ABSTRACT
This chapter begins discussions of international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), of which there are numerous examples: the International Red Cross, the World Council of Churches, Amnesty International, and many others. Multinational corporations (MNCs) are integrated independent subsidiary networks controlled from the parent nation-state by corporate command headquarters. Multinational corporations may be classified by type of enterprise, by ownership, and by the degree of autonomy exercised by the subsidiaries. The immense economic power that characterizes most MNCs translates into significant amounts of political power and often serious problems for host-nation governments, especially for Third World governments. The theories of MNCs are generally no more successful in explaining and forecasting the behavior of nonstate actors in world politics than are theories of international political integration. The nonstate actors best suited to control the abuses of multinational corporations are international labor unions.
