During the past century revolutionary organizations have, in the name of mankind, sought the violent transformation of the existing international framework. Their aim has been the liberation of nations submerged by fate or repressed by coercion and the destruction of the entire nation-state system, considered a passing phase of history. Even those revolutionary organizations dedicated to a specific national struggle have tended to see the triumph of their cause as a step toward a conflict-free world society in which the basic aspirations of all will have been achieved. In the heyday of anticolonial revolts nationalism per se tended to dominate the ideology of the various movements. In the last decade, with fewer countries to liberate from a foreign oppressor and more to be liberated from domestic regimes supported by worldwide imperialism, the universal ideological context of the revolutionary struggle has become more pronounced. Today most, but by no means all, revolutionary movements proclaim an allegiance to world revolution; nevertheless, as in the past, most continue to act as covert governments or illegal armies, underground or in exile, and to represent not the universal but the particular. Such organizations may have deep sympathies, even specific alliances, with fellow national revolutionary organizations or legitimate governments, but they are often comparable, if not parallel, to normal international arrangements. Even the most militant movements in the vanguard of world revolution, despite all their paraphernalia of antinational ideology, are nearly always established on a national basis and act as alternative national regimes. At best, revolution in one country may be actually allied with similar revolutions, but rarely is it submerged in a fully integrated, universal transnational movement.

Inquiry into the nature and role of international organizations has not been a noticeably cumulative enterprise. Descriptive lacunae have been filled, new and more reliable techniques of observation and measurement have been introduced, and more sophisticated and powerful instruments of analysis have been brought to bear on various problems—all signs of change, even of progress—but the field as a whole remains “notorious for its lack of systematic and testable theory.” This state of affairs has been lamented generally and has been contrasted specifically with the situation which prevails in international organization's “stepfield” of regional integration. Here, previous paradigms and conceptual frameworks have been scrutinized critically and constructively; alternative measures and additional hypotheses have been proposed; originally divergent “perspectives” have acquired convergent properties; and speculative reformalizations have been advanced which seek to build upon past criticisms.

The essays in part III describe systems of interaction—“the ways the game is played”—in specific issue areas. While the essays in part II focus on different types of transnational organizations, the following essays approach transnationalism from a different direction. Without prejudging their importance we want to discover the significance of transnational organizations and interactions in regard to various types of subject matter.

Partly by design, partly by coincidence the twelve months from September 1969 to September 1970 saw an “explosion” of reports about development problems. This article is particularly concerned with one of these, Sir Robert Jackson's A Study of the Capacity of the United Nations Development System. While the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) covers only a minor percentage of total assistance extended to less developed countries, its significance reaches beyond its quantitative development impact It has become the single most important United Nations cooperative effort and, more generally, represents an unprecedented example of intergovernmental and interorganizational cooperation.

Amos Perlmutter has raised an interesting series of points in his commentary on my recent article concerning the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). As I understand the crux of his argument, it is as follows. “From the outset UNRWA was a political organization” (p. 307). Despite this fact I have displayed a “low level of political judgment” (p. 306) which has led me to focus neither on the decisions rendered by UNRWA's commissioner-general nor on the future impact of UNRWA and the ways in which it can contribute to stability in the Middle East. Presumably these latter two types of analysis would be “high-level political judgments” (p. 308).

The major international economic institutions established after World War II, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), had the economic disintegration of the Great Depression as their historical heritage. The lessons learned from that experience were twofold: National governments can and should take an active role in achieving national economic stabilization objectives, and one state's economic policies can and often will work at cross-purposes with those of another. The role of international institutions in such circumstances is to harmonize national policies so that international conflict is avoided.

It has often been observed that recent converts to any belief system tend to be among its most zealous adherents, and science (despite its emphasis on objectivity and detachment) has proved no exception. As the canons of scientific inquiry begin to take hold in each field of human knowledge, there have appeared those who seem, as it were, more royalist than the king. For these scholars the rules of scientific inference are not guidelines to be used with care but dogmas to be pursued unswervingly; to them science is not, as someone once expressed it, “attenuated common sense” but a totally different and rather severe regimen of thought.

Air transport across national boundaries has increased greatly in scope and intensity since the end of World War II. Although the vast majority of such transport involves private individuals and corporations, governments play a major role in the process. They act as producers, consumers, and regulators of air transport; they have become one of the primary actors in the process. The participation of governments has greatly modified the environment and processes through which carriage is accomplished. Governments have been involved in the establishment of such organizations as die International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a supranational organization in a narrowly limited way, and the International Air Transport Association (IATA), an international association of airlines, many of which are, in fact, owned or controlled by governments.

