Framing the Localization of the Global Agendas: Orchestrating the Political Agency of Cities Within the Local-Global Nexus

Introduction

The current article delves into the end of the identification of the nation-state as the sole macro-political actor in the international field and contributes to the expanding genus of studies that signal the contemporary international relevance of the city as an actor in its own right. More precisely, the article advances scholarly knowledge of the self-organization of city governments across the world into networking formal organizations that extend bridges with and engage the multilateral system.

Scholars have become increasingly aware of how conventional conceptual frameworks are no longer suitable for grasping the dynamics taking place outside the predominant state-centric ontology that underlies the study of international politics, as claimed by constructivists (e.g. Onuf, 1989), feminists (e.g. Tickner & Sjoberg, 2011), and post-modernists (e.g. Der Derian & Shapiro, 1989). The emerging role of subnational actors in international politics lies in a “conceptual gap” between the disciplines of international relations and urban studies (Herrschel & Newman, 2017, p. 1). As argued by Michele Acuto (2010), over a decade ago on this journal, acknowledging the political agency of cities in international politics provides the opportunity to bridge the macro scale of broad global processes and the micro scale of local political dynamics.

The current article builds on the scholarly literature on city networks, which has particularly progressed in the realm of climate action and sustainability (e.g. Bulkeley & Betsill, 2003; Johnson, 2018). It seeks to enrich this body of literature by presenting a single-case study on the city network United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), famously defined by Benjamin Barber as the “world’s largest and most influential organization nobody has ever heard of” (2013, p. 111). While provocatively overstated, this affirmation yet masks an unspoken truth in the sense that empirical research has so far prioritized inter-city networking around environmental governance over a policy organization such as UCLG with a broader topical coverage of policy areas of relevance for subnational governments.

Established in 2004 as the result of the unification of inter-municipal world organizations with long historical trajectories, UCLG is the largest global organization of local and regional governments. With over 250,000 members and 175 associations of local and regional governments in over 140 United Nations (UN) member states, UCLG counts with a set of decision-making bodies entrusted with the governance of the internal and external affairs of the organization, a decentralized structure of geographical regions and sections, and an array of consultation mechanisms responsible for policy development that cluster members around multiple thematic areas in line with the generalist rather than specialist topical coverage of the organization.

In order to illustrate how cities are gaining relevance as actors of global governance, the research analyzes how UCLG has transformed the global agendas adopted by the UN in the last decade in a political opportunity to their benefit, thus shedding light on the evolving nature of the relationship between the inter-municipal organization and the multilateral system. The current recognition of UCLG as a generalist rather than thematic organization across intergovernmental fora provides a unique opportunity to focus on the adoption of the UN global agendas as an analytical leverage to grasp the insightful and understudied legitimation strategies enacted by networking formal organizations to raise their profile within the state-centric global governance architecture.

In addition to the novel empirical evidence for the body of literature on city networks, the article addresses the broader audience of political science and international relations. Despite the lively debate around legitimacy in global governance institutions (e.g. Hurrelmann, Schneider, & Steffek, 2007; Tallberg, Bäckstrand, & Scholte, 2018), the theoretical focus on legitimacy is absent in the scholarly work around city networks. The article addresses this gap by interrogating the legitimation strategy enacted by UCLG vis-à-vis the multilateral fora. It does so by charting an analytical path that deploys the conceptual tools of interpretive policy analysis, and intersects theoretically the studies on legitimacy and institutions in global governance, contributing, hence, to extend interdisciplinary bridges across different bodies of knowledge. The empirical research is qualitative and is based on the analysis of a dataset of 154 policy documents, direct observation in 13 meetings, and four elite interviews.

The article is organized as follows. The next section briefly situates the potential of cities in the current multilateral moment. Following the conceptual unpacking and theoretical review, the third section presents the core characteristics of the frame of the localization of the global agendas. The fourth section presents four discursive properties of the frame storyline, which will allow the reader to grasp how the legitimation of UCLG as a global governance actor within the multilateral system unfurls. The fifth section exposes how the deployment of the discursive practices sketched in the article must be embedded in a wider picture that takes into account the institutional logic and organizational legitimacy of UCLG.

