“Global and local matters are more intertwined than ever before. Ultimately it is in the streets of your cities and towns that the value of what is decided here (the UN) will be tested. You are essential partners. It is there, in the daily lives of your citizens, in their safety and security, in their prosperity and sense of opportunity that our progress will be most visible, and our setbacks felt most keenly. While our Goals are global, they can most effectively be achieved through action at local level.” (Kofi Annan1)
Setting controversies aside on the origins, nature and scope of the phenomenon called “globalization,” there is a consensus on the fact that, among many other things, it carries with it the change from a State-centric model to a complex, multilevel relations system. It is in this process that a deep phenomenon takes place, dominated by trends that would seem to move one against the other: an upward, aggregating movement – with supra-national instances –, and a fragmenting, downward movement – with sub-national expressions –; in parallel, a modification of the terms of the relationship between state and civil society takes place. As it has been pointed out, a world of bifurcations and perforated sovereignties appears, in which territoriality-defining criteria have to be corrected in the light of new commercial and techno-productive patterns, of new forms of international relations, of changes in the interrelation between domestic and foreign affairs and the alteration of intergovernmental links. In short, new procedures are established in the handling of world affairs.
Adapting themselves to the logic that guides them, the supranational and subnational levels are progressing according to their own specificity, interrelating in diverse domains and manners. In this work, our interest is focused on the subnational level, understanding as such both the major administrative units within a country – provinces, regions or their equivalent denominations –, and the town- and city-halls. It is unnecessary to mention the evidence of the increasing relevance of these players, be it with regard to internal development – political organization, management of the economic life, relations with civil society, etc. –, as well as external relations – towards their own regional environment and the world scale. Any record on the public activities of no matter what country, will show a great deal of external initiatives involving cities or regions: conferences, commercial missions, agreements of diverse kinds, establishment of local bodies' representations abroad, participation in international organisms and networks. They cooperate, compete, issue statements, sign agreements, form interest groups and alliances, create their own instruments for international action and broaden their external projection. A reflection of this phenomenon is the increasing interest that the performance of these subnational units has stirred in the field of social sciences and, within this setting, the hypotheses about the roles that may be assigned to them, naturally under certain conditions, in the demands of democratization into the entrails of every society and in the world order.
In any case, some warnings should be made before moving on. In the first place, the identification of a tendency must not be mistaken for its complete realization, and consequently the analytical effort must focus on the complex interactions between old (which usually re-emerges) and new. In the second place, when pondering any given phenomenon, it is worth foreseeing the potentialities that may or may not come to their full expression. Lastly, both global-reaching transformations as well as those related to a lesser reach, happen with different peculiar traits in the central areas and in the peripheral regions.
Cities have been active players in this movement, frequently heading this international opening up, that can take bilateral or multilateral forms. Naturally, beyond the significance of new global and regional trends – boosted by the impact of integrating initiatives expressed in the form of new regionalizing waves –, such a projection acknowledges extensive antecedents. Cities possess a long trajectory in international relations. Since the Greek city-states, we can identify trans-territorial growths of cities and their roles as trading hubs and urban network systems. In western history, the nature of their role has undergone constant modification. If during the Middle Ages they acted as political and administrative centres, their role underwent a deep transformation since the industrial revolution, when they became the central space for economic activities of material production, concentrating modern industries and factories. Current trends are manifesting new modifications in this sense.
The example of Quebec is generally taken as one of the earliest records of subnational entities' actions in the international plane, aiming to create their own representation space abroad. In the times when the Province of Quebec was divided into Upper Canada and Lower Canada, international relations were part of the British imperial policy; some members of the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada sought to establish relations with the British Parliament first and then with the United States of America, and between 1816 and 1833 an agency was established in the region of the imperial metropolis. Years later, Quebec opened its first General Agency in Paris in 1882, even before Canada as such had a delegation overseas; the second was opened in London in 1908 and the third in Brussels in 1915.
The early 20th century witnesses the establishment of the first transnational network of cities, created in Belgium in 1913. On that occasion, and responding to the initiative of a political sector, a Congress was held in which over four hundred delegates participated, representing town-halls from twenty countries. It was during this congress that the International Union of Local Authorities (IULA) was founded.
As the century went by, the establishment of city networks appeared increasingly connected to the idea of city-“twinning”, particularly after World War II, with the intention of preventing new conflicts. An example of this are the links established in 1944 between the Canadian port-city of Vancouver and the recently liberated port-city of Odessa, which helped in the reconstruction of the latter. Or the 50 mayors who in 1951, convinced that Europe would not be able to overcome its difficulties without unifying its strengths, founded the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CCRE - CEMR), introducing the notion of “European citizenship”, and from this the concept of “twinning”. Germany and France had a leading role; more than half of the twinnings may be credited to them. This movement was one of the factors that contributed to avoid military confrontations, creating a climate that favored a convergence and that will later materialize in the form of the agreements that gave origin to the European Community. That gesture, of great symbolic impact at the time, has become a movement of local governments that bet on a concerted multilateral action for conflict prevention, for improving coexistence and promoting peace. Some examples of this are the World Conferences on City Diplomacy (supported by the UCLG), the Mayors for Peace network, that gathers at least 3,150 mayors from 134 countries, or the “Proyecto Guernica: Ciudades por la Paz” (Guernica Project – Cities for Peace) during the 2008 Mercociudades Annual Summit, aiming to consolidate a “Network of Cities for Peace” in the region.
