Beyond the Boomerang: From Transnational Advocacy Networks to Transcalar Advocacy in International Politics 9780817321147, 0817321144

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BEYOND THE

BOOMERANG

NGOgraphies: Ethnographic Reflections on NGOs SERIES EDITORS David Lewis Mark Schuller

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Sonia Alvarez Michael Barnett Erica Bornstein Inderpal Grewal Lamia Karim Anke Schwittay Aradhana Sharma Thomas Yarrow

The NGOgraphies book series explores the roles, identities, and social representations of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) through ethnographic monographs and edited volumes. The series offers detailed accounts of NGO practices, challenges the normative assumptions of existing research, and criti­cally interrogates the ideological frameworks that underpin the policy worlds where NGOs operate.

B E Y ON D T H E

BOOMERANG From Transnational Advocacy Networks to Transcalar Advocacy in International Politics

EDITED BY AND

CHRISTOPHER L. PALLAS

ELIZABETH A. BLOODGOOD

THE UNIVER SIT Y OF AL A­B AMA PRESS

Tuscaloosa

The University of Ala­bama Press Tuscaloosa, Ala­bama 35487–0380 uapress.ua.edu Copyright © 2022 by the University of Ala­bama Press All rights reserved. Inquiries about reproducing material from this work should be addressed to the University of Ala­bama Press. Typefaces: Arno Pro and Futura Cover image: Global network connection; iStock.com Cover design: Lori Lynch Cataloging-­in-­Publication data is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: 978-­0-­8173-­2114-­7 E-­ISBN: 978-­0-­8173-­9387-­8

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

vii

Foreword MARISA VON BÜLOW

ix

Preface CHRISTOPHER L. PALLAS AND ELIZABETH A. BLOODGOOD

xiii

Acknowledgments xv Abbreviations xvii Introduction New Transcalar Advocacy and Evolving Patterns of Advocacy beyond the Boomerang CHRISTOPHER L. PALLAS AND ELIZABETH A. BLOODGOOD

1

PART I. NEW CHALLENGES: THE CHANGING ARCHITECTURE OF GLOBAL GOVERNANCE 1 Closing Space and the Restructuring of Global Activism

Causes and Consequences of the Global Crackdown on NGOs SUPARNA CHAUDHRY AND ANDREW HEISS

23

2 Opening Up of International Organizations ANDERS UHLIN

36

3 South–South Networks among NGOs SUSAN APPE

49

4 Power to the People?

Network Structures and the World Social Forum ELIZABETH A. BLOODGOOD

62

5 Power Shifts, Paradigm Shifts, and Transnational

Advocacy Ecosystems JACKIE SMITH

81

vi / Contents

PART II. CHANGING AGENCY AND ADVOCATES 6 Downscaling Contestation in Global GMO Governance

Challenging Transnational Actors at the Subnational Level in Mexico SHANA M. STAROBIN

97

7 Assessing Prospects for Transcalar Activism

against the Global Oil Industry Lessons from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

MARIA GUADALUPE MOOG RODRIGUES

110

8 Transnational Advocacy and Increasing Local Agency

Vietnamese NGOs in the HIV/AIDS Sector

CHRISTOPHER L. PALLAS AND LAN PHUONG NGUYEN

125

9 Compliant States, Reluctant Communities?

Transcalar Activism against Gender-­Based Violence KARISA CLOWARD

139

10 Changing Climates in Russia and China

NGOs and Transcalar Climate Advocacy in Authoritarian States LAURA A. HENRY AND LISA MCINTOSH SUNDSTROM

159

Conclusion Toward an Empirically Grounded Theory of Transcalar Advocacy ELIZABETH A. BLOODGOOD AND CHRISTOPHER L. PALLAS

174

Afterword JAN AART SCHOLTE

193

References 201 Contributors 237 Index 239

ILLUSTRATIONS

FIGURES 1.1. CIVICUS monitor civic space ratings

24

1.2. Civil society regulations

27

1.3. Barriers to advocacy and aid

30

4.1. World Social Forum 2016 network diagram

70

5.1. Number of transnational social movement organizations, 1953–2013 85 C.1. Boomerang model revisited

178

C.2. Basic process of transcalar advocacy

180

C.3. Agency, architecture, and transcalar advocacy

184

TABLES I.1. From transnational to transcalar advocacy

19

2.1. Frequency of international organizations and bodies with transnational actor access over time

38

4.1. Descriptive statistics of World Social Forum 2016 registered organizations 72 4.2. Multivariate regression analy­sis

75

5.1. Transnational social movement organization ties to intergovernmental organizations by cohort, 2003 and 2013

89

10.1. Chinese and Russian organization and delegate participation by year

165

FOREWORD

O

n No­vem­ber 25, 2019, dozens of Chilean women participated in a performance on the streets of Santiago to celebrate the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Wearing a black blindfold around their eyes, they danced and chanted, “It wasn’t my fault, not where I was, not how I dressed” (Elimination of Violence against Women 2019). They denounced not only the systematic failure of the justice sys­tem and of the police to protect women but also the victim-­blaming attitudes that make raped women even more vulnerable. The call to participate was launched by the group Lastesistas, a feminist collective created by four Chilean activists based in the city of Valparaíso. A week later, videos of the performance had gone viral globally, and similar flash mobs had taken place in at least ten countries around the world, in­ clud­ing Argentina, Brazil, France, and India. (This is a rough estimation, based on a hashtag search conducted on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram on De­cem­ ber 2, 2019.) In February 2020, the feminist organization Geochicas launched an interactive map that showed that the performance had been replicated 367 times in fifty-­two countries (Geochicas 2020). The example of this Chilean-­turned-­global performance speaks directly to the theoretical framework the authors of this volume propose to understand collective action. It began as an initiative of a small local Chilean feminist organization and very quickly diffused globally. To do so, actors created online networks linked through the use of the hashtags #ElVioladorErestu and ­#ElVioladorenTuCamino and their equivalents in vari­ous languages. The words were translated and the performance was adapted to the reality of women in places as different as Beirut, Caracas, and Paris. Although the origi­nal Chilean song made specific references to that country’s police and its his­tori­cal relationship with women, the performance also mobilized strong emotions around a universal message: the need to end sexual violence against women. In spite of the fact that the state played a prominent part in the Chilean anthem—“the rapist is you … the policemen, the judges, the President, the state”—denouncing violence and injustice against women requires a societal change that includes but goes well beyond state policies and po­liti­cal actors’ attitudes. This is thus a

