a cross-border regional development vision; (III) mobilizing multiple cross-sectorial projects. Through a desk study analysis, the authors draw insights from selected case studies where these aspects have been implemented to inspire policy intervention in the aftermath of COVID-19. This paper presents the MOA theoretical model, which has potential explanatory power in other cross-border regions.
Highlights
The COVID-19 pandemic has led nations to issue unprecedented border closures around the world, resulting in abrupt impacts on the movement of goods and people
This paper aims at informing policy recommendations concerning the potential implementation of mission-oriented policies in border regional contexts
The current COVID-19 pandemic resulted in border closures around the world, severely affecting the quality of life in cross-border regions, which are often found to be at a disadvantage when compared to other regions in terms of employment, accessibility, social services and economic growth
Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic has led nations to issue unprecedented border closures around the world, resulting in abrupt impacts on the movement of goods and people. This has heavily affected global value chains, halting economies around the world. The quality of life has been heavily affected by the border closures, where they are experiencing an economic loss and a threat to the public service provision mechanisms that rely on cross-border flow of people and goods. The research problem is to find an appropriate policy to ignite economic recovery, social cohesion and environmental protection in cross-border regions in connection with the sustainable development goals
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