BUDAPEST, BÉCS, PRÁGA ÉS VARSÓ KÖZÖTTI VÁROSDIPLOMÁCIAI KAPCSOLATOK

Absztrakt

The significance of city diplomacy started to increase after the end of World War II, and the main features of city cooperation also constantly changed throughout the post-war decades. Recently, partner city and sister city collaborations are characterized not only by cultural aspects but by economic ones as well. The issues related to city diplomacy are primarily investigated by scholars from the fields of international relations and jurisprudence. In human geography, however, the examination of city cooperation is mainly concerned with economic issues, and much less with political ones. By revealing local government linkages between four Central European capitals, this paper attempts to demonstrate city diplomacy as a useful research in the field of human geography. In addition to geographical proximity, Budapest, Vienna, Prague and Warsaw have much more in common: they have comparable population sizes, common historical influences over the 20th century, as well as strong cultural relations, all of which might contribute to tight political-diplomatic relationship between them. Moreover, after the fall of the Iron Curtain and the subsequent access of their respective countries to the European Union, Central Europe became politically more united. Based on official city cooperation contracts, the principal aim of the study is to reveal the four capitals’ diplomatic relations compared to those on the national scale.