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For more years than I care to count, I have been teaching one of the core courses for the Master of International Affairs program at the School of International Affairs at Penn State. The course is titled "Actors, Institutions, and Legal Frameworks in International Affairs." It is described at the SIA website this way:
"This course introduces students to the various levels of international interaction and exchange (supranational, state-to-state, state-to-private, private-to-private); the sources and limitations of law and regulation at each level; and the variety of actors and institutions characteristic of each level. The course explores the roles, authority, and limitations of the institutions and actors at each level and the implications of these for domestic and transnational governance, development, human rights, commerce, migration, and civil society."
For most of those years the structuring of the course has been fairly straightforward, involving annual small contextual revisions around what seemed to be a fairly stable state of core principles from out of which the entirety of the sometimes baroque ecologists of institutional relations among recognized actors, institutions, and the legal frameworks that formalized their self-contained (only certain actors are admitted into the systems of inter- and self-relations that count) and self-referencing (only those admitted into the circle of membership counted for the dialectical relations within the group) universe of relations could be studied, analyzed, and critiqued on and in its own terms. It was fun. . . .
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It was fun examining the way that the conceptual power of a human directed process of meta-collectivization could be utilized as the ordering premise of human social relations expressed through their collective politics economics, culture, religion, etc. The Soviets thought small in the first third of the 20th century--collective farms, collective factories and the like. The idea turned on the collectivization of the individual. After 1945, the victorious allies took that idea and sought to expand it and with it the fundamental ordering principles of their political-economic model. They sought to collectivize the state as the working organs of a global system, a collective of collectives.
The idea might be described this way: that everything and everyone could be consciously organized into a collective, that organized collectives could be managed, and organized managed collectives in turn, could be organized into a collective, a collective of collectives, around which values could converge in a way that ensured stability built around a set of overarching solidarity reinforcing institutions. Those values, and those institutions, in turn were meant to overcome what at the time was referenced as "Asiatic" militarism and "European" ethno-racial-religious barbarism. Times have changed by the fundamental behaviors and values remain taboo. This effort, this conceptual core, required a re-orientation of the idea of collectivization, one grounded not in the collectivization of people, but rather in the collectivization of the State, and with it of the collectivization all manner of human interaction (economic, social, religious, cultural, identitarian, etc.), then arranging them within hierarchically situated relations with the State at its operational apex and a growing institutional techno-bureaucratic apparatus representing State collectivization as its conceptual, values producing and convergence inducing apex.
On this basis all aspects of collective life could be elaborated. It could be built on the foundations of the past, at least as to its forms (the state and the primacy of politics as the apex legitimate and authoritative expression of binding collective action, thought, values, principles, mores and the like) to the ends of assuring the self-actualization of the individual within the forms of collective types. All of this was to be managed through the State (and then delegated again to other collective organs suitable for functionally differentiated aims) that was the instrument for the realization of the convergence norms developed by the institutionalized apex institutional organs of normative values.
Indeed, on the basis of a premise that the apotheosis of the individual could only be fulfilled through the collectivization of the individual, one could produce a system in which fulfillment was a function of the collective, that the collective must converge around core values that made collectivization for stability and against chaos not just possible but permanent, and that the values around which all of this was to occur was to be embedded in a collective of collectives. From this it was almost inevitable that the contemporary products of international life emerged--for example, collective regimes of human rights grounded in individuals but ordered through collective values, the rise of collective identity around which individuals could realize themselves and form which they could understand the (collective) essence of their individuality, and the refocus of collective consciousness from individual to collective welfare maximization transposed to a global level and operated within intertwined platforms of collective self-actualization tied together by the overarching normative and discursive (values and language) frameworks of apex international organs.
Of course, this was always (at least since 1945) an organized work in progress. And it was always riven with the internal dialectics especially among sub-collectives that sought to bend this convergence apparatus toward their way of seeing the world. And there were always the stragglers--traditionalist, reactionary, and oppositional forces that contested the enterprise of collectivization either in favor of older forms (religion, for example) or anarchic forms (drawing on idealized versions of the past) or that viewed the entire enterprise of collectivization with varying degrees of horror for a variety of historical, cultural, personal or other reasons (anti-colonialist camps, for example). Beyond these were organized counter-collective collectives--international criminal organizations, and collectives that rejected the convergence based normative values around which meta-collectivization was moving forward.
