The International dimension of subnational self-government

The International Dimension of Subnational Self-Government

Ivo D. Duchacek City University of New York

Ralph Bunche Institute

In recent decades, complex interdependence as well as domestic issues have encouraged many constituent governments of larger national polities to assert an international competence of their own, primarily in matters touching upon their respective jurisdictions, such as trade promo- tion, foreign investment, employment and rights of foreign workers, environmental and energy issues, and tourism. Two forms of the resulting paradiplomacy are identified: transborder regional regimes (dominantly based on informal consociational processes) and "global micro-diplomacy"

which bring constituent governments, including those of major cities, into direct contact with foreign national and constituent governments. Examples of the latter include the permanent

representations of U.S. states and Canadian provinces in Tokyo, Brussels, Frankfurt, and Lon- don. The international initiatives of constituent governments evoke various reactions from na- tional governments, ranging from lack of concern to positive or highly negative responses, de- pending on their perception of these activities as being politically marginal, complementary with, redundant to, or conflicting with national foreign policy. From these activities there emerges the concept of a territorial state as a multivocal actor. Neither a blessing nor a curse, subna- tional presence on the international scene has become a fact of life in an interdependent world.

Territorial components of federal and decentralized unitary systems have been increasingly asserting their international competence. They have done so in matters concerning foreign investment, trade promotion, environmen- tal and energy issues, cultural exchanges, human and labor rights, and tourism. A shorthand term, micro-diplomacy, will be used here to describe the concept and practice of such international ramifications of autonomous territorial politics.

Heeding the imperatives of global and regional interdependence today, elected officials and administrators of many self-governing territorial com- munities try to project their interests and needs onto the international scene.

Thus "provincialism" has been "internationalized" to some extent—however paradoxical that may seem. Most of these micro-diplomatic contacts and

AUTHOR'S NOTE: The U.S.-Canadian part of my research was assisted by the University Consortium for Research on North America, Harvard University. The West European and U.S.- Mexican parts were supported by a research-travel grant from the PSC-CUNY Research Award Program. A portion of this article was included in a comparative study on "Transborder Regionalism and Global Micro-diplomacy" presented and discussed at the Seminar on Canadian- U.S. Relations, Harvard University, 6 December 1983; the discussant was Hon. Pierre-Marc Johnson, Minister of Social Services for Quebec. The author wishes to thank him as well as many other national and regional officials and scholars for their critical comments and helpful suggestions.

Publius: The Journal of Federalism 14 (Fall 1984) ^c CSF Associates, Philadelphia

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resulting "compacts" deal with issues traditionally or constitutionally sub- ject to the reserved, residual, delegated, or shared jurisdiction of subnational territorial components, such as provinces in Canada; states in the United States, Nigeria, India, and Latin American federations; Lander in West Ger- many and Austria; autonomous republics in Yugoslavia; and cantons in Switzerland as well as self-governing units within unitary systems, such as regions or major municipalities. Some writers have used a general, though not very precise, term "low politics" to describe the sum total of these predominantly economic, social, and cultural interchanges in contradistinc- tion to the traditional concept of foreign policy, "high politics", which is primarily concerned with diplomatic status and national security.

SUBNATIONAL PRESENCE ON THE INTERNATIONAL SCENE The following data and recent news reports illustrate some of the visible forms of current subnational participation in international affairs:

In Canada, six provinces (Alberta, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, On- tario, Quebec, Saskatchewan) have established forty-three offices in foreign political, industrial, and financial centers. Alberta, for example, has not on- ly permanent representatives in Los Angeles, New York, Houston, Tokyo, London, and Hong Kong but has also established special relationships with subnational territorial communities in Japan (the island-province of Hok- kaido), People's Republic of China (province of Heilongjian), and South Korea (province of Gangweon). Quebec has twenty-two offices abroad. These offices represent potential proto-embassies because they combine Quebec's present trade needs ("low politics") with the potential "high politics" of secession as advocated by the Parti Quebecois (P.Q.). In part, this explains why Quebec's expenditures for foreign representation (about $15 million a year) represent more than one-half of the total $27 million collectively spent by thirty-three U.S. states for the maintenance of their state offices abroad.

In the United States, these thirty-three states maintain sixty-six permanent overseas offices or consultants in seventeen countries (1982 data); nineteen of the offices are in Tokyo and eleven are in Brussels, the administrative headquarters of the European Community. These state micro-diplomatic net- works are complex in terms of responsibility and reporting. For example, Alabama has a state office in London that promotes sales on behalf of the Alabama State Docks in Mobile. Alabama also has a full-time person in Bern, a part-time salesman in Frankfurt, and a consulting firm in Tokyo.¹ In 1980, state expenditures for the promotion of trade and reverse investment represented a fourfold increase over 1976 allocations. Collectively, the U.S.

'Based on a detailed communication from Governor George C. Wallace to the author. The pattern of other states' representation abroad varies. Florida, for example, for which foreign visitors represent a major source of state income, has one office in Miami to deal with Latin America, three state offices abroad (London, Toronto, and Stuttgart), and one contracted of- fice in Tokyo. Iowa has just one office in Frankfurt.

International Dimension 7 states spend more for such promotional activities than does the U.S. Depart- ment of Commerce.² In this issue of Publius, John H. Kline and John Kin- caid in their respective studies analyze the vitality of state foreign relations and the new international roles of the U.S. governors, often reflecting the particular clout of the incumbents.

In addition to the states, some major U.S. municipalities have also en- gaged in "foreign relations" of their own; some cities have their own diplomatic protocol officers (e.g., Dallas); the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department issued two manuals for the consular corps there in 1983. One is on "Diplomatic and Consular Immunity;" the second deals with diplomatic security matters under the title "Kidnappers and You." In 1982, New York City sent its own trade missions to England and West Germany, even though New York State has permanent trade offices in both London and Wiesbaden.

In September 1983, the U.S. National League of Cities (which groups both major and minor cities in a cooperative framework) organized a conference in San Antonio for the purpose of briefing administrators on the need and importance of their cities' foreign relations. The invitation addressed to mayors condensed its central message into the following three sentences, printed in boldface:

Can Your City Afford to Continue Ignoring the Rest of the World? Not if Your Economy is Going to Grow . . . Maybe it's Time to Expand Your City's Horizons.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors (whose members are municipalities with populations over 30,000) organized a show in Zurich in 1982 and 1983 under the slogan "Invest in America's Cities." One hundred eighty U.S. cities, port authorities, and development or trade agencies competed by appropriate ex- hibits and brochures for foreign investment and trade. One visitor referred to the successful show as a "civil war for foreign dough." Another such show took place in Hong Kong in 1983.

