Power Shift

Author(s): Jessica T. Mathews

Reviewed work(s):
Source: Foreign Affairs, Vol. 76, No. 1 (Jan. - Feb., 1997), pp. 50-66
Published by: Council on Foreign Relations
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 Power Shift

Jessica T.Mathews

THE RISE OF GLOBAL CIVIL SOCIETY

The end of the Cold War has brought no mere adjustment among
states but a novel redistribution of power among states, markets, and
civil society. National governments are not in
simply losing autonomy
a economy. They are sharing powers?including
globalizing political,
social, and security roles at the core of sovereignty?with businesses,
with international and with a multitude of citizens
organizations,
groups, known as (ngos). The
nongovernmental organizations
steady concentration of power in the hands of states that began in
1648 with the Peace of is over, at least for awhile.1
Westphalia
The absolutes of theWestphalian system?territorially fixed states
where of value lies within some state's borders; a
everything single,
secular authority governing each territory and representing it outside
its borders; and no authority above states?are all dissolving.
resources and threats that matter,
Increasingly, including money,
information, pollution, and popular culture, circulate and shape lives
and economies with little regard for political boundaries. International
standards of conduct are to override claims of
gradually beginning
or the most states find
national regional singularity. Even powerful
the marketplace and international public opinion compelling them
more often to follow a course.
particular
The state's central task of assuring security is the least affected,
but still not exempt. War will not disappear, but with the shrinkage
of U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, the transformation of the

Jessica T. Mathews is a Senior Fellow at the Council on

Foreign
Relations.

[50]
 Power Shift

Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty into a permanent covenant in 1995,

agreement on the Test Ban treaty
long-sought Comprehensive
in 1996, and the likely entry into force of the Chemical Weapons
Convention in 1997, the security threat to states from other states is
on a downward course. Nontraditional threats, however, are rising?
terrorism, organized crime, drug trafficking, ethnic conflict, and
the combination of
rapid population growth, environmental
decline, and poverty that breeds economic stagnation, political
and, sometimes, state collapse. The nearly 100 armed
instability,
conflicts since the end of the Cold War have virtually all been
intrastate affairs. Many began with governments acting against
their own citizens, through extreme corruption, violence, incompe
tence, or complete breakdown, as in Somalia.
These trends have fed a growing sense that individuals'
security
may not in fact reliably derive from their nation's security. A com
peting notion of "human security" is creeping around the edges of
official thinking, that security be viewed as
suggesting emerging
from the conditions of daily life?food, shelter, employment,
health, public safety?rather than flowing downward from a country's

foreign relations and military strength.

The most powerful engine of change in the relative decline
of states and the rise of nonstate actors is the computer and
telecommunications revolution, whose deep political and social
consequences have been almost completely ignored. Widely accessible
and affordable has broken governments' on
technology monopoly
the collection and management of large amounts of information
and deprived governments of the deference they enjoyed because
of it. In every sphere of activity, instantaneous access to information
and the ability to put it to use multiplies the number of players who
matter and reduces the number who command great authority.
The effect on the loudest voice?which has been government's?
has been the greatest.

By drastically reducing the

importance of proximity, the new

technologies change people's perceptions of community. Fax machines,

^he author would like to acknowledge the contributions of the authors often case
studies for the Council on Foreign Relations study group, "Sovereignty, Nonstate
Actors, and aNew World Politics," on which this article is based.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS January/February 1997 [51]

