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
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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;
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-
-
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,
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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,
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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;
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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. The
International Relations (IR) of the twentieth century
have all occurred within complex, pluralist political
systems.
actors is scant and often coloured by normative
values rather than rigorous empirical analysis.
Coupled with all of these open questions, the rise of
transnational actors (TNAs) in numbers and
complexity will thus continue to reshape global
politics and occupy scholars for decades to come.
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