Lawfare Daily: Why Autocrats Hate Cities with Ambassador Nina Hachigian

The Lawfare Podcast

In this episode of The Lawfare Podcast, Managing Editor Tyler McBrien interviews Ambassador Nina Hachigian about her Foreign Affairs article 'The Autocrat's Worst Enemy: Why

Key takeaways

• Cities function as 'laboratories of democracy' by delivering tangible services, guaranteeing rights, and maintaining accountability at a local level.
• Autocrats often target cities and mayors because urban centers embody pluralism, individual freedoms, and resistance to centralized control.

Main topics

• The democratic role of cities in resisting autocracy
• International municipal cooperation and diplomacy

Notable quotes

"Autocrats tend to not like what cities stand for. So pluralism and individual freedoms, they make it difficult for autocrats to really consolidate politically."

Conclusion

Cities and mayors play a crucial role in sustaining democratic norms through innovation,

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Hi, friends and fellow students. Americans living abroad can legally vote in the U.S. election. Register or get tailored support at VoteFromAbroad.org. Look, state deadlines are super close, so don't waste another second. Go to VoteFromAbroad.org now and click Request My Ballot and ask to receive it by email. All you got to do is fill it out and send it back in. Don't miss this chance to shape the future. Don't delay. VoteFromAbroad.org. Speaker 1 (0:30) I think autocrats tend to not like what cities stand for. So pluralism and individual freedoms, they make it difficult for autocrats to really consolidate politically. It's the Lawfare Speaker 3 (0:45) Podcast. I'm Tyler McBrien, Managing Editor of Lawfare, with Ambassador Nina Hachigian, President and CEO of the Alliance for Local Leaders International, and the first U.S. Special Representative for City and State Diplomacy from 2022 to Speaker 1 (0:59) 2025. They are little democracies with three branches of government, with rights guaranteed, with transparency and accountability and responsiveness and tangible progress, tangible delivery of what people need and want. And that keeps our norms somewhat preserved. Speaker 3 (1:23) Today we're talking about the ambassador's recent piece in Foreign Affairs, entitled The Autocrat's Worst Enemy. We discussed how cities are both laboratories of democracy and backstops against democratic backsliding, as well as what U.S. mayors can Speaker 2 (1:37) learn about resisting autocracy from their counterparts abroad. Speaker 3 (1:42) So, Ambassador, I wanted to start, if I may, with a bit about your background and the origins of your interest in this relationship between cities, democracy, international affairs, diplomacy. In other words, why did you write this? Speaker 1 (1:57) Yeah, thank you for the question. So I was, I had a kind of relatively traditional career in foreign policy. It was, you know, worked at think tanks and then was lucky to be an ambassador under President Obama. And then I came back to the U.S. and got an offer I couldn't refuse from Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles to be his first deputy mayor of international affairs. And in that job, I learned about just the incredible power of cities, both in improving the lives of the residents of the city, but also in how they network internationally. and learn a tremendous amount from each other. So I'll give you two examples of that. So one, the mayor took a trip to Mexico City. We have a sister city relationship with Mexico City. This was before I came on board. And he met with Claudia Scheinbaum, now the president of Mexico, and noticed that they had this earthquake early warning system that she told him about. So he came back to Los Angeles and said, we need to have an earthquake early warning system. And so the city worked on that and set it up. So now, you know, you have residents in Los Angeles who have a few seconds to, you know, jump under a table before the earthquake hits. And then the state since adopted it. So now we have 40 million residents of California who all can have this app on their phone that gives them a little time. So that's one example. Another is that he was chair of a group called C40. And that is the 100 or so. biggest cities of the world, all of whom have pledged to attack climate change because of the terrible effects it was having in all their cities, floods, heat, I don't have to go through it, and expensive energy. And so that collective has done a tremendous amount toward taking carbon out of the atmosphere. And when you think about it, cities, they have public transit. If you electrify your public transit, that's a big step. You can... divert your organic waste. And that doesn't, then you don't create methane, which is worse than carbon, et cetera, et cetera. So those are two kinds of examples of how cities work internationally. So that was that. And then I got a chance to do that work in the Biden administration, but not just for Los Angeles, but for all cities in the United States. And then we did a lot of connectivity, not actually just cities, but cities and states and counties and the whole lot. And in that... job, we did a lot of connecting across borders for learning, for shared problem solving, etc. And in that job also, and we, you know, we reached, I think, something like 5000 local leaders, and answer lots of questions and help them with their own international plans. I was expecting the biggest surprise of that job, I was expecting, you know, I'm coming from Los Angeles, a global city, but there is interest. across the United States in some of the smallest towns and cities in international work. But anyway, in that role, we did a bunch of work on democracy. And so I was aware, I became aware of how cities can preserve and exercise and innovate the systems of democracy, the kinds of things that we take for granted, like guaranteeing people's freedoms, issuing permits, protest. Speaker 1 (5:28) monitoring elections and working with civil society and being transparent and trying to be responsive to people's needs quickly and tangibly. All of that's democracy. And it happens in these many democracies all around the world. Speaker 3 (5:43) Thank you for that. That's Speaker 1 (5:44) a Speaker 3 (5:44) really helpful setup. And we will definitely dig into a lot of that municipal multilateralism as you refer to it in your piece. And before we dig into the meat of your argument in your foreign affairs piece, I'm hoping you could shed a little light on what happens in these offices of international affairs. It's something that I've been curious about. I live in New York City, and it's an inherently global city. And a lot of the work of City Hall, regardless of the city, is inherently global in nature or democratic in nature, of course, which we will talk about. But what's a day in the life like at an international affairs office? And what types of cities have them versus don't? Obviously, New York, LA, I assume Chicago. How small of Speaker 1 (6:30) a Speaker 3 (6:30) city do you get where they don't really exist? Speaker 1 (6:32) Well, sadly, in the United States, the capacity for this international engagement is actually quite limited. So you pointed out that Los Angeles and New York have the... biggest offices. New York has a lovely new commissioner. I really like her. She's really smart. A commissioner of international affairs. And she's got a great team. And similarly with LA. And then it's like, you know, Seattle has one person. Atlanta may have a few. San Antonio has one person. Like these big cities, Chicago has one person. And then most places have nobody. And they're just, you know, the chief of staff is doing it or, you know, someone else, maybe occasionally you've got someone in the economic development department who is doing these issues. But so a day in the life really changes depending on what kind of city you're talking about. And let me just draw a contrast here because Tokyo has like 50 people doing international affairs and Shanghai has 100 and even Buenos Aires has like 20. So we really, I mean, in general, we under-resource cities in the United States. And when it comes to international engagement, you know, there's just no, there are very few cities that can afford to, you know, reap the benefits of someone who's doing international work. But to answer your question, it could be that we are working on a community college program to send low-income community college students overseas for free. to gain that life-altering, mind-expanding experience. It could be that we are trying to attract businesses, foreign businesses