 Jessica T Mathews

satellite hookups, andthe Internet connect people across borders

with exponentially ease while
growing separating them from natural
and historical associations within nations. In this sense a powerful
force, they can also have the opposite effect, amplifying
globalizing
and social fragmentation more and more
political by enabling
identities and interests scattered around the globe to coalesce and thrive.
These have the to divide new
technologies potential society along
lines, separating ordinary people from elites with the wealth and
education to command technology's power. Those elites are not only
the rich but also citizens groups with transnational interests and identi
ties that frequently have more in common with counterparts in other
countries, whether industrialized or developing, than with countrymen.
Above all, the information technologies disrupt hierarchies,
power among more and groups. In drastically
spreading people
lowering the costs of communication, consultation, and coordination,
they favor decentralized networks over other modes of organization.
In a network, individuals or groups link for joint action without
a or formal institutional presence. Networks have
building physical
no person at the top and no center. Instead,
they have multiple
nodes where collections of individuals or groups interact for
different purposes. Businesses, citizens organizations, ethnic
groups, and crime cartels have all readily adopted the network
model. Governments, on the other hand, are hierarchies,
quintessential
wedded to an form with all that the
organizational incompatible
new make possible.
technologies
nonstate actors are not without
Today's powerful precedent.
The British East India Company ran a subcontinent, and a
few influential ngos go back more than a century. But these are

exceptions. Both in numbers and in impact, nonstate actors have

never before their current strength. And a still
approached larger
role likely lies ahead.

DIAL LOCALLY, ACT GLOBALLY

No one knows how many ngos there are or how fast the tally is
are One widely cited es
growing. Published figures badly misleading.
timate claims there are 35,000 ngos in the developing countries;

FOREIGN AFFAIRS'Volume76No. 1
[52]
 Power Shift

another to 12,000 irrigation cooperatives in South Asia alone.

points
In fact, it is impossible to measure a
swiftly growing universe that in
cludes neighborhood, professional, service, and advocacy groups,
both secular and church-based, every conceivable cause
promoting
and funded by donations, fees, foundations, governments, interna
tional oganizations, or the sale of and services. The true
products
number is certainly in the millions, from the tiniest village associa
tion to influential but modestly funded international groups like
to like
Amnesty International larger global activist organizations
Greenpeace and giant service providers like _
care, which has an annual budget of nearly are NGOs able to
$400 million.
Except in China, Japan, the Middle push around even the
East, and a few other places where culture
largest governments.
or authoritarian governments severely
limit civil society, ngos' role and influence
have exploded in the last half-decade. Their financial resources and?
often more important?their expertise, approximate and sometimes
exceed those of smaller governments and of international organiza
tions. "We have less money and fewer resources than Amnesty
International, and we are the arm of the U.N. for human rights,"
noted Ibrahima Fall, head of the U.N. Centre for Human Rights,
in 1993. "This is clearly ridiculous." Today ngos deliver more official

development assistance than the entire U.N. system (excluding the

World Bank and the International Monetary Fund). In many coun
tries they are the services?in urban and rural community
delivering
development, education, and health care?that faltering govern
ments can no
longer manage.
The range of these groups' work is almost as broad as their interests.
new ideas; advocate, protest, and mobilize
They breed public support;
do legal, scientific, technical, and policy analysis; provide services;
shape, implement, monitor, and enforce national and international
commitments; and change institutions and norms.
ngos are able to even the
Increasingly, push around largest
governments. When the United States and Mexico set out to reach
a trade agreement, the two governments on the usual
planned
narrowly defined negotiations behind closed doors. But ngos had a

FOREIGN AFFAIRS January/FebruaryI?97 [53]

 Jessica T.Mathews

very different vision. Groups from Canada, the United States, and
Mexico wanted to see in the North American Free
provisions
Trade Agreement on health and safety, transboundary pollution,
consumer labor child labor,
protection, immigration, mobility,
sustainable agriculture, social charters, and debt relief. Coalitions
of ngos formed in each country and across both borders. The