But still, the process and its progress appeared stable enough and was moving predictably enough (though one ought to be cautious about suggesting that this movement had any direction other than to the fulfillment of its organizational premises) that generations of academics could build courses around it, comfortable in the assumption that this project was the "way the world was going."
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So. . . . . . that posed a challenge, at least form me, in approaching a course on "actors", "institutions" and "legal frameworks" in "international affairs" when each of these terms has now become contested, and where their expected interactions have become more contested still. Backwards or forward looking orthodoxy was out of the question, at least for me, where my object is not to advance a political, normative agenda. The challenge, then, might be usefully organized around offering students a glimpse at what is occurring--past, present and future. That glimpse becomes more useful when it goes beyond description but also where it avoids or at least exposes editorializing and judgment--allowing students access to analytics and leaving space for each to consciously apply their own lens to try to make sense of things. To what ends? Communication first; one must be able to understand others (and their own cognitive frameworks) before one can effectively understand a situation, context, etc. Analysis, second; one might better understand relations, framework, desires, and ways of rationalizing the world and thus responding to things, events, conditions, aspirations, etc., where one can project oneself out of one's own cognitive universe to understand that of others.
To that end I have tried my hand at developing a Concept Note for the course that reframes its focus and objectives hopefully to meet, if not entirely understand and frame, the realities that appear to be emerging, and with a bit of acceleration after COVID. The conceptual framing reference is collectivization--no surprise if the reader has gotten this far. That is to attempt to organize the study of "actors", "institutions" "legal frameworks" within "international affairs" around the rationalization of collectivization as a normative value, as an instrument, and as a means of managing social relations as these are currently expressed in the now more engaged contests over control of the expression of each of these aspects of collectivization. The subtext then follows: a consideration of the relationship of the individual to the collective in ordering intertwined levels of individual-collective interactions (dialectics) focusing on the collectivization States and other emerging actors in whatever passes for "the global" today.
For those interested, the Concept Note appears below.
INTAF 801
Actors, Institutions, and Legal Frameworks in International Affairs
Course Concept Statement 6 January 2026
Larry Catá Backer[1]
“Actors, Institutions, and Legal Frameworks in International Affairs” introduces students to the core principles and methods of international interaction and exchange. Interaction points to the forms used to engage with others—communication, collaboration, cooperation, association, and their opposites. These can range from the informal and serendipitous, to the formal and meticulously orchestrated. Exchange tends to be understood as a consequences of interaction; it is what interaction makes possible in terms of trade or exchange. But it also suggests the quality of the interaction—an argument, an altercation, an airing of difference. Interaction and exchange mark all behaviors among individuals, as well as the institutions and communities within which they may be situated (either by choice, birth, or circumstances). It is around these exchanges and interactions that complex webs of politics, society, economics, religion, and culture are woven.
The Normative and Structural Structure of the Course Materials: Subjects, Objects, Processes, Dialectics.
For our purposes in this course, this ecology of interaction and exchange will be considered from the interactions and exchanges among two broad but distinct categories of persons with agency--actors and institutions:
Actors: individuals, people, formal collectives (states, public and private organizations), informal collectives (identities, affiliations, etc.); and other abstract actors recognized or given form (territories organized as states; production organized as a multinational enterprises; objects (of production, symbolic, etc.)
Institutions: the formal organizational manifestation of collectives, and the manifestation of objects and processes (for example: courts are institutional expressions of law); query whether informally organized collectives can be said to be institutionalized or whether a single individual or object may be constituted an institution--that is do institutions organize collectives or are they better understood as solidified avatars of for any one or group with access to its forms and authority?
The principal focus of the structuring of those interactions and exchanges will on law and legal frameworks. In that context all other frameworks (political, social, cultural, economic, and religious) will be considered through the lens of legal frameworks around which the formal ordering of human society is to some extent and importantly organized.
Legal Frameworks: The language and principles under which individuals and institutions develop and apply rules manifested through a specific ideology of rulemaking to the construction of public (and now private) collectives; understood as the legal system-ideology of states, of the international constitution and operation of non-state actors; and of other collectives.
