Transnational Non-state Actors Research Articles

The impact of human rights INGO activities on economic sanctions

What impact do human rights international non-governmental organizations (hereafter HROs) have on the initiation of economic sanctions? The extant literatures on sanctions and transnational non-state groups have largely overlooked the role, if any, the activities of these transnational non-state actors have on the use of economic coercion as a popular policy tool. In this study, we argue that HROs could affect sanction decisions through two distinct mechanisms: information production (“shaming and blaming”) and local empowerment (local presence). By bringing poor human rights performers into the international spotlight, we argue that this effect should hold even after accounting for human rights practices in the targeted countries. Using dyadic data on HROs and economic sanctions, we find robust support for our basic argument that HRO activities increase the likelihood of sanction events against repressive regimes. Additionally, much of the empirical support highlights the role of information production, as opposed to local empowerment, in leading to sanction onset. Overall, our findings indicate that HROs are powerful actors in influencing foreign policy decisions between states.

Thinking the Unthinkable: Has the Time Come to Offer Combatant Immunity to Non-State Actors?

If there is one designation that has come to symbolize the complexity of characterizing the struggle against international terrorism as an armed conflict, it is “unlawful enemy combatant.” For the U.S. military and the al Qaeda and Taliban operatives it detained following September 11th, the characterization defined a group subdued enemy personnel who would be detained to prevent their return to hostilities, but who would also be denied the legal status of prisoner of war and the accordant protections of the Third Geneva Convention. Operating as a “combatant” without privilege (President Obama has substituted the term “unprivileged belligerent” for these detainees) deprives the individual of legal and moral equivalency with his privileged opponent: state actors. As a result, the rules established by international law to protect these “privileged” combatants must be denied to the unprivileged counterpart. This theory of “status” and “privilege” among combatants is a genuine article of faith. It is derived from an unassailable interpretation of the Third Geneva Convention’s prisoner of war qualification equation. Prisoner of war status, which is international law’s manifestation of the “privileged” or “lawful” combatant, is reserved exclusively for combatants who fight on behalf of a state during inter-state armed conflict, and who satisfy four widely known conditions of carrying arms openly, wearing a fixed distinctive emblem recognizable at a distance, operating under responsible command, and complying with the laws and customs of war. What is equally important in this equation, however, is that these factors apply only to combatants engaged in inter-state armed conflicts, effectively excluding from the lawful combatant status any individual fighting on behalf on an entity not affiliated with state authority. What has been absent from the avalanche of scholarship, debate, and even judicial analysis of the validity of this detention without privilege theory is a critical assessment of whether the underlying rationale for the legal dichotomy between the lawful and unlawful combatant is logically applicable to non-state transnational actors. Such an assessment must focus on not only the origins of this dichotomy, but also - and perhaps more importantly - on the ostensible effect intended by denial of lawful combatant status for non-state actors. Considering the issue through this “effects based” analytical lens raises a genuine question as to whether the denial is the most effective way to achieve these desired effects.This article will explore this question by focusing on both these proposed analytical elements. It will begin with a review of the origins of the lawful/unlawful enemy combatant dichotomy. It will then discuss the ostensible effects the United States desires to achieve by applying this dichotomy to transnational non-state actors. Ultimately, it will question whether the unthinkable – extending the opportunity to qualify for the privileged combatant’s immunity – might actually offer a greater likelihood of achieving these effects than clinging to the current lawful/unlawful combatant dichotomy.

Regulating Corporate Social and Human Rights Responsibilities at the UN Plane: Institutionalising New Forms of Law and Law-making Approaches?

AbstractGlobalisation's unprecedented growth and transborder activities of business coupled with increasing awareness of the impact of business on societies and human rights has resulted in demands for the international society to regulate corporate social and human rights responsibilities. This not only challenges traditional notions of duty bearers under international law, but also calls for novel approaches for the United Nations (UN) to implement central parts of the Charter's human rights aims and to address corporate behaviour in a state-centred international law-making order that lacks the willingness of States to regulate business. This article explores recent UN responses and argues that in the absence of States acting through ordinary international law-making, the UN as an intergovernmental organisation draws on participatory modes of law-making and new forms of law in order to normatively influence businesses' impact on human rights. The pattern of using these forms suggests an institutionalisation of reflexive regulation as a regulatory process drawing on public-private regulation, and of an emerging UN based 'Global Administrative Law' in order to meet regulatory challenges in living up to the human rights aims embodied in the UN Charter under the conditions posed by globalisation of the economy and emergence of strong transnational non-state actors. The analysis is based on the UN Global Compact, the draft Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with regard to Human Rights and the process of the Special Representative of the Secretary General on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and business (SRSG).

