Sub-state Governments Research Articles

Examining How Equalities Nonprofit Organizations Approach Policy Influencing to Achieve Substantive Representation in Sub-State Government Policymaking

This article is concerned with equalities nonprofit organizations’ activities to achieve substantive representation in policy-making through a sub-state government. It draws on three strands of the interest representation literature from equalities theory, nonprofit sector studies, and social movements theory. The analytical framework synthesizes these to provide a new approach for examining equalities nonprofit organizations’ policy influencing. Drawing on equalities theorists’ accounts of mainstreaming, and understandings of campaigns from social movement literature, it explores nonprofit organizations’ positioning in relation to government in order to advance equality. This analysis engages with questions raised by nonprofit scholars about nonprofit organizations’ independence from government and their capacity to retain a critical voice. An overarching institutionalist lens enables an examination of the formal and informal facets that shape policy influencing approaches. The research question is: How have equalities organizations engaged with the institution of a nonprofit-government partnership to promote substantive representation in policy? This research uses semi-structured elite interviews to explore key policy actors’ accounts. The case study is the statutory Welsh nonprofit sector–government partnership. Findings suggest the equalities nonprofit organizations involved in this partnership deploy a sophisticated array of action repertoires as part of an interrelated web of nuanced, multi-positioned influencing activities. This agility enables the sector to maintain some capacity to be critical of the state whilst sustaining informal relations with state policy actors.

Frameworks of Paradiplomacy. Cases of Selected Unitary States: France, the Netherlands and Czechia

Paradiplomacy literature focuses on federations. This paper is dedicated to selected unitary states. The aim was to identify the achievement of those states in terms of cooperation between central and local governments with respect to foreign policy. The principal research method was a semi-structured direct interview. In the light of the examined examples, the French model of paradiplomacy for a unitary state appears to be the best solution. It respects both the authority of the sub-state governments to engage in foreign cooperation and the constitutional prerogative of the government as the body responsible for pursuing foreign policy of the state.

Means of Influence, the Joint-Decision Trap and Multilevel Trade Negotiations: Ontario and Québec and the Renegotiation of NAFTA Compared

Trade negotiations address issues that are increasingly pertinent to substate governments, leading many to insist on being included in trade negotiations. The increasingly multilevel nature of trade negotiations and the influence of substate governments in the negotiation process is beginning to attract theoretical attention. The Canadian case is interesting here as it allows us to test two recent theories about the role of substate governments in trade negotiations. Canadian provinces are increasingly included in trade negotiations despite the fact that they do not have veto power and the Senate of Canada does not represent their interests. The Canadian case demonstrates that, contrary to the means-of-influence theory, inclusion in the negotiation process is more important than formal constitutional powers. Moreover, contrary to a recent theory that questions the joint-decision trap perspective, in the case of the NAFTA renegotiation, granting veto power to the provinces would likely have been a major problem for Canadian negotiators. This article compares the role Ontario and Québec played in the NAFTA renegotiations with their role in CETA and Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) negotiations. Trade negotiation, federalism, means of influence, joint-decision trap, Canadian provinces, Ontario, Québec, NAFTA renegotiations, CETA, CPTPP

Premiers Abroad

International affairs has typically been seen as the sole domain of the central government in a Federal state, however there has been a rise in subnational actors involving themselves in international affairs. The object of this paper is to analyze the place of Regional Paradiplomacy within the Canada-US context, and to determine the necessity and purpose of these kinds of relationships in the context of state-based international relations. This analysis is done through the review of previous research on the topic as well as looking to primary resources concerning subnational governments involved in international affairs. The result of this paper is the discovery that Regional Paradiplomacy provides a more direct tool for substate governments to enact policy and represent their jurisdiction without the need to submit to the central government. The results indicate a greater decentralization of sovereignty at least in the Canadian context, with tacit permission given by the Federal government to allow provinces the ability to exercise agency over issues pertaining to their own jurisdiction within a shared region.

