Subnational diplomacy in the Great Lakes region: toward explaining variation between water quality and quantity regimes

Abstract

/RésumésSubnational diplomacy is increasingly important in foreign policy and Canada-United States relations. The Great Lakes region represents an excellent laboratory for studying the role of subnational governments in foreign policy. This article focuses on water policy in the Great Lakes region, and the central research question of why subnational diplomacy varies across water quality and water quantity policy regimes. Using a comparative case approach, the paper investigates the degree to which the character of the policy challenge itself, constitutional and institutional arrangements, and the nature of federalism and intergovernmental relations in the two countries explain differing levels of subnational diplomacy. One case illustrates how institutionalized relationships between subnational units that share interests in a transboundary resource cooperate to engage in subnational diplomacy; the other illustrates more traditional involvement of subnational governments in foreign policy, highlighting that these factors hold significant promise in explaining variation in subnational diplomacy and support existing theory in the paradiplomacy literature.