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Cities in Global Governance - Web
Cities in Global Governance - Web
81
Cities in Global Governance
From multilateralism to multistakeholderism?
Agustí Fernández de Losada and Marta Galceran-Vercher (Eds.)
81
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ABSTRACTS 9
INTRODUCTION 13
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Barcelona), public sector organisations (Kreuzberg Museum for Urban
Development, Berlin) and local governments (Diputació de Barcelona).
She holds an MA in International Relations from the University of
Warwick (2013) and is currently finalising a PhD on City Diplomacy,
Global Governance and Sustainable Development at Pompeu Fabra
University.
For decades now, cities have been trying to open up a space in the struc-
tures of global and regional governance. Yet, beyond achieving growing
recognition, their capacity for influencing traditional multilateralism is
still more symbolic than effective and does not clearly result in improved
answers and solutions offered to citizens. However, the alliances cities
have been forging with other stakeholders in the international scene,
running parallel to the structures of multilateral governance, are acquir-
ing significant visibility while also showing considerable potential for
mobilising resources and bringing about changes. Based on a twofold
analysis, global and European, this article studies the extent to which the
efforts of cities and their networks to join formal multilateralism have a
limited track record, as well as the degree to which the commitment to
creating multi-stakeholder alliances is more able to produce measurable
results although it confronts major challenges in terms of legitimacy and
accountability.
Although the long term impact of Covid-19 on the world’s cities cannot
yet be known, what we can see is how the pandemic is interacting with
existing trends and forces that are shaping both cities and the wider
international system of which they are a part. Covid-19 will not trans-
form cities permanently on its own. Instead, its short-term effects will
interact with deep-lying structural transformative trends that are already
playing themselves out in our cities. This article examines this intersec-
tion, and suggests the pandemic also represents an opportunity for
different political actors to struggle to shape the future of cities.
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the face of these pressures: affirming the agenda while subtly tweaking
their policy practice and rhetoric around the agreements according to
historic events.
The UN marks its 75th anniversary amid growing calls for the reform
of multilateralism. The international municipalism has been advocating
for this reform since its inception. Two of the most noteworthy propos-
als are obtaining permanent observer status at the General Assembly
and institutionalising the World Assembly of Local and Regional
Governments (WALRG). Despite some progress over the last decades,
most initiatives remain more symbolic than real. Significant challenges
therefore still lie ahead. Further institutionalising the WALRG would
require rethinking its current governance scheme, especially its level of
representativity and the role played by associations of local and regional
governments.
In an even more uncertain world, many voices are calling for radi-
cal change in the governance models of development policies. The
European Union – like the 2030 Agenda – has recognised the need for
local and regional authorities (LRAs) to pay a greater role in defining and
implementing public policies. This paper addresses three fundamental
questions: a) when and why LRAs became central to EU policymaking;
b) how LRAs can take part in EU policymaking; and, finally, c) the extent
to which the European Committee of the Regions adequately frames
LRA representation in EU policymaking. The analysis focuses on the
ABSTRACTS
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INTRODUCTION
Marta Galceran-Vercher
Part-time Lecturer in International Relations, Pompeu Fabra University
C
ities have been advocating for a seat at the global table for
decades. They are part and parcel of the international sys-
tem, yet they remain structurally powerless and virtually
invisible under international law. Global governance structures have
been designed by and for nation-states, and they leave little room for
the involvement of other stakeholders, including local governments.
Since the 1990s, some advances have been made in formalising the role
of cities in the architecture of global and regional governance, especially
within the European Union (EU) and the United Nations (UN). Yet, for the
most part, they remain more symbolic than effective, and the system is
crying out for thorough reform.
This edited volume seeks to contribute to the policy and academic dis-
course on the reform of the multilateral system by unpacking the role
of cities and their networks in global and regional governance, spelling
out the policy implications, and making recommendations on how cit-
ies could gain greater global leverage beyond symbolism. In particular,
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it addresses the tensions and complementarity between two evolving
pathways for bringing urban interests and expertise to the global stage.
On the one hand is the long-standing ambition of the international
municipalism movement to reform the UN system. On the other is the
enhancement of new forms of global urban governance operating out-
side the traditional multilateral system, which may be depicted as an
inchoate form of multistakeholderism.
The first part of the monograph sets out the opportunities and lim-
itations of cities’ political agency within the current global order and
its primary normative framework: international law. Simon Curtis
posits that global cities, as we know them today, are the product of a
historically specific form of liberal order, underpinned by a particular
configuration of geopolitical power. They are also intrinsically linked
to a distinct era of globalisation. The future of cities (and their global
political agency) will thus be formed at the intersection of the deep-lying
structural transformative trends playing out in the broader international
system in which they are embedded. The author analyses them through
three dimensions: globalisation, global governance and geopolitics.
While COVID-19 will not transform cities permanently, it will accelerate
some of the trends already in place.
For cities to gain greater leverage within the global governance system,
its legal structures, institutions and norms need to be rewired. As Marta
Galceran-Vercher shows, this root and branch reform has been on the
agenda of the international municipalism since its inception. Two very
specific proposals are on the table: getting permanent observer status
before the UN General Assembly and institutionalising a mechanism
for a permanent and structured dialogue between cities and national
governments within the UN system: the World Assembly of Local and
Regional Governments (WALRG). While on paper these initiatives seem
like a remarkable step forward, their real efficacy in helping cities move
beyond mere symbolism is questioned. Significant challenges still lie
ahead, notably with regards to the WALRG’s level of representativity and
the role city networks should play in it.
The third part of the monograph explores alternative pathways for cities
to engage in global politics to those currently available under intergov-
ernmental multilateralism. Eva Garcia-Chueca and Lorena Zárate
critically appraise the virtues and limits of multistakeholderism as a more
inclusive global governance framework, particularly focusing on who
benefits from this model and who loses out or is excluded. This is exam-
ined through the analysis of the involvement of the Global Platform for
INTRODUCTION
15
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the Right to the City and United Cities and Local Governments in the
Habitat III summit. While this landmark event provided an opportunity
for civil society and local governments to participate in the intergovern-
mental process, it also revealed important shortcomings and inequalities.
To ensure that all voices are heard, multistakeholderism should be built
from below through horizontal dialogues (ecology of knowledges) in
which all stakeholders are treated on the same footing.
Along similar lines, Anna Kosovac and Daniel Pejic explore how new
forms of city diplomacy interact with evolving conceptions of multis-
takeholderism. Drawing on survey data from 47 cities from around the
world and a case study on the city of Amsterdam, the authors show that
it is now standard practice for local authorities to engage in partnerships
with philanthropies, universities and the private sector to access resourc-
es, knowledge and expertise. These alliances may be producing new
forms of global urban governance operating both within and outside
the traditional multilateral system.
Starting with a brief overview of the channels available to cities for associ-
ating with multilateral bodies, in Europe and at the global level, this article
aims to ascertain the extent to which they are managing to move beyond
mere rhetoric and to shape the international political agenda. In the last
few decades cities have focused on attaining recognition and visibility at
the symbolic level. Yet, the pressing challenges they face demand that they
should move towards result-driven action in order to bring about mea-
surable improvements in the policies and solutions they are promoting in
their local communities. In its analysis of the wide range of traditional and
multistakeholder platforms available to cities for intervening in the inter-
national arena, the article draws attention to some of the challenges that
might arise in terms of relevance, legitimacy, and accountability.
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II. Cities and the EU: an institutionalised but diffuse
connection
For decades now, European cities have been trying to influence policies
pursued by the European Union (EU). Mainly through the Structural and
Cohesion Funds, but also through other financial programmes, the EU
International has been increasing its presence in the local sphere, situating itself behind
agreements have an the main urban infrastructure projects, the most advanced development
increasingly direct strategies, and the most transformative innovations. An agenda seeking to
strengthen the urban dimension of European policies has gradually been
impact on local realities
taking shape. It is constructed on the basis of intergovernmental agree-
and determine many of ments that make up the present European urban acquis, with the Leipzig
the policies promoted Charter on Sustainable European Cities1 (2007) and the Pact of Amsterdam
by city governments. (2016), through which the Urban Agenda for the EU2 is adopted, as its
most notable components.
Having an influence
in these agreements However, although some progress has been made, there is still a long
cannot and should not way to go before the EU places urban challenges at the heart of its polit-
be seen as an option ical agenda. The weight of cities is still relatively slight, especially when
compared with other actors like regions. Nevertheless, they do have
but as part of the
well-defined mechanisms for channelling their contributions. The European
responsibility of local Committee of the Regions3 (CoR) offers cities and regions an institution-
leaders. alised channel to make their voice heard. Besides this consultative body,
cities also use informal channels through which they manage a dense and
dynamic network of institutional and professional relations that give rise to
effective collaborative links.
1. See https://ec.europa.eu/regio- It is undeniable that the Committee can place issues on the agenda and
nal_policy/archive/themes/urban/
leipzig_charter.pdf
that it has the legitimacy to be involved in the definition of policies present-
2. See https://ec.europa.eu/info/eu-regio- ed by the EU in certain areas that have repercussions at regional or local
nal-and-urban-development/topics/ level. But it is also true that cities are increasingly opting to channel their
cities-and-urban-development/urban-
aspirations through their own networks or by establishing direct links with
agenda-eu_en
3. See https://cor.europa.eu/en European institutions. On certain occasions, the European Commission even
4. See https://www.covenantofmayors. sidelines the Committee when establishing forums for dialogue with cities,
eu/ for example the EU Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy4 or the Policy
5. See https://europa.eu/capacity4dev/
Forum on Development5.
policy-forum-development
6. See https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/
recovery-plan-europe_en Access to post-COVID-19 recovery and resilience funds launched by
7. See: https://eurocities.eu/ the EU through the Next Generation EU6 package provides a very good
wp-content/uploads/2020/10/202010-
Letter-from-European-Mayors-on-
example of this. In a letter7 sent in November 2020 to the presidents
the-EU%E2%80%99s-Recovery-and- of the Parliament, the Commission, and the Council, the mayors of
Resilience-Facility.pdf some of the larger European cities demanded that 10% of the total
Another good example is the mention of the right to the city as a shared
ideal of the New Urban Agenda (section 11). This is an achievement
resulting from the negotiating efforts of many actors—local govern-
ment, civil society, academia—whose inclusion in the Agenda had met
with stiff resistance from the national governments. However, the text
approved in Quito does not display the concept in all its complexity—as
it is cited only once and in isolation—but presents it with a significant
lack of internal coherence. If the idea of the right to the city recognis-
es the social function of the city, this is not expressed in a text that is
clearly guided by the logic of sustainable economic growth (Fernández
de Losada and Garcia-Chueca, 2018; Garcia-Chueca and Zárate in this
volume).
The link with global agendas has also served cities to mark out political
13. See https://sdgs.un.org/2030agenda positions in the national sphere. In the United States, for example, the
14. See https://unfccc.int/process-and- commitment of the main cities to the climate agenda set out in the Paris
meetings/the-paris-agreement/ Agreement14 on climate change and the migratory agenda stemming
the-paris-agreement
15. See https://www.un.org/en/conf/
from the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration15 has
migration/global-compact-for-safe- led to confrontation with the Trump administration. The paradox is that
orderly-regular-migration.shtml cities have based their opposition to the decisions of the federal govern-
Cities are not immune to this reality and, in parallel with their contin-
ued efforts to associate with or influence the UN and the European
16. See https://citiesforhousing.org/
Union, they are also approaching these new areas of power. In this
17. Including the 2030 Agenda for
regard, it should be asked whether their ability to influence this new less Sustainable Development, the New
institutionalised reality is greater than what they have shown in the tradi- Urban Agenda, the Addis Ababa
tional forums or whether, on the contrary, they are still restrained by the Action Agenda on Financing for
Development, the Paris Agreement
unchanging leverage of national governments and other stakeholders on Climate Change and the Sendai
like transnational corporations, which have gained considerable muscle Framework for Disaster Risk
with regard to the international agenda. Reduction.
