contemporary issues in international relations transnational politics

Contemporary Issues in International Relations

Transnational Politics

Today

Registration: everyone? Basic intro

Attendance, papers, presentation, participation Digital pictures Reading: Orenstein/Schmitz

Wednesday, 1/16/2008Hans Peter Schmitz

Are you

Wednesday, 1/16/2008

Hans Peter Schmitz

Some rules and comments

We will take attendance. Advice us before you plan on missing a class. Email Lindsey.

Come to class on time. Complete your assignments on time. Ask questions and come to office hours. If you have any issues preventing you from attending

the class regularly, please talk to us asap.


Some rules and comments

Mid-term. Assignment of country for final paper. Assignment of presentation (choose three

preferred topics). Random assignment of response papers. Blackboard: your grades.

Are there topics you would like to discuss in the class?


Definition: Transnational relations

Transnational relations are “regular interactions across national boundaries when at least one actor is a non-state agent or does not operate on behalf of a national government or an intergovernmental organization.”

(Thomas Risse-Kappen, Introduction, in Bringing Transnational Relations Back In: Non-State Actors, Domestic Structure and International Institutions, Cambridge University Press 1995, p. 3)


States and transnationalism

Are states becoming increasingly irrelevant in a transnational world?

Is the separation of ‘domestic’ and ‘international’ disappearing? Are borders a thing of the past?

‘The New Transnationalism and Comparative Politics’


What is ‘new’ about the ‘new transnationalism’?

1970s, First generation (482): a challenge to state-centrism (multinational corporations)

1990s, Second generation (483): a normative agenda and a non- zero sum perspective (transnational advocacy networks)

2000s, Third generation: questioning transnational activism (problems of the transnationalist literature and violent actors)


Five lessons (484)

Globalization is overrated. New forms of collective agency. The state itself is becoming transnational. Hierarchy and geography matter less and less. Beyond the interests/norms divide.


Beyond globalization (485)

Globalization is not a uniform and purely economic process.

Creating opportunities for transnational activism. What matters is not if activists go global, but how

they do so. Political globalization is conflictual and fragmented.


Autonomous collective agency (487)

Epistemic communities (expertise), IPCC Transnational advocacy networks (norms), AI Norm entrepreneurs (cosmopolitans), R. Lemkin Overlapping authorities


The transnational state (490)

Increasing horizontal ties across state bureaucracies and to intergovernmental agencies.

Development of shared understandings. Examples: World Economic Forum and

supranational institutions.


New Spheres of Authority (492)

New social contract and dispersed authority. Democratic deficit? Are global activists legitimately

shaping the lives of Millions? Example: Gates Foundation and global health


The Power of Ideas (494)

Moral authority (beyond traditional means of power) Knowledge/expertise Constructing identities and interests Logic of appropriateness


Options for comparativists (495)

Three choices:

1. Rejection2. Limited acknowledgment (‘external shocks’)3. Opportunity to expand comparative methods to global

realm.


contemporary issues in international relations transnational politics

Documents