ABSTRACT
The concept of territorial impermeability has combined with the facts of permeability to produce what may be called international relations among perforated sovereignties. Trade opportunities; investment offers; and energy, water, technology, or cultural transfers as well as a migrating labor force, drug traffic, health problems, and air and water pollution are the usual ingredients of ingress streams crossing sovereign boundaries, sometimes at the invitation of, at other times without the permission of, territorial authorities. Interdependence that is so highly asymmetric in terms of resistance to external pressures or blackmail induces territorial states to remain “the most rigid defenders of the principle of national sovereignty.” Transnational associations devoted to the promotion of art and human rights, the salvation of human souls, or protection of the biosphere often oppose economic and business transnationalism and its callous by-products more vehemently than their own national governments do.
