This open panel invites papers that examine political authority, democratic practice, and institutional innovation beyond the conventional nation-state frame. It focuses on current “glocal governance” transitions in which cities, regions, municipalities, Indigenous polities, translocal movements, CSOs, and other subnational actors claim forms of sovereignty while operating through global networks. At the UN level, governance beyond or alongside national government is driven by unresolved global questions about climate change, AI, or migration, as seen in the Global Compact, Summits for the Future, or EU local empowerments and citizen assemblies, which seek local, individual, citizen-driven, or private (PPP) solutions.
We welcome theoretical, comparative, historical, and empirical contributions addressing themes such as urban and regional autonomy, international world order and rules (international human rights law); networked governance; municipalism; city diplomacy; cross-border solidarity; climate and migration governance. It also welcomes submissions on digital infrastructures and AI; climate change and its impact on local and global governance; decolonial and Indigenous political orders; and the tensions between local self-determination, global interdependence, and democratic accountability or quality of democracy.
The local-global Twist panel aims to explore whether, and under what conditions, local sovereignty and global networking can generate more democratic, just, and resilient forms of political order.