This is a clear indication of the interest the urban domain has awak-
ened among the most influential global economic operators like the
World Economic Forum. Similar interest has been shown by the world’s
leading philanthropic institutions, including Bloomberg Philanthropies,
the Rockefeller and Ford foundations, and Open Society, which are
supporting some of the platforms with the greatest presence in the
global urban ecosystem. Indeed, platforms like the C40, the Resilient
Cities Network21, and the Mayors Migration Council22 approach city
interests by building global multi-stakeholder alliances with key actors
in the private sector, knowledge based institutions, and national and
international agencies. These partnerships enable them to access
knowledge, innovation, and funds and increase their capacity to set
the agenda.
The analysis carried out in the present text shows that cities have
achieved recognition in the international scene which nobody disputes
anymore. This may happen within the framework of traditional multilat-
eralism with a status which, varying in accordance with the institutional
context, keeps them situated on the margins of the system; or it could
be in the context of the new multilateralism, where they operate in
keeping with a multi-stakeholder scheme together with other actors,
both governmental and private, with considerable capacity for mobilising
resources and knowledge.
In times of crisis and emergency like the present, when citizens are
calling for effective solutions, cities must be able to present mea-
surable results deriving from their efforts to have an influence in 23. See https://www.metropolis.org/
international agendas. Symbolism and rhetoric have played their part 24. See https://iclei.org/
References
Curtis, S., Mayer, M. “Belt and Road Cities Begin to Find Their Form”.
CIDOB opinion, 01.07.2020 (online), 630 [Accessed on 12.12.2020]:
https://www.cidob.org/en/publications/publication_series/opinion/2020/
belt_and_road_cities_begin_to_find_their_form
Simon Curtis
Ian Klaus
Elif Durmuş
25
GLOBAL CITIES, WORLD ORDER AND POST-PANDEMIC
FUTURES
Simon Curtis
Senior Lecturer in International Relations,
University of East Anglia and Senior Fellow on Global Cities
at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs
T
he long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the develop-
ment of the world’s cities is not yet known. But as with previous
outbreaks of disease throughout history, it will be felt in the ways
infrastructure and urban planners adapt to the spread of the disease. Just
as the cholera outbreaks of the 19th century accelerated moves to sewerage
systems and new sanitation infrastructure and practices in cities, so the leg-
acy of this 21st century pandemic will reshape urban form. Already we are
seeing varied responses: in some cities transportation is being remodelled
by the rapid implementation of new cycling networks; in others existing
agendas are being brought forward, such as Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s
“15-minute city”, where all the goods and services people need are placed
within walking distance of their homes; urban greening trends have
accelerated (e.g. Boston’s “Big Dig”); existing shifts towards surveillance
technologies and the use of big data in cities have been extended; central
business districts have emptied in response to needs to physically distance
(placing question marks over their viability in the long term); and new local
community solidarity initiatives have emerged in response to the collective
challenges the pandemic poses (Safi, 2020).
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ments in cities that were already visible before the pandemic struck, such
as the implementation of digital technologies in the creation of “smart
cities”, the emerging tensions between major cities and the states in which
they are embedded, and prompting reflection on how to make cities more
socially just and environmentally sustainable.
COVID-19 will not At the same time, cities, states and societies have all had to adapt and
transform cities change in relation to the specific challenges the virus presents. COVID-19
permanently on its has paused the frenetic onward surge of urban life and given a chance
to reflect on broad trends. But while the virus alone is not enough to fully
own. Instead, its
recast the shape and direction of cities, it may be woven through and
short-term effects entwined with these trends, with its influence making certain futures more
will interact with probable and others less so. The future of global cities, their interplay and
deep-lying structural engagement with other powerful entities like states and international
organisations and broader geo-political, geo-economic and ecological forc-
transformative trends
es already posed pressing and open questions before the pandemic hit.
that are already playing
themselves out in our In this short discussion of these major transformative trends I make
cities, and in the wider use of the concept of the “global city” to denote a historically specific
urban form: a form that may be subject to transformation. The sociol-
international system
ogist Saskia Sassen (1991) introduced this concept to the discussion
in which cities are on urban change to describe a distinctive form of city whose features,
embedded. morphology and webs of global connectivity emerged in the late-1970s
in response to the restructuring of the global economy following the
collapse of the post-World War II Bretton Woods system. Global cities
are urban forms that are intrinsically and inseparably linked to the spe-
cific era of globalisation that followed from this economic restructuring.
Global cities were a product of the regulatory environment created at
this time (with its emphasis on free market exchange, privatisation,
deregulation and financialisation) and were shaped by the global flows
of deregulated capital that it set loose. They became its material expres-
sion (in the generation of new urban forms and infrastructures) and
came to shape the development and direction of globalisation itself.
But in these origins lies a further crucial point that is often missed by
many urban theorists. The global city has been made possible by a
particular configuration of geopolitics. Global cities are the product of
a historically specific form of liberal world order, underpinned by a his-
torically specific configuration of geopolitical power (Ikenberry, 2011).
Under the hegemony of the United States, a liberal, open trading order
has been fostered over the past four decades, underwritten by US
military power in the last resort, but providing a secure and stable envi-
ronment in which cities could begin to play important roles on the world
stage, firstly as economic actors and sites of economic power and, more
recently, as political players (Curtis, 2016). It is only in this stable global
environment that cities, long stripped of their military or defensive capa-
bilities, could begin to find their niche and to evolve.
However, even when such existential threats are real, the very fact of the
existence of global cities – novel urban forms not seen before in the histor-
ical record – has opened up new possibilities in the international system.
Global cities have original features, new capacities and capabilities and
a new weight on the world stage that have altered the nature of world
politics and global governance and offer novel possibilities, pathways and
futures for the evolution of international society. And this is necessary,
because in a world of transnational challenges, including global pandemics,
but also the climate emergency and the crises of global capitalism, cities’
capacities to help with global challenges via their globe-spanning networks,
leadership and agenda-setting capabilities, are going to be necessary. This
is a world in which states have struggled to deal with such challenges.
That makes cities acting together on the world stage a critical governance
resource – and one that needs to be better understood and defended.
In the space of this short essay I want to examine the intersection of three
dimensions of the transformation of cities before concluding with some
thoughts on what is at stake in the future evolution of global cities in a
post-pandemic world. These dimensions are: globalisation, global gover-
nance and geopolitics.
I. Globalisation
Globalisation produced global cities. But it has become apparent in the last
decade or so that globalisation has brought many problems in its wake and
that its future is unclear. Because global cities are products of the forces
that unleashed contemporary globalisation, especially in their reliance on
deregulated markets and global capital flows, they also exhibit, in their
very morphology and form, many of the tensions and contradictions of
globalisation (Curtis, 2019a). They become strategic sites where the more
abstract forces underpinning globalism reveal themselves in concrete form.
They focus and amplify systemic tensions. We have seen this in the way
social movements protesting globalisation choose global cities as their sites
of protest and resistance – the anti-globalisation protests of the 1990s and
early 2000s, and the Occupy movements of the post-2008 financial crisis
and austerity decade, for example.
SIMON CURTIS
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They also demonstrate these tensions in their very materiality: in the co-ex-
istence of poverty and great wealth within the same neighbourhoods,
or in the sprawling slums and informal settlements of developing world
cities, such as Sao Paulo or Delhi, which nestle close by the gated commu-
nities of the super-rich (Davis, 2006; Graham, 2016). Global expressions
of the “right to the city” movement have come into being, as urban
Cities and their citizens everywhere protest against the ways the inequalities of free mar-
leadership are able to ket, finance capital-led globalisation have been materialised in cities, and
exercise a new form demand more democratic control over how urban space is allocated and
used (Harvey, 2012).
of power on the world
stage: the ability to But it is not just the left that has problems with the orientation of global-
convene networks of isation. Now, with years of austerity beginning to bite, global cities, with
various actors. their cosmopolitan and open orientation, with their diverse populations
and multiple forms of identity, culture and belonging, have started to
come into conflict with the rise of nationalist and nativist feeling brought
by globalisation’s attendant uncertainties and destabilisation of tradition.
A divide has begun to emerge between global cities and the heartlands
of the territorial nation-states in which they formed. We have seen this in
voting patterns around Brexit and the election of US President Trump: a
clear preference in metropolitan areas for remain in the case of Brexit, and
for Democrat in the case of the US election in 2016. We have seen it in the
tensions between the Trump administration and US cities over Sanctuary
Cities and the rights and protections they afford migrants. We have seen it
in disagreements over the implementation of the Paris Agreement (Trump
repudiates it, while global city mayors say they will implement it). Recently,
we have seen it in debates about law and order in liberal US cities in the
wake of the Black Lives Matter protests.
But now these cities have begun to seek power beyond the economic
sphere. The primary mechanism for exercising new political powers has
been unexpected, perhaps, but also fully in line with the ways global cities The decline of US
have evolved economically – via globe-spanning networks, connected by hegemony has been
digital information technology infrastructures. There has been a surge in mirrored by the rise
the growth of functional political networks connecting cities around the
of Chinese power
world. Today there are between 250–300 organised associations of cities
globally – the vast majority of which have been formed in the last three and influence in
decades – covering issues such as climate, security, health, resilience and the last decade. As
many others (Acuto, 2016; Fernández de Losada, 2019). Such transnation- China exerts more
al municipal networks (TMNs) are conduits for cities to exert influence on
influence and seeks to
global agendas, development goals and international norms (including the
evolution of international law) (Blank, 2006). They offer new forms of gov- reshape the nature of
ernance that act in parallel to that pursued by traditional state diplomacy, international society,
giving cities a new presence among the constellation of global governance we should expect this
actors, helping both to shape and implement the agenda of the United
to be reflected in the
Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, the New Urban Agenda and the
Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, for example. nature of urban space.
But, more than this, some of the most powerful TMNs have even begun
to develop their own agendas, regardless of the direction of states. The
C40, for example, a group of almost 100 of the world’s most powerful cit-
ies, embraced a “global green new deal” agenda in 2019, committing its
members to develop policies to achieve the Paris climate goals of limiting
global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and halving emissions
by 2030 (Curtis, 2019b). Such decisions are far from negligible: C40 mem-
bers encompass a twelfth of the world’s population, their economic power
represents a quarter of the global economy, and they are the key strategic
sites in which the climate emergency will have to be tackled.
However, the question arises once more: how will states accommodate
the rise of this new form of agency? Will they embrace the novel gover-
nance capacities emerging within cities and work with cities to empower
them to help solve global governance challenges such as climate change
and health issues? This would enable international society to move
beyond the roadblocks and impasses built into its structure, where com-
petitive state sovereignty has led to the repeated failure to deal with
these challenges. Or will states seek to supress these emerging forms of
agency and city diplomatic activity? Already we see signs of this – in the
SIMON CURTIS
31
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clashes between US cities and the Trump administration mentioned ear-
lier and in moves by Russia to resist the encroachment of city activities
onto the territory of state sovereignty (Acuto, 2017).
