KIU Journal of Social Sciences KIU Journal of Social Sciences Copyright©2020 Kampala International University ISSN: 2413-9580; 6(2): 85- 100 Transnational Actors in the era of Complex Interdependence and Globalization M.‟BIMBO OGUNBANJO Adonai University, Cotonou, Republic of Benin Abstract. Of particular importance for International Relations (IR) are transnational actors (TNAs) that wield considerable influence on politics across borders, such as non-governmental organizations (NGOs), multinational corporations (MNCs), religious actors, terrorism rebels, criminal actors, and diasporas and ethnic actors. „Transnational‟ is a frequently mentioned key word in International Relations (IR) today, to denote in a simplifying manner an organization working beyond state boundaries and acting independently from traditional state authorities. The scholarly recognition of such actors occurred relatively late in the field and advanced with the acceleration of globalizing economic, political, cultural and social processes. This paper emphasizes that despite the appearance of transnational actors (TNAs) as a topical and palpable concern for academics and practitioners alike, questions of conceptual vagueness and relational indeterminacy remain, and the continual proliferation of these entities lends urgency to more scholarly attention on these agents. This paper views transnational actors (TNAs) as political, social, cultural and economic agents or groups which operate trans-societal and/or trans-governmental across borders in pursuit of their goals, to a certain degree independently from domestic governmental considerations. This paper further stresses that the subject of International Relations (IR) originally covered simply the relations between states. Economic bodies and social groups, such as banks, industrial companies, students, environmentalists, and women‟s organizations, were given secondary status as non-state actors. It opines that this two-tier approach has been challenged, particularly by the effects of globalization. First, ambiguities in the meaning given to „a state‟, and its mismatch with the contemporary world, result in it not being a useful concept. Greater clarity is obtained by analyzing inter-governmental and inter-society relations, with no presumption that one sector is more important than the other. Second, governments are losing sovereignty when faced with the economic activities of transnational companies and the violent threat from criminals, terrorists and guerrillas. Third, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) engage in such a web of global relations, including participation in diplomacy, that governments have lost their political independence. This paper concludes that events in any area of global policy-making have to be understood in terms of complex systems, containing governments, companies, and NGOs interacting in a variety of international organizations. Keywords: Transnational, Transnational Actors, Transsocietal Relations, Transnational Agents, Transnational Relations, Transnational Organizations, International Relations, International Organizations, Political Actors 1. Introduction While international institutions were long the exclusive preserve of national governments, the past decades have witnessed a gradual and partial shift from interstate cooperation to more complex forms of governance, involving participation by transnational actors (TNAs), such as non-governmental organizations (NGOs), advocacy networks, party associations, and multinational corporations (MNCs). Increasingly, states and international institutions are engaging transnational actors (TNAs) as policy experts, service providers, compliance watchdogs and stakeholder representatives. The World Bank, for instance, draws on the expertise of NGOs in the formulation of country reports, engages in operational collaboration with civil society actors in the field, and conducts policy dialogue through the NGO-World Bank Committee. Whereas only 21 percent of all World Bank funded projects involved civil society participation in 1990, this figure had risen to 78 percent in 2018 (Gotz 2019). The United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) provides another example, engaging transnational actors 85 KIU Journal of Social Sciences To avoid the debate on the labeling of IGOs, one could call International Organizations (IOs) transgovernmental actors and reserve the term “classic” TNAs to non-state actors such as civil society representatives and private interest groups acting transnationally. Recent years have seen an emphasis on private business regulation (Kolb 2015; Koenig-Archibugi and Zuern 2016) and social activism (Keck and Sikkink 2008; Dingwerth 2017; Joachim and Locher 2018), which tend to exclude IGOs as well. (TNAs) by offering NGOs accreditation to its meetings, operating a Global Civil Society Forum, and drawing on civil society in the implementation of its programmes. Transnational actors (TNAs) are, by definition, political, social, cultural, and economic agents or groups which operate trans-societal and/or transgovernmental across borders in pursuit of their goals, to a certain degree independently from domestic governmental considerations. “Transnational” is a frequently mentioned key word in International Relations (IR) lexicon today, often conflated with “international” or “supranational” to denote in a simplifying manner an organization working beyond state boundaries and acting independently from traditional state authorities. The scholarly recognition of such actors occurred relatively late in the field and advanced with the coinciding acceleration of globalizing economic, political, cultural, and social processes. Despite the appearance of transnational actors (TNAs) as a topical and palpable concern for academics and practitioners alike, questions of conceptual vagueness and relational indeterminacy remain, and the continual proliferation of these entities lends urgency to more scholarly attention on these agents. Trans-national does not simply signify inter-national; it refers to the organization of power beyond the state (not between states) and is, thus, an open and somewhat nondescript term (Richter et al. 2006; Barnett and Finnemore 2014) denoting political coordination, exchanges, and regulation that transcend national boundaries. It should also be conceptually distinguished from supranational agents, as they represent a level of governance above the state. Transnational actors (TNAs), then, encompass a wide variety of boundary-crossing entities addressing a host of issues which cannot be resolved alone or are, for better or for worse, managed in a cross-border fashion. These activity areas vary from regime promotion to social activism to non-legitimate disruption of a political order and involve INGOs, transgovernmental epistemic communities, international advocacy networks, religious communities, and social movements as well as multinational companies. In the original, groundbreaking work on interdependent transnationalism by Keohane and Nye (1972), all entities interacting across national boundaries with at least one non-state agent present were considered transnational, which arguably included intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). Transnational relations, then, were different and novel in that they represented “contacts, coalitions, and interactions across state boundaries that are not controlled by the central foreign policy organs of the government” (1972: 11). In their later work (1974), the authors retracted from the inclusion of IGOs and categorized them separately as transgovernmental actors, thereby creating a debate centered on the validity of political agents that were not traditional state representatives, as Huntington (1973) and Bull (1977) contested the (government-) exclusive reading of TNAs. While the former group of scholars wanted to challenge the state-centric system in view of the proliferation of non-traditional actors, the latter remained somewhat wedded to the state system and focused on the activity focus, rather than the nature, of these organizations. Thus, a narrow reading of the term does not count IGOs as they are part of governments, but others include them in the definition because they act mainly in a cross-border fashion and constitute global governance (Arts 2002; Munoz 2008; Tarrow 2018). In diplomacy, international law, journalism, and academic analysis, it is widely assumed that International Relations (IR) consist of the relations between coherent units called states. Better understanding of political change is obtained by analyzing