ABSTRACT
Global cities are at one with the mutation in capitalism wrought by neoliberalism in this period and exist only in relation to the emergence of the competition or market state that emerged from the ruins of the old welfare or Keynesian model. Friedmann's work was indeed a seminal insight, but it has also had the effects of skewing the literature in a certain economistic direction and of directing the focus to the symbiosis between global cities and the global economy, at the expense of the prior question of what type of international order generates such global economic conditions. The World Organisation of United Cities and Local Governments represents a recent attempt to boost the political representation of local government in the international arena, in particular with the United Nations' agencies that deal with urban issues, such as UNESCO, UN-HABITAT and the World Bank.
