Non-state Actors Challenge Sovereignty

The more connected our world becomes the more challenging it is for a state actor to maintain their full autonomy. The frequent convergence of power, ideas, and interests that takes place in a globalized world forces states to negotiate with one another causing shifts in the roles of actors. Furthermore, “states share the stage with a wide variety of non-state or sovereign-free actors” (161). Therefore, globalization may be regarded as a threat to national sovereignty because diversification and the rise of new agencies causes transformations in the way in which order and security are normally maintained by the sovereign state. 

 The increase in private security companies around the world marks a shift in domestic and international security governance. These private companies influence other agents and actors though their coercive capacities (Abrahamsen 14) altering the role and authority of the state. The notion that non-state actors threaten the autonomy of national sovereigns is also discussed in Transnational Organized Crime and the State. Williams asserts that criminal organizations undermine a state’s power through coercion and corruption. While operating outside the system of rules, the organization is able to reshape society’s structure by filling in capacity gaps. In Security Beyond the State, Abrahamsen and Williams argue that “privatization and globalization are not simply forces eroding the state, as states have themselves actively participated in their own partial disassembly. (3)” Private security companies and criminal organizations differ in many ways, especially in their function and configuration, or legitimacy, but both groups have the ability to influence the sovereign states power and authority. Their existence as “resources and threats...shape lives and economies with little regard for political boundaries [which] threatens the intersection of sovereignty and territory. (Williams 162)” I think it is fair to say that weak states, or actors who choose to pass on certain responsibilities to other actors, put themselves at risk of losing some authority and thus, change political landscapes.

References
Phil Williams, “Transnational Organized Crime and the State,” in The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance, ed. Tom Biersteker and Rodney Bruce Hall (Cambridge, 2002).
Rita Abramson and Michael C. Williams, “Security beyond the State: Global Security Assemblages in International Politics,” International Political Sociology 3:1 (2009).

Comments

  1. AnonymousAugust 8, 2018 at 2:30 PM

    I definitely agree, I also think that just as there is an increased need for private companies, there is an increased amount of non-state actors for states to deal with. Non-state hackers, groups like ISIS, these are all non-state actors that sometimes require answers from organizations other than the state. If the state cannot stop violence, it might be up to private companies to step in and defend their territory, or provide expertise on subjects that the state may be unequipped to do alone.

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