x / Marisa von Bülow

prime example of “transcalar advocacy,” defined by the editors of this volume as “advocacy at even very local levels which has global effects by seeking to make, change, or implement policy or practices concerning issues or phenomena that cross national borders.” TRANSCALAR—NOT TRANSNATIONAL—ADVOCACY

This book contributes to the scholarly field of transnational collective action by making a strong case for dropping the “transnational” vocabulary. Although such nation-­based thinking might have been justified in the past, the editors and contributors argue, this is no longer true. Advocacy in the international realm has become more complex and comes in different shapes and forms, many of which do not cross national boundaries and do not necessarily result from the actions of transnational networks. The authors of the chapters make this case convincingly by showing the usefulness of a transcalar theory of collective action to the analy­sis of a diversity of types of mobilizations across scales, from the World Social Forum to advocacy in Brazil, Mexico, China, and Vietnam. In making the argument in favor of a transition to a new theoretical approach, the authors stand on the shoulders of several scholars who have tried to make sense of the increased complexity of collective action across scales in the 2000s. Sidney Tarrow’s rooted cosmopolitans offered evidence that “not all activism that is relevant to transnational politics takes place in the international arena” (Tarrow 2005, 30). In a book chapter published seven years after “Activists beyond Borders,” Kathryn Sikkink proposed to expand on the idea of the boomerang pattern by differentiating among four types of domestic-­ international interactions resulting from different degrees of institutional openness to civil society at these scales (Sikkink 2005, 156–57). Similarly, in their work on European integration, Donatella della Porta and Manuela Caiani (2009) showed that, for many social movements, influencing European policies and issues of­ten entailed targeting national, not regional, authorities. My work on pathways to transnationality also sought to allow for a broader array of possible locations in space through time than previous definitions of transnational collective action. Pathways to transnationality are multiple, because they can be temporary or sustained through time, and they do not necessarily require transnational forms of organization (von Bülow 2010, chap. 2). My research on action around free trade showed that civil society actors sometimes operated only at the domestic level, while others had much deeper international commitments and built stronger ties with allies in other countries; their strategies also varied in the temporal dimension, from short term, to intermittent, to more sustainable efforts (von Bülow 2010, 25–34).

Foreword / xi

This literature not only incorporated the possibility that actors engage in transnational advocacy in diverse ways but also argued that actors from the south had a more important role in these mobilizations than suggested by the pattern of a simplified boomerang that is thrown by south­ern actors to north­ern allies and arenas. In specific po­liti­cal contexts, south­ern actors can have more access to policy makers and thus push forward agendas and proposals more efficiently than north­ern actors do (Sikkink 2005; von Bülow 2010, chap. 10). Furthermore, north­ern actors are not necessarily part of every transnational organizing effort. Based on an analy­sis of transnationalism in Central America, Rose Spalding (2015) contributed to further specifying the agency of south­ ern actors by describing south–south networking as “lateral transnationalism,” which refers to processes of “frame construction and resource flows that emerge through exchanges between activists in most similar, and frequently neighboring, countries” (Spalding 2015, 185). In spite of such efforts at thinking in terms of multiple scales and pathways and of going beyond simple north–south dichotomies, the literature has not incorporated many of the changes that the contributors to this volume explore. In particular, the focus on upward scale shift has left undertheorized cases of domestication or of local action oriented toward international issues. This book contributes to further advancing the scholarly debate by clearly connecting structural changes in international politics with new possibilities for collective action across scales. The authors point to the shift in the relative power of north­ern and south­ern civil society actors, to the development of information communications technologies and its new affordances for collective action, and to changes in the geographical locations where policies are decided. However, this is not a deterministic argument. Instead, the framework put forward in this book leaves ample space for agency. It allows us to analyze how actors adapt their strategies, targets, and goals to shifts in both opportunities and threats at multiple scales. Furthermore, the analytical separation between tran­ scalar advocacy and transcalar networking enables us to understand that actors will still focus on global issues, even if they do not cross national boundaries or engage in transnational organizing. This analytical separation between advocacy and networking is key to understanding the diversification of types of actors and the emergence of new patterns of transcalar collective action, such as the one spearheaded by the performers of the Chilean anthem. A RESEARCH AGENDA

