Strategic competition and the evolving role of Indo-Pacific paradiplomacy

ABSTRACT

Scholarship on paradiplomacy, or sub-national diplomacy, has often focused on economics, trade, cooperation and politics. The deepening of strategic competition between the People’s Republic of China and the United States has raised the stakes for sub-national diplomacy. While US-PRC strategic competition occurs primarily at the national level, the subnational level plays an important role in terms of creating opportunities for influence and advancing the strategic interests. In this article recent paradiplomacy in the Indo-Pacific is examined, as is the is the intersection of paradiplomacy with strategic competition.