| dc.description.abstract | Transregional collaboration can be mobilized in different forms of associations and established due to different reasons such as common features or shared interests. The Northern Sparsely Populated Areas (NSPA) are a northern and arctic transregional network collaboration between fourteen regions distributed between northern Norway, northern Sweden, and northern-, and eastern Finland. The NSPA is based on geographical relations where the regions share many of the same opportunities and challenges tied to natural resources, distances to markets, harsh climates, and being sparsely populated. Working through three centralized subnational offices that collaborate on influencing EU policy and creating awareness of the network. This thesis will describe how the three offices collaborate to influence the policy-making process in the EU. Expecting that they will be closely collaborating, the thesis further seeks to explain the effects of their mobilization by adopting three intersected dimensions of which multi-level governance crosses according to Simona Piattoni (2010). The thesis finds that despite the close collaboration between the offices, and signs of mobilization effect across the three dimensions, the offices keep much of their autonomy through the process of influencing and are very connected to their regions. The explanation for this autonomy and loyalty is that even though the circumstances of the problems and opportunities are similar for the fourteen regions, their outcomes and paths to success are different. | |