Wales and the United Kingdom: a territorial constitutional policy drive

ABSTRACT The Welsh Labour government has developed a distinctive brand of territorial constitutional policy in the UK context. The product of a strongly devolutionist government with a care for union, it reinforces the importance of autochthonous development in substate governance, reflects an adverse state of power relations in a famously uncodified constitution, and, framed by ongoing turbulence, provides an alternative vision of the UK territorial constitution at large. Building up Wales as a politically progressive polity, and promoting federal-type ideas of subsidiarity and shared governance in the union, are major threads. Grounded in the notion of popular sovereignties in a multipolar polity, and stressing the need for continued consent to and reform of the union, the approach represents a profound and difficult constitutional challenge. Wales as a substate polity remains a work in process, with largescale devolution of justice high on the policy agenda, while competing pressures of centralism and interest in independence inform an increasingly fluid territorial debate that sees the establishment of a new Constitutional Commission. A sustained exercise of constitutional voice, and, shown with Brexit and a muscular unionism of the Conservative government at Westminster, the struggle to be heard, characterizes the Welsh Government effort at the UK level.

Quebec, Scotland, and substate governments' roles in Canadian and British trade policy: Lessons to be learned.

Following Brexit (the withdrawal of the UK from the EU and the European Atomic Energy Community at the end of 31 January 2020), the British government stated that it hoped to reach a new trade agreement with Canada to be modelled after the Canada–EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, the first free-trade deal for which Canadian provinces were directly involved at every stage of negotiations. In the UK, while there are mechanisms for the involvement of devolved regions in European policy, there is no clear constitutional doctrine as to the roles they should play in elaborating trade policy more generally. Moreover, the asymmetric nature of the UK’s devolution system complicates the involvement of its devolved governments in trade negotiations. By providing a specific focus on the cases of Quebec and Scotland, this article provides a comparison of substate governments’ roles in trade negotiation and trade promotion. It concludes that, while there seems to be only limited scope for substate governments’ formal input into future trade negotiations, their trade and investment promotion organizations allow them to pursue different objectives over trade outcomes within a unified national framework.

Trade Paradiplomacy and the Politics of International Economic Law: The Inclusion of Quebec and the Exclusion of Wallonia in the CETA Negotiations

ABSTRACT International trade negotiations are no longer largely limited to federal government's constitutional jurisdictions. In this context, substate governments, like Quebec and Wallonia, are aware that their ability to formulate and implement policy, are subject to negotiations in trade talks. This article compares the role of Quebec and Wallonia in the CETA negotiations. While Wallonia was able to force the inclusion of an interpretative legal instrument to clarify certain parts of CETA, Quebec, like the other Canadian provinces, was able to influence the negotiation from within. Quebec's influence was felt on many issues such as regulatory cooperation, certification, labour mobility, cultural diversity, but also on issues that were ultimately left outside the agreement. The comparison provides important lessons: the inclusion in the negotiating process of substate governments, like Quebec, makes it easier for them to make important concessions during the negotiation but also to accept the outcome of the negotiation. Moreover, substate governments are important actors in legitimising these trade treaties. When they strongly oppose them, like Wallonia did, it has a deleterious effect on the legitimacy of the agreement.

UK analysts’ and policy-makers’ perspectives on Brexit: challenges, priorities and opportunities for subnational areas

ABSTRACT This paper explores the perspectives of expert analysts and policy-makers on the implications of Brexit for different parts of the UK economy. For local and regional areas, the need for such expert voices to be heard is urgent, given the fact that UK subnational and substate governance authorities have been effectively blocked out of all Brexit-related negotiations, and as such, are wholly unprepared for the post-Brexit realities. The issues discussed in this paper reflect the key themes that came out of four regional stakeholder participatory symposia organized by The UK in a Changing Europe (UKICE), which were held in Leeds, Birmingham, London and Edinburgh, and that focused on the Brexit-related economic and governance challenges for the different parts of the UK. These issues are examined in the light of the recent ‘levelling-up’ agenda prioritized by the UK government.

Moments of alignment between devolved political ideology and policy design: the case of Wales

The devolution of power and responsibility from central to sub national levels of governance over the past half century marks a paradigm shift in forces shaping social policy across much of Western Europe. Scholarship in this field is often concerned with a binary analysis of before and after the advent of devolution, with insufficient attention paid to transitory changes over time. Through attention to Wales’ flagship community regeneration programme, Communities First, a striking instance of divergent devolved social policy, we highlight the need to attend to the dynamics of devolution across time. Drawing on empirical data charting the programme’s conception, implementation, evolution, distortion and eventual demise, we argue that a moment of alignmentbetween ideology and policy design was visible at conception but eroded over 16 years, as the programme increasingly came to bear the hallmarks of neoliberalism. Using this case study, we consider the extent to which newly devolved states can implement ideological policy visions that resist the restraints put upon sub-state governance on the one hand and forces of central state ideologies and logics on the other.

