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City Diplomacy: A Strategic Choice

This chapter aims to introduce city diplomacy as both a practice and a field of research. After having described the purpose and structure of the book, it will provide a definition of the city, and an overview of the main goals motivating its international action. It will then present the tools through which city diplomacy is practiced, namely bilateral agreements, networks, projects, events, and advocacy campaigns. Finally, it will present the core components of a city’s international strategy, taking into due consideration its preconditions and the main challenges in its implementation.


Introduction
After having spent centuries at the margins of international relations, cities appear today among the protagonists of world politics. What happened?
Across the world, cities have created new spaces for their international action, partially subverting the traditional hierarchies and sometimes going as far as building international city coalitions to vocally oppose the foreign policy of nations.
Such fast-paced evolution appears primarily due to the participatory and impact-driven connection between local and global that many cities across the world have built. As it will be duly analyzed in the book, cities have perfectioned the practice of addressing transnational issues such as climate change, urbanization, mobility, migration, violent extremism and, more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic, by building horizontal partnerships with their peers across the world and fueling them by means of vertical partnerships with their residents and local stakeholders. Thanks to such an approach, city diplomacy has grown to represent a multilateral, participatory practice (mainly) aiming at building a brighter future for all.
Nevertheless, this perception, often bordering to a "romancing" of the international action of cities-most visible in relation to ecological challenges (Teles 2016, 69)-hides an ampler, manifold practice. In fact, city diplomacy includes an extensive set of municipality-led bilateral and multilateral interactions with foreign actors-mainly other cities, city networks, and international organizations-in order to advance an international agenda inspired by local values and interests. As such, city diplomacy represents a practice and a research topic at the crossroads of local and international affairs.
Hence, it is not surprising that most of the available publications on city diplomacy focus either on municipal planning and management (mainly prescriptive reports by cities, city networks, and international organizations) or on its impact on international relations and world politics (scholarly analyses, often featuring a descriptive, comparative perspective). As a result, a hiatus between practice and research has emerged. The aim of this book consists of offering practitioners, scholars, and students alike a clear, cross-cutting analysis of city diplomacy's value, scope, impact, and challenges across the world. By combining extant research with practical reasoning, this publication aims at representing a handbook to support city diplomats' daily duties, while providing scholars and students with a comprehensive overview of the multi-faceted international action of cities.
As its guiding principle, the book will follow cities' agency in international relations, a topic that will be addressed from three different but coexistent perspectives: I. An international perspective, by focusing on a variety of global governance issues (climate change, migration, creativity, diversity, security, global economy, digital transformation, transportation, etc.); II. A national perspective, taking into consideration interactions between national and city diplomacies; III. A local perspective, focusing on the urban impact of international activities (exchange of best practices, introduction of pilot projects) as well as on the role of local actors in the design and implementation of city diplomacy, namely through co-creation, participatory approaches.

Structure of the Book
The book consists of 9 chapters and an afterword. This first chapter will lie the ground of the discipline of city diplomacy by presenting its core protagonist-the city-as well as the components of successful city diplomacy strategies. The second chapter will present the origins and evolution of city diplomacy through the lenses of its relationship with the other actors of international relations, namely the state, international organizations, and NGOs. The book will then delve into the specificities of the seven main dimensions of city diplomacy (development cooperation, peace and reconciliation, economy, innovation, environment, culture, and migration). For each dimension, the book will offer an overview of the scope and challenges, mapping the actors involved and their interactions, and evaluating available tools. Each chapter will include the analysis of a selection of best practices, as well as a focus on the impact of COVID-19, offering a perspective on the possible evolution of the discipline over the next few years.

Defining the City
A key methodological challenge for this handbook lies in the diversity enclosed in the term "city," both in its political meaning of local administration and in its spatial one of an urban area. This duality calls for a comprehensive definition of both dimensions.
City as a government: across the world, city governments are the public, subnational body responsible for the governance of an urban territory. Their internal organization varies a lot across the world, but it usually features an executive branch-headed by the mayor-a political assembly-the council-and a permanent staff. As a result of the global trend of decentralization (see below), most mayors and city councilors are elected by residents and no more appointed by the central governments.
Most city governments worldwide are in charge of providing a similar set of public services to their local communities, such as public housing, lighting, waste management, public transportation, and the management of public spaces and parks. These shared tasks explain the widespread practice of city-to-city knowledge exchange and peer-learning in each of the seven main dimensions of city diplomacy.
City as a territory: this book will define cities according to their administrative boundaries-an area often defined as "city proper." This choice does not intend to disregard the socioeconomic relevance of larger functional areas. Nevertheless, such areas are not actors of international relations unless governed by a second-tier administration (e.g., a county/province/metropolis) able to act internationally.
In terms of size, the book will adopt the following population thresholds, which consider the diversity of the urban phenomenon across the world: • Small city-urban areas with a population ranging from the (varying) national minimum threshold between village and city, and up to 50,000 inhabitants; • Intermediary city, featuring a population between 50,000 and one million inhabitants. The term is generally preferred to that of the medium or secondary city by city networks such as UCLG (United Cities and Local Governments 2014) and by international organizations such as UNESCO (UNESCO Chair on Intermediary Cities, Urbanization and Development at the University of Lleida in Spain), in order to highlight its role in connecting rural and urban areas; • Large city: more than 1 million inhabitants (sometimes called megacities, for agglomeration of more than 10 million inhabitants). 1 The term metropolis, used across the world with different meanings, is intended in this book as the local government whose administrative boundaries comprise a center city and a series of surrounding smaller municipalities (in accordance with the use of the term in countries such as France and Italy). In such a definition of metropolises, constituent city governments maintain a part of their competencies, among which international affairs are often included. The coexistence of international capabilities between metropolitan and municipal governments might in fact create some confusion and discrepancies in terms of international action 2 (Kihlgren Grandi 2020, 23-24). Alongside these administrative/size-based definitions of cities, one of qualitative nature is often used in relation to city diplomacy: the global city. This term is generally used to refer to a city playing a fundamental role in the global economy. Coined by Dutch-American sociologist Saskia Sassen, global cities share four characteristics: "first, as highly concentrated command points in the organization of the world economy; second, as key locations for finance and for specialized service firms, which have replaced manufacturing as the leading economic sectors; third, as sites of production, including the production of innovations, in these leading industries; and fourth, as markets for the products and economic innovations produced" (Sassen 1991, 3-4). or supra-city (Gottmann 1957;Florida et al. 2008). Differently from the metropolis, the megalopolis is polycentric as it includes several large cities. Although this term has an indubitable economic relevance, it is generally not accompanied by any formal of centralized administration, even if economic cooperation and coordination between its core cities are frequent. An example of the latter is the Milan-Turin-Genoa "industrial triangle", relaunched in the framework of Expo Milan 2015 in order to advance cooperation in economic development and tourism attraction (Comune di Milano 2020). Following a similar perspective, UCLG defines agglomeration above 50 million inhabitants as supracities or urban regions. Differently to cities and metropolises, they do not appear to be linked to a specific identity or feeling of belonging, that remains anchored to each city, although this might happen in the future (Florida et al. 2008, 8). 2 The international actions of center cities and their surrounding cities can feature little alignment. For example, as Dierwechter showed analyzing the US climate action, central cities appear more engaged to international environment action than suburbs, which results in an "uneven, incomplete, and generally uncoordinated 'mosaic model' of metropolitan climate action" (Dierwechter 2010, 77). Even when metropolitan areas follow the same direction, its municipalities do not necessarily choose the same strategy, nor the same city network, thus making the evaluation of their actions' impact, quite complex to assess. This identification of cities' "globality" with their economic weight has been strengthened by the spread of rankings to assess urban competitiveness, as discussed in Chapter 5. These rankings show that most global cities have large populations-with the exception of a few highly innovative cities in Northern Europe and North America enjoying world renown thanks to their capacity to attract foreign talents, investments, and firms. Alongside the economic component, the term global city will be used in this book to refer to cities recognized for their political and cultural relevance, featuring major infrastructures connecting them to the world, and a population higher than a million.
It is worth noticing that most academic research on city diplomacy has been focusing on global cities, thus contributing to making this term a highly desired marker of urban success. Unsurprisingly, several large cities are using it as a brand-Mexico City defines itself as a global city in its 2017 constitution (article 20).