opposition they generated in early 1991 endangered congressional

approval of the crucial "fast track" negotiating authority for the U.S.
government. After months of resistance, the Bush administration
capitulated, opening the agreement to environmental and labor
concerns. progress in other trade venues will be slow, the
Although
tightly closed world of trade negotiations has been changed forever.
is fundamental to ngos' new clout. The
Technology nonprofit
Association for Progressive Communications ngos in
provides 50,000
133 countries access to the tens of millions of Internet users for the price
of a local call. The dramatically lower costs of international communi
cation have altered ngos' goals and changed international outcomes.
Within hours of the first gunshots of the Chiapas rebellion in southern
Mexico in January 1994, for example, the Internet swarmed with mes
sages from human rights activists. The worldwide media attention they
and their groups focused on Chiapas, along with the influx of rights ac
tivists to the area, sharply limited theMexican government's response.
What in other times would have been a bloody insurgency turned out
to be a conflict. "The shots lasted ten days," Jos?
largely nonviolent
ever since,
Angel Gurria, Mexico's foreign minister, later remarked, "and
the war has been ... awar on the Internet."
ngos' easy reach behind other states' borders forces governments
to consider domestic in countries with which
public opinion they
are even on matters that governments have
dealing, traditionally
handled between themselves. At the same time, cross-border
strictly
NGO networks offer citizens groups unprecedented channels of
influence. Women's and human rights groups in many developing
countries have linked up with more experienced, better funded, and
more
powerful groups in Europe and the United States. The latter
work the global media and lobby their own governments to pressure
leaders in developing countries, a circle of influence that is
creating
accelerating change in many parts of the world.

[54] FOREIGN AFFAIRS-Volume 76No. 1

 Power Shift -

OUT OF THE HALLWAY, AROUND THE TABLE

In international as with
governments at home,
organizations,
ngos were once largely relegated
to the hallways. Even when they
were able to as the Helsinki Watch
shape governments' agendas,
human rights groups did in the Conference on
Security and Cooper
ation in Europe in the 1980s, their influence was largely determined
own to be.
by how receptive their government's delegation happened
Their only option was to work through governments.
All that changed with the negotiation of the global climate treaty,

culminating at the Earth Summit inRio de Janeiro in 1992.

With the
broader independent base of public support that environmental
groups command, ngos set the original goal of negotiating an

agreement to control greenhouse gases long before governments were

to do so, most of its structure and content, and
ready proposed
lobbied and mobilized public pressure to force through a pact that
no one else
virtually thought possible when the talks began.
More members of ngos served on government delegations than
ever before, and
they penetrated deeply into official decision-making.
were allowed to attend the small
They working group meetings where
the real decisions in international are made. The
negotiations tiny
nation of Vanuatu turned its delegation over to an ngo with expertise
in international law (a group based in London and funded by an
American foundation), thereby making itself and the other sea-level
island states major players in the fight to control global warming. ECO,
an was best source of
NGO-published daily newspaper, negotiators'
information on the progress of the official talks and became the forum
where governments tested ideas for breaking deadlocks.
Whether from developing or developed countries, ngos were tightly
organized in a global and half a dozen regional Climate Action
Networks, which were able to bridge North-South differences among
governments that many had expected would prevent an agreement.
United in their passionate a treaty, ngos would out
pursuit of fight
contentious issues among themselves, then take an agreed position to
their respective delegations. When they could not agree, ngos served
as invaluable back channels,
letting both sides know where the other's
or where a
problems lay compromise might be found.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS January/February1997 ?55J

 Jessica X Mathews

As a result, the framework of a global climate

delegates completed
a
accord in the blink of diplomat's eye?16 months?over the opposition
of the three energy superpowers, the United States, Russia, and Saudi
Arabia. The treaty entered into force in record time just two years later.
a framework accord whose are
Although only binding requirements
still to be negotiated, the treaty could force sweeping changes in energy
use, with potentially enormous
implications for every economy.
The influence of ngos at the climate talks has not yet been
matched in any other arena, and indeed has provoked a backlash
among some governments. A handful of authoritarian regimes, most
notably China, led the charge, but many others share their unease
about the role ngos are assuming. Nevertheless, ngos have worked
their way into the heart of international and into the
negotiations
of international new
day-to-day operations organizations, bringing
a voice to groups outside
priorities, demands for procedures that give
government, and new standards of accountability.