the relations between governments and many other actors from each country (Della-Porta and Tarrow 2015; Orenstein et al. 2017). Global politics also includes companies and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Thus the five main categories of political actors in the global system are: - Nearly 200 governments in the global system, including 192 members of the UN; - 77,200 transnational companies (TNCs), such as Vodaphone, Ford, Shell, Microsoft, or Nestle, with these parent companies having just over 773,000 foreign affiliates; - More than 10,000 single-country nongovernmental organizations such as Population Concern (UK), or the Sierra Club (USA), which have significant transnational activities; 86 KIU Journal of Social Sciences - - 246 intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) such as the UN, NATO, the European Union (EU), or the International Coffee Organization; and 7,300 international non-governmental organizations (INGOs), such as Amnesty International, the Baptist World Alliance or the International Chamber of Shipping, plus a similar number of less well-established international caucuses and networks of NGOs. according to their stance on the substantive role of state governments and their assessment of changes in the international system. Following this, the nature of the different types of actor will be outlined. Finally, the case will be argued for always considering the activities of a diverse range of political actors. 2. The Historical Context of Transnational Actors Historically, the precursory existence of trade- and activism-related transnational organizations has been observed since the days of colonialism starting in the fifteenth century (Risse 2002). Already in the fourteenth century, European merchant guilds along the main bodies of water established guidelines for the smooth exchange of commodities in an uncertain transnational exchange process threatened by foreign militaries and rulers (Hagel and Peretz 2005: 133; Zweifel 2015: 33). A few hundred years later, the nineteenth-century Concert of Europe represented an early form of supranational policy coordination among the major European powers at the time. Transnational actors (TNAs), however, gained in importance only with the advance of globalization processes in the twentieth century. Early on, the main such actors consisted in fact of large US and European agriculture, mining, and oil companies operating in their colonial territories (Willets 2018). After decolonialization commenced in the 1950s and 1960s, these subsidiaries continued their trade relationships and thus established an irreversible trend toward the transnationalization of the global political economy. Henceforth, some analysts prefer to call them transnational corporations (TNCs) rather than MNCs. The impact of the global political economy was such that it reshaped a previously protectionist state-centered global system and pushed it toward the liberalization and the removal of trade barriers, but simultaneously had a deteriorating effect on the less developed economies of the Global South (Willetts 1990; UNCTAD 2001; Appi 2008). Around that time, intergovernmental transnational politics was still in its infancy – the major exception being the League of Nations – compared to the vibrant world of nongovernmental transnational interactions that currently exists. In the interpretation of some analysts, the League was the first truly transgovernmental body in which delegates from the member states could “act as a wider transnational community of global citizens” (Willetts 1992: 322; Webster 2015: 494), and its task of protecting national minorities in the aftermath of World War I connected the IO with transboundary nongovernmental advocates of such groups. All these actors play a regular part in global politics and each government interacts with a diverse range of non-state actors. Sometimes guerrilla groups challenge the authority of particular governments. In addition, even though they are considered not to be legitimate participants in the system, terrorists and other criminal gangs have an impact, often minor, but sometimes in a major way. Very many more companies and NGOs only operate in a single country, but have the potential to expand into other countries. Nobody can deny the number of these organizations and the range of their activities. The controversial questions are whether the non-state world has significance in its own right and whether it makes any difference to the analysis of inter-state relations. It is possible to define International Relations (IR) as covering the relations between states. This is known as the state-centric approach, or Realism. Then it is only a tautology (true by definition) to say that nonstate actors are of secondary importance. A more open-ended approach, known as Pluralism, is based on the assumption that all types of actor can affect political outcomes. The very words, non-state actors, imply that states are dominant and other actors are secondary. An alternative phrase, transnational actors (TNAs), has been coined by academics in order to assert forcefully that International Relations (IR) are not limited to governments and other actors operate across country boundaries. It is an acceptable analytical bias to decide, before research starts, that only states have any influence. Until the evidence indicates otherwise, we must assume that governments also interact with NGOs, companies, and international organizations. This paper will first examine the evolution of transnational actors (TNAs) in global politics. It will later consider how assumptions made about „states‟ inhibit analysis of transnational actors (TNAs) and international organizations (IOs). Then it will emphasize that the major strands of international relations theories conceive of transnational actors (TNAs) differently, 87 KIU Journal of Social Sciences Following the League‟s demise, the creation of the United Nations was in turn predated by many functional agencies, which began their existence regulating specific policy areas in a multilateral way. The UN as a system of coordinating transnational functional agencies coincided with the founding of the Bretton Woods institutions to address both political and economic concerns in the aftermath of World War II. To this end, separate organizations were created, which would avoid the complex process of reaching consensus and also provide increased political leverage for the victorious allied powers. Governmental Organizations in Relationship with the UN (CONGO). Consultative Reviving the debate on TNA characteristics, hybrid organizations composed of governmental as well as civil society representatives, such as the International Red Cross or Birdlife International, conflate the distinction of transgovernmental and transnational actors (Ackiss and Lorden 2006; Willets 2018). As such, the UN increasingly provides a platform for smaller nations, crises observers, and social justice activists to be heard (Kaul 1993; Puchala et al. 2017), while at the same time it continues to be constrained by the political will of its member state governments and the institutional access granted by UN accreditation. Reinforcing this transnational political coordination, the Bretton Woods institutions, including the UNassociated World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the independently acting General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs – the precursor of the World Trade Organization (WTO) – augmented the already elevated power of the allies. All of these organizations were purely intergovernmental in character and they displayed fundamentally traditional power relationships in their relations to member states. The balance, however, was tipped when the UN began assisting for the decolonialization of the Global South‟s former colonies, thereby nominally improving the leverage of the developing world in the General Assembly. Evidence of this change in power relations can be found in the call for a new international economic order, the institutionalization of the Trade and Development body UNCTAD, and the UN Centre on Transnational Corporations (UNCTC) advocating a code of conduct for TNCs. In the 1970s and 1980s, after the detection of “complex interdependence” of states based primarily on economic exchange, MNCs and IGOs were the main entities theorized in the field. MNCs had varying impacts on the modernization of developing economies based on domestic characteristics rather than on TNCs‟ constituent characteristics (Risse 2002). TNCs, by virtue of their reliance on the market, are able to