Many Cities, One Diplomacy?
In consideration of the political, socio-economic and cultural differences among cities across the world, how can they be addressed as a coherent group in their international activities?
Three main distinctions arise when analyzing the international action of cities: I. The size. Research in the United States (Dierwechter 2010), Sweden (Lundqvist and Von Borgstede 2008), and France (Kihlgren Grandi 2020), as well with a global perspective (United Cities andLocal Governments 2013, 2014;Bilsky et al. 2017; Kihlgren Grandi and Sottilotta 2020) have shown a direct correlation between size and level of international activities. Moreover, even when present, small and intermediary cities' international action still suffers from a limited recognition at national and international levels (United Cities and Local Governments 2014). In fact, regardless of their socioeconomic situation and the legal or de facto capacity to act internationally independently from their central administrations, most small and middle-sized cities across the world still perceive international engagement as something outside of their scope and remit. Such a trend is in no little part motivated by the common misunderstanding across city administrations, residents, and stakeholders that only large, economically dynamic global cities can implement impactful international strategies. This book presents a set of best practices showing the contrary and contains indications to support the spread of city diplomacy across cities of all sizes. II. The legal situation. The legal boundaries of the relationship between the national and city governments varies considerably across the world (see Chapter 2). As a result, cities' international action ranges from total alignment with the central government's foreign policy-a feature reaching its maximum extent in centralized autocratic states-to vocal opposition in a few decentralized democracies. Notwithstanding their formal powers, cities of many countries across the world benefit from actual empowerment, generally acting with the consent of their nation and under the auspices of international organizations, as both national and international legal boundaries are bending (see the section on the legal frameworks below). The book is designed to support city diplomats in various legal situations, as long as they can, de iure or de facto act internationally, and can do so with a fair level of independence from their national governments. III. The geographic location. Traditionally, most of city diplomacy activities remain concentrated in Europe, where 43.5% of city networks operate (Acuto et al. 2017). Nevertheless, a growing number of cities and networks from other continents are rising as protagonists in the field, with a multiplication of South-South and North-South-South triangular city diplomacy. The next chapter will offer an insight into the geographical distribution of city diplomacy and its evolution, while Chapters 3-9 will present several best practices from all over the world.
While taking into consideration all cities across the world, this book does not consider sub-municipal governance as independent actors of city diplomacy. Across the world, largest cities proper are often divided in a series of sub-municipal bodies-e.g., New York's boroughs, Rome's Municipi, Paris' Arrondissements, or Buenos Aires' Comunas. Just like cities, their governance is usually composed of permanent staff and elected officials. While they enjoy a series of prerogatives as municipal subdivisions of the municipality, they generally do not have self-governance powers and are not active in city diplomacy. Therefore, they are generally not able to design and implement autonomous international strategies. Nevertheless, they might contribute to the strategy of the city government, and in such a framework is not uncommon for them to host and/or support international events, sometimes in cooperation with foreign consulates and embassies. Cities are not the only type of subnational government active internationally across the world: regions, provinces, departments, counties, etc. have been implementing a broad set of international activities with significant consequences both locally and internationally. In fact, international frameworks have emerged to foster dialogue among the different actors of subnational diplomacy, the most famous of which indubitably is United Cities and Local Government (UCLG), the world's largest association of local governments, whose direct and indirect members account for 70% of the world's population. Nevertheless, cities are by far the most suitable type of local government to act internationally, and that for five main reasons: I. City administration is the only omnipresent subnational government. A recent study by OECD and UCLG on 122 countries across the world, shows that in 30% of them, there is no other form of local authorities than cities (48% also feature regions and 22% have an intermediary level between cities and regions) (OECD/UCLG 2019); II. For the first time in human history, the majority (55%) of the human population live in cities. In 2018, the urban population reached 4.2 billion, compared to 3.4 billion in rural areas, as the result of rapid urbanization since 1950, when 70% of the world population was rural (United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, and Population Division 2019). Nations and international organizations are increasingly reaching for the cooperation of cities in a set of commonalities, as shown in Chapter 2; III. Cities are the oldest political institution. Often dating back to centuries, or even millennia, most cities are much older than their nation-states. This has resulted in a stratified city identity-a key component of city branding strategies (see Chapters 5 and 8); IV. A global trend of decentralization has led cities to expand the remit of their government, including international relations as a competence formally or de facto attributed them (see Chapter 2 for the evolution of the relationship between national and city diplomacies); V. Over the last few years, the number of city networks has significantly increased to reach over 200 (Acuto et al. 2017), allowing for cities to count on permanent structures of national, regional, and global coordination (see below).

