Courses

This seminar examines theoretic and empirical literatures that focus on the roles and impacts of private actors in international politics. We explore how different scholars have defined and conceptualized private authority in transnational affairs. We focus on how non-state actors contribute to the production and maintenance of order in the international system through public-private partnerships, interest-group mechanisms, instances of express or implicit delegation of regulatory tasks (the ‘privatization’ of governance), and through strategic behavior within existing regulatory frameworks. We also explore how and why private actors may challenge, or undermine, public modes of international and transnational governance.