Sub-state diplomacy: Understanding the international opportunity structures

Abstract:

Developing explanations for how sub-state governments are active internationally is central to understanding their unexpected growth as international actors. Building upon Lecours’ work, this article develops an expanded historical institutionalist analysis of the international agency of sub-state governments.

Its original empirical contribution is utilizing this approach to examine within case variation across four contrasting policy domains in a case study of Wales. Reflecting the European Union sub-state mobilization literature, levels of constitutional powers are constrained in their capacity to account for Welsh sub-state international agency. Instead, the article highlights strong variation in the opportunity structures shaping sub-state diplomacy across policy domains.

The article argues that institutional continuity and change, the prevalence of ‘path dependence’, can differ significantly between policy domains in sub-state diplomacy, argues for an expanded multi-level framework recognizing the impact of non-governmental organizations and international institutional opportunity structures and confirms historical institutionalism’s ability to enrich understanding of agency-structure relationships.