The Goals of City Diplomacy
Another feature that allows city diplomacy to be treated as a coherent discipline lies in the limited, yet flexible set of its international goals and the tools cities have to implement them. Not unlike countries, cities act internationally mainly to achieve two apparently opposed sets of goals: universal moral good and local selfinterests.
Value-based city diplomacy leads to the creation of international partnerships to implement or advocate for goals whose international spread and adoption are deemed relevant to the local community. These includes: I. Prevention of conflicts and reconciliation; II. Development aid and solidarity; III. Cooperation in addressing global challenges such as climate change, migrations, gender equity, violent extremism, and urbanization; IV. Regional integration and solidarity.
Structured partnerships implemented to this purpose feature political and managerial components allowing their representatives to advocate internationally for their adoption and, to that purpose, lobby nation-states and intergovernmental organizations, sometimes in cooperation with NGOs.
As mentioned, the spread and global recognition of city diplomacy are, to a large extent, linked to a value-based approach.
Interest-based city diplomacy revolves around the concrete benefits for the local community at large. Expected outcomes can be divided into two groups: I. Improving and strengthening service delivery. Since its creation more than a century ago, city diplomacy involves technical cooperation in the form of both knowledge transfers and joint innovation processes. Thus, the potential impact includes the improvement of municipal services' quality and cost-effectiveness via the introduction of new technologies or methodologies, including those to cope with unexpected and unprecedented challenges (e.g., climate change hazards, COVID-19). II. Enhancing attractiveness, a joint priority in both economic and cultural dimensions of city diplomacy. The potential impact includes a bolder global positioning of the city and a boost in its local development due to the city's enhanced inflow of foreign tourists, investments, talents, and students.
These sets of goals of city diplomacy are often intertwined. This is particularly evident in sustainable development, where an international action might answer both local interests (e.g., making local economy more resilient to climate change, fighting local inequalities) and values (equality, diversity, green transition, preservation of biodiversity, etc.). As it will be presented in Chapter 7, the capacity of cities to effectively implement international activities linking local interests to moral values has sometimes fueled cities and city networks to an "adversarial positioning against states," perceived as "ineffective bureaucratic machines" (Acuto 2013, 308). Nevertheless, numerous forms of cooperation between states and cities exist regarding both goals of city diplomacy, as proven by the grants states and intergovernmental organizations have issued to support cities' international actions.
Regardless of the specific goals for acting internationally, cities should define their own strategy in a clear and comprehensive way. This book aims to support municipalities in such a choice by highlighting the diverse components of city diplomacy, their potential impact, and their challenges.

The Tools of City Diplomacy
City diplomacy tools vary a lot in shape and scope. Most domestic legal framework allows cities to negotiate and implement a series of bilateral and multilateral agreements, formalizing partnerships with their foreign peers. As Chapter 2 will highlight, these partnerships differ from those implemented by states as they are not legally binding. As a result, signatories cities cannot be held internationally accountable for the lack of respect for the content of such partnerships. Notwithstanding, these partnerships can indeed represent a strong political commitment by the local government, and might generate a variety of concrete consequences involving local stakeholders and populations.
As the following paragraphs will discuss, the panorama of city diplomacy tools includes hosting international events and issuing advocacy campaigns-the latter featuring very different nature between democratic and nondemocratic countries.

Bilateral Agreements
Twinning (or sister city) agreements (TAs) constitute the most ancient and widespread of the bilateral ties between cities, as well as the first one to emerge in the first part of the twentieth century 3 (see next chapter). The agreement consists of the framework for a close and long-term (sometimes temporally unlimited) partnership between two cities. It can either open to cooperation in all sectors of municipal action or mention specific sectors in usually long, non-exhaustive lists generally including culture, urban planning, economic development, and sharing of best practices. They are usually adopted through formal ceremonies involving the signature of the agreement by both mayors.
Cooperation (or friendship) agreements (CAs) represent weaker forms of cooperation, usually more specific in the content, with less formal protocols surrounding the adoption and usually a term, at which the agreement or memorandum may or may not renew automatically. An even weaker for city partnership is represented by the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). The MoU usually defines the partnership in more open, less precise terms than the TA or CA and is generally the only form of partnership that does not require a formal vote by the city council. As such, it is usually intended as a first step in a city-to-city partnership aiming at the signature of a TA or CA.
When fully implemented, the three forms of bilateral partnerships usually involve reciprocal institutional and training visits, a direct relationship between municipal offices, and the exchange of citizen and students' delegations. In order to enhance residents' participation in the process, many cities across the world have created twinning committees. These are formed (and often directly run) by citizens and enjoy some sort of support of the municipality in their activities, which might include cultural events, visits, and exchange programs.
Today, bilateral agreements worldwide maintain their symbolic value of friendship. As such they continue to receive the support of nations. 4 Moreover, it is rare for cities to revoke these agreements-a move that could be perceived as offensive by the partner. The nonbinding nature of these ties allows cities to keep them formally alive, even when a change in the municipal majority or the emergence of different local priorities lead cities to concentrate on other international goals.
It is important to notice that bilateral agreements are undergoing, as other practices of city diplomacy, a significant change involving the addition or strengthening of an economic component. Generally, twinning agreements terms are vague enough to allow cities to adapt their actual meaning according to their priorities. As Acuto highlights in the framework of the UK-China twinning agreements, such practice now features an "important impact in directing entrepreneurial collaborations" (Acuto et al. 2016). These agreements' flexibility has also allowed many cities to cooperate on issues not formally mentioned, such as climate change or COVID-19.

