Transnational Corporations in International Relations
Introduction
Many schools of thought and individual researchers have reached the conclusion that state-centric approaches fail to examine and analyze international elations as they have changed in the past century. The different leakages of the state-centric theories like the fact that states nowadays are multinational and are not constituted by only one nation (Baylis et al, 2008) in combination with the existence of other entities in the international arena apart from states has created the need of a theory that acknowledges those facts and tries to explain international relations in the new and more complex developing environment.
Non-state actors are these international organizations that have diplomatic power and enact with states in the global environment (Kegley and Wittkopf, 2004). The position developed in this paper aims to debate whether transnational corporations are important non-state actors and in which ways they exert power over states.
Transnational corporations : A theorist debate about their role as non-state actors
Viewing the existing literature on the topic one identifies that different schools of thought have positioned themselves on the matter of non-state actors with diverging and many times pretty unclear opinions. In the specific case of transnational corporations neo-institutionalists generally disregard their power whereas they consider the importance of Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs) and academic communities in international relations (Bas, 2000). Likewise Neorealists keep a very state-centric perspective dismissing the possibility that non-state actors actually play an important role in forging the transnational map of alliances and cooperation all over the world. They acknowledge the influence non-state actors have on states but they consider that they do not have international power independently of their country’s influence (Willets, 1982). Socialists on the other hand tend to be divided. We face the case of
Many schools of thought and individual researchers have reached the conclusion that state-centric approaches fail to examine and analyze international elations as they have changed in the past century. The different leakages of the state-centric theories like the fact that states nowadays are multinational and are not constituted by only one nation (Baylis et al, 2008) in combination with the existence of other entities in the international arena apart from states has created the need of a theory that acknowledges those facts and tries to explain international relations in the new and more complex developing environment.
Non-state actors are these international organizations that have diplomatic power and enact with states in the global environment (Kegley and Wittkopf, 2004). The position developed in this paper aims to debate whether transnational corporations are important non-state actors and in which ways they exert power over states.
Transnational corporations : A theorist debate about their role as non-state actors
Viewing the existing literature on the topic one identifies that different schools of thought have positioned themselves on the matter of non-state actors with diverging and many times pretty unclear opinions. In the specific case of transnational corporations neo-institutionalists generally disregard their power whereas they consider the importance of Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs) and academic communities in international relations (Bas, 2000). Likewise Neorealists keep a very state-centric perspective dismissing the possibility that non-state actors actually play an important role in forging the transnational map of alliances and cooperation all over the world. They acknowledge the influence non-state actors have on states but they consider that they do not have international power independently of their country’s influence (Willets, 1982). Socialists on the other hand tend to be divided. We face the case of
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