Non-State Actors and Authority in the Global System (PDF)

Traditionally in International Relations, power and authority were considered to rest with states. But now, in the light of changes associated with globalisation, this idea has changed; there are now two opposing views. Globalists regarded globalisation as moving inevitably to a borderless world, and an economic 'level playing field' on which companies are the primary actors. Conversely, internationalists consider states to be the main actors in international politics and economics; accordingly internationalisation is defined as a drastic increase in cross border flows of goods, services and capital.
This volume demonstrates convincingly that neither extreme position adequately conceptualised the role states and non-state actors under conditions of globalisation. Understanding the state in all its complexity is a central question in contemporary political economy, which, the authors argue, is obscured by this rhetoric of extremes.
Non-State Actors and Authority in the Global System is a volume which argues that the state and non-state actors are not, in fact, different entities but are very much part of the same historic bloc. If state authority is passed to firms, this does not mean that states lose and non-actors gain authority. Rather, the authors argue, this signifies a new way of sustaining capitalist accumulation in an era of global structural change. What appears at first sight to be a competition for authority turns out to be a strategy, under new conditions, for continuing the same system of economic production. The chapters in this book explore the nature of the relationships between state and non-state actors in an evolving global economic order.