378 INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION gence and growth of what may be called transnational economic activities. As I suggested above,a discussion of transnational economic activities ought to be concerned with two issues:I)the empirical question of whether trans- national activities exist and 2)the theoretical question of what sort of theory is necessary to explain the emergence of transnational activities and the dy- namics of their growth.It is the former issue to which the following discus- sion is largely directed.Problems arising from the theoretical issue are dis- cussed in section IV. Any discussion of the nature of transnational economic processes must re- late the emergence of transnational economic relations to relatively recent changes in international relations and include the magnitude of the growth of international economic activities.Because a theory to explain this growth is lacking,even the empirical concern of describing trends is confronted with frequently contradictory evidence.Some writers see these trends as support- ive of the thesis that transnational economic activities have grown in volume as well as significance during the past century.Others see the trends as re- flective of a substantially decreased significance in the external sector for vir- tually all societies which followed the growth in this sector before World War I These contradictions apparently reflect our inability to perceive clear- ly the dynamics of change since we are in the midst of a process which is as yet incomplete.As a result trends have become clearly discernible,but,as one student of modern economic growth has argued,"the final shapes of these characteristics are presently hidden from us.This limitation,however,should affect primarily questions of degree rather than kind,of intensity rather than being.It will be most important to bear this limitation in mind in evaluating the specific empirical coefficients-their stability and variability over time and space." There are several possible ways to organize a discussion of transnational economic trends.One would involve the specification of the nongovernmental participants including corporations,financial organizations,and other group- Mutual Neglect,"International Afjairs (London),April 1970 (Vol.46,No.2),pp.304-315;and my article,"The Politics of Interdependence,"International Organisation,Spring 1969 (Vol.23,No.2), pp,3I1-326. 10 Several of these contradictory interpretations are reviewed in my article in International Organiza- tion,Vol.23,No.2;and in Oran R.Young,"Interdependencies in World Politics,"International Journal, Autumn 1969 (Vol.24,No.4),pp.726-750. 11 Sce Kuznets;and Richard N.Cooper,The Economics of Interdependence:Economic Policy in the Atlantic Community (Atlantic Policy Series)(New York:McGraw-Hill Book Co.[for the Council on Foreign Relations],1968). 12 The most extreme statement of this viewpoint is found in Kenneth N.Waltz,"The Myth of Na- tional Interdependence,"in The International Corporation:A Symposium,ed.Charles P.Kindleberger (Cambridge,Mass:M.I.T.Press,1970),pp.205-223.See also Karl W.Deutsch and Alexander Eckstein, "National Industrialization and the Declining Share of the International Economic Scctor,1890-1959," World Politics,January 1961 (Vol.13,No.2),pp.267-299;and Karl W.Deutsch,Chester I.Bliss,and Alexander Eckstein,"Population,Sovereignty,and the Share of Foreign Trade,"Economic Development and Cultural Change,July 1962 (Vol.1o,No.4),pp.353-366. 13 Kuznets,pp.15-16