Paradiplomacy and international projection of Brazilian cities: Crafting the concept of “local international management”

Abstract

Based on the broader context of “globalization as politics”, this paper adopts the following assumption: cities through their transnational cooperation networks and economic projects are the expression of a new political actor that has shifted its scale of operations, and have thus partly emancipated themselves from the monopoly of the nation-state in the deployment of transborder public action; thefore, they have challenged the Westphalian imaginary and the monopoly of the nation-state as “the” bounded political community with the capacity to frame and totally control a fixed and vertical national territory. In pursuance of developing this assumption, this paper approaches the discussion on municipal paradiplomacy in three parts: firstly, it presents the historical background and empirical reality of paradiplomacy in Brazil; secondly, it presents a series of critical questions for analyzing cities and their transnational networks within the soft borders approach; thirdly, it discusses the concept of “local international management”.