ABSTRACT
The growing extranational involvement of regional and local governments has provided a growing focus of interest from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Consequently, we have a good deal of analytical and empirical material from which to draw conclusions regarding the meaning and significance of this phenomenon. Diversity is accompanied by disagreement and NCG internationalization has provided sustenance for very different approaches to understanding world politics, from realist to post-modern analyses, from arguments concerning neo-medievalism to territorial 'debordering'. Frequently, however, the processes of NCG internationalization have been isolated from their broader contexts, imposing on them assumptions derived from the concerns and language of foreign policy, and focusing on the boundaries separating actors rather than the linkages binding them together. This is reinforced by a tendency to locate NCGs within the traditional, and increasingly uninformative, categories of state and non-state actor rather than seeking to appreciate their defining characteristics. As with other entities, the analysis of the qualities inherent in NCGs as actors in world politics - their 'actorness' - helps us to move beyond evaluations of their role and significance rooted in these assumptions of separateness, discontinuity and exclusivity.
