“BERLIN IS POOR, BUT SEXY”: APPLYING PARADIPLOMACY IN THE BERLINER INTERNATIONAL PROJECTION

Abstract

Given the advance of research on paradiplomacy as public policy, this paper seeks to investigate the model of strategic image projection from Berlin after its reunification, in 1990. Berlin is chosen because the city illustrates a paradiplomacy that remains with few changes in thirty years, even in political party alternation scenarios. To identify which values ​​and strategies and which social sectors would be present in the city's paradiplomatic action, the paradiplomacy analysis model (APD) is used, which guides data collection in five dimensions of explanatory variables: the dimension of management policy; the institutional; the market; the international; and the epistemic. The main results obtained are: I) a consensus of managers to redefine the projected image of Berlin, from a city of conflicts and social problems to a contemporary city of financial opportunities; II) create urban devices that support this new image, such as the international airport and the changes in Potsdamer Platz and Alexanderplatz; III) replicate its good practices from international networks of cities and higher education.