This World Politics in a Time of Populist Nationalism (WPTPN) guest post is written by Fiona B. Adamson, an Associate Professor of International Relations at SOAS, University of London.
In the aftermath of the UK Brexit vote, London Mayor Sadiq Khan and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo issued a joint letter committing themselves to work more closely together and to deepen connections between cities in Europe and across the world, declaring that “the 21st century belongs to cities.” They are not the only ones who think so – sociologists, geographers, urban studies scholars and others have long focused on cities as important sites of power in the international system – sites that increasingly make up a networked global structure that exists side-by-side with the system of nation-states.
The tension between the globalized world of interconnected cities and the still territorially-defined system of nation-states is one of the factors that has come to the fore in both Brexit and the US election. Voting preferences in both cases mirrored the rural-urban geographic divide – with urban centers overwhelmingly voting “Remain” in the UK and for Clinton in the US. Indeed, both the “Leave” and Trump campaigns played on this distinction. The Brexit vote was as much about perceptions of London’s “elites” and “experts” as it was about fact-based arguments or the actual workings of the European Union. Trump’s “America First” and “Make America Great Again” version of nationalism was pitted against the “globalism” of metropolitan elites – who were deemed to represent neoliberalism, mainstream media and corporate power – but also pluralism and cultural diversity.
The rhetoric in both campaigns should not necessarily be surprising. Nation-states are being buffeted by the forces of globalization in ways that are also cutting across traditional left-right party politics. Politicians at the national level risk being unable to respond to the contradictory demands of differently positioned constituencies, and have incentives to resort to nationalist rhetoric to unite geographically diverse populations. Yet, many urban dwellers feel that they are citizens of the world, and not just the nation – and exclusionary forms of nationalism run counter to their lived realities, which are defined by multiple identities and concentric forms of citizenship – a notion perhaps best articulated by London Mayor Sadiq Khan who refers to himself as a Londoner, European, British, English, of Islamic faith, and of Pakistani heritage.
Trump’s reliance on crude forms of nationalism and his overt fear-mongering and courting of far right extremist groups have unleashed forces of aggression and bigotry that threaten diverse sectors of the American public, many of which are concentrated in America’s cities. But it is also in cities where much of the organized post-election resistance to Trump has been found. In the weeks since the US election, some of the more vocal critics of the US President-elect’s agenda have been urban publics, mayors and police departments. Protests against Trump in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and other major cities have drawn tens of thousands. Mayors and police chiefs of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia and other “sanctuary cities” have reassured their citizens and vowed to protect undocumented migrants from Trump’s threats of deportation – possibly leading to future political stand-offs between local and federal authorities. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio went so far as to meet with Trump to make clear to him how dangerous many of his proposals were for New Yorkers. These actions mirror those taken by European mayors in response to right-wing populism, such as Sadiq Khan’s “London is Open” campaign or Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s attempt to bring the inner city and outer suburbs together in a “Grand Metropole Paris.”
Cities are often poised to gain from the same aspects of globalization that right-wing populists rail against. They benefit from the opportunities provided by the turn towards knowledge-based economies and are hubs in circuits of global finance. They are centers of media, culture and global civil society. They are magnets for migration and function as nodes in global diaspora networks. They are spaces of conviviality, diversity and tolerance –features that make them equally potential targets of terror attacks as well as the target of white nationalists, conservative evangelicals and other right-wing groups that thrive on fears of cultural pluralism.
These same forces of globalization give cities common interests and also provide them with the wherewithal to network with each other to address issues of common concern. In doing so, they can bypass national institutions, share best practices, and agree policies directly with their other urban counterparts. Cities have increasingly shown leadership in areas in which national institutions have suffered political paralysis. The C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group and the Mayor’s Climate Protection Initiative in the US, for example, emerged partly as a response to national reluctance to meet the reduction targets of the Kyoto protocol. On migration policy, cities have taken the lead by advocating for migrants and refugees and participating in global networks such as United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) or the Joint Migration and Development Initiative (JMDI). In the United States, the “sanctuary cities” movement has emerged as a response to broken and unrealistic migration policies at the federal level. In other countries, cities are pushing for more autonomy over migration issues – such as the demand for a special London visa. On security issues, cities regularly exchange information and facilitate police cooperation across borders, networking with each other via global initiatives such as The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) Making Cities Resilient Campaign and the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities Initiative. Similarly, groups such as the United Nations Human Settlements Program (UN-Habitat) and the Global Parliament of Mayors are facilitating new forms of city-led global governance.
These city-focused global arrangements point to alternative forms of power, politics and governance that exist alongside national governments and politics. However, they are rarely acknowledged or studied by International Relations (IR) scholars – who often remain constrained by a methodological nationalism that defines their field. Likewise, Americanists still generally look at cities through the lens of national politics – in the United States the subfield of urban politics rarely situates American cities in larger global networks. The political events of 2016, however, may suggest that the gap between the study of urban politics and the study of world politics needs to be bridged. New York, Los Angeles and Chicago are both American cities and global cities – and are embedded in broader trans-city relationships and policy networks that transcend any particular state. This gives them a particular power – both collectively, as cities working together to address global challenges, but also as spaces of political engagement that can counter forces of populism and authoritarianism that emanate from the national level. Whether it be Gezi Park in Istanbul, Tahrir Square in Cairo, Trafalgar Square in London or Union Square in New York – cities are places that lend themselves to collective acts of resistance and defiance.
