The only way to solve a twitter-fight that has been tweeted to a stalemate is to enter the Goodreads octagon for a no holds barred book fight.

Mmm. Networks of actors who go transnational and supply rather than demand solutions... 19th-century nationalists? 20th-century communists? The shestidesyatniki who helped to reimagine Soviet socialism at the end of the 20th century?

I mean, I'm not unwise enough to wrangle with either of you on the issue of whether highly engaged and motivated transnational networks of actors are at present poised at the brink of changing the nature of international relations. But are you arguing, Dan, that it hasn't ever happened or couldn't happen—that the nature of international relations is so static that these sorts of fundamental shifts in the basic issues that matter to states just never happen?

To tee off of your framing point for a moment, there's an implicit assumption in what you write above that the nature of international relations is static, rather than constantly contested—that the issues at stake aren't constantly being reaffirmed by the actors engaged in it. That means that, to you, "significantly altering the status quo" means, I take it, "making something different matter to states when they haggle over outcomes in IR." As I see it, anyway, it's inherent to international relations that what matters to states depends on the desires of their key constituencies and is therefore at least potentially always in a state of change. "The status quo" is a condition of permeability, not stasis.

I don't think that would be an alien thought to someone like Kissinger, either, and far earlier than his most recent book: in A World Restored he wrote, "Every statesman must attempt to reconcile what is considered just with what is considered possible. What is considered just depends on the domestic structure of his state; what is possible depends on its resources, geographic position and determination, and on the resources, determination and domestic structure of other states." Anne-Marie's point, from her original post, was actually not all that different—"The term [The New Foreign Policy Frontier] just underlines our need for a framework that moves beyond states and addresses both governments and societies." I don't know that the means by which that outcome is achieved is particularly critical to the point that she's making (?).

That said, one point is definitely worth underscoring: with Boston currently atop the AL East, no disagreement can be too serious.

Cheers, and thanks for a thought-provoking discussion.

ps FYI, posting a comment on this damn site is harder than signing on to my bank's website....

Dan, I was surprised to see you defending Realism by citing the two-level games / domestic politics theories of IR. While both agree--as Anne-Marie does--that "states matter," they are NOT the same. Realism posits that we can explain variation in world politics by looking at changes in the balance of power, while domestic politics theories focus on state preference formation as the key variable. As an IPE scholar, you don't need to be told how domestic politics theories beat out Waltzian realism in explaining crucial parts of the world economy. Anne-Marie is arguing that we need to relax the state-centric assumption of parsimonious Realism even further to explain crucial phenomena of world politics. For example? Let me answer your challenge and identify 3 major issue areas where it's not sufficient to analyze world politics through a Realist or even a two-level games lens:

1) The rule of law in the world economy. How do firms adjudicate transborder commercial contracts? It's often not through national courts or intergovernmental bodies, but rather private arbitration organizations. Here private institutions are providing a public good without which there would be no global economy (a model that existed even before modern nation states).

2) Environmental politics. With almost every global environmental issue mired in multilateral gridlock, environmentalists are increasingly turning to non-IGO solutions, often domestic or sub-national, often linked across borders. Climate change is a great example.

3) Global health. The key actors on this issue are are major state and IGO donors AND big pharma firms, foundations, and charities. Global regulation / public good provision in this area is shared by these actors, and policy is set and negotiated amongst them. The International Health Partnerships + is a great example, a coordinated system across the big public and private donors that sets specific and exacting criteria for developing countries' health systems if they are to receive life-saving aid.

So yes, of course the state matters. I don't really see how this is a defense of Realism, though.

Dan is arguing that transnational non state actors do not matter all that much and Anne-Marie is saying that they will profoundly change international politics in the 21st century. But, one could make the case that transnational forces matter but much less than they used to in the 20th century. The 20th century saw real transnational people power and ideology, most notably through the spread of communism but also with fascism, Islamism (Iran 1979), and democracy. In the case of communism, not only did a network create a new superpower but their message had a powerful resonance at the very highest levels of western society (Cambridge spies, etc). In short, small networks communicating the old fashioned way changed the course of history. When I look at today's world, there are plenty of signs of transnational activism but so far they fall far short of the type of impact of what has gone before. Now, I guess one could argue that international relations theory has always been flawed because it omitted this aspect but it strikes me as a bit of a stretch to say that we are witnessing a truly novel development and departure from the past. Provocative bottom line: networks matter but perhaps not much as they used to.

One could look at the campaign to ban landmines that led to the anti-landmines treaty. Certainly there was a transnational network of individuals and groups working on this issue, but it wasn't until Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy took it on and applied all the resources of the Canadian state (don't laugh) to provide a global institutional "home," legitimacy, and the ability to bring other states on board. His personal prestige and recognition as an authoritative representative of a state is what allowed for the convening of the Ottawa process. There is no evidence that without the Canadian state's intervention, the campaign would have been successful.

These theory posts are interesting from a 1000 foot perspective, but for me, they always raise the question of where is the science in this social science? The test of any model is its predictive power. So, just like one would be wise not to utilize models on war planning from Donald Rumsfield or models on economics policy from Paul Krugman, the question to me is always have any of these models correctly predicted outcomes?

Slaughter's distinctions are without a difference: transnational networks have existed as long as nations have done; that individuals and non-governmental groups have sought to influence governments is as axiomatic as the susceptibility of governments is to their pressure. No state or government exists in a vacuum. This was true at the Congress of Vienna and is true today. There is no general rule or law of significance or a universal ranking of "actors": some historical perspective is needed to understand the differences. See, for example, Paul W. Schroeder's _Transformation of European Politics_.

I think, semantics put aside, that the idea that the distribution of power and preferences determines how the wind blows is a trivial truth in politics. The real question is: the power of what? and the preferences of what?

These are empirical questions. The problem with realism is that it comes across as an essentialist theory. The key "philosophical" difference between realists and others can be reduced to the facts that the latter emphasize (1) that, as THALE pointed out, state-centrism is misleading--in terms of both power and preferences, and further, (2) that power OVER OTHERS is not a constant target in preference formation.

According to constructivists in particular, there is no essential object of political power or preference; there is only a variable, bounded only by the accidents of history.

So, "really," one of the things that make Waltzian realism so sophomoric is that, for all its claims to evade the sins of classical realism, it carries, IN EFFECT, a whole lot of essentialism (about the locus of power in states and the survival preference of states... essentially :)).

Drezner is right that Slaughter might be proven right. So why does he spend all this time defending