The Opening of Multilateralism in the Urban Age

The state-based international architecture is struggling to adapt itself to an evolving global landscape where the core principle of national interest is undermining the collaborative frameworks required to tackle the increasing complexity of contemporary challenges (Lopez-Claros, Dahl, & Groff, 2020). Multilateralism has been outpaced by the growing number and relevance of international non-governmental organizations and multinational corporations that played a very minor role in the post-World War II context in which the founding principles of the UN Charter were drafted (Acharya, 2018). The awareness of the incapacity of individual states to solve contemporary worldwide problems has prompted the emergence of hybrid configurations of governmental and non-governmental actors that constitute the current global governance architecture (Weiss, 2011). Across the range of stakeholders treated as non-state actors within the formal understanding of sovereign nation-states enshrined by the UN, city governments are promising actors of transformation as local forms of institutionalized power capable of promoting and obstructing social and political change (Haus, 2018).

Despite the increasing relevance of hybrid configurations in the construction of global governance arrangements, the UN continue to represent the major institutional site of global governance, reproducing the structural tension of states intended to preserve their sovereignty while addressing transboundary public policy problems such as climate change and migration that cross national borders and transcend them (Higgott, 2006). ¹ The ongoing opening across several intergovernmental fora within the UN system to an increasing involvement of stakeholders is an indicator of this shift (Birch, 2018). State authority is not in zero-sum opposition with non-state actors and might even increase state power if diverse interests are successfully aligned through alliances (Avant, Finnemore, & Sell, 2010).

At the same time, the defining demographic and economic characteristics of the current “urban age” have recast and amplified the potential role of cities in global policy-making (Martinez, Bunnell, & Acuto, 2021). The sustainability discourse has shifted from understanding the city as a source of problems to a source of solutions (Angelo & Wachsmuth, 2020), within a larger process of evolution from negative to positive views on the contribution of cities to environmental, social, and economic public policy areas (Satterthwaite, 2016). These evolving perspectives have converged into an emergent broad international consensus about the role of sustainable urban development as a driver for human development (Rudd, Simon, Cardama, Birch, & Revi, 2018). Such a consensus has underpinned the (slightly) higher recognition that cities have received in the global agendas adopted by the international community of states in the 2010s, as is particularly the case with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This is no small achievement. As spaces constituted by place-based actors endowed with political significance, cities can find in the global agendas a political opportunity through which to mobilize their claims (Barnett & Parnell, 2016). In light of the uneven distribution of the current wave of global urbanization, this political opportunity is particularly promising for the demands and capacities of cities of the global South, all the more as a geographical category that has been traditionally homogenized (Gelardi, 2020).

The article illustrates how the city network UCLG has harnessed the international consensus underpinning the adoption of the SDGs in order to raise its advocacy vis-à-vis the multilateral system, enacting a process of discursive empowerment to the benefit of its members. The article does so by presenting the “localization of the global agendas” as a case of “framing,” deploying the conceptual tools of interpretive policy analysis in a wider theoretical framework informed by the studies on legitimacy and institutions.

Connecting Transboundary Political Problems with Local Policy Solutions

Originating in the interstices between psychiatry, anthropology, and epistemology (Bateson, 1955), and central to the development of symbolic interactionism (Goffman, 1974), the concept of frame gained relevance in political science with Martin Rein (e.g. Rein, 1976) and his collaborator Donald Schön (e.g. Schön & Rein, 1994), who proposed, in their latest conceptual development, frame analysis as an argumentative approach by which to solve policy problems and controversies. In a nutshell, frames are socially constructed narratives that connect the “diagnosis” of political problems with the “prescription” of policy solutions (Rein & Schön, 1996). Connecting facts, values, and belief about how to act (Laws & Rein, 2003), framing rests on a fundamental narrative quality, as it connects a specific depiction of reality with a call to action through storytelling (van Hulst & Yanow, 2016). Framing relies on a conceptually coherent and persuasive analysis of the policy problem, the credibility of and trust in the actors aiming to consolidate their definition of reality, the motivational capacity to mobilize actors in collective endeavors, the accommodation of ritual practices that provide stability, and the adaptability to changing contexts (Benford & Snow, 2000; Hajer, 1995; Rein & Schön, 1993).