As every good scholarly contribution does, this book presents a provocative theoretical framework and also offers a research agenda for the field. A relevant

xii / Marisa von Bülow

part of this agenda relates to the need to better understand the effects of new digital technologies on transcalar action. From activists’ use of email and websites in the 1990s to social media platforms and messaging apps in the 2000s, digital technologies have offered new possibilities for po­liti­cal activism in general and more specifically for collective organization and mobilization across scales. Such developments call into question mechanisms of transcalar diffusion of ideas and repertoires and, more specifically, the differentiation between “relational” and “nonrelational” diffusion. The former refers to diffusion through “well-­connected trust networks” and the latter to diffusion through “the media and the Internet” (Tarrow 2005, 101). A third type—“mediated diffusion”— occurs through social movement brokers (Tarrow 2005, 101–2). However, as Mercea and Bastos have argued, digital activism of­ten brings together the three kinds of diffusion all at once (2016). Much like other dichotomic thinking that this volume criticizes—north/south, local/global—the differentiation between online and offline collective action does not seem to be useful anymore. This is true for actors across the ideological spectrum. In spite of recent efforts at studying mobilizations of conservative and right-­wing actors at vari­ous scales (e.g., Permoser and Stoeckl 2020; Bob 2012, 2013), how these actors engage in processes of transcalar advocacy and networking remains understudied. And, yet, for actors across the ideological spectrum, the use of new digital technologies has further blurred the distinction among scales of activism. It has become harder to tell where interpretative frames originate, to trace diffusion paths across territories, and to determine the boundaries of social movements. The framework of transcalar advocacy the contributors to this volume put forward helps in better understanding these seismic changes to collective action. May it inspire others. MARISA VON BÜLOW

PREFACE

CHRISTOPHER L. PALLAS AND ELIZABETH A. BLOODGOOD

T

he seed for this volume was planted at the International Studies Association in Atlanta in 2016. Christopher Pallas was presenting for the first time his and Lan Phuong Nguyen’s work on transnational advocacy by Vietnamese NGOs. Elizabeth Bloodgood served as a discussant on the panel and high­lighted the links between the Pallas and Nguyen paper and other recent developments in the field. Recognizing our mutual interests, Pallas and Bloodgood began discussing what we saw as an ongoing transformation in transnational advocacy. That summer, we applied for an International Studies Association (ISA) Catalytic Grant to develop further research on this topic and were successful. The grant allowed us to convene a preconference workshop at ISA 2017 to discuss with other scholars the changes that they were observing in the transnational advocacy space. Margaret Keck and Jan Aart Scholte participated as discussants. The workshop solidified our intuition that a significant change was afoot in transnational advocacy, in­clud­ing changes in both the agency of NGOs and the architecture of global governance. Jan Aart’s framing of contemporary advocacy as “transcalar” rather than transnational provided an additional stepping-­stone for the development of our theory. The process from there was one of perseverance and dedicated effort, especially on the part of our contributors. We developed a framework for the volume and recruited contributors, in­clud­ing participants from the origi­nal workshop and other scholars. We received draft chapters and requested several rounds of revisions. Indeed, the willingness of the contributors to conform their chapters to the volume’s framework and respond to requests for revisions was instrumental in helping us build a coherent volume. At the same time, Beth and Chris presented the material from the introduction and conclusion at several conferences, in­clud­ing the International Society for Third Sector Research (ISTR) 2018, and the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA) 2018 and 2019.

xiv / Pallas and Bloodgood

The feedback we received from discussants and audience members, especially Joannie Tremblay-­Boire, Maryam Deloffre, Cristina Balboa, George Mitchell, and Sarah Stroup, was particularly helpful. Friendly debates with Hans Peter Schmitz, George Mitchell, and Tosca Bruno-­van Vijfeijken, with whom (along with Nina Hall) we published a piece in Stanford Social Innovation Review discussing possible future trends in advocacy, were also beneficial. Finally, in the summer of 2019, we began discussions with the University of Ala­bama Press. We are deeply grateful to David Lewis, Mark Schuller, and Wendi Schnaufer for their support for the publication of this volume and for the constructive feedback provided by Wendi and UAP’s reviewers.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A

n International Studies Association Catalytic Research Grant (2016–17) brought together many of the contributors for this volume and launched the development of the ideas embodied in the introduction and conclusion. In addition, preparation for this volume was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (#435-­2017-­0302). The editors offer a huge thanks to Lorraine Bergeron for her assistance with research, editing, coordinating communications with the authors, and revisions to the manuscript. We also thank Amy Melvin for their work in preparing the index for this volume. Elizabeth Bloodgood extends special thanks to Jeremy Varvaris for research assistance and Jonathan Ames for technical assistance with the World Social Forum data. This research was funded by a Concordia University Under­ graduate Research Award. Jackie Smith’s chapter draws from collaborative work with Melanie Hughes. She is grateful to Hughes and to her other collaborators, especially Samantha Plummer, Basak Gemici, and Brittany Duncan, who provided invaluable assistance with our data collection and analy­sis of transnational social movement organizations and networks. The empirical case elaborated in chapter 6 draws on revised and abridged case material first published in Shana M. Starobin, “Beekeepers versus Biotech: Commodity Characteristics and Regulatory Interdependence in the Global Environmental Politics of Food,” Global Environmental Politics 18, no. 2 (May 2018): 123–31. © 2018 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Funding to conduct this research was provided by a Social Science Research Council’s (SSRC) fellowship, the Duke University Graduate School, and the Center for Latin Ameri­can and Caribbean Studies at Duke. Alexandra Johnson and Laurent Abergel provided research assistance with support from the Penn Program on Regulation. Special thanks to colleagues who commented on earlier drafts of this work, namely, Edward Balleisen, Tim Büthe, Jennifer Clapp, Cary Coglianese, Jack Knight, Kimberly R. Marion Suiseeya, Kate Neville, Gabriel Scheffler, Caitlin Scott, Dan Walters, and Erika Weinthal; participants in the Beyond the Boomerang Workshop at the International Studies Association An-