Studies published in this issue (Niles Hansen and John H. Kline) suggest that major cities rather than state or provincial governments are frequently the energetic initiators of foreign contacts or of transborder problem solv- ing. This seems to be particularly so in the cases of New York City, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Montreal—in the latter case due to the political clout of its mayor, Jean Drapeau, rather than the position of the cities in the Canadian federal system. Canadian cities are more subservient to their provincial governments than is the case of major cities in the United States. There are also the obvious cases of border or twin cities, including those having ethnic, racial, linguistic, historic, tribal, or religious links with both sides of an international frontier. Strasbourg in France, Freiburg in West

2Committee on International Trade and Foreign Relations, Export Development and Foreign Investment: The Role of the States and its Linkage to Federal Action (Washington D.C.: Na- tional Governors' Association, 1981), p. 1.

Germany, and Basle and and Geneva in Switzerland are good examples, as are the twin cities along the U.S.-Mexico borders.

In Europe, in the area between the Jura, the Black Forest, and the Vosges, a transborder regional framework (with its think-tank in Basle, the Regio Basiliensis) has been operating successfully for over twenty years.³ The tri- national region consists of the northwestern cantons of Switzerland, the southern portion of the German Land of Baden Wiirttemberg, and upper Alsace (departement Haut-Rhin and Territoire de Belfort). The Regio ramifies out farther north into Strasbourg and Rheinpfalz.

The intensity of the transborder links in the Rhine region is not only the result of cultural, lingual, Alemanic affinity and history; it also reflects the contemporary accelerated movement of trade, credits, cultural products, workers, and pollutants. The flow of commuting workers between France, Switzerland, and Germany has now reached a quarter of a million a day.

In contrast to movements across the southwestern border of the United States, the commuting workers are mostly skilled persons from France seeking higher wages and the harder currencies of Switzerland and Germany.⁴ Far fewer workers commute into France. In 1982, for example, Geneva saw a daily influx of 37,300 workers, commuting mostly from France, with some others coming from the canton of Vaud; only 1,300 Swiss workers commuted daily to France.⁵ As to pollutants, besides acid rain, the central ecological prob- lem in the Rhine corridor is the excessive saturation of the Rhine Valley by nuclear reactors (leading, among other things, to overheating of the river Rhine). These reactors had been planned by the French, German, and Swiss national governments without regard for regional transborder configurations and interests.

The above illustrations suggest two general characteristics of subnational micro-diplomacy.

1. Visibility and intensification of the various subnational governmental initiatives in the field of international relations are of relatively recent vin- tage: mostly they date from the early 1970s, that is, from the world energy crisis followed by the world recession, the continuing arms race, unemploy- ment, budget and export trade deficits, and the ensuing dwindling of central supports for subnational welfare and development programs. More will be said later about the intertwined causes of the subnational awareness of vulnerability and the resulting search for self-help alternatives.

2. Transborder regionalism and "global micro-diplomacy" have come to

3Cf. Planting iiber die Grenzen: Oberrheingraben (Bonn: Europa Union Verlag, 1979). The publication contains detailed maps and statistics on the so-called Rhine Corridor (Le couloir rhinan) separating and (now) so closely linking Switzerland, Germany, and France. See also Viktor V. Malchus, Partnerschaft an europdischen Grenzen (Bonn: Europa Union Verlag, 1975), p. 350 and other publications of the (Association of European Border Regions).

4Charles Ricq, Les Travailleurs frontaliers en Europe (Paris: Editions Anthropos, 1981), p.

504. It contains an excellent bibliography. In 1975, the daily commuting involved over 250,000 workers. The largest number were attracted by Switzerland (99,400), second was West Germany (74,000), third, The Netherlands (19,500), and fourth, France (16,400).

Journal de Geneve 28 (12 November 1982).

International Dimension 9

represent the two basic types of subnational government activities outside national boundaries. Subnational territorial authorities engage in either or both of them. Their principal goal is self-help. Elected subnational leaders perceive transborder regionalism and/or global micro-diplomacy as ap- propriate instruments derived from and consistent with their territorial jurisdictional autonomy, in response to external opportunities or threats.

TRANSBORDER REGIONALISM

This study applies the term "transborder regionalism" to the various for- mal institutions or compacts and informal networks, which have brought contiguous subnational authorities into binational or trinational cooperative associations along and across national boundaries.

Neighboring communities and their governments have always been pressed toward various formal and informal interactions (cooperative as well as hostile or competing). This is not new; what is new is the intensity and political impact and complexity of cross-border interactions. Transborder regional collaboration dates back at least to the Peace of Westphalia (1648) that fragmented Europe into territorial states. The geographic delineation of these states reflected existing religious boundaries, followed by conquests or interdynastic arrangements, including marriages. These boundaries rarely continued to make much sense in light of subsequent industrial and technological developments. Today, despite the jet age, contiguity still plays an important role in subnational transborder interactions, in part, because of the volume and speed of cross-boundary movements of products, per- sons, and pollutants. The resulting subnational perforation of inter-sovereign boundaries may often be seen as a useful correction of past conquests and other territorial insanities.

Conceptually, in the framework of federal studies, such cooperative transborder overlaps between neighboring systems represent confederal associations sui generis; or, if we combine the consociational process with the confederal form, they can be viewed as "consociations of subnations,"

reaching their decisions by micro-diplomatic agreement, not by a majoritarian rule. As is characteristic of most confederations, the aim of such subnational consociations is an inter-sovereign, territorially delineated cooperation, not the creation of a new borderland nation. The cooperating subnational units do not intend to weaken substantially their membership in, and basic allegiance to, their respective nation-states. If a subnational community were to aim at secession (Quebec, for example), it would generally aim at acces- sion to the international system of sovereign states (including membership in the United Nations Organization), not accession to a neighboring national system. Transborder regional frameworks may have, of course, a limited buf- fer effect on centrifugal tendencies within nation-states and so at least com- pensate partly for the dominance of the national center, perceived as excessive by the territorial component.

As to the formal (noncentral) transfrontier institutions along the U.S.- Canada and U.S.-Mexico borders (the two longest unfortified land boun- daries in the world—5,525 miles with Canada and 1,933 miles with Mexico), the most important political instruments of transborder regionalism have been regular summit meetings of the U.S. governors with their counter- parts, the Canadian premiers and Mexican governors. Their staffs and various experts in the fields of energy, ecology, cultural exchanges, investment, and trade who have to prepare and then implement the agreements reached at such regional summits represent a very significant part of the U.S.-Canadian and U.S.-Mexican transborder regional setups. In addition, in Sacramento, a Three Californias Commission serves as a permanent clearinghouse for cooperative contacts with the two Mexican Californias (Baja California Norte and Baja California Sur). Similar transborder commissions are in Arizona and New Mexico. Texas has a state office in Mexico City. In the Northwest, the U.S. states and Western Canadian provinces (as well as Alaska and Yukon) have also begun holding similar regional summit meetings.