III. Geopolitics
The post-pandemic
future for global cities Indeed, the pandemic has accelerated recent trends towards the return
faces two forks in of the state. States have had to step in to underwrite economies in ways
that exceed even the 2008 financial crisis, using their sovereign power
the road. The first
to keep stalled societies afloat and roll out national health responses.
is a choice between Everywhere the neoliberal illusion of the small state is beginning to be
a cosmopolitan, burned away by the harsh light of the pandemic. The return of the state
interconnected to the centre of economic decision-making joins the trends towards
populist nationalism and authoritarian states that were already gaining
internationalism and an
momentum. The international environment is quickly shifting, and the
international system of climate that made liberal globalisation and the global city possible is
renewed state control. beginning to darken. The emerging forms of multi-stakeholder global
The second is between governance described above may not be able to survive in a less hospita-
ble climate, as the liberal world order begins to decay.
an increasingly crisis-
wracked form of The decline of US hegemony has been mirrored by the rise of Chinese
capitalist city. power and influence in the last decade. As China exerts more influence
and seeks to reshape the nature of international society, we should
expect this to be reflected in the nature of urban space. Just as global
cities are a reflection of, and intrinsically connected to, US liberal hege-
mony, so the very different values China espouses will materialise in
the tight connection between geopolitics and urbanisation. Since 2013
China has been engaged in a vast project of infrastructure construction
and urban development across Afro-Eurasia, both within and beyond its
borders. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), as this multi-faceted policy
is named, is nothing less than an attempt to instantiate a Chinese-led
form of globalisation. Drawing, so far, around 70 countries into its orbit
of influence, the BRI incorporates twothirds of the world’s population,
has a projected $1.5 trillion price-tag, and incorporates six land and
maritime economic corridors (Maçães, 2018). Belt and Road cities have
yet to find their form, but the early signs are that they will be shaped
by a number of trends drawn from Chinese developmental models:
emphasising the spatial form of the transnational economic corridor and
smart surveillance technologies applied to cities, as seen in Shenzhen,
Hangzhou and Shanghai within China, and beyond in the models of
Bonifacio Global City, Manila and the “smart city” of Astana (Curtis and
Mayer, 2020).
Such cities and urban corridors will likely eventually project political and
economic principles and preferences that are very different to the open,
liberal trading order in which global cities have thrived. Indeed, the cur-
rent travails of Hong Kong are emblematic of the fault lines where two
possible world orders grind against each other: the open, networked
trading city of recent decades and the emerging Belt and Road system
of tomorrow.
What possible futures are emerging at this juncture? They are multiple
and complex, but as a useful simplifying sketch two distinct pathways
are appearing along two contrasting political fault-lines.
The first is a choice between greater state control over cities and continued
autonomy and independence for cities and their transnational networks.
As we have seen, certain states find the devolved model cities have carved
out for themselves in world affairs hard to accept, as well as their increas-
ing economic and political weight, and may seek to rein this trend in. But,
at the same time, global cities have begun to offer a new capacity for
governing global challenges – something the world needs given states’
failures on issues such as the climate emergency. At the same time, many
global cities also have a level of democratic legitimacy that challenges the
sovereign prerogatives of states: many urban citizens are beginning to
invest their identity and loyalty in the city and its leadership. Not only do
such cities often have vast and diverse populations that fit uneasily within
the nation-state framework, they also offer a unique form of multi-scalar
local-to-global reach missing in moribund national politics today. This is
very visible in the current pandemic, where top-down statist responses
that marginalise local expertise and knowledge, such as in Britain, have
performed poorly. Perhaps a useful middle way would be a renewed part-
nership between states and cities where states recognise the capacities and
capabilities of cities and their globe-spanning networks as a resource and
collaborate to empower them to meet global challenges.
The second choice of path emerges from the increasingly strident calls
for greater social justice, equity and ecological sensitivity embodied
under the “right to the city” that oppose the defence and intensification
of the neoliberal hyper-financialised form of the global city, with its vast
wealth disparities and contrasts in life experiences. Even before the pan-
demic this contrast was increasingly on the political agenda, exacerbated
by over a decade of austerity policies and held in place by an increasingly
authoritarian form of neoliberal capitalism, augmented by trends such
as surveillance technologies and the secession of urban elites into gated
communities and fortified spaces. The pandemic has merely clarified
this picture: those with wealth and private resources have retreated into
well-connected home offices, while those without have been left to cope
as best they can.
SIMON CURTIS
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The post-pandemic future for global cities faces two forks in the road.
The first is a choice between a cosmopolitan, interconnected internation-
alism and an international system of renewed state control. The second is
between an increasingly crisis-wracked form of capitalist city and moves to
build alternative urban forms with greater balance, social justice and equity.
The pandemic will not transform cities by itself: it offers a political opportu-
nity that groups with different visions of future cities are trying to grasp.
References
Acuto, M. Give cities a seat at the top table. Nature 537 (7622) 611–13,
2016
Curtis, S. and M. Mayer, Belt and Road cities begin to find their form.
CIDOB Opinion 630, 2020 (online). [Accessed on 20.11.2020]: https://
www.cidob.org/en/publications/publication_series/opinion/2020/belt_
and_road_cities_begin_to_find_their_form
Harvey, D. Rebel cities: from the right to the city to the urban revolution
New York: Verso, 2012.
Safi, M. “Coronavirus will reshape our cities: just don’t know how yet”,
The Guardian. 22 May 2020.
SIMON CURTIS
35
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THE TABLE WOBBLES: CITIES AND A FALTERING MULTILA-
TERAL ORDER
Ian Klaus
Senior Fellow, Chicago Council on Global Affairs
F
or years, cities have been improving both their capacity to address
global challenges and their knowledge of the political and eco-
nomic forces that create such challenges. This effort has been
well-funded by major philanthropies, private corporations, national
governments and even cities themselves. Operating simultaneously on
a number of scales – city, nation-state, regional and global – this cam-
paign has at times appeared shambolic. It has no single leader, hub or
strategy, but is spread across a host of networks, non-governmental
organisations and stakeholder groups. Nonetheless, over the last decade
urban stakeholders have increasingly refined their messaging, goals and
diplomatic practices: mayor-driven reports now rival those of policy and
research institutions in quality; city summits advance with the pomp of
party conferences and the polite rigour of diplomatic negotiations; and
partnerships are forged between urban-stakeholder groups and well-re-
spected governments, companies and international organisations. To be
sure, this campaign has facilitated policy exchange, enabling cities to set
ambitious goals and take practical steps around climate change, eco-
nomic inequality and governance practices. While doing so, it has also
sought to elevate urban voices on global issues, to highlight urban solu-
tions to global challenges and to establish a role for urban stakeholders
in global agenda setting.
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As part of this diverse effort at policy implementation, knowledge build-
ing and global organising, the panoply of urban stakeholders – from
elected mayors to civil society representatives – have been campaigning
for a city seat at the international table. In 2016, in advance of Habitat
III, the Global Task Force issued a political statement and ten recommen-
dations that if put into practice would form a new global governance
Cities have been model by, among other measures, raising the volume of local voices
improving both their (GTF, 2016). The “Seat at the Table” statement was supported by more
capacity to address than 500 mayors and was an especially visible moment in a campaign
that has taken on diverse shapes and platforms: cities and city networks
global challenges and
have assumed semi-formal roles translating research and findings from
their knowledge of the international organisations into urban-focused material; urbanists and
political and economic associated experts have advised the UN Secretary-General on organis-
forces that create such ing around urban issues; and networks and platforms have continued
to lobby international organisations for both more attention to urban
challenges.
issues and the reform of existing institutions to reflect the unique gov-
erning status of mayors. But sometimes a restaurant changes before
your turn on the waiting list. In other words, while scholars, commen-
tators and advocates of global urban politics have maintained a keen
focus on international organisations and the UN in particular, the covet-
ed table has been growing ever shakier before their eyes. And nowhere
is this clearer than on the global development agenda.
The “together” of which the president spoke hopefully was a big tent.
But, amid shifts in national and geopolitics and global crises such as
climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic, where does this agenda
sit today? Some have exited to the right, some to the left, but while five
years later the poles of that tent remain in place, it’s no longer exact-
ly clear who remains inside. The most obvious shift in support for the
agenda has come in the form of renunciations from governments which,
playing to and encouraging nationalist revivals, have targeted the agree-
IAN KLAUS
39
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ments and the wider multilateral framework around everything from
climate change to trade as attacks on sovereignty. In 2017, the United
States announced its intention to leave the Paris Agreement, with the
official departure coming in October 2020. In 2018, Brazil announced it
would abandon its commitment to host COP25 the following year. Both
decisions were couched in nationalist terms: Pittsburgh over Paris, and
While scholars, all that. María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, President of the 73rd Session
commentators and of the UN General Assembly observed that critics of the agenda and
advocates of global multilateralism more widely, “peddle an insular vision of nationalism to
score political points with domestic constituencies. They point to some
urban politics have
unspecified time in the past, when things were supposedly better”
maintained a keen (Garcés, 2019). Nationalist revivals need not, by definition, undermine
focus on international progress on the global agenda. Narratives that enable progress on
organisations and the climate change and development can and have been couched in nation-
alist or realist terms, as Anatol Lieven has recently argued (Lieven, 2020).
UN in particular, the
If resurgent nationalism is here to stay, such a framing will be necessary.
coveted table has been
growing ever shakier But the nationalist, often populist, often authoritarian, turn in multilateral
before their eyes. diplomacy and international organisations is just one of the developments
that has challenged the agenda’s viability. The stability of the agen-
da has come under pressure from other slightly unexpected sources:
developments in climate science, economics and social policy that have
noted the need to strengthen the agenda’s ambition and goals. The
most notable example here occurred in 2018 with the publication of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Special Report on Global
Warming of 1.5oC (SR1.5). The report detailed the dramatic differences in
outcomes in everything from biodiversity to health and poverty between a
world of 2.0°C warming over pre-industrial levels and one of 1.5°C. While
Article 2.1.(a) of the Paris Agreement is certainly consistent with SR1.5’s
finding, the international community was shocked by the differences in
impact between the two levels. This was not a departure from Paris, rath-
er an affirmation of its most ambitious goals. Nonetheless, it also means
implicitly that the higher-end numbers of the Paris Agreement are not suit-
ably ambitious to meet the climate crisis.
IAN KLAUS
41
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And yet, in suggesting reform of the SDGs, Naidoo, Fisher and the wider
Nature editorial team opened up a healthy discussion of the fixation on
growth. Meanwhile, the “C40 Mayors’ Agenda for a Green and Just
Recovery” puts environmental and economic justice front and centre in a
way that might not have been possible in 2015. This heightened atten-
tion to economic inequalities is coupled with continuing attention to the
But hewing less closely need to strengthen multilevel cooperation and governance practices: “As
to the agenda, using mayors” the report notes, “together with our staff and residents, we are
the goals as guides already building a green and just recovery. We call on national and regional
governments, central banks and international financial institutions to join
rather than metrics, or
us”. While not especially new, the importance of such coordination has
choosing to prioritise been brought home in cities across the world as they’ve struggled with
a few goals is a the vast majority of identified COVID-19 cases without always receiving
privilege that is more support from national governments and international organisations. Just as
the multilevel governance conversation has continued, it is likely discussion
easily exercised by
around inequality will only grow, whether it be focused around justice or
stakeholders, including emerging agendas built around the global commons.
local governments.
