'From spaces of place' to 'spaces of flows'? Territorial and functional governance in cross-border regions in Europe and North America

To what extent are we experiencing a transformation from 'spaces of place' to a 'space of flows' as proposed by Manuel Castells? Applying his thesis to the political system leads to the following implications. Socio-economic processes of 'glocalization' are undermining the gate-keeper position of national governments. Furthermore, governance is becoming 'deterritorialized', an aspect which is characterized by Elkins as an ,unbundling' of identities and jurisdictions. But does this process of unbundling lead to a federal system of multi-level governance where the national level is complemented by supranational and subriational levels of governance; or does it imply an even more radical transformation towards an architecture of governance which is characterized by a proliferation of single-purpose governments with variable and flexible spatial scales? A final implication is the transformation from 'government to governance' - which means a broader array of actors and changing modes of interaction. This article traces these theses by analysing institutions of governance in four cross-border regions in Europe and North America. In all regions we indeed find many cross-border networks and institutions undermining the national gate-keeper position. In Europe, cross-border collaboration is producing another soft, but institutionalized, comprehensive, stable and territorially-defined layer in the European 'multi-level-system'. In North America, by contrast, only informal, fluid, specific and non-territorial institutions are evolving across national borders. Here, the territorially-based nation state is not complemented by similar kinds of political institutions, but is instead being challenged more fundamentally by new kinds of institutions: transnational socio-economic exchange networks and transnational ideological coalitions which embody enormous transformational power. In conclusion, cross-border regional governance in Europe still follows the logic of 'spaces of place', whereas in North America quite different 'spaces of flows' are emerging as complementary logics of community and institution building.