Sub-State Organizations as Foreign Policy Agents: New Evidence and Theory from India, Israel and France

Abstract

The extant scholarship in international relations (IR) does not completely account for the role of sub-state organizations (SSOs) in foreign policies of states. Yet, international cooperation, especially, in specialized areas like defense, space and nuclear technologies that are technologically complex frequently witness extensive involvement of the SSOs. In other words, the SSOs act as foreign policy agents driving the international partnerships. Why does this happen, and what are its causal mechanisms? In this study, we conduct a plausibility probe on the role of SSOs through examining India’s partnership with France and Israel in specialized domains of nuclear, space and defense technologies, and find that the foreign policy elites within the government frequently defers to relevant SSOs when specialized knowledge and expertise are required, thus conferring foreign policy agency to the SSOs. We also find that the SSOs select their international partners based their goals of efficiency, and common institutional designs and organizational cultures. Our conclusions lead us to draw scholarly attention to this largely ignored yet significant actor in foreign policy decision-making.