Beyond the economic agenda : towards a normative dimension of paradiplomacy

The phenomenon of paradiplomacy, broadly referring to external activities of sub-state governments and embracing to a lesser or greater extent the elements defining foreign policy, gains an interest of experts from various academic disciplines. Yet, over the recent years, with some exceptions, the academic literature has been more preoccupied with investigation of economic dimensions of paradiplomacy when compared with investigation of normative-oriented issues. The objective of this article is to analyse the potential of the sub-national actors paradiplomatic activities in the field of development assistance. The articles adopts an exploratory research design and it based theoretically on the studies on paradiplomacy. It looks at the particular examples of sub-state governments from the EU countries. The results show that despite little attention concerning the problem, the local governments go through the process of an ongoing institutionalization of their activities in development assistance as they have launched their own development aid programmes, manage local budgets for development aid, and established administrative bodies in charge of conducting development aid programmes. Due to such institutionalization of development assistance policy, sub-state governments are capable of establishing and developing bilateral and multilateral relations with third parties, both state and non-state actors, confirming that they are politically and economically adequately resourced.