Non-state actors in world politics, the political performance of the PLO. (c2014)

Abstract

There is a robust increase in the number of various kinds of non-state actors and a growing involvement of their role in many local and international key policy concerns that range from humanitarian and environmental fields, civil society issues, monitoring human rights violations, multinational corporations, national liberation movements, and guerilla and terrorist networks. Despite the slight realization of their place and role in the liberal approach and some other theories, a lot of aspects related to them, are still undermined in favor of the primacy given to states as the principal and exclusive actors. This thesis intends to demonstrate the active and undeniable role of non-state actors in the light of the liberal paradigm by taking the changing political program of the PLO as an example. It will serve as well to criticize the basic notion of the realist paradigm that stresses on states as the principal actors in world politics. In fact, the PLO, an example on one category of non-state actors, has shown to be efficient and active in regional politics and on the international stage in an attempt to achieve its political objectives; it was able to put the Palestinian cause on regional and international agendas, was recognized by the United Nations and the Arab League and finally succeeded to become a non-member observer at the UNGA.