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"William, when I went into the jungle, I was seventeen. When I walked out I was twenty-one. And, by God, I was rich!"Arthur Miller,Death of a Salesman, Act IFortunes magically and mysteriously made on vast continents overseas have tempted western entrepreneurs for generations, much as Uncle Ben tempted Willie Loman. But these exploits also involve machinations which appear sinister to a general public increasingly disturbed by the control giant corporations have over our daily lives. As long ago as 1900, John Hobson developed the theory that modern imperial expansion was the product of the manipulation of national foreign policies by the "Rand lords" and similar overseas financial operators. This idea was used by Lenin, Hilferding and others in their elaborations of the Marxist explanation of the nexus between economic forces and the political behaviour of states. Imperialism in tropical Africa was always seen as a key issue in this context. With the onset of decolonization and the struggle for development, questions of the history and the progress of imperialism have remained cogent subjects of intellectual controversy. The historical "scramble for Africa" and the process of colonization which followed created the basis for the modern political map of Africa and modern African political society. To what extent were these developments triggered or determined by the activities of private entrepeneurs? What relevance might the answer have for the contemporary study of international politics? This article seeks to explore these questions in the light of theories of transnational politics. At the same time, the problem of European expansion in Africa provides an important test for the transnational approach, as it relates to the overseas political activity of international business firms.

Canadian-American relations have tended to bore statesmen and scholars who long to be where the action is. According to one scholar, "study of Canadian-American relations tells one almost nothing about the big problems facing the world," while in a classic essay Arnold Wolfers used the unguarded border as an example of "indifference to power." If we view world politics with "realist" assumptions that unified states are the only actors, force is the major source of power, and solving the military security dilemma is their overwhelming objective, then Canadian-American relations are indeed dull.

The concept of "international politics" which is central to a large sector of political science, indeed its label, is increasingly being called into question. Those processes which can no longer be clearly assigned either tostatesor—as suggested by the model of "inter-national politics"—to the areabetweenstates are gaining in importance in international affairs. Some examples of these processes are the direct horizontal transactions between societal actors of different nation-states, transactions which bypass the institutions of government but strongly affect their margin of maneuver; the various forms of mutual penetration of formally separate entities; and the growing activities of a number of nonstate actors. Many theories which are connected with the model of international politics, above all that of sovereignty but also subordinate constructs such as the doctrine of separation of powers, should likewise be called into question.

World politics is changing, but our conceptual paradigms have not kept pace. The classic state-centric paradigm assumes that states are the only significant actors in world politics and that they act as units. Diverse domestic interests have effects on international politics only through governmental foreign policy channels. Intersocietal interactions are relegated to a category of secondary importance–the "environment" of interstate politics. As Karl Kaiser has pointed out, the reality of international politics has never totally corresponded to this model. Nevertheless, the model was approximated in the eighteenth century when foreign policy decisions were taken by small groups of persons acting within an environment that was less obtrusive and complex than the present one.

Two consequences of the internationalization of economic activities that has taken place since the early 1960s have been that, within the international trading system, participant states have become more vulnerable and sensitized to the economic conditions obtaining in other countries; and economic actors have, in general, become more transnational and universal in their orientation and more aware of worldwide business possibilities. Consequently, visible trade flows have been progressively transformed through global raw material sourcing, production location and marketing; and invisible trade has been restructured by global deposit sourcing and lender servicing. Both types of international exchange required extensive external production networks which had to be newly created by international capital transfers and institutional migration. Despite the outward manifestation of these infrastructures, international exchange tensions nevertheless remained because of 'the continued existence of still mainly nationally based political systems' and the conflicts of interest and uncertainties created by the asserted extra-territorial orientation of national tax and legal system's, These problems were largely untouched by the harmonization and liberalization processes attempted by industrial nations under the aegis of GATT and other international institutions. As a result, the transnational operations of multinational companies have often had to be channelled to parts of the world where their activities are least frustrated by obstructive interventionist policy in order to secure particular objectives.

A striking feature of our times is that private individuals and corporations are engaging increasingly in activities that may result in significant accidental damage to the transnational environment. The international community has responded to this phenomenon by strengthening the transnational accountability of the private actors. Significant efforts have been made to obtain wide international acceptance of the principle of "equal right of access," that is, the right of the actual or potential victim of transnational pollution to have recourse, for the purposes of both prevention and compensation, to the national authorities that exercise jurisdiction or control over the private actor concerned. A similar endeavor is discernible towards ensuring, at least in certain cases, that the private actor will maintain minimal financial resources for compensating victims of accidental transnational pollution damage.

This article presents both a history and an administrative analysis of the United Nations Volunteers, an international organization established by a General Assembly resolution in December 1970. The hope that the new organization would presage a new era of multinational volunteerism has proven groundless. In seeking to explain the ineffectiveness of the UN Volunteers, I look inside the organization and find that it has little or no control over its six principal functions. This extreme decentralization of responsibility is then explained not by a static description of the institutional but by focusing on the dynamic process by which state and transnational actors exercised influence during the different stages of the organization's establishment and development. Those actors whose autonomy was most jeopardized by a new volunteer organization were most active in defining and limiting the scope of its operations. The relative lobbying advantages of state and transnational actors meshed with bureaucratic and budgetary constraints to ensure an enfeebled organization.