Networks
The origin of city diplomacy is generally considered to coincide with the creation of the first global city network, the International Union Of Cities in 1913 (see next chapter). There is a general understanding across practitioners that city networks represent today the most visible and vocal expression of city diplomacy -a point corroborated by scholars, who focused on these networks most of the available city diplomacy literature. Saskia Sassen posits that the emergence of transnational networks of global cities has led to the formation of "new types of 'global' politics of place" (Sassen 2017, 149).
City networks consist of formalized multilateral cooperations between three or more cities coming together to cooperate on one specific sector of the municipal action (thematic city networks, like C40 for the fight to climate change, or LUCI with public lighting) or on all of them (multipurpose networks, like UCLG or Eurocities). Their governance most frequently includes an elected representative, usually a mayor, a general assembly of all member cities, and a permanent administration (sometimes hosted by the international relations department of one of the founding cities, or by an international organization). Vast global networks such as UCLG and ICLEI also feature regional offices.
The number of city networks rose significantly in the first decade of the twenty-first century, coinciding with increased recognition of the impactful and innovative nature of these "networks of pioneers for pioneers" (Kern and Bulkeley 2009). Research by the UCL City Leadership Laboratory shows there are now more than 200 city networks around the world, with an average of 4 new networks initiated every year 5national networks 6 represent the majority of the total (53%), followed by regional and global networks (Acuto et al. 2017).
Membership criteria might allow all cities around the world to join (e.g., UCLG, ICLEI), other limit membership to specific regions (Arab Towns Organization-ATO, Eurocities, Mercociudades, Union of Baltic Cities, Association of Cities and Collectivities of the Indian Ocean-AVCOI), city size (Metropolis for cities above 1 million residents, Cittaslow for those of less than 50,000), cultural and language connections (UCCI uniting cities in Iberia and in Latin America, UCCLA, for Portuguese language cities, or AIMF for French-speaking cities across the world-see Box 3.2), or share a geographic situation (AIVP, the global network of port cities). Most city networks' budget is based on membership fees-whose amount sometimes depends on the city's average income. Other sources might come from international charities (such as Bloomberg Philanthropies for the C40, the Rockefeller Foundation for the Resilient Cities Network, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for AIMF) and grants by international organizations or the European Union (currently sponsoring projects by Eurocities and AIMF).
Albeit their goals vary considerably, city networks generally share a methodology designed over four axes: -facilitating cooperation and knowledge exchange between members; -advocating on shared vision and goals and lobbying with global or regional organizations; -promoting research and innovation, by internal means or by partnering up with academia and consultancies; -designing and implementing activities in cooperation with their members.
A minority of city networks also feature funding mechanisms for their members' initiatives, including in the framework of awards to expand best practices (C40, CityNet, Milan Urban Food Policy Pact). City networking features two main challenges. First, while certainly being representative of their global success, the multiplication of city networks, frequently tackling same or similar issues, has enhanced the risks of duplications and overlap, while making cities' search for the most suited one harder. This is likely to produce three possible scenarios: a competition among similar networks, potentially increasing the quality of both; two or more similar network merge in one bigger network-as it happened with IULA, UTO and Metropolis creating UCLG in 2004 (see next chapter)-or the "survival of the fittest," where the success of most dynamic network causes the others to lose agency, resources, and membership, forcing them to reevaluate their strategy (Keiner and Kim 2007).
Generally aware of the issues related to their multiplication in numbers, and the rising duplications and overlaps, city networks have shown a rising commitment toward concentration and synergies. The most concrete example of such approach is represented by the Global Taskforce of Local and Regional Governments, a consultation and coordination mechanism between 25 of the leading global and regional city networks, aiming at defining common strategies toward the main global agendas, notably the Agenda 2030 and the New Urban Agenda. Moreover, the Global Taskforce convenes the World Assembly of Local and Regional Governments, reuniting mayors from across the world. The assembly met in the framework of the Habitat III conference in Quito (2016) and has been formally identified by the New Urban Agenda as a tool for the follow-up and review of its dispositions (United Nations 2016; Global Taskforce of Local And Regional Governments 2019).
Second, mainly due to the nonbinding nature of their frameworks of action, most city networks feature variable levels of commitment among their members. They usually include a core of highly motivated pioneer cities and a periphery of relatively passive ones whose participation in the network barely affects their behavior (Kern and Bulkeley 2009). Studies suggest that belonging to a major network is likely to act as an incentive to join others (Acuto et al. 2016). With the time, a city might find itself member of a considerable number of networks, often due to different city diplomacy priorities expressed by the succeeding mayors. While certain cities decide to keep their membership even with little activity-most city networks do not expel inactive cities, as long as they pay their fee-others, such as Angers in France, decided to abandon a part of them to concentrate on those perceived as more useful in terms of advocacy and learning potential (Kotras 2012).
Finally, even if city networks are often compared to international organizations, the formers are often characterized by close cooperation between mayors from distant political backgrounds. Moreover, dialogue among mayors tends not to be limited by frictions between their states, as the Summit of Mayors convened by Florence Mayor La Pira during the Cold War clearly showed (see next chapter). This has fuelled cities criticism to the "unsolvable deadlocks" of state-level multilateralism (Acuto 2013, 308). Chapters 3-9 will highlight the additional features of thematic city networks and their impact on member cities, as well as on the regional and global stage.

