Features and Role of Non Sovereign Actors in IR with relevant Case Studies

When the 1994 genocide unfolded in Rwanda, it was a United Nations peacekeeping mission — not a single powerful state — that was supposed to stop it, and failed to. A year later, in a different kind of crisis, it was often a medical charity, not a government, first on the ground. Neither actor held territory or armies of its own, yet both mattered enormously to how events actually played out. This topic asks what non-sovereign actors are actually made of, and what they do, once you get past the label.

In two minutes

Non-sovereign actors in IR — international organisations, NGOs, companies, and others — share a set of common features (no territory or sovereignty of their own, transnational reach, dependence on resources and legitimacy rather than force) and play recurring roles (service delivery, monitoring and advocacy, agenda-setting, and economic development), which case studies from UN peacekeeping to microfinance illustrate.

The rest of this chapter

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