circumvent control of their home government and, because of the tremendous size of some companies – Walmart‟s revenue dwarfs the gross domestic product (GDP) of most states in the developing world– are capable of pressuring governments into trade- and fiscally related policies at home and abroad, as some of the more spectacular cases in the WTO have shown. The WTO, itself a branch of the Bretton Woods institutions that were created in the postwar period to regulate the global economy and finances under American auspices, experienced an impressive degree of expansion of transnational influence over private and public sectors alike. Over time, the main objectives of the Bank, providing loans for development projects, and the IMF‟s prevention of financial crises have come under pressure by transnational civil society agents (as well as beneficiary governments) for the ineffective and, at times, socially detrimental solutions that were prescribed in the “Washington Consensus” of the early 1990s and beyond (Cleary 2006). Despite the shortcomings of bureaucratic politics and national egotism, and the proliferation of non-state TNAs competing with it for influence in the world, the UN remains the transgovernmental vehicle for calling attention to global security, social, or environmental issues that are of concern to all constituents of the international community. Importantly, it also incorporated INGOs, interest groups, and non-profit organizations into its working procedures by affiliating them with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), albeit only in a consultative fashion. NGOs were invited to provide their expertise in specific matters to the UN, to represent world public opinion, and, not to forget, bolster support for the institution. Over time, their influence spread to other functional agencies in the UN and expanded to include occasional hearings in the General Assembly and the Security Council (Stephenson 2010) aided by the Conference of Non- The evolution of the WTO attests to the power of governments in promoting their “national champions,” although, ironically, the protectionist ambitions of large companies and their backing governments speak against rather than for the muchtouted neoliberal internationalism. Thus, while transnational actors such as TNCs did not eradicate state governments in the current global marketplace, 88 KIU Journal of Social Sciences they certainly diminished and helped transform states‟ hold on power in the international arena and led to what analysts termed the “convergence hypothesis,” the proposition that governments are increasingly exposed to the ups and downs of an integrated world economy (Strange 1996). As these agents amplified their power in the global economy, an augmentation of counter-movements and advocacy networks protesting the adverse developmental, social, and ecological effects of these firms occurred (Willets 2018; Smith 2018). This aspect became particularly accentuated as public exposure of companies in the global media by social justice movements and INGOs started to reach a transnational consumer audience, thus making customers aware of problematic production cycles involving, for instance, child labour, exploitative wages, and environmental degradation. Whereas TNCs from industrialized countries were the first to experience the wrath of an increasingly critical civil society, companies from emerging economies, mainly because of their impressive growth, are now being viewed as endangering the ownership and (labour) standards of industrialized economies. The regulation of TNCs through IGOs, however, remains rather weak, with most regulatory models based on voluntary codes of conducts (Mingst and Karns 2014: 407). In the economic sphere, another new set of actors entering the transnational marketplace are the so-called “sovereign funds,” national wealth funds created by governments in search of an exploitation of global investment opportunities. Research into the lobbying and regulation of international trading schemes depicts the relationship between TNCs and the United Nations as an evolving, increasingly cooperative yet ambiguously interdependent one (Sagafi-Nejad 2018). relations, extensive forms of illegitimate networks are increasingly able to exploit the manifold technological, spatial, and communicative interdependencies of a globalized world. This diminished the ability of domestic law enforcement agencies to respond appropriately to these groups. At the same time, transnational justice regimes are slowly responding to the challenges they face, for instance in the case of Interpol‟s police cooperation or the EU‟s judicial EuroJust coordination body. Similarly, academics have only begun to explore the ramifications of these dangerous developments on governments, IOs, and other transnational actors (TNAs), some theorized as counter-reactions to global processes of homogenization and Americanization/Westernization (Barber 2005), others as utilization of power vacuums created by economic liberalization and the spread of communication technologies (Bunker 2015). Few scholars in the field explore those illegitimate transnational practices and policies, either because they are too wedded to a state-centered analysis or they experience difficulties in systematically analyzing claims and estimates involved in these contentious areas (Friman 2013). To sum up the historical overview of TNAs, they are often categorized as representing formal, transgovernmental relations (intergovernmental bodies) or the informal sort representing “classic” non-state TNAs (“civil society”) (Alexandroff 2018). As Tarrow (2018) states, the focus on the characteristics of international organizations is one major avenue of research for academics, while the scholarly preoccupation with a specific area of activity exemplified by the workings of civil society organizations detailed below represents another. However, the integration of both of these, institutional and policy-based, areas of research remains one of the main challenges for future scholarship. In contrast to the above mentioned examples, some transnational actors (TNAs) lack formal or popular legitimacy yet are able to exploit the connectedness of markets, countries, and people. Scholarly and political recognition of the augmented importance of “the dark side” of TNAs – transnational criminals (money launderers, pirates, human-, weapons-, and drug-smugglers), terrorist networks, etc., has occurred only in the past decade. Failed states and highly integrated regions alike provide fertile ground for illegal activities based on the lack of basic security and order or the acceleration of exchanges, respectively. Private mercenaries, questionable practices by multinationals, and disruptive civil protest movements add to the complexities of acting in the gray-zone of overlapping territorial jurisdictions. While they may be excluded from participation in regular state–society or state-to-state 3. Problems with the State-Centric Approach in Global Politics The great advantage of the state-centric approach is that the bewildering complexity of global politics is reduced to the relative simplicity of the interactions of less than 200 supposedly similar units. However, there are four major problems that suggest the benefits of simplification have been gained at the cost of the picture being distorted and blurred. 89 KIU Journal of Social Sciences the general recognition of their right to have their own government. They are legally equal and politically very different. 3.1 Ambiguity Between Different Meanings Of A ‘State’ Writers who refer to the state often fail to use the term consistently and lack intellectual rigour by merging three concepts. The state as a legal person is a highly abstract fiction. This is easily confused with the concrete concept of a country, with a distinct political system of people sharing common values. Then there is a very dissimilar concept of a state as the apparatus of government. Unfortunately, no standard method exists to handle the ambiguity. From now on, this paper will use the word „state‟ to indicate the abstract legal concept, while country and government will be used to analyze political behaviour. The consequence of admitting the differences in size is to make it obvious that the largest transnational actors (TNAs) are considerably larger than many of the countries. In 2004, the 50 largest transnational industrial companies, by sales, each had annual revenues greater than the GNP of 133 members of the United Nations. Using people as the measure, many NGOs, particularly trade unions, churches, and campaigning groups in the fields of human rights, women‟s rights and the environment, have their membership measured in millions, whereas 42 of the 192 countries in the UN have populations of less than 1 million, of which twelve are less than 100,000. There is also great variation in the complexity and diversity of the economies and the societies of different countries and hence the extent to which they are each involved in transnational relations. Within traditional International Relations (IR) scholarship, civil society is understood to be part of the state, whereas for philosophers and sociologists, focusing on the state as government, civil society is separate from the state. Thus, in international law or when the state means the whole country, there is very little room to acknowledge the existence of distinct transnational actors (TNAs). Alternatively, when the state means the government and does not encompass civil society, we can investigate both intergovernmental relations and the inter-society relations of transnational actors (TNAs). 