Finally, many close UN-watchers still see the agenda as an essential
political and policy tool, but one that cannot be delivered upon without
notable reform of governance practices. If the SDGs are at risk, so too
is the multilateral system that developed and marketed them, which
now has a leadership role in implementing and tracking them. “The
prospect of more intense and frequent future crises of global scope, like
the COVID-19 pandemic or the onset of dangerous climate change”,
Revi wrote (2020), “could lead many contemporary institutions that
are not fit-for-purpose to become irrelevant or be swept away by the
storm-tides of history”. The fix, according to Revi, and many others
working with local authorities, must be structural: “There is a strong
case for national Governments and the United Nations system to consid-
er a time-bound transition to a greater institutional voice and agency for
local and regional governments. This is just, rational and in the mutual
interest of citizens and all levels of government” (Revi, 2020). Such
voice and agency, authors like Revi and organisations like the Urban
20 noted this year, would have to be supported by a strengthening of
the financial capacity of local authorities (Birch et al., 2020). In prac-
tice, this position adopts many of the same policy prescriptions as
those advanced by the city networks and others focused on multilevel
governance and financial innovation, but with an additional rhetorical
dimension: it calls out the threat not only to cities and nation-states, but
indeed to the wider post-WWII international architecture, should such
evolution not occur.
Local authorities have taken significant steps toward delivering upon the
Paris Agreement and the SDGs, but multistakeholder approaches, resil-
ient though they are, benefit from support from national capitals and are
unlikely to be able to fully fill a gap left by the abdication of important
member states. The agreements that compose the wider agenda were
signed, after all, by nation-states and undoubtedly prioritise nation-states
as the key actors for delivering upon them. The litany of policy failures
that enabled the global financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the associat-
ed euro crisis have imparted a simple, enduring lesson: legitimacy, hard
enough to maintain, is even more difficult to gain. If the agenda’s legit-
imacy or relevance is lost so soon after it was conceived, who will put
their confidence in the next one or the system that backed it?
Birch, E, Mauricio Rodas and Ian Klaus, “Financing Cities’ Recovery from
Covid-19 and Preparing for Future Shocks,” October 2020 (online).
[Accessed 3 October 2020]: https://www.urban20riyadh.org/sites/default/
files/2020-10/Financing%20Cities%27%20Recovery%20from%20Covid-
19%20and%20Preparing%20for%20Future%20Shock_22102020.pdf
C40, “C40 Mayors’ Agenda for a Green and Just Recovery,” June 2020
(online). [Accessed 15 November 2020]:
https://c40.my.salesforce.com/sfc/p/#36000001Enhz/a/1Q000000kVoY/
kuR1PLHMGR2K9eEbo8aivV.xPegZVTqwt.EjX.4a.hk
Garcés, M., “The United Nations in the Age of Nationalism: Making The
UN Relevant To All: Statement by H.E. Mrs. María Fernanda Espinosa
Garcés, President of the 73rd Session of the UN General Assembly,”
April 2019 (online). [Accessed 10 September 2020]: https://www.un.org/
pga/73/2019/04/16/the-united-nations-in-the-age-of-nationalism-mak-
ing-the-un-relevant-to-all/
GTF - Global Task Force, “A Seat at the Table,” October 2016 (online).
[Accessed 22 November 2020]: https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/
files/a_seat_at_the_global_table.pdf
Lieven, A., Climate Change and the Nation State: The Realist Case. New
York: Oxford University Press, 2020.
Moyn, S., The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2012.
IAN KLAUS
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http://www.oecd.org/coronavirus/policy-responses/cities-policy-respons-
es-fd1053ff/
Watts, M., “Climate science tells us the 1.5°C is likely to become the
most important number in human history,” (online). [Accessed 20
November 2020]
https://www.c40knowledgehub.org/s/article/Climate-science-tells-us-
that-1-5-C-is-likely-to-become-the-most-important-number-in-human-
history?language=en_US
Elif Durmuş
PhD Researcher, Utrecht University – Cities of Refuge Project
I
nternational law is seen by many practitioners, as well as by conser-
vative legal scholars, as a strictly inter-state endeavour. Symbolically
associated with the Treaty of Westphalia, this may have been true
for many centuries. But since – at the latest – the Reparations for Injuries
Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice recognised the legal
personality of the United Nations as the first non-state entity, this strict
state-centricity has ceased to reflect the state of affairs. Instead, today’s
reality of global governance and its primary normative framework – inter-
national law – is messy, pluralist, multistakeholder, uses soft governance
tools rather than hard and binding law, and bridges public–private divides.
In fact, arguably, states were never monolithic, unified rational actors
conducting international law and governance, but were, in fact, when
scrutinised through a socio-legal lens, an amalgamation of influence from
elements within and without the state apparatus, such as diplomats,
networks, bureaucrats, faith organisations, political groups, other levels
of governments and more (Berman, 2007). International law worked to
reduce such influences to stricter imagined categories such as “subjects”
and “objects” for the purpose of creating a solid, dependable, as well
as binding legal framework with chances of enforcement. This “subject-
hood” or international legal personality is the primary concept in positive
international law distinguishing actors from non-actors. Now, however,
even the most positivist1 of international lawyers are confronted with the
pluralisation of actors without established legal personality engaging in
practices traditionally reserved for states. There is, additionally, a growing
preference for norms designed to govern international behaviour to be
soft, non-binding and created through multistakeholder governance pro-
1. Legal positivism refers to the stand-
cesses rather than binding treaties signed by states only. Non-state actors, point that lawyers ought to be
starting with international organisations like the United Nations, but later interested only in what law is and
also encompassing individuals, NGOs, transnational corporations and not what it should be. According to
legal positivists, what law is can be
armed groups, have been gradually accepted by international lawyers to be
determined conclusively by looking
participants and to possess legal significance in international law (Gal-Or et at whether it was issued by the
al., 2015). The pluralisation of actors and the softening of the norms creat- relevant authority. “Soft law” and
ed corresponds to a move from multilateralism – referring to an inter-state any actors excluded from official
law-making capacity should be dis-
governance system – towards multistakeholderism – referring to a system regarded as non-law and non-actors,
of norm generation and governance that involves many actors relevant to a as giving them a quasi-legal value
subject matter, which is the premise of this volume. might threaten the legal system.
45
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In this world, cities and their transnational city networks (TCNs) have
been engaging with increasing resonance, competence and rigour in the
governance of (and norm generation on) issues that would traditionally
be considered within the jurisdiction of the state. Our previous research
(Durmuş and Oomen, forthcoming) focussing on the field of migration
has found that this engagement of cities with matters of global gover-
“Subjecthood” or nance, including by mobilising international law, can be generally divided
international legal into two types of engagement, namely: (a) seeking a seat in traditionally
personality is the state-centric processes; and (b) creating city-centric (or local-centric, to
be more inclusive of non-urban localities) fora to engage collectively with
primary concept in
international law and global governance. The two types of engagement
positive international are complemented by cities’ engagement with international law in govern-
law distinguishing ing their own locality. For some, the question then becomes: Is any of this
actors from non-actors. city engagement relevant for international law? What are the prospects for
achieving recognition of cities’ activities and space for their engagement in
Now, however, even
formal international legal frameworks? This piece argues that international
the most positivist of law, even as it currently stands, can be observed both conservatively and
international lawyers more progressively. The progressive perspective recognises – often through
are confronted with the the support of interdisciplinary research – the de facto engagement and
even influence of local governments on international law. This piece also
pluralisation of actors
argues that even if observed through a conservative legal positivist lens,
without established the engagement of local governments with international law is likely to
legal personality be increasingly relevant to the developments in the content and practice
engaging in practices of international law. This is true regardless of whether it takes a long
time for any formal change of status to occur – if it occurs at all. If cities,
traditionally reserved
collectively, are seeking formal recognition of their role and status in inter-
for states. national law, they are on exactly the right path, both in seeking a seat at
the table in state-centric processes and in organising and convening with
their peers to engage in international law and governance matters with-
out reservations and concerns about whether or not they are “permitted”
by international law to do so (as “subjects” or holders of international
legal personality). The recognition of new players in the game, whether
by progressive or more conservative observers or by existing players, does
not come about by such permission but by a retroactive recognition of
accumulated evidence showing a new de facto reality. I will now seek to
explicate this by first reflecting on what the conservative and more plural-
ist perspectives concerning actors in international law are and how they
have changed, followed by a reflection on the current state of affairs with
regard to cities’ engagement with international law. Finally, I will sum-
marise some suggestions for practitioners representing the municipalist
movement in global governance.
ELIF DURMUŞ
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tions binding their respective states (HRC, 2015: para.1). When it comes
to law-making in international law (one of the capacities of international
legal persons), one could argue that customary international law, which
is built by accumulated state practice accompanied by a belief that the
practice constitutes law, could offer a narrow entry point for local gov-
ernments, where local governments contribute to its development as a
If cities are seeking state organ (Durmuş, 2020). Otherwise, positive international law has
formal recognition offered no place to local governments in their autonomous, non-state
of their role in capacity.
international law, they
Parallel to this pluralisation of actors, the last decades have also
are on the right path, witnessed a decline in the usage of the formal sources of interna-
both in seeking a seat tional law codified in the ICJ Statute (Art 38(1)) – treaties, customary
at the table with states international law and general principles of law – and an increased
preference for non-binding commitments and guidelines, so-called
and in organising in
“soft law”. Many fewer treaties are now concluded between states
their own fora. than in the 1990s, while non-binding norms such as the UN Guiding
Principles on Business and Human Rights and the Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs) attract more interest, advocacy and
mobilisation from the international community. The usage of such
forms of soft law also allows the international community to circum-
vent the question of who exactly is a formal subject of international
law with the capacity to conclude treaties, and instead focus on sim-
ply reaching as wide a societal consensus as possible. The new norms
made this way are often not binding and have little (or no) justiciabil-
ity (ability to be enforced by courts). This in no way means that soft
law is ineffective, however, as international law depends on actors to
enforce it in the absence of a central enforcer. If soft law created in
multistakeholder processes with broad consensus enjoys more popu-
larity and wider mobilisation (like the SDGs) while states perpetually
turn away from binding law, the power of soft law should not be
underestimated.
Yet, the positivist vision is not the only way to see international law.
Some pluralist scholars have long recognised the power of actors and
types of norms not contemplated by “official” international law. Legal
pluralists, especially representatives of the “New” New Haven School
of International Law (Koh, 2007) have been exploring the notion of
“bottom-up international law-making” (Levit, 2007) by “norm-gener-
ating communities” (Berman, 2007) constantly proposing, negotiating
and contesting different imaginations of the law with different levels of
persuasive power and authority. Norms are created, interpreted, chal-
lenged and enforced – travelling, as they change, between different
international actors and governance levels – within a constant multi-di-
rectional process (Berman, 2007; Durmu ş , 2020). These scholars,
following the original New Haven scholars of the Cold War era, argue
that law’s power comes not only from coercion and enforcement capac-
ity, but above all from persuasion by the actors who advocate for them,
including by those within the state. Through the interactions with other
members of the international community, the advocates of a certain
norm may successfully change what other actors consider to be in
their best interests and in those of the international community. While
positive international law may remain reluctant and conservative, this
pluralist lens is very helpful in understanding how global governance
functions today.