In Western Europe, the multitude of both formal and informal regional cooperative networks has induced some European scholars, perhaps prematurely, to anticipate that such transfrontier regional arrangements will significantly blunt the rough edges of competitive European nationalisms and so speed up the European unification, whose snail-like tempo is deplored by these scholars.⁶

Since 1979, the "Outline Convention on Transfrontier Cooperation Be- tween Territorial Communities or Authorities" has established various pro- cedures for the West European national and subnational governments to follow in order to create, step-by-step, regional cooperative frameworks. In this issue of Publius, Niles Hansen deals with the integrative potential of this Convention, which has been ratified by most West European nations (as of 1983), including centralized unitary states, such as France and the Scan- dinavian countries. In his study, Hansen focuses on the comparison of the Western European progress in transborder regional cooperation with the situation along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The neighboring nations in Scandinavia have long been grouped in the Nor- dic Council, which has now truly perforated the frontiers within the Scan- dinavian region by eliminating the use of passports by the citizens of Nor-

6The following hopeful note is contained in Charles Ricq's article in Regionalism and Unifica- tion in Europe, ed. Denis de Rougemont (Geneva: Institut universitaire d'etudes europeennes, 1974), p. 186: "Unlike the closed system of nation states . . . the transfrontier regions, transform- ing themselves from regions of confrontation to regions of concentration, will see the first real signs of surrender of sovereignty—Europe of the future will have to base itself on these regions in order to redesign itself and produce a better structure." A similar optimism characterizes Ricq's recent work on the Alpine Community, combining parts of Switzerland, West Germany, Austria, Italy, and Yugoslavia. "The Community of Alpine regions will necessarily contribute a foundation stone to the slow and complex construction of Europe" is one of his conclusions in "La Communaute des regions alpines" in his Final Report for the Working Group on Alpine Regions (Geneve: Institut universitaire d'etudes europeennes, Section Etudes regionales, 1983), p. 32.

International Dimension 11 way, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland. In 1974, the Nordic Environmental Protection Convention (Article 3) also authorized any individual person "who is affected or may be affected by a nuisance caused by environmentally harm- ful activities in another Contracting State to bring before the appropriate Court or Administrative Authority of that [neighboring] State the question of permissibility of such activities, including the question of measures to pre- vent damage." If this Scandinavian procedure, encouraging not only the authorities but also individual citizens to act against transborder pollution, were applied to Canada and the United States, individual Canadian citizens would surely be suing American "acid rainmakers" in U.S. courts and vice versa.

In the Canadian context, an intensification of transborder regional links between the various provinces and U.S. states in the East and, to a lesser extent, in the West may make the U.S.-Canadian power asymmetry somewhat more bearable as opposed to the effects of the concept of "continentalism."

In the eyes of many Canadians, "continentalism" tends to be interpreted as a possible institutionalization of the U.S. continental dominance or, at least, the U.S. cavalier attitude toward Canada, which too easily takes Canada for granted as merely a minor partner. In a regional transborder framework, some states (Vermont) and counties are often, in fact, more dependent on their Canadian counterparts than the other way around. Also, in the regional context, francophone Quebec may feel less overwhelmed by the anglophone ocean south, west, and east—against which, otherwise, intimate links with France seem to be the only antidote. From Ottawa's point of view, regional linkages between Quebec and eastern U.S. states merit support rather than hindrance.

There is no doubt that, in a regional context, contiguous communities often feel closer to each other (both within and across the national boundaries) than to distant provinces or states and distant national capitals which, right- ly or wrongly, are deemed ignorant or neglectful of the interests and needs of the borderlands and their common concerns. In the American Southwest, for example, Ellwyn Stoddard analyzed the special problem of borderlands that have to absorb the impact of their respective national centers and their center-to-center agreements. As to the border cities along the U.S.-Mexico border, he writes, they are "more integrated into each other's economy than they are with their respective states or nations."⁷ One telling example is a current study, undertaken by the City of San Diego, concerning the possibility and cost of a plant to treat all of Tijuana sewage. San Diego presently treats 13,000,000 gallons of Tijuana sewage a day.⁸

In the context of the various water problems (supply, irrigation, and pollu- tion) along the U.S.-Mexico border, this issue of Publius focuses also on the impact of transborder regionalism on the conduct of national policy. This

7Ellwyn Stoddard, "Local and Regional Incongruities in Bi-National Diplomacy: Policy for the U.S.-Mexico Border," Policy Perspectives Journal 2 (1982): 114.

*New York Times, 14 September 1983.

is the subject of a perceptive analysis by Stephen P. Mumme.

In studying these transborder regional configurations, one is constantly struck by the importance of the informal inter-elite frameworks that can function so well without any formal institutions and often, by telephone, perform the transborder tasks of coordinating or adapting national policies to borderland realities. In New England, for instance, the states and pro- vinces actually do without any permanent representatives in their respective regional "capitals," while they seem to need state offices in such distant places as Japan (Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island), West Germany (Connecticut), Belgium (Massachusetts Port Authority), and England (Rhode Island). Only one New England state (Vermont) presently has an office in Canada (Montreal) for the purpose of promoting tourism and reverse in- vestment. It seems that for many a New England governor and his staff (as well as for their East Canadian counterparts), the opposite side of the U.S.- Canada border is simply not "foreign" or "abroad" in the same sense as Tokyo or London are, and understandably so.

Then, there is the telephone, whose transborder uses often elude the eyes and ears of not only researchers but governors' staffs as well. Jokingly, the governor of Vermont, Richard Snelling, told this writer in 1982: "If I want to keep my people warm the next winter, I simply pick up the phone and call Rene [Levesque]." It was, of course, not as simple as that; it took, for example, several years before Hydro-Quebec and the New England Electric System (NEPOOL) finally reached a complex agreement in 1983. A similar energy compact was signed between Quebec and the New York State Power Authority (PASNY) in 1982.

While these formal and informal cooperative networks manifest a com- mon, quite relaxed attitude toward the reality of inter-sovereign borders on the part of political, administrative, and technical elites, the question may be posed whether such inter-elite intimacy may lead to an emergence of a popular transborder political and social culture and sentiments of separate identity and border loyalty. Not enough field research has been completed on this subject to warrant a positive or negative answer. We may only assume, quite tentatively, that the constant interlacing of human fates, jobs, mar- riages, shopping, and general ways of life (that may differ from those found in the respective hinterlands which, if not seen from the peripheral perspec- tive are, of course, core lands) is bound to have some effect in the long run.

But one should be cautious in this respect. In Europe, for example, the Ger- man language—in both its literary form and its Alemanic dialects—has been, of course, an additional powerful link between the populations on both sides of the Rhine for centuries. In the U.S. Southwest, "Spanglish" and calo (the dialect of the Andalusian gypsies spoken along the border) do not yet qualify as true and integrative borderland languages.

