PRINCIPLES OF MODERN CITY DIPLOMACY AND THE EXPANDING ROLE OF CITIES IN FOREIGN POLICY.

• Author: Leffel, Benjamin

INTRODUCTION

This study provides a theoretical synthesis that explains present-day trends in city diplomacy, or city government intervention in foreign affairs otherwise managed by the nation-state. In a recent article in the Hague Journal of Diplomacy, I used an initial iteration of this synthesis to explain factors shaping the "municipal foreign policy" movement during the Cold War. (1) The present piece expands upon this synthesis to explain modern and global-scale city diplomacy trends.

This piece is organized as follows: The first section argues that cities intervene to enforce universal norms when their national government violates or fails to enforce them, as illustrated by the bottom-up response to the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement under the Trump administration. It further explains the norm enforcement function and articulates city diplomacy as a social justice mechanism. The second section uses the example of China to argue that non-democratic regimes commandeer city diplomacy for national foreign policy purposes, unlike their democratic counterparts, and that city networks spread democratic processes beyond the sovereign nation-state. The third section argues that municipal foreign policy implementation requires local official-constituent alignment on foreign policy issues, as seen in the sanctuary movement during the Trump administration. The fourth section argues that economic pursuits are expanding in city diplomacy but risk diminishing returns to social welfare if private actors gain excessive influence. Finally, the study concludes with policy recommendations on models of city diplomacy that cities and nations alike should aim to implement.

NORM VIOLATION AND ENFORCEMENT

City and state governments often engage in diplomacy as a direct response to national government transgressions in foreign policv, including the violation of universal norms or the failure to sufficiently enforce them. (2) This can be explained by the sociological tradition of world society theory, which assumes that norms such as human rights diffuse internationally and are implemented by nation-states, (3) but that subnational authorities may intervene and independently enforce said norms if the nation-state fails to do so. (4) The common thread with international relations theory is the recognition of an emergent international society affecting and limiting the actions of nation-states, including the moral imperatives of Kantian universalism (3) and the shared knowledge, identities, and norms of constructivism. (6) The concept of plural diplomacies situates local governments within this international society, which are then prompted to take diplomatic action by a normative desire for peace. (7)

The accelerated globalization of the 20th century thus cultivated a new global consciousness at the city level, (8) bringing such matters as human rights within the competence of subnational authorities. (9) Thus, local officials justified intervention in foreign policv as a direct attempt to enforce the norms set forth in the UN Charter and Nuremberg principles, particularly when nations failed. (10) City diplomacy operated on this principle during the municipal foreign policy movement of the Cold War, when U.S. cities intervened in response to President Ronald Reagan's arms race with the Soviet Union, inaction on apartheid, and funding of death squads in Central America." This "animus of the underling" principle continues to explain modern dynamics in city diplomacy, notably the response by U.S. local leaders to President Donald Trump's announcement of his intent to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.

This response, involving direct subnational intervention to fill a federal governance gap in climate leadership, was facilitated by an important precedent and its associated bottom-up city diplomacy infrastructure. In 1974, University of California Irvine chemists Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina discovered that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were critically damaging Earth's ozone layer. After tireless advocacy, this discovery led to the 1987 Montreal Protocol, whereby the nations of the world pledged to ban the then-common chemical. (12) While this was the first UN treaty to be ratified by all UN member states, national government ratification did not necessarily translate to immediate action.

In 1989, the Irvine-based Center for Innovative Diplomacy, led by Irvine Mayor Larry Agran, policy entrepreneur Jeb Brugmann, and attorney Michael H. Shuman, responded to slow national implementation of the Montreal Protocol by implementing the first city-level CFC ban in the United States. They then partnered with Rowland himself to host the "North American Congress of Local Governments for a Stratospheric Protection Accord (SPA)" at UC Irvine. There, U.S. and Canadian local officials convened both to share knowledge on Irvine-style CFC bans and to pledge to create an international secretariat for similar local environmental initiatives. The UN Environmental Program (UNEP) took note of the SPA's success, and in 1990, UNEP invited Irvine leaders to the UN headquarters to attend the "World Congress of Local Authorities for a Sustainable Future." This congress convened over 200 local leaders globally to breathe life into the SPA's envisioned international secretariat, thus establishing what was called the "International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives." (13) Today, that organization is known as ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI), the world's largest environmental transnational municipal network.

ICLEI paved the way for other environmental networks to grow, as other world cities increasingly responded to national failures by creating new city networks to share knowledge and resources about environmental policy best practices. (14) The advent of transnational municipal networks brought a structural evolution in city diplomacy which facilitated cities' efforts to enforce norms violated or ignored by nations. This also paved the way for the later response to President Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Agreement.

PARIS PULLOUT AND SUBNATIONAL RESPONSE

Following President Trump's June 2017 announcement of his intention to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement, California Governor Jerry Brown and other U.S. subnational leaders forged the U.S. Climate Alliance. This coalition of U.S. states and cities promised to uphold the American commitment to the Paris Agreement from the bottom up. In furtherance of these commitments, they also established America's Pledge, which aimed to track and quantify the impact of U.S. non-federal climate action, including local emissions reduction capacities, to fill the federal leadership gap. Given the absence of a U.S. federal government pavilion at the 23rd UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of Parties (COP23), America's Pledge opened an informal pavilion under the banner "America's Pledge: We Are Still In." (15) Several states and cities from outside the United States also reaffirmed their commitment to the Paris Agreement by joining the U.S.-based Under2 Coalition of subnational governments for climate action, then under Governor Brown's leadership. The 2017 North American Climate Summit in Chicago saw over 50 mayors from ten countries sign the "Chicago Climate Charter" pledging to achieve greater emissions reductions in order to fill the gap left by Trump's withdrawal of U.S. federal support. (16) This bottom-up networked response by cities in the United States and beyond to act as global climate governance "norm sustainers" (17) was enabled in part by the environmental norm enforcement precedent of SPA and ICLEI surrounding the Montreal Protocol, as well as by the new global environmental governance structure for cities created in its stead.

Such conditions produce unique multilevel governance arrangements between nation-states and subnational authorities, where uncooperative national leaders are bypassed by counterpart nations that seek instead to make inroads with the norm-enforcing subnational leaders. (18) China's President Xi Jinping met with California Governor Brown to address bilateral cooperation on climate change instead of President Trump. (19) Likewise, Governor Brown met with Barbara Hendricks, the German Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety, regarding cooperation on sustainable economic growth and fighting unemployment. (20)

CITY DIPLOMACY AS SOCIAL JUSTICE

The norm enforcement function of city diplomacy can serve to protect populations marginalized by or otherwise subjugated by unjust conditions at the hands of national-level forces. The traditional role of the nation-state as a guardian versus the role of cities as commercially concerned entities (21) blurs when considering the evolving role of cities in diplomacy. Might cities become guardians to an extent? The inclusive nature of city diplomacy brings about a democratization of foreign policy, one involving greater inclusion of traditionally less powerful voices long unheard. In this way, city diplomacy could advance social justice.

Local authorities, and especially indigenous communities, have been underrepresented in U.S. national policymaking on global climate change governance, a gap which President Obama attempted to fill by creating the State, Local, and Tribal Leaders Task Force on Climate Preparedness and Resilience. (22) In the absence of enduring national reform, such task forces tend to be temporary national attempts to improve representation of municipal locales in global processes. In the longer term, city diplomacy serves as one of the vital civic mechanisms to provide said representation.

City diplomacy as social justice underscores the guardian role for cities, particularly as U.S. federal statecraft increasingly operates on neoliberal principles that privilege commercial interests over...