Sub-state Governments as Rising Stakeholders in Development Cooperation. The Added Value of Regional Governments in the Light of Debates on Effectiveness in Development

Although the growing presence of European sub-state governments in development cooperation is gradually becoming recognized, it has yet to be thoroughly analysed. Due to the limited evidence-based monitoring of cooperation volumes provided by sub-state governments, and the fact that development cooperation has only recently gained international support, literature on the subject remains scant. The article presents models of decentralized cooperation provided by selected European sub-state governments. Having recognized the ongoing debate on the concept of effectiveness in development cooperation, the article looks at the relationship between internationally agreed principles in aid/development effectiveness and adherence to the concept at the sub-state level. The article identifies managerial model (Flanders, Catalonia), facilitation in development model (Wales), and leadership in development model (German federal states).

Enforcing immigration law

AbstractOver the last few years, an increasingly sophisticated literature devoted to normative questions arising out of the enforcement of immigration law had developed. In this essay, I consider what sorts of constraints considerations of justice and legitimacy may place on the enforcement of immigration law, even if we assume that states have significant discretion in setting their own immigration policies, and that open borders are not required by justice. I consider constraints placed on state or national governments, constraints on enforcement by substate governments, and constraints on the actions of individuals. I show that there are significant limits on what states may do and what they may require substate governments and individuals to do, in enforcing their immigration laws, but that these constraints are not clearly incompatible with significant state discretion in setting immigration policy. Nonetheless, consideration of justice in enforcement is necessary for any complete normative account of immigration.

National recognition and power relations between states and sub-state governments in international sport

ABSTRACTThis article offers a theoretical reflection about how the power relations within the international political system configure national recognition in the context of sport. Theoretical developments of soft power are complemented with a neoclassical realist approach, due to the fact that countries shape their sports policies and estimate their potential scope and impact according to their relative capacities in the international scenario.The starting point is that states and sub-state governments pursue the same political goals in international sport: influencing international arena through diplomatic strategies, increasing patriotism and the nation´s international prestige through the organisation of sports mega-events, legitimising their – regional or national – governments through medals and victories, etc. However, only the states are initially legitimised to achieve such goals due to the sports statehood, meaning in this context that International Sports Federations and International Olympic Committee define the term country as an independent state recognised by the international community.Analysing the cases of China–Taiwan and Serbia–Kosovo, the conclusion is that without a consensus between the disputing parties, national recognition in international sport will not depend so much on the development of a soft power strategy, but on the relative capacities of countries to impose their political criterion in the United Nations, the International Olympic Committee and the International Sports Federations.

美国联邦及州以下政府事权与财权划分研究

美国联邦及州以下政府事权与财权划分研究

Prohibited sub-state public diplomacy: the attempt to dissolve Catalonia’s DIPLOCAT

The attempt by the Spanish state to dissolve the Public Diplomacy Council of Catalonia (DIPLOCAT) in the aftermath of the 2017 Catalonian referendum on self-determination is an interesting story in and of itself but it also has implications for understandings of public diplomacy and relationships between state and sub-state governments. This article is the result of academic and practitioner collaboration to provide a detailed critical account of the recent occurrences in Catalonia’s public diplomacy history. One part of the authorship provided an auto-ethnographic account of his experiences and a history of DIPLOCAT’s activities, providing evidence where necessary to confirm accuracy. Once this was completed it was sent to the academic party of the authorship who had control over the structure, theoretical framework and the critical analysis that is provided on these pages. The research reveals that DIPLOCAT managed the pro-independence organisations within its consortium relatively well. However, its dissolution in the aftermath of the 1st October 2017 referendum appears to be case of guilt by association with a group of organisations that Spanish central power sought to punish and dissolve. This is despite DIPLOCAT following a similar strategic focus and structure to its predecessor organisations, which were tolerated by Madrid, and the Rajoy administration not seeking the closure of public diplomacy organisations in other Spanish regions with similar structures. To this end, DIPLOCAT was targeted by Madrid for two reasons. First: its work, and its foundation under the acronym DIPLOCAT in 2012 amidst other pro-referendum and pro-independence pivots in Catalan politics, led to a (not unreasonable) perception of its preference for Catalan statehood; and second, the very fact that it gained traction with distinguished international audiences and was perceived as being successful at raising Catalonia’s profile and foreign awareness of issues surrounding the province at a time when Madrid would have preferred a greater amount of control over the political narrative. As such, Madrid’s hard-fisted actions reveal their own tacit awareness of their communications weaknesses and fears over the power of DIPLOCAT.

