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Cross-border cooperation (CBC) is a widely used term for explaining processes in regional development and geopolitical stability. Scholars most often refer to the transformation of peripheral border regions into dynamic spaces of territorial integration. While the practical implementation of CBC has been extensively documented, the academic definition still lacks a unified approach, as various disciplines analyze borders through isolated theoretical lenses. Terms such as “Europe of Regions,” “Borderless Europe,” or “Europe without Borders” became widespread in the early 1990s, with the change of regimes reshaping Central and Eastern Europe. The European Union enlargements, resulting in an extensive eastward expansion in the early 2000s, opened up an entirely new path for these concepts. The transformation processes generated a major conceptual shift in geopolitics, inviting border theorists to provide new models and frameworks. Borders have not only become permeable in the literal sense but have also formed bridges between academic disciplines in a figurative sense. As a result, traditional geopolitical demarcations have given way to interdisciplinary cooperation in border studies. This entry addresses this gap by providing a comprehensive, systematic study of established theoretical models and analytical perspectives that define contemporary border studies. To make the complex phenomenon of CBC accessible to scientists working outside this specific field, this entry synthesizes the existing literature into a cohesive, four-dimensional matrix encompassing geographical, political, economic, and socio-cultural perspectives.

The central aim of this work is to evaluate how these shifting theoretical concepts operate across space and time, with a chronological focus on the post-1990 development of CBC within the European Union and a specific focus on the structural tensions within Central and Eastern Europe. By anchoring the analysis to the post-Cold War era, this entry explores the geopolitical and institutional shift triggered by the change of regimes, using earlier structures (such as the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance—COMECON—framework) strictly as historical-institutional contrasts. The entry examines two closely interrelated hypotheses prominent both in academic literature ^[1] and current EU policy debates: first, that top-down institutional frameworks (such as EU-driven regional policies) require the parallel evolution of bottom-up social trust and functional networks for sustainable CBC; and second, that subjective “mental borders” persist as invisible friction points long after physical and legal barriers have been dismantled. The duality of the analytical framework used in this entry is rooted in the parallel discussion of scholarly research and European integration. In academic literature, CBC is primarily treated as a territorial and relational concept; in EU policy, it is also an instrument of regional integration and development.

The entry is divided into three main analytical sections with the aim of providing an integrated analytical framework for border research. The first section establishes the conceptual foundations of border studies (2.1), supported by the geographical dimensions of territorial, functional, and relational perspectives (2.2); the (geo)political dimension of multilevel governance (2.3); the economic frameworks of market integration (2.4); and the sociological constructs of spatial socialization (2.5). The second section introduces the most common existing CBC models and typologies grouped around six thematic areas (3.1–3.6). Concluding the entry, the third section highlights contemporary challenges and CBC resilience (4.1), summarizes the historical–institutional evolution and main characteristics of European CBC frameworks (4.2), introduces the multidimensional added values of CBC (4.3), offers an integrated matrix for resilient and optimal CBC frameworks while summing up the future perspectives of CBC based on the discussed dimensions, frameworks, and models (4.4), and outlines some of the methodological and analytical limitations (4.5). The current synthesis of theoretical works demonstrates that successful CBC does not depend on the absolute eradication of borders, but on the capacity of local and transnational actors to manage the hybrid, networked spaces created between central state sovereignty and regional integration.