Sub-State Agency in Global Governance: A Relational Framework

How do sub-state entities become actors in global governance? Global governance and sub-state diplomacy (also known as paradiplomacy) scholarship acknowledges that sub-state entities are global governance actors but not how they acquire international agency. We argue that sub-state agency is not an inherent disposition but rather the product of complex relational interaction between established and emerging global governance actors. We adapt Hofferberth and Lambach’s relational agency framework to sub-state entities and apply this new framework to a case study of Quebec’s agentification towards la francophonie conferences and institutional efforts from the 1960s until the 2000s. We find that sub-state entities’ defining actorness characteristic is that as constituent units of sovereign states, sub-state entities are simultaneously sovereignty-bound and sovereignty-free. This status endows them with unique structural constraints and opportunities as global governance actors.