3.4 State Systems And International Systems Third, there is an underlying analytical inconsistency in supposing „states‟ are located in an anarchic international system. Whether it means a legal entity, a country, or a government, the „state‟ is seen as a coherent unit, acting with common purpose and existing as something more than the sum of its parts (the individual people). At the same time, most advocates of the state-centric approach deny the possibility of such collective entities existing at the global level. The phrase the international system is denied its full technical meaning of a collectivity in which the component elements (the individual „states‟) lose some of their independence. No philosophical argument has been put forward to explain this inconsistency in the assumptions made about the different levels of analysis. By exaggerating the coherence of „states‟ and downplaying the coherence of global politics, both transnational relations and intergovernmental relations are underestimated. 3.2 The Lack Of Similarity Between Countries The second problem is that giving all „states‟ the same legal status implies they are all essentially the same types of unit, when in fact they are not remotely similar. Orthodox analysis does acknowledge differences in size between the superpowers and middle and small powers. Nevertheless this does not suggest that at the end of the Cold War the United States economy was twice the size of the Soviet Union‟s economy, nor that at the start of this century the US economy was eight times China‟s, 64 times Saudi Arabia‟s, more than 1,400 times Ethiopia‟s, and over 100,000 times greater than Kiribati‟s. In terms of population, the divergences are even greater. The small island countries of the Caribbean and the Pacific with populations measured in tens of thousands are not comparable entities to ordinary small countries, let alone China or India: they are truly „micro-states‟. Alternatively, comparing the governments of the world reveals a diverse range of democracies, feudal regimes, ethnic oligarchies, economic oligarchies, populist regimes, theocracies, military dictatorships, and idiosyncratic combinations (Adwards and Caventa 2011: 222; Aeise 2015: 245). The only thing that the countries have in common is 3.5 The Difference Between State And Nation Fourth, there is a behavioural assumption that politics within „states‟ is significantly different from politics between „states‟. This is based on the idea that people‟s loyalty to their nation is more intense than other loyalties. Clearly, it cannot be denied that nationalism and national identity invoke powerful emotions for most people, but various caveats must be made about their political relevance. Communal identities form a hierarchy from the local through the 90 KIU Journal of Social Sciences nation to wider groupings. Thus, both local communities and intergovernmental bodies, such as the European Community, can also make claims on a person‟s loyalty. institutionalist and neo-Marxist approaches are similar in that they tend to favor rationalist explanations based on expected gains, constructivists differ in that they base their predictions on the values and norms that they find present, or that they want to see constituted. Acknowledging the increasing role of non-state agents, alternative models of IR are evolving, ranging from neoliberal market-based conceptions to cosmopolitanism to alter-globalism, but have in common the opposition to state-centric theories and an empowered view for transnational actors (Marchetti 2019). There has been a long-standing linguistic conjuring trick whereby national loyalty is made to appear as if it is focused on the nation-state. Both international relations and transnational relations cover relations across „state‟ boundaries, although logically the words refer to relations between national groups, such as the Scots and the Welsh. In the real world, only a few countries, such as Iceland, Poland, and Japan, can make a reasonable claim that their people are from a single nation and in all such cases there are significant numbers of the national group resident in other countries, often in the USA. Most countries are multinational and many national groups are present in several countries. Thus national loyalty is actually quite different from loyalty to a country. 4. International Relations Transnational Actors On an epistemological level, middle-level theories concerning the rational-institutional behaviour of TNAs gained interest over the past decade, aiming at reconciling rational applications of principled behaviour with the potential downfalls of bureaucratic politics (Rosenau 2008: 154; KoenigArchibugi and Zuern 2016: 7). Irrespective of the ontological stance, research on transnational actors and governance mushroomed over the past two decades and knowledge about these agents is increasingly focused on the dynamic coexistence with other actors in the political field, as is pointed out below. Even skeptics in this arena submit to their influence and, as Risse stated in his 2002 survey of this topic, “most of the contemporary work in international affairs no longer disputes that TNAs influence decisions and outcomes” (Risse 2002: 262). Theories and The major strands of international relations theories conceive of transnational actors differently, according to their stance on the substantive role of state governments and their assessment of changes in the international system. Among neorealist, neoliberal institutionalist, constructivist, and neoMarxist theories, realism and neo-Marxism possess a largely negative attitude toward these agents. For realists, who maintain state integrity and power as ultimate objectives, the rise of transnationalism is hardly acknowledged and governmental action perpetuated. While Marxists exhibit transnational potential based on the internationality of class struggles, most of these critical theorists come to a similar pessimistic judgment about the viability of TNAs to improve governance, as they see marketbased agents such as multinationals or IOs inextricably linked to state governments which, in turn, symbolize the extended arm of capitalism. Institutionalists and constructivists perceive the issue differently: liberal institutionalists find international bargaining and monitoring, particularly of transnational issues of common interest such as trade and environmental protection, useful tasks which could not be achieved domestically. Constructivists view the emergence of multiple transnational actors (TNAs) as a return to normalcy from the limited statist outlook of realists and institutionalists, thus reflecting a globally diverse world made up of a variety of actors, interests, and identities who aim at the normative advancement of pluralistic values in a transnational political space. Whereas neorealist, neo- 5. Transnational Companies as Political Actors All companies that import or export are engaging in transnational economic activities. If they lobby foreign governments about trade, they become transnational political actors. However, they are not known as transnational companies (TNCs) until they have branches or subsidiaries outside their home country. The first companies to expand in this way were in agriculture, mining, or oil, operating in the European empires. Now they occur in all economic sectors, while industrialized countries that never had empires and most developing countries have seen some of their companies expand transnationally. In 2004, among the 100 TNCs with the highest levels of assets outside their home country, 53 were from eleven Western European countries, 25 from the USA, four with dual headquarters in Western countries, nine from Japan, three from Canada, one from Australia and one each from China, Malaya, Singapore, Hong Kong, and South Korea. Only developed countries, East and South-East Asia, a few Latin American countries, India, and South Africa host large TNCs. Nevertheless, there are now 91 KIU Journal of Social Sciences transnational companies based in as many as 138 countries – 35 from developed countries and 103 from transition and developing countries, including 31 African countries. 