One way of imagining the interactions of actors, institutions, and legal frameworks is as a set of interacting closed (that is sometimes referred to as self-reflexive) systems of interacting and exchange that are produced through, memorialized by, and that produce legal standards to guide behavior and achieve legitimated and authoritative collective goals.
Nonetheless, these complex interactions of these systems themselves rest on a set of more fundamental systemic structures that provide the lens through which these interactions and systemic conceits are given meaning and form. That fundamental lens applies to all means of layering the world with meaning and of signifying objects, people, behaviors, and activity around a set of core approaches to rationalizing the world. These we can understand as the world perception (popularly even in English Weltanschauung)
Ideologies or imaginaries or “lifeworlds”: the way that knowledge is organized and rationalized through systems of interpreting, understanding and giving meaning to the world around us (Sartre, Lacan[2]). It can also be understood as shared perceptions of the meaning of reality backed by massive background consensus (Habermas[3]); or as biopolitics (the narratives through which social and political power may be normalized over the control and management of the bodies of the living and their relationship to physical and abstract objects and the technologies of control) (Foucault[4]).
The following table may prove helpful in organizing the analytical framework around which the course organizes the materials to be studied.[5]
From this framing it is now possible to more precisely state the core operating principle of this course--and the fundamental understanding around which meaning will be created and the materials presented—it is this:
(1) The global ordering in the contemporary world represents the current state of interactions and exchanges between multiple actors and institutions. These actors and institutions may understand themselves (perceive or understand themselves)and their place in the global order(s) quite differently from the way other actors and institutions perceive them or interpret their character or the meaning of their actions.
(2) The legal frameworks through which those actions and interactions are rationalized is one means, though a very significant one, to seek a common language and basis for exchange and interaction and for signaling not just a shared belief in the existence (and to some extent) meaning of action, but also its legitimacy and the authority of the actor both within their own spaces and in inter-actor activity. There are multiple legal frameworks. They share, however, certain discursive commonalities and modes of operation, and they construct a quite specific meaning universe that has served to organize the way actors, institutions, and their exchanges and interactions are perceived.
(3) Actors, institutions, and the legal frameworks through which their interactions and exchanges are rationalized can be understood only by reference to the core approaches to the way the reality within which these actions take place and these actors and institutions are constituted is given meaning. Under contemporary conditions the global order(s) multiple fundamental imaginaries now compete for shaping the meaning lenes through which legal frameworks and the actors and institutions operating within them are understood and evaluated by providing the core framework for perception--including the perception of values, objectives, taboos and the like. These complex interactive webs, in turn, serve as the basis for the great systems that now dominate life in virtually every part of the globe. The course starts with an examination of organizing system ideologies and then consider six key systems that constitute the driving elements of international interactions and exchanges.
(4) The current state of the global ordering in the contemporary world (point (1) above)) is continuing to evolve. That evolution affects the way in which one approaches contemporary perspectives on actors, institutions, and legal frameworks in a number of ways. First the concept of actor is changing substantially, as is the range of ways of inserting them (understanding what they “stand for”) in systems (political. Economic, social, religious, local, national, transnational and international). Where once there were a very limited and well defined cast of “actors” the concept of “actor” has become fluid and consensus about the nature and meaning of “actor” is no longer certain. Second, institutions are also transforming. It is not that institutions were stable, but rather that the trajectories of change now suggest conflict around the nature, role, and function of institutions within systems and how it all ought to fit together. Third, legal frameworks are undergoing substantial interrogation at every level. Legal frameworks were once also quite specifically understood. That is no longer the case, as the old well established understanding of law and legal hierarchy appears to be challenged by both private law and informal rule making regimes of all sorts.
