Rethinking the Governance-Governmentality-Governability nexus at the EU's Eastern Frontiers: the Carpathian Euroregion 2.0 and the future of EU-Ukrainian Cross-Border cooperation

The EU's neighbourhood policy and the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement in particular envisage bilateral and multilateral platforms for promoting cooperation between the EU and non-EU countries, and their regions. The Union's decade-old Eastern Partnership (EaP) policy framework, too, aims at increasing cross-border connectivity and capacity-building for good governance, including in Ukraine-one of the six EaP states. Within the EU-Ukrainian borderland, one of the key-but hardly unproblematic-roles in driving cross-border interactions as well as regional dialogue and development has been performed for the past three decades by the Carpathian Euroregion, whose agency is more attributable to distinct national representations than associated with the Euroregion as a whole. Empirically disentangling the institutional design and performance of the Carpathian Euroregion, with an emphasis on the Ukrainian part, this article seeks to contextualize and conceptualize the very phenomenon and varied practice of Euroregions forged along and beyond the EU-Ukraine borderlands. Drawing on the literature on cross-border governance, the article also integrates insights from the governmentality and governability studies (within the herewith originally theorized `governance-governmentality-governability' nexus) in order to provide a more synergetic and encompassing analytical perspective on the past, present and the future of EU-Ukraine cross-border and inter-regional cooperation, Carpathian region-building-and the renewed role of the Carpathian Euroregion therein.