1. Cities Joining States as International Actors

This book is about the increasing presence as actors in their own right of cities and regions in international policy-making and governance. The book is also about the ‘conceptual gap’ exposed by the presence of sub-national actors between the concepts of internationality developed by the two main relevant disciplines International Relations and Urban Studies. Both recognise the emergence of new international actors, but largely fail to step out of their respective disciplinary confinements. The book thus seeks to address and investigate the ways in which cities reach across spatial and institutional scales and get themselves directly involved in the international arena. But what have the two disciplines have to say about this from their different analytical and discursive traditions? Are the narratives and conceptualisations complementary in what they have to say, or contradictory? And can the two broad disciplines with their particular engagement with, and explanation of, the governance of the international arena learn something from each other and thus provide a more complete narrative of the new international arena? What can we learn from such a cross-disciplinary perspective about the forces behind this sub-national challenge to the traditional concept of the sovereignty of nation states as the predominant international actors? Traditional views presume that states and ‘national interest’ are coterminous, each between a set of equally clearly defined borders. Yet, reality is no longer as clear-cut, if ever it has been. Established conceptualisations of ‘state’, ‘sovereignty’ and ‘national interest’ require revisiting, as new sub-national actors are adding complexity and agency to the picture.