As to the effect of historically given anglophone linkages along the U.S.- Canada border (with the exception of francophone Quebec), one should guard against crediting a common language with an integrative potential. Often,

International Dimension 13 in anglophone Ontario, resentment against the popular culture of the United States is more pronounced than in Quebec, precisely because of the absence of a lingual barrier. By contrast, some francophone elites in Quebec argue (perhaps wrongly) that they are better protected because of the Latin barrier against the U.S. cultural onslaught. Nevertheless, the preoccupation with

"franglais" in France itself indicates the extent of the problem posed by American power and technological dominance in any linguistic milieu.

No clear evidence of the emergence of a separate U.S.-Canada borderland popular culture has been documented convincingly. "Along the more free- flowing Canadian border," notes one American scholar, "there is a weak or non-existent culture whereas a strong border culture extends along the entire length of our southern border with Mexico."⁹ The difference may be, at least partly, due to the sparsely populated nature of the U.S. northern borders in contrast to the population density in the industrial and rural areas along the Rhine and in the twin border cities along the Mexican border from Tijuana/San Diego in California to Matamoros/Brownsville in Texas— where the underdeveloped and overpopulated Third World so uniquely interfaces with one of the most developed countries in the world.¹⁰ Also, borderland portions of these U.S. states once belonged to Spain/Mexico and were long occupied by Hispanics.

GLOBAL MICRO-DIPLOMACY

For lack of a better term, "global micro-diplomacy" will be used here to describe that pattern of subnational micro-diplomacy that searches for cooperative contacts and compacts far beyond the immediate neighborhood and establishes relations with distant centers of economic and political power.

It appears as a more spectacular departure from the past subnational absence on the international scene; but it does not necessarily mean that this type of subnational diplomacy is today more important in its consequences than transborder regionalism.

Global micro-diplomacy involves, therefore, the stationing of permanent missions (state offices) in distant corners of the world (e.g., the U.S. state and Canadian provincial houses abroad). They truly represent only a tip of the subnational iceberg in foreign relations. There are other equally or more

'Stoddard, "Local and Regional Incongruities in Bi-National Diplomacy:" 114.

10The density of the population in the Swiss/German/French Regio is about 606 people per square mile as opposed to 34 per square mile in the five Canadian provinces in the Northeast, that is, about seventeen times greater. However, such measurements are misleading because in a way, the very concept of borderlands, as it is known in Western Europe or in the U.S.

Southwest, hardly fits the border configuration between Canada and the United States. Six of the ten provinces are contiguous to the U.S. states, and the remaining four face the United States in a sort of "salt or fresh water neighborhood." The ten provinces are Canada, not peripheral sectors of a nation-state as is the case of Baden, Alsatia, and Basle in Europe; and Baja California/California, Sonora/Arizona, Chihuahua/New Mexico, and Coahuila/Nuevo L6on/Tamaulipas/Texas. In the Southwest, the density measurements also pose some problems because uninhabitable deserts alternate with overpopulated cities; therefore, density averages along the U.S.-Mexico border tell us very little.

important instruments of local globalism such as (1) sending fact-finding missions for short-term visits abroad (e.g., a Kentucky trade mission to South Africa); (2) trips by state governors and provincial premiers abroad for the specific purpose of promoting subnational interests; (3) hosting foreign dignitaries and trade representatives for the same purpose; (4) trade and in- vestment shows (e.g., U.S. cities in Zurich and Hong Kong); (5) state-paid promotional campaigns in foreign media; (6) foreign trade/banking zones (thirty U.S. states have them); (7) special relationships with foreign territorial communities abroad" (e.g., Connecticut's sister relationship with the Brazilian state of Paraiba and Alberta's special relationship with the Japanese province of Hokkaido); (8) various important, though elusive, operations inside the country but with eyes directed overseas, such as lobbying at the national capital, especially at the departments of commerce and external af- fairs, as well as the briefing and training of state or provincial officials for the conduct of foreign relations; and (9) many other fragmentary actions of subnational officials.

All these multiple springs of policy are calculated to "bubble up" to major decisional levels. In the United States, the National Governors' Association, particularly its Committee on International Trade and Foreign Relations,¹² represents not only a collective lobby on behalf of the states vis-a-vis the national executive and legislature but also an important train- ing and inspirational base for the political leadership of the various states.

Similar lobbying as well as information dissemination is done by the Na- tional Association of State Development Agencies (NASDA),¹³ National League of Cities, and U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Some of these activities are occasionally reported in the press; but their complexity cannot be easily and interestingly captured, nor can the conse- quences of these numerous inputs and "withinputs" be measured easily. There is, for example, no yardstick by which we could accurately estimate the amount of dollars in foreign investment that would result from " x " number of dollars spent by the state representatives in Frankfurt or Brussels. How also could one measure the personal interest and political clout of a gover- nor (e.g., former Governor William Clements of Texas) in conducting a per- sonal micro-diplomacy in Mexico City? In this issue of Publius, the roles of U.S. governors are analyzed in more detail by John Kincaid.

"The National Association of State Development Agencies considers such a sister relation- ship ineffective. See NASDA, Trade Development Catalogue (1982), p. 14.

"National Governors' Association, Policy Positions 1982-1983, "International Trade and Foreign Relations," pp. 205-239, and its Winter Supplement (1982-1983), "Refugee and Im- migration Policy," pp. 53-56. In the fiscal year ending 30 September 1983, the U.S. Border Patrol caught 1.2 million aliens trying to cross the United States-Mexico border illegally. Over 60 percent of these were apprehended in the El Paso (Texas) and Cula Vista (California) areas.

The number of successful crossings is a matter of very approximate guessing. In September 1983, the estimate of such crossings between Mexico and California only, was 20,000 in August.

l3Cf., NASDA, Trade Development Catalogue (1982), basically a briefing manual for state government foreign trade specialists. It defines, for example, the primary function of the state trade specialist assigned abroad as being "to locate potential buyers of the state's products and services" (p. 10).

International Dimension IS

Whereas physical proximity is the obvious main reason for transborder regionalism, awareness of universal interdependence is the major cause of global micro-diplomacy. Interdependence is certainly not new; but the general awareness of its all permeating imperatives is new. It has, as it were, trickled down from beyond the borders and from the national government to pro- vincial, state, or cantonal elected officials and their staffs, who are respon- sible for the progress and well-being of their respective territorial com- munities, and for their own political survival in them. Interdependence simply means a vulnerability to external, often quite distant, events and an imperative to act—as so many subnational leaders were compelled to recognize under the jolt of the OPEC boycott in 1973, the world economic crisis, and the concomitant decline of exports and, therefore, export connected employment in the various states.

