ABSTRACT
This chapters studies the perceptions, preferences and interests of the agencies and personnel responsible for paradiplomacy in Mexican states based on a survey applied to their higher-ranking officials. It presents several important findings. Two-thirds of the SSGs have a specific area, office or agency in charge of coordinating their international relations, and close to 60% have a centralized coordination of external affairs. Most agencies are relatively new and there is huge variation in their names and staff. Most heads of these offices have undergraduate degrees in the social sciences, and only a few have graduate degrees. The staff of the agencies is concentrated in the social sciences, and other than Spanish staff members are also proficient in English. However, proficiency in other languages is very limited (only a few have staffers that speak French, German, Portuguese, Italian or Chinese). There is also huge variation in terms of their legal and statutory capacities. The most important challenges that they face in terms of their consolidation are insufficient budgets, a lack of highly professionalized staff, insufficient staff numbers, a lack of an official legal framework and limited mechanisms of coordination with the national government and other SSGs. The SSG that have higher levels of paradiplomacy and have concluded more IIAs are those that have more and better trained personnel, more institutionalized agencies and better legal and institutional frameworks. The most important international activities conducted by the federal units are directed at promoting local development and welfare (attracting FDI, tourism, remittances, international cooperation in education, culture, science and technology, export promotion and providing services to communities abroad). Most are responsible for organizing and coordinating the external trips of the governor, the visits of foreign personalities, supervising international events that take place in the state and the relations with international organizations, as well as coordinating the conclusion and implementation of IIAs. Around half oversee external economic promotion, sisterhood agreements, decentralized cooperation, relations with their migrants, cultural and education cooperation, tourist promotion and participation in international networks. To conduct their international affairs, most have established strategic relations with universities and research centers, while around half have relations with their local business communities, civil society organizations and migrant diasporas. Their most important institutional relation is with the SRE. Mexican states have a very positive perception of their relations with SRE and AMAIE, and almost 85% of them consider their paradiplomacy as complementary to Mexico’s foreign policy, not competitive or conflictive.
