Envisioning the Invisible: Nonstate Actors in International Affairs

Abstract

Post-Treaty Politics: Secretariat Influence in Global Environmental Governance . By Sikina Jinnah. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014. 272 pp., $26.00 (paperback), ISBN-13: 978-0-262-52655-5. An exciting, growing body of work demonstrates that nonstate actors matter in international affairs. This work surmounts significant obstacles: states and their coercive powers are conspicuous, but nonstate actors and their softer powers are subtler, at times almost invisible. And some nonstate actors—such as people working within the secretariats of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs)—prize invisibility (Mathiason 2007). In Post-Treaty Politics , Sikina Jinnah examines secretariats of environmental treaties to pierce both the state-centric assumptions of international relations and the invisibility of international bureaucrats. Recognizing not only the importance but also the limitations of state-based explanations in international affairs, she seeks conditions under which secretariats are likely to influence political outcomes (Bierman and Siebenhuber 2009). She proposes two entwined conditions: state preferences are weakly solidified (for example, because states disagree about what should be done) and secretariat functions enjoy low substitutability (for example, because the secretariat possesses specialized expertise). If both factors are in place, secretariats have the greatest likelihood of altering power relations between states by shaping ideas, relationships, and institutions. Cleverly, these conditions incorporate and circumvent demands of state-centrism, for influence can exist even if secretariats do not oppose states’ interests or thwart states’ plans. Rather, their influence includes shaping the ways in which states understand their own interests or altering the context in which states interact (Johnson 2014). By promoting particular norms, rebalancing states’ relative capabilities, or designing new rules and institutions, secretariats … tana.johnson{at}duke.edu