xvi / Acknowledgments

nual Conference, Baltimore, Maryland, February 21, 2017; and two anonymous reviewers. Chapter 8 is a revised and abridged version of Christopher L. Pallas and Lan Nguyen, “Transnational Advocacy without North­ern NGO Partners: Viet­na­ mese NGOs in the HIV/AIDS Sector,” Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 47 (4_suppl, 2018): 159S–176S. Christopher L. Pallas’s fieldwork in Viet­nam was supported by a summer research grant from the Kennesaw State University College of Humanities and Social Science. He is grateful to the Center for Supporting Community Development Initiatives (SCDI) for hosting him during his time in Hanoi. Chapter 9 includes text from Karisa Cloward, When Norms Collide: Local Responses to Activism against Female Genital Mutilation and Early Marriage and has been reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press. The field research described in the chapter was conducted with support from Yale University’s Institute for Social and Policy Studies and MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies as well as from South­ern Methodist University’s University Research Council. Laura A. Henry and Lisa McIntosh Sundstrom gratefully acknowledge the superb assistance of Jennifer Allan, Priya Bala-­Miller, Juan Wang, and Daria Boltokova in compiling data used in their chapter. This research project is supported through a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (#430–2013–000379). The authors are grateful to Jennifer Allan for sharing the origi­nal United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) NGO participation dataset on which her doctoral thesis is based.

ABBREVIATIONS AAA ADB ADIC AHOMAR AROG ASEAN ATTAC BAPA BNDES CBO CEDAW COMPERJ CONABIO CONANP CONGO COP CRC CSN CSO CSR CSRE ECOSOC ECOSUR EU FAONG FASE FGM FOE

Agenda Accra Action Asian Development Bank Agency for Integrated Development in Congo Association of Men and Women of the Sea Network Association of NGOs of Guayaquil Association of South­east Asian Nations L’Association pour la Taxation des Transactions financières pour l’Aide aux Citoyens Plan of Action of Buenos Aires Brazilian National Bank for Economic and Social Development community-­based organization Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women Petrobras Petrochemical Complex National Commission for Biodiversity Knowledge and Use National Commission for Protected Natural Areas Conference of Non-­Governmental Organizations in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations Conference of Parties (UNFCCC) Convention on the Rights of the Child Confederation des syndicats nationaux civil society organization corporate social responsibility Civil Society Regulatory Environment index UN Economic and Social Council El Colegio de la Frontera Sur European Union Federation of Antioqueña NGOs Federação de Órgãos para Assistência Social e Educacional female genital mutilation Friends of the Earth

xviii / Abbreviations

FSM G7 GBV GM GMO GPEDC HRWG IBAMA IBASE IFRC

Forum Social Mondial Group of 7 gender-­based violence genetically modified genetically modified organism Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation Human Rights Working Group Instituto Brasileiro de Meio Ambiente Instituto Brasileiro de Análises Sociais e Econômicas International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies IGO intergovernmental organization ILO International Labor Organization IMF International Monetary Fund INE National Institute of Ecology international nongovernmental organization INGO INPE Instituto Brasileiro de Pesquisas Espaciais INESC Instituto de Estudos Socio-­Economicos international relations IR ISA Socioenvironmental Institute Institute for Social and Development Studies ISDS LBGOM Law on Biosecurity of Genetically Modified Organisms MAB Movimento dos Atingidos por Barragens MDG millennium development goal NGO nongovernmental organization NLGACC National Leading Group to Address Climate Change OECD Organisation for Economic Co-­Operation and Development PEPFAR President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief REDUC Refinaria Duque de Caxias RLCJDS Latin Ameri­can Network for Fair, Democratic and Sustainable Cities SAGARPA Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food SCDI Center for Supporting Community Development Initiatives SDG sustainable development goal SEMARNAT Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources SENASICA National Service for Health, Food Safety, and Quality SINDIPETRO Sindicato dos Petroleiros do Rio de Janeiro TAN transnational advocacy networks

Abbreviations / xix

TIN TNA TSMO UN UNAIDS UNFCCC UNFPA UNICEF USF VNGO VUSTA WHO WSF WTO WWF

Transnational Institute transnational actor transnational social movement organization United Nations Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change United Nations Population Fund United Nations Children’s Fund Urban Social Forum Vietnamese nongovernmental organization Vietnam Union of Science and Technology Associations World Health Organization World Social Forum World Trade Organization World Wide Fund for Nature

BEYOND THE

BOOMERANG

INTRODUCTION New Transcalar Advocacy and Evolving Patterns of Advocacy beyond the Boomerang CHRISTOPHER L. PALLAS AND ELIZABETH A. BLOODGOOD

I

n Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink’s (1998) landmark volume, Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics, the authors describe how transnational activism was instrumental in opposing the Polonroeste and Planofloro development projects in Brazil. In their recounting, the Brazilian government collaborated with the World Bank to facilitate internal colonization of broad swaths of the Amazon rain forest, allowing a flood of new settlers whose presence and practices threatened the lives and livelihoods of the indigenous people living there. Local activists, in­clud­ing rubber tappers, connected with international environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the United States to build an international network that leveraged United States po­liti­cal power to pressure the World Bank to reform the project. It was a classic example of what became known as “boomerang” activism: local activists facing a local po­liti­cal blockage working with international counterparts to leverage external power (the United States and World Bank) to remedy the local situation. Two decades later in Brazil, transnational activism looks decidedly different. Brazilian activists are still engaging on transnational activism. Yet their partners, rather than being international nongovernmental organizations (­ INGOs) based in the global North, are of­ten Brazilian government staffers and NGOs from India, Brazil, and South Africa (Rodrigues 2016). Indeed, a “revolving door” between activist organizations and the government “has, at times, strengthened the [activists’] agenda” (Rodrigues 2016, 713). At the same time, local NGO staff of­ten operate in tension with their erstwhile environmental allies from the United States, seeking to chart a locally appropriate course in the face of international pressure (Rodrigues 2016). Activism may now begin locally, but it reaches out internationally to magnify local power rather than circumvent a local blockage, and it targets foreign states and actors just as of­ten as it enlists their aid.