As constitutive of representations of ideas through discourse (Schmidt, 2011), frames situate the analysis in the realm of discursive processes of legitimation and meaning-making. In global governance the political decision about who has the legitimacy to frame a public problem precedes the decision on the institutions needed to accomplish the policy goal (Anheier, 2019), allowing us to unveil the localization frame as a “weapon of advocacy” (Weiss, 1989, p. 117) that aims to exert influence over the definition of the transboundary political problems and identification of policy solutions that multilateral institutions are addressing through the global agendas. The relevance of legitimacy in contemporary international politics is due to the increasingly complex and crowded global governance architecture in which both state and non-state actors may be simultaneously both producers and audiences of legitimation strategies (Bäckstrand & Söderbaum, 2018). Legitimacy claims about an organization are discursively mobilized in order to be validated by the social actors of the targeted audience and according to prevailing social norms (Reus-Smit, 2014; Tallberg & Zürn, 2019). The discursive legitimation of an organization as a global governance actor is embedded in an institutional logic that structures the organization, defines its identity, and allows it to act as one single actor vis-à-vis the surrounding environment, in our case the multilateral system (Ahrne & Brunsson, 2008; March & Olsen, 2011). Taking for granted that a specific policy area is the responsibility of a specific global governance institution is the best indicator of a successful legitimation process (Steffek, 2003).

Following this brief theoretical review, it is fair to state that UCLG performs the role of the “frame holder” within the institutionally embedded legitimation strategy directed towards the UN system as a wider audience (Rein & Schön, 1996, p. 89). It is here argued that the localization of the global agendas, which underpins the current UCLG strategic priorities and links the central working areas of the organization (i.e. advocacy, research, and learning), can be interpreted as a frame. The frame storyline produced by UCLG presents the full commitment of subnational governments to contribute to the achievement of the global agendas while, in turn, stressing that these cannot be achieved on the ground without incorporating them into local policy-making. The way the concept of localization is presented by the organization itself gives an idea of how the city network interprets the political momentum underpinning the agendas adopted by the UN system or, in other terms, of how the frame holder names the social construction it has created: “[l]ocalizing isn’t the parachuting of global goals into local contexts. Localizing is implementing local agendas in cities and territories to reach local and global goals. Localizing is a political process based on harnessing local opportunities, priorities and ideas” (UCLG, 2017c, p. 14). The frame of the localization of the global agendas seamlessly aligns with the conceptual definition by Rein and Schön (1996) outlined above, yet with a trans-scalar connotation that is at the center of the local-global nexus that UCLG and the rest of global city networks enact in their institutional practices. The localization frame is therefore constructed as a “diagnostic/prescriptive” storyline that links the identification of transboundary political problems affecting global governance with the proposal of local policy solutions contributing to both global and local goals.

Localization as a Political and Collaborative Project

The UN global agendas and, in particular, the 2030 Agenda, constitute the political opportunity harnessed by UCLG as succinctly illuminated in the political declaration of the last UCLG congress: “[m]aking this global agenda our own is what we understand by localization” (UCLG 2019b, p. 3, emphasis in the original). Jan van Zanen, Co-President of UCLG, Mayor of The Hague, and President of the Association of Netherlands Municipalities (VNG), provides an exemplary starting point from which to disentangle the construction of the localization frame. During the Local and Regional Governments’ Day organized during the United Nations High-level Political Forum (HLPF) 2020 under the title “Accelerating transformation from the ground-up in a post-COVID era,” he called local and regional governments to play a fundamental role in order to “re-build our societies together with our communities and to transform the current context into a world of international cooperation and solidarity with the SDGs as common language, as a framework, you could say.” ²

The localization of the global goals predates the adoption of the SDGs in 2015. Yet the institutional efforts carried out by UCLG to increase the role of local governments in the achievement of the goals adopted in 2000 has revolved only partially around the notion of the ‘localization of the MDGs.’ The localization of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is built, in turn, on the widely acknowledged experience of over 6000 Local Agenda 21 initiatives, which translated the outcome of the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro to the local level. Nonetheless, the localization of the MDGs was mainly understood as a technical endeavor across multilateral fora. It revolved around the “strategic and practical role” local governments were called upon to play within the “disaggregation of nationally adjusted global goals” at the subnational level (United Nations Development Programme [UNDP], 2005, pp. 6, 11). The frame of the localization of the SDGs by UCLG marks a departure from that. As an interviewee eloquently summarized it, the 2030 Agenda is “after all a political project” in that it enables a different narrative to be generated. The VLRs are an ideal, recent example to illuminate this phenomenon.

