Paradiplomacy : a comparative analysis of the international relations of South Africa’s Gauteng, North West and Western Cape provinces

• Main Author: Nganje, Fritz Ikome
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: International relations; Provincial governments - South Africa; Subnational governments - Foreign relations - South Africa; Diplomacy
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10210/8644

D.Litt. et Phil. (Politics) === South Africa’s 1996 Constitution makes provision for relatively autonomous provincial administrations, which share responsibility with the national government for important functional areas while also exercising exclusive authority over others. Although the Constitution is not explicit on the distribution of foreign policy competence, the dominant interpretation among South African policy-makers is that this functional area is the exclusive domain of the national government. Consequently, the foreign policy-making process in the country has over the years been dominated by the national executive. Even so, since 1995 the interplay of a set of push and pull factors has encouraged all provinces to assume an active and direct international role, to the extent that provincial international relations or paradiplomacy has become an important feature of South Africa’s international relations. This study examines the paradiplomacy of the South African provinces of Gauteng, the North West and the Western Cape against the backdrop of a relatively weak scholarly and public discourse of the phenomenon in the country. Through an in-depth and empirically based analysis of the three case studies, the inquiry generates insight into the nature and meaning of paradiplomacy in South Africa, as a contribution to the development of alternative accounts of a phenomenon whose scholarship is still heavily dominated by Western perspectives. The study finds that paradiplomacy has evolved in South Africa as a predominantly functional project, which has little significance for the authority of the national government over the country’s foreign policy and international relations. The provincial governments in Gauteng, the North West and the Western Cape engage in international relations primarily as a strategy to harness the opportunities of globalisation and economic interdependence, in the interest of the socio-economic development of their respective jurisdictions. This ‘developmental paradiplomacy’ is conditioned to a large extent by the limited provincial powers on foreign affairs, strong centripetal forces in South Africa’s political system, as well as the pervasive influence of the post-apartheid discourse on socio-economic transformation. Thus, although all three provinces examined conduct their international relations with relative autonomy and in ways that have at times undermined the country’s international reputation and attracted Pretoria’s ire, these activities are consciously defined within the framework of the country’s foreign policy and, in some cases, are executed in close collaboration with the national government. In a sense, therefore, provinces conceive of their international role as that of agents or champions of Pretoria’s foreign policy agenda. The key findings of this study, especially as they pertain to the nature and significance of paradiplomacy in South Africa, highlight the North-South geopolitical cleavage in the manifestation of the phenomenon. On the one hand, the South African case resonates with the experience in other developing countries like India, China, Malaysia and Argentina, where paradiplomacy evolves under the shadow of national foreign policy processes. On the other hand, the findings contrast with the experience in most countries in Europe and North America where questions of nationalism, sub-national identity and the sovereign authority for international representation have contributed to defining the international agency of sub-national governments.