Non-State Actors in International Politics

For the most part of the discipline’s history, international relations scholars have disregarded non-state actors like businesses, civic groups, transnational terrorist organizations and so on, since they appeared to stand on the border lines of world politics. They persisted, but their size, power and activities made them third-rate factors in making an analysis of world relations. Most scholars have seen states as the primary actors and, therefore, the sole legitimate object of study because state action – mainly in the form of military, diplomatic and policy activity – shaped the maps of international collective life to a large extent. This disregard for non-state actors began to change towards the end of the last century.

In the beginning, scholars demonstrated that non-state actors, even though still lie within the shadow of states, remarkably control the behaviour of state. They started to view non-state actors as transnational pressure groups that porch or else try to control government officials. As time passed, it became clear that non-state entities were not merely outgrowths to the state-system, but they had their individual political life. Transnational businesses, especially multinational corporations, change the economic scenario of world relations. Public minded non-governmental organizations not only porch government officials in different countries, but function to transfer vast cultural understandings concerning human rights, environmental protection and international peace. Humanitarian relief organizations go through action on the ground to feed, clothe, shelter and provide medical aid to those in times of need. Global media outlets form and broadly disseminate new understandings of world relations. Terrorist networks instill fright and change political calculations in different parts of the world. Apart from being at the borders of political life, non-state actors seem to be key players.

The mount of non-state actors such as multinational corporations is fraction of a wider prototype mainly in terms of the growth of complex interdependencies in the international scheme. Many transnational interactions are not under the control of states, but will yet be affected by decisions taken by states. On the other hand, the state in its turn will be affected by the activities of other actors as well as by the complex network of transnational interactions that has become an increasingly vital constituent in international relations. The crash of transnational support networks could well be outweighed by the blow of subterranean networks which challenge global norms, undermine global governance and look for to counterbalance instead of mobilizing the power of states. Appreciation of the significance of non-state actors rapidly gave way to love. International relations scholars began to view certain non-state actors as promising agents of progressive social change. Studies of Amnesty International, Greenpeace, Oxfam, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and so forth explained how these organizations were transfering standards of good conduct, engineering international policy and realizing some of the duties of states as they became key players in addressing collective action problems. Scholars gave hope in these organizations and saw them as harbingers of a just, peaceful, economically viable and environmentally sane world. In fact, many scholars viewed non-state actors, on the whole, as boosting a nascent global democracy wherein transnational civil society would provide a non-state form of global representation.