Cities and their transnational city networks have been engaging with
international law and issues of global governance with increasing
intensity for at least three decades. While local governments in this
engagement demonstrate qualities of both non-state and sub-state
actors (Nijman, 2016; Durmuş, 2020), most relevant for the purposes The International Court
of this piece is to focus on the activities of local governments that are of Justice showed in
somewhat autonomous and comparable to the engagement of non- 1948 that if a new
state actors, since these are activities that go unrecognised by, and
actor in international
challenge, formal international law. Here, our previous research in the
field of migration and human rights has shown a multiplicity of ways in law had functions
which local governments engage with international law. which required a
degree of autonomy,
and this was accepted
Engaging with international law in their own local governance
by other actors such
Firstly, local governments can engage with international law in their own as states, a degree
localities regardless of whether they are also seeking to engage in the of functional legal
global governance of these issues. Symbolic ratification of international
personality would
treaties and the adoption of international soft law instruments into local
governance are good examples for this engagement. Instances from emerge for this actor.
practice include San Francisco and other US cities symbolically ratifying
the Convention on the Elimination of All Kinds of Discrimination Against
Women (CEDAW) while the United States has not (Davis, 2016), the city
of Graz creating a local implementation plan for the local realisation of
the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), and the
widespread practice of referring to the Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs) in local law and policymaking. When the United States withdrew
from the Paris Climate Agreement, many cities pledged to continue to
comply with the international treaty, demonstrating that the “state” is
not monolithic. While this engagement certainly constitutes a contesta-
tion of what formal international law considers permissible and by which
actors, this practice alone is not considered direct engagement in global
governance by this author and thus will not be discussed extensively.
Such activity concerns the governance of the locality the local govern-
ment represents, and does not necessitate interaction, negotiation and
deliberation with other international actors. Of course, such practices
often do not stand alone. They may be linked to activities such as report-
ing progress on adopted international norms to monitoring bodies,
which include interactions with international actors and would therefore
fit within the categories below.
ELIF DURMUŞ
49
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es to local governments in total). Local governments gathered in parallel
to government representatives for the Global Compact for Migration
in Marrakech in December 2018, demonstrating their eagerness both
to take part in state-centric processes and gather amongst themselves,
even if not “permitted” to join the states. Also worth mentioning are
local governments’ efforts to secure formal recognition within the
A legal pluralist United Nations system, including but not limited to the conferences and
perspective on proceedings of UN-Habitat. Some municipalist victories in these regards
international law include the recognition of the International Union of Local Authorities
as a consultative entity before ECOSOC in 1948, the inclusion in 1992
argues that law’s
of local governments as a Major Group to be consulted in the UN espe-
power lies not only cially within the climate regime (Garcia-Chueca, 2020), the creation of
in coercion but the UN Advisory Council for Local Authorities (UNACLA) in 1999, and
persuasion, and that local governments acquiring accreditation at the United Nations to
participate in UN proceedings (unless their national governments reject
actors big and small,
to it in time) (Durmuş and Oomen, forthcoming: 7). Recently, in June
even unrecognised, 2019, the UN Human Rights Council for the first time organised a con-
can influence what sultative meeting on the role of local governments in human rights that
others consider invited TCNs such as UCLG to the Council’s headquarters in Geneva.
By the same token, cities such as New York have gone as far as report-
“good” for themselves
ing to the United Nations on their progress in implementing the Paris
and the international Climate Agreement and the SDGs locally through the Voluntary Local
community. Reviews, as if they were required to do so by the normative mechanisms
(Javorsky, 2018).
The final conclusion of this piece is that, whether cities have higher legal
status or official recognition in their agenda or not, they have been tak-
ing exactly the right steps to influence the development of international
law and to be included in global governance processes. A pluralist lens
reveals what legalists may not see, namely that local governments are
part and parcel of the patchwork of international law and governance,
as some of the most enthusiastic internationalist actors taking the initia-
tive and showing the motivation we now miss amongst states. If cities
seek official legal recognition, the activities they engage in, particularly
seeking inclusion in state-centric processes, are exactly the criteria rec-
ognised by the international community in determining who is an actor 3. Participant observation by the
and who is not. However, these processes are often frustrating for cities author at the WHCRF, October
and their networks and require energy that might be deemed dispro- 2018, Gwangju.
ELIF DURMUŞ
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portionate to the scant space and voice they gain from it. Therefore, in
order to continue demonstrating their full potential, fluency and com-
petence in international law and global governance, cities and TCNs
should continue investing in their own local-centric fora and their local
engagement with international law. These combined efforts are bound
to gain more and more recognition from all actors in the field, and local
governments – just like other non-state actors who now enjoy a more
established legal status – could reach the recognition, power and influ-
ence they seek and deserve.
References
Aust, H. P. “Shining Cities on the Hill? The Global City, Climate Change,
and International Law” European Journal of International Law 26(1),
2015, pp. 255–278.
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EMPOWERING CITIES IN A
REFORMED MULTILATERAL
SYSTEM
Marta Galceran-Vercher
Andrea Noferini
55
THE ROLE OF CITIES IN A REFORMED UN: TOWARDS THE
INSTITUTIONALISATION OF THE WORLD ASSEMBLY OF
LOCAL AND REGIONAL GOVERNMENTS
Marta Galceran-Vercher
Part-time Lecturer in International Relations, Pompeu Fabra University
T
he United Nations (UN) marked its 75th anniversary at a time
when the coronavirus pandemic and other global crises were
underscoring the fragility of multilateralism as the guiding
principle of global governance. The Secretary-General acknowledged
a few months ago that in the 21st century we cannot continue to
accept a dysfunctional global governance system made exclusively by
and for national governments. António Guterres proposed moving
towards “a networked multilateralism” built in collaboration with civil
society, the private sector and local governments. It would be a mul-
tilateralism based on “[s]hared values, shared responsibility, shared
sovereignty, shared progress”.1 In this context, the organisations that
make up “international municipalism” eagerly joined the UN75 global
conversation and put forward bold demands for greater recognition.
These claims and aspirations are nothing new. In fact, reforming the
multilateral system to make it more encompassing and permeable to
cities’ interest has been on the agenda of international municipal-
ism since its inception. As far back as 1920 the International Union
of Local Authorities (IULA), predecessor of United Cities and Local
Governments (UCLG), sought permanent participation in the League
of Nations (LON) (Gaspari, 2002). The demands met little success and
both the LON and its successor, the UN, ended up structuring a frag-
mented relationship with cities’ representative bodies that is similar to
its treatment of civil society.
Admittedly, there has been some progress in the past three decades
to formalise the role of local governments in global governance
structures, especially within the UN system (Garcia-Chueca, 2020).
An important milestone in this regard was the recognition in 1992
of local governments as one of the Major Groups that should be
involved in implementing global sustainability agendas. Another 1. Press conference by Secretary-
significant landmark was the second United Nations Conference on General António Guterres at the
Human Settlements (Habitat II) in 1996, which was attended by more United Nations Headquarters,
June 25 th 2020. Available online:
than 500 mayors and municipal leaders who managed to participate https://www.un.org/press/en/2020/
in the deliberations. More relevantly, during Habitat II local govern- sgsm20142.doc.htm [Accessed: 20
ments associations for the first time convened the World Assembly September 2020].
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of Cities and Local Authorities (WACLA), which served as a formal
mechanism for providing input to the Habitat II negotiations.
Hence, the main global city networks continue to call for “a seat at
the global table” (Salmerón Escobar, 2016), which would involve a
structural shift in how the UN and its members relate to local govern-
ments. Certain concrete proposals exist for remodelling the system
in this direction, such as upgrading the current consultative status
with ECOSOC to permanent observer status before the UN General
Assembly; the creation of a new agency that would give more visibil-
ity to cities and urban issues within the UN (something like UN-Cities
or UN-Urban); and the establishment of subsidiary bodies of consul-
tative nature with some UN agencies, which could be inspired by the
European Committee of the Regions. To be sure, some have more
potential than others, and the current context of UN reform could
help accelerate such changes. In order to understand them further,
the remainder of the chapter provides an overview of some of the
current mechanisms and limitations of cities’ participation within the
UN system, focusing on the institutionalisation of a World Assembly
of Local and Regional Governments (WALRG), and discusses the chal-
lenges that lie ahead.
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I. From consultative status with ECOSOC to per-
manent observer at the UN General Assembly
MARTA GALCERAN-VERCHER
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II. The need to speak with a single voice
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2013 and was, in turn, instrumental in relaunching the World Assembly
of Local and Regional Governments in 2016.
In sum, there has been some progress and promising initiatives have
materialised in recent years aimed at reforming the UN to make it more
inclusive towards local governments. Also, research has shown that at
least at the discursive level, the acknowledgement of cities as decisive
actors has improved in most UN frameworks (Kosovac et al., 2020). Still, 5. G e n e r a l A s s e m b l y re s o l u t i o n
there is a long way to go and the challenges ahead are significant, par- 71/256. New Urban Agenda.
Resolution adopted by the General
ticularly with regards to translating a strictly nominal and rather symbolic Assembly on 23 December 2016, A/
recognition into effective and tangible influence in global governance RES/71/256, paragraph 169, page
outputs. 29.
MARTA GALCERAN-VERCHER
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To start with, prospects for obtaining permanent observer status with
the General Assembly do not look bright, despite this being one of the
core demands local authorities have once again brought to the fore
over the course of the UN75 consultations. Also, it remains to be seen
whether such status would bring any substantial change, as at the end
of the day, voting power would remain with member states. The con-
Institutionalising the solidation of the World Assembly of Local and Regional Governments
WALRG would require is surely a remarkable step forward, and its acknowledgement in the
rethinking its current New Urban Agenda should be cherished. However, the WALRG has yet
to obtain recognition by UN agencies other than UN-Habitat, let alone
governance scheme,
adquiring formal UN status before the General Assembly. Until that time
especially its level of arrives, its declarations will remain non-binding and therefore more sym-
representativity and bolic than effective. Further, institutionalising the WALRG would require
the role played by city rethinking its current governance scheme, especially its level of represen-
tativity and the role played by city networks.
networks.
As has been argued, the competing and overcrowded ecosystem of city
networks makes it hard for local governments to speak with a single
voice. Yet, it is not only a matter of having too many organisations all
claiming to be the most effective and legitimate advocate of local gov-
ernments. Instead, the issue of representativeness is profoundly rooted
in the very nature of the category of “local and regional governments”
itself. Indeed, the urban voice is not and will never be a homogeneous
one, but rather diverse and rich in nuances. The interests and challenges
of large metropolitan areas have little in common with those of small
and medium-sized cities. Aspirations to build a single shared agenda
that fits all shapes and sizes can therefore appear unworkable. Cities
and regions belong to different levels of jurisdiction, and a single assem-
bly could never hope to represent them both satisfactorily. The European
Committee of the Regions suffers from this very structural flaw. Perhaps
a bicameral system of representation could be a way forward in achiev-
ing greater levels of representativity and relevance.