Since 2016, the HLPF has asked member states to submit their Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs) to review the state of implementation of the SDGs. Even without an official mechanism within the UN institutional architecture, local governments have decided to develop their own reporting systems to assess the achievement of the SDGs in their territories. VLRs have been developed by large metropolises such as Los Angeles or Taipei but also by smaller cities such as Mannheim (Germany) or Santana de Parnaíba (Brazil). Following the pioneering VLRs by New York City and three Japanese municipalities—Kitakyushu, Shimokawa, and Toyama—in 2018, an increasing number of subnational governments have followed and embarked on this effort. The VLRs are understood as “more than monitoring mechanisms,” as “political tools” to align local policy-making and promote community engagement. ³ As Francisco Resnicoff, Undersecretary of International Relations of Buenos Aires, highlights, the process of localization of the SDGs is even more important than its result, stressing how the complex mission of conveying the importance of incorporating this framework both within the local government and beyond is inherently “political, because it involves creating a narrative.” ⁴ This effort, at the same time, strives to change the power relations in the other tiers of governance. The VLRs complement the ongoing advocacy by local government associations to include local achievements in the VNRs and emphasize the role of local governments within national commitments. They further provide an additional institutional resource to make cities’ efforts visible, raise their perspectives on the global arena, and “change the conversation.” ⁵

Therefore, the discursive construction of the VLRs as “part and parcel of the localization movement” ⁶ embodies a political rationality that is diametrically opposed to the ‘traditional’ account of local government as the local technical implementation of inter-state agreements and national ownership. It epitomizes a growing “sense of self-worth” among cities and local governments in terms of their political agency in global issues (Ljungkvist, 2014, p. 54, emphasis in the original). As an interviewee explains, understanding the local relevance of the 2030 Agenda is, first of all, a “pedagogical effort,” since “the firsts [sic] that must understand it is ourselves.” This pedagogical effort implies simultaneously uncovering and orchestrating the political agency of cities in the global urban age. An underlying relational ontology of the city as a node in a wider city network sustains this account. In other terms, an important source of legitimacy for cities stems from the consideration that they step into the global arena through collaborative configurations rather than individual engagement. In this context lies the fundamental legitimating role of UCLG as a platform that promotes, accommodates, and organizes this networked orchestration.

While just one instantiation, the VLRs are part of the overarching strategy for the localization of the global agendas. They allow the underlying political agency that the ‘common language of the SDGs’ offers to local governments to be understood. Specific discursive properties must be reproduced in order to sustain the legitimation strategy. We now turn our attention to them.

Frame Storyline

The localization frame attends to both the external and internal dimension of the organization. As a narrative, it simultaneously ties transboundary political problems with local policy solutions helping UCLG make a space for itself within multilateralism and allows UCLG to convey a sense of unity. UCLG is a large membership-based association that builds on the merger of forerunner organizations with distinct historical trajectories. As a result, as an organization, it presents a significant degree of internal diversity that can be summarized in terms of dichotomic tensions and multitudinous juxtapositions: local governments of urban settlements or regional governments with higher degrees of urban-rural continuum; local government associations aggregating the voices of subnational governments at the national scale or individual autonomous cities; cities in the top rankings of global inter-urban competition or small- and medium-sized cities that, despite the lower profile across the general public, play a fundamental role within global urbanization; geographical sections with disparate trajectories, comprising subnational governments with remarkably different degrees of institutional development; and the broad spectrum of political ideologies inscribed in the continuum from liberal-democratic states to authoritarian regimes that UCLG members embody and convey in their networking activities.

The ‘localization of the global agendas’ is a catch-phrase ⁷ that serves as a vehicle for the “discursive reduction of complexity” (Hajer, 2003, p. 105). Since UCLG seeks to be recognized as a united political representative of local and regional governments vis-à-vis the multilateral system, the city network discursively organizes the ambivalence stemming from such a degree of diversity within its membership. The storyline constitutes an “ordering device” that harnesses ambivalence through narratives that structure relations and construct shared meaning among actors with diverging accounts of social reality (Hajer & Laws, 2006, p. 252). It is possible to single out analytically four discursive properties that play a key role in the reproduction of the storyline: its “experiential commensurability” (Benford & Snow, 2000, p. 621), “inter-textuality” (Hajer, 2009, p. 63), adaptability, and transversality. These four discursive properties are tactics deployed by UCLG in order to uphold the core legitimacy claim of the frame storyline on the full commitment, and, in turn, crucial role, of its membership towards the achievement of the UN global agendas.

