Students and practitioners of international politics have traditionally concentrated their attention on relationships between states. The state, regarded as an actor with purposes and power, is the basic unit of action; its main agents are the diplomat and soldier. The interplay of govern-mental policies yields the pattern of behavior that students of international politics attempt to understand and that practitioners attempt to adjust to or control. Since force, violence, and threats thereof are at the core of this interplay, the struggle for power, whether as end or necessary means, is the distinguishing mark of politics among nations. Most political scientists and many diplomats seem to accept this view of reality, and a state-centric view of world affairs prevails.

Our introduction has indicated why we are interested in transnational relations and has suggested what some of their effects on world politics may be. But it is surely difficult to evaluate our claims about transnational phenomena until one has some information about their history, scope, and significance. The essays in part I are designed to provide such information as well as to forward a variety of arguments about the causes and future of transnational relations.

Among the striking developments of modern history the growth of nationalism and the proliferation of nation-states must surely take high place. To numerous peoples in the post-Napoleonic era the possibility of modeling themselves on England and France seemed both desirable and feasible in a time when language groupings, the reach of political and economic control systems, and the capabilities of armaments appeared roughly to coincide. Together with patriotisms reinforced by popular education and increasing literacy these phenomena emphasized the defensibility of both the spiritual and the military frontiers. The result, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, was a series of wars of national unification which were followed in the twentieth century by great efforts to defend the nationality thus gained, socially, through such devices as immigration restriction, economically, by tariffs and various autarchic experiments, and militarily, in two great wars.

Changes in the structure of the global economy have resulted in a withering of governmental control of certain activities presumed to be de jure within the domain of governments. The international monetary crises of the 1960s have demonstrated the emergence of financial markets that seem to operate beyond the jurisdiction of even the most advanced industrialized states of the West and outside their individual or collective control. The flourishing of multinational corporations has affected the national science and economic growth policies of highly developed and less developed states alike by restricting the freedom of those governments to establish social priorities. Tariff reductions carefully and arduously negotiated on a multilateral basis through the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), through bilateral arrangements, or through emergent regional economic organizations have similarly increased the number of relatively nonmanipulable and unknown factors which must be accounted for in planning a wide spectrum of domestic and foreign economic policies—from regional development policy or anti-inflationary efforts on the domestic side to the international exchange rate of a state's currency.

These two statements—the first by a Canadian nationalist, the second by a former United States undersecretary of state—express a dominant theme of contemporary wrïtings on international relations. International society, we are told, is increasingly rent between its economic and its political organization. On the one hand, powerful economic and technical forces are creating a highly integrated transnational economy, blurring the traditional significance of national boundaries. On the other hand, the nationstate continues to command men's loyalties and to be the basic unit of political decision. As one writer has put the issue, “The conflict of our era is between ethnocentric nationalism and geocentric technology.”

Transnational interactions have been defined as “the movement of tangible or intangible items across state boundaries when at least one actor is not an agent of a government or an intergovernmental organization.” Correspondingly, transnational organizations can be defined as transnational interactions institutionalized. There may be several reasons why participants in transnational interactions may find it convenient to found a permanent organization and to endow it with a certain amount of authority to coordinate their interaction. First of all, the intensity of a particular kind of interaction may rise to such a level that more personnel and other resources are needed to regulate and facilitate the process. The most economical way of responding to this need may be to establish a joint secretariat. Second, although the intensity of exchanges between each pair of interacting entities may be constant, the number of participants may increase. This process results in a problem of coordination and the need for a coordinating agent in the form of, for example, an international body. To put it slightly differently, institutionalization tends to follow multilateralization. Third, although neither of the above conditions may dbtain, an organization may be founded to achieve fast action in emergencies requiring joint operation. Finally, an organization, and in particular its officers, may serve as mediator and arbitrator in situations of conflict and competition between interacting members. Such activities are, for example, promoted by the Inter-American Commercial Arbitration Commission.

Part II focuses on transnational organizations, but the essays themselves are quite diverse. Louis T. Wells, Jr., considers the best known set of transnational organizations, multinational business enterprises, and Peter D. Bell discusses the offspring of one of these enterprises, the Ford Foundation. On the less economic side of transnational relations Ivan Vallier analyzes the Roman Catholic church as a transnational actor, and J. Bowyer Bell explores transnational revolutionary movements. Since these organizations are quite dissimilar, the authors' conclusions cannot be neatly summarized. Many points made in part II refer only to one organization or set of organizations.

The recent growth in the size and number of private business enterprises that operate in many countries has generated a great deal of speculation as to whether a form of international organization has been created which is able to frustrate the policies of the traditional nation-state. The enterprise with subsidiaries scattered around the globe clearly has the potential to evade the influence of many governmental policies. The firm can circumvent a tight monetary policy in one country by having an affiliate borrow in another country and transfer the funds across national borders. If direct transfers of capital from abroad are restricted, transfer prices, royalty payments, or open accounts between affiliates can be adjusted to bring in the needed financial resources. If taxes are high in one jurisdiction, profits that would be subject to tax can be shifted to another tax jurisdiction through manipulation of affiliate transactions. National labor unions and comparatively harsh labor legislation can be frustrated by moving production to facilities in another country when strikes or higher costs threaten a particular market. A governmental program aimed at increasing technical and managerial training to provide a larger domestic supply of skilled personnel may only generate technicians or managers for the multinational enterprise to shift out of the country, back to its head office or to other countries. Technology developed in one country—often through governmental support and often related to defense needs of governments—can be leaked quickly to other countries through the communication network of the multinational enterprise.

”Foundations,” private, nonprofit institutions that make grants for public purposes, depend for their existence on the private accumulation of great wealth and on fiscal and moral incentives for its philanthropic use. Several European foundations, including the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Volkswagen Foundation, the Krupp Foundation, and the Nuffield Foundation, are now comparable in organization and size to the American leaders. But modern foundations, independently directed and professionally staffed, are principally an invention of twentieth-century industrial society in the United States.1 Of 32 foundations with assets exceeding $100 million, 29 are American.

The notion of the Roman Catholic church as a transnational actor is both intriguing and elusive. Its global empire, and thus its transnationality, ties it to many situations, no two of which are exactly alike. Its center in Rome coordinates and shapes the actions of the subsidiary field units by supplying them with general norms, symbolic leadership, and authoritative decisions. Each of the field units possesses, in turn, a certain autonomy vis-a-vis the center; the field units make demands on the center, may provide it with new ideas, and often generate key resources for the center, for example, loyalties, money, and skills.

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.

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.

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.

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?