Cities as International Actors
Cities as International Actors

Author: Tassilo Herrschel

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-01-20

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 1137396172

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This book explores the growing role of cities and regions as sub-national actors in shaping global governance. Far from being merely carried along by global forces, cities have become active players in making and maintaining the networks and connections that give shape to contemporary globalization. Exploring examples from Europe, North America and beyond, the authors reconcile the two separate, yet complimentary, theoretical and analytical lenses adopted by Urban Studies and International Relations, as they address the nature of ‘cities’ and ‘internationality’. The authors challenge academic debate that is reluctant to cross disciplinary boundaries and thus offer more relevant answers to the new phenomenon of international city action, and how it weakens the traditional prerogative of the state as primary actor in the international realm. Conclusions focus on how this new internationality opens opportunities for cities and regions but also contains potential pitfalls that can constrain policy options and challenge the legitimacy of policy making at all scales.

The City as a Global Political Actor
The City as a Global Political Actor

Author: Stijn Oosterlynck

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-10-10

Total Pages: 445

ISBN-13: 135133073X

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This book engages with the thorny question of global urban political agency. It critically assesses the now popular statement that in the context of paralysed and failing nation state governments, cities can and will provide leadership in addressing global challenges. Cities can act politically on the global scale, but the analysis of global urban political agency needs to be firmly embedded in the field of urban studies. Collectively, the chapters in this volume contextualize urban agency in time and space and pluralize it by looking at how urban agency is nurtured through coalitions between a wide range of public and private actors. The authors develop and critically assess the conceptual underpinnings of the notion of global urban political agency from a variety of theoretical and disciplinary perspectives. The second part contains several (theoretically informed) empirical analyses of global urban political agency in cities around the globe. This book geographically expands analysis by looking beyond global cities in diverse contexts. It is highly recommended reading for scholars in the fields of international relations and urban studies who are looking for an interdisciplinary and empirically grounded understanding of global urban political agency, in a diversity of contexts and a plurality of forms.

Cities and Global Governance
Cities and Global Governance

Author: Mark Amen

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-05-23

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1317166094

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Case study rich, this volume advances our understanding of the significance of 'the city' in global governance. The editors call for innovation in international relations theory with case studies that add breadth to theorizing the role sub-national political actors play in global affairs. Each of the eight case studies demonstrates different intersections between the local and the global and how these intersections alter the conditions resulting from globalization processes. The case studies do so by focusing on one of three sub-themes: the diverse ways in which cities and sub-national regions impact nation-state foreign policy; the various dimensions of urban imbrications in global environmental politics; or the multiple methods and standards used to measure the global roles of cities.

City Diplomacy
City Diplomacy

Author: Raffaele Marchetti

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2021-10-19

Total Pages: 139

ISBN-13: 0472055038

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While the view that only states act as global actors is conventional, today significant diplomatic and cross-cultural activity is taking place in cities. Economic growth and fiscal experiments all occur in urban contexts. Cities are the center of the world economy, producing 85% of global GDP. Political reforms, social innovation, and protests and revolutions generate in cities. Criminal activities, terrorist actions, counterinsurgency, missile attacks (indeed, atomic bombs), and wars are centered in big cities. Pandemics spread in large urban conglomerates. Cities are sources of global pollution (80% of carbon emissions come from cities), as well as of environmental transformations such as urban gardening. Knowledge production, big data collection, and tech innovation all spur from intense interaction in cities. Cities are the meeting points between different cultures, religions, and identities.0These increasingly international cities develop twinning networks and projects, share information, sign cooperation agreements, contribute to the drafting of national and international policies, provide development aid, promote assistance to refugees, and do territorial marketing through decentralized city-city or district-district cooperation. Cities do what ""municipalities"" used to do many centuries ago: they cooperate but also enter into intense competitive dynamics. To understand current sociopolitical dynamics on a planetary level, we need to have two mental maps in mind: the state-centered map and the nonstate centered map. With regards to diplomacy in particular, we must take into account the existence of a complex diplomatic regime based on different overlapping levels-the urban and the state.

Global Political Cities
Global Political Cities

Author: Kent E. Calder

Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

Published: 2021-01-26

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0815739087

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Why cities often cope better than nations with today's lightning-fast changes The British Empire declined decades ago, but London remains one of the world's preeminent centers of finance, commerce, and political discourse. London is just one of the global cities assuming greater importance in the post-cold war world—even as many national governments struggle to meet the needs of their citizens. Global Political Cities shows how and why cities are re-asserting their historic role at the forefront of international economic and political life. The book focuses on fifteen major cities across Europe, Asia, and the United States, including New York, London, Tokyo, Brussels, Seoul, Geneva, and Hong Kong, not to mention Beijing and Washington, D.C. In addition to highlighting the achievements of high-profile mayors, the book chronicles the growing influence of think tanks, mass media, and other global agenda setters, in their local urban political settings. It also shows how these cities serve in the Internet age as the global stage for grassroots appeals and protests of international significance. Global Political Cities shows why cities cope much better than nations with many global problems—and how their strengths can help transform both nations and the broader world in future. The book offers important insights for students of both international and comparative political economy; diplomats and other government officials; executives of businesses with global reach; and general readers interested in how the world is changing around them.