First, experiential commensurability means that the storyline must resonate with the everyday experiences of local and regional governments in order to ensure the members’ validation and consequent mobilization for the localization frame, and, in turn, persuade partners of the “political will and capacity” of the city network (GTF, 2017b). This is where the “advocacy weapon” shows its deep interconnection with the other fundamental organizational outputs of the city network: research and learning. The legibility elicited by the “common language” of the global agendas must be internalized and socialized. The research agenda of the organization strives to gather members’ first-hand information and researchers’ analysis on the implementation of the global agendas in order to ensure a local bottom-up complementarity with the national official inputs to the UN monitoring and reporting processes. The learning agenda has developed a toolkit to enhance local and regional governments’ capacities to localize the SDGs, by raising awareness of the key issues of the sustainable development agenda, supporting the integration of the 2030 Agenda principles into urban and territorial planning, and the involvement of local and regional government associations in national and subnational reviewing. In short, the research and learning organizational outputs are fundamental in simultaneously feeding, capitalizing on, and consolidating advocacy endeavors by contributing, in discursive and practical terms, to the increasing salience of the localization frame across the membership and partners.

Second, the imperative of inter-textuality requires evoking, often in subtle emotional terms, other discursive practices embedded in historical events imbued with meanings. Recalling not only the decisions but the collective efforts attached to in-person conferences are key moments of this legitimation strategy. The Global Taskforce of Local and Regional Governments (GTF), a coordination mechanism gathering the major international networks of local and regional governments and facilitated by UCLG, convened the Second World Assembly of Local and Regional Governments in 2016 within the UN Habitat III Conference in Quito. Acknowledged as one of the key moments of the official program of the intergovernmental conference and included as reference in the outcome document of the event, the world assembly staged the historical process of consolidation of the municipal movement. The process of unification of the municipal movement started on the eve of the Habitat II Conference in 1996 in Istanbul and culminated in the foundation of UCLG in 2004. Therefore, the decision to host the sessions of the World Assembly of Local and Regional Governments in the largest global gatherings of UCLG and UN-Habitat, the UN agency in charge of cities (i.e. World Summit of Local and Regional Leaders in 2019 in Durban and World Urban Forum in 2018 in Kuala Lumpur and in 2020 in Abu Dhabi respectively), allows participants to draw upon the wider momentum built around these gatherings, simultaneously conferring additional legitimacy to these gatherings and building on their legitimacy status to raise the profile of the World Assembly. Importantly, evoking individual situations can be as empowering as recalling collective endeavors. In one of the most challenging moments of the COVID-19 response, the Executive Director of UN-Habitat, Maimunah Mohd Sharif, former Mayor of Penang Island (Malaysia) and active international representative of several city networks, wished the UCLG political representatives participating in a virtual meeting in 2020 luck by stating: “I know that is very challenging down there. I was there before and I will always be with you, mayors.” ⁸ At first glance, this statement addresses the local-global nexus and rejects the warning call to avoid equating, in exclusive terms, the global scale with the notion of “above” and the local scale with “below” (cf. Smith, 2005, p. 242). Yet, it discursively constructs the level of partnership with UCLG, both in terms of the organization and membership, by building an experiential linkage between the personal previous circumstances of the UN agency’s chief officer and the current individual situations of the mayors attending the virtual event.

Third, adaptability means leveraging the opportunities that ambivalence encloses in political terms within the sound construction of the diagnostic-prescriptive narrative. The adaptive nature of the localization frame does not refer solely to the UN global agendas agreed upon in the 2010s. The political ambition of UCLG with regard to multilateral affairs implies having both a reactive and proactive approach. While aiming to include its inputs in the state-centric international agreements that ultimately affect the everyday lives of local communities, but that cities cannot substantially influence in terms of agenda-setting, the organization simultaneously develops its own narrative. Within the UCLG triennial flagship report—the Global Observatory on Local Democracy and Decentralization (GOLD)—this is the logic that has underpinned the GOLD IV Report “Co-creating the Urban Future” in 2016 (UCLG, 2017b), launched a few days before the formal adoption of the UN New Urban Agenda. Organized in line with the membership’s constituencies of metropolitan areas, intermediary cities, and territories—and not according to the chart of the UN system—the agenda was built with the support of scholars and through consultations with members. It emphasized the role of local and regional governments within the implementation of the New Urban Agenda, yet within the context of an agenda that is “by and for Local and Regional Governments” (UCLG, 2017a, p. 30). The subtle discursive line between reactive and proactive positions aims to embrace global agendas while protecting local ownership vis-à-vis state-centric multilateralism. The amalgamation of globalist and localist narratives is the ultimate expression of the trans-scalar interpretation of the local-global nexus that UCLG and the ecosystem of city networks as a whole display.

