Para-diplomacy: Concept and the Context

Abstract

Globalisation and market reforms have made foreign policymaking a more inclusive and multilayered process. Para-diplomacy and emergence of empowered federating/component units engaging in international interaction call for recalibration of theories and understating of International Relations. The debate over central control versus unit autonomy raised the concern: whether para-diplomacy will turn out to be an asset or a threat for the sovereign state. While state may reap benefits of economic development, para-diplomacy may yet lead to regional imbalance, ethnic mobilisation and separatism. With the focus being shifted to Asia with respect to expanding market and sphere of influence, this article analyses the experience of para-diplomacy between India and China as well as of both with the USA. In doing so, reference is drawn to the past experiences of the West to understand how para-diplomacy took root and how is it practised in different contexts. Considering the economic, political and social implications of para-diplomatic practices in specific contexts, the article concludes with an attempt to find out the institutional space it may tread and the policy options it may hold out especially for India.

Integration in health: cooperation at triple international border Amazon

“…These types of agreement, although not legally recognized 19 , are common among international border municipalities, both in Brazil and in other countries 27 . Nowadays, this phenomenon, described as paradiplomacy, has been gaining prominence in the discussions of international relations and redefining the role of foreign relations in the world, mainly in the Americas, Western Europe and Asia 28 .…”

The Non-traditional Security Threat of COVID-19 in South Asia: An Analysis of the Indian and Chinese Leverage in Health Diplomacy

“…This could be interpreted as a reiteration of India's omnipresence in South Asia not only in regional but extra-regional and global scale. The cultural ties, track-two initiatives and twinning of cities of South Asia in para-diplomatic perspective (Chatterji & Saha, 2017) with China is a natural corollary to advent of globalisation, failing of Keynesian welfare model, 'Regulatory State' concerned with 'metagovernance' and delegating much to subnational units, which have wider latitude with respect to 'multi-scalar governance arrangement', often, across borders (Hameiri & Jones, 2013, p. 467). This has also placed interstate interaction away from the central corridors of power in more unconventional and issue-based parlance.…”

Debating the value of twinning in the United Kingdom: the need for a broader perspective

“…Key examples include the C40 cities initiative to tackle climate change, the United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) group and the Rockerfeller Foundation 100 Resilient Cities network. These and other experiments in city networking have been conceptualised as examples of ‘paradiplomacy’ (Kincaid 2002 ; Tavares 2016 ), a process by which the constituent units of a sovereign state are able to conduct their own diplomatic engagement with another state or its constituent units for the pursuit of their own interests (Chatterji and Saha 2017 ). The concept of ‘paradiplomacy’ aims to capture the zeitgeist and a great deal of the literature emerging from this perspective frames subnational diplomatic activity as something qualitatively new for the twenty-first century.…”

“…However, subnational diplomatic cooperation is by no means ‘new’ to the world of global politics and international society. Indeed, paradiplomacy is perhaps better understood as an outcrop, product or extension of earlier experiments in town twinning and sister-city partnerships (Cities Today 2014 ; Hansard 2014 ; Chatterji and Saha 2017 ). It merely marks the latest phase in the continual evolution of cross-border forms of cooperation.…”