(5) At the foundation of these changes and challenges are changes to and challenges within what had been a stable state of ruling ideologies built around a “globalist” set of premises that were used to shape conception and discussion of issues. That framework is itself now challenged (and also defended). Convergence globalists continue to serve as a potent force. However the shocks to the systems built on the foundation of those premises, starting with the attacks on New York in 2001, the financial crisis of 2006-2008, and then the renewal of the great power European wars in 2014 (almost a century after their start in 1914) have created conceptual spaces for substantial challenge and evolution in ideology and in the core remises on which they are built. Where once one could divide the world ideologically between a liberal democratic, a Marxist-Leninist, and an amalgam of post-colonialist lenses, each embracing some form of convergence globalism, that is now subject to substantial challenge. Chinese Marxist-Leninism continues to evolve in its New Era, and with it an evolution of its internationalism, now grounded in a defense of the multilateral order within a set of institutional organs within which common aims may be realized and inter-governmental dialogue may be had, while also developing its own autonomous framework around its “Silk Roads” initiatives. Liberal democracy, especially within apex OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) states has also been developing, and to some extent fracturing in their approaches to international internal. On the one end are European approaches that still embrace notions of convergence internationalism built around systems of regulatory supervision grounded in interconnected regulatory and compliance institutions within States and international organizations. On the other end is the evolution of a U.S. “America First” approach grounded in principles of sovereignty and the protection of national interests and built around the protection of transactional spaces driven by markets and guided by State organs.
(6) Lurking in the background are a host of extra-legal actors that are reshaping the “international.” These include networks of extra-legal actors that have developed their own structures of institutions, legalities, and operations that make them capable of operating as autonomous collective entities that exist beyond the life span of any of its members. One encounters here not just international criminal organizations, but also all sorts of other organizations that may seek to act autonomously of the international system built around the State and its public and private instrumentalities. Beyond those, virtual collectives and their platforms are increasingly visible in international spaces Where these organizations also operate within platforms of actors, then the possibilities of creating parallel internationalisms increases in ways that are only now becoming clearer.
The objectives of this class, then, are to provide students with an introduction to the way in which actors, institutions, legal frameworks, and grounding ideologies may be identified, and understood. But more importantly, perhaps, to begin to provide students with the tools to understand how , under what circumstances, and in what ways, even the most well settled notions of actors, institutions, and legal frameworks change over time. In that respect two sorts of changes become critical—the first is that of evolutionary change that remains fully embedded in the generative premises on which systems are built and operated; the second is that of transformative change in which the operative core premises are themselves the object of challenger and change. From that core understanding, it is then possible to provide students with the tools for identifying the contemporary approaches, and points of convergence and divergence, in the conceptualization and rationalization of global order(s) through (mostly) a legal lens.
On that basis it may be possible to add substance to the concepts around which the course is built.
Organizing Ideologies for International Affairs.
Every system, though, is made up of actors, of the institutions within which actors can engage in collective activity. Those systems require a common discourse, a means of communication built on common perceptions that can be used to institute action and build substantive programs, as well as to assess action. To that end, it become necessary to understand actors, the institutions in which they operate, and the structuring language through which such actions are given effect and meaning. This is the language of the ideologies of globalization that “are part of an extended family that translate a generalized global imaginary into competing political programs and agendas.”[6] Consideration of each of the systems identified below requires a close examination of the actors, institutions, and framing language through which these systems are constituted and operate. Each requires a slightly different approach.
A critical set of global ideologies are identified. Most attention will be paid to the dominant ideology of contemporary international affairs—the ideology of post 1945 globalization built around a very specific view of the state system It identifies the values and key premises of this ideological base and suggests its trajectories. This is a systemic ideology that reached the apex of its power in the first decades of the 21st century. It is grounded in principles of markets driven fere movement of goods, capital, investment, and to a lesser extent—people. It embraces the principle of formal equality among states and the supremacy of national law. It creates a community of states through international law that is transformed from mere contracts between states to constituting documents that create government for the management of the duties and responsibilities of states, and for the development of the values to be advanced by that community. It is also a system that encourages the delegation of authority and embraces new sources of governance and new governance actors who operate in transnational space—civil society, multinational enterprises, private standard setting bodies, religious organizations. It is also a system that is increasingly grounded in overarching cultures of compliance and accountability administered through standards overseen by bureaucracies of public and private actors.