Fourth, transversality means the global agendas are understood as inseparable “on the ground” at the local and regional levels (GTF, 2017a, p. 17). Their seamless integration in policy-making and action is presented as the central element to ensure that global solutions build on local experiences. As the global agendas have tangible, immediate effects on the urban and territorial scale, cities need to contribute to their definition and implementation: “[w]e need to address all of the universal development agendas as one if they are to be achieved” (UCLG, 2019a, p. 7). Even more importantly for our current times, the discursive properties of adaptability and transversality allow the storyline of the localization of the global agendas to be able to incorporate unforeseeable events in the surrounding environment and be fit for changes. The possibility to discursively transform a challenge into an opportunity derives from the capacity to mobilize normative claims vis-à-vis multilateral fora. This, in turn, relies on the legitimacy of UCLG as a representative organization. The unprecedented challenge brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic is a clear, recent example that deserves a closer look.

Only Target 3.3 of the SDGs (UN, 2015, p. 18), adopted in the mid-2010s, includes a reference to epidemics, but it does not mirror the gravity and scope of the (then forthcoming) COVID-19 pandemic: “[b]y 2030, end the epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and neglected tropical diseases and combat hepatitis, water-borne diseases and other communicable diseases.” As with many other aspects of social life, the global pandemic has shifted the priorities and concerns of the international development community as a whole. Actors that have legitimized their role within the context of global agendas are seeking to show the merits of these pre-existing frameworks in tackling the challenges of the “new normality.” The consensus built around the definition of global agendas is a source of institutional stability that is highly demanded in the current global crisis. For the “Decalogue for the post COVID-19 era” charted by UCLG, “the SDGs remain, now more than ever, a valid reference to frame the transformational measures being implemented” (UCLG, 2020, p. 3). Consistently with what we observed above, transversality is further actualized within the COVID-19 context as follows: “[t]he pandemic is demonstrating that all development agendas need to be addressed as one” (GTF, 2020, p. 2).

UCLG deploys the political opportunity embedded in the post-COVID-19 conjunction to legitimate its positioning and claims within global agendas in order to pursue the empowerment of its members. Nonetheless, as a true advocacy actor, it further leverages the pandemic crisis as a window of opportunity to call for normative transformations. Claudia López, Mayor of Bogotá, for instance, warned against the threat of the discourse of “go[ing] back to normality” as she pictured that the most challenging moment of the pandemic crisis brought at the same time “clear, blue sky [with] no pollution in our city,” distinguishing between the conjunctural challenge of the pandemic and the “structural challenge of humanity: climate change.” ⁹ The discursive representation of COVID-19 as a “magnifying glass” of pre-existing inequalities and shortcomings ¹⁰ allows us to “raise the bar” by calling for a transformation of the current development model and a call to “bend the curve of the current unsustainable trajectory” (GTF, 2020, p. 2). Therefore, in another instantiation of discursive adaptability, compelling needs that are high on the political agenda inscribed within the pandemic response are accurately blended with transformative policies that transcend the initial post–COVID-19 recovery phase. As such, the need to preserve public service provision (including health care) and reduce the digital divide, as well as to ensure adequate housing and basic services for the more vulnerable population, are complemented by calls, for instance, to adopt a global green deal or protect human rights through local democracy. As mentioned earlier, this normative transformation is always institutionally embedded in the existing frameworks of multilateralism, whereas “[t]he 2030 Agenda represents an opportunity to renew the social contract, to rethink relationships” (UCLG, 2019b, p. 3).

Organizational Legitimacy

We have noticed how the discursive properties of experiential commensurability, inter-textuality, and especially adaptability and transversality can be tactically deployed within an institutional strategy. We have further observed how exogenous events can be framed as windows of opportunity to call for normative transformations. It is important now to recall that the quality of the storyline per se cannot account for discursive empowerment in the relationship with the multilateral system. It is blended with complementary considerations of an institutional nature. The storyline further intersects with the power status that stems from the legitimacy of the organization.

Two empirical examples are provided in this section in order to sustain this argument. They relate to the experience of the VLR and the response to the COVID-19 crisis we have touched upon in the previous sections of the article. The first example addresses the legitimating role of UCLG as a networking platform that orchestrates the political agency of cities and illustrates how this legitimating power must be continuously (re)validated by the organization’s members and partners. The second example illustrates how the organizational legitimacy of UCLG ultimately performs as a differentiator within the discursive space embedded in the variegated institutional landscape outlined by the international development community at large.