2 / Pallas and Bloodgood

The case of Brazil is only one of many. Christopher Pallas and Lan Nguyen (2018, 2016) record how INGOs, to avoid tension with the Vietnamese government, avoid partnering with Vietnamese NGOs in advocacy activities, yet Vietnamese NGOs will partner with their own government to do international advocacy on issues like access to antiretroviral drugs. Susan Appe (2018) describes regional networks forming among NGOs in Central America. Research on closing NGO space (e.g., Dupuy, Ron, and Prakash 2015; Toepler et al. 2020) demonstrates how international partnerships may no longer be a viable option for many local NGOs. These cases highlight several factors, in­clud­ing changing levels of agency among local NGOs, changing po­liti­cal opportunity structures in international policy-making, and a shift from transnational to tran­ scalar advocacy, wherein the transnational nature of advocacy is no longer constituted by ties across the nationalities of the actors involved but rather by the transnational nature of the issues addressed. RECONSIDERING TRANSNATIONAL NETWORK ADVOCACY

Our goal in this volume is to develop a new theoretical framework for understanding and conceptualizing transnational advocacy in the twenty-­first century. Because we are proposing something new and different, it naturally begs the question, “Different from what?” The answer, as the title of this volume suggests, is a deviation from the traditional boomerang model. Keck and Sikkink’s Activists beyond Borders has become the basis for a generation of scholarship on transnational NGO advocacy. Drawing on rich his­tori­cal accounts from human rights, environmental, and women’s advocacy, the authors showed how transnational advocacy networks typically formed when local activists facing a local blockage, of­ten a corrupt, undemocratic, or otherwise intransigent government, reached out to international partners, of­ten NGOs based in the high-­ income countries of the global North. These partners then leveraged the power of foreign states to bring pressure on the local government (or other blockage) for reform. The book provided an intuitive and powerful explanation of the dynamics of transnational advocacy and network formation and arrived at a crucial time for the study of international NGOs, just as the end of the Cold War opened up new po­liti­cal space for transnational advocacy and as major NGO campaigns focused on World Bank reform (Pallas 2013; Fox and Brown 1998), international debt relief (Busby 2007), and the ban of landmines (Rutherford 2000) were gaining pub­lic attention or policy success. It launched a vibrant research agenda on transnational actors and advocacy in international politics and has been cited more than twelve thousand times since its publication in 1998. Yet the theory was of­ten applied in narrow ways that made limited ap-

Introduction / 3

plication of the theoretical richness of Activists beyond Borders. Thus, within the field of transnational advocacy research, a number of assumptions became prevalent. Scholars assumed that international advocacy occurred in response to local needs; that local actors (of­ten code for activists from the low-­and middle-­income countries of the global South) lacked the power or agency to act internationally; that international policy-­making structures were closed to local input; and that, as a result, transnational advocacy, at least when involv­ing south­ern NGOs, would necessarily also be network advocacy. Significantly, even critics of transnational network advocacy who called into question the altruism, representativeness, and legitimacy of transnational advocacy networks did so by stressing the differences in resources, power, and po­liti­cal access of north­ ern and south­ern NGOs but not the assumption of South–North partnership (Nelson 2000; Bob 2005; Pallas and Urpelainen 2013). While Bob (2005), for example, clearly demonstrates the self-­interested selective partnering of north­ ern NGOs based on “marketing” by potential south­ern candidates, the competition is between south­ern NGOs for north­ern sponsors who have the power to bring local organizations’ campaigns international attention or doom them to remaining unknown. Many of these assumptions were accurate generalizations in the early days of contemporary transnational advocacy. However, the empirical conditions that supported the theory presented in Keck and Sikkink’s book have changed in the years since the volume’s publication. As a result, as the Brazil case just mentioned illustrates, transnational advocacy looks decidedly different than it did in the late 1990s. The social, economic, and po­liti­cal environments in which NGOs operate are now far more diverse, as are the NGOs themselves. The analytic shortcomings of the boomerang model are in part the result of the limited application of the theoretical richness of Activists beyond Borders, and it is important to stress that our critiques of the usage of the boomerang theory should not be confused with a critique of the theory itself. Yet we also must acknowledge that—even if correctly applied—the boomerang model no longer explains many instances of transnational activism. Current events showcase additional strategies and outcomes for transnational advocacy and thus the need for new theory to advance the study of NGOs in international relations. In this volume we ask the following question: How have changes in the po­ liti­cal, social, technological, and economic environment of NGOs, both in the high-­income countries of the global North and the low-­and middle-­income countries of the global South, yielded new patterns of transcalar advocacy? We seek to identify the drivers of change, build new theory that captures the consequences of new actors’ advocacy strategies, and develop methodologies to further enhance theory-­building in the field.