Cities and global city-networks pose a challenge and an alternative to the politics of populist nationalism and creeping authoritarianism. As internally-diverse and globally-interconnected spaces they tend towards policies that promote openness, inclusiveness and pluralism. They are also leading the way in addressing many of the common challenges that the world faces – such as climate change, migration or terrorism. Connections between cities within the United States – but also across national boundaries – are likely to continue to grow and act as a constraint on right-wing populism. Moreover, networks of cities in many ways constitute an alternative structure in world politics – one that is embedded in and functions alongside — but also at times bypasses or resists — the power of state institutions. Sociologists and geographers have long appreciated the power of global cities – with the recent rise in populist nationalism it is time for IR scholars to recognize their power as well.
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A very informative post, and all the points are well taken. One might add that in some contexts the cosmopolitan, pluralist etc. features of cities may extend some distance beyond cities proper and in some cases even beyond metropolitan areas. With apologies for U.S. terminology, there may be in some cases a split developing between exurbs and suburbs. But the context of course matters, as, e.g., Hidalgo’s “Grand Metropole Paris” campaign (which I hadn’t heard about, I don’t think) probably would look different in a British or American (or other) city. There’s also some internal political diversity: e.g., while London as a whole voted against Brexit, I wouldn’t be surprised if the support for Remain were stronger in certain areas of London than others (though I don’t know the data on that).
On the disciplinary point, I agree that IR scholars should pay more attention to cities. I think that for example Sassen’s work on global cities, and that of some other sociologists and geographers, is cited by some IR types. But, no doubt, not enough.
Thank you for the comments. Indeed, more could be said about the internal political diversity and contradictions of cities — after all Trump himself is based in and a product of NYC, etc. There are structural tensions although those very tensions also have the potential to foster forms of resistance. And, yes, you are correct, there is some work on cities by IR types such as Michele Acuto and Simon Curtis in the UK that deserves more attention.
Very interesting (and refreshingly hopeful) post… I am just wondering whether this applies to cities in the developing world too (we know these are the fastest growing ones, after all)? Has any consistent research been done on their voting, opinion and policy patterns? The other question that comes to mind is whether it is realistic to hope that this pattern will continue and/or strengthen. The two main examples you cite, London and Paris, are also well-known for their increasing house prices. This is likely to limit their claim to (social) diversity in the future. The London Borough of Lambeth was the second constituency, after Gibraltar, with the highest Remain vote last year. It is also, thanks to its vast (surviving) council estates, a very socially and culturally diverse part of London (thus confirming your analysis). I wonder whether it will be able to remain so, however.
Thanks for the comments. Yes, there is a bias in both the academic literature and existing rankings towards cities in the “Global North” – and within that as well a disproportionate focus on a few large cities that consistently top the rankings. It would be interesting to look at large-N cross-regional studies of rural-urban voting patterns – any comparativists out there with good data on this? The pattern fits in Turkey and for example Poland: https://nyti.ms/2gkILL3. And, yes, on the issue of housing prices, gentrification, redevelopment schemes and displacement – the potential of cities should not blind one to their problems, including class, racial and other inequalities.
You raise a number of important points in this post – and many thanks for bringing cities into the conversation! As an early-career IR scholar, I continually struggle to reconcile my interest in cities and issues of environmental sustainability/climate change with the prevailing currents in the discipline (which are, as you note, largely indifferent if not at times outright hostile to the study of cities as units of analysis). I draw a great deal of inspiration from those few IR scholars – Michele and Simon as you note in your supplementary comment, but also Kristin Ljungqvist, Michele Betsill, Harriet Bulkeley, Philip Pattberg, Sander Chan, Oscar Widerberg, Thomas Hickmann, and others – who have engaged the task. And, in what seems to be a positive trend, there does seem to be much greater interest in city-oriented scholarship at ISA and elsewhere in recent years.
What I would add, however, is the need to avoid conceptualizing cities as apolitical or purely pragmatic in their global engagement – as they and their boosters (I’m looking at you Benjamin Barber!) tend to portray themselves. Whereas you note the need to pay attention to the “alternative forms of power, politics and governance” emerging in/around the efforts of cities as global governors, it strikes me that in many cases the first two of these tend to receive much less attention than does the latter. And so we get analyses of the governance potential inherent in cities, and more often in transnational city-networks such as the C40, at the expense of a critical consideration of the power dynamics and political processes through which cities adopt, embrace, and enact a new “global” self. Who has the power to constitute cities as particular kinds of global governors, to give substance to those “best practices” that are mobilized and transmitted between them, and who is able to resist or contest these processes? Prickly questions for sure, but important ones nonetheless if we are to gain a better understanding of both the potential, and pitfalls, of global urban governance.
As interest mounts in the role that cities can, might, and indeed do play in the global response to complex issues ranging from climate change to international migration, counter-terrorism to health pandemics, I would humbly append to your post that there is at the same time a clear need to better understand how various stakeholders (multinational corporations, international organizations, philanthropic entities, and so on) come together in an effort to shape and give substance to these efforts – and how these global processes interact with the local relations that exist between citizens, community organizations, and city government.
Many thanks for raising these points, and for bringing the work of other scholars who have looked at cities into the discussion. The subfield of environmental politics has been at the forefront of analyzing cities as entities in global governance, largely as you mention via studies of the C40 and other arrangements. Some of the work of Bulkeley, Betsill and others is now more than a decade old and has been pioneering in that respect. The puzzle is why it has not yet entered larger disciplinary debates about power and governance at the international level. There is, as you suggest, much work to be done on how global cities interact with other circuits of power, including questions of who benefits, who is excluded, and so forth. In addition to the extensive work in sociology and geography by Sassen, Harvey and others on global capital and local resistance, Paul Amar’s 2013 book The Security Archipelago stands out as an excellent example of scholarship that takes on the issues you raise — in his case, by examining the relationship between global stakeholders and diverse local communities in Cairo and Rio de Janeiro. I’m sure there are other examples of innovative work along these lines.