This work contributes to a better understanding of the growing subnational involvement in foreign affairs, offering a general view of the most prominent aspects in the development of subnational foreign action around the world,

Region and international affairs - motives, opportunities and strategies, Michael Keating; patrolling the frontier - globalization, localization and the actorness of non-central governments, Brian Hocking; diplomacy and paradiplomacy in the redefinition of international security - dimensions of conflict and co-operation, Noe Cornago; the European Union and inter-regional co-operation, Kepa Sodupe; towards plurinational diplomacy in the deeper and wider European Union, (1985-2005), Francisco Aldecoa; the other dimension of third level politics in Europe - the congress of local and regional powers of the Council of Europe, Jose Luis de Castro; the international competence of US states and their local governments, John Kincaid; federal-state relations in Australian external affairs - a new co-operative era? John Ravenhill; the Quebec experience - success or failure? Louis Balthazar; the international relations of Basque nationalism and the first Basque autonomous government (1890-1939), Alexander Ugalde; making sense of paradiplomacy? an intertextual inquiry about a concept in search of a definition, Inaki Aguirre.