That ideology of post 1945 globalization is now challenged and students will also consider a number of these challenging ideologies. Very briefly, these include ideologies that suggest post-global orders grounded in hierarchies built around a dominant power and organized around a set of dominant principles. These principles may determine the shape of these post-global structures, or the post-global structures may produce the principles that ten shape them. They are presented by what I would call a post-global imperialism (in the more ancient sense of systems of imperium (command or supreme authority) rather than as systems that invoke the version of imperial systems of ethno-cultural-racialized territorialism the 19th and 20th centuries). They are represented by variations of hub and spoke systems of inter-state relations which are then augmented and administered through international institutions and operationalized through deputized private actors. The America First and Chinese Belt and Road Projects may manifest moves toward this ideology. It also includes post-colonial ideologies. These have an older pedigree and arose even as contemporary globalization ideology gained dominance. Post-Colonial ideologies reject the core principles of post 1945-globalization and those of neo-imperialist schools, especially the exercise of hegemonic authority by states and the governance role of private actors. It seeks to deconstruct the current systems based on an objective of dismantling structures of power hierarchies among states and to seek a more equitable division of benefits and obligations that are components of the tasks of increasing human welfare. It is suspicious of the exercise of power beyond state borders and yet understands that community is necessary as a predicate to challenging unbalanced exercises of national power directly or through international organizations.
Each of these ideologies are manifested in the construction of systems of international affairs. Students will be introduced to the relationship between ideological perspective and the way that affects and constrains the possibility of building systems of international relations. The focus will be, initially, on introducing students to the conventional master narrative of international relations (and to re-interpret that master narrative through the lens of ideological analysis). It then considers emerging schools of international affairs, focusing students on transnational and plural law theories, and polycentricity in governance. Because one is engaged here in system building, students will also in the process be introduced to the (1) forms of legal discourse (2) in the translation of ideological positions to concrete manifestations (3) in institutional organization, (4) in the management of power and (5) in the creation of values systems (6) through which the politics, culture, and sociology of international affairs is organized.
Actors, Institutions, Law.
Framing ideologies have to frame some community and must occupy some sort of space (concrete or abstract) within which it can be manifested and applied. . In international affairs, the community through which ideologies ae manifested include three quite different sorts of structures that move from the more or less concrete t the infinitely abstract.
1. Actors. Not all actors are central to each of the five systems described above. It will be necessary to examine which actors tend to be important to a system, and to determine further, the extent to which actors are important across systems (and how that significance is understood). The defining characteristic of actors is that they “act”--that is that they are capable of agency. They have the capacity, however constituted, to set things in motion, to perform; they are those who drive other things (people, events, policy, decisions, etc.). Any one or thing, abstract or corporeal can be an actor. Part of what the student will undertake in this course is to begin to develop a method for identifying actors relevant to the study of international affairs. In that context, however, it is the character of the actors that themselves are essential elements in the understanding of the characteristics of systems, but also of the ways in which such systems will be constrained. Every actor carries with it a set or self-conceptions and principles of actions (including objectives and taboos) that are essential to their own constitution, but also critical to the way in which they operate within systems. That accumulation of those operational objectives and constraints, then provide the system with its character and the limits of evolution (and, as we will see, of reform). The identification and examination of actors, then, will play a large role in the study of the systems through which they act. But actors are also objects. In this sense they are objects that can be invested with significance, the meaning of which then attributes to it qualities and characteristics against which other actors may react. A few critical actor-objects come to mind. One is physical territory (land); another is abstract territory made real (e.g., patents). Symbols are also sectors that can be deployed by other actors, or they may be tools or aspects of other actors, engagement with which provokes response (pictural depictions of religious figures, Ikons, flags).[7]
2. Institutions. Institutions are establishments through which collectives can become a singularity; they are a thing established as well as its arrangement and characteristics. They are also a curious hybrid—like the state. On the one hand it is a singularity. An institution is spoken of and understood in the singular. And yet that singular personality is a construct—of law, of social norms and expectations, and of the collective consent of those who choose to operate within it. At the same time, institutions might be understood as collectives—as the means through which individuals can aggregate something (capital, effort, political or religious authority) and manage collective objectives, aspirations and rules to create communities of shared interest. Institutions are both the sum of its constituents as well as an organism apart from those who come together to create it. It is a means of structuring and aggregating, of collective action, but it is at the same time a singular actor. In the first half of the 21st century, institutions have also come to be understood as platforms. It is in this sense a nexus point, a space, within which other actors may operate. In this sense they can be the collectives made up of other actors. For example, the international system includes international organizations that are themselves the representative bodies of states. In this sense, states might be understood as its internal constituency (in the sense that a state is its citizens, or a corporation its shareholders). Nonetheless, such institutions may seek a measure of autonomy from states in the way that the governments of states are autonomous of its citizens or the board of directors from its shareholders. Each represents an aggregation of a collective that is distinct from any one of its members. To represent them all the institution cannot represent any one of them. Yet conventional institutions do not represent the entire universe of institutional existence. For example, markets are also institutions--a space where actors and others can bring objects for exchange. Depending on the circumstance, these different characteristics may be emphasized. But together they play a key role in understanding the way that collective organizations work. During the course of study we will consider the way that different systems approach the construction of institutions differently, and the consequences of those differences in terms of the exchanges and interactions possible among them.
