A charter city is a type of city in which a guarantor from a developed country would create a city within a developing host country. The guarantor would administer the region, with the power to create their own laws, judiciary, and immigration policy outside of the control of the host country.

> Most or all of the agreed downsides of colonialism are not about the existence of exclaves containing foreign people, they're about e.g. people being governed from afar without any local representation.

That's exactly what Romer is proposing. The foreign guarantor would administer the region and control its laws, judiciary and immigration policy.

These aren't intended to be comprised solely of foreigners. I suspect like past exclaves, they would bring in foreign overseers to enforce their vision.

Again your beef is that there isn't local representation. There isn't some law of the universe that a charter city can't allow the locals to influence policy of the guarantor. You have an issue that government doesn't always work the way you want it, and it's a valid concern that governments often (if not always) are bad for the locals.

You can't point at North Korea and say "Look, when you have a nation-state everyone ends up with essentially zero influence by common locals." But this is essentially what you're doing with charter cities.

>foreign guarantor

Better terminology would be 'formerly foreign guarantor.' They are domestic to the charter city.

My beef is with a system that allows foreign guarantors.

> Better terminology would be 'formerly foreign guarantor.' They are domestic to the charter city.

Do they surrender their home country nationality? If not...

Understood

>No my issue is with foreign controlled exclaves which can exert disproportionate influence on the locals without being accountable to the locals whose lives they control.

It's interesting that I could swap "foreign controlled exclaves' with 'federal government' here and suddenly many would be outraged. Your argument fits in pretty neatly with anti-federalism and anti- other structures that serve to dilute the power of locals.

It's a valid point to be concerned about loss of local power. I'm skeptical that there is any practical difference here for exploitations of locals (charter-city vs non-charter-city) other than an OPPORTUNITY for competing governments models to prove themselves in a way that lets those in a constrained geographic area compare many governance models to see which works. I can see using charter cities to INCREASE local power, by creating a 'foreign guarantor' that is actually a representation of the locals, ousting much federal power.