Non-State Actors and Authority in the Global System

Andreas Bieler, Richard Higgott, Geoffrey Underhill

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781134599301
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Traditionally in International Relations, power and authority were considered to rest with states. But recently, in the light of changes associated with globalisation, this has come under scrutiny both empirically and theoretically. This book analyses the continuing but changing role of states in the international arena, and their relationships with a wide range of non-state actors, which possess increasingly salient capabilities to structure global politics and economics.

Part I

Theoretical
considerations

The changing nature of
authority relations

1 Who does what?

Collective action and the changing
nature of authority

Ann M.Florini

Introduction

With a little translation into the appropriate theoretical terms, the debate over the form of the emergent world order boils down to disagreements over which collectivities will provide which collective goods to whom. Huntington’s (1996) clash-of-civilisations thesis contends that civilisations, rather than states, will provide such collective goods as defence (from other civilisations) and cultural belonging. Kaplan’s (1996) prediction of The Coming Anarchy asserts that many collective goods will not be provided at all because poverty and environmental degradation will overwhelm the capacity of states to undertake collective action. Mathews’ (1997) Power Shift analysis argues that the information revolution has rendered a whole host of non-state actors increasingly capable of undertaking collective action and is thus undermining the power of the state.

As these and many other authors show in very different ways, the tendency in international relations studies to see states as the sole providers of collective goods has become an increasingly inappropriate over-simplification. States cannot solve all, or even most, of humanity’s most important collective action problems, nor can all these collective goods be converted by the magic of property rights into private goods to be provided by the market. This is true in part because state capacity is being undermined even at the domestic level by everything from the globalisation of the economy to environmental degradation (for the debate, see inter alia Ayoob 1995; Barber 1995; Guehenno 1995; Hirst 1997; Hirst and Thompson 1996; Homer-Dixon (forthcoming), Horsman and Marshall 1995; Ohmae 1995; Sassen 1996; Strange 1996). Even more significant is the growing importance of transnational issues and actors: many of the most pressing collective action problems cannot be resolved by individual states acting alone, and the world is awash with actors whose interests and capacities span national borders (Hammond 1998; Mathews 1989 and 1997).

At a time when the supply of and demand for collective action seem increasingly out of balance, it is useful to review what theory can tell us about when and why people do contribute to the provision of collective goods, that is, when and why collective goods, especially transnational collective goods, are provided (or underprovided). The first section provides an overview of the literature on collective action. The next addresses the effect of the information revolution on the various bases for collective action. Then follows a look at the sketchy empirical evidence about where and why people actually are making contributions to the provision of collective goods. The conclusion suggests that while broad evidence is not yet available about the shifts in provision of collective goods or in group identity, both theory and the likely developments in information technology give strong reasons to believe that the shift in authority from state to non-state actors will continue and intensify.

Theory of collective action

The essence of the collective action problem is the lack of congruence between individual incentives and desired outcomes for the group. The problem is clearest with the most famous category of collective goods: public goods. These are goods that are non-excludable and non-rival in consumption: that is to say, if any amount of a public good is provided by anyone, no one can be prevented from consuming it, and no one’s consumption reduces anyone else’s consumption.

The classic example is national defence: if a state defends its boundaries, everyone within those boundaries gets defended, whether or not they contribute to the defence, and the defence of one person does not detract from the defence of another. Climate protection offers another example: everyone ‘consumes’ the same climate, and no one’s ‘consumption’ uses it up. Thus, preventing climate change benefits everyone, whether or not they contribute to that prevention, and my enjoyment of that benefit does not detract from yours. Under these conditions, no individual has an economically rational incentive to contribute to the provision of public goods, because everyone would rather free-ride on the contributions of others. Thus, public goods are not adequately provided by market forces.

In reality few pure public goods exist. Non-excludability is usually a matter of feasibility rather than impossibility: a country could, for example, choose not to defend a region that fails to pay taxes. Non-rivalry of consumption is often subject to ‘crowding’ effects; that is, rivalry sets in as more and more people try to consume a good. National parks with few visitors are public goods. National parks with a million visitors on the Fourth of July weekend suffer serious rivalry of consumption. Yet such goods and services have some degree of non-excludability and non-rivalry, and thus pure market forces cannot be relied on to match demand and supply.

Accordingly, collective action theory has cast a wider net beyond public goods, incorporating the broader range of goods whose provision is made difficult by the collective action problem. Although Olson’s famous 1965 book was entitled The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups, in fact the book addressed primarily non-excludable, not non-rival, goods (Olson 1965:14). And as Hardin (1982) has pointed out, the important issue in analysing the supply and demand of collective goods is not whether consumption has the demanding technical characteristics of pure public goods, but whether provision of the good requires collective action and thus requires overcoming the collective action problem. Collective action theory thus applies to a broad range of goods and services that have some degree of one or both of the defining characteristics of non-excludability and non-rivalry.

Despite the tendency to underprovision, collective goods do get provided, often at levels that are less than socially optimal, but still far more than can be explained by motives of economic individual self-interest. Government, organised into territorially based states, has long been the primary means by which collective goods are provided, and governments have compelled contributions through legally mandated taxes. Beyond this, several additional motivations (often overlapping rather than mutually exclusive) can explain why people do often contribute to the provision of collective goods.

Olson suggests that two factors—small size and selective incentives—can overcome the free-rider problem. Achieving common ends is easier in small groups than large ones, says Olson, because the costs of organising grow with size.¹ It is also easier in ‘privileged’ groups, assumed to be small, where members are of unequal size and the bigger ones benefit enough from their own contributions to be willing to carry the smaller members as free-riders. These conditions aside, provision of collective goods is likely to require selective incentives, that is, rewards available only to contributors. Sandler (1992:60) gives examples of selective incentives such as journals provided to members of a learned society or concert tickets given to supporters of a symphony orchestra. Social incentives also exist, but, says Olson, these usually require face to face contact: yet another reason small groups do better than large ones. Overcoming collective irrationality in larger groups thus may require designing institutions that make large groups function like small ones, for example by dividing themselves into federations of smaller sub-groups.