3. Law. Students are fairly well used to the language of policy, at least in terms in which discourse is constructed and meaning (including values) are given to words, concepts, and taboos. They are less used to the language of law, and of business. Both the language and discourse, the way in which meaning is made and frames of reference constructed through the language of policy and law are themselves subsets of the larger framing language and discourse of core system ideologies. The six great systems to be considered, and identified below are essentially framed by and operate using language, concepts and principles that touch both on law and on business. Familiarity with legal concepts and orientation, as well as the tropes used to express (and manage) political, economic, social, and religious issues through law will be highlighted. But the language of business has also become important. We live in a word of accountability, whose rules are implemented not through the coercive police power of the state but rather by the constant and repetitive process of assessment. Accounting and accountability, risk management, and compliance will also be considered as the means through which systems are now operated. As well the differences in the ways that framing language (of law and accountability) between these systems tell the student much about how they operate and the way they are conceived. Attention will be paid to similarities and differences between systems in the way they use the language of law and of accountability.
Six Key Actor-Institutions in their Legal Frameworks in international affairs.
The combination of the framing ideologies of globalization, and the three structural components necessary to give them life, now appear to operate within six systems within which ideology and clusters of actors, institutions, and law operate to give the system its internal character and define the way in which they may interest with other systems. Together this produces the ecology within which it is possible to understand international affairs. The six foundational systems that produce the environment in which international affairs occur include: (1) the state; (2) public international organizations (including regional organizations); (3) private international organizations (civil society and multinational enterprises); (4) private transnational economic systems (MNEs, SOEs);(5) public international judicial systems; and (6) private grievance and dispute resolution systems.
1. The State and its Legal Institutional Framing System. Political systems remain the basic building blocks through which international exchanges and interactions are grounded. Until the middle of the 20th century states were deemed to be the only mechanism for such exchanges that had any authority. But the development of multilateralism, and the rise of governance authority in international public and private organizations—the structural foundations for globalization—have substantially transformed the role and function of states. Still, no understanding of international interactions and exchanges is possible without first understanding the state within these emerging webs of activity—and of governance. In that context it is important to understand the concept of the state, the meaning of sovereignty, and the basic framework within which states have developed rules for governing their inter-relations. It is also important to begin to understand that states do not appear the same from the inside and from the outside. From the outside the state appears as a unitary body corporate onto which all political authority has been vested (through the operation of whatever political theory suits its people). States are formally equal in their inter-relations; functionally the authority and power of states are based on a number of factors. But effectively all states are unequal. States may work in concert, or they may seek to act alone. But all states appear solid form the outside—a single color painted onto maps. From the inside, states may appear far less solid. While states are solid, their government can vary wildly. That variation goes not just to the organization and theory of operation of government. But it also touches on the effective extent of government control of its territory and population. Just as states can cede some authority to institutions created among a group of states, states have also ceded authority down to regions and peoples. While states ae vested the highest authority over politics, economics, and society, it may have a more complex relation with religion and with ethnic nations within a territory. But since 1945, states have also operated in the private sector. States have become enterprises (SOEs or state-owned enterprises); they have become investment vehicles (sovereign wealth fund); they have become banks and insurance companies (Ex-Im Banks). This has complicated the traditional understanding of states as public bodies regulating markets, as against private bodies participating in markets or as social actors. The highest expression of state activity is through law or permitted exercises of executive (administrative) discretion. It will be as important for the student to develop an understanding of the language (its ideologies and constraints) that states use to communicate (and to bind themselves and their residents) as it is to develop a clearer understanding of the state itself. To that end a basic grounding in principles of international law and of national formation will be necessary.
