Suchergebnisse

Despite the challenges of the geopolitical divisions of the interwar years, the International Federation of League of Nations Societies (IFLNS) brought together associations claiming to promote the ideals of the League of Nations in forty countries. It pioneered techniques for the lobbying of intergovernmental organizations that were so extensive that some considered it a "third chamber" of the League of Nations, and in areas such as its minorities work the Federation's independent policy initiatives may be considered to be precursors to present‐day "politics beyond the state." Based largely on hitherto neglected publications and archives of the IFLNS, this is the first article to evaluate specifically the work of a body that at the time was often considered to be the leading international nongovernmental organization for the promotion of peace between the world wars. The article introduces the evolution of the IFLNS and explores its national and international work in turn.

Review essay on books by (1) Paul J. Nelson & Ellen Dorsey, New Rights Advocacy: Changing Strategies of Development and Human Rights NGOs (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2008) & (2) Jonathan Graudbart, Legalizing Transnational Activism: The Struggle to Gain Social Change from NAFTA's Citizen Petitions (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008).

Abstract
Scholarship drawing from a wide array of perspectives including field theoretical and functional differentiation approaches has shed increasing light on the sectoral dimensions of world politics. In contrast to dominant approaches emphasizing hierarchy and power in relations between global fields, this article offers a novel interpretive framework for understanding how diverse fields, systems, or sectors may interact and facilitate change in world politics beyond the operation of established hierarchies and power dynamics. Taking forward the previously underutilized concept of symbolically generalized media of communication, this article elucidates two processes of international political change by which different fields, systems, or sectors may transform world politics. The first process, lateral retreat, is illustrated with reference to the case study of the Protestant Reformation, in which internal changes in the religious field facilitated the development of an increasingly autonomous political domain. The second process, lateral penetration, is illustrated with reference to the international political response to the climate change and Covid-19 crises, in which the scientific sector contributed toward transformed political priorities and associated hierarchies, at least in the short term. These diverse cases are used to indicate the broad potential scope of application of the concept of symbolically generalized media of communication to enrich relational theorizing in the study of international relations, and to improve understanding of diverse dynamics of international political change missed in traditional power- (and anarchy-) centric accounts.