California’s paradiplomacy with the EU: navigating the relationship with the federal government

While scholarship on regional mobilization within the European Union has focused primarily on European regions, the subnational engagement of third countries’ regions through paradiplomacy with the EU is much less studied. Rather than engaging in advocacy and lobbying, California has opted to focus on international cooperation with EU member states and regions, particularly in areas in which the EU has innovative regulatory frameworks. How has California navigated the relationship with the federal government in shaping its subnational paradiplomacy in Europe? We argue that it involves two distinct strategies - benign neglect and bypassing - whose causal drivers range from constitutional constraints and party politics. What does this external subnational engagement in Europe tell us about subnational diplomacy in multilevel federal settings? Looking at the nuances and dynamics of California’s engagement with Europe, we find that different factors combine to explain California’s subnational diplomacy, where the state’s market size and entrepreneurship are key explanatory factors. Theoretically, the case study brings together the work on paradiplomacy with that of multilevel governance scholarship, drawing on semi-structured interviews with California’s state officials.