How Power Flows Through Cities
It has already been decades since the latest wave of globalization brought non-state actors and subnational entities to the forefront of international affairs. As power has been diffused from nationstates to these non-traditional actors, global cities have become increasingly important political actors. Oddly, however, there have been few theoretical studies exploring the role of cities in the field of international relations. Challenging the centrality of nation-states, this book fills the gap between empirical reality and theoretical research in a remarkably underdeveloped field.
Kent Calder builds up four hypotheses on the city’s global political influence along the four functional dimensions of global cities — the “penumbras of power” where broadly connected idea industries and advisory complexes generate governance proposals; the venue of political forums that broaden global input into policy agendas; the battlegrounds for the grassroots advocacy groups that challenge elite policy agendas from below; and furnishing the leaders who transform options into actual policy. He then examines the hypotheses through comparative studies of 15 major global cities.
From his empirical research, Calder concludes that deepening trans-national networks concentrated in global cities, leveraged by the related power of technology and finance in the Internet age, have greatly enlarged such cities’ capacity to understand and cope with global problems. The book propels a convincing message that a historic new era of the global political city in international affairs has begun.
This freshly reprinted volume assembles 16 rich essays into what is a treasure trove.