Borders and Governance: An Analysis of Health Regulation and the Agri-food Trade

The contemporary dynamics of states, borders, and markets suggest the need for non-traditional methods of regulation and international cooperation in areas such as border inspections and management. The emerging literature on cross-border regions and multi-level governance suggests a framework to understand this development within the general transformation of states under globalisation. To explore these ideas, in this article we focus on the arena of health regulation and the international agricultural and food trade. Multilateral bodies such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), and the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) have endorsed the policy concept of “regionalisation” as a means by which states can preserve trade relations when sanitary (human or animal health) or phytosanitary (plant health) hazards threaten a country's trading status. In this paper, two cases – one historical and one contemporary – illustrate that regionalisation offers a largely functional application of multi-level governance to enhance regulatory and trade capacity. We conclude that governance changes indicated by regionalisation may provide further evidence for the transformation of borders, regions, and states in an era of globalisation.