In November 2012, Mayor Julian Castro of San Antonio, Texas, spoke to a packed house at the London School of Economics. Mayor Castro was leading a Texan business delegation on a trade mission to London and promoting San Antonio to the global market as a place to do business. In and of itself, this is not unusual activity. Local and state delegations undertake overseas trade missions quite frequently. What was unusual was that whilst Mayor Castro was in London, in addition to encouraging city-to-city business deals between London and San Antonio, he also engaged in several high-level meetings at 10 Downing Street, including private meetings with the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Foreign Secretary, an activity usually reserved for nation-to-nation diplomacy. “Responding to comments that he had extraordinary access to the UK’s top leaders, Castro said he’s determined to use every bit of political capital he’s garnered … to sell the city” (Baugh, 2012).
Politics is changing in a globalised world. The tentacles of globalisation, including economic globalisation across developed countries, and social, cultural and environmental globalisation around the world, mean that almost anyone or any entity can now be an actor on the global stage (Sassen, 2004). Globalisation has become a form of global pluralism, or, as Cerny (2010a) coins it, transnational neopluralism.
In a global economy, the role of cities and their leadership is transforming as the role of the nation-state is evolving (Cerny, 2010a). In the UK, as the nation-state moves further down the spectrum from a welfare state to a competition state (Borraz & John, 2004; Brenner, 1998; Cerny, 1997, 2010a, 2010b; Cerny & Evans, 1999), local authorities are increasingly burdened with the responsibility of delivering more public services on smaller budgets while working to increase economic stability and growth in their areas without central government funding support. The analysis details how the transition from pluralism to international neopluralism has enabled the shift from the welfare state domestic lobbying structure to one potentially represented by local officials who intervene at the global level for local domestic agendas of economic development, thus adding another layer to transnational neopluralism.
In an increasingly web-like, interconnected and interdependent economy, global cities have become the apparent hub or command centres of global activities (Sassen, 2001), specifically for new economic sectors, such as technology, and finance. Through greater understanding of and economic alignment with global cities, some local areas appear to be making headway in building a framework for participation in the new economy (Dobbs et al., 2011; Sassen, 2000). Tracing the path from local cities to the global economy, this book explores the changing nature of local elected officials as well as the role of global entrepreneurs in local economic development.
The book examines the changing behaviours of local elected officials and new policies or structures within local government as a result of increasing globalisation, inter-connectivity and inter-dependency. It is proposed that transformational local elected officials in a legislative-activist policy structure are best positioned to contribute to economic development through connecting the local economy to the global economy, and that local entrepreneurship is helping to drive the local-to-global economic activity. The following key questions are considered: What are the behaviours of local officials that contribute to global participation? What are the policies of local government that contribute to global participation? In this scenario, what is the optimal interaction of policy and behaviour? How is innovation and entrepreneurship driving the connection between local and global?
Specifically, the book examines political leadership considering transactional versus transformational behaviours. It seeks to understand why they are motivated and whom they feel they represent in carrying out their work. These behaviours are examined in light of local structures as institutions and the shape of local administration, in order to understand how local elected officials are engaging in local-to-global activities in which they feel empowered to act on their own and engage in paradiplomacy, or collectively through global networks. The local policy structures examined are organised as administrative-executor for the traditional form of local government operating within the hierarchy of national or central government, or as legislative-activist representing a new structure for local government operating (at times) independently of central government as well as on the global level. The book explores how the two types of behaviour, transactional and transformational, combine with the two types of local government policy structures, administrative-executor and legislative-activist, to determine if the resulting four dyadic permutations lead to different outcomes in whether a local area is more likely to participate in and benefit from the global economy.
The book examines innovation and entrepreneurship as an economic driver for local-to-global activity. Specific emphasis is given to ethnic, or global, entrepreneurs who are operating at an international level. Ethnic entrepreneurs in this research are considered to be those entrepreneurs who are connected to a migrant group through a common background or cultural experience and, as business owners, leverage that background and experience to take risks, work internationally and seek a value-added perspective (based on previous definitions and works by Aldrich & Waldinger, 1990; McDougall & Oviatt, 2000; Peterson, 1980; Yinger, 1985). Ethnic entrepreneurs establishing start-up businesses in new economic sectors are examined as potential local vehicles for economic growth in building global businesses, and by looking at their behaviours in building local-to-global businesses as well as the various structures that facilitate building “born global” companies. Agency, in the form of postnationalism (Soysal, 1994), is considered to understand why ethnic entrepreneurs build local businesses with global reach, and structure is considered through transmigration, to explain how ethnic entrepreneurs set up “born global” companies. Postnationalism (Soysal, 1994) refers to the conceptual impact of globalisation on nationality in which nationalism loses meaning through frequent participation in inter- or supranational activities. Postnationalism suggests that a broader set of human rights are applicable beyond rights bestowed by citizenship.
