“We are the state”: Cities’ quest for recognition in climate diplomacy

Students of urban studies have long recognized cities as key sites, but also as critical actors , of global governance. However, they are only beginning to explore how cities’ infrastructural power can be translated into political influence and a distinct form of recognition within the exclusive fora of multilateral conferences and UN institutions. This research seeks to answer this question by applying a relational framework of global agency drawn from International Political Sociology. I mobilize event ethnography at climate COP28 in Dubai (2023)—where subnational governments gained unprecedented recognition, namely through the Local Climate Action Summit and the Coalition for High Ambition Multilevel Partnerships—to analyze how the Local Governments and Municipal Authorities (LGMA) constituency to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which I define as a subnational community of practice , seeks recognition for itself and its members by deploying “hybrid” diplomatic practices that oscillate between “multilevel” diplomacy and transnational advocacy . By strategically balancing challenges to the centralized structure of multilateral diplomacy with advocacy practices that align with the UN’s binary distinction between “state” and “non-state” actors, the LGMA works to differentiate cities and other subnationals from “civil society” while promoting the redistribution of power and financial resources to the local level. This attempt marks a new phase in the historical mobilization of cities and city networks of great importance for urban studies: a shift from merely seeking “recognition” in global governance to advancing a progressive reform of the multilateral system into a genuinely “multilevel” structure that would empower subnationals as governmental actors and integral components of the “state.”