Non-State Actors and Authority in the Global System

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.

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Table of contents : Introduction: globalisation and non-state actors Richard A. Higgott, Geoffrey R. D. Underhill and Andreas Bieler
Part I. Theoretical considerations: the changing nature of authority relations
1. Who does what? Collective action and the changing nature of authority Ann M. Florini
2. Grassroots empowerment: states, non-state actors and global policy formation Kendall W. Stiles
Part II. Multinational companies and the establishment of international rules
3. Globalisation and policy convergence: the case of direct investment rules Andrew Walter
4. State authority and investment security: non-state actors and the negotiation of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment at the OECD Elizabeth Smythe
5. Structures, agents, and institutions: private corporate power and the globalisation of intellectual property rights Susan K. Sell
6. Business strategy and evolving rules in the Single European Market Duncan Matthews and John F. Pickering
7. Private sector international regimes Virginia Haufler
8. Corporate political action in the global polity: national and transnational strategies in the climate change negotiations David L. Levy and Daniel Egan
Part III. Multinational companies and the international restructuring of production
9. Alliance capitalism as industrial order: exploring new forms of interfirm competition in the globalising economy Brian Portnoy
10. How global is Ford Motor Company's global strategy? Maria Isabel Studer Noguez
11. Foreign capital, host-country-firm mandates, and the terms of globalisation Jochen Lorentzen
Part IV. Globalisation and inter-governmental and non-governmental organisations
12. Private authority, scholarly legitimacy and political credibility: think tanks and informal diplomacy Diane Stone
13. International trade rules and states: enhanced authority for the WTO? Gilbert Gagné
14. The World Bank, the World Trade Organisation and the environmental social movement Marc Williams
15. 'In the foothills' - relations between the IMF and civil society Jan Aart Scholte
16. Transnational environmental groups, media, science and public sentiment(s) in domestic policy-making on climate change Susanne Jakobsen

Contributor Information :Daniel Egan, Ann M. Florini, Glibert Gagne, Virginia Haufler, Susanne Feitelberg Jakobsen, David L. Levy, Jochen Lorentzen, Duncan Matthews, John F. Pickering, Brian Portnoy, Jan Aart Scholte, Susan K. Sell, Elizabeth Smythe, Kendall W. Stiles, Diane Stone, Maria Isabel Studer-Noguez, Andrew Walter, Marc Williams