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The influence of global cities collectively has also been enhanced at the international level by the expansion of global city networks. As indicated in figure 3-5, intercity networks have been expanding rapidly since the mid-1980s, and there is presently no end in sight.⁴⁰ These include mayoral, finance, and higher-education networks, among others—variously directed toward global governance and best-practice informational exchange.⁴¹

Actors connect with one another through networks for two underlying reasons. First of all, actors need information that is reputable, relevant, and accessible; they consequently seek potential providers in networks with these qualities. Second, they particularly value providers that are already popular—the so-called network effect. Preferential attachment thus sustains and amplifies the hierarchical and regional structures of global city networks.⁴²

Figure 3-5. The Growth of Global City Networks (1885–2015)

Source: Michele Acuto and Steve Rayner, “City Networks: Breaking Gridlocks or Forging (New) Lock-ins?,” International Affairs 92, no. 5 (2016), p. 1156, figure 3.

City networks are fundamental to the operation of global political cities. They can be either hierarchical (connecting core and periphery) or regional. There is also an interaction dimension between hierarchical and regional structures. London and New York form the nucleus of most global networks that have an economic or financial basis, since they are the most important global financial centers.⁴³ Regional centers typically are connected through these two cities, although network formation typically follows a “preferential attachment” pattern, in which actors and arenas within cities attach through nodes that themselves are already highly connected, creating important first-mover advantages.⁴⁴

Our principal concern here, however, is not so much private sector networks, even though they do provide the underlying economic base and rationale for policy. Our greater concern, since this book deals with global political cities, is the actual public intergovernmental institutions that are beginning to shape a broader framework of global governance. This new global institutional infrastructure, ultimately profoundly political, has begun to emerge most clearly in the form of intergovernmental organizations such as C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and Local Governments for Sustainability. These local leadership networks thus capture best the political focus of this book.

Such extranational, policy-oriented bodies help deepen and give political importance to transnational urban networks. They also greatly facilitate information transfer, including the dissemination of best practices among global cities. As in the case of NGOs, the rising global prominence of intercity networks has been supercharged by the ICT revolution.

National governments of course continue to play central roles in global agenda-setting and governance. Indeed, many of them helped catalyze the post-Westphalian world now dawning, with their early support for IGOs, NGOs, and deregulation. It was national governments that established the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and, recently, the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Ironically, however, national governments, particularly that of the United States, have also lately undermined important multilateral organizations that they once created. American policies since 2017 have subverted major multilateral institutions, ranging from the Conference of Parties’ 2015 Paris Climate Conference (COP 21), the United Nations, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership to the WTO, leaving more space for NGOs, local governments, and transnational federations to define global agendas on such topics as environmental protection, transportation, and public health. Geopolitics, socioeconomic forces, and national policy are thus all working interactively to propel politics among nations deeper and deeper into a turbulent post-Westphalian world, where global political cities loom ever larger.