Perforated Sovereignties and International Relations: Trans-Sovereign Contacts of Subnational Governments

(Hardback)

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In case studies and comparative analysis of Canada, the United States, France, Switzerland, and Belgium, a distinguished international group of scholars looks at how and why provinces, states, cantons, and large municipalities increasingly seek access to foreign sources of wealth and technological information. The first book to explore the subject, this new study examines the effects of these initiatives on the traditional conduct of foreign policy and foreign trade and the implications of the continued perforation of national boundaries already subject to an unprecedented flow of foreign products, cultural influences, and visitors, as well as environmental pollution from abroad.

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This volume is the result of a 1986 workshop-conference on the international roles of subnational governmental actors in an era of complex interdependence and perforated' sovereignties. The highly qualified authors address the issue of the potential or practice of federally segmented foreign policy. The central case study is Canada and in particular Quebec with its two special relationships with the US and France and with other Francophone countries). The book also addresses the issue of the emergence of geographically delineated transborder frameworks between neighbors, such as regional cooperation between Canadian provinces and US states, between Swiss cantons and French regions and departments, and between Belgium's Communities of Regions and foreign states or their components. The collection is deliberately explortory, attempting to bridge the fields of comparative and international politics by exploring the new roles that subsovereign (noncentral) governments have begun to play on the international scene. The question asked is whether or not these new, though secondary, actors complement, complicate, or compete with the traditional conduct of foreign policy and foreign trade. Of principal interest to specialists in federalism and international relations. A good selected bibliography and an extensive index. Recommended for graduate students and for comparative theoretical research.-Choice
"This volume is the result of a 1986 workshop-conference on the international roles of subnational governmental actors in an era of complex interdependence and perforated' sovereignties. The highly qualified authors address the issue of the potential or practice of federally segmented foreign policy. The central case study is Canada and in particular Quebec with its two special relationships with the US and France and with other Francophone countries). The book also addresses the issue of the emergence of geographically delineated transborder frameworks between neighbors, such as regional cooperation between Canadian provinces and US states, between Swiss cantons and French regions and departments, and between Belgium's Communities of Regions and foreign states or their components. The collection is deliberately explortory, attempting to bridge the fields of comparative and international politics by exploring the new roles that subsovereign (noncentral) governments have begun to play on the international scene. The question asked is whether or not these new, though secondary, actors complement, complicate, or compete with the traditional conduct of foreign policy and foreign trade. Of principal interest to specialists in federalism and international relations. A good selected bibliography and an extensive index. Recommended for graduate students and for comparative theoretical research."-Choice

Author Bio

IVO D. DUCHACEK was Professor Emeritus of Political Science, City University of New York and a visiting scholar, Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California, Berkeley. DANIEL LATOUCHE is Professor of Political Science at McGill University and presently a fellow at the Urban Research Center of the Institut national de la recherche scientifique in Montreal. GARTH STEVENSON is Professor of Politics at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario.