Introduction: Non-state Actors in Mediterranean Politics

In 1977, Joseph Nye and Robert O. Keohane revolutionized the study of international relations with the publication of Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition (Nye and Keohane 1977). Their study challenged a disciplinary orthodoxy that depicted states as the ultimate actors in world affairs. Before Nye and Keohane, scholars had taught that sovereign states contended in a condition of anarchy, in the sense that they were not subject to any political authority beyond their own borders. According to this view, rivalry, conflict, and open war were perennial features of the international landscape, since states invariably struggled to maximize their powers and minimize their vulnerabilities. State power was military power, plain and simple. So-called "realist" scholars from Hans Morgenthau to Kenneth Waltz presented the axioms allegedly governing interstate relations as if they were as immutable as the laws of physics.¹ If one state grew more powerful by enlarging its armies or developing new weapons technologies, for example, its neighbors would form alliances to oppose the threat and maintain the balance of power. Their citizens might debate these alliances' merits, but those debates and deliberations ultimately would not matter. States were the driving force behind world and regional politics alike. International affairs unfolded according to an impersonal raison d'etat that superseded the interests of lobbyists, concerned citizens groups, and even transnational assemblies like the United Nations.

Nye and Keohane rejected this exclusive focus on states as reductive. In their alternative analysis of world politics, the military power wielded by states was only part of a more complex network that also factored in economic capacity, diplomatic sway, and even cultural influence. They argued that a country like modern Japan, although militarily insignificant, was a major player in world markets. If economic power mattered in its own way as much as military power, moreover, scholars of the international system needed to pay attention not only to states—with their discrete borders, armies, and centralized bureaucracies—but also to such non-state agents as transnational corporations, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund.

As neoliberal institutionalism, the complex interdependence theory first introduced by Nye and Keohane, has developed over the past half century, it has focused on multiple non-state actors: multinational corporations (MNCs); intergovernmental organizations like the United Nations, the World Bank, the European Union, and the Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries; nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) like the Red Cross, Amnesty International, Oxfam, Ashoka, and Human Rights Watch; transnational diasporic communities that continue to have an impact on their homelands and regions of origins; and global religious organizations like the Catholic Church, the World Council of Churches, al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun, and Munazzamat al-Da'wa al-Islamiia.² Interest continues to grow in so-called "Track II" diplomacy, informal efforts by noncommissioned and nonprofessional diplomats to promote better understanding between peoples and foster interpersonal networks between their respective citizens.³ Track II initiatives include scientific and cultural exchanges, as well as diplomatic outreach by private citizens and even former heads of state such as Jimmy Carter, who no longer act in an official governmental capacity. On a less sanguine note, other non-state agents, such as drug cartels, criminal organizations like the Mafia and the Bratva, and terrorist groups like al-Qaeda, undermine the international order maintained by states and humanitarian NGOs (Mulaj 2009).

The Mediterranean holds a singular place in a world where these many non-state actors complement, complicate, and even undermine state-based initiatives. No one could adequately describe current Mediterranean politics without referring to intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) such as the EU, the IMF, or the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. While the EU and IMF have been protagonists in the Greek financial crisis, the UNHCR and major NGOs, such as Médecins Sans Frontières (or Doctors Without Borders), Doctors of the World, and Praxis, are heavily involved with the Mediterranean migration crisis. Nothing better demonstrates the limits of state-based approaches to the region's problems than the plight of Middle Eastern and North African refugees. As Médecins Sans Frontières has noted, "rash decisions to close borders and a...