2. Public International Organizations Within and Beyond the State System. Especially since 1945, states have sought to act in concert. That action in concert principle has led to the development of an enormous and enormously variegated universe of international organizations, many of which are vested with forms of executive, legislative or judicial authority. International organizations are the constructs of states. They are created through law; and they function through governance principles constrained by the (international) law form which they were created. International organizations can be organized into complex multi-institutional systems—the classic one is the United Nations system. Or they can be organized into functionally distinctive organs—like the world Trade Organization or the International Criminal Court (the later to be considered as an exemplar of a public prosecutor-judicial institution). Their authority is limited only by their willingness of states to concede to their authority. But since 1945, even non-consenting states may be caught up in their webs of governance. Nonconsenting states may be required to observe the rules of international practice in their relations with consenting states. But international organizations are not limited I their capacity to traditional matters of public concern. Critically important to the construction of a globally disciplined economic and financial system embedding the values of markets driven globalization and its governance values has been the role played by international financial institutions (IFIs), principally the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, now joined by the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and others. Here one encounters the regulatory and policy power of lending and its legalization through contract. The great web of international organizations has produced the foundations necessary for the development of economic globalization. They have set global standards, they have provided consensus global normative principles—from principles of development, to human rights, to conflict. Their operation is as varied as their objectives. The understanding of the international system, and their relation to states, and increasingly to individuals and non-state entities, forms the key element in the operation of global systems.
3. Private International and Transnational Organizations as a Supplement, Alternative or Challenge to the Orthodox State-Public Institutional Global System. States are not the only “bodies corporate” that have embraced the notion of multilateralism. Globalization has also produced a trend toward the development and operation of private international organization. The most well-known of these are international governmental organizations that seek to act as the nexus point for the organization of collective popular will across states. These are usually organized along functionally differentiated lines. Amnesty International and Oxfam are two famous examples. But there are others. And they have become important actors in systems of international public organizations. But beyond NGOs, there are a growing number of private international organizations that function in a variety of areas. These include standard setting organizations, and organizations that create, certify, and monitor compliance with their own standards. They have become an essential element of the move from human rights based to sustainability-based responsibility for economic transactions by public or private bodies. In the process they have developed sometimes autonomous systems of governance that have become important drivers of international exchanges and interactions.
4. Private transnational economic systems (MNEs; SOEs, SWFs) as Global Orders Without a State or as States Without Territory. Globalization has not only made borders more porous, to has created a significant governance gap. While states have great authority within their borders, they generally cannot reach economic activity beyond their borders, though the power of the more powerful states to reach their economic actors outside their borders is greater. And that is the problem. Globalization has made it possible to move from national to global production chains. It has permitted the disaggregation of economic activity. So disaggregated, economic activity can be placed in any number of different places and all coordinated through interlinked relationships of contract or ownership. The resulting aggregation, the multinational corporation, has itself transformed the nature of governance. Since the start of this century, the multinational enterprise has become both a source and an object of international regulation. States and international organizations have increasingly delegated regulatory objectives to MNEs. Legal cultures of compliance and accountability, including anti-corruption efforts, human rights and sustainability obligations, along with efforts to suppress terrorist and international criminal activity (money laundering, modern slavery, have resulted in the creation of law and normative frameworks at the national and international levels that have effectively imposed n MNEs an obligation to monitor their supply chains and to use their control and contract relations to ensure compliance with normative and legal expectations. MNEs have also become, like NGOs an important stakeholder in the creation of international norms. As a result, much operational regulation of economic activity is overseen by or developed through the system of disaggregated coordinated economic production.
