ABSTRACT
Paradiplomacy remains largely ignored, yet the phenomenon it symbolizes has become almost run-of-the-mill: the city of San Francisco endorses a foreign country that does not respect human rights; the Quebec Government opens a series of season of cultural events in Paris; Flemish and Walloon sub-state entities form a Belgian delegation to the World Trade Organization; the Australian states attend a United Nations conference on development and the environment within the Australian government’s own UN representation; the Baden-Württemberg Land participates in overseas missions to restore peace in Bangladesh, Russia, and BosniaHerzegovina as well as in Burundi and Tanzania; the President of Catalonia, Jordi Pujol, meets with G-7 leaders, with the noted absence of Jean Chrétien …
The phenomenon of paradiplomacy is not recent. The Quebec Government, for instance, began to play a role on the international stage as early as the nineteenth century. The current paradiplomacy era, that is to say, the period extending from the early 1960s to date, is considered a distinct historic period defined in terms of growth, dynamism, and its repercussions on the international behaviour and activities of sovereign players. Some of the sizeable paradiplomatic files that we can identify include economic and commercial policy, foreign investment promotion, the attractiveness of decision-making centres, export promotion, as well as science and technology, energy, the environment, education, issues of culture, and immigration, population mobility, multilateral relations, international development and human rights. Today, players on the paradiplomatic stage are becoming similarly interested in matters of human safety.