In 1981, nearly five million jobs in the United States were related to the export of manufactured goods; within the manufacturing sector, exports ac- counted for 12.8 percent of the total manufacturing employment. Among the states, California had by far the largest number of export-related jobs;

New York was second; and Texas, Pennsylvania, and Ohio were next in rank.

In terms of civilian export-related jobs, the leading states were Connecticut, Washington, Ohio, and Delaware, all four being above the six percent bracket.¹⁴ If we add the budgetary deficits caused by the nuclear and con- ventional arms race and various welfare and social security programs, federal components and their governments were simply compelled to search for ways to replace diminishing national support by direct contacts with foreign markets and foreign centers of financial and economic power. The logic of global interdependence applies to both types of national systems: those that own and manage the production of goods and services (loosely called socialist or welfare states) and those that promote and support free enterprise, even by governmental action and regulation (loosely called capitalist) and, therefore, displace, at least partly, the market mechanism.

The intermingling of all facets of domestic politics with international politics and economics has been referred to by one American scholar as

"intermestic" politics.¹⁵ Our emphasis here is that both the international

I4U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Annual Survey of Manufactures (1981), p. 1. A recent New York Times editorial (20 November 1983) noted that every $1 billion of exports supports 25,000 jobs. This figure was compared with the expected U.S. foreign trade deficit for 1983: $70 billion. The editorial, appropriately entitled "The Ominous Deficit," points to the important intangible factor in world competition: "the pervasive export-mindedness of foreign traders; unlike Americans, they have long lived by the slogan 'export or die'. " See also the 1983 statement by the Chairman of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovern- mental Relations, Arizona Governor Bruce Babbit, "states will probably have to assert themselves as never before in modern times. Fiscal pressure on the federal budget has meant a declining rate of growth in intergovernmental aid. . . . federal grants are projected to continue to ac- count for a decreasing proportion of total federal spending for the foreseeable future. . . . The message is clear—the national government will no longer bail us out." Intergovernmental Perspec- tive 9 (1983): 2.

"Bayless Manning, "The Congress, the Executive, and the Intermestic Affairs: Three Pro- posals," Foreign Affairs 55 (January 1977): 306.

and domestic components of the newly coined term "intermestic" should be understood as clearly containing also a subnational dimension. Or, in Manning's words:

The economic interdependence of the modern world is more than international.

It is also inter-local.... Every jiggle in the pattern of the international economy is likely to pinch some local group . . . and convert it immediately into a vocal group.¹⁶

As the U.S. National Governors' Association expressed it recently: "States must maintain and enrich their contacts with foreign governments, industries, and citizens.. . . They must be diligent in . . . establishing the need for recogni- tion of their individual and collective interests in international affairs."¹⁷

In practical political terms, the well-being of subnational electorates—

and therefore their leaders' own staying power—clearly depends on an ability to graft secondary links to foreign sources of economic, financial, and in- dustrial power onto primary links with the national center (and its funding agencies). Wolfram Hanrieder's perceptive argument about the internal (ver- tically applied and vertically supported) power being sustained by horizon- tal (external) cooperation may be extended also to the territorial components of federal and decentralized unitary states. They too are now "compelled to turn to external sources in order to meet demands pressed upon them by their electorates."¹⁸

In order to remain "custodians of the living standards, employment, and amenities of their population"¹⁹ not only nations but also subnational ter- ritorial communities have "to go it with others" across national boundaries so as to be able to "go it alone" more successfully within their own borders.

OPPOSITION, SEPARATISM, AND ME-TOOISM

In addition to the logic of global interdependence and contiguity (that is, regional interdependence) several other reasons for a subnational presence on the international scene should be briefly identified:

1. Opposition to bigness and distance. The neo-populist dictum,

"Small is Beautiful," has its intra-federal counterpart, "Local is Beautiful."

In addition to the usual criticism of the administrative, economic, and legislative performance of national governments, subnational leaders and their publics often oppose the center on the ground that it is unwieldy, big, over- bureaucratized, dehumanized, and above all, distant and unfamiliar with where the local and regional shoe pinches. Extra-national remedies then

16Ibid: 309.

"Committee on International Trade and Foreign Relations, Export Development and Foreign Investment, p. 115.

l8Wolfram F. Hanrieder, "Dissolving International Politics: Reflections on the Nation-State,"

American Political Science Review 72 (December 1978): 1276-1286.

"Edward H. Carr, Nationalism and After (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1948), p. 28.

International Dimension 17 appear as justified on the basis of this basically populist (or should we say:

neo-confederal?) argument. In the context of transborder regionalism, it ap- pears more vocally present in the U.S. Southwest than in the Rhine Valley or in the U.S.-Canada North. As one borderland scholar described it with reference to the U.S.-Mexico border:

Border policies are formulated far from the border by people unfamiliar with . . . "frontier" customs and integrative systems through which daily border activities are conducted. They are equally naive as to how national policies are implemented in border contexts.²⁰

2. Extension of foreign policy monopoly. In federal systems in particular, leaders of subnational territorial communities have questioned the expan- sion of the national government's monopoly in the fields of diplomacy, foreign trade regulation, and defense into areas considered to be partly or fully within the domestic jurisdiction of the federal components (or once delegated to territorial communities in unitary systems). Since World War I and then World War II, national governments have been increasingly called upon (which is another effect of global interdependence) to negotiate, sign, and ratify—and thus indirectly legislate by means of executive agreements—international compacts dealing with human and labor rights, crime, genocide, fishing limits, energy flows, commodity prices, financial matters, and cultural exchanges. These issues are usually painfully more im- portant for one subnational segment than others. Yet they are usually handled without an appropriate formal or informal machinery for prior center- provincial, center-state, or center-cantonal consultation and consent.

In the United States, thirty years ago, the issue of a federal tendency to preempt some states' rights became an explosive issue (e.g., the Bricker Amendment).²¹ One delicate, though perhaps less explosive, contemporary issue is the so-called "unitary tax" which twelve U.S. states have imposed on multinational corporations within their boundaries. These companies are not being taxed on profits earned within the state, but on the local company's share of its parent company's worldwide profits. Canada and other U.S.

allies—and the corporations—have strongly protested these subnational taxes, which they consider as being contrary to both free trade and some of the GATT regulations.²²

^Stoddard, "Local and Regional Incongruities in Bi-National Diplomacy:" 126.

2lSenator John Bricker (R-Ohio) proposed an amendment to the treatymaking power of the federal government on 7 February 1952. Its main purpose was to eliminate self-executing ex- ecutive agreements, which were then viewed as indirect legislation by the federal government at the expense of state police powers. Sixty-three senators initially joined in signing the Bricker resolution before the whole amendment (revising the precedent set by the famous Missouri v.