ONE WORLD BUSINESS

The multinational
corporations of the 1960s were virtually all
American, and prided themselves on their
insularity. Foreigners
run subsidiaries, but were never partners. A
might they foreign posting
was a setback for a executive.
rising
Today,
a
global marketplace is developing for retail sales as well as

manufacturing. Law, advertising, business consulting, and financial

and other services are also marketed Firms of all
internationally.
nationalities to look and act like locals wherever
attempt they operate.
skills and abroad are an asset,
Foreign language lengthy experience
and increasingly a for top management. Sometimes
requirement,
are not even in a
corporate headquarters company's home country.
Amid shifting alliances and joint ventures, made possible by
computers and advanced communications, nationalities blur.
Offshore evasion of national taxes.
banking encourages widespread
Whereas the fear in the 1970s was that multinationals would become
an arm of government, the concern now is that they are disconnecting
from their home countries' national interests, moving jobs, evading
taxes, and eroding economic sovereignty in the process.

[56] FOREIGN AFFAIRS Volume76No.1

 Power Shift
The even more of financial markets has left
rapid globalization
governments far behind. Where governments once set foreign exchange
rates, private currency traders, accountable only to their bottom line,
now trade $1.3 trillion a 100 times the volume of world trade. The
day,
amount exceeds the total reserves of all governments,
foreign exchange
and ismore than even an alliance of strong states can buck.

Despite the enormous attention given to governments' conflicts

over trade rules,
private capital flows have been growing twice as fast as
trade for years. International portfolio trans
actions by U.S. investors, 9 percent of U.S.
GDP in 1980, had grown to 135percent of gdp Nowadays governments
in Germany, have only the appearance
by 1993. Growth Britain, and
elsewhere has-been even more rapid. Direct of free choice when they
investment has surged aswell. All in all, the
set out to make rules.
global financial market will grow to a stag
gering $83 trillion by 2000, a 1994McKinsey
& Co. study estimated, triple the aggregate gdp of the affluent nations
of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
has been a
Again, technology driving force, shifting financial
clout from states to the market with its offer of
unprecedented speed in
transactions?states cannot match market reaction times measured in
seconds?and its dissemination of financial information to a broad
range of players. States could choose whether they would belong to rule
based economic systems like the gold standard, but, as former
Citicorp
chairman Walter Wriston has pointed out, they cannot withdraw from
the technology-based marketplace, unless they seek autarky and poverty.
More and more frequently today, governments have only the
appearance of free choice when set economic rules. Markets are
they
setting de facto rules enforced by their own power. States can flout
them, but the penalties are severe?loss of vital foreign capital, foreign
technology, and domestic jobs. Even the most powerful economy must
pay heed. The U.S. government could choose to rescue the Mexican
peso in 1994, for example, but it had to do so on terms designed to
satisfy the bond markets, not the countries doing the rescuing.
The forces shaping the legitimate economy are also
global
nourishing globally integrated crime?which U.N. officials peg at
a staggering $750 billion a year, $400 billion to $500 billion ofthat in

FOREIGN AFFAIRS- 1997

January/February
 Jessica T.Mathews

narcotics, according to U.S. Drug Enforcement estimates.

Agency
Huge increases in the volume of goods and people crossing borders and

competitive pressures to speed the flow of trade by easing inspections

and reducing paperwork make it easier to hide contraband. Deregu
lation and privatization of government-owned businesses, modern
communications, rapidly shifting commercial alliances, and the
emergence of global financial systems have all helped transform local
drug operations into global enterprises. The largely unregulated multi
trillion-dollar pool of money in supranational cyberspace, accessible by

computer 24 hours a day, eases the drug trade's toughest problem: trans
sums of hot cash into investments in
forming huge legitimate business.
Globalized crime is a security threat that neither police nor the
state's traditional responses?can meet. it
military?the Controlling
will require states to pool their efforts and to establish unprecedented
cooperation with the private sector, thereby compromising two cher
ished sovereign roles. If states fail, if criminal groups can continue to
take advantage of porous borders and transnational financial spaces
while governments are limited to within their own
acting territory,
crime will have the winning edge.