Bilateral and Multilateral Projects
Alongside long-term partnerships, municipalities are in the possibility of realizing short to middle-term joint international projects. Unlike most formal bilateral and multilateral agreements, international projects usually feature a list of concrete objectives to be met in a precise time frame. The main driver of such actions lies in the expansion of participant cities' international visibility and attractiveness, the creation of new partnerships, and the introduction of innovative solutions.
Over the last few years, many cities' preference for international ties moved from perpetual bilateral projects to shorter-term international projects, often to be implemented in "municipal promiscuity" (Handley 2006), i.e., involving two or more foreign partners. Such an approach is widely due to the wish of city leaders to harness city diplomacy's potential to impact the city positively. As such, many of these international projects involve exchanging best practices in all sectors of municipal action, such as transports, hygiene, and the introduction of new technologies (see Chapter 6). Moreover, the trend is often linked to the spread of regional integration: regional organization such as the European Union, the Council of Europe, ASEAN, the African Union, and Mercosur consider cities as key actors in strengthening ties between their member countries and have thus created funding frameworks (or supported the existing ones) to enhance this cooperation via call for projects, knowledge exchange and events. This dynamic has also contributed to the spread of the so-called triangular (or North-South-South) cooperation, linking a city from the Global North with two cities in the Global South.
Calls for projects issued by international organizations, as well as national governments, have deeply shaped duration, goals, partnership, and methodology of these projects. Notable examples include European Union's Urbact program, aimed at supporting and spreading peerlearning and innovation in European cities, and the thematic/geographic calls for projects issued by French government's Delegation on the International Action of Territorial Collectivities (DAECT), or by the French Development Agency (AFD) (Kihlgren Grandi 2020).
A number of well-established city networks also run a series of programs among members, which are sometimes opened to the participation of external cities. An example is the C40's Clean Bus Declaration, which aims to encourage the spread of low and no-emission public transport vehicles in cities across the world (C40 2015).
Nevertheless, bilateral and multilateral projects present a few criticalities, potentially limiting their impact: 1. Calls for projects might have a distortive impact on one city's international strategy. Instead of only applying to these calls compatible with it, cities' widespread desire to win the highest number of calls might result in little coherent international action, with a potentially negative impact on the city international positioning and branding strategy; 2. Not infrequently, pilot technologies and services introduced in the framework of projects are discontinued once the project ends, thus resulting in little to no long-term impact on the city and its population. It is of paramount importance for cities to exploit these actions' full potential by integrating a long-term perspective; 3. Little to no background information is usually collected on private actors, namely international charities, issuing calls for projects. Before applying to these calls, municipalities should consider any potential hidden political agenda or green/social washing strategy by these actors; 4. Unless a grant or sponsorship is available, international projects can result in expensive activities, starting from travel costs. This fact might represent in itself an obstacle to get involved in international projects, not in little part to avoid easy criticisms of wasting public money in activities abroad. This can be partially avoided with the economic participation of private and public partners and a clear strategy featuring measurable local outcomes.

International Events
Around the world, cities of all sizes host international events as tools to raise their international profiles while boosting the local economy in both the short and long term. These events can be divided into groups: -Events with an exclusive connection to the city. This includes onetime events (such as celebrations), as well as recurring ones. Notable examples of the latter include Cannes and Venice's film festivals, or fine art fairs such as Art Basel, Frieze Art Fair in London, and the India Art Fair in New Delhi. -Recurring, itinerant events whose organization is overseen by an external entity (usually an international organization or an NGO) and that require cities to enter an international competition to be selected as host of the event.
Among the many international events a city can bid to host, three stand out for their capacity to attract the broadest international public and grant the city with the highest possible level of exposure to foreign media: the Olympics (both Summer and Winter editions), the World Fair, and the FIFA World Cup. 7 Moreover, numerous other major events take place every year across the world, including sports competitions (athletics championships, Formula 1 and motorcycle grand prix) and annual cultural events such as the European (and, starting from 2020, African) Capitals of Culture (see Chapter 8).
Cities bid to these international events for a plurality of reasons. First, they represent a unique opportunity too deeply improve the brand of the city. Alongside the pride of inhabitants for hosting the major event, this can profoundly impact the city's identity and offer it remarkable visibility: for the duration of the event, the world's media concentrate on the city. As such, they represent the opportunity for the city to strengthen its existing brand or create a new one. An example of the latter practice can be found in Rio de Janeiro's smart city strategy driven by the Olympics momentum (Mendes and Figueira 2017, 14-15). Similarly, Milan's international tourism strategy was powered by the 2015 World Expo. Through these events, cities aim at profoundly strengthening their global inflows of capitals, companies, tourists, talents, students, and ideas.
Second, the significant investments linked to such events are an opportunity for the host city not only to undergo much-needed infrastructure and beautification projects but to reshape in depth its urban space. Of course, the event's built legacy's long-term impact differs from city to city: the goal is to use these global events to realize infrastructure that will fully integrate into the city's urban tissue and positively impact the population for the years to come. Best practices include the new neighborhoods created in the former Olympic villages in Seoul (1988), Barcelona (1992), Sydney (2000), and London (2012). Infrastructure like Paris' first metro line inaugurated for the 1900 Universal Exposition (alongside the Grand Palais and Petit Palais, today major exhibition centers), the Seattle 1962 World Fair monorail, and Lisbon's 1998 World Fair's Gare do Oriente have considerably enhanced their cities connectivity and local transportation. Nevertheless, the opposite result is not uncommon whenever these events infrastructures are designed with a short-term approach.
Bidding for major international events usually implies a complex and intense diplomatic action, often implemented in the framework of a multilevel partnership between the city, other local governments such as the department or the region (when present), and the national government. The more distinctive feature of this "bidding city diplomacy" consists in such close cooperation with the other layers of government, given the high amount of investments needed to present a sound project, and the need to secure broad diplomatic support by national states (for Expos) or national sports association (for the Olympics and FIFA championships). In decentralized countries, this can result in bid-related empowerment of the city international action, carried out "with the consent of, rather than in parallel with, the state" (Acuto 2013, 307).
Needless to say, from the side of the municipal administration, the bid should be designed in order to comply with the general international strategy of the city-and take the opportunity to enhance it. To that purpose, it is crucial to incorporate the core values at the center of the city's international networking and advocacy initiatives (e.g., sustainability, interculturality, innovation). Moreover, cities should be well aware of the potential diplomatic drawbacks arising from the process. As a matter of fact, bidding puts cities in direct competition with one another, as the bidding process is intended to show the city's comparative advantages. This competition might create temporary coalitions of cities, as bidding mayors tend to reach for the support of their colleagues in twin and friend cities.
As will be discussed in Chapter 5, major international events' economic and social impact is increasingly an object of debate. This is particularly true for cities aiming at hosting the Olympics, whose bids sometimes led to protests by residents, culminating in the withdrawal of the bid itself.
As the author writes this book, all major events across the world, including the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games and the 2020 Expo Dubai, have been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Until the introduction of a vaccine, it is unlikely for cities to host any events involving large publics.

