The domestic sources of sub-state foreign policymaking: determinants of subnational development cooperation across European regions

Subnational governments have come to challenge the foreign policymaking monopoly of national governments. An increasingly salient area of sub-state foreign policymaking is international development cooperation, but systematic knowledge about the drivers of such activities is limited. We argue that subnational governments develop capacities for international development cooperation for domestic region-building purposes, geared toward advancing political claims for regional autonomy that can take institutional, political, and cultural representations. To test this argument, we construct a new dataset of 195 politically relevant European regions which maps the autonomous engagement of regions in international development cooperation. Large-N regression analysis establishes that regions are significantly more likely to be engaged in international development cooperation where they have greater constitutional autonomy, cultural-linguistic distinctiveness, and a regionally-based party to advance the regional agenda. These results have important implications for our understanding of sub-state foreign policy actors and their role in the global governance of development.