The first example refers to the city of New York, which, being among the frontrunner cities that issued their VLRs in 2018, launched the VLR Declaration during the 2019 UN General Assembly in order to promote the localization of the SDGs through this reporting mechanism. Penny Abeywardena, Commissioner for International Affairs of New York City, explained how the creation of the VLR stemmed from the entrepreneurship of “showcasing American leadership on the SDGs.” ¹¹ The entrepreneurship of New York City involved, of course, several partnerships, in line with the networked institutional arrangements that underpin global governance. Nonetheless, this is also an expression of the political ambition and resources of what could be defined a global “free riding” city. Global cities in the top rankings of inter-urban competition present unique characteristics that allow them to gain visibility in the international arena by selectively joining or detaching from collaborative endeavors and relying on their individual positioning. In the case of New York and its legitimating status as “first mover,” for example, the VLR conceptual development was built also on exchanges with high-level officials from multilateral institutions, taking “advantage of hosting the largest diplomatic corps and the UN.” ¹²

Nonetheless, as one interviewee vividly summarizes, entrepreneurial global cities “can shine once, but don’t have the legitimacy.” In 2020, UCLG and UN-Habitat decided to scale up the mechanism globally by jointly developing a series of guidelines and normative resources to support subnational governments and promote their engagement in the VLR process. The institutionalized collaborative impetus and long time, broadly recognized efforts to construct and promote the wider notion of the localization of the global agendas provided a powerful platform for policy diffusion. This degree of mobilization is, of course, for the benefit of all cities. Outstanding as a reference in a specific policy field is a political goal that encompasses all cities, large and small, in the global networked arena. The fact that the representative of New York City decided to actively participate in the institutional launch of these guidelines is testimony to the organizational legitimacy of the promoters. The Guidelines for VLRs, as well as other related initiatives such as the establishment of a UCLG Community of Practice on VLRs, provide evidence of the continuous institutional efforts to be carried out in order to uphold this perception of legitimacy. The increasing number of VLRs being developed by subnational governments across the world is, at the same time, a confirmation of the ‘governance by diffusion’ enacted by platforms like UCLG, as they host learning processes that ultimately promote the adoption of specific local actions (Hakelberg, 2014).

The second example is situated in the virtual edition of the 2020 UCLG Executive Bureau. Tedros Adhanom, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN agency responsible for the management of the global pandemic, intervened in the meeting of the UCLG decision-making body and affirmed that the “COVID-19 pandemic highlights the crucial role of mayors and local authorities as guardians and promoters of good health and well-being.” ¹³ It is important to highlight that this key statement, which acknowledges the role of cities and local governments in the pandemic response and legitimizes UCLG as a representative organization in a context of shifting international priorities, emanates from a mutually beneficial recognition. During that very session, Sami Kanaan, Mayor of Geneva and President of the UCLG Permanent Working Group on Territorial Prevention and Management of Crises, further addressed the audience from the special perspective of a city that experiences “first-hand the benefits of multilateralism,” ¹⁴ and called for a stronger UN that collaborates directly with cities to support “pragmatic solutions for daily life within cities.” ¹⁵ His support went yet deeper: “specially the WHO has been crucial in this crisis, but the budget of the WHO is equal as the main hospital in Geneva. They definitively need more money and recognition, and not less as some governments proposed unfortunately.” ¹⁶

The statement by the mayor of Geneva highlights two fundamental aspects that are discursively constructed as inseparable by networking platforms like UCLG that strive to increase cities’ decision-making power in the global governance institutional architecture. On the one hand, it aims to further consolidate the strategic relevance of cities in the urban age by tapping into a set of core ideas that local governments in a coordinated fashion circulate about the key role of subnational governments in the achievement of the UN global agendas. On the other hand, it firmly takes the side of multilateral institutions in a historically shifting moment where the US government, the “hegemonic sponsor” of the post-World War II liberal world order (Ikenberry, 2018, p. 15), suspended its national funding to the WHO and criticized the organization for its “alarming lack of independence from the People’s Republic of China” (Trump, 2020). The transnational “sense of self-worth” of cities, channeled and amplified by a networking institution that is increasingly perceived as legitimate within the global governance arena, provides local government leaders with an enabling platform to deploy their political agency in terms of policy issues that have long exceeded the monopolistic notion of national sovereignty.

Conclusion

The article makes a case for the recognition of the city as an actor in its own right in the field of international studies, broadly construed. It posits that by self-organizing themselves formally into platforms of policy-making and learning, cities are creating networks that are constitutive of the global governance architecture. By shedding light on the legitimation strategy by which the largest global city network bridges and engages the multilateral system, the study shows how networking cities seek to make a space for themselves as actors in a state-centric global governance architecture where international law prevents cities from being members of intergovernmental organizations and have a substantive stake in agenda-setting.