Ostrom (1990) has examined a sub-catagory of collective goods called common pool resources (CPR), which are fully rival in consumption but not excludable, such as open-access fisheries or some irrigation systems. She shows that groups can organise themselves without governmental intervention to ensure optimal, and sustainable, exploitation of such resources. As she notes, ‘communities of individuals have relied on institutions resembling neither the state nor the market to govern some resource systems with reasonable degrees of success over long periods of time’ (Ostrom 1990:1). To do so, they need to solve several problems: to determine the capacity of the resource (so that they do not use it up beyond sustainable levels); to agree on a system of allocating usage (for example, who gets to fish where when); to monitor compliance with that system; and to enforce adherence to the agreement. Although these are difficult things to do, Ostrom argues, what is striking is that these non-state and non-market institutions are often more successful at organising collective action with regard to CPR than are the governmental and market actors on which analysts normally concentrate. Communities that actually use CPR are more likely to have the necessary information to come up with workable systems than are external governmental officials, and because many of the resources (fish, water) are not stationary, it can be impossible to devise workable ways of assigning, and enforcing, private property rights. But success in managing CPR through non-state and non-market mechanisms has its own difficulties. Above all, it requires time to evolve workable institutions and long time horizons on the part of participants so that reputational concerns and diffuse reciprocity can maintain cooperation.

The large literature in international relations theory on regimes or institutions (Krasner 1983; Rittberger 1993; Keohane 1989) essentially addresses the collective action problem as it applies among states. Because much of the difficulty of achieving collective action lies in the cost of negotiating, monitoring and enforcing agreements, these theorists argue, institutions that can lower such costs should raise the likelihood that collective action will occur. But this literature has predominately focused on regimes and institutions that result from state-to-state cooperation. Only recently are we beginning to see the emergence of studies that examine non-state actors as integral components of such regimes (Chayes and Chayes 1996: chapter 11). While states remain important actors, their role is increasingly circumscribed. As is discussed below, the identity basis on which state power largely rests is giving way to new forms of identity, and the powerful advances in information technology are transforming the bases of power.

The preceding literature largely assumes that groups have and recognise common interests, and that motivations for contributing to the realisation of those common interests are economically rational.² Olson, for example, deliberately and explicitly limited his analysis to a sub-set of collective goods and motivations for collective action. He discussed only groups whose purpose is to further their members’ economic interests, primarily labour unions, not philanthropic or religious organisations, nor communal groups, nor other groups motivated by non-economic considerations (Olson 1965:6). We need to turn now to the identification of group interests and ‘extra-rational’—that is, social and moral rather than material— motivations.

Once we get beyond the sub-set of interests that are economic in nature, the question of how groups become groups and identify their interests becomes a crucial consideration. One of the major puzzles of human affairs is what makes a group a coherent entity. In the words of Webster’s Dictionary, a group is ‘a social unit comprising individuals in continuous contact through intercommunications and shared participation toward some commonly accepted end’ (Third New International Dictionary 1976:1004). This suggests that ongoing contact, shared experience and a common goal are all necessary elements of being a group. But it is possible to feel part of a group while never having communicated at all with most of its members nor having agreed on any particular goals: large kin groups and nation-states are united by something more.

The drive to form groups seems inherent in human nature. Given the need to belong to a group in order to survive, it is not surprising that the need for community feeling seems to be bred into humanity. When we have the sense of belonging to a group, we feel secure and purposeful in life. When we lack it, we feel uneasy, alienated, insecure. Fukuyama based his famous end-of-history thesis on the Hegelian assumption that human behaviour is motivated by a deep-rooted drive for recognition by other humans, a drive as fundamental as any material interest (Fukuyama 1993).

But the need to belong somewhere says little about where people will end up feeling they belong. Once humanity moved beyond the small kin groups of prehistoric times, the bases of ‘groupness’ became rather more complex. Mere contiguity is not enough to form a coherent group, as the long and difficult process of nation-building shows (Tilly 1975; Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983; Gellner 1983). People may live near each other, and may share similar conditions and concerns, but if they act individually rather than collectively, they are not a group.

Two types of bonds can unite groups sufficiently to motivate individual action: cultural and associational. In the ‘cultural’ category are characteristics such as shared language, religion, social practices, and kinship (real or imagined). Associational groups, by contrast, share specific interests and goals. The former are generally seen to be the more powerful motivator of collective action. Huntington argues that ‘what ultimately counts for people is not political ideology or economic interest. Faith and family, blood and belief, are what people identify with and what they will fight and die for’ (Huntington 1993:194). Along the same lines, Gurr has noted that ‘it is seriously misleading to interpret the Zapatistas as just a peasants’ movement or the Bosnian Serbs as the equivalent of a political party: they draw their strength from cultural bonds, not associational ones’ (Gurr 1996:53).

But this is too simplistic. People are part of a large and growing number of systems and collectivities, each of which may recognise, or require, a different identity from the same individual. Identities have always been social constructions, but increasingly, the constructors are individuals rather than societies and the wei...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Figures
• Tables
• Acronyms
• Contributors
• Preface
• Introduction: Globalisation and Non-State Actors
• Part I: Theoretical Considerations: The Changing Nature of Authority Relations
• Part II: Multinational Companies and the Establishment of International Rules
• Part III: Multinational Companies and the International Restructuring of Production
• Part Iv: Globalisation and Inter-Governmental and Non-Governmental Organisations