Local actors in global politics

Globalization and the new information and communication technologies(ICTs) have enabled a variety of local political actors to enter inter-national arenas once exclusive to national states. Multiple types of claim-making and oppositional politics articulate these developments. Going global has been partly facilitated and conditioned by the infrastructure of the global economy, even as the latter is often the object of those oppositional politics. Further, and in my analysis, very importantly, the possibility of global imag-inaries has enabled even those who are geographically immobile to become part of global politics. NGOs and indigenous peoples, immigrants and refugees who become subjects of adjudication in human rights decisions, human rights and environmental activists, and many others are increasingly becoming actors in global politics. That is to say, non-state actors can enter and gain visibility in inter-national fora or global politics as individuals and as collectivities, emerging from the invisibility of aggregate membership in a nation-state exclusively represented by the sovereign. One way of interpreting this is in terms of a