In drawing conclusions on a local area’s level of participation in global economic activities, global fluency of each area is assessed. Global fluency is the term used by Clark and Moonen (2013) to describe the “the level of global understanding, competence, practice, and reach a metropolitan area exhibits in an increasingly interconnected world economy” (p. 3). Three local London case study boroughs are used as in-depth examples of the degree to which changing local government institutional structures and behaviours contribute to a local area’s global fluency, participation in global activity and potentially local economic development. Additional anecdotal examples are provided from cities around the world.
The book looks beyond mega-cities (i.e., New York, London, Tokyo) as the hubs and command centres of globalisation and into more localised areas. It examines what types of local leaders are engaging in global activity and looks at empirical evidence of how they are undertaking the activities. For London, the empirical work focuses on an analysis through interviews of local officials and business leaders alongside a review of economic development documentation in three local London Boroughs.
There is a significant amount of research that analyses the changing economy of local areas. Current research analyses transitions from rusting factories to modern manufacturing bases, technology and new energy hubs; business clusters to maximise a target growth sector and innovative public private models to fund the initiatives (Bagwell, 2008; Hutton, 2008; Porter, 1995). All of these new economic sector initiatives have valid underpinnings in economic research and data on where markets are heading. However, data does not fully explain and conceptualise how the changing behaviours of local elected officials and the structures in which they operate are initiating these conversions. One cannot simply throw the components for local economic success into a pot and stir. In the new economic landscape, these elements need to be driven, negotiated, communicated and championed by a local leader who not only has vision and ability to generate support and followers but also has an understanding of how a local area can benefit from global participation and where the local area may fit into a broader global system. Simply put, there is a leadership skill set required to successfully connect a local economy to a global economy. The gap in the current literature, which this book seeks to contribute to, is identified when seeking to understand the journey that local elected officials have been taking since the modern construct of globalisation, together with an analysis of the changes in policy structure and behaviour that are occurring at the local level as a result of this journey. This research explores the changing roles of local officials from one of transactional leadership in an administrative-executor structure to potentially one of transformational leadership in a legislative-activist policy structure.
The book explores and explains how some local leaders are driven to participate in and seek to influence global policies that may benefit their local economy. In doing so, they feel empowered to act as a direct participant and negotiator with actors in the global economy. Some local officials specifically choose to support and enact local policies that enable the growth of local businesses helping to connect the local economy to the global marketplace—for example, fostering technology start-up clusters and providing local support for access to capital and digital connectivity infrastructure. These types of local structures and behaviours help develop local entrepreneurs to “go global”, thus improving the local area’s economic standing.
The research seeks to contribute to the existing body of knowledge through providing an in-depth analysis of how behaviour and policy structure play a role in how local elected officials integrate local areas into a global economy and the unique role that ethnic, or global, entrepreneurs may play. The work is based on and expands from several fields including international relations, economics, immigration and politics. In particular, the exploration builds on five areas of seminal research and scholars. First, Joseph Nye’s (2008) analysis of transactional and transformational styles of political leadership is used to explore the why of local-to-global activities of elected officials. Second, Philip Cerny’s work (1990, 1997, 2010a, 2010b) on transnational neopluralism and Saskia Sassen’s work (1991, 2000, 2001, 2004) on global cities are both used as frameworks to understand structure, the how of the new activities. Third, Yasemin Soysal’s framework for postnational participation (1994), elucidating guest-worker rights, is used to understand why local entrepreneurs are motivated to not only build global businesses, but specifically do it as local entrepreneurs and members of a local community. Fourth, Schiller, Basch, and Blanc-Szanton’s work (1992) on transmigration is used to understand the structural component of how some entrepreneurs are able to build successful local to global businesses. Last, Clark and Moonen’s The ten traits of globally fluent metro areas (2013) is used at the sub-“global city” level to determine what each combination of structure and agency looks like for engagement at the global level on a scale of global fluency.
Increasingly faced with struggling for survival in a globalised age, predicated by ongoing variations in the globa...