This book illustrates the importance of global cities for world politics and highlights the diplomatic connections between cities and global governance. While there is a growing body of literature concerned with explaining the transformations of the international order, little theorisation has taken into account the key metropolises of our time as elements of these revolutions. The volume seeks to fill this gap by demonstrating how global cities have a pervasive agency in contemporary global governance. The book argues that looking at global cities can bring about three fundamental advantages on traditional IR paradigms. First, it facilitates an eclectic turn towards more nuanced analyses of world politics. Second, it widens the horizon of the discipline through a multiscalar image of global governance. Third, it underscores how global cities have a strategic diplomatic positioning when it comes to core contemporary challenges such as climate change. This book will be of much interest to students of urban studies, global governance, diplomacy and international relations in general.

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.

In How to Build a Global City, Michele Acuto considers the rise of a new generation of so-called global cities—Singapore, Sydney, and Dubai—and the power that this concept had in their ascent, in order to analyze the general relationship between global city theory and its urban public policy practice. The global city is often invoked in theory and practice as an ideal model of development and a logic of internationalization for cities the world over. But the global city also creates deep social polarization and challenges how much local planning can achieve in a world economy. Presenting a unique elite ethnography in Singapore, Sydney, and Dubai, Acuto discusses the global urban discourses, aspirations, and strategies vital to the planning and management of such metropolitan growth. The global city, he shows, is not one single idea, but a complex of ways to imagine a place to be global and aspirations to make it so, often deeply steeped in politics. His resulting book is a call to reconcile proponents and critics of the global city toward a more explicit engagement with the politics of this global urban imagination.

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.

"While diplomacy is a well-established topic for study, global governance is a relatively new arrival to the conceptual landscape of international relations. At first glance the two exist in separate worlds with little or no engagement between scholars of one or the other. At the most fundamental level, the absence of dialogue between diplomacy and governance derives from contrasting understandings of the nature of contemporary world politics, including the nature of globalization and the role of the state in the twenty-first century. Examining the relationship between these two concepts for the first time in a comprehensive manner, this book contains rich theoretical and case study analyses by noted academics and diplomatic practitioners."--Back cover.

This volume advances understanding of the significance of 'the city' in global governance, demanding innovation in international relations theory. A rich assortment of case studies adds breadth to theorizing of 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 globalizing processes.

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.

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.

This is the second volume to commemorate the 90th birthday of the distinguished scholar Chadwick F. Alger to honor his lifetime achievement in international relations and as President of the International Studies Association (1978-1979). After a brief introduction by Chad F. Alger this volume presents six of his key texts on The UN System and Cities in Global Governance, focusing on “Cities as arenas for participatory learning in global citizenship”; “The Impact of Cities on International Systems”; “Perceiving, Analysing and Coping With the Local-Global Nexus”; “The World Relations of Cities: Closing the Gap Between Social Science Paradigms and Everyday Human Experience”; “Japanese Municipal International Exchange and Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific: Opportunities and Challenges” and on “Searching for Democratic Potential in Emerging Global Governance: What Are the Implications of Regional and Global Involvements of Local Governments?”.

This thesis is about the importance of global cities for world politics. While there is a growing body of literature concerned with explaining the transformation of the international order, almost no theorization has taken into account the key metropolises of our time as elements of these revolutions. I seek to overcome this gap by demonstrating how global cities have a pervasive agency in contemporary global governance. They, I argue, are influential both in an 'actively passive' sense, recasting the geographies of local politics (their actant dimension) as well as in the more active ways of diplomacy and transnational networking (their actor dimension). Looking at global cities brings about three fundamental advantages on traditional IR paradigms. First, it facilitates a structurationist turn in IR towards more nuanced analyses of world politics. Second, it widens the horizon of the discipline through a multiscalar image of global governance. Third, it underscores how global cities have a strategic positioning when it comes to core contemporary challenges such as climate change.