Last but not least, perhaps it is time to decouple the debate on the role
of cities in global governance from the debate on how to improve their
recognition within the UN. For one thing, the number of “global tables”
THE ROLE OF CITIES IN A REFORMED UN: TOWARDS THE INSTITUTIONALISATION OF THE WORLD ASSEMBLY OF
62 LOCAL AND REGIONAL GOVERNMENTS
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at which local governments must aim to exert influence has multiplied
and the UN no longer remains the sole body in charge of global gov-
ernance. This calls for city networks to diversify their efforts in order to
make cities’ voices as necessary in spaces like the G20 as they are in any
intergovernmental process sponsored by the UN. The consolidation of
the Urban 20 initiative attests to this trend. But the pathway for cities
within a system made by and for national governments may always Perhaps it is time to
be limiting and shortsighted. Local governments should not pursue decouple the debate
recognition for the sake of recognition, but ought to aspire to create on the role of cities
global impact instead. And if this cannot be attained within the system
in global governance
they strive to reform, other pathways without the UN may need to be
explored. from the debate on
how to improve their
recognition within the
References UN.
Abdullah, H. and Garcia-Chueca, E. “Cacophony or Complementarity?
The Expanding Ecosystem of City Networks Under Scrutiny”, in: Amiri, S.
and Sevin, E. (eds.) City Diplomacy: Current Trends and Future Prospects.
London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.
MARTA GALCERAN-VERCHER
63
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Salmerón Escobar, F. Un lugar en la mesa global: Los gobiernos locales
como tomadores de decisiones en la agenda mundial. Mexico City:
Proyecto AL-LAS, 2016.
THE ROLE OF CITIES IN A REFORMED UN: TOWARDS THE INSTITUTIONALISATION OF THE WORLD ASSEMBLY OF
64 LOCAL AND REGIONAL GOVERNMENTS
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IS SOMETHING BETTER THAN NOTHING? MULTI-LEVEL
GOVERNANCE AND THE EUROPEAN COMMITTEE OF THE
REGIONS IN EU POLICYMAKING
Andrea Noferini
Adjunct Professor, Department of Political Science,
Universitat Pompeu Fabra and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
I
n a globalised, polycentric, fragmented and increasingly uncertain
world, many voices are calling for a radical change in the governance
models of development policies. New, urgent problems – COVID-19,
climate change, digitalisation, growing inequalities – invite a paradigm
shift in collective decision-making models. Increasingly, “from govern-
ment to governance” is the slogan used to express this change. On
the one hand, it underlines the inadequacy of traditional centralised
public decision-making models and, on the other, the openness of poli-
cymaking to actors who were until now largely absent from the various
national, European and international political arenas.
In this context, it seems that local and regional authorities (LRAs)1 are
gaining ground on central governments, which have always been the
centre of political power and undisputed rulers of public decisions. The
2030 Agenda recalls, for example, that localisation – the involvement of
LRAs in the implementation of the SDGs – is fundamental to achieving
its goals and that cities and territories must be able to maintain certain
autonomy to define and implement public policies on a local scale.
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regions have access to – and a degree of supervisory power over – the
legislative process in such a complex political structure as the EU.
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itor progress”. 2 Basically, localisation recognises local development
as an endogenous and spatially integrated phenomenon, conferring
primary responsibility for its planning, management and financing on
LRAs.
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In both cases, formal representation spaces are limited. When LRAs have
the opportunity to meet with their central governments to discuss EU
affairs, they usually prefer to activate their rights through the formal
member state structures rather than beyond them. In the end, most
LRAs – particularly sub-state entities – collaborate with central state
authorities rather than bypassing them (Tatham, 2008). In some cases,
Pioneering however, the weakness of formal domestic channels of representation
contributions on MLG has contributed to the development of alternative models including
revealed that the informal “going it alone” and “variable geometry” strategies aimed at
circumventing central governments’ gatekeeper positions.
presence of LRAs in EU
policymaking was a At the supranational level, legislative powers are framed within the EU’s
novel phenomenon of classical “institutional triangle”, which includes the three main institu-
a potentially innovative tions: the Commission as the agenda-setter and the two “legislative
chambers” represented by the Council and the European Council. If we
nature in the context
exclude the role of the European Committee of the Regions (CoR; see
of EU policy, polity and next paragraph), LRA access to the three institutions is constrained and
politics. usually occurs via lobby activities performed, respectively, by individual
LRAs, national associations of LRAs and international networks of LRAs
(such as the Council of European Municipalities and Regions, CEMR; the
Conference of Peripheral and Maritime Regions, CPMR; Eurocities; and
Metropolis, to name just a few).
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and allow them to increase their awareness of local political issues and
debates that would otherwise remain too distant. Since 2005, for exam-
ple, the URBAN Intergroup at the European Parliament has acted as a
cross-party, cross-committee group with a horizontal approach to dis-
cussing urban issues. By bringing together over 89 MEPs representing all
the political groups at the EP it collaborates with 143 partners from the
local, regional, national and European levels that represent the interests Whether the CoR
of Europe’s towns and cities or who work in the relevant field of urban can be considered
development. the Union’s third
representative
III . The European Committee of the Regions chamber or not is
still up for debate.
The third question regards the CoR’s role and the extent to which the Nonetheless, given
youngest of the EU’s constitutional organs can adequately frame LRA
the representative
representation in EU policymaking (Christiansen, 1996; Hönnige and
Panke, 2015; Heinelt, 2017). Established by the Maastricht Treaty in and political mandate
1992, the CoR is composed of 329 locally and regionally elected rep- of its members, to
resentatives from all member states who are organised into political consider the CoR
groups. Although LRAs and their associations can propose candidates,
a merely technical,
in almost all member states, central governments formally decide on
the list of candidates for the CoR. Candidates’ profiles therefore vary consultative assembly
depending on the relative powers LRAs possess domestically to get their would probably be to
preferred candidates approved by their national governments. underestimate its real
influence within EU
Moreover, the domestic administrative and territorial distribution of
powers in each EU member state varies and central governments find policymaking.
different ways to privilege (or inhibit) local or regional representation.
Member states with a strong regional tier of government (Austria,
Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Spain) send very few representatives
from the municipal level to the CoR. Germany, for example, reserves
only five of its 24 seats on the CoR for local government representa-
tives. By contrast, all CoR members from Bulgaria, Estonia, Cyprus,
Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta and Slovenia are from the
municipal level because no “meso-regional” government exists in these
member states between the municipal and national levels (Heinelt and
Bertrana , 2012). As a consequence of this, representation in the CoR is
highly fragmented and – more importantly – larger and influential cities
have insufficient presence.
As the “voice” of regions and cities in the EU, the role and the func-
tioning of the CoR are laid down in articles 300 and 305–307 of the
Treaty on the Functioning of the EU (TFEU). Since the entry into force
of the 2007 Treaty of Lisbon – granting the CoR legal status before the
CJEU for actions for annulment under Article 263 of the TFEU – the CoR
has strengthened its position, being regarded, along with national par-
liaments, as the guardian of the principle of subsidiarity. The fact that,
until now, the CoR has never defended its own prerogatives before the
CJEU should not decrease the value of the instrument itself, as it still rep-
resents a strong deterrent to EU institutions neglecting the subsidiarity
principle in EU law making.
ANDREA NOFERINI
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posal. Consultative functions are fulfilled in various ways, one the
most important elements being the opinions adopted at the plenary
meetings. Beside this, however, the CoR also performs many com-
plementary activities, such as specific collaborations with LRAs and
networks of LRAs and the organisation of events, conferences and
meetings in Brussels with local stakeholders. Formally, the CoR is
Considering the lack involved in the law-making process by forming mandatory, request-
of a legal basis in ed and own-initiative opinions. Consulting the CoR is mandatory for
the EU treaties and both the Council and the Commission before deciding on matters
that concern local and regional issues, such as economic, social and
the heterogeneity
territorial cohesion, education, culture, public health, trans-European
of cities and regions transport, telecommunications and energy networks. On other topics
in Europe, a single the CoR might be requested to issue an opinion if the Commission or
cohesive, shared and the Council think it is necessary. Finally, the CoR may also take the ini-
tiative and issue an opinion when regional interests are involved.
agreed model of LRA
representation at EU On average, the CoR adopts between 60 and 70 opinions per year
level is hard to imagine. (Schönlau, 2017). Although the CoR’s opinions are not binding, when
it issues own-initiative opinions EU institutions – particularly the
Commission – tend to seriously consider them. Neskhova concludes,
for example, that the European Commission acts in accordance with
the preferences of the CoR 45.5% of the time (Neskhova, 2010).
Regarding own-initiative opinions, Hönnige and Panke (2015) recog-
nise that the committee’s role improves when opinions are delivered
quickly to the members of the European Parliament and the staff of
the permanent representations. It is therefore crucial that the CoR
submit its opinion quickly, as a delayed opinion could be less influ-
ential in the decision-making processes within the two legislative
institutions.
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70 OF THE REGIONS IN EU POLICYMAKING
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determined essentially by national governments – represents a typical EU
compromise (Piattoni and Schönlau, 2015). Indeed, this formula was very
attractive for the supranational institutions, since it had the advantage of
adding legitimacy at the EU level without creating potential for obstruct-
ing the decision-making process.
it is hard to assess
Conclusions whether the CoR
will contribute to
Europe has many different types of LRA: there are municipalities,
inspiring a process of
provinces, counties, sub-state federated units and regions. Capital
regions and metropolitan areas cohabit with rural municipalities, institutional reform
peripheral areas and small and medium-sized towns. At the regional within the United
level, sub-state entities vary from democratically elected and economi- Nations or other
cally endowed regional governments to deconcentrated administrative
international agencies.
units with executive tasks and scarce autonomy (Hooghe et al., 2016).
Considering the lack of a legal basis in the EU treaties and the het- Nonetheless it would
erogeneity of cities and regions in Europe, a single cohesive, shared be surely unwise and
and agreed model of LRA representation at EU level is hard to imagine imprudent not to study
(Heinelt, 2017). However, spurred by the deepening of the process of
this option.
European integration and of decentralisation processes, a constant
increase of the role of LRAs in EU policymaking can be observed.
This is based on the recognition by the EU institutions that LRAs can
improve the effectiveness and the legitimacy of European public pol-
icies.
Since the CoR was established LRAs have had access to the formal are-
nas of the EU’s legislative process. The heterogeneity of its members
and the way CoR representatives are selected by member states weak-
en the potential for more incisive and cohesive action as, more often
than not, opinions are taken at the level of the minimum common
denominator. Moreover, the fact that the largest and most influential
cities are not fully represented in the CoR has increased the search for
alternative routes, particularly city networks (Fernandez de Losada,
2020). Despite its consultative character and the non-binding nature
of its opinions, the CoR has been able to position itself on highly
salient issues with territorial impact that are of interest to LRAs.
ANDREA NOFERINI
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References
IS SOMETHING BETTER THAN NOTHING? MULTI-LEVEL GOVERNANCE AND THE EUROPEAN COMMITTEE
72 OF THE REGIONS IN EU POLICYMAKING
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Piattoni, S. The theory of multi-level governance: conceptual, empirical,
and normative challenges. Oxford University Press, 2010.
