Abstract :
What has been traditionally conceptualised as ‘the international’ has beenundergoing a fundamental transformation in recent decades, usually called ‘globalisation’.Globalisation is a highly contested concept, and even among those who accept that somesort of globalisation process is occurring, attempts to analyse it have focused on a rangeof structural explanations: the expansion of economic transactions; the development oftransnational or global social bonds; and the emergence and consolidation of a rangeof semi-international, semi-global political institutions. In all of these explanations, the roleof actors as agents strategically shaping change has been neglected. In this article I arguethat structural variables alone do not determine specific outcomes. Indeed, structuralchanges are permissive and can be the source of a range of potential multiple equilibria. Theinteraction of structural constraints and actors’ strategic and tactical choices involves aprocess of ‘structuration’, leading to wider systemic outcomes. In understanding this process,the concepts of ‘pluralism’ and ‘neopluralism’ as used in traditional ‘domestic’-level PoliticalScience can provide an insightful framework for analysis. This process, I argue, hasdeveloped in five interrelated, overlapping stages that involve the interaction of a diverserange of economic, social and political actors. Globalisation is still in the early stages ofdevelopment, and depending on actors’ choices in a dynamic process of structuration, arange of alternative potential outcomes can be suggested
