Involvement of Transnational Actors in Supplying Public Goods and Policymaking

The Future for Non-State Actors
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Steven Bernstein and Benjamin Cashore’s article titled “Can non-state governance be legitimate? An analytical framework” discusses the absence of intergovernmental and national regulations to alleviate social and environmental problems. In response to this absence, private alternatives such as self-regulation, public to private partnerships, and corporate social responsibility have emerged in great numbers. The authors assert that of the three alternatives, NMSD systems should be recognized more because they provide the optimal regulation as well as the capacity to infix global markets. NMSD systems have also burgeoned to address global issues such as mining, tourism, food production, community and rural poverty, environmental impacts from forestry, and inhumane working conditions. To delve deeper into what makes the NMSD system unique, the authors create an analytical framework to elucidate how NMSD systems aid in achieving “political systems.” The methods used for the framework include deductive and inductive elements. The framework identifies a three-step procedure that NMSD systems can use to acquire political legitimacy. Through the framework, the authors discover that actor evaluations cannot be explained by “logic of consequences” only. The authors conclude that theory testing with an all-inclusive actor motivation as well as factors that induce them is the next step that will fuel empirical research.
Questions have arisen regarding NGO’s ability to meet their long-term goals which include transformation and social justice. Rather, their focus tends to be on value for money as well as short-term results. ‘Civil society functions’ are given little attention compared to ‘service delivery functions.’ Nicola Banks, David Hulme, and Michael Edwards in their article titled “NGO’s, State, and Donors Revisited: Still Too Close for Comfort?” state that the differences in MBOs and intermediary NGOs can be used to explain this. The authors identify two factors as strengths for NGOs: their capacity to innovate and their link to the grassroots level. The authors also note that innovations by NGOs have gone down due to donor expectations, risk-averseness among donors, and early appraisal of the influence of NGO activities. NGOs ability to utilize their knowledge of local contexts, coordinate between sectors, and establish links could further strengthen their role. The authors conclude that NGOs are unlikely to respond ingeniously to the challenges they face if they remain ‘too close for comfort.’ But, by isolating separating from their reliance on donors and governments, they could become more effective in transforming entire societies.
Magdalena Bexell, Jonas Tallberg, and Anders Uhlin, in their article titled “Democracy in Global Governance: The Promises and Pitfalls of Transnational Actors,” note that global policymaking has attracted the interest of transnational actors as a method of democratizing global governance. Based on existing empirical evidence in combination with theories of democracy, the authors examine the promises and drawbacks of the involvement of transnational actors. The authors investigate how public-private partnerships and international institutions are structured as well as how they operate. As a result of this investigation, the authors discover that actor involvement has democratizing potential. Also discovered is that the practice of global governance and democratic theory present hurdles that require a more careful outlook. The authors conclude the article by outlining an agenda that recommends that more research on global governance should be conducted to investigate the conditions necessary for democracy by combining positive empirical research with normative political theory.
There exists considerable support regarding the democratizing potential of the involvement of transnational actors. Most notably, the involvement of NGOs, advocacy networks, and social movements can increase involvement in global governance because they broaden the scope of actors participati...