Traitors, Double Agents or Rescuing Knights

Strange, Susan. Europe 1992 - Some Personal Observations (SAIIA occasional paper). Working Paper for Table Ronde No. 4 ‘Les Individus dans la Politique Internatioanle’ Association Française de Science Politique, Quatrième Congrès, 1992.

In this working paper Strange links her approach laid out in States and Markets (1988) and links it to the research she had recently published on the role of firms in the global system Rival States, Rival Firms (with John M. Stopford, 1991). This leads her to conclude that a greater role for firms (and their decision-makers, their managers) must be recognised by social science, and that the ‘nation state’ is less and less useful as a concept for the study of the global system. Once again Strange’s frustration with the myopia of her colleagues is scarcely concealed.

Keywords: Corporations; Global governance; Structural Power, Power; Theory; Transnational Corporations; Global System