International Advocacy
More and more frequently, cities aim at influencing global governance's handling of transnational challenges. Through vast and ambitious advocacy campaigns, most of them in the framework of city networks, the voice of cities has obtained an important echo, especially when it opposes the will and action of one or more national governments. As Chapters 2 and 4 will highlight, this practice emerged during the Cold war, when mayors from across the world started uniting their voices in demanding states to renounce the arms race and commit to peaceful resolutions of conflicts. Chapter 7 will focus on the most vocal of these advocacy campaigns, the one devoted to the fight to climate change, which provided some mayors' criticisms to their central governments with global visibility and the endorsements of foreign cities-and government.
Chapter 9 will present a similar trend in place regarding migration policies, with national and international coalitions of cities defending their welcoming policies against the restrictive approach put in place by a number of national governments.
Alongside these and the other thematic campaigns highlighted throughout the book, most city networks, and several global cities' advocacy feature a dual focus connected to the role of cities in national and international governance, respectively: -Calling for stronger multilateral cooperation between national and local authorities in addressing a number of transnational issues; -Calling for a "seat at the global table," i.e., the formal inclusion of cities in global governance mechanisms (Metropolitan District of Quito et al. 2016).
Such international advocacy, requiring cities' freedom to express an independent view from national governments, is fully implemented exclusively in democratic, decentralized countries. Cities in highly centralized or autocratic countries can hardly oppose their nation-state approach of transnational issues, and their advocacy campaigns usually consist of a mere local adaptation of those launched by the central authority.

Building a Strategy
Surprisingly enough, many cities active internationally through bilateral agreements, city networks, international programs, or advocacy campaigns do not have a formal, explicit international strategy.
As a result, cities might struggle to prioritize their international activities, communicate them to the population, and build a coherent international brand for the city.
The book aims to illustrate how cities can leverage the existing bilateral and multilateral relations, both formal and informal, and build a strategy. Ideally, the definition of such a strategy should be renewed at any municipal election, to integrate it into the administration's political goals. Its design, requiring a complete understanding of city diplomacy scope, actors, tools, and challenges, as well as its implementation, need to involve professionals in the field. These two points call cities to create, if not present, an international relations office/department, whose first charge would, therefore, consist of designing such a strategy.
As shown in the image below, all effective strategy should comprise three parts: a diagnostic of the city's international relations, the definition of a set of goals, and the methodology to implement them. (1) Diagnostics The staff in charge of paving the ground to the definition of the strategy should realize a full diagnostics of existing international activities and positioning of the city. This step consists of: (1) Qualitative and quantitative information on city formal and informal international connections, including those involving the city, local NGOs and associations, and the private sector; (2) A SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis of such connections. The analysis will allow tracing a portrait of the ongoing international impact and positioning of the city and its potential evolution; (3) The mapping and statistics of foreign residents and actors, both private (foreign companies, and charities) and public (embassies/consulates, foreign cultural institutions, international organizations). Extensive dialogue with these actors is needed in order to assess their actions' goals and impact: (4) A comprehensive evaluation of the legal framework for the city's international action, taking into consideration both national and international law.
(5) The goals Based on the diagnostics, the mayor and the council will be able to design specific goals. These should include both the values the city wants to support across the world and the outcomes it aims at harnessing from its international activities. The latter, according to the political priorities set by the elected officials, might include: -Political outcomes: the city and the mayor's political priorities obtain international visibility and receive the endorsement of international partners such as other cities, city networks, international organizations, NGOs, and nations; -Economic outcomes: the city strengthens its economic growth and the job market by attracting international tourists, companies, investments, and talents; -Social outcomes: international partnerships provide the tools to address local social issues, either by means of new resources and practices implemented locally or through the involvement of target communities in activities abroad; -Cultural outcomes: the city enhance its local cultural and creative sectors through international branding and interactions with foreign partners; -Technical outcomes: the city is the recipient of knowledge transfers, which often match innovation with sustainable development purposes.
(3) The implementation As mentioned, municipalities dispose of a set of tools to act internationally. The strategy should include a detailed description of the way the municipality will deploy them.
Therefore, this part should include creating/rationalizing/revamping existing bilateral and multilateral partnerships, creating advocacy campaigns or joining existing ones, and hosting international events (and, if needed, bidding for them).
Moreover, the implementation should feature assessment mechanisms to evaluate the impact of international actions, thus allowing the city to modify them, if needed.
Based on the diagnostics' results, the city should also define the modalities to inform and engage residents and local stakeholders in the activities planned. This part of the strategy should also include precise dispositions to facilitate the sometimes-limited cooperation between different municipal departments, by clarifying the international relations office's coordination and management duties.
Finally, such a strategy should allow municipalities to deal with international symmetric and asymmetric shocks. Concretely, this means to define the mechanisms the city could deploy to both bring its support to affected foreign partners and to ask for it should the crisis take place at home. As an example, the book will include a focus on the challenges and opportunities generated by COVID-19 in each of the seven main components of city diplomacy.

Preconditions
Across the world, city diplomacy's success depends widely on the city administration's capacity to design a strategy that meets a series of five preconditions.

