CHAPTER ONE
NON STATE ACTORS IN CONTEMPORARY INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
INTRODUCTION
One of the most prominent features of the global political system in the second half of the twentieth century is the significant surge in numbers and importance of non-state entities. These non-state entities are heroes and villains in different narratives of international politics. They are actors on the international level which are not states. The rise of these transnationally organized non-state actors and their growing involvement in world politics challenge or rebuke the assumptions of “Realism” and traditional approaches of international relations, which argue that interactions between states are the main relationship of interest in studying international system. While some authors recognize that these non-sovereign entities and their activities have led to fundamental changes in world politics, others maintain that the structure of the international system can still be treated on the basis of inter-state relations.
At this point let us look at the different paradigms actors to enable us understand the concept of non-state actors in the contemporary international relations. These are contending theoretical approaches.
Actors in World Politics: Contending Theoretical Approaches
Actors in the classical Realist paradigm. Since the end of World War II, Realism also known as the power-politics school of though has dominated the field of international relations. Although according to Smith, “it faces sustained challenge, Realism continues to provide for a large number of scholars and foreign policy makers the basic assumptions for the analysis of world politics”.1
The ideas of Realism date as far back as Thucydides whose History of the Peloponnesian War is recognized as the first attempt to explain the origins of international conflict in terms of the dynamics of power-politics, says Evans and Newnham.2 As a distinctive paradigm, however, Smith makes us to understand that “Realism” emerged after World War II as a challenge to the Idealist school of thought that dominated the interwar period and whose overriding aim had been the prevention of another World War.3
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