Almost done.  I'll have to eke out a bit more, but I think I've got the basics covered and now its all about polishing and adding in a bit here and there.  I suppose I can sum up my paper here...but in my own words, and without all the academic speak.  Umm, and its late and I'm feeling flippant so it won't be all that good.  Might be fun to post my paper later, so you can compare. :)  Maybe not, though.

The crisis of the nation/state. 

The modern notion of the nation/state sort of relies on national sovereignty.  Nations are supposed to be the supreme power in their land.  Nations also maintain legitimacy and live up to their social contract by protecting their citizens from disasters.  So when you've got crises happening on a global scale and nations are powerless to resolve them (unless they cooperate with each other) then you have a pretty serious threat to the supremacy of the nation/state.  Especially since international cooperation often means giving up some of your ability to say what does or does not happen.

Issues like piracy, terrorism, organized crime, environmental concerns, the risk of global pandemics, and the current global financial crisis all threaten the supremacy of the nation/state because they require global rather than national solutions.

Tied in with this is the role played by non-state actors.  Granted, non-state actors have been around for ages (the Catholic Church, for example.  Even if it does have a state.) but non-state actors have grown increasingly important in the past half-century or so...partly because they've been encouraged to grow by various governments, partly because technology has enabled them to build transnational networks, and partly because there's a global shift in understanding - because more and more people are operating with the awareness of some sort of global identity.  Thus, non-state actors can create international systems and norms (like some of the agreements to sustainably take lumber from forests) which are encouraged by consumers who actually buy the products approved by such systems...thereby creating standards that developed with little or no input from the state. 

States end up choosing to either accept these systems as developed, or "risk isolation and irrelevance" (I rather like that phrase, but I didn't phrase it that way, that was how they worded it in the book.  Hence quotation marks.)

And this part isn't in the paper -see, I've got some of my own concerns and issues with this whole method of sort of presenting a done deal with regards to international norms.  Luckily, not all of them catch on...which goes to show that these non-state actors do operate somewhat like our own interest groups and party politics.  The ideas that resonate with the public can gain tremendous support, but the ones that don't well...don't.  I still think that (if there really was such an attempt) this idea of trying to force the US to implement gun control policies via an outside agency was crap. 

The problem with this kind of a norming system is that its a rather top down process, and somewhat patronizing to boot.  You're going to pressure everyone to do what you think is right?  If you can't convince them that you're right through open discourse, what right do you have to try to force them to go along with what you want anyway? 

That's also part of what I wonder with, well...the EU and the way Europe is integrating.  I mean, if the elites are the ones creating the EU and the average European citizen doesn't understand what the heck is going on...then you've kind of lost the ground-up type of governance that is one of the strengths of a democracy. 

But that's some random thoughts that require more research before I could really get into.  Anyways...I'm done for the night.