The State-Centric Approach
Simon Dzhaparidze Professor Omae May 2, 2011 PLSC 220 The State-Centric Approach International Organizations are formal institutional structures transcending national boundaries that are created by multilateral agreement among nation-states. Their purpose is to foster international cooperation in areas such as security, law, economic and social matters and diplomacy. The world system has many factors that effect what happens in world Politics. One major explanation of this is the State-Centric approach where state-actors and the world system work together.
This makes it so that everyone is accountable for their actions since all of the state-actors are on a world stage. Many events that happen in the world can also have other factors that can directly or indirectly be influenced by Non Governmental organizations. One issue in the United States is controlling the U. S. -Mexico border and trying to contain the drug cartels out of America. One major problem that the U. S. is facing is that these drug cartels are not part of Mexican authority. They have no direct connection with the government of Mexico. Therefore they are not sponsored by the Mexican Government.
On the other hand they are indirectly very involved with the Mexican Government. For example when someone in a Drug-Cartel run area tries to run for a political position and is not approved by the cartel they will not end up winning that position and if they do he or she will be forced out of office. Not, only will they not win the election, they can also be killed or harassed by the Drug Cartel. Recently I had read an article about how the Mexican Youth is being forced to join the drug cartels. It is very easy for the kids because the minimum wage in Mexico is so low only around 5 dollars a day.
On the other hand the cartel can afford to give them around $100 to $150 a day. When they start getting kills they can make thousands a day. Another problem with this situation is that 35,000 people have been killed since President Felipe Calderon started the war on drugs in 2006. This has left many children without parents. Once that has happened the children have no where to go but the cartels to survive. Another problem is that once they are in the cartels there is almost no way out to escape because if you even try they will be after you, and can eventually find and kill you.
In terms of World politics the Mexican Government is the state actor influencing the situation. The drug cartel is the Non Governmental Organization that has taken over many parts of the country with drug money and influence on the politics of their specific region. In return these problems in Mexico come home to America in a variety of ways. The Mexicans try to flee their country by crossing the border which increases the amount of illegal immigrants in the States. Then drugs are shipped to the states in high quantities using special routes across the border.
As you can see another state actor gets involved which is the U. S. government. This transnational cycle continues throughout the world. Another even better example of transnational world politics is the War on Terror. The war on terror started around the time of 9/11/01 when the twin towers were hit by two hijacked planes. Soon thereafter America moves troops into Afghanistan looking for Osama Bin Laden the conductor of the 2001 tragedy of the twin towers falling. In Afghanistan our troops are not really fighting a State actor.
This is due to Afghanistan nature and by the high levels of corruption that occur in the Middle East. By 2003 a war between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and the United states had officially started. This was started due to speculation that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction. As you can tell the war in Iraq was completely an effect caused by the twin towers falling. This war is between two state actors but, a leading reason to why they started the war was due to the leader of Al-Qaeda Osama Bin Laden who is part of a Non-Governmental Organization.
The fight has continued on against terror and will probably never stop due to its nature and because of how far its spread. This is a key part in understanding how Non Governmental Organizations can really affect world politics. Another example of how Non Governmental Organizations is how the “international Red Cross helps people in Africa with starvation”. Unlike the drug cartels the Red Cross helps people across that are in need of food, water, shelter. This gives them the resources to survive and if it weren’t for the Red Cross they would not get it.
Another aspect of this is that many of these organizations have individual actors that can greatly influence certain situations. “Through the growing awareness of individuals of their place in the world, individual acts produce significant impacts. ” Like when bono has used his money to create an organization that helps Africans with the Aids epidemic. Another influential power in world politics is increasing amount of Multinational Corporations. “The top 100 Multinational Corporations (industrial not financial) controlled $8. trillion in assets, had $6. 6 trillion in sales, and employed more than 15 million people world wide. On average, half of their assets, sales and employment were foreign. ” The book explains how Multinational Corporations have really emerged as the strong competitor to the Nation-State. These organizations directly influence the way political parties act due to their actions of bribery. They play a major role in how politicians act because they pay for the elections of certain politicians that would favor their corporation financially.
Therefore it is important to follow the actions of many world wide corporations that can be affecting the world we live in. The State centric view of the world is very naive and closed off compared to the transnational view. In a State centric approach Governments only deal with each other and International Governmental organizations. On the other hand in a Transnational view of the world IGO’s, NGO’s, Governments, the public and other groups influence the process of world politics. I personally feel that a State-Centric approach to world politics is almost impossible to achieve.
There are just not enough actors that are shown in the state centric approach. In contrast the transnational approach really shows how all of the influential actors are working together and are affecting each other. There are so many groups in this world that are trying to act independent from the state itself. They can significantly change the behavior and actions that the states act upon. This means that the traditional actions of state like security and military are not the most important. This is because all the other actors put together make it essential for the nation-state to interact with the non-state actors.