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Developing Local Foreign Policy: Enhancing Local Policy Influence and Governing Capacity

Local Government
Political Leadership
Public Administration
Colin Copus
De Montfort University
Colin Copus
De Montfort University
Alasdair Blair
De Montfort University

Abstract

Councils across Europe have long been developing policy relationships and interactions between themselves and with the EU as a way of enhancing capacity to deal with complex policy issues for which resources may be scarce. Councils have also attempted to develop their policy leverage within EU institutions again as a way of enhancing capacity to tackle policy problems. Such activities can be best described as the development of local foreign policy. They have done this within different constitutional and political frameworks and within the context of a shift from government to governance where councils, across Europe interact with a range of other public and private bodies over whom they have no direct control but whose policies they seek to shape and influence. The paper will explore how councils, at all levels of local government, operate across national boundaries to effectively develop a ‘foreign policy’ as a way of enhancing policy influencing capacity and it will address the following questions: • how do councils construct effective working relationships with councils in other national settings so as to shape policy responses in governance networks to a range of policy issues • what strategies do councils devise to enhance their working relationships within a European-wide context • what characteristics are displayed by local foreign policy and how can we identify effective and ineffective local foreign policy • how do councillors employ a democratic mandate to construct local foreign policy and develop international coalitions around policy problems • what factors stimulate or hinder the development, influence and effectiveness of local foreign policy • what lessons can be learned for the development of local foreign policy in times of austerity • how the concepts of policy entrepreneurs, policy communication and information networks can be used to strengthen policy transfer across European local government