Building on the theorization of interpretive policy analysts, it is argued that UCLG transforms the inter-state consensus and common language underpinning the UN global agendas in a political opportunity by constructing a frame, that is, a narrative that connects the definition of a set of political problems (i.e. diagnosis) and the identification of the relevant policy solutions to tackle them (i.e. prescription). The frame ultimately revolves around the construction of a local-global nexus, which is at the center of the institutional logic of UCLG. By amalgamating globalist and localist narratives, it presents a trans-scalar connection between transboundary contemporary challenges affecting global governance and policy solutions contributing to both global and local goals. By emphasizing the degree of interrelatedness between the local and global scale, the frame suggests that the local, rather than the level of nation-states, is closer to the global. Away from the inter-state tensions associated with national sovereignty, cities are governmental actors that can contribute to local change by harnessing the amplifying power of the transnational networking platforms necessary to address transboundary phenomena. The localization of the global agendas epitomizes a paradigm shift in the way local governments understand themselves from technical implementers of state-based agreements to political actors of global governance. As global challenges are converted into urban (local) issues, local governments deepen their “sense of self-worth” and claim political authority, mindful that the way a problem is framed will affect the actions deployed and the actors to be involved.

In overall terms, within the different degrees of devolution of authority across the world, local governments play a key role in services provision, infrastructure management, urban planning, and building regulation. Climate change is undoubtedly the clearest instantiation of the amplifying networking power of cities with formal responsibilities to bring about (still insufficient) change, as exemplified by the commitment of city leaders, supported by a coalition of several city networks including UCLG, to climate targets more ambitious than those established by their national counterparts during the adoption of the Paris Agreement. Yet, the groundbreaking dimension of the political authority claimed by cities is that it also encompasses policy responsibilities that are conventionally associated with national sovereignty and where yet cities are functionally instrumental. The key role deployed by local governments in basic services provision and protection of human rights and the consequent advocacy, again sustained by the orchestration of networking organizations like UCLG, for their full involvement in the international and national governance of migration is the clearest instantiation of this dimension.

The social construction of the frame contributes to building trust and consensus within an ecosystem of actors that do not share the same frames of reference, both internally across the membership and externally vis-à-vis the state-based architecture of the multilateral system. The fundamental quality of the localization storyline lies in the connection of multiple themes and the continuous incorporation of changes, while conveying a sense of unity to both the members and partners of the organization. The coherence and persuasiveness of the storyline revolves around a simple message, which is broad enough to encompass and harness the political ambivalence stemming from a such a diverse and wide membership: subnational governments are fully committed, and, in turn, crucially needed on the ground, to contribute to the achievement of the global agendas. The discursive properties of experiential commensurability, inter-textuality, adaptability, and transversality are then deployed as tactics by UCLG in its capacity as frame holder in order to uphold the main argument of the legitimation strategy directed toward the UN system.

At the same time, the discursive practices cannot be detached from the institutional logic in which they are embedded. The storyline intersects and is buttressed by the legitimacy of UCLG as an organization, contributing to the overall discursive empowerment of its membership vis-à-vis the multilateral system. Against the tantalizing prospects of (global) ‘free riding’ cities, UCLG embodies the institutionalized, long time, broadly recognized capacity to orchestrate the political agency of a wide diversity of cities in the global arena, emphasizing the need for collaborative endeavors rather than individual engagements in contemporary politics. In an increasingly competitive and fragmented institutional landscape, the multilateral system finds in UCLG a global political actor committed to act as one single representative voice and contribute to the global agendas adopted by the international community of states.

The article offers an empirical contribution to the study of the transnational dynamism of cities and extends scholarly knowledge beyond the well-established genus of studies on environmental governance. It further engages a broader audience by showing the merits of approaching this empirical study through lines of inquiry that are firmly established in political science and international relations such as interpretive policy analysis, neo-institutionalism, and organizational theory. By focusing on the intersection of discursive and institutional practices, the article underlines the analytical purchase of extending the lively debate around the legitimacy of global governance institutions to inter-municipal organizations. By bridging across different bodies of knowledge, this interdisciplinary endeavor outlines promising avenues for research for the study of city networks and, in a wider perspective, for the scholarly analysis of the rising international role of cities and their formal networking organizations as global governance actors in their own right.