Preconditions
Risks when absent I. CD as a political priority: the role of the mayor Difficulty in involving other municipal sectors; limited human and economic resources II. Human resources Incapacity to design and implement a coherent and impactful international strategy III. Economic resources Limited capacity to act internationally IV. Choice and engagement of the right foreign partner(s) Unnecessary or duplicated initiatives; endorsement on nondemocratic regimes V. Local public engagement and communication strategy Limited local support and participation in city diplomacy

I. City Diplomacy as a Political Priority: The Role of the Mayor
First, in order to be effective, city diplomacy should represent an explicit political priority of the municipal government. As such, it needs to be supported by the mayor and the council, who can lend their legitimacy to make sure city diplomacy is recognized as a fully fledged, cross-cutting public policy (Campbell 2001;CEVIPOF 2019). 8 Therefore, the municipality should commit to providing the office or department in charge of managing international relations with the needed human and economic resources (see below). Without a strong accent on this relatively new sector of municipal action by the mayor and the city council, its action would be limited to the advantage of other, more established ones, especially in the sometimes persistent contexts of budgetary cuts. Moreover, international technical cooperation does not need a direct involvement of the mayor, establishing the international partnership(s) to enable it most frequently does. Moreover, mayors can also play a central role in the spread of best practices: as noted by Campbell in a study on Latin American cities, "mayors learn from each other more than any other single source," with experience showing that they are particularly effective in retransmitting ideas (Campbell 2001, 229). Additional mayoral tasks in the framework of city diplomacy include: representing the city and its complex and diverse ecosystem abroad, leading city delegations abroad, welcoming high foreign officials, leading the bid to international events, voicing branding campaigns, addressing international public opinion in the framework of advocacy campaigns, serving as a chair/board member of city networks, taking part in international summits. Moreover, mayors are the primary connection between the city and national diplomacies: in decentralized, democratic countries they play a central role in the establishment of either the cooperative, as well as the more or less openly adversarial positioning on specific topics (for the most vocal confrontation, please refer to environmental city diplomacy strategies presented in Chapters 2 and 7).
Moreover, city diplomacy has revealed to be a powerful tool in creating or strengthening personal international visibility for mayors, especially those advocating for a multilateral response to global challenges. It is the case, for example, of Los Angeles' Eric Garcetti, Paris' Anne Hidalgo or Milan's Giuseppe Sala for their commitment in the fight to climate change, of Palermo's Leoluca Orlando for his welcoming approach to economic migrants, refugeesm and asylum seekers (Favereau and Sardier 2019), or of the "Pact of Free Cities" mayors (Budapest's Gergely Karácsony, Prague's Zdeněk Hřib, Warsaw' Rafał Trzaskowski and Bratislava's Matúš Vallo) for their pro-EU agenda and opposition to their central governments' policies on immigration, climate change and the rule of law (Hopkins and Shotter 2019;Parmentier 2020).
It is worth mentioning that elected officials might also act to discontinue or prevent their city's international action. Such decision, more frequent in smaller cities, is often the result of either electoral campaigns fuelled with populist, "city-first" rhetoric, or self-restraint to avoid criticisms depicting international actions as a waste of taxpayers' money with low or nonexistent locale return on investment. Linked to the absence of adequate city diplomacy public information and engagement campaigns (see below), this point tends to be raised in particular regarding development aid initiatives-the value of international solidarity being deemed an insufficient justification (see Chapter 3). This approach might also conceal a free-rider positioning, aiming at harnessing the spill-overs of the international commitment of neighboring cities, such as those aiming at pollution reduction (Lundqvist and Von Borgstede 2008).
Finally, the mayor's central role in international affairs has led many cities to locate the international relations office within the mayor's cabinet. 9 Another choice, frequently found in big and medium-sized cities, involves the appointment of a deputy mayor in charge of international relations.

II. Human Resources
Regardless of its location, all municipal administration with a dynamic international strategy possesses an international relations office or department, staffed with highly skilled professionals.
City diplomats share a series of personal skills with their colleagues from foreign offices, namely mastery of verbal and oral expression in a set of foreign languages, negotiation skills, ability to deal with different procedures, cultures, and traditions, knowledge of international protocol.
Moreover, at the crossroads between local and international policies, the unique nature of their job requires them to comply with several specific tasks: • Researching and analyzing qualitative and quantitative information on the city's formal and informal international connexions; • Contributing to the definition of the city diplomacy strategic plan; • Advising the mayor, the city council and other municipal offices/departments on foreign affairs and international partnerships; • Assisting the mayor and other elected officials in meetings with foreign officials and missions abroad; • Bidding for international events, and managing their international relations if the bid is successful; • Managing the daily interactions with foreign public and private partners, including partner cities, networks, NGOs, international organizations and development banks; • Expanding the city's international relations by negotiating new partnerships and agreements and applying to international projects and networks; • Managing the relations with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; • Implementing international city branding strategies; • Designing, managing, and evaluating international projects in all the domain of municipal action; • Fundraising for international activities; • Managing the relationship with the local diplomatic and consular community; • Training of foreign officers in the framework of development cooperation; • Supporting the press office in communicating on international affairs and dealing with foreign media; • Designing and running public public information and engagement on international activities; • Facilitating the local implementation of global agendas (Agenda 2030, Paris Agreement, New Urban Agenda, among others); • Coordinating the sending/receiving of emergency aid to/from foreign actors.
Moreover, the evolution of city diplomacy and international relations require officers to update their knowledge and skills regularly (e.g., to creatively adapt partnerships to the COVID-19 pandemic limitations). Such a broad set of tasks often represents a challenge for cities' human resources departments, given the limited availability of city diplomacy courses in universities or institutes of public administration. The absence of specific curricula in all but a few countries in the world is mainly addressed by hiring professionals with a study and professional background in international relations or diplomacy, to be coupled with in-place mentoring and a good dose of creativity. It should come with no surprise that some global cities such as Los Angeles, Montreal, or Paris, have appointed veteran diplomats at the head of their respective international relations departments.

