Citizen or City Diplomacy?

What is it about?

Citizen or City Diplomacy? Diplomatic Co-Production and the Middle Ground in Municipal Twinning Relationships Since their early origins in the Cold War, municipalities worldwide have engaged with each other through twinning relationships, also called sister cities or friendship cities, to form cultural links and business ties, and promote educational exchange. Creating and maintaining these relationships requires both official city and citizen initiative and participation.  Scott Harrison and Quinton Huang, two researchers at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, a not-for-profit organization focused on Canada-Asia relations, have spent years examining global municipal twinning in Asia and the crossroads of Canada-Asia Pacific city twinning. Their work gets at the heart of how and why these networks form and their outcomes, benefits, and pitfalls. Harrison and Huang ask whether twinning is a quaint but outdated concept or a viable modern strategy for enhancing Canada-Asia and international relations in general?  Findings are drawn from 18 interviews with official and domestic society actors involved in Canadian twinning relations with China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. Using examples from Canada-Asia city twinning, this paper examines how cities and citizens work together and could better do so. Insights gleaned will inspire new approaches to designing and implementing twinning relationships and how cities and everyday citizens can work better together.

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