BORN-AGAIN INSTITUTIONS

Until recently, international organizations were institutions of, by,

and for nation-states. Now they are building constituencies of their own
to the
and, through ngos, establishing direct connections peoples of the
world. The shift is infusing them with new life and influence, but it is
also creating tensions.
States feel they need more capable international organizations to deal
with a lengthening list of transnational challenges, but at the same time
fear competitors. Thus they vote for new forms of international inter
vention while reasserting sovereignty's first principle: no interference in
the domestic affairs of states. They hand international organizations
new and then rein them inwith circumscribed
sweeping responsibilities
or states ambivalent about inter
mandates inadequate funding. With
vention, a host of new problems demanding attention, and ngos bursting
with energy, ideas, and calls for a larger role, international organizations
are an but certainly different, future.
lurching toward unpredictable,

[58] FOREIGN AFFAIRS Volume76No.1

 Power Shift
International are still to terms with
organizations coming
growth in the volume of international
problem-solving.
unprecedented
Between 1972 and 1992 the number of environmental treaties rocketed
from a few dozen to more than 900. While collaboration in other
fields is not growing at quite that rate, treaties, regimes, and inter
governmental institutions dealing with _
human rights, trade, narcotics,
antiterrorism
corruption,
measures,
No longer of, by, and
crime, refugees,
arms control, and democracy are for the nation-state,
multiply
ing. "Soft law" in the form of guidelines, international institutions
recommended reso
practices, nonbinding
lurch toward change.
lutions, and the like is also rapidly expand
new agreement are scien
ing. Behind each
tists and lawyers who worked on it, diplomats who negotiated it, and
ngos that back it, most of them committed for the long haul. The
new also includes a influential class of in
constituency burgeoning,
ternational civil servants responsible for implementing, monitoring,
and enforcing this enormous new body of law.
At the same time, governments, while ambivalent about the
international community mixing in states' domestic affairs, have driven
some two. In the
gaping holes in the wall that has separated the
after the Berlin Wall came down, international
triumphant months
accords, particularly ones agreed on by what is now the Organization for

Security and Cooperation in Europe and by the Organization of Amer

ican States (oas), drew explicit links between democracy, human rights,
and international security, establishing new legal bases for international
interventions. In 1991 the U.N. General Assembly declared itself in favor
of humanitarian intervention without the request or consent of the state
involved. A year later the Security Council took the unprecedented step
of authorizing the use of force "on behalf of civilian populations" in So
malia. Suddenly an interest in citizens began to compete with, and oc

casionally override, the formerly unquestioned state interests.

primacy of
Since 1990 the Security Council has declared a formal threat to
international peace and security 61 times, after having done so only six
times in the preceding 45 years. It is not that security has been abruptly
and terribly threatened; rather, the change reflects the broadened
scope of what the international now feels it should
community poke

FOREIGN AFFAIRS January/February1997 [59]

 Jessica T.Mathews

its nose into. As with Haiti in 1992, many of the so-called vu

Chapter
resolutions authorizing forceful intervention concerned domestic
situations that involved awful human suffering or offended international
norms but to international peace.
posed little if any danger
Almost as intrusive as a vu intervention,
Chapter though always
invited, election monitoring has also become a growth industry. The
United Nations monitored no election in a member state
during the
Cold War, only in colonies. But beginning in 1990 it to a
responded
deluge of requests from governments that felt compelled to prove
their legitimacy new standards.
by the In Latin America, where
countries most jealously guard their sovereignty, the oas monitored
11 national elections in four years.
And monitoring is no longer the passive observation itwas in ear
out a
lier decades. Carried by close-knit mix of international organiza
tions and ngos, it involves a large foreign presence dispensing advice
and recommending standards for voter registration, campaign law,
campaign practices, and the training of clerks and judiciaries. Ob
servers even carry out vote counts that can block fraud but at
parallel
the same time second-guess the integrity of national counts.
International financial institutions, too, have inserted themselves
more into states' domestic affairs. During the 1980s theWorld Bank
attached conditions to loans concerning
recipient governments' poli
cies on poverty, the environment, and even, occasionally, military
a once sacrosanct domain of national In 1991 a
spending, prerogative.
statement of bank policy holding that "efficient and accountable
pub
lic sector management" is crucial to economic growth provided the ra
tionale for subjecting to international oversight everything from official
to government competence.
corruption
Beyond involving them in an array of domestic economic and social
decisions, the new policies force theWorld Bank, the International
Monetary Fund, and other international financial institutions to forge
alliances with business, ngos, and civil society if they are to achieve
broad changes in target countries. In the process, they have opened
themselves to the same demands are of their clients:
they making
broader public participation and greater openness in decision-making.
As a result, yet another set of doors behind which only officials sat has
been thrown open to the private sector and to civil society.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS-Volume76No. 1
[60]
 Power Shift