“You Cannot Trade What Is Not Yours”: Indigenous Governance and the NAFTA Negotiations

ABSTRACT Contemporary International Relations scholars and practitioners generally recognize that substate governments affect the state’s international affairs; however, there is less acceptance of Indigenous governments as global actors that meaningfully impact the state. After all, the expectation would be that central governments, with considerably more resources and power, would be unlikely to face a challenge from an Indigenous government. However, Indigenous governments are negotiating new relationships with foreign and domestic governments, forming economic development corporations, hiring private firms to raise capital, funding trade missions, and even opening offices in key international locales such as Beijing to engage in trade promotion and push investment opportunities in projects such as resource extraction. Applying paradiplomacy theory, which argues that International Relations cannot be properly explained absent the global affairs of substate governments, this article analyzes the effect of Indigenous peoples and governance in the Canada–US trade relationship. It specifically considers how Indigenous engagement in the global economy affects the bilateral trade regime, foreign direct investment, and cross-border trade. The driver for these analysis centers on demands for the inclusion of a so-called “Indigenous chapter” in the North American Free Trade Agreement renegotiations in 2017 and 2018.

Federalism and Foreign Affairs: The International Relations of Mexican Sub-State Governments

Federalism and Foreign Affairs: The International Relations of Mexican Sub-State Governments

How Courts Decide Federalism Disputes: Legal Merit, Attitudinal Effects, and Strategic Considerations in the Jurisprudence of the Belgian Constitutional Court

AbstractAn urgent question in contemporary federal theory is how institutions impact upon the centralization grade of multi-tiered systems. This article focuses on constitutional courts as one of such institutions. It constructs a classification for measuring a court’s position in federalism disputes and tests hypotheses about what determines variation across decisions within one court. The case study is Belgium, as a model of contemporary fragmenting systems. We find that if the defending party is the federal government, the probability of a centralist outcome increases compared to when a sub-state government is the defendant, and vice versa. Evidence suggests that legal merit plays a role to this effect. We further find that each state reform decreases the probability of a centralist outcome. This appears to be a consequence of strategic considerations. We finally find suggestive evidence that the organization of the court does not fully succeed in playing down judges' ideological preferences.

Language revitalisation and social transformation: evaluating the language policy frameworks of sub-state governments in Wales and Scotland

Efforts by European sub-state governments to revitalise minority languages are increasingly common. This article investigates whether these revitalisation efforts have considered the implications of contemporary social change, by utilising content analysis methods to analyse policy documents in two cases, Wales and Scotland. In concluding that engagement with social change is limited, the article highlights the challenge faced by language revitalisation policy in ensuring awareness of the nature of globalisation and associated social change. More broadly, it demonstrates that language policy can be conceived and analysed as public policy, and highlights opportunities for further research in this area by policy scholars.

Federal reform and the quality of representation in Belgium

One of the ways in which ‘good’ representation can be measured and assessed is by the degree of congruence between the preferences of the population and the preferences and policies of the political elite. One of the arguments for defending decentralisation is that governmental institutions on a smaller territorial scale can be closer to the population, and that they can provide policies that are more responsive to the population of the sub-states. This argument is often made in Belgium, where voters in Flanders traditionally vote centre-right, while the voters of Wallonia vote centre-left, and where federal coalitions need to reflect the preferences of both regions whereas regional governments can be responsive to their voters only. Using data from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey, this paper tests this assumption and compares the left–right orientation of the population and of governments at the different institutional levels and regions. The findings suggest that sub-state governments are partially more congruent to their sub-state voters than federal governments. However, congruence gaps are less related to constraints in government formation than to changes in behaviour of key political actors.

Cooperation without the Leviathan: Intergovernmental policymaking in Canadian education

ABSTRACTA staple of policymaking in any federation is intergovernmental cooperation, which can take the form of vertical initiatives between the central and substate governments or as horizontal initiatives among the substate governments themselves. Most research has focused the former whereby the central government often deploys powerful levers to encourage the constituent members to cooperate. Such accounts, however, cannot be applied to cases occurring without the influence of the proverbial Leviathan. This article sets out to identify conditions that may be conducive to horizontal cooperation, developing a set of propositions focusing on economic, institutional, and ideational factors. These propositions are then considered on three cases of cooperation with varying results in Canadian education. While no single factor can be identified as necessary and sufficient for horizontal cooperation, institutional and ideational conditions interacted in dynamic ways and appeared to play the leading roles in the outcomes presented here.