In 1957, the World Federation of United Cities was created. A year earlier, President Eisenhower had launched the People to People2 initiative, a forebear and inspirator of the acknowledged Sister Cities Network. In his remarks of September 11, 1956, at the People-to-People Conference, he said: “If we are going to take advantage of the assumption that all people want peace, then the problem is for people to get together and to leap governments – if necessary, to evade governments – to work out not one method but thousands of methods by which people can gradually learn a little bit more of each other”. Some find in this speech the introduction of the idea of city diplomacy. This organization currently includes 2,500 communities from 137 countries worldwide.
Several more are the examples that can be taken into account. These experiences express ways of articulating the characteristics of urban culture, linked to diverse international and regional belongings, postwar reconstruction demands, the search for coalitions, the struggle between blocs, the conditioning factors of domestic scenarios, that were – as well as the increasing transnational flows of people – facilitated by the changes in transport and communications technologies.
Some surveys indicate that today there are no less than fifteen city global networks in existence, plus a substantial amount of networks with a regional scope, along with hundreds of organizations oriented to deal with specific problems3.
An indicator of the dimension acquired by this phenomenon is the creation in 2004 of United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), a leading organization acting as spokesman for local governments in the global domain. Its main goals are to promote cooperation and integration of local governments, increase the influence of these governments and the organizations that represent them in global governance, and ensure a democratic and efficient world organization. “Renewing and deepening our partnership with the United Nations and the global community, and building an effective and formal role for local government as a pillar of the international system,” are stated to be their guiding principles.
As reflected in the initial phrase of this article, in the words of the former UN Secretary Kofi Annan, the UCLG has become a relevant spokesperson in the UN with regard to major world issues: the environment, climate change, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), global urban problems, the world development agenda, Aid and Cooperation for Development, women, natural catastrophes, AIDS and other pandemics, Alliance of Civilizations, among others; however, it has not yet gained a formal consultative status in that organization, for which it is working relentlessly.
There are divergences in the way of denominating these “new” international players, which are usually mentioned as subnational units or entities, non-central governments (NCGs), sub-state or infra-state units, territorial actors; they are ways of denominating them, each one expressing a criterion based on the juridical or functional features of their hierarchical relationship with the State. Likewise, the ways of framing and typifying their performance differ: they are seen as an expression of management, action, external projection; as a particular variation of international relations – subnational international relations –; as alternatives forms of diplomacy – para-diplomacy, subnational diplomacy, multilevel diplomacy, etc.; as a reflection of a trend towards decentralizing Foreign Policy and, more recently, as an expression of the emergence of new ways of governance, in which multiple levels of government intervene.
This international action began being approached chiefly from two analytical viewpoints: on the one hand, according to its effects on Foreign Policies – a domain that belongs to the exclusive competence of national governments –, with a stress on the question of how these expressions of para-diplomacy affect State sovereignty; and on the nature of the phenomenon, i.e. if they do constitute external policies or if they are manifestations of internal policies that are internationalized. On the other hand, starting from the acknowledgement of their impact on intergovernmental relations, particularly (but not exclusively) in States of a federal nature, and moving on in the study of the link between that type of regime and foreign policy. A particular chapter is constituted by the inclusion and treatment of the issue within the framework of regional integration processes.
Current trends are boosting both in intensity and in depth these relations, from which the subnational entities' international activity acquires diverse orientations, meanings and potentialities. It is probably the multilateralization of such links and the way they constitute themselves in means of articulating local levels with issues affecting global governance what makes this subject ever more relevant, opening an alternative of new scenarios that require an attentive follow-up.
1 Kofi Annan: New York, 8 September 2005 - Secretary-General's remarks to "United Cities and Local Governments", http://www.un.org/apps/sg/sgstats.asp?nid=1660
2 The People to People program aims to improve understanding and dialog between peoples, by means of education, the direct interchanging of ideas and experiences between communities
3 Such organizations include: Cities Alliance, World Association of Mayor Metropolises, World Association of Cities and Local Authorities, World Federation of United Cities, Eurocities, Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe, Council of European Municipalities and Regions, East and Southeast Asia Regional Network for Better Local Governments, Europe-Latin America Urban Cooperation Program, International Local Government Partnerships for Urban Development, Arab Towns Organization, Managing the Environment Locally in Sub Saharan Africa, Mercociudades, Red Andina de Ciudades, Asociación Internacional de Ciudades Educadoras (AICE), Ciudades Unidas contra la Pobreza, Foro de Autoridades Locales por la Inclusión Social (FAL), among others