4 / Pallas and Bloodgood

To answer this question, we examine the evolution of advocacy in response to changing social, economic, and po­liti­cal conditions. We argue that changes at all levels of politics, from the local to the global, along with new economic growth, have generated a greater diversity of actors engaged in advocacy, increasing competition among north­ern INGOs while empowering south­ ern NGOs to work together. National regulations have increasingly prevented North–South links (Dupuy, Prakash, and Ron 2016; Heiss and Kelley 2017) and of­ten prompted INGOs to “nationalize” their operations, that is, to spin off INGO country offices to become independent organizations (Rodrigues 2016). At the same time, new access to international organizations (Tallberg et al. 2013; Johnson 2014), the increasing importance of the local (Cloward 2016), and the creation of a greater diversity of international organizations (Abbott, Green, and Keohane 2016), has provided south­ern NGOs with more po­ liti­cal power in international spaces. The advocacy practices that result from these shifts extend beyond what was seen and understood twenty years ago and generate the need for a new generation of empirically grounded theory. Strategic adaptation to the changing global context has led to a growing diversity of actors and resulted in more complex patterns of advocacy network formation. Advocacy in the international realm is no longer defined primarily by transnational networking but by the transnational nature of the issues or policies involved. Advocacy may be a local response to an international issue, such as child marriage, rather than an international response to a local issue, such as the detainment of po­liti­cal dissidents. With shifts in information, access, and funding, the power of actors is no longer immediately predictable from their location or actor type, and networks are not always necessary or desirable for successful advocacy campaigns. Where advocacy networks form, they feature a more diverse range of partners, in­clud­ing corporations, national governments, and electronically connected communities of in­di­vidual activists and protestors. Because of the growing recognition of the diversity of actors involved in tran­ scalar advocacy, the authors across this volume use a range of terms, in­clud­ing NGO, INGO, civil society organization (CSO), transnational social movement organization (TSMO), grassroots organizations, and associations. These terms are not interchangeable insofar as the groups they refer to of­ten operate at different scales, from the very local to the international, and may differ in their internal structures and governance. However, they all share the characteristics of being publicly oriented, private organizations seeking social or po­liti­cal change via po­liti­cal processes or institutions. The strategy and tactics for advocacy taken by these networks are likewise more diverse than the origi­nal boomerang. Local farmers and businesses, for instance, may work together to preserve national laws against international free-­

Introduction / 5

trade pressure rather than drawing on international pressure to change local laws. NGOs based in the United States or Europe may reach out to low-­and middle-­income country partners in “inverse boomerangs” to develop networks that ostensibly have greater legitimacy. Shifts in power from high-­to middle-­ income countries, national regulatory constraints on foreign funding, combined with increasing NGO capacity in middle-­income countries, can sideline north­ern NGOs entirely as South–South networks emerge. Lastly, the advocacy strategies of these networks have diversified. With power no longer concentrated in north­ern arenas, activists must devise ways to engage and persuade local governments, traditional authorities, regional bodies, international institutions, and multiple populations of in­di­vidual stakeholders and interested citizens to change their policy, practice, or behavior. Accordingly, as we work to develop new theory to suit a new global architecture and diversifying agents, we apply the language of “transcalar” rather than “transnational” activism pioneered by Jan Aart Scholte (McKeon 2017). We define transcalar activism as activism that works across multiple po­liti­cal levels, each of which reflects a different scale or scope of activity. These include local and national advocacy efforts that nonetheless influence policy or practice at global levels as well as global actions that shape local and national practices (see Alejo 2019). The framing of advocacy as transcalar or multiscalar is a growing trend in the literature on advocacy ( Jessop 2009; Scally 2012; Mayer 2013; McKeon 2017; Balboa 2018; Alejo 2019). Its emphasis reflects emerging empirical phenomena. Margit Mayer (2013, 163), for instance, describes as a new phenome­ non “the re-­scaling of decision-­making processes about many contested issues: which issues get downscaled to local or urban authorities, [and] which get up-­ scaled or externalized to supra-­or extra-­national bodies.” Changes in the scale of advocacy and decision-­making affect how advocacy itself is conducted and how effective it is. Balboa (2018, 5, 6) notes that “access to the local scale increases NGOs’ legitimacy at the global scale” and yet, to maintain power, NGOs “must systematically favor the requirements of the global scale over the local scale.” Marisa von Bülow (2013, 58) adds that no longer is scale shifting a one-­ time decision; transnational activism may shift from local to national to global multiple times in a campaign as priorities and targets change. Seeing advocacy as occurring on different scales (rather than on different po­liti­cal levels) helps highlight the fact that, in a globalized world, even locally oriented, small-­scale actions can have global implications (see Starobin, this volume). Advocacy is not limited by advocates’ locale (Scally 2012). Activists may mobilize strategically, working “locally, but also regionally, supra-­regionally, nationally, and . . . globally” as they respond to “where contested decision-­making

6 / Pallas and Bloodgood

is taking place” (Mayer 2013, 163). Seeing advocacy as transcalar thus reflects the move toward deterritorialization in international politics, reminding us that “po­liti­cal actors have pluralised and no longer see the state as the main vehicle through which to realise their interests” (Cerny and Prichard 2017, 383). The unifying characteristics of transcalar advocacy are that actors’ strategies and actions concern issues, or have impacts, that extend beyond their geographic locale and across levels of politics. To avoid potentially changing the meaning or intentions of other authors’ work, we continue to use the term “trans­national” to discuss his­tori­cal instances of advocacy and scholarly theory based on those his­tori­cal cases. The contributors to this volume, in their work, focus on actors’ strategic use of scale and the increased availability and flexibility of po­liti­cal arenas for advocacy on transnational issues in the current era of global governance. Importantly, this volume shifts emphasis away from the dominant role and power of states in the creation of advocacy networks and highlights NGOs’ strategic adaptation to changing po­liti­cal and economic conditions. By recon­sid­ ering fundamental assumptions of the relative power of international and local NGOs, we reveal how networking may be a strategic choice and not a necessity for many actors. Our focus on the transcalar rather than the transnational opens investigation into the processes by which advocacy at even very local levels can have global effects by seeking to make, change, or implement policy or practices concerning issues or phenomena that cross national borders. This shift, along with our recognition of the diversification of the types of actors involved in network advocacy, allows us to craft theory that more accurately captures and explains current empirical conditions. In short, this volume seizes the opportunity to reevaluate a standard model of NGO advocacy while consolidating and advancing a larger NGO research program that examines changing empirical realities in the advocacy arena and develops new theoretical models that are grounded in evolving power dynamics among local and international actors. To frame our discussion, this introduction sets out our argument for why new empirical realities require a shift from traditional transnational advocacy theories to a new grounded theory of transcalar activism. First, it examines the roots of the existing theory on transnational advocacy. Rather than critiquing the conventional wisdom as misguided or myopic, we instead show how existing theory, especially the boomerang pattern, accurately reflected the social, economic, and po­liti­cal conditions under which many NGOs operated in the 1990s and early 2000s. Second, we discuss the empirical observations that have prompted us to reconsider the prevailing theory on transnational advocacy and to reconceptual-

