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CITY DIPLOMACY: GLOBAL AGENDAS, LOCAL AGREEMENTS
This article aims at analyzing the strengthening of network cooperation between cities inaugurating new forms of diplomacy in the second half of the twentieth century. The main objective being to shed light on diplomatic relations between cities that have been established since the early 20th century and having gained prominence in the latest twenty years. Since 1980 the neoliberal policies of nation-states has boosted the direct action of cities, social movements and NGOs in the search for local solutions to global city problems. Furthermore, in recent years there has been a growing presence of a broad range of financial capitals in special investment funds as a key player to shaping the future of cities matching global goals. This being either due to direct investments or through banks and international agencies, global agreements and goals that conform to principles of investment, with an emphasis in developing countries. The existence at the global level of a new space of tensions and ventures is verified. Geopolitics is kept alive by the clash between institutions from different scales: global organizations, national states and also local powers represented or not in transnational networks.
Global Cities in International Relations: the King's Hand or World Revolutionists
Since the early 2000s, the majority of people live in urban areas, and expectations are that by 2050 75% of the world population will be living in urban settings. Assuming that we have entered an urban age the role of cities as the closest political link to citizens, automatically, will have an effect on how we perceive their legitimacy as diplomatic actors. In the future, global cities such as London, Shanghai and Dubai will have a special role to play which is sometimes referred to as city diplomacy. However, the legitimacy of cities as diplomatic actors and subjects of public international law is a bone of contention. Can we even call cities’ international activity diplomacy or should it not be better-called city lobbying? Looking at the state system, key concepts to our understanding of the functions of sovereignty, hegemony and balance of power will lead to an understanding that sovereignty is an ideal construct and most certainly is not absolute. Moreover, the paper traces the evolution of our perception of the concept of diplomacy to explain why it has become more inclusive and how forces of autonomy have led to a number of new actors at different scales. In a final step, the phenomenon of global cities will be analysed. Taking a city perspective fundamental works such as those of Saskia Sassen, Michelle Acuto and Peter Taylor give explanations to why we can understand cities as hegemony makers or revolutionists of a new global economic system detached from that of the state system…or both.
Principles of modern city diplomacy and the expanding role of municipal foreign policy
Journal of International Affairs, 2021
Modern city diplomacy finds city governments intervening in nearly all foreign policy arenas traditionally managed by nation-states. These trends are explicable by the same factors shaping the “municipal foreign policy” movement during the Cold War, while also growing more complex. In this study, I discuss four factors as they shape current city diplomacy trends. I also discuss their theoretical and policy implications. First, cities intervene to enforce universal norms when the national government violates or fails to enforce them, as seen in global cities recommitting to the Paris Accord in response to the Donald Trump administration’s withdrawal. Second, democratic regimes enable local defiance of national foreign policy, while non-democratic regimes such as China harness a more restricted sort of city diplomacy as an extension of national diplomacy. Third, social movement conditions whereby local officials’ views align with constituents on foreign policy issues enable and constrain city diplomacy activity, as seen in U.S. cities declaring themselves sanctuaries in response to the Trump administration’s immigration policies. Fourth, cities often follow economic growth–seeking interests when overlapping with governance issues, as seen in international urban climate change cooperation aimed at foreign market entry, export promotion, and investment attraction.
City Diplomacy: The Case for Eclectic (and Humble) Theorizing
e-International Relations, 2022
For much of its existence, the discipline of International Relations (IR) has viewed nation-states as the key actors in global affairs. Gradually, however, scholars of IR and diplomacy have turned their attention to non-state actors such as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), multinational corporations, civil society, and the role of citizens. Recently, scholars have paid more attention to the role of cities as global actors, leading to a new and burgeoning subfield of city diplomacy that spans the fields of IR and urban studies.
Conducting City Diplomacy: A Survey of International Engagement in 47 Cities
Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 2020
The impact of global challenges such as climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic manifests most acutely in urban settings, rendering cities essential players on the global stage. The individual stories of five cities whose officials participated in the study offer lessons for a variety of challenges and approaches to city diplomacy. Based on the survey results, we discuss the three primary obstacles cities must overcome in order to strengthen the role of city diplomacy globally: inadequate funding and resources for international engagement, insufficient training in city diplomacy, and the failure of national and multilateral bodies to fully recognize and formalize city engagement in diplomacy.
Cities and Global Governance: State Failure or a New Global Order?
International society, so long the resolution to problems of collective political order, now appears to be failing in its capacity to deal with transnational challenges such as climate change, global security and financial instability. Indeed, the structure of international society itself has become a significant obstacle to such pressing issues of global governance. One striking response has been the reemergence of cities as important actors on the international stage. This article will show how these two issues are intrinsically linked. Cities have taken on new governance roles in the gaps left by hamstrung nation-states, and their contribution to an emerging global governance architecture will be a significant feature of the international relations of the 21st century. But do the new governance activities of cities represent a failure on the part of states, as some scholars have argued? Or are they a part of an emerging form of global order, in which the relationship between states, cities and other actors is being recalibrated? This article argues that the remarkable renaissance of cities in recent decades has been a result of a shift in the structure of international society, and assesses the causal drivers of this shift. It goes on to draw out some of the implications of the recalibration of the relationship between the city and the state for how we understand the emerging form of global order.
Bright Future for City Diplomacy and Soft Power
Cities are once again in the forefront of diplomatic activities. In this essay, I unpack a relatively understudied area within city diplomacy: the link between cities and countries. Although cities enjoy a heightened level of agency in the international arena, they do not exist in a vacuum. As substate actors, the actions of cities could impact their home countries. Using lessons learned from public diplomacy studies and situating soft power as a framework to describe such activities, I first present the changes in the diplomatic landscape that paved the way to resurgence of city diplomacy. Next, I propose a more inclusive definition of the activities of cities in the international arena. Last, I show the link between cities and countries.
Boletim de Economia e Politica Internacional, 2023
The international character of cities is intrinsic, giving relevance to their geopolitical role in the global arena. The recent creation and relevance of an interconnected space of cities that may or may not be influenced by nation-states has fostered research on international relations carried out by cities. The purpose of this article is to present the city diplomacy beyond western diplomacy. We seek to conceptualize and categorize city diplomacy, its strategies, and agents since its inception. Focusing on Brazil, we seek to understand how the global South has engaged in this field. Considering that the territory of cities is central to global production and accumulation strategies, city diplomacy sometimes finds it self in the midst of contradictions, in a field of forces in which large corporations, nation-states, multilateral agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and citizens compete for spaces of power and visions of the city and the world. This scenario leads to the formation of three types of networks in which cities take part: i) project; ii) corporate; and iii) city. Brazilian cities have positioned themselves internationally as consumers of the world, much more than producers, however other cities in the global South seek to insert themselves as producers of global solutions based on the valuation of local strategies. In general, the field of study on city diplomacy requires theoretical and methodological advances to better understand this complex phenomenon.