Beyond the State: Non-State Actors in the Modern World

Abstract

States have traditionally been the centrepiece of the study of international relations. In the classical realist view, international relations studied the interrelationships between states, particularly as they related to security. Other issues were neglected or regarded as being someone else’s province. International trade, for instance, was for the economists to study. There has always been some dissatisfaction with this position but it has strengthened in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Other organizations, no longer regarded as the tools of states or as of little importance, are now considered crucial to the understanding of the behaviour of the international system.