The Power of Cities in International Relations
The Power of Cities in International Relations

Author: Simon Curtis

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-04-16

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 1317915860

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Cities have become increasingly important to global politics, but have largely occupied a peripheral place in the academic study of International Relations (IR). This is a notable oversight for the discipline, although one which may be explained by IR’s traditional state centrism, the subjugation of the city to the demands of the territorial state in the modern period, and a lack of conceptual and analytical frameworks that can allow scholars to include the impact of cities within their work. Presenting case-specific scholarship from leading experts in the field, each contribution guides the reader through the changing nature of cities in the international system and their increasing prominence in global governance outcomes. The book features case studies on the financial power of cities, city action in the security domain, collaboration of cities in coping with environmental problems, transnational urban regions, and mayors as international actors to illustrate if the relationship between the city and the state has changed in profound ways, and how cities are empowered by structural changes in world politics. The multidisciplinary and global focus in The Power of Cities in International Relations sheds much needed light on the significance of the reemergence of cities from the long shadow of the nation-state. Only by examining the mechanisms that have empowered cities in the last few decades can we understand their new functions and capabilities in global politics.

City Diplomacy
City Diplomacy

Author: Sohaela Amiri

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-07-11

Total Pages: 375

ISBN-13: 3030456153

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This edited volume provides an inclusive explanation of what, why, and how cities interact with global counterparts as well as with nation states, non-governmental organizations, and foreign publics. The chapters present theoretical and analytical approaches to the study of city diplomacy as well as case studies to capture the nuances of the practice. By bringing together a diverse group of authors in terms of their geographic location, academic and practitioner backgrounds, the volume speaks to multiple disciplines, including diplomacy, political science, communication, sociology, marketing and tourism.

Paradiplomacy
Paradiplomacy

Author: Rodrigo Tavares

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0190462124

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Orthodox international relations theory considers foreign affairs to be the exclusive purview of national governments. Yet as Rodrigo Tavares demonstrates, the vast majority of leading sub-states and cities are currently practicing foreign affairs, both bilaterally and multilaterally. Subnational governments in Asia, the Americas, Europe and Africa are changing traditional notions of sovereignty, diplomacy, and foreign policy as they carry out diplomatic endeavors and establish transnational networks around areas such as education, healthcare, climate change, waste management, or transportation. In fact, subnational activity and activism in the international arena is growing at a rate that far exceeds that carried out by the traditional representatives of sovereign states. Paradiplomacy is the definitive first practitioner's guide to foreign policy at the subnational level. In this seminal work, Tavares draws from a unique pool of best practices and case studies from all over the world to provide a comprehensive and critical overview of the conceptual, juridical, operational, organizational, governmental and diplomatic parameters of paradiplomacy.

Global City Makers
Global City Makers

Author: Michael Hoyler

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2018-09-28

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1785368958

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Global City Makers provides an in-depth account of the role of powerful economic actors in making and un-making global cities. Engaging critically and constructively with global urban studies from a relational economic geography perspective, the book outlines a renewed agenda for global cities research. Focusing on financial services, management consultancy, real estate, commodity trading and maritime industries, the detailed studies in this volume are located across the globe to incorporate major world cities such as London, New York and Tokyo as well as globalizing cities including Mexico City, Hamburg and Mumbai.

City Diplomacy
City Diplomacy

Author: Rogier van der Pluijm

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 42

ISBN-13: 9789050311168

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Although it could be argued that foreign affairs is still primarily a task of national governments and their ministries of foreign affairs (MFAs), the state is no longer the only actor on the diplomatic stage. Associations of states, NGOs and multinational corporations, for example, increasingly play a role in diplomacy. Despite substantial attention for these three groups of new actors, academic discussion has focused less on the increasing role of another actor in diplomacy, namely the city. This omission is remarkable given the increasing importance of cities around the world. In 2007, for the first time in human history, more people will live in urban than in rural areas. In addition, on a global scale, over 100,000 people a day move to cities. World cities such as Tokyo, New York and London have economies as big as the economies of medium-sized countries such as Canada, Spain and Sweden. It is therefore clear that cities now matter more than ever, making some even term cities as the one socio-political unit that is growing in power in the era of globalization. This paper aims to fill a gap in the academic literature on diplomacy by introducing the concept of city diplomacy. It will be argued that city diplomacy is a professional, pragmatic and upcoming diplomatic activity on the international political stage, which is changing and will continue to change current diplomatic processes.--Provided by publisher.