Introduction / 7

ize the phenomenon. We provide an overview of recent instances of advocacy that defy explanation by conventional theory and show how these instances, in turn, suggest that the social, economic, and po­liti­cal conditions under which advocacy is occurring have changed in substantial ways, undermining the basis of earlier theory. Third, we lay the framework for a new, grounded theory of transcalar advocacy. We identify two key dimensions of change: new challenges facing advocates in the face of changes in the architecture of global governance and a change in the agency and strategies of advocates as they seek to adapt to these new contexts and opportunities. We then use these two categories—new challenges in the architecture of global governance and changing advocates’ agency and ­strategies—­to organize current research on transcalar advocacy, both reviewing recent publications and previewing the contents of parts I and II of this volume. Fourth, on the basis of these cases, we preview our own theory of tran­scalar advocacy. Building on recent trends in advocacy research, we offer a theory of advocacy in which a fluidity of partners and strategies, combined with shifting and of­ten ambiguous arenas for advocacy across po­liti­cal scales, yields an advocacy defined by the transnationality of the issues under contention rather than the national identities of initiating advocates or their partners or targets. THE EMPIRICAL ROOTS OF EXISTING THEORY

Keck and Sikkink’s Activists beyond Borders continues to be the gold standard and most cited work in the area of transnational advocacy research. While this rich volume contains insights into the strategies and achievements of transnationally networked NGOs well beyond the boomerang model (Keck and Sikkink 1998), the boomerang pattern is one of the most recognizable and frequently used aspects of the volume. Keck and Sikkink’s boomerang model suggests that transnational NGO advocacy arises when NGOs blocked from domestic influence seek out partners, generally international NGOs based in high-­ income countries and their more liberal state governments, and form networks to ­apply pressure for policy change at home. Keck and Sikkink’s boomerang model continues to be widely used (e.g., Muñoz 2009; Friedman 2009; Wells 2009; Drezner 2010; Trommer 2011; Zwingel 2012), and has been applied to issues ranging from human trafficking to environmentalism to labor rights (Hochstetler 2002; Friedman 2009; Bertone 2004) in geographic regions from Latin America to East Asia and Africa (Lerche 2008; Wu 2011; Mbali 2013; Sikkink and Lutz 2007). It has also been expanded to “spirals” of influence built on repeated “boomerang throws” (Risse 2000, 190; Risse and Sikkink 1999, 18). Significantly, even work that eschews the explicit use of the boomerang model

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nonetheless shares some of its core tenets, especially the assumption that transnational advocacy revolves around networks and develops in response to local requests or needs (e.g., Clark 2001). The model also serves as the starting point for the criti­cal evaluation of transnational advocacy (e.g., Bob 2005; Tarrow 2002; Brysk 2002), in particular unintended consequences like po­liti­cal backlash and the development of illiberal countermovements. Implicit in the boomerang model, as popu­larly deployed, are two core assumptions. At one level, the model implies limited agency and capacity for the local actors initiating outreach. At another level, the model assumes that international NGOs have almost full access to local actors and international policy-­ making arenas (Carpenter 2007a, 2011). Each of these premises had a strong empirical basis when the model was developed and popu­larized. To engage in international policy-­making processes, NGOs must have significant resources or expertise, preferably both. Outside lobbying tactics rely on the mobilization of a criti­cal mass of supporters, of­ten among influential high-­ income country populations (see Keck and Sikkink 1998; Clark 2001). Prior to the current age of social-­media-­driven information transfer, NGOs in developing countries would need to gain the attention of conventional media outlets, bridge any language or cultural barriers, overcome basic technological hurdles (such as a lack of reliable communications), and demonstrate their credibility. Mobilizing supporters without free media attention would require mailing lists, postage and mailing costs, or funds for advertising. These challenges might be nearly insurmountable for a small, rural NGO without full-­time staff, wealthy supporters, or leaders fluent in a widely spoken language like English or French. Insider lobbying would be even more difficult for most local NGOs, given their potential physical and socioeconomic distance from national, much less international, po­liti­cal structures. In order to succeed, local NGOs would need to have access to decision-­makers in positions of po­liti­cal influence as well as expertise or information needed by these individuals (Tallberg et al. 2018). Both po­liti­cal expertise, in­clud­ing personal relationships with policy makers, and technical expertise in a subject area, require considerable resources and time to build (Pallas and Nguyen 2018; Buffardi, Pekkanen, and Smith 2017). For NGOs located far from the physical centers of policy-making like Geneva, New York, or Wash­ing­ton, DC, inside lobbying on transnational issues would be nearly impossible, even if the policy-making process were porous enough to allow them access and if policy makers perceived them as credible (Bloodgood 2013). The counterpoint to local NGO weakness within the boomerang model is “international” NGO strength. “International NGO,” as the term is used in the literature, commonly refers to professionalized NGOs from high-­income or