Holland case in 1920) was defeated by only one vote in July 1953.

^While the Treasury and the Council of Economic Advisers unanimously recommended a congressional correction of these state practices, a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June 1983 and, then, President Reagan, 22 September 1983, in the name of "New Federalism" upheld the unitary tax, which allows the global income of multinational corporations to be included in figuring state taxes.

3. Separatism. Politics within and among nations has often been deter- mined by nationalist sentiment rather than economic calculation. When history, language, and culture are involved, the cold eloquence of trade statistics is not of much avail.²³ This seems to be the case in Quebec—with its francophone and francofile sentiment—whose subnational trade and cultural activities on the international scene tend to contain a strong separatist message when the Parti Quebecois is in power. The Quebec case indicates the relative unimportance of economic issues when nationalist sentiment is present.²⁴ Since 1974, for example, the federal government of Canada has been spending more in the province of Quebec than it has collected there in taxes ($4.8 billion in Quebec's favor). This has been calculated by Quebec governmental economists and published in the official document, Comptes Economiques.²ⁱ

4. Me-Tooism. In politics, not only nations but also their territorial components—and their leaders—may be copycats. Some state and local governments have established foreign contacts simply to emulate other sub- national successes in attracting foreign investment or manufacturing plants to their territory: thirty U.S. states, for example, competed over the loca- tion of a Volkswagen assembly plant, with Pennsylvania emerging as the final winner. Others, one may suspect, have established state offices abroad as perhaps a new status symbol, without heeding NASDA's general caution about the cost and effectiveness of a state presence abroad. One of the fifty state governments replying to my questionnaire on their foreign relations stated almost apologetically that is has not yet established a state office abroad, but that its state university maintains extensive contacts with several foreign countries—which, by the way, may be a good long-term investment after all.

DO REGIONAL AND GLOBAL MICRO-DIPLOMACY MATTER?

Two questions should be posed at this point:

1. Do subnational activities change important outcomes in international

23This author comes from Czechoslovakia, which, exercising its right of national self- determination during World War I, separated from en economically well balanced framework of the Austro-Hungarian empire. The national independence and prosperity of Czechoslovakia subsequently lasted only two decades. Abandoned by France in Munich, the country was first occupied by the Nazis, and then later, by the Soviet Union.

^ h e prime minister of Canada, Pierre Trudeau, demonstrated the difficulty in balancing emotions and dollars when, during the patriation of the Canadian constitution in 1982, he criti- cized the provincial premiers for lacking a higher purpose and non-pedestrian commitment to and vision of Canada, treating their country as merely a "confederation of provincial shopping centers." The argument used by Ottawa in Quebec may, of course, often be just the opposite:

too much vision and too little concern for the economic facts of Canadian life.

25"Les comptes economiques de 1981: Ottawa verse $18 milliards au Quebec et y percoit $13.2 milliards." Le Devoir, 7 September 1983.

International Dimension 19 relations from what they would have been, had the contacts been confined to the traditional sovereign-center-to-sovereign-center level?

2. Is the foreign policy monopoly at the center eroded, especially its ef- fectiveness to speak to the external world with one clear voice?

In their thorough study of the autonomous roles of Canadian provinces in international affairs in this issue, Elliot and Lily Feldman have posed these two important questions.

The first question, posed as a "contrafactual conditional," points to a problem inherent in all fields of political science. In contrast to hard sciences, the science of politics cannot repeat experiments, alternatively adding and then eliminating various ingredients and so observe the interplay of indepen- dent and dependent variables.

We cannot, for example, first add and then subtract subnational participa- tion in international affairs and measure the difference in outcomes. All we can do for the time being—in the framework of the second question—is to observe and estimate national governments and foreign governments and their reactions and responses to the various forms of subnational entries (at- tempted or successful, regional or global) upon the international scene. The seven studies published in this issue illustrate and demonstrate that the territorial components of various national systems have indeed made their interests and needs clearly audible internationally: the contemporary nation- state speaks to the external world with more than one voice. The various noncentral voices and the central voice of a nation-state may be sharply disso- nant and, therefore, confusing or even unintelligible to foreign ears; oc- casionally, they may invite foreign fishing in federally troubled waters. But these voices may also be basically complementary or coordinated.

In general, it should be noted that national governments have long been accustomed and trained to listen carefully and react cautiously to more than one voice of foreign governments. This is particularly so in the case of govern- ments presiding over a truly pluralistic society or a society experiencing civil war or other turmoil. National governments, for example, have always listened and established contacts with the foreign opposition parties since, after all, they may be a government of tomorrow; national governments have behaved similarly with regard to dissatisfied ethnic communities, which could become another nation-state. National governments also react to various func- tional and professional groups within foreign nations—from transnational corporations and labor unions to academics and dissidents, sometimes har- bingers of things to come.

Our present study adds to the above communication networks autonomous territorial components in federal and decentralized unitary systems because the governments of those components can make, and have made, their interests and needs part of international concerns. In such a context, the image of a nation-state speaking abroad with a single legitimate voice is re- placed by a concept of a multivocal (polyphonic) state actor.

In this sense, our concern with the international roles of subnational

governments also corrects the so-called "world paradigm"²⁶ which a decade ago so usefully modified the state-centric paradigm by adding nongovern- mental transnational actors, such as multinational corporations, churches, labor unions, professional associations, and transnational ideological organizations as well as (under the rubric of "transgovernmentalism")

"bureaucratic contacts that take place below the apex of the organizational hierarchy."²⁷

The Nye-Keohane paradigm has not included the patterns of movement of tangible and intangible items across international boundaries when one or more of the interacting units is a subnational territorial authority, that is, subnationally elected officials and their staffs who, in a federal system of divided and coordinated powers, cannot be viewed as subordinate units of the central government. In their study of the assertive role of Canadian provinces in international relations, Elliot and Lily Feldman deal with the amplification of the Nye-Keohane paradigm in more detail.

In the Canadian context, as well as in the Third World, attention must also be paid to potential autonomous international contacts which have been developed by publicly owned enterprises—producers of goods and services for sale on international markets. In Canada, eight public corporations are owned by the national government and fifteen by provincial governments.

Jean Kirk Laux deals with the situations in which territorially based and publicly owned corporations engage in activities abroad as autonomous

"para-governments" which often are not only unknown to their government owners but also contradict public policy and escape governmental corrective controls because "the soundness of investment [on the basis of a profit- making mandate] rather than governmental policy has become their perfor- mance yardstick."

CENTRAL GOVERNMENT AND SUBNATIONAL ACTIVITIES:

FEARS AND SUPPORTS

One possible measure of the importance of subnational foreign policies are the reactions of the national governments to them and measures proposed or adopted to deal with them.

