ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the institutional challenges resulting from the eastward enlargement of the European Union. It explores a main area of conflict within this twin city and discusses the concept of 'governance paradoxes'. The chapter suggests an empirical model for resolving and integrating these path-specific and border-specific conflicts and options. Some features of the German-Polish border situation in general are sketched out, concentrating on the two different transformational pathways that bump against each other. The laboratory character of this border zone provides the background for an ongoing research project on the evolution of cross-border relations within the German-Polish twin city of Guben/Gubin, straddling across the river Neisse. Post-socialist transformation types have been analytically located between two poles: 'Big Bang' change on the one hand, gradualist transformation on the other. The chapter describes the experience of paradoxical capacity building processes in the Guben/Gubin context will be connected with a proactive learning-oriented model.