ANDREA NOFERINI
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MULTISTAKEHOLDERISM
AND OTHER FORMS OF GLOBAL
URBAN AGENCY
75
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POLITICS: CIVIL SOCIETY AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT
ALLIANCES IN HABITAT III*
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With these elements as a backdrop, it might be said that traditional mul-
tilateralism is in crisis, as Ian Klaus’s text in this volume also shows. Aware
of this, the United Nations (UN) has, for some years now, been discussing
how to bring about possible reforms. It even devoted its 75th anniversary
celebrations in September 2020 to promoting international debates that
would help to define a strategy for action (Bargués, 2020). In this regard,
The structures of global there are now several discussions on the need to shift from multilater-
governance have been al global governance to a model of multi-stakeholder governance that
designed by and for would make international relations more plural by recognising the voices
and roles of other actors with growing influence in international affairs.
nation states, giving
rise to the multilateral But what exactly does this mean? And, above all, what would be the
frameworks that have implications of introducing multi-stakeholder governance? It is often
been dominating argued that the multi-stakeholder factor constitutes a more inclusive
framework of global governance making it possible to circumvent the
international relations
intrinsic limitations of traditional, eminently state-centric multilateral-
since the Second World ism by facilitating the coordination of state and non-state stakeholders
War. and their joint action in tackling global challenges (Cogburn, 2006).
It is also said that it is an approach that allows a more pragmatic re-
sponse to problems because it enables collaboration between stake-
holders with different standpoints and interests in the quest for and
development of solutions.
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Multistakeholderism is not, therefore, a guarantee per se of greater and
better inclusion. This will depend on the stakeholders that are participat-
ing (or that can participate), in the power relations existing among them,
and also on the availability of appropriate mechanisms for incorporating
traditionally excluded voices. The key lies in mobilising different kinds of
knowledges and resources from below to the detriment of technocratic
approaches which, privileged by the rhetoric of pragmatism, ultimately It is often argued that
contribute towards depoliticising global politics and weakening a public the multi-stakeholder
sphere which—not because it is global—should then be less democratic factor constitutes
and transparent. Multi-stakeholder governance must also have mecha-
a more inclusive
nisms of responsibility, accountability, and transparency (Gleckman, 2018).
framework of global
governance making it
II. An ecology of knowledges to decolonise inter- possible to circumvent
national relations the intrinsic limitations
In keeping with these concerns, we suggest that multi-stakeholder gov- of traditional,
ernance should be interpreted from the standpoint of the “ecology of eminently state-
knowledges” (Santos, 2009) as a mechanism for endowing it with greater centric multilateralism
scope and legitimacy. From this perspective, we aim to fill one of the most
by facilitating the
important gaps in the existing literature on multi-stakeholder governance
(Scholte, 2020) which has mainly focused on carrying out descriptive anal- coordination of
ysis of how and why multi-stakeholder initiatives emerge, how they func- state and non-state
tion, and how and why they have a certain impact on policies. However, stakeholders and their
few studies consider whether the results of multi-stakeholder governance
joint action in tackling
are just. In other words, insufficient attention has been given to identify-
ing who benefits and who is left out. global challenges.
In the quest for greater legitimacy and distributive justice, it is also neces-
sary to take into consideration the fact that, generally speaking, interna-
tional relations actively reproduce hierarchical schemes of colonial origin.
This is a discipline theorised by European, American and, to a lesser ex-
tent, Australian intellectuals who have constructed a field of knowledge
that has been devoted to studying matters of interest from their own
cultural perspectives (the inter-state system, hegemonies between coun-
tries, global economic policy) while, at the same time, remaining silent
about international power structures created by themselves by way of
schemes of imperial domination that situated the territories and peoples
of colonies in a situation of inferiority and subordination (Jones, 2006).
Accordingly, international relations are rooted in the exclusion of certain
countries and groups, so it is not hard to imagine that multi-stakeholder
governance arising from this unequal environment reproduces the same
problem. However, present worldwide reflections about governance could
be an opportunity for moving towards a necessary decolonisation of inter-
national relations if inclusion on an equal footing of historically silenced
actors is guaranteed.
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Partnerships between civil society and city governments were not new
phenomena either. They had been forming intermittently but steadily
since the first expressions of the World Social Forum (WSF), after 2000.
The “municipalist” section of the WSF was constituted over about a de-
cade by the Forum of Local Authorities for Social Inclusion and Participato-
ry Democracy (FLA), the most significant space for international dialogue
between organised civil society and local governments. The combined Global politics,
efforts that made the two spaces of WSF and FLA possible also laid dominated by state-
the foundations for the appearance of proposals that have had a long centrist standpoints,
political history in terms of international narratives calling for solidarity,
often bureaucratised
democratic participation, inclusion, and human rights. Especially nota-
ble in this regard are the World Charter for the Right to the City (2004)3 and subject to
and the Global Charter-Agenda for Human Rights in the City (2011).4 geopolitical interests,
has the chance
These precedents prepared the ground for the fact that, in 2015, two
to become more
prominent expressions of organised civil society and international mu-
nicipalism, the GPR2C and UCLG respectively (heirs of the processes humanised by means
5
of multi-stakeholder dialogue linked to the WSF and the FLA ), joined of processes of
forces with the shared aim of influencing the future urban agenda. Al- collective construction
though the United Nations environment was not new to either of the
arising from the
two platforms, gaining influence in a multilateral framework was no
easy task. Participation in the Major Groups allowed a certain amount participation of
of dialogue with the UN (a limited right to speak, as Galceran-Vercher stakeholders that
argues in this volume). But chances of having real influence were slight are traditionally
given the role of the diplomatic delegations of the member states, the
invisible in the more
only ones with the right to vote.
traditional dynamics of
In this situation UCLG and GPR2C joined forces and their partnership international relations.
not only had an impact on the outside—which is to say, reinforcing
their ability to have political influence in the process of Habitat III—but
there were also internal repercussions within their own organisations,
buttressing and nourishing some elements of their messages and pro-
posals. The right to the city was the catalyst for these synergies, both
outside and inside. In the case of the UN, it constituted a shared nar-
rative promoted by both platforms during the NUA negotiations with
a view to speaking out for the need for urban policies to be designed
to place people at the centre of political action. As for their own mem-
bership, it allowed reinforcement of certain strategic contents. For the
GPR2C, working with local governments meant expanding the impact
of its political proposals while also deepening its thinking about the 3. See https://www.right2city.org/
need to bolster local democracy and political decentralisation (or the wp-content/uploads/2019/09/
A1.1_Carta-Mundial-de-Derecho-
“rights of cities”). For UCLG, the connection with civil society brought a-la-Ciudad.pdf (in English, https://
legitimacy and underpinned the territorial and democratic approaches www.hlrn.org.in/documents/World_
that the organisation had advocated since its inception. Charter_on_the_Right_to_the_City.
htm).
4. See https://www.uclg-cisdp.org/es/
This simultaneous inside and outside situation also characterised the el-derecho-la-ciudad/carta-mundial
approach opted for in order to influence the process of defining the (in English, https://www.uclg-cisdp.
NUA, which combined 1) political influence in the working spaces and org/en/right-to-the-city/world-char-
ter-agenda).
official phases of the preparatory process of Habitat III, and 2) partic-
5. The Committee on Social Inclusion,
ipation in other urban forums and coordination with agencies of the Participatory Democracy and Human
UN system apart from UN-Habitat including, inter alia, the Office of the Rights, one of UCLG’s working
High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Food and Agriculture groups, has played a key role in this
process as it functioned as the con-
Organization (FAO). The strategies inside Habitat III involved working in nection between the FLA and the
a coordinated manner to influence the different drafting phases of the UCLG, and between UCLG and the
NUA over the eighteen months prior to the summit. This included being GPR2C.
Partnerships between Strategies outside the official process included consolidating already ex-
civil society and city isting spaces for political discussion between civil society and local gov-
governments were ernments, among them the Gwangju World Human Rights Cities Forum,
where several debates were concerned with the future NUA. These strat-
not new phenomena
egies even involved forging ad hoc alliances like the network of cities
either. They had been called “Cities for the Right to Housing and the Right to the City” whose
forming intermittently manifesto, based on specific commitments of cities regarding housing
but steadily since the and urban planning policies, detailed proposals that were relevant for
the political discussion at Habitat III.6 Meanwhile, during this period, the
first expressions of the
GPR2C and UCLG furthered the discussions they had been having prior
World Social Forum to Habitat III with several UN agencies that could be sympathetic to some
(WSF), after 2000. of their messages. Particularly noteworthy in this regard is collaboration
with the UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Adequate Housing, who
was promoting the campaign The Shift,7 in which the GPR2C and UCLG
actively participated, and also with the Office of the UN High Commis-
sioner for Human Rights which, shortly beforehand, had undertaken the
unprecedented task of studying the role of local governments in safe-
guarding human rights.8
The synergies created inside and outside of Habitat III, and with and
outside UN-Habitat, enabled gradual reinforcement of shared messag-
es between the GPR2C and UCLG. In brief, these revolved around the
need to consolidate five issues that are fundamental for urban policies:
1) the focus on human rights; 2) the territorial approach; 3) public
sector-community collaboration through processes of co-creation and
co-production; 4) greater local autonomy, not only political but also
financial; and 5) deepening of democracy. While the first three mat-
ters filtered into the negotiations and were incorporated into the New
Urban Agenda, the last two were met with outright rejection by sev-
eral national governments and were excluded from the adopted text.
Habitat III therefore provided a window of opportunity for a certain
degree of bottom-up multi-stakeholder governance, although this was
affected by significant structural limits which we shall describe in great-
er detail below.
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However, a qualitative analysis cannot escape a more critical reading. Both
participation in the various working spaces and phases of discussion, and
incorporation of proposals coming from outside the domain of nation
states faced major challenges. Asymmetry in the conditions of participa-
tion (in terms of access to resources, information, capacity for political
communication, and the need for a certain degree of professionalisation,
for example) did not favour horizontal dialogue among the stakehold- Habitat III therefore
ers. The multiplicity of in-person events and preparatory documents, most provided a window
of them available only in English, made active participation difficult for of opportunity for
traditionally excluded actors without the means to cover high transport
a certain degree
and translating costs. Moreover, the richness of the preparatory process
and the inputs collectively produced over more than a year were seriously of bottom-up
undermined when the diplomatic delegations of the member states took multi-stakeholder
over the debate. governance, although
this was affected by
Hence, in the months leading up to the summit there were significant set-
backs with several key contents of the drafts that had been produced hith- significant structural
erto (including the right to the city as a common good, inclusion of the limits.
rights of LGBT+ groups, furthering of processes of decentralisation, and
strengthening of democratic institutions and processes). Another major
problem in this framework was confirmation of the fact that, in numerous
instances, private sector interests were channelled by voices coming from
governments, and that many of their demands were directly incorporated
into the final version of the document. Meanwhile, it became clear that
the dynamics of negotiations among the member states made the discus-
sions more dependent on broad geopolitical balances than on different
specific standpoints regarding urban matters. Indeed, the diplomatic rep-
resentatives participating in the name of the member states in the various
spaces of negotiation often lacked knowledge of urban and housing is-
sues, which meant that the relevance and scope of some proposals were
not properly understood (Zárate, 2017).
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84 ALLIANCES IN HABITAT III
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from this if the necessary principles and norms are established to permit
their participation on an equal footing and with guarantees of horizontal
dialogue. Otherwise, multi-stakeholder governance can contribute, even
unintentionally, to legitimating private interests and giving them priority
because the actors representing them have greater capacity for political
influence.
References
Gleckman, H. “UN signs deal with Davos that threatens democratic prin-
ciples”, 3 July, Transnational Institute, 2019. Available at: https://www.tni.
org/en/article/un-signs-deal-with-davos-that-threatens-democratic-princi-
ples.