LEAPS OF IMAGINATION

After three and a half centuries, it requires amental leap

to think
of world politics in any terms other than occasionally cooperating
but generally competing states, each defined by its territory and
all the people therein. Nor is it easy to
representing imagine political
entities that could compete with the emotional attachment of a
shared landscape, national history, language, flag, and currency.
Yet history proves that there are alternatives other than tribal anar
both tightly and loosely ruled, achieved success and
chy. Empires,
won In the Middle emperors, dukes,
allegiance. Ages, kings,
knights, popes, archbishops, guilds, and cities exercised overlapping
secular power over the same territory in a system that looks much
more like amodern, three-dimensional network than the clean-lined,
hierarchical state
order that replaced it. The now is
question
whether there are new geographic or functional entities that might
grow up alongside the state, taking over some of its powers and
emotional resonance.

The kernels of several such entities

already exist. The European
Union is the most obvious Neither a union of states nor an
example.
international organization, the eu leaves experts groping for inadequate
like "post-sovereign or
descriptions system" "unprecedented hybrid."
It respects members' borders for some purposes, particularly in foreign
and defense policy, but ignores them for others. The union's judiciary
can override national law, and its Council of Ministers can overrule
certain domestic executive decisions. In its thousands
of councils,
committees, and working groups, national ministers increasingly find
themselves working with their counterparts from other countries to
oppose colleagues in their own government; agriculture ministers,
for example, ally against finance ministers. In this sense the union
penetrates and to some extent weakens the internal bonds of its
member states. Whether Frenchmen, Danes, and Greeks will ever
think of themselves first as Europeans remains to be seen, but the eu
has already come much further than most Americans realize.
Meanwhile, units below the national level are on formal in
taking
ternational roles. Nearly all 50American states have trade offices abroad,
up from four in 1970, and all have official standing in theWorld Trade

FOREIGN AFFAIRS- January/February1997 [ 61 ]

 Jessica T Mathews

Organization (wto). German L?nder and British local governments

at eu s
have offices headquarters in Brussels. France Rh?ne-Alpes region,
centered in Lyon, maintains what it calls "embassies" abroad on behalf of
a
regional economy that includes Geneva, Switzerland, and Turin, Italy.
Emerging political identities not linked to territory pose a more
direct challenge to the fixed state system. The wto
geographically
_ is struggling to find a method of handling
environmental in the global com
The shift from national disputes
mons, outside all states' boundaries, that the
to another allegiance General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade,
will be a cultural and drafted 50 years ago, simply never envisioned.
a
Proposals have been floated for Parliamen
political earthquake. taryAssembly in theUnited Nations, parallel
to the General to represent the
Assembly,
are under discussion that
people rather than the states of the world. Ideas
would give ethnic nations political and legal status, so that the Kurds,
for example, could be legally represented as a people in addition to being
Turkish, Iranian, or Iraqi citizens.
Further in the future is a proposed Global Environmental

Authority with independent regulatory powers. This is not as

far-fetched as it sounds. The burden of participating in several hundred
international environmental bodies is heavy for the richest governments
and is becoming prohibitive for others. As the number of international
agreements mounts, the pressure to streamline the system?in
environmental as in other areas?will grow.
protection
The realm of most rapid change is hybrid authorities that include
state and nonstate bodies such as the International Telecommunications
Union, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, and hun
dreds more. In many of these, businesses or ngos take on formerly public
roles. The Geneva-based International Standards Organization, essen
a sets on
tially business ngo, widely observed standards everything from
to internal corporate
products procedures. The International Securities
Markets Association, another private regulator, oversees international
trade in private securities markets?the world s second-largest capital
market government bond markets. In another crossover,
after domestic
markets become government enforcers when they adopt treaty standards
as the basis for market
judgments. States and ngos are collaborating