Since World War II national trade union organizations have become involved in the internal political affairs of other countries, usually through the labor organizations in these countries. Soviet trade unions, a precursor and model in this respect, supported Soviet foreign policy through their international trade union contacts. United States unions played an important role in promoting the Marshall Plan, winning trade union support for it in Western Europe, and countering the opposition of communist-oriented trade unions in France and Italy. British and French unions were active in the colonial territories of their countries and often continued their influence after these territories achieved independence. United States unions have been active in Latin America and in the less developed areas of the Caribbean and Africa.

Basic science is an inherently international activity. Its principal goal is the production of new knowledge which is evaluated according to universal standards. In terms of membership and goals scientific communities have been international since their emergence during the seventeenth century. Basic science today consists of hundreds of research problem areas in which groups of scientists study similar problems and exchange information across national boundaries. International scientific cooperation occurs on several levels ranging from informal communication between individual researchers to multilateral agreements between governments and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs).

Interactions between different kinds of actors engaged in outer space and ocean exploration and exploitation can be grouped into five major categories of activities. These activities reflect the dominant interests of all the participants, and they are treated at a level of generality which facilitates comparison. The categories of activities are: i) management and regulation of common resources; 2) exploitation of specific resources; 3) coordination and financing of research, including exploration and experimentation at the international level, and arrangements governing the exchange of information gained; 4) preservation of national and international security; and 5) recreation and the control of pollution.

In any discussion of transnational relations the nuclear energy field can best be studied within the framework of the statecentered model of international politics. Although in most fields private activities precede governmental regulation (which follows in response to social and other considerations), the opposite is true in the nuclear energy field. Because the first development of nuclear energy so intimately involved national security, government immediately assumed a preeminent role. This role is now being modified—but still only slightly—by nascent private undertakings of an occasionally transnational nature. Nevertheless, there is already sufficient evidence of growing transnational trends to make an exploration eminently worthwhile in the context of this volume.

Transnational relations are significant in current world politics, but it is not obvious that their effects are uniformly£ benign. It is therefore important to ask how transnational relations affect such deeply held values as peace, welfare, democracy, and self-identity. Who is helped and who is hurt by transnational relations?

The extract above echoes one of the firmest tenets in the internationalist credo: Greater contact between the peoples of the world will foster attitudes favorable to peace. But is this conviction anything more than a comforting article of faith? What evidence is there that transnational contacts do, in fact, produce greater understanding and accommodation, and what is the impact of changes in individuals on relations between nationstates?

Whether or not less developed countries can better realize their economic aspirations by strengthening their ties with developed countries will remain in dispute as long as there are rich and poor countries. Dispute will be particularly sharp while the main instruments of such interconnection are identifiable institutions like the multinational corporation. It is easier to map the growth of the multinational corporation than to assess its consequences, but the need for an assessment cannot be ignored. As this essay's subtitle suggests, my main concern is consideration of arguments which are critical of the role of the multinational corporation.

This essay elaborates several basic propositions. First, the extraordinary changes in international communication and international transportation during the past 40 or 50 years have profoundly altered the horizons of business decisionmakers, giving enormous stimulus to the creation of multinational business enterprises. Second, in narrow economic terms the multinationalization of business activity has added to the efficiency of the world economy. Third, the advances in transportation and communication, reinforced by the existence of multinational business enterprises, have stimulated interaction between national economies and reduced the effectiveness of national controls, particularly in advanced countries. Finally, despite the increasing porosity of national boundaries these countries have been expanding and refining their national economic and social goals in ways that require more controls at national borders or more joint controls between cooperating states.

Transnational relations and other multional process seriously threaten democratic control of foreign policy, particularly in advanced industrial societies. The intermeshing of decisionmaking across national frontiers and the growing multinationalization of formerly domestic issues are inherently incompatible with the traditional framework of democratic control. The threat is all the more serious because it is sustained not by enemies of democracy but unknowingly by people who consider themselves to be acting within Western democratic traditions and because it results in part from the very forces of internationalism, interdependence, and economic advancement that have come to be regarded as indispensable. The consequences of these developments and the ongoing erosion of control over military and foreign policy, dramatically demonstrated by the debate on the Vietnam War, amount to a fundamental challenge to the democratic structure of Western societies. This essay analyzes the threat of transnational relations by reexamining the arguments for limited democratic control of foreign policy in light of recent structural changes in world politics and the consequences of transnational relations for the democratic process and its institutions. It concludes by indicating some approaches that could strengthen the democratic dimension which is being eroded.

World politics is changing, but our conceptual paradigms have not kept pace. The classic state-centric paradigm assumes that states are the only significant actors in world politics and that they act as units. Diverse domestic interests have effects on international politics only through governmental foreign policy channels. Intersocietal interactions are relegated to a category of secondary importance–the “environment” of interstate politics. As Karl Kaiser has pointed out, the reality of international politics has never totally corresponded to this model. Nevertheless, the model was approximated in the eighteenth century when foreign policy decisions were taken by small groups of persons acting within an environment that was less obtrusive and complex than the present one.