Repertoires of Collaboration and Conflict in Divergent Development Along the US-Mexico Border

This paper presents a new approach to the age-old problem of the underlying causes of economic development through a comparative case study of communities along the U.S.-Mexico border. It argues that McAllen-Reynosa's divergence from Brownsville-Matamoros post-NAFTA cannot be accounted for by established causes of economic growth. Drawing from data collected during a year of field research, including 101 semi-structured interviews and extensive documentary evidence, this paper explains variation in local development as a consequence of different community-level understandings of political collaboration and conflict ("repertoires")