“Made in the USA? The paradiplomatic strategies of California and Illinois to the EU”

While scholarship on paradiplomacy—the involvement of non-central governments in international relations—vis-à-vis the European Union has primarily focused on European regions, a new article co-authored by SIS Professor Michelle Egan in the journal Territory, Politics, Governance analyzes third-country subnational engagement with the EU and assesses the paradiplomatic strategies of two US states: California and Illinois. Although both states engage with the EU for economic reasons rather than for interest representation, Illinois prioritizes market access, while California focuses on regulatory issues. Drawing on the multilevel governance and paradiplomacy literatures, the authors examine the impact of these paradiplomatic efforts on state–federal relations.

In the article, part of a Special Issue titled “Between Cooperation and Conflict: Explaining Differentiation in Regional Paradiplomacy towards the EU in Federal and Regionalised States (1992-2022),” Egan and her co-authors find that Illinois’ subnational diplomacy benefits from state–federal dynamics of benign neglect, while California’s subnational initiatives involve both benign neglect and federal bypassing. They unveil the determinants of these patterns of state–federal relations, and identify five explanatory factors: constitutional competences, political leadership, entrepreneurship, party politics and market size.

Read the article here.