The international system is experiencing a growing amount of terroristic violence. During the past five years there has been a marked increase in the yearly number of politically inspired assassinations of prominent public figures. This study presents the results of a seven-year, cross-national survey of political assassinations. An analysis of 721 events reported in 123 nations for the period concludes that there are definite trends and patterns of political assassinations that may provide important lessons for public policymakers. Certain nations, targets, and terrorist actors account for a large portion of all assassination activity. Statistical analysis suggests that the academic community may have to rethink its ideas about assassination behavior in general and its relationship to the issue of development in particular. No evidence could be generated by the study to link terrorist-inspired assassinations to the developing world nor was any international network of assassins discovered. The findings point to growing levels of separatist-inspired violence and a distinct shift in target selection toward the international business community and the diplomatic corps. Terrorists appear to be increasingly successful because they are targeting relatively unprotected public individuals.

The international system has undergone great changes since the nineteenth-century European balance of power. Central in its dynamics has been the changing number, nature, and power of the protagonists in world politics. Some of the disorganization of the interwar period may be explained by the reluctance of the United States and the Soviet Union to play key roles in the postwar world. After World War II, Soviet reconstruction and preoccupation with East European and Chinese allies kept the Soviet Union from challenging America's de facto hegemony outside the socialist countries. United States policy toward the Third World was to favor nationalism and to strengthen new states by transferring arms and economic resources to them. This pattern of diplomacy stabilized the international system and led to the emergence of confident Third World governments that became protagonists in the new system. The special American role in ensuring this form of world order is now diminishing, for a variety of political and strategic reasons; and Russian capabilities, while much greater, are also heavily invested in regional and domestic commitments. Third World states are, therefore, the most dynamic elements in the changes in world politics. Their role as protagonists is accelerated by technological change and by the entrance of world corporations and other transnational actors into global politics.

In their work on a series of monographs, the themes of which follow, a group from the Section for International Politics of the German Political Science Association posits the following assump tions : (a) that international relations and the foreign policies of individual states can be suffi ciently explained only when considered within the hierarchical structure of world society; and (b) that this structure, carried by the interests and mechanism of capitalism, represents a system of dominance ('Herrschaft'). 1) Empirical analysis of penetration processes and dependency structures in various strata of world society. This includes the global as well as respective national historical conditions, and also the socio-economic changes in and between the center nations which generated waves of penetra tion. 2) Analysis of the core area of the more or less integrated international center, including multi national corporations and bank systems; of the effects of the international division of labor with regard to desintegration and retardation of devel opment in the international and intranational peripheries of world society. 3) Analysis of the role of the state apparatuses as agents of the national centers as well as of transnational actors. 4) Analysis of the nature of the competition between the capitalist and the socialist systems and its function in stabilizing or destabilizing the international system of dominance. 5) Examination of the relations between socialist societies as to the extent to which they represent reactions to the capitalist environment or autonomous transition forms, and as to the con clusion to be drawn for emancipating non- socialist peripheries. 6) Estimation of the possibilities for emancipa tory strategies of dissociation in the peripheries aiming at nonviolent capital accumulation, divi sion of labor, and cultural development, all these free of dominance.

This article examines the United States-Canadian defense issue area from a transnational and transgovernmental perspective, and attempts to develop conceptually the transgovernmental dimension through empirical application. The first part delineates those factors that encourage transnational and transgovernmental activity in the defense issue area. The second part considers pure intergovernmental transactions, referring to United States-Canadian dealings in which there is no transnational or transgovernmental activity. Because we know so little about how these dealings occur, this section examines pure intergovernmental transactions as a three-stage issue flow: preprocess, process, and postprocess. The third section identifies and examines the dynamics of mixed transactions, referring to intergovernmental flows having transnational or transgovernmental activity that does not essentially alter the outcomes of the flows. The fourth part identifies transformative transactions, referring to intergovernmental flows that become transnational or transgovernmental flows (or the reverse) through the involvement of new actors that significantly alter the outcomes of the flows. In summation, the fifth section considers those factors militating against transnational and transgovernmental activity in the defense area.

As events since October 1973 have again underscored, security of supply and price of energy resources have enormous strategic and economic implications for any industrialized country. Nevertheless, trade in energy resources between Canada and the United States has not always been closely managed by the central governments that are responsible for national security and economic development. In fact, the energy trade involves a wide variety of actors that continually seek transnational contacts and alliances of opportunity to further their own self-interest almost as if the national border did not exist.

Development policy is analyzed by liberal models in terms of bargaining transactions between interest-maximizing actors and by the dependency perspective in terms of the internalized requirements of worldwide capital accumulation. Both approaches assume the working of capitalist rationality in dependent nations. In contrast, a focus on productive relations, class alliances, and political coalitions reveals the constraints on developmental policies in nations built around the partial development of capitalist productive forces and occupying a subordinate role in the international division of labor. Analysis of the Venezuelan auto policy during the Pérez administration (1974–79) shows the relations constituting socially defined actors and the structures underlying the policy bargaining process. It posits that in Venezuela there is a growing disjuncture between the internationally conditioned requirements of capital accumulation and the locally based demands of social reproduction; that the common interest of state and bourgeoisie in maintaining the rentier basis of the economy shapes the direction and extent of industrial development; and that circulation of petrodollars has absorbed production as a phase of circulation. The struggle between state and transnational corporations over local engine manufacture, and the tension between import substitution and export promotion, concealed an underlying conflict between rent appropriation and capital accumulation.