FOREIGN AFFAIRS' Volume76No. 1

[62]
 Power Shift

ad hoc in large-scale humanitarian relief operations that involve both

ngos have taken on
military and civilian forces. Other standing opera
tional roles for international organizations in refugee work and devel
opment assistance. Almost unnoticed, hybrids like these, inwhich states
are often the are a new international norm.
junior partners, becoming

FOR BETTER OR WORSE?

A world that ismore adaptable and inwhich power ismore diffused

could mean more peace, justice, and capacity tomanage the burgeoning
interconnected a time of
list of humankind's problems. At accelerating
ngos are to new
change, quicker than governments respond to
demands and opportunities. Internationally, in both the poorest and
richest countries, ngos, when adequately funded, can outperform
government in the delivery of many public services. Their growth,
can
along with that of the other elements of civil society, strengthen the
fabric of the many still-fragile democracies. And they are better than
governments at dealing with that grow slowly and affect
problems
society through their cumulative effect on individuals?the "soft"
threats of environmental
degradation, denial of human rights, population
growth, poverty, and lack of development that may already be causing
more deaths in conflict than are traditional acts of
aggression.
As the computer and telecommunications revolution continues,
ngos will become more across national
capable of large-scale activity
borders. Their loyalties and orientation, like those of international civil
servants and citizens of non-national entities like the eu, are better
matched than those of governments to problems that demand transna
tional solutions. International ngos and cross-border networks of local
groups have bridged North-South differences that in earlier years para
lyzed cooperation among countries.
On the economic can avoid
front, expanding private markets
economically destructive but politically seductive such
policies,
as excessive or to which
borrowing overly burdensome taxation,
governments succumb. Unhindered by ideology, private capital flows
to where it is best treated and thus can do the most good.
International a
organizations, given longer rein by governments
and connected to the grassroots ties with ngos, could,
by deepening

FOREIGN AFFAIRS January/February1997 [63]

 Jessica T.Mathews
on
with adequate funding, take larger roles in global housekeeping
(transportation, communications, environment, health), security
of mass destruction,
(controlling weapons preventive diplomacy,
peacekeeping), human rights, and emergency relief. As various
the funds could come
international panels have suggested, from fees
on international activities, such as currency transactions and air
of state appropriations. new force on
travel, independent Finally, that
the global scene, international public opinion, informed by worldwide
media coverage and mobilized can be
by ngos, extraordinarily potent
in getting things done, and done quickly.
There are at least asmany reasons, however, to believe that the con

tinuing diffusion of power away from nation-states will mean more

conflict and less problem-solving both within states and among them.
For all their strengths, ngos are special interests, albeit not motivated
most
by personal profit. The best of them, the ablest and passionate,
often suffer most from tunnel vision, judging every public act by how
it affects their particular interest. Generally, they have limited capacity
as to sustain
for large-scale endeavors, and they grow, the need growing
can the of mind and
budgets compromise independence approach
that is their greatest asset.
A society inwhich the piling up of special interests replaces a single
strong voice for the common good is unlikely to fare well. Single-issue
voters, asAmericans know all too well, polarize and freeze public debate.
In the longer run, a stronger civil society could also be more fragmented,
aweakened sense of common identity and purpose and less
producing
to invest in or
willingness public goods, whether health and education
roads and ports. More and more groups promoting worthy but narrow
causes could threaten democratic government.
ultimately
Internationally, excessive pluralism could have similar consequences.
Two hundred nation-states is a barely manageable number. Add hundreds
of influential nonstate forces?businesses, ngos, international organiza
tions, ethnic and religious groups?and the international system may

represent more voices but be unable to advance any of them.

