City Diplomacy Research Articles

City Diplomacy: Towards More Strategic Networking? Learning with WHO Healthy Cities

AbstractCities are increasingly capturing the attention of major international actors and now regularly feature in multilateral processes. Yet while there are many studies on networking among cities, there have been few studies of ‘city networks’ as formal and institutionalized governance structures facilitating city‐to‐city and city‐to‐other actors cooperation, or ‘city diplomacy’. Institutionalized networks of cities, while not new, are becoming a growing presence on the international scene, almost omnipresent and perhaps even too common. Might it be time for a ‘Darwinian’ selection between city networking options? Diving deeper into this networked challenge, this essay focuses on the effects this networked diplomacy and overlap it might have on cities. Drawing on a research collaboration between the UCL City Leadership Laboratory at University College London and the World Health Organization's Healthy Cities Network and both a global dataset of city networks as well as qualitative focus group data, we consider the growth of these governance structures, their strengths, but also the weaknesses associated with their rapid growth, and how cities can engage with this networked landscape more strategically. In short, we argue that the potential of city networks must go hand‐in‐hand with more integrative and strategic thinking at both local and international levels.

City networks: breaking gridlocks or forging (new) lock-ins?

There is today a global recognition that we live in an ‘urban age’ of near-planetary urbanization where cities are at the forefront of all sorts of agendas. Yet little attention is offered to the active role of cities as political drivers of the urban age. There might today be more than two hundred ‘city networks’ globally, with thousands of para-diplomatic connections actively defining relations between cities, international organization and corporate actors. This actively networked texture of the urban age shapes all areas of policy and, not least, international relations, and holds much promise as to possible urban solutions to global challenges. Based on an overview of a representative subset of this mass of city-to-city cooperation (n=170), this article illustrates the landscape of city networking, its issue areas and institutional shapes, and its critical features. As we argue, city networks today are faced by a crucial challenge: while trying to overcome state-centric ‘gridlocks’ cities are, at the same time, building both political–economic as well as very material ‘lock-ins’. We need to pay serious attention to this impact of city diplomacy in international affairs, developing a greater appreciation of the path dependencies and responsibilities this diplomatic activity purports.

City diplomacy and “glocal” governance: revitalizing cosmopolitan democracy

Diplomacy is in trouble. With globalization come global problems. While we live in a twenty-first-century world of interdependence, we face seventeenth-century Westphalian political institutions with defined boundaries and separated responsibilities of nation-states. When we think of diplomacy, we are thinking of state-to-state relations; however, with sovereign obligation and national interest obsession, state-to-state negotiations often fall into “gridlocks”; international policy-making also suffers from “democratic deficits”. David Held offered cosmopolitan democracy as the answer, but his “world government” thesis provides no realistic policy implications.In very recent years, city-to-city (“trans-municipal”) networks have received significant international recognition as cities are able to cooperate, with concrete actions, on a range of global issues. Surprisingly, scholars of international relations have largely neglected the role of cities in global governance. This paper argues for city diplomacy and “glocal” governance to fill the theoretical gap. It has two purposes: (1) to break the “conceptual jail” of regarding nation-states as the legitimate subject to manage world affairs, and open the door for cities and (2) to revisit the condition of cosmopolitan democracy, and offer a realistic model to revitalize the concept while bypassing the infeasibility of world government. In Part I, as I revisit Confucian philosophy da-tong (great unity), Rosenau's “sovereignty-free” actors and Athenian democracy, I argue that cities are our best hope to transcend nationality for the common well-being of humanity, connect local citizens to global public policy, and move towards cosmopolitan democracy. In Part II, drawing on Dahl's democratic criteria and DeBúrca's “democratic-striving approach”, I will develop two “building blocks” of democracy at the global level – —equal participation and popular control. In Part III, with reference to the “building blocks”, I will conduct a qualitative analysis to evaluate the cosmopolitan characteristics of C40 and develop political justifications for “trans-municipal networks”.

Institutional Foundations and Characteristics of City Diplomacy through International Organizations of Local Governments: The Case of UCLG(Union of Cities & Local Governments)

Institutional Foundations and Characteristics of City Diplomacy through International Organizations of Local Governments: The Case of UCLG(Union of Cities & Local Governments)

Regional cooperation in the Black Sea basin: what role for city diplomacy?

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, extended geography encircling the Black Sea has begun to evolve into a multi-polar chaotic regional system and since then, this region has never been free of disputes over land frontiers. Besides border clashes, contestations over the control of energy resources and routes has been escalating since the 1990s and emerged as yet another dimension to explain the region’s diplomatic unpredictability. Under the shadow of these conflicts, regional players have been experiencing difficulties in formulating nonaligned and sustainable foreign policy strategies. They have been mostly unable to bring their common interests to the forefront and fallen behind in their regional integration objectives. Numerous cooperation attempts have remained inadequate in regards to standards such as scope, sphere of influence and permanency. Weak structure of regional integration and reluctance for its deepening create doubts about the region’s future stability. This paper first reviews the policy context of the Black Sea geography. It focuses on the Black Sea cities’ engagement into this context and mainly asks what kind of role, if any, cities play for facilitating diplomatic ties and alleviating systemic-level controversies. Building on the literature on city diplomacy, the paper elaborates on motivations behind and limits over such alternative levels of interactions and comments on their future geopolitical implications.

World Politics by Other Means? London, City Diplomacy and the Olympics

Summary Drawing on the case of the Olympics, and in particular on the role of London in securing, planning and administering the 2012 Summer Games, this article investigates how cities participate in world politics beyond the traditional avenues of the international system. Tracing how the planning of a sporting mega-event has been woven into London’s international role as a global ‘green’ leader, the article seeks to shed some light on the diplomatic role of cities, as well as on how sport has been used in relation to city diplomacy and urban governance. The Olympics offer a unique window on the multi-scalar reach of these subnational authorities, allowing for substantial public diplomacy initiatives. Major cities such as London, as the article argues, can exert a pervasive diplomatic influence, and planning for sporting events can extend their capacity to link ‘city diplomacy’ with tangible impacts on everyday lives.