Local identity in sub-national foreign action

Reflections from the Colombian Caribbean

Abstract

Why a sub-national entity decides to have strategic interactions at the international level? In this article, we propose the concept of subnational foreign action and use it to analyze the process of international insertion of the city of Barranquilla and the department of Atlántico in Colombia. We observe that the subnational foreign action of these entities was shaped by three elements. Firstly, it served to build and strengthen a particular identity of the city as a leader and epicenter of development in the Caribbean region. Secondly, it was strongly influenced by the role of an "entrepreneur" of that external action and, finally, it also responded to the influence of "experts" with the capacity to encourage individuals with the potential to be entrepreneurs of subnational foreign action. Thus, we propose that this type of international activities is useful to achieve domestic objectives and responds to the influence of individuals with the capacity to redirect the resources of entities to those ends.