5.2 Triangulation Of Trade And Loss Of Sovereignty Governments have great difficulty regulating international transactions. Even the US administration was unable to prevent its citizens visiting communist Cuba during the Cold War. It may be possible to prevent the direct import or export of goods. However, there is no guaranteed method of preventing indirect trade from one country to another. This is known as triangulation. Only if an UN Security Council resolution obliges all the countries of the world to impose sanctions is there a reasonable prospect of a determined government preventing TNCs from evading sanctions. However, in such a situation, sovereignty over the relevant trade then lies with the Security Council and not with the individual governments. 5.1 Financial Flows And Loss Of Sovereignty The consequences of the extensive transnationalization of major companies are profound. It is no longer possible to regard each country as having its own separate economy. Two of the most fundamental attributes of sovereignty – control over the currency and control over foreign trade – have been substantially diminished. The two factors combined mean governments have lost control of financial flows. In the case of the currency, the successive crises in the 1980s and the 1990s for the dollar, the pound, the French franc, and the yen established that even the governments with the greatest financial resources are helpless against the transnational banks and other speculators. 5.3 Regulatory Sovereignty The effects of trade on finance are less obvious. When goods move physically across frontiers, it is usually seen as being trade between the relevant countries, but it may also be intra-firm trade. As the logic of intra-firm trade is quite different from intercountry trade, governments cannot have clear expectations of the effects of their financial and fiscal policies on TNCs. A company may respond to higher tax rates by changing its transfer prices to reduce its tax bill. Several other motives might induce a company to distort transfer prices, including evasion of controls on the cross-border movements of profits or capital. Arbitrage And Loss Of It is difficult for government to regulate the commercial activities of companies within their country, because companies may choose to engage in regulatory arbitrage. If a company objects to one government‟s policy, it may threaten to limit or close down its local production and increase production in another country. The government that imposes the least demanding health, safety, welfare, or environmental standards will offer competitive advantages to less socially responsible companies. Government Government TNC TNC Subsidi Figure 1.1 Who Controls the United Kingdom Subsidiary of a US TNC? companies: it is the partial surrender of sovereignty to an intergovernmental body. There is also a strong global trend towards the reduction of corporation taxes. It thus becomes difficult for any government to set high standards and maintain taxes. In the case of banking, the political dangers inherent in the risks of a bank collapsing through imprudent or criminal behaviour are so great that the major governments have set common capital standards, under the Basle Committee rules (Gotz 2019). Whatever control is achieved does not represent the successful exercise of sovereignty over 5.4 Extraterritoriality And Sovereignty In addition, transnational companies generate clashes of sovereignty between different governments. Let us consider the example of a company that has its headquarters in the United State and a subsidiary company that it owns in the United Kingdom. Three 92 KIU Journal of Social Sciences Global Compact to implement ten principles of corporate social responsibility on human rights, labour standards, the environment, and anticorruption. lines of authority exist. The United States government can control the main company and the United Kingdom government can control the subsidiary. Each process would be the standard exercise of a government‟s sovereignty over its internal affairs. In addition, both governments would accept that the TNC can, within certain limits, control its own policies on purchasing, production, and sales. Under normal circumstances these three lines of authority can be exercised simultaneously and in harmony. However, when the US government decisions cover the global operations of the TNC, there is a clash of sovereignty. Does the subsidiary obey the UK government or the orders of the US government issued via its headquarters? This problem of extraterritoriality is inherent in the structure of all TNCs. 6. Non-Legitimate Groups and Liberation Movements as Political Actors A variety of groups engage in violent and/or criminal behaviour on a transnational basis. A distinction can be made between activity that is considered criminal around the world, such as theft, fraud, personal violence, piracy, or drug trafficking, an activity that is claimed by those undertaking it to have legitimate political motives. In reality, the distinction may sometimes be blurred, for example when criminals claim political motives or political groups are responsible for acts such as terrorism, torture, or involving children in violence. For all governments, neither criminal activity nor political violence can be legitimate within their own jurisdiction and generally not in other countries. As a matter of routine policy implementation, clashes now have to be resolved between different decisions in different jurisdictions on competition policy, mergers and acquisitions, accounting procedures, and anti-corruption measures. Will US accounting standards apply to European companies because some of their operations are in the USA? Can the directors of parent TNCs be prosecuted for the payment of bribes by their overseas branches? The long-term trend is for such questions to be resolved by global standardization of domestic policy. For example, the OECD has developed a Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions. 6.1 Transnational Criminals And Their Political Impact Politically, the most important criminal industries are illicit trading in arms and in drugs. As travel has increased, trafficking in people has become easier and has increased significantly in recent years. There is a new slave trade, mainly for sexual exploitation of young women. TNCs are most concerned to prevent trade in counterfeit goods and theft of intellectual property, particularly of music, films, and computer software. The same four sovereignty problems arise with tackling criminals as with regulating TNCs. First, criminal financial flows can be massive and money-laundering threatens the integrity of banking and other financial institutions. Second, criminal trade has been so extensively diversified through triangulation that no government can confidently claim that their country is not a transit route for drugs or arms. Third, as with regulatory arbitrage by TNCs, police action may displace well-organized gangs to another country rather than stop their activities. Fourth, illicit drugs and money-laundering involve questions of extraterritorial jurisdiction. However, in contrast to the regulation of TNCs, transnational police activities involve high levels of cooperation. 