Anna Kosovac
Research Fellow, Connected Cities Lab, University of Melbourne
Daniel Pejic
Research Fellow, Connected Cities Lab, University of Melbourne
W
itnessing city leaders participate in major multilateral fora,
such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) or the Global Forum on Migration and Development
(GFMD), has provided a convincing visual representation of their
emerging role in global governance. Narratives of city engagement
and participation in the “international system” are now also being
correlated with systematic evidence of the way multilateral processes
are being reshaped, albeit timidly, to include urban actors as critical
partners in addressing the world’s most pressing global challenges.
For example, a recent analysis of United Nations (UN) frameworks
found that 80% of documents that referred to cities had been pub-
lished since the year 2000 and, of these, 85% characterised cities as
“actors” capable of influencing the achievement of collective global
goals (Kosovac et al., 2020a). Despite these trends, without radical
reform, cities are likely to be granted only marginal and consultative
positions in multilateral institutions, akin to other non-state actors.
These positions will not be representative of the importance of city
leadership in governing global challenges in a predominately urban
world. Accordingly, the diplomatic activities of cities have focused
not only on influencing traditional multilateral actors and processes,
but on developing alternative modes of global urban agency, wheth-
er through bilateral relations, city networking, or partnerships with
other international actors such as non-government organisations,
philanthropies and research organisations. This city diplomacy has
resulted in emerging forms of formal and informal “global urban
governance”, which are operating both within and outside what is
traditionally understood as the international system. Global urban
governance recognises that urban political agency involves interac-
tions with actors at the local, national, regional and international
levels. To understand 21st century global governance and its increas-
ingly urban dimensions we first must unpack this multiscalar reality.
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resource barriers, in terms of both finance and expertise). Hence,
they play to what the scholarship on modern urban governance tells
us are their key strengths – working in partnership and building coa-
litions of likeminded actors, often operating across political scales, in
order to advance the interests of their constituents (Beal and Pinson,
2014). In this way, the global agency of cities closely reflects the
Cities are likely to be principles of multistakeholder governance; however, mainstream
granted only marginal international relations has given limited consideration to how cities
and consultative fit into multistakeholder typologies (Raymond and DeNardis, 2015).
In this chapter we focus specifically on the way cities partner with
positions in multilateral
other non-state actors such as universities, philanthropies and the
institutions, akin to private sector to maximise the impact of city diplomacy and sup-
other non-state actors. port initiatives that build the capacities of global urban governance.
These positions will not Drawing on a recent survey of the diplomatic activity of 47 cities
around the world and a brief case study of Amsterdam, the chapter
be representative of
contends that if we seek to understand the governance of modern
the importance of city challenges through a multistakeholder lens, we need to focus on
leadership in governing city leaders and their interactions with academic, philanthropic and
global challenges in a business partners. Based on these trends, we also project forward to
provide some tentative predictions of how the future of global urban
predominately urban
governance may be shaped by these coalitions of actors and the
world. changes that may result from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Our results indicate that private actors and philanthropies have a major
role in the way cities conduct their international engagement activities
(Figure 1): 96% of those surveyed were part of at least one city net-
1. Please note that there are more work, while around half engage regularly with philanthropies (56%) and
responses than cities because two
cities responded twice. For the full
multilateral lending agencies (48%); 40% of respondents indicated that
list of participant cities, see Kosovac they partner with multinational companies as part of their international
et al., 2020. engagement.
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Figure 1: Findings from the survey “In the last 12 months, which of the
following organisations has your city engaged with?”
Multi-national Companies
International
Non-Governmental
Philanthropies
The global agency of
cities closely reflects
City Networks
the principles of
Multilateral Lending
Agencies multistakeholder
UN Agencies
governance;
(eg. Un Habiatat, WHO, however, mainstream
UNESCO)
international relations
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Percentage of cities that have engaged with entity has given limited
Source: Analysis of 47 cities by Connected Cities Laboratory consideration to
how cities fit into
multistakeholder
Funding constraints were identified as a key barrier to cities engaging in
typologies.
city diplomacy, with over 77% of surveyed city officials agreeing with the
statement “We would engage more in city diplomacy if we had more
funds exclusively allocated for this.”
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result, local authorities look to supporting agents, such as philanthro-
pies, universities and the private sector, for assistance in providing the
resourcing, knowledge and expertise they need to maximise the bene-
fits of their city diplomacy. Likewise, these organisations often look to
partner with city governments for access to data, expertise or the legal
authority/legitimacy to achieve their own urban objectives. These types
Local authorities look of partnerships are becoming essential to the semi-formalised architec-
to supporting agents, ture of global urban governance.
such as philanthropies,
universities and the
Philanthropic partnerships
private sector, for
assistance in providing Large philanthropic funders, particularly those based in the United
the resourcing, States, have had a highly visible impact on the ecosystem of transnation-
al city networking. To highlight a few well-known examples, the support
knowledge and
of the Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) and Bloomberg Philanthropies
expertise they need to for the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, and The Rockefeller
maximise the benefits Foundation for 100 Resilient Cities have been essential to the develop-
of their city diplomacy. ment of the capacities and prominence these networks have exhibited
globally. The Open Society Foundations (OSF) have been a critical cata-
lyst in the emergence of cities as transnational actors in migration policy,
supporting the mayoral summits on migrants and refugees that led to
the establishment of the Mayors Migration Council (MMC). Alongside
the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and United Cities
and Local Governments (UCLG), the MMC now co-steers a dedicated
“Mayors Mechanism”, which is one of the key pillars of input into the
multilateral Global Forum on Migration and Development. Naturally,
there are risks to an overreliance on philanthropic funding to underpin
the architecture of city diplomacy, as funding priorities can change. The
decision of the Rockefeller Foundation to stop funding the 100 Resilient
Cities Initiative, for example, demonstrates how even well-established
transnational networks are vulnerable to shifting philanthropic priorities.
WHAT’S NEXT? NEW FORMS OF CITY DIPLOMACY AND EMERGING GLOBAL URBAN GOVERNANCE
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tions, the mayors of Los Angeles, Milan and São Paulo committed their
cities to the GCM’s goals and became founding members of the Leadership
Board of the MMC. They have leveraged their positions on the MMC Board
to become prominent global advocates for the importance of city leader-
ship in global migration governance, including promoting commitment to
the GCM, Global Compact on Refugees and city-led initiatives such as the
Marrakech Mayors Declaration and the Call to Local Action on Migration. The multistakeholder
dimensions of city
diplomacy are clearly
University partnerships
exhibited in the case
While universities have not been significant primary funders of global of Amsterdam, where
urban initiatives, city governments nevertheless work with academic city officials consider
institutions as a gateway to international knowledge and partnerships, private companies,
as well as the expertise to translate and contextualise knowledge to
universities and civil
local or regional realities. For instance, many local authorities have part-
nered with universities to support their localisation of the Sustainable society organisations
Development Goals (SDGs). The Connected Cities Lab at the University as both partners and
of Melbourne has brought together ten local authorities from across key actors in driving
Asia–Pacific to work collaboratively on local projects aligned with the
their international
SDGs. This programme includes cities from diverse contexts such as
Malaysia, India, Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands. These partnerships engagement.
may be critical for cities of the Global South, where local authorities
have even more limited resources to engage internationally. In Africa,
for example, the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town
and the African Urban Research Initiative have been crucial in connecting
African cities with international urban initiatives.
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III. Collaborative urban governance and city
diplomacy in Amsterdam
WHAT’S NEXT? NEW FORMS OF CITY DIPLOMACY AND EMERGING GLOBAL URBAN GOVERNANCE
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traditionally fragmented (polder) (Schreuder, 2001). In line with a
neoliberal approach of increasing privatisation, the polder model was
developed in the 1980s and 1990s as a way of creating a collective
group of stakeholders to deliver a unified all-of-community approach
to societal policymaking. The neoliberal drivers of this form of col-
laborative governance in many ways reflect broader trends toward
urban entrepreneurialism, although the model has been shaped by
many uniquely Dutch factors. The Dutch political system has tradi-
tionally been fractured, with a large number of political parties vying
for power, resulting in no single political party being able to achieve
a majority in parliament. This has produced a culture of coalitions
and consultative decision-making, leading our interviewee to assert:
“We are a country of people of compromises” (city official, interview,
2019). This embedding of a negotiation-based culture underpins the
way Amsterdam engages internationally, presenting a multistakehold-
er model of city diplomacy that could be pursued by other cities.
Conclusion
In the case of universities, the pandemic and its impact on the inter-
national movement of students has placed unprecedented financial
strain on academic institutions in many countries. The budgetary
impacts of these challenges will persist for many years and have the
potential to affect investment in new globally focused initiatives and
partnerships. While universities have not been major direct funders of
global urban initiatives, their role as facilitators which connect local
governments to international knowledge and partners may also be
diminished. A similar observation could be made for private sector
actors, who are struggling through the worst economic conditions in
modern history. This will undoubtedly lead to a degree of centring on
core business to the detriment of more innovative and forward-think-
ing initiatives.
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Despite this, there are reasons to be optimistic regarding the role of cities
and urban initiatives in shaping global governance. To some extent, the
COVID-19 crisis has solidified the centrality of local authorities and their
partners in addressing global challenges. As highlighted by the Global
Resilient Cities Network (the next evolution of 100 Resilient Cities), cities
are on the “frontline” of COVID-19, with over 90% of cases occurring
in urban settlements (United Nations, 2020). City leaders have been
responsive and pragmatic in rising to meet the challenges of the virus
with a number of city networks quickly mobilising to share resources and
approaches to mitigating the impacts of the crisis. In some contexts, these
responses have been juxtaposed with sluggish national responses. The reli-
ance on new forms of digital connectivity, driven by the private sector, will
in some way reshape post-crisis transnational collaboration. This will hope-
fully create new opportunities for city diplomacy, which to date has been
hindered by limited travel budgets and a stigma toward city leaders who
travel too frequently. The future of global governance has perhaps never
been more uncertain, however what is certain is that the urban dimensions
of global governance have never mattered more.
References
Gordon, D. J. Cities on the World Stage: The Politics of Global Urban Cli-
mate Governance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. ISBN
9781107192331.
WHAT’S NEXT? NEW FORMS OF CITY DIPLOMACY AND EMERGING GLOBAL URBAN GOVERNANCE
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Raymond, M. and L. Denardis. “Multistakeholderism: anatomy of an
inchoate global institution”. International Theory, 7(3), 2015, 572–616.
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Cities have been advocating for a seat at the global table for decades. They are part and parcel
of the international system, yet they remain structurally powerless and virtually invisible under
international law. For local governments and their networks to gain greater leverage within the
current global and regional governance architecture, its legal structures, institutions and norms
need to be rewired. But, what principles and models underpin this reform agenda? Which specific
strategies and proposals are on the table? Are they yielding results?
In seeking answers to these questions, this volume discusses the opportunities and constraints
affecting cities’ political agency within the contemporary global order, while addressing the
tensions and complementarity between the two strategies for bringing urban concerns and
interests to the global stage. On the one hand, it examines the prospects of reforming the
current multilateral system, today in crisis. On the other, it analyses the promises and perils
of “multistakeholderism” as an alternative, seemingly more inclusive, governance framework.
Further, it delves into how city diplomacy is being reconfigured towards more innovative practices
that operate both within and outside the traditional multilateral system, encouraging urban
experimentation and new forms of public–private alliances.
This CIDOB monograph aims to contribute to the policy and academic discussion on the reform of
the multilateral system by unpacking the role of cities and their networks in global and regional
governance, spelling out the policy implications and making recommendations on how cities can
gain global leverage that extends beyond the merely symbolic.