Transnational Actors Analysis

Since the 19th century the number, density and intensity of connections between different actors on the world stage across a multitude of countries has incessantly increased, resulting not only in the creations of international organizations (e.g. the United Nations) or supranational organizations (e.g. the European Union), but also in the emergence of transnational actors and consequently, transnational interactions, defined as the interaction involving at least one non-state or non-international organization actor. Example of transnational actors are NGOs, like Greenpeace and for-profit companies, like Shell.
As the pace of globalization does not seem slowing down, scholars have started to look into the most suitable approaches and theories
Lastly, there is an issue-based approach, according to which, the influence of transnational actors is not always relevant (or irrelevant), but it depends on the specific issue.
In order to analyse transnational actors, it would be more effective to use a liberalist or even constructivist approach (so more society-centric), since the primary role of transnational actors is to influence state or international organizations with their own policy agendas, ideas and beliefs. A theoretical framework that stresses the role of ideas in world politics has a more powerful explanatory power. Therefore, a realist approach can be discarded.
However, same aspects of realism cannot be disregarded: transnational actors are more influential in a “low-politics” issues, while in “high politics” problems, concerning state security, they are rarely taken into consideration. When the issues are about state survival, they might be better analysed in realist terms. In this sense, a issue-based approach is useful in stressing the limits of
The decisional power corresponds to the ability of influencing decision-making. The level of decisional power is given by factors such as expertise about a certain field and reputation. The discursive power is the most “constructivist” of the elements. It consists in the ability of giving (new) meaning to certain issues or phenomena in a way to further one’s agenda. Lastly, the regulatory power is the ability of creating rules or modifying the existing ones. Decisional and regulatory power can be mostly associated with lobbies and epistemic communities, while discursive power is more connected to advocacy groups. Nonetheless, every TA possess different levels of each of these