*Originally published in 2022 and preserved as part of our archive project.Get E-International Relations delivered to your inbox, free of charge. As you sign up, consider becoming a paid subscriber to support our work.

For much of its existence, the discipline of International Relations (IR) has viewed nation-states as the key actors in global affairs. Gradually, however, scholars of IR and diplomacy have turned their attention to non-state actors such as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), multinational corporations, civil society, and the role of citizens. Recently, scholars have paid more attention to the role of cities as global actors, leading to a new and burgeoning subfield of city diplomacy that spans the fields of IR and urban studies (Amiri & Sevin, 2020; Curtis, 2016; Marchetti, 2021; Van der Pluijm and Melissen, 2007, p. 5-8). Recent studies have focused on the expanding role of city networks such as C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group and Mayors for Peace in global affairs (Acuto, 2013; Bouteligier, 2012), the role of cities as global activists (Miyazaki, 2021), the attractive agency of cities as the hubs and nodes of globalization (Curtis, 2011, 2016; Acuto, 2013; Curtis & Acuto, 2018), and the leadership of individual mayors as global actors (Acuto, 2013; Beal & Pinson, 2014; Stren & Friendly, 2019; Miyazaki, 2021).

The study of city diplomacy is still a relatively young subfield. Yet, a great deal of progress has been made in theorizing cities and their activities. This short essay details some of that progress, and advocates for future research that is eclectic, humble, and works in partnership with practitioners to find best practices. This essay also finds evidence that city diplomacy should not be idealized as a panacea to 21st-century problems. Though recent activities have shown that cities can respond more flexibly to issues of global concern such as climate change and nuclear disarmament in ways that may be difficult for states, cities too must deal with a kind of “realism” (different from tradition IR Realism) – the constraints of budgets, a lack of time, a lack of expertise, and the pressing needs of local constituents.

Theorizing Cities as Global Actors: A Case for Eclecticism and Humility

How do cities act? Why do cities act?How can we understand cities as actors? How do cities act in relation to states, IGOs, NGOs, and citizens? Theorizing about cities has been a troublesome affair, frustrated by the enigmatic and wonderful differences of individual cities, their relative invisibility in the scholarship until recently, and the different theoretical persuasions of authors writing about them. Thus, when it comes to theorizing the city as a global actor it is important to approach the project with a sense of humility. This humility can be deepened by several observations.

First, cities have important differences from states. Whereas states have fixed borders, rigorously defined and defended, cities tend to be more porous and subject to unregulated flows; in addition, their status as diplomatic actors is less defined and fluid. In important ways, they are free of the burdens of states but also limited by their ambiguous formal status in global affairs. Second, whenever we discuss a city, we should recognize the difficulty of discussing it as a unitary actor. Traditional IR, especially realist perspectives, have privileged examinations of states as unitary actors. Cities pose particularly thorny problems for unitary actor approaches (Acuto, 2013, p. 10). Should a city be treated as a unitary group, expressing a collective identity; or, should cities be treated as conduits and aggregations of people, goods, ideas, and events, or (to borrow a term from urban geography) the site of “flows”?

For these reasons, I believe the best approach to theorizing about cities at the moment is to be eclectic, humble, and grounded in concrete examples. Such an approach would avoid grand theories that can be generalized across many cases and instead develop........

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