NGOs, Corporations and Security Transformation in Africa

Transnational non-state actors interested in maintaining a presence in parts of the world where the state is weak are an important part of the privatization of security that has not been well analyzed. In this article I lay out propositions about how an increasing role for non-state actors in security may transform the conceptualization of security and the use of violence more generally. I argue that international NGOs and transnational corporations conceptualize security and how to achieve it differently than states have traditionally done and that these differences have potential consequences for which problems are addressed, as well as for whether and how violence is used in the communities where they operate.

Sustainable development frontiers and divides: Transnational actors and US/China greenhouse gas emissions

SUMMARY Perpetuation of the South-North divide over climate change threatens to undermine the sustainability of the planet's vulnerable ecosystems. The current focus of international attention is on the USA and the PRC since both countries are in a position to negate or clinch the global warming mitigation efforts of the rest of the world community and because the two governments are primarily responsible for the entrenched global impasse over greenhouse gas (GHG) abatement. This contribution illustrates how transnational non-state actors, specifically Chinese American transmigrants, can make a difference in surmounting the US-China divide over GHG emissions, even in a time of state stalemate. Specific opportunities to shape sustainable development outcomes are explored by reference to energy efficiency, renewable energy, transportation, GHG capture, and public education projects. The discussion shows that, by teaming up with the NGOs, universities, foundations and firms engaged in or contemplating involvement in GHG emission mitigation projects in China, Chinese Americans from many walks of life who can manoeuvre skilfully along the climate change frontier occupy a potentially decisive position in terms of supporting sustainable development.

Islam in Southeast Asia: The Challenge of Radical Interpretations

This article addresses three questions. The rise of radical Islamic movements in Southeast Asia, the links between Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) and al-Qaeda, and the challenge to Southeast Asian states from JI. Desker gives an overview of radical Islamic organisations in Southeast Asia resorting to violence, and their reciprocal connections and ties to the global al-Qaeda network. These organisations and their actions draw attention to the interplay between transnational non-state actors, postcolonial states and regional integration processes in the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN). Desker points out the fragility of postcolonial states challenged by religious, ethnic and linguistic groups promoting separatist or transnational agendas. As new states protective of their sovereignty and the primacy of their national identities, the ASEAN members generally have pursued individual national interests in confronting such transnational actors. As such the ASEAN member-states have not relied on their multilateral relationships, highlighting the erosion of the ASEAN security community after the Cold War. The original version of this paper was prepared for the Regional Outlook Forum organized by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore on 7 January 2003.

Beyond Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism: Diasporic Chinese and Neo-Nationalism in China and Thailand

This article highlights the dynamic interaction between Chinese, Thai, and Sino-Thai identity construction, on the one hand, and the mutual production of domestic and international politics, on the other. It questions how nationalism and cosmopolitanism are formulated by arguing against the popular notion that a diaspora is a cosmopolitan community situated in a foreign nation. Diasporic public spheres are critically examined to show how Sino-Thai identity is produced in relation first to neo-nationalism in Thailand and China, and second in specific contexts within Thailand that call into question essential notions of Thai, Chinese, and overseas Chinese identity. Diasporas thus both construct and deconstruct the seemingly opposing forces of nationalism and cosmopolitanism. The article uses the ethnographic approach of anthropological constructivism to build on sociological constructivism's focus on national identity, norms, and formal institutions. Rather than looking to culture as a substance, the article highlights how culture takes shape in context-sensitive relations between identity and difference. This ethnographic approach encourages one to look in different places for world politics, shifting away from state actors to transnational nonstate actors, from geopolitics and international political economy to economic culture, and from law and institutions as the foundations of international society to the less formal organizations of the diasporic public sphere. Diaspora thus not only adds new data to arguments about global/local relations—it helps one question the structures of world politics that look to the opposition between cosmopolitanism and nationalism.

Human rights, principled issue-networks, and sovereignty in Latin America

International relations theorists have devoted insufficient attention to the processes through which state sovereignty is being transformed in the modern world. The human rights issue offers a case study of a gradual and significant reconceptualization of state sovereignty. In the human rights issue-area, the primary movers behind the international actions leading to changing understandings of sovereignty are transnational nonstate actors organized in a principled issue-network, including international and domestic nongovernmental organizations, parts of global and regional intergovernmental organizations, and private foundations. These networks differ from other forms of transnational relations in that they are driven primarily by shared values or principled ideas. Through a comparative study of the impact of international human rights pressures on Argentina and Mexico in the 1970s and 1980s, this article explores the emergence and the nature of the principled human rights issue-network and the conditions under which it can contribute to changing both state understandings about sovereignty and state human rights practices.