Paradiplomacie a hlavní město Praha
Paradiplomacy and the City of Prague

Summary/Abstract: This study deals with the phenomenon of paradiplomacy, or parallel diplomacy. Paradiplomacy refers to international activities of cities and regions and includes marketing and public diplomacy, cross-border cooperation, functional trans-border cooperation, cultural and educational cooperation, and other activities. Paradiplomacy developed in the last third of the 20th century as a result of economic globalization, state decentralization, nationalism and the strengthening of regional identity, European integration, and the internationalization of cultural, educational, environmental, transport and other topics labelled as “low politics”. Thus, we can identify both economic and political foundations of paradiplomacy. The first part of the study presents a review of literature on paradiplomacy; the second part is a case study of foreign policy instituted by the City of Prague in the electoral term 2006–2010. This case study confirmed initial hypotheses: first, that paradiplomacy is influenced by three supra-national factors: economic globalization (a), regional and global political and economic regimes (b), and transnational networks, mainly based in the EU (c); second, that paradiplomacy is influenced by institutional and constitutional relations between the centre and regions; third, that paradiplomacy is influenced by the antagonistic nature of these relations.

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