5.5 From Domestic Deregulations To Global ReRegulation For most companies most of the time, their interests will be in accord with the government‟s policy of increasing employment and promoting economic growth. Conflicts will arise over the regulation of markets to avoid the risks of market failures or externalization of social and environmental costs of production. Domestic deregulation and globalization of economic activity mean regulation is now occurring at the global level rather than within individual countries. Three factors involving TNCs push towards the globalization of politics. First, governments can only reassert control by acting collectively. Second, consumer pressures are leading to global codes of conduct being accepted by companies and implemented in collaboration with NGOs. A third push is for global companies to submit to social and environmental auditing. These factors are coming together in the collaboration between governments, NGOs, and the UN Secretariat to recruit the major TNCs as voluntary partners in a 6.2 Terrorists, Guerrillas, Liberation Movements And National Political violence is most common when broadlybased nationalist movements or ethnic minorities reject the legitimacy of a government (Friman 2013; 93 KIU Journal of Social Sciences Joachim and Locher 2018). These groups are often called terrorists to express disapproval, guerrillas by those who are more neutral, or national liberation movement by their supporters. In the past, nationalists were usually able to obtain some external support. Now, because of widespread revulsion against political violence, national groups and ethnic minorities are subject to pressure to negotiate instead of fighting. Political violence is more likely to be legitimate when a group has widespread support; when political channels have been closed to them; when the target government is exceptionally oppressive; and when the violence is limited to „military targets‟. Groups that fail to match these four characteristics only obtain very limited transnational support. When Palestinian groups first used terrorist methods, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) gained attention, but not support. When terrorism stopped in the mid-1970s, they achieved membership of the Arab League, along with observer status at the UN. However, suicide bombing, targeted at civilians, by some Palestinians during the second intifada greatly reduced the Palestinian Authority‟s legitimacy. political violence at the end of the twentieth century, a revolution has occurred in international law. First, temporary tribunals were established to cover atrocities in Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Then a new permanent International Criminal Court (ICC) was created in July 2002 to prosecute those who commit genocide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity. The ICC is a modification of the inter-state system because it was created by political campaigning of human rights NGOs, because bitter opposition from the sole „superpower‟ was defeated, and because the sovereign responsibility to prosecute criminals has been assumed by a global court. In September 2005, the United Nations went further, replacing state sovereignty with a collective responsibility to protect, when national authorities are manifestly failing (General Assembly Resolution 60/1). 6.3 The Significance Of Criminals, Terrorists, And Guerrillas Before September 2001, analysis of transnational criminals and guerrillas did not present a challenge to orthodox state-centric theory. Criminals seemed to be marginal because they are not legitimate and are excluded from normal international transactions. The violent groups that gained military, political, and diplomatic status on a transnational basis could be presented as nationalist groups, aspiring to gain their place in the inter-state system. Such arguments ignore the way globalization has changed the nature of sovereignty and the process of government. The operations of criminals and other non-legitimate groups have become more complex, spread over a wider geographical area, and increased in scale because the improvements in communications have made it so much easier to transfer people, money, weapons, and ideas on a transnational basis. Government attempts to control such activities have become correspondingly more difficult. The legal concept of sovereignty may nominally still exist, but political practice has become significantly different. Now virtually every government feels it has to mobilize external support, to exercise „domestic jurisdiction‟ over criminals. Defeat of Al Qaeda will not be achieved by military counter-terrorism, but by global political change that delegitimizes fundamentalism and violence. Oppressive action by governments is subject to extensive review under global human rights mechanisms and, in some situations, may be subject to prosecution at the ICC. Since 11 September 2001, the political balance has changed substantially. The scale of the destruction wrought by Al Qaeda organizing 19 hijackers simultaneously taking control of four passenger aircraft and using these as weapons against New York and Washington did much to delegitimize all groups who use violence for political purposes. Historically, terrorism has mainly been an instrument of internal conflict within a single society, but Al Qaeda suddenly presented the world with a new threat of a transnational global network (Kolb 2015; Alexandroff 2018). Within a few years they staged attacks in Kenya, Tanzania, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, the USA, Tunisia, Indonesia, Turkey, and Spain. Despite this, contemporary terrorism is not a single phenomenon. The Basque, Palestinian, Kashmiri, Tamil, and Chechnya disputes clearly have roots that are totally independent of each other and have little or no connection to Al Qaeda. There are different transnational processes for different conflicts generating terrorism. Even Al Qaeda itself is a disparate coalition of anti-American fundamentalist groups rather than a coherent disciplined organization. Extensive political violence used by governments against their citizens was commonplace and immune from diplomatic criticism, as recently as the 1970s.because of a widespread desire to end the impunity of individual government leaders, soldiers, and officials responsible for the horrors of large-scale 94 KIU Journal of Social Sciences as - The politics of an individual country cannot be understood without knowing what groups lobby the government and what debate there has been in the media. Similarly, international diplomacy does not operate on some separate planet, cut off from global civil society. Because diplomats like to claim that they are pursuing the national interest of a united society, they will not admit to relations with interest groups or pressure groups and they use the bland title, non-governmental organizations or simply NGOs. - 7. Non-Governmental Political Actors Organizations Many NGO activists believe the UN should be more restrictive and only accept groups that are „true‟ NGOs, contributing to „prospective‟ social movements. Environmentalists are often upset that business federations are accepted and the whole NGO community at the UN agonized over the National Rifle Association being admitted to the Roster in November 1996. 7.1 Consultative Status At The UN For NGOs As a result of pressure, primarily from American groups, the United Nations Charter contains Article 71, providing for the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to consult with NGOs. In 1950, the Council formally codified its practice, in a statute for NGOs. It recognized three categories of groups: (1) a small number of high-status NGOs, concerned with most of the Council‟s work; (2) specialist NGOs, concerned with a few field of activity and having a high reputation in those fields; and (3) a Roster of other NGOs that are expected to make occasional contributions to the Council. Since then the term NGO has, for diplomats, been synonymous with a group that is eligible for ECOSOC consultative status. 7.3 Globalization And The Expansion Of NGOs The creation of a complex global economy has had effects way beyond the international trade in goods and services. Most companies, in each distinct area of activity, have formed organizations to facilitate communication, to harmonize standards, and to manage adaptation to complex change. Equally, the employees have found they face common problems in different countries and so trade unions and professional bodies have developed their own transnational links. Any form of international regime to formulate policy for an industry, whether it is nongovernmental or intergovernmental, will encourage the strengthening of the global links among the NGOs concerned with its activities. 