“Goodbye Moscow, Hello Brussels”: The City Diplomacy of Chișinău Mayor Dorin Chirtoacă

Cristian Cantir

doi:10.1017/nps.2021.57

Abstract

AbstractThis article argues that post-Soviet mayors are foreign policy actors that deserve more attention from area studies and foreign policy analysis scholars. Mayors have their own diplomatic preferences and goals – rooted in geopolitical and ethnonationalist views – that they can enact using city hall institutions and networks. They can work either in harmony or in opposition with central authorities by bolstering or compromising the executive’s diplomatic goals and actions. These claims are explored in a case study of the foreign policy of Chișinău mayor Dorin Chirtoacă (2007–2017), whose diplomatic endeavors consolidated the Moldovan capital’s ties with Romania and the European Union and minimized interactions with countries in the former Soviet Union, including Russia. At times, the mayor’s actions abroad ran afoul of central authorities as he created an alternative foreign policy that undermined central foreign policy. The findings suggest that a more extensive investigation of how mayors interact with foreign actors would refine our understanding of foreign policy-making in the former Soviet Union and in Central and Eastern Europe more broadly.

Highlights

Sub-national governments interact often with foreign entities (Cornago 2010). This is the case in the former Soviet Union (FSU) as well: mayors like Yuri Luzhkov have enacted wide-ranging projects for Russian speakers living abroad (Saari 2014), while Tbilisi asked for direct assistance from Bristol after Georgia’s civil war in the 1990s (Couperus and Vrhoci 2020)
During a January 2010 meeting with Romanian President Traian Băsescu, the mayor said that Chișinău was interested in using the experience of Romanian cities to adopt European standards and gave the Romanian head of state “a symbolic mandate to represent our country until we become a full member of the European Union” (Primăria Municipiului Chișinău, May 10, 2017)
In ties with the European Union, Dorin Chirtoacă’s city diplomacy centered on staking out a claim for Chișinău as a main driver of European integration in the country: during a January 2010 meeting with Romanian President Traian Băsescu, for example, Chirtoacă said that Chișinău was “the locomotive of Moldova’s European integration” (Primăria Municipiului Chișinău, January 27, 2010)

Summary

Introduction

Sub-national governments interact often with foreign entities (Cornago 2010). This is the case in the former Soviet Union (FSU) as well: mayors like Yuri Luzhkov have enacted wide-ranging projects for Russian speakers living abroad (Saari 2014), while Tbilisi asked for direct assistance from Bristol after Georgia’s civil war in the 1990s (Couperus and Vrhoci 2020). Before and during his time in office, Chirtoacă (and PL) consistently expressed a set of beliefs about major issues in Moldovan politics: the ethnicity of the majority population, Moldova’s national and European identity, and the country’s historical and current relationship with Russia and the former Soviet Union.

Results

Conclusion