Moreover, there are roles that only the state?at least among today's
are the
polities?can perform. States only nonvoluntary political unit,
the one that can impose order and is invested with the power to tax.
states will encourage conflict, as they have inAfrica,
Severely weakened

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-Volume
 Power Shift

Central America, and elsewhere. Moreover, it may be that only the

nation-state can meet crucial social needs that markets do not value.
amodicum of job security, avoiding higher unemployment,
Providing
preserving
a livable environment and a stable climate, and protecting
consumer health and are but a few of the tasks that could be left
safety
a
dangling in world of expanding markets and retreating states.
More international decision-making will also exacerbate the so
called democratic deficit, as decisions that elected representatives
once made shift to unelected international bodies; this is already a
sore eu members. It also arises when are forced
point for legislatures
to make a on
single take-it-or-leave-it judgment huge international
agreements, like the several-thousand-page Uruguay Round trade
accord. With citizens already feeling that their national governments
do not hear individual voices, the trend could well provoke deeper and
more
dangerous alienation, which in turn could trigger new ethnic
and even religious separatism. The end result could be a proliferation
of states too weak for either individual economic success or effective
international cooperation.
fearsome dislocations are bound to accompany the weaken
Finally,
an in
ing of the central institution of modern society. The prophets of
ternetted world inwhich national identities gradually fade, proclaim its
nature and yet believe the
revolutionary changes will be wholly benign.
to some other
They won't be. The shift from national political allegiance,
if it comes, will be an emotional, cultural, and political earthquake.

DISSOLVING AND EVOLVING

Might the in state power prove transitory? Present disen

decline
chantment with national governments could dissipate as quickly as it
arose. a
Continuing globalization may well spark vigorous reassertion of
economic or cultural nationalism. By helping solve problems govern
ments cannot handle, business, ngos, and international
organizations
may actually be strengthening the nation-state system.
These are all possibilities, but the clash between the fixed geography
of states and the nonterritorial nature of today's problems and solutions,
which is only likely to escalate, strongly suggests that the relative
power of states will continue to decline. Nation-states may simply no

FOREIGN AFFAIRS -January/February 1997 [65]

 Jessica X Mathews

longer be the natural problem-solving unit. Local government

a
addresses citizens' growing desire for role in decision-making, while
even
transnational, regional, and global entities better fit the dimensions
of trends in economics, resources, and security.
The evolution of information and communications
technology,
which has just begun, will probably
only heavily favor nonstate
entities, those not yet envisaged, over states. The new
including
over the
technologies encourage noninstitutional, shifting networks
fixed bureaucratic hierarchies that are the hallmark of the single-voiced
sovereign state. They dissolve issues' and institutions' ties to a fixed

place. And by greatly empowering individuals, they weaken the relative

attachment to of which the preeminent one in modern
community,
society is the nation-state.
If current trends continue, the international system 50 years hence
will be profoundly different. During the transition, theWestphalian
system and an one will exist side by side. States will set the
evolving
rules by which all other actors operate, but outside forces will increasingly
make decisions for them. In using business, ngos, and international
to address cannot or do not want to take
organizations problems they
on, states will, more often than not, inadvertently weaken themselves
further. Thus governments' to fund inter
unwillingness adequately
national organizations helped ngos move from a peripheral to a central
role in shaping multilateral agreements, since the ngos provided expertise
the international organizations lacked. At least for a time, the transition
is likely to weaken rather than bolster the world's capacity to solve its

problems. If states, with the overwhelming share of power, wealth, and

can do less, less will get done.
capacity,
Whether the rise of nonstate actors ultimately turns out to be
news or bad will on whether can launch itself
good depend humanity
on a course of as it did after World War 11.
rapid social innovation,
Needed adaptations include a business sector that can shoulder a
broader policy role, ngos that are less parochial and better able to
operate on a
large scale, international institutions that can
serve the dual masters of states and citizenry, and, above
efficiently
all, new institutions and political entities that match the transnational
scope of today's challenges while meeting citizens' demands for
accountable democratic
governance.?

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