5. Public International Judicial Systems as Autonomous Common and Mediating Spaces. Public judicial system are both the oldest and in some respects the least developed forms of international remedial organs. It is likely that international public judicial organs came late to the scene precisely because of the utility and success of national judicial systems and the willingness of states to tolerate the forum and rule shopping that follows a system fractured along national lines. But from the early 20th century, and increasingly in this century, public international judicial bodies have arisen in response to the needs of states to find a means of peaceful settlement of disputes among them. More importantly, as international organizations have been created to develop international law systems—judicial mechanisms had to be developed to provide a means of vindicating these newly developed systems of rights and duties. Foremost among these efforts has been the development of an international system of criminal law, and the simultaneous development of an International Criminal Court through which those rights are vindicated. But also important are the evolution of regional human rights tribunals. The European, OAS, and African Courts of Human Rights have become powerful actors in the development both of a normative system based on human rights, and as a vehicle for the vindication of such rights, mostly against states indirectly, and private individuals indirectly. .
6. Private International Grievance and Dispute Resolution Systems as Common and Mediating Spaces. Since the end of the last century a number of dispute resolution and remedial systems have acquired prominence. These tend to blend elements of public and private organizations. What makes them distinctive is their separation both from the judicial organs of states, as well as from a tight adherence to the domestic legal orders of any state or of international bodies. There is a substantial variety of forms that have emerged. Some of them are almost wholly private and deal specifically with issues related to economic activity. In that respect we will consider the great systems of private arbitration that have arisen, both as examples of autonomous systems and for their substantive and operational characteristics. We will also consider hybrid arbitration systems. These include ICSID, a World Bank sponsored system for arbitration of claims between states and private entities related to the protections of bilateral trade agreements. But increasingly, these private systems also include emerging company-based grievance mechanism. These are distinctive for three reasons. First they tend to serve as the creators of enforceable norms specific to the company. Second, these norms tend to be enforced, increasingly, along the entire chain of production over which the company has authority. Third, they give rise to grievance mechanisms that sometimes even displace those offered by states through their judiciaries. Related to these company grievance mechanisms are multilateral private mechanisms. The most well-known of these was established in the wake of the Rana Plaza Factory building collapse, in which a group of companies formed an collective and provided (and funded) a grievance mechanism that substantially displaced the courts and national remedies. Lastly, the importance of religious courts ought to be considered. They sometimes serve a hybrid role—institutions to which the state has devolved authority over certain matters. At other times they serve as autonomous vehicles for applying religious norms enforced through religious courts over economic and social matters in interactions among members of a faith community.
Taken together, this matrix of ideologies, of systems and their actors, institutions and framing language, produce the rich environment in which international activity is now managed. That matrix suggest that this environment is dynamic and constantly changing. It also suggests that the systems created are volatile, even if internally stable.
Starting in 2026, each semester will be built around a theme that integrates material from other courses and learning experiences. For Spring 2026, the focus will be on the actors, institutions, legal structures, economics, politics, cultural, and normative discourse around the Arctic regions. Students will consider the themes of the course through the lens of the “Arctic Scenario” which is undertaken in conjunction with the U.S. Army War College Center for Strategic Leadership International Strategic Crisis Negotiation Exercise.
[1] Larry Catá Backer (白 轲), W. Richard and Mary Eshelman Faculty Scholar Professor of Law and International Affairs, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA USA.
[2] Jacques Lacan, Écrits: A Selection (Routledge, 1997) p. 21; Jean-Paul Sartre, The Imaginary: A Phenomenological Psychology of the Imagination (Routledge, 2010 (original 1940), pp. 57-94.
[3] E.g., Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms (William Rehg (trans) MIT Press, 1996); pp. 22, 322.
[4] Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France 1978-1979 (Graham Burchell (trans) Picador 2004), pp. 75-101.
[5] Manfred B. Steger and Paul Jones, “Levels of Subjective Globalization; Ideologies, Imaginaries, Ontologies,” PGDT 12:17-40 (2013); Table 1, p. 24.
[6] Manfred B. Steger and Paul Jones, “Levels of Subjective Globalization; Ideologies, Imaginaries, Ontologies,” PGDT 12:17-40 (2013); Table 1, p. 32.
[7] Discussed at greater length in Larry Catá Backer, “Foreword: Bannermen and Heralds: The Identity of Flags; the Ensigns of Identity,” in Flags, Identity, Memory: Critiquing the Public Narrative Through Color (Anne Wagner and Sarah Marusek, eds., Dordrecht: Springer 2020)
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