THE THIRD WAVE
“It is not just, or even mainly, a question of whether international companies can circumvent particular regional laws and regulations,” writes Hugh Stephenson in a study of the impact of TNCs on the nation-state. “It is that our whole framework of thought and reaction is found in the . . . concept of the sovereign nation state [while] international corporations are rendering this notioninvalid.”
In terms of the global power system, the rise of the great transnationals has reduced, rather than strengthened, the role of the nation-state at precisely the time when centrifugal pressures from below threaten to part it at the seams.
THE EMERGING “T-NET”
Though they are the best known, the transnational corporations are not the only forces on the global stage. We are witnessing, for example, the rise of transnational trade union groupings—the mirror image, as it were, of the corporations. We are also seeing a growth of religious, cultural, and ethnic movements that flow across national lines and link up with one another. We observe an antinuclear movement whose demonstrations in Europe draw protesters together from several countries at a time. We also are witnessing the emergence of transnational political party groupings. Thus Christian Democrats and Socialists alike speak of forming themselves into “Europarties” that transcend individual national boundaries—a move accelerated by the creation of the European Parliament.
Paralleling these developments, meanwhile, is a rapid proliferation of nongovernmental transnational associations. Such groups devote themselves to everything from education to ocean exploration, sports to science, horticulture to disaster relief. They range from the Oceania Football Confederation to the International Red Cross, the International Federation of Small and Medium-Sized Commercial Enterprises, and the International Federation of Women Lawyers. In aggregate, such “umbrella” organizations or federations represent millions of members and tens of thousands of branches in many countries. They reflect every conceivable shade of political interest or lack of interest
In 1963 some 1,300 such organizations operated across national lines. By the mid-1970’s the number had doubled to 2,-600. The total is expected to zoom to 3,500—4,500 by 1985 —with a new one springing up approximately every three days.
If the United Nations is the “world organization,” these
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