Before turning to these difficulties, however, we must consider a final level of affiliation that increasingly confronts the liberal citizen: supranational regimes. Since World War II, states have increasingly created supranational formations such as the United Nations, European Union, General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, North American Free Trade Agreement, the International Criminal Court, and many others. In most cases, these formations have entailed the surrender by member states of some of their national sovereignty. Some supranational regimes, however, are not state-created at all. Non-governmental actors concerned with human rights, international standards, cultural issues, and so forth now play an increasingly prominent role, constituting what some view as a kind of ‘international civil society’ (Spiro, 1996).