Ideas of world government and supra-national authorities fit very poorly, if at all, into the new global environment. Centralized and elevated authorities cannot be effective network players. If one looks at the texture of international relations today it is immediately apparent that the linkages are no longer confined to officialdom and to formal relations between foreign ministries and government bureaucracies. We may go further and assert that at the hub of this 'mass of connections' are the new large non-governmental organizations, which actually lead and shape the foreign policies of modern democratic governments. For instance, Oxfam, Medicin sans Fronti res, Amnesty International, Greenpeace and host of other voluntary and charitably funded bodies have acquired their own mandate and legitimacy from society to carry out policies and interventions in the name of humanitarianism.
Governments have no choice but to react and follow.
These influential organizations can act this way because they have funds and appeal. And they have funds and appeal because they occupy massive space on the media stage which they know exactly how to fill to best effect. This is not to say that the media themselves decide foreign policy. For another, the news media have to show a modicum of objectivity, otherwise their whole message is devalued and seen as shallow propaganda, which then destroys their worth, appeal, and most crucial of all, audience ratings, by which they live or die. So even if at times it appears that CNN is creating policy as well as reporting events, the charge that 'the media' actually determine public policy is misplaced.