III. Economic Resources
In terms of funding, city diplomacy activities can be divided into two groups: (1) self-funded activities, allowing the highest level of discretion. The maximum amount of money available for city diplomacy is usually defined by both national law and local budgets. This includes the municipality officers' training activities, in the framework of "officers without borders" development cooperation projectsa popular choice for municipalities facing budget cuts (Dragone 2020). An audit of existing human resources to that purpose reveals to be very useful and should also include the venues (monuments, museums, schools, and other public buildings) the municipality owns or has access to, for hosting international events and foreign delegations.
(2) Activities funded by external actors, such as international organizations, development banks, ministries and governmental agencies, embassies, consulates and cultural institutes abroad, NGOs, and the business sector. This also includes in-kind contributions from public and private partners, such as airplane companies providing tickets, hotels hosting delegations or museums, and universities contributing to international events with venues and speakers.
Understandably, private sector contributions are often provided in exchange for international visibility.

IV. Choice and Engagement of the Right Foreign Partner(s)
The choice of the right foreign partner(s) is essential to the success of any city diplomacy initiative. Municipalities generally face a choice between strengthening existing partnerships, i.e., twinned and friend cities, and the identification of new ones. As a matter of fact, the evolution in the goals and the methodology of city diplomacy has led many partnerships to be inactive for years. This is particularly frequent with those partnerships set up after World War II to reconcile former enemies-a goal that has lost its momentum. Nevertheless, the revitalization of existing partnerships might support the city's international strategy, providing political or material support mass to its value-based activities or fueling its interest-based ones with local practices and ideas.
To successfully revitalize these dormant partnerships, a joint action by the municipalities, local actors, and residents is needed. The anniversaries of the twinning/friendship agreement offer the opportunity to organize joint events (such as festivals, exhibitions, round tables) with bilateral side meetings where cities update the partnership's priorities and goals, possibly with a broader participatory approach. This can represent the opportunity to involve in the partnership actors such as associations, education and research institutes, museums, and sports teams, thus renewing local engagement in the partnership.
As mentioned, the research of new partners falls within the duties of the international relations staff. This search can benefit from the support of: -City networks, which often encourage partnerships between their members. Networks' administrations can thus provide useful help in matching members. -National embassies and consulates in the targeted country and the latter's diplomatic representations in the city might help identify the most suitable partner(s) based on the city's goals and tools.
It is important to note that while partnerships with cities of similar size and geographic, social, cultural, or economic characteristics are the most frequent, this does not represent a rule. Rather than in similarities, the success of a partnership lies in the commitment to a shared goal and the capacity of city administrations to interact on a practical level. For that, the first two steps new partnerships should implement tend to be: (1) Dialogue, if possible in the framework of exploratory visits, in order to ensure commitment on both sides and agreeing on a rationale for the partnership. This also applies to current partnerships in order to keep them relevant.
(2) Joint definition of a strategic plan to implement such a rationale.
It is important to notice that a particularly challenging form of partnership consists of those with cities in nondemocratic regimes. Cities in democratic countries might have perfectly valid reasons to implement such partnerships, ranging from humanitarian aid to technical and cultural cooperation. Nevertheless, it is important to define a set of clear guidelines for all the actors involved in the initiative, taking in due consideration that (I) the foreign regime is likely to directly or indirectly influence the partnership, as nondemocratic systems rarely grant political autonomy to local governments; (II) cooperation with these cities could be easily instrumentalized by the regime to appear as an endorsement.

V. Local Public Engagement and Communication
Over the last few years, city diplomacy initiatives have been increasingly involving residents and local public and private actors such as civil society organizations, schools, universities and research organizations, museums, theaters, artists, and businesses. Their contribution to city diplomacy is essential in both the design and implementation of activities.
These multi-stakeholders partnerships can vary a lot, but they usually feature one of the following three characteristics: -The municipality involves local actors in existing initiatives, usually by issuing calls for partners and grants; -Municipalities and local actors jointly design and implement new international partnerships and initiative via co-creation methodologies; -The municipality follows the footsteps of local actors' international connections. This choice is particularly frequent in the framework of decentralized cooperation activities (see Chapter 3).
Regardless of the form the partnership may take, they usually allow the municipality to benefit from local actors' creativity, energies, existing international connections, and political support. Local actors receive in exchange the opportunity to realize their own goals while acquiring international experience and exposure. As a result, these partnerships represent the primary tool to respond to the already mentioned criticism depicting city diplomacy as a policy without "return on investment" and a tangible impact on the territory. Moreover, they constitute the driver for international actions in line with expectations from residents and stakeholders.
To provide for the best conditions for local partnerships' development, municipalities across the world have developed a set of communication and engagement tools, including press releases and conferences, social media, workshops, and town meetings. Moreover, a solution that has proved to be particularly effective in French cities is creating physical spaces devoted to celebrating the city's international activities and connecting them with residents and stakeholders (Kihlgren Grandi 2020). The agenda of these "international houses" usually includes debates, workshops, exhibitions, artistic performances, and other events organized by the municipality and its local partners. By strengthening and providing visibility to these actors' contributions, the municipality creates the conditions to enhance the practice of co-creation and co-responsibility.

Box 1.1: Voceros de Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is one of the few cities of the world to have deployed its own "diaspora diplomacy" (Rana 2011, 94-111).
Launched in January 2017, the "Voceros de Buenos Aires" ("Buenos Aires' Spokespersons") is an initiative empowering expats from Buenos Aires as "honorary representatives" of their city of origin. The project integrates the activities of the city's international relations department by sharing Buenos Aires' best practices with Voceros' cities or residence, facilitating cooperation (including or financial nature) between Buenos Aires and foreign actors, and maintaining the contact between Buenos Aires and its diaspora. Their activities are frequently implemented in cooperation with Argentinian embassies or consulates.
The IR department selects candidates based on their resume and integration in their host city. Their 2-year appointment is on a pro-bono basis, upon signature of a goodwill agreement.
In the framework of the COVID-19 pandemic, Voceros around the world maintained a dialogue with the Municipality of Buenos Aires, sharing the mitigation and recovery strategies implemented in their host city.
In June 2020, the program counts 33 Voceros in 31 cities across the world, including Mexico City, New York, London, Rome, Cape Town, Dubai, Beijing, Tokyo, and Sidney. It advertises its activities through a LinkedIn group.