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My subject within the series topic of New Dimensions of World Politics is the role of transnational and transgovernmental relations. 1 My talk might be subtitled ‘Beyond the billiard ball concept of the nation state’. Those who think that I am addressing a straw man I could refer to a popular text book in which you will find little circles and little arrows between the circles as an aid to understanding international politics. In any case, whatever one thinks of visual aids, the dominant paradigm that has informed the discipline of international politics since the 1940s and 1950s has been a ‘state-centric realism’ based on three powerful simplifying assumptions: (1) significant relations between states; (2) states act as coherent units; (3) political-military security concerns are the dominant objectives and motivations of states. In Professor Morgenthau’s words, ‘two factors are the basis of international society. The multiplicity and antagonism of its elements, the nations.’ Or in the view of the sensitive French writer, Raymond Aron, there are two archetypical actors in international politics, the soldier and the diplomat. 2