With the disintegration of the Soviet Bloc and the increasing inte-
gration of China into a world capitalist trading system, the political
power of multinational companies in a globalised world has become
increasingly central and controversial. The rules governing economic
relationships between states are increasingly decided through
international organisations such as the World Trade Organisation
(WTO), the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
These in turn are often dominated by the United States and to some
extent the EU, both of which are sympathetic to the interests of
multinational companies (Baylis and Smith, 2005: Ch. 14 by Woods).
For instance, Sell (2003) argues that the heads of twelve multi-
nationals successfully lobbied the WTO to mould the Agreement on
Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) in the
interests of their companies. This technical-sounding victory has
been important in making it difficult for countries in the South to
make available generic drugs to treat AIDS or to resist the import of
genetically modified plant species. Multinational companies have also
lobbied hard, via the WTO, to ensure that they are entitled to tender
for the provision of privatised government services across the globe.
Politics as a universal activity
The more international relations is analysed, the less important the
differences between international and domestic politics seem to be.
As we shall see in a later chapter, it can be argued that explaining
relationships between member states and the EU is very like explain-
ing relationships between the states and the federal government in
the USA. Equally, insights from domestic politics, and even the
politics of stateless societies, can be of relevance to international
politics.
To return to the theme introduced at the beginning of this chapter,
the evidence presented suggests that politics in the broad sense we
defined it in Chapter 1 is a more or less universal aspect of life in
human societies. Strictly speaking we have not established this – only
produced evidence that politics is widespread in many human
societies (for further discussion see Human nature and politics in
Chapter 3). But we have established that centralised national govern-
ments – although a dominating feature of modern Western societies
- are by no means inevitable.
SYSTEMS 47