Internationalized Local Governments: A Theoretical Look At The Local Foreign Policy (Paradiplomacy)

Local management mechanisms using the power of central management on the local communities in certain geographical areas have obtained different qualifications with some factors like localization, globalization, and democratization. The mobility of cross-border local management collaboration increasingly continues with several international organizations, and supra-national management (central management) politics has generally affected the international politics of local managements. Practices to decrease the role of state on economics, democracy, demands for decentralized management, and globalization have become important pressure tools on central managements. Central managements are conscious that local units are the places for meeting these demands. However, the politics for meeting them differ in unitary and federal organizations. Further, the cooperation of local managements with the other local units has appeared by making their own political fields independent from the politics carried out by the central managements. As a result of the international relations of local units, some phenomenon like sister city, cross-border collaboration, units established among local managements and local foreign politics (paradiplomacy) determining the basic dynamics of these phenomenon have emerged