Cross-border Cooperation and Regional Development - Case Studies of Two Villages in the South Bohemia Region

Cross-border cooperation is still more important especially in context of European integration processes. Significance of cross-border cooperation has increased mainly in the 2007 - 2013 programming period. These facts are also reflected within the aims of regional policy of the European Community for the 2007 - 2013 programming period. One of the reasons for support of cross-border cooperation is to decrease regional disparities between central and peripheral regions of nation states. The paper is focused on the realised cross-border projects within the small villages in the South Bohemia Region. At the basis of theoretical approaches to the regional development and cross-border cooperation are explored particular cross-border projects and their influence on the regional development. The main aim of the paper is to compare impacts of two different particular cross-border projects (one of them was realised in the 2007 - 2013 programming period as a "small" project, has local character and could be classified as cultural, second project was realised in the 2004 - 2006 programming period as a "large" project, has rather non-local character of its implementation and could be classified as projects of tourism industry) on the development of two small villages in the South Bohemia Region. From the methodological point of view mainly secondary analysis and semistandardized interviews with the main local actors of the projects are used. As a result of the research were identified similar and dissimilar features of realised projects and also factors of success of cross-border projects were specified. These factors of success are mainly local character of the project, involvement of local actors and actual cross-border cooperation (not only formally declared as is often common).