Interviews with national elites have so far pointed to the following seven sources of central opposition to subnational micro-diplomacy:

1. Opposition in principle (invoking the constitution and its approval of

^Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, eds. Transnational Relations and World Politics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972), pp. 371-398. Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, "Transgovernmental Relations and International Organizations," World Politics 27 (October 1974): 39-62; and Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power and In- terdependence: World Politics in Transition (Boston/Toronto: Little, Brown, 1977), pp. 3-261.

27Keohane and Nye, "Transgovernmental Relations," 44.

International Dimension 21

foreign policy monopoly at the center) to any dilution of central power, a natural characteristic of all those who wield significant power.

2. Fear simply of anything novel, that is, bureaucratic inertia dreading any departure from a well established routine.

3. Devotion to neatness, and therefore, fear of a new, complex, and com- plicated pattern.

4. Fear of consequences resulting from relative inexperience, diplomatic gullibility (borderland "chumminess"), and lack of negotiating skill on the part of provincial and local personnel as they move from the domestic order into the anarchic international system and consociational decisionmaking frameworks. In the Southwest, for example, the four U.S. governors and their aides, accustomed to free and competitive politics and considerable deci- sional elbowroom at home, must confront a near monolithic cohort of six Mexican governors, operating under the direction and supervision of a single party system.²⁸ In an interview with a high Swiss official, a fear of Com- munist meddling and spying through contacts with naive cantonal authorities was very clearly expressed and the need for federal control and monitoring emphasized.

5. Fear of political-administrative chaos since subnational micro-diplomacy may reduce the operational effectiveness of the central government. Other nations may exploit such a segmentation of national foreign policy into its constituent parts, especially by using, as it were, a back entrance into a nation- state. Idaho was so used by Libya and Iran, both countries trying to develop a "special relationship" between their nations and Idaho agriculture.²⁹

Some U.S. and Canadian observers also view Quebec's direct relations with neighboring U.S. states, as well as with more distant U.S. states, as a backdoor entrance to the United States, a preliminary contact with "ersatz Americans" in the words of one Quebec liberal critic, before the real thing happens.

The justification for an anxiety about a possible chaos may be illustrated by the conflicting state and federal attitudes toward the explosive issue of South Africa. While, for example, Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young placed in the center of his mayoral campaign the slogan, "Making Atlanta the Gateway to the American Supermarket" (meaning all Africa except South

^Stephen P. Mumme, "The Politics of Water Apportionment and Pollution Problems in United States-Mexico Relations," Overseas Development Council, U.S.-Mexico Project Series, No. 5 (1982). Mumme writes (p. 16) that "the primary obstacle to a new groundwater treaty and resolution of outstanding surface water issues is the decentralization of the treatymaking process [in the U.S.] of formulating a negotiating position and ratifying water apportionment agreements. Mexico, with centralized management of its domestic policy process, has greater flexibility in developing its negotiating position."

^Earl H. Fry and Gregory A. Raymond, Idaho's Foreign Relations: The Transgovernmen- tal Linkages of an American State (Boise, Idaho: Center for Research, 1978). See also Earl H. Fry, "The Politics of Investment Incentives and Restrictions: A Preliminary Analysis of the Transnational Linkages of the U.S. State and Canadian Provincial Governments," paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Western Social Science Association, Albuquerque, 27-30 April 1983.

Africa), Kentucky sent a trade mission to South Africa in 1982 on the basis of its study of the South Africa-Kentucky trade potential. At the same time, several states, under the pressure of an anti-apartheid lobby, have considered divesting their pension funds, if placed in the hands of banks doing business with South Africa.

Under the rubric of chaos, we can also place the various state laws prescrib- ing "Buy American" practices and forbidding incorporation of foreign banks or foreign purchases of land. Such policies are hardly consistent with the proclaimed federal policies of free trade and competition.

6. Fear of subnational egocentrism, which may be promoted to the detri- ment of other federal components and lead to acute intra-federal tension and conflict. One national official expressed this fear as follows: "What's good for the Southwest with regard to Mexico [in immigration matters], may not be so good for the other forty-six states."

7. Fear of a secessionist potential in some subnational initiatives has already been discussed and needs little elaboration here. This issue plays, of course, its key role in Ottawa's attitudes toward Quebec and its openly politically motivated activities abroad, especially in relation to France and francophone countries in general. In Ottawa's eyes, the Quebec issue colors the initiatives of all other provinces abroad, including those of ever faithful Ontario. A precedent is a terrifying prospect. It should be noted, however, that the Quebec proto-embassies abroad were initiated by the liberal op- ponents of P.Q. separatism and would be no doubt continued in a modified network if the liberals come back to power. In Alsace, peripheral secessionism seems to be only a rather distant echo, a lingering opposition to an excessive Jacobin centralism in Paris rather than a genuine desire for secession. (Cor- sica is, of course, a different case.) As to Mexico, instead of a fear of seces- sion, some anxiety has been expressed in Mexico City about the long-term consequences of the exposure of the nortenos (used pejoratively in this con- text) to some aspects of the U.S. way of life. "Bluejeanization," rock music, and consumerism in particular tend to be interpreted as manifestations of a dangerous alienation from true Mexican values and culture.

WHO WILL EXPAND: THE CENTER OR THE COMPONENTS?

In response to the logic of global and regional interdependence, two scenarios are conceivable for the relationship of national and subnational governments in the area of foreign policy.

1. Centralization is the first plausible scenario, marked by a new expan- sion of national governmental power far beyond the traditional, constitu- tional monopoly of foreign policy (security, diplomacy, and regulation of foreign trade) to encompass all modern economic, social, ecological, cultural, and humanitarian issue-areas. The probable accompanying feature would be a mammoth growth of national bureaucracy and its subnational

International Dimension 23 branches—all that to be justified in the name of an effective promotion of a balanced sum total of all national and subnational interests by a single legitimate voice abroad.

2. Federal segmentation—separating defense from non-security areas of international relations and then even subdividing these—is the second possi- ble scenario. It clearly recognizes and draws appropriate conclusions from the international roles of component autonomous governments—all that to be justified in the name of participatory democracy and the territorial divi- sion of powers in which, in our interdependent age, subnational politics do not and cannot stop at international boundaries.

Federal-territorial segmentation of foreign policy should be distinguished from functional sectorialization or functional decentralization of foreign policy. By functional sectorialization, we mean a division of international roles among various specialized departments and agencies of the national government along their lines of functional expertise permitting, among other things, cooperative international contacts "below the foreign policy apex."

Today, in all countries, not only the ministry of external affairs (or Depart- ment of State in the U.S.) but also all the other principal ministries or depart- ments exercise their responsibilities beyond the national borders. At embassies and consulates abroad, diplomatic personnel in the traditional sense of the word now often represent, quantitatively, a minority (20 percent in the case of the United States) as opposed to the representatives of the ministries of commerce, finance, foreign trade, agriculture, science, technology, com- munications, and immigration. Ten years ago, Nye and Keohane calculated that forty-four distinct federal bureaucracies were represented at the U.S.

