Through what mechanisms can non-state actors influence world politics? Give at least two concrete examples. Then discuss the theoretical implications of these modes of influence. What implications do they have for IR theory?
Nonstate actors have unique and powerful qualities that shape state behavior. This essay will address ways in which nonstate actors such as NGOs, International NGOs, epistemic communities, and transnational activist networks influence the international system.
Puzzle: nonstate actors don’t have the military or economic resources at their disposal that states have. Neither do they (excepting the case of transnational terrorism) deploy violence or force. However, they shape international relations in many ways, especially in the human rights network and spreading norms for legitimate wartime activity.
The range of goals of nonstate actors include:
- getting an issue on the international agenda
- getting international actors to change their positions and institutional procedures
- influencing policy change and actors behavior
- changing not just the interests and identities and practices of actors but also the environment in which those actors operate such as the structures of power and meaning.
These groups are driven by shared values or principled ideas about what is right and wrong rather than shared causal ideas or instrumental goals.
These formal and informal organizations wield influence through the mechanisms of:
Authority and “Enforcers” of norms, rights
- Expertise
o Evangelista, epistemic community of nuclear scientists changed
- moral influence
o Clark, Amnesty Int’l’s legitimacy and authority depend on apolitical reputation as a disinterested third party actor
o In realm of human rights, it is the combination of moral pressure and material pressure that leads to change.
§ Linking principled ideas to material goals such as military aid, economic aid, and trade benefits.
§ NOT a simple dichotomy of norms v interests
o Catholic initiatives, Pedro Pan
§ Reconciliation and resolution comes through religious authorities rather than state/political authorities
- claim to political legitimacy
o legitimacy is moral power and authority (Hurd) and is an ordering principle in IR
Violence, Terror
- terrorists, obviously
- they interrupt peace processes strategically
- obviously they affect state behavior, and in fact lead to states being identified as “rogue” by other states.
- Led to the us v. them of Bush era, Afghanistan today
Economic interactions (Multi National Corporations)
- interdependence leads to greater state cooperation
- reputation, less likelihood of war, even explanandum of democratic peace
Challenging sovereignty/leads to intervention
- human rights regimes contradict the core premise of sovereignty, “how a state behaves toward its own citizens in its own territory is a matter of domestic jurisdiction”
- How states change:
o First, denial and refusal to cooperate with human rights pressures
o Second, lip service. States accept legitimacy in statements in international forums, ratify relevant treaties, cooperate with human rights orgs, but don’t change practices
o Third, reconstituted sovereignty, where states recognize legitimacy and cooperation and concrete responses to international pressure that change domestic human rights practices. Argentina and Mexico (Keck and Sikkink)
Exposing states’ repressive practices
- gathering and sharing information
- issuing public condemnations
- applying material sanctions (boycott)
- making them visible and salient, forcing states that otherwise would have remained silent to respond
- applying pressure contributed to disappearances in Argentina (Keck and Sikkink 1998)
Influencing elites
- burgerman, violator state will comply with human rights norms only if a key element of its domestic political elite perceives itself to be vulnerable to condemnation or has concer for its country’s international reputation as a violator state.
- This accounts for the differences between states in being receptive to nonstate actors
Redefining interests, actors, understandings
- Human rights pressures contributed to changing understandings of how states should use their sovereign authority over their citizens and to changed practices in Mexico and Argentina, but NOT in Haiti, Guatemala, Cambodia or China
Persuasion
- Norm entrepreneurs
- Framing, lobbying: Busby and Bono in Jubilee
- hosting and being involved in international conferences
- being a voice for anti globalization, anti UN platforms
- participating in true argumentation and providing the information to negotiators
- teach and socialize (Finnemore)
Activism
- persuading decision makers at domestic level
- creating a media frenzy to draw attention to issue for intervention
o Darfur, Twitter Revolution in Iran, Burmese monks burning, etc Mobilizing, Haiti
- boycotts, mobilization
Criticism/Shaming
- drawing attention and forcing a response
- challenging a state’s reputation
- calling other states to attention, holding accountable
- source of human rights criticism shows that criticism by NGOs, religious groups and foreign gov’t is more effective than criticism from international organizations, institutions (james franklin, shame on you)
- shaming is a tactic of persuasion that defines target state as part of an outgroup separate from the community of “civilized nations”
setting the agenda
- carpenter….two faces of power
- why some norms and not others? Child soldiers, girls in war V. children born of wartime rape
their influence will be more effective as current trend in economic globalization will become more effective as the current trend in economic globalization continues
Alternative thoughts:
- many organizations are government funded (power consideration)
- influence tied to material power and there is informational politics that go into this (Ron Ramon Rodgers, Keck and Sikkink)
- NGOs have an agenda and are competitive (Ron Cooley, Prakash and Sell)
- Participating and signing human rights treaties is really window dressing, providing governments a shield, thus becoming a “paradox of empty promises” (Burton Tsutsui)
Most authors who look at nonstate actors (outside of the economic realm) don’t believe that the state is going to disappear or be subsumed by transnational authority. The objective of nonstate actors is not to replace government but to inform and persuade governments and businesses to adopt or abandon certain policies and positions.
Most of these theories gain traction at the domestic level.
They are changing the traditional notion of sovereignty because these movements are transnational and even transreligious and transracial and trans-class and they are countering state policy and institutional policy. This is a challenge to the state-central IR to the point that they cannot be ignored or separated from the high state politics of IR. Even influences security.
Additionally challenges system orientation of much IR. Much of the work of nonstate actors emerges or gains traction at state level.
Challenges state sovereignty and encourages a global community of accountability. Human rights is extreme example because how states treat their own citizens within their own borders has no bearing on other states security or economic interests. It is purely normative reasons why states would get involved in another state’s repression.
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