"Money and Ideas"

The discussion that occurred in the last class highlighted the fact that the International Political arena of today boils down to two things; Money and Ideas. The work of Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye, in my opinion has reinforced this idea, through the introduction of transnationalism. The states that existed in the World War era, existed rather independently and thus studying them in isolation may have been productive, but these theories are not sufficient to explain the political workings of the “Global village” that exists today. Money has completely changed today’s political landscape. States are now far more dependent on each other today than ever before (perhaps that is why ideological rivals like China and USA helped each other during the Global Financial Crisis in order to survive) and thus studying the behavior of states in isolation may not help us understand the workings of the International political system.

The exponential expansion that has occurred in communicative technologies has greatly helped the spread of ideas. This has resulted in ideological movements that span across several states, like the “we are the 99%” movement that spanned across Europe and USA or the ISIS which quite explicitly deny the very existence of national boundaries. Money, which has given rise to Corporations bigger than entire states and the Expansion of ideas, which has given rise to trans-national ideological factions (both good and bad) highlight the importance of the workings of Non-state actors in today’s political landscape. The arguments that Keohane and Nye presented, have only been strengthened with time (and Globalization) In fact, in my opinion the study of non-state actors is now far more important today than ever before, in understanding the now existing International Political Economy. This does not mean that studying states is futile, states still continue to exert great influence on the political landscape of today due to their Legitimacy, but they too are victims to the power of Corporations and Ideological Factions. At the end, the current political landscape does boil down to two things; Money and Ideas.