Introduction / 9

“north­ern” states. NGOs from such states have his­tori­cally dominated NGO influence in international policy-making, even exercising gatekeeping functions to limit the access of nonaligned NGOs, in­clud­ing sometimes those from the global South (Pallas 2013; Bob 2005; Rutherford 2000). The accessibility of these NGOs, especially for researchers in the global North, may also result in a selection bias in the research. To lessen the potential for confusion, we use the term “north­ern NGO,” which both acknowledges the power base and perspective of such actors and creates space for the discussion of the international ­activities of NGOs from low-­and middle-­income countries. In the boomerang model, north­ern NGOs are credited with a variety of strengths. Indeed, they are sometimes seen as almost perfect counterparts to local NGOs in the global South. Local NGOs lack media savvy and access; north­ ern NGOs readily grab media attention. Local NGOs lack contacts with policy makers; north­ern NGOs are networked with key policy makers. Local NGOs are physically unable to participate in decision-­making forums; north­ern NGOs of­ten have dedicated representatives. What north­ern NGOs require from their local counterparts is knowledge of local events (e.g., Clark 2001) and, in more recent analyses, the legitimacy that comes from working on behalf of a marginalized population (Pallas 2017). As with the assumption of local NGO weakness, the assumption of north­ ern NGO strength has a strong empirical basis. In the 1990s and early 2000s, north­ern NGOs led international campaigns that were credited with a host of international policy changes, in­clud­ing ending torture (Clark 2001; Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink 2005; Hopgood; Wong 2013); ending nuclear testing (Dalton 1998); banning landmines (Rutherford 2000); debt forgiveness (Busby 2008; Pettifor 2006); the creation of the International Criminal Court; stopping genocide (Prendergast 2007); protecting the rain forests (Keck and Sikkink 1998); improving environmental negotiations (Wapner 1996; Raustiala 1997); and democracy promotion (Kelley 2009). These campaigns featured savvy media usage that helped build widespread pub­lic support, particularly among the home countries of key north­ern policy makers. Success also relied on NGOs’ connections and inside access (Hanegraaff 2015b; Charnovitz 1997; Florini 1996) as well as the ability to mobilize considerable resources, in the form of money, supporters, and expertise. Evidence of south­ern NGO weakness and north­ern NGO strength provided the foundation for the boomerang model and drove much of the research into transnational advocacy campaigns in the 1990s and 2000s. From these beginnings, additional beliefs were built into these theories, in­clud­ing the reliance on networks as the basis of nonstate actor strength and network formation as the core organizing principle for their advocacy.

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Conflating Transnational Advocacy and Network Advocacy

Given the reliance of many transnational campaigns on partnerships between ­local NGOs from low-­or middle-­income countries and north­ern NGOs (Sikkink 1996; Clark 2000; Thomas 2001; Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink 2000), it is perhaps unsurprising that scholarship in the field regularly has of­ten conflated transnational advocacy and network advocacy. In practice, the term “transnational advocacy” is used in the literature in two distinct ways. In the first usage, of­ten applied when discussing advocacy initiated by north­ern NGOs and focused on north­ern audiences, transnationality reflects the issue or target. Thus, an NGO based in New York but lobbying the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva on global health issues is described as engaging in “transnational advocacy,” even if doing so without any foreign partners. The sec­ond usage, of­ten applied to low-­and middle-­income-­country NGOs, defines transnationality by the locations of the participants. Thus, an Egyptian NGO partnering with Amnesty International in Lon­don to address Egyptian issues is engaging in transnational advocacy. Given the his­tori­cal realities just described, this pattern makes a certain intuitive sense. Simply put, local NGOs from low-­and middle-­income countries were initially doing little transnational advocacy (in the sense of addressing nonlocal issues or targets) without the assistance of international partners. However, the unquestioning assumption that networks are fundamental to NGO advocacy campaigns poses a problem for scholars. If transnational advocacy by definition requires north­ern NGO partnerships, then academic research is reifying the view that south­ern policy change, and south­ern NGO advocacy success, requires assistance (Pallas and Nguyen 2018). Furthermore, this unproblematic view of transnational advocacy networks also dismisses power disparities and struggles within networks, of­ten between north­ern and south­ern NGOs, over the goals, targets, and activities of the network (Hertel 2006; Nelson and Dorsey 2007). With most transnational advocacy research, south­ern NGOs were seen to follow north­ern NGOs’ lead (Bob 2005), as most scholars ignored cases in which NGOs sought to outbid one another to direct a campaign (in the case of labor organizations studied by Hertel [2006]) or instances when NGOs found their interests more closely aligned with home governments than foreign NGOs (in the case of access to medicines or water studied by Nelson and Dorsey [2007] and Sell and Prakash [2000]). Moreover, excessive focus on the boomerang pattern of transnational advocacy creates the risk of ignoring instances of advocacy that fail to fit this pattern, such as transnational advocacy by south­ern NGOs without north­ern partners, because researchers fail to look for such instances or have no category in which to collect them. The definitional ambiguity perpetuates the problem identified

Introduction / 11

by Tarrow (2001) of confusing the transnational activism of in­di­vidual NGOs and the activities of transnational advocacy networks. In this volume, we begin by recognizing transnational advocacy (the engagement of nonlocal targets or issues) and transnational network advocacy (partnership with nonlocal organizations) as distinct phenomena. