Subnational governments have come to challenge the foreign policymaking monopoly of national governments. An increasingly salient area of sub-state foreign policymaking is international development cooperation, but systematic knowledge about the drivers of such activities is limited. Building on a growing body of related literature, we argue that subnational governments develop capacities for international development cooperation to advance territorial-based claims domestically. By enhancing their international reputation and fostering a regional identity, subnational governments can bolster territorial-based claims, which can take institutional, political, and cultural representations. To test this argument, we construct a new dataset of 195 politically relevant European regions which maps the autonomous engagement of regions in international development cooperation. Large-N regression analysis establishes that regions are significantly more likely to be engaged in international development cooperation where they have greater existing constitutional autonomy, cultural-linguistic distinctiveness, and a regionally-based party to advance the regional agenda. These results have important implications for our understanding of sub-state foreign policy actors and their role in the global governance of development.

Interest in the international development cooperation activities of subnational governments like Catalonia, Flanders, and Scotland has grown in recent years. Beyond these well-known cases, however, we currently lack systematic evidence on the scope of the phenomenon. This paper introduces a new dataset of 195 European regions to provide systematic information on which regions engage in international development cooperation. The dataset includes information on institutional structures and governance modalities, aid motivations, aid modalities, and aid policies. To demonstrate the utility of our dataset, we provide descriptive insights into the phenomenon of subnational development cooperation while at the same time discussion questions for future research that can be addressed with the help of the dataset. We find that subnational development cooperation extends far beyond some well-cited cases, given that around 70 regions have some institutional structure for development cooperation. With relatively small budgets, regional aid delivery primarily relies on NGOs and supports a variety of purposes in the sustainable development agenda, including human rights, environmental affairs, fair trade, sustainable consumption, and development education at home. Being the first of its kind, the dataset advances our understanding of subnational governments as autonomous providers of development aid and their potential role in helping advance the Sustainable Development Goals in the multi-level global development governance architecture.