Embassy in London.³⁰ In contrast, adapting to the monolithic nature of the Soviet political system, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow consisted predominantly of diplomatic, consular, military, and C.I.A. personnel.

Whereas the presence of commercial or science attaches at a consulate or embassy abroad is a visible symbol of functional sectorialization of foreign policy, the presence of an officer representing a subnational territorial interest at an all-national embassy³¹—or at a separate state or provincial office—are visible manifestations of some degree of federal segmen- tation.

The two sharply distinguished scenaria are, of course, too clear-cut for

^Keohane and Nye, "Transgovernmental Relations," 392.

3lOne example is the presence of a Manitoba representative at the Canadian Embassy in Washington in connection with the Canadian-U.S. negotiations concerning the Garrison Dam Project between North Dakota and Manitoba. There is, however, no North Dakota representa- tion at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa. Another example is the presence of a Quebec diplomat at the Canadian Embassy in Abidjan (Ivory Coast). These "territorial" officers' access to all- national classified documents raises some intriguing questions. The Maritime provinces generally rely only on the Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to represent and promote their interests abroad. They do, however, fully participate in the New England-East Canada gubernatorial summits and the resulting formal and informal transborder regional frameworks. In the west, civil defense agreements have linked up regionally, British Columbia with the State of Washington (1968) and Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia with Montana (1969).

the world of practical politics. If present trends are indicative of probable future developments, they seem to point to a continuing duplication with coordination, a scenario representing a middle ground, though a constantly shifting one, between centralization and federal segmentation and/or fragmentation.

MANAGEMENT OF CHAOS

Logically, if we speak of duplication with coordination, coordinative measures constitute a recognition of and response to actual or potential duplication, which is perceived by the governments concerned as possibly leading to chaos, waste, or frictions among subnational and national authorities in the domain of their respective activities abroad. In some cases, duplication may prepare the way for such a loosening of federal bonds (sovereignty/association, diplomatic federalism,³² and other formulas) as to fragment some systems into separate sovereignties.

The concept of duplication-with-coordination assumes quite realistically, that subnational assertions of territorial interests and needs will inevitably continue to seep up to the national and international plateaus, while the national perspective and power will simultaneously percolate through intra- federal boundaries. "Parallel circuits"—as partially self-regulating mechanisms in all complex organizations—come to mind here. In a different context, Martin Landau convincingly argued that redundancy has proven useful not only on an airplane, which is in distress, but also in a complex organization and in federalism, in which overlaps and duplication-with- coordination are part of its concept and practice."

In the past two decades, both national and subnational governments have taken a number of steps (to be identified later) to coordinate the various sub- national initiatives and activities. We should note, however, that in a great many cases, no coordinative action has been taken and no catastrophe has ensued.

One reason for the absence of coordinative concern is simply a lack of awareness. National policymakers and administrators often do not know what is actually going on in the borderlands or in other subnational networks

32Paul Painchaud, "Territorialization and Internationalism: The Case of Quebec," Publius:

The Journal of Federalism 7 (Fall 1977): 161-176.

33Martin Landau, "Redundancy, Rationality, and the Problem of Duplication and Overlap,"

Public Administration Review 29 (July 1969): 346-358 and "Federalism, Redundancy and System Stability," Publius: The Journal of Federalism 3 (Fall 1973): 188, where he describes the U.S.

federal government as the most redundant in the world. The constitutional designers not only

"engineered feedbacks into the system . . . they multiplexed it at every critical choice point.

. . . Domains overlap, jurisdictions are confused and accountability is dispersed. . . . And for each citizen there is, at the least, two of everything:. . . . two constitutions, two executives, two legislatures, two codes of law, two judiciaries . . . two bills of rights, two networks of checks and balances . . . and there are more." This study adds: "also two types of international con- tacts: national and subnational."

International Dimension 25 abroad. Time and again this author, for example, has found evidence in both Western Europe and North America of deliberate efforts on the part of sub- national elites not to draw unnecessary or premature attention from central authorities to local solutions of some local problems by means of informal contacts and "good neighborhood" networks. Often, it was not a deliberate deception, just an avoidance of unnecessary complications.

Another reason for the absence of coordinative measures is a frequent con- viction on the part of national administrators that most of the subnational contacts and cooperative arrangements are politically quite marginal, since they so often deal with complex technical matters of regional or local im- port only.

As to the decision to try to coordinate micro-diplomatic initiatives, the fear that subnational activities abroad might get out of control is only one reason for coordination. At the national center, there is also a frankly positive view of subnational activities abroad. In the United States, for example, the U.S. government not only looks with favor but often encourages subnational promotion of foreign trade, reverse investment, and cultural exchanges. This is based on the belief that subnational and national objectives are basically complementary even though nuanced differently. Some central policymakers and administrators also take seriously both federalism and its need to adjust to the demands of the contemporary era. In the United States one can, of course, note some differences among national agencies. While the U.S.

Department of Commerce seems the most encouraging, the office of the U.S.

Trade Representative at the White House is often more cautious for political reasons, and the U.S. Treasury Department becomes quite alarmed about state taxing powers. The potential uses of taxation to help state export trade and reverse investment could lead to trouble with GATT and its standards as well as with the Treasury's concept of the real purpose of particular state taxes. The U.S. Department of State worries when the states' various com- mercial initiatives acquire disturbing political overtones, as for example Idaho's desire for a special relationship with Iran and Libya, or Kentucky's enthusiasm for trade with South Africa (1982).³⁴

In Switzerland, the federal government warmly endorsed the creation of

Mln November 1977, eight years after Qadafi's accession to power in Libya, the Idaho State Farm Bureau promoted the signing of a contract involving the government of Libya, North Pacific Grain Growers, and Lewiston Grain Growers. Quoted by Earl H. Fry and Gregory H.

Raymond, Idaho's Foreign Relations, p. 36. On 1 July 1982, Kentucky began an active cam- paign to promote trade with South Africa and sent a two-week trade mission there on the basis of its findings that, according to Gene Smith, deputy secretary of the Kentucky Department of Commerce, South Africa could be considered as a promising and largely untapped market for American business. In September 1983, a similar problem arose in Dallas when the city's Office of Protocol and the Chamber of Commerce arranged a "Mayor's Breakfast" to honor a delegation of fourteen South African businessmen from Durban. The ranking black member of the City Council, Deputy Mayor Fred Blair, criticized the event as inappropriate as would be these days (following the shooting down of the Korean plane) "hosting an event such as this for the Soviet Union." The South African delegation was also scheduled to visit Houston, Chicago, and Los Angeles.