7.2 The UN Definition Of An Acceptable NGO The ECOSOC statute and the way it has been applied embodies six principles: - - - - An NGO must respect the norm of „noninterference in the internal affairs of states‟. This means an NGO cannot be a political party, but parties can, like companies, form international federations. Also, NGOs concerned with human rights should not restrict their activities to a particular group, nationality, or country. An international NGO is one that is not established by intergovernmental agreement. For most of the twentieth century, any individual could travel in person or communicate in writing to most parts of the world. The technical revolution in recent years lies in the increased density, the increased speed, and the reduced cost of communication. The political revolution lies in these changes bringing rapid global communication within the capabilities of most people. This includes even the poor, if they band together to fund a representative to articulate their case or gain access to the news media. Changes in communications constitute a fundamental change in the structure of world politics. Governments have sovereignty over the transnational relations of their citizens. They may attempt to monitor or control trans-boundary communications, but closing the border is no longer technologically possible. An NGO should support the aims and the work of the UN. However, it is very rare that objections are made to the political purposes of NGOs. Officially, an NGO should be representative body, with identifiable headquarters, and officers who are responsible to a democratic policy-making conference. In practice, many highly prestigious NGOs, particularly development and environment NGOs, are not membership organizations. An NGO cannot be a profit-making body. Individual companies cannot gain consultative status, but trade federations of commercial interests are recognized as NGOs. An NGO cannot use or advocate violence. 95 KIU Journal of Social Sciences 7.4 The Shift Of NGOs From The Local To The Global 8.1 International Organizations As Systems It was argued earlier that it is inconsistent to see „states‟ as coherent entities, while asserting that anarchy exists at the global level. We can be consistent by accepting the existence of systems at all levels of world politics. In the modern world, human groups are never so coherent that they are independent, closed systems (perhaps excepting monastic orders). Equally, once distinct organizational processes are established, they are never so open that the boundaries become insignificant. Thus international organizations of all types transcend country boundaries and have a major impact on the governmental actors and transnational actors (TNAs) composing them. One effect of the globalization of communication is to make it physically and financially feasible for small groups of people to establish and to maintain cooperation, even though they may be based thousands of miles apart from each other. Thus it is very easy for NGOs to operate transnationally, but not all NGOs make this choice. They vary from local organizations solely operating in one small town to large global bureaucracies with a presence in most countries. When NGOs cooperate transnationally, they may use one of four different types of structure. In the past, a formal joint organization, known as an INGO (an international NGO) was usually established, with a permanent headquarters, a secretariat, and a regular programme of meetings. With the advent of the Internet it is now just as likely that a looser network will be formed, often with a single NGO providing the technical support for e-mail communication and a joint website. The most famous networks, such as Jubilee 2000, the Coalition for an International Criminal Court, and the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines, have united around a single policy domain, brought together hundreds of NGOs from all around the world, and achieved major policy changes against the opposition of leading governments. These are known as advocacy networks. At the meetings of intergovernmental organizations, NGOs may combine in a caucus. This is a temporary network formed solely for the purpose of lobbying on the agenda items at the particular meeting. Finally, there are governance networks, formed by NGOs to maintain and enhance the participation rights of NGOs in intergovernmental meetings. They differ from advocacy networks and caucuses in not having common political goals, other than their common interest in being allowed access to the policy-making process. 8. For a system to exist, there must be a sufficient density of interactions, involving each of its elements, at a sufficient intensity to result both in the emergence of properties for the system as a whole and in some consistent effect on the behaviour of the elements. Generally, international organizations will have founding documents defining their goals, rules of procedure constraining the modes of behaviour, secretariats committed to the status and identity of the organization (or at least committed to their own careers), past decisions that provide norms for future policy, and interaction processes that socialize new participants. All these features at the systemic level will be part of the explanation of the behaviour of the members and thus the political outcomes will not be determined solely by the initial goals of the members. The statement that international organizations form systems is a statement that they are politically significant and that global politics cannot be reduced to „inter-state‟ relations. Normally a sharp distinction is made between intergovernmental organizations and international non-governmental organizations. This conveys the impression that inter-state diplomacy and transnational relations are separate from each other. In practice, governments do not rigidly maintain the separation. There is an overlapping pattern of relations in another category of international organizations, hybrid INGOs, in which governments work with NGOs. Among the most important hybrids are the International Red Cross, the World Conservation Union (IUCN), the International Council of Scientific Unions, the International Air Transport Association, and other economic bodies combining companies and governments. International Organizations as Structures of Global Politics International organizations provide the focus for global politics. The new physical infrastructure of global communications makes it easier for them to operate. In addition, when the sessions of the organizations take place, they become distinct structures for political communication. Face-to-face meetings produce different outcomes from telephone or written communications. Multilateral discussion produces different outcomes from interactions in networks of bilateral communications. In order to be regarded as a hybrid, the organization must admit as full members both NGOs, parties, or 96 KIU Journal of Social Sciences companies and governments or governmental agencies. Both types of member must have full rights of participation in policy-making, including the right to vote on the final decisions. When the principle of formal equality of NGOs and governments is acknowledged by both sides in such a manner, the assumption that governments can dominate must be totally abandoned. 9. negotiations; economic events may be treated as crises; social policy can concern matters of life and death; and heads of government do at times make the environment a top priority. It is useful to analyze global politics in terms of a variety of dimensions describing each policy domain and the actors within it, but the different dimensions do not correlate. A single high/low classification does not work. The move from a state-centric to a Pluralist model depends on rejecting a static unidimensional concept of power. Actors enter a political process possessing resources and seeking particular goals. However, contrary to the Realist view, capabilities alone do not determine influence. Explaining outcomes requires examining whether the resources of actors are relevant to the goals being pursued, describing the degree of divergence between the goals of the different actors, and analyzing how they are changed by the interaction processes. Conclusion The review of transnational actors (TNAs) and transnationalism is dominated by European, and, to a lesser extent, North American authors – this may reflect the degree to which transnational actors (TNAs) operate in these environments already, but it is also an expression of the international North–South divide and Eurocentrism in existence. Future scholarship should contribute to more diversity in this area so that it may become truly “transnational.” The negative transnational externalities of market-driven globalization, such as recessions, pandemics, or terrorism, have caused many TNCs to increasingly retreat to their home territory, governments to rethink liberalization, and IGOs to be reshaped to respond to economic and monetary crises. Although it proves the limitations of transnational actors – and states alike – to contain such crises, the globalizing effect of these agents has spread too far and too deep to be held back by such medium-term processes. It is indicative, however, of implications for the future development of TNAs, particularly IGOs and TNCs, which may become more conscious of the ambiguous volatility caused by mutual interdependence. In this sense, the systemic interaction of governments, IGOs, INGOs, social movements, and TNCs under the growing influence of market forces has received too little scholarly attention thus far and remains to date under-researched. Governments are usually characterized as having legal authority and control over military capabilities and economic resources. They may also have high status, possess specialist information, have access to communications and be able to articulate widely shared values in support of their goals, but all these latter four capabilities can also be attributes of transnational actors (TNAs) and international organizations (IOs). In the process of political debate something else is crucial. It is the ability to communicate in a manner that commands the attention and respect of other actors. While this is enhanced by possession of status and resources, in practice – when making speeches, during interviews for the news media, in negotiations or when lobbying – the ability to communicate is a personal attribute of the speaker. Some presidents and prime ministers fail to command respect, while some NGO activists are inspiring and cannot be ignored. If power is seen solely in military terms, governments are expected to be dominant. If power is seen solely in economic terms, TNCs are expected to be dominant. However, if power includes possession of status, information, and communication skills, then it is possible for NGOs and international organizations to mobilize support for their values and to exercise influence over governments. Most real- world situations will see a mix of different capabilities being brought to bear upon the policy debate. State-centric writers accommodate transnational activities by distinguishing the high politics of peace and security, taking place in military alliances and UN diplomacy, from the low politics of other policy questions, debated in specialist UN bodies, other IGOs, and INGOs. Then, by asserting it is more important to analyze peace and war, actors in low politics are defined out of the analysis. In practice it is not so simple. Scientists, the Red Cross, religious groups, and other NGOs are involved in arms control 97 KIU Journal of Social Sciences Main Governments Involved Transnational Companies Guerrillas Grass roots of NGOs UN InterGovernmental Policy Forum UN Secretariat Other IGOs International NGOs Hybrid INGOs Apartheid in South Africa South Africa, UK, USA versus African Governments Wide Range, but especially Mining and Oil ANC, PAC, and SWAPO Anti-Apartheid Movement Committee Against Apartheid and Security Council Centre Against Apartheid Organization of African Unity Many Involved, with a Secondary Concern Human Rights Population Planning Democratic versus Authoritarian Governments All Types Governments Any Working with Oppressive Governments Medical, Pharmaceutical, and Food Any in Control of Territory Religious, Women‟s and Health Groups Commission on Population and Development UNICEF, UN Population Fund WHO, World Bank Those Concerned with Trade ILO Any Taking Hostages Human Rights Groups and the Oppressed Human Rights Council Office…for Human Rights Council of Europe, OAS, and AU Amnesty International and Others Environment of International Planned Parenthood Federation None Those Who Feel Threatened By Problems versus Those Who Do Not Mainly Industrial, Energy, and Transport Generally not Concerned Friends of the Earth, WWF, Greenpeace, etc. Commission on Sustainable Development UNDP, UNEP World Bank Environment Liaison Centre International and Other Networks World Conservation Union (IUCN) Table 1.1 The Variety of Political Actors Involved in Different Policy Domains politics may seem to be relatively stable and under governmental control. Under the exceptional circumstances of war or under exceptional leadership, governments can generate change. However, NGOs generally provide the dynamics of politics. The European empires were dismembered by nationalist movements, with support from lawyers, journalists, unions, and the churches. Democracy and human rights have been extended by women‟s groups, ethnic minorities, and dissident groups. The types of authority, status, resources, information, and skills that are relevant to political success are issue-specific. (They vary from one issue to another.) Thus which actors will have the ability to exercise influence varies according to the issues invoked by a policy problem. Table 1.1 illustrates the point that there is not a single international system of nearly 200 „states‟, but a variety of policy domains, each involving their own distinct actors. Governments have a special role, linking the different domains, because membership of the UN obliges governments to form policy and vote on most issues. In practice, they are less centralized and cohesive than it appears in the UN, because different departments of government handle the different policy questions. The transnational actors (TNAs) and international organizations generally are more specialist and involved in a limited range of policy questions (Djelic and Sahlin-Anderson 2006: 423). Amnesty International rarely has significance in environmental politics and Greenpeace rarely is concerned with human rights, but each is central to its own domain. Being a specialist generates high status, provides command over information, and enhances communication skills. These capabilities enable a challenge to be made to the governments that control military and economic resources. The environment has moved up the agenda in response to grassroots anger at the loss of natural beauty, protests against threats to health, and warnings from scientists about ecosystems being at risk of collapse. The right to have access to family planning has been established as a global norm. In some countries, notably the USA, this initially required women to go to jail to challenge repressive laws, but since 1953 the International Planned Parenthood Federation has grown to become the world‟s second largest NGO, even operating in virtually all Catholic and Islamic countries. The start of the Cold War was not simply the formation of military alliances: it was a political struggle of communism as a transnational movement against the transnational appeal of democracy, the Catholic Church, and nationalism (Arts 2002; Mingst and Karns 2014). The arms race and the process of détente included conflict between arms manufacturers and peace movements, with scientists being crucial to both sides. The end of the Cold War was driven by economic failure within communist Within both domestic and global politics, civil society is the source of change. Companies usually initiate economic change and NGOs are usually the source of new ideas for political action (Marchetti 2019). At any one point in time, economics and 98 KIU Journal of Social Sciences countries and the political failure in response to demands from unions, human rights dissidents, the churches, and environmentalists. The response to refuge crises has been dominated by the media, the UN, and NGOs. The shift from seeing development as increasing a country‟s GNP to meeting ordinary people‟s basic needs and using resources in a sustainable manner was driven by development NGOs and the environmental movement. 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Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Gotz, N. (2019) Transnational Actors and Global Governance. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hägel, P., and Peretz, P. (2005) “States and Transnational Actors: Who‟s Influencing We have certainly moved beyond treating the question of whether or not TNAs matter vis-a-vis state governments or intergovernmental organizations. Also, a preoccupation with the exclusion of transgovernmental actors has been replaced by the acknowledgment that states are inevitably involved, either as addressees of claims by civil society or in the establishment of and cooperation with IGOs. It has become clear that all of these actors have become significant interlocutors for the management of global issues. Rather, the focus of contemporary research is on the interactive dynamics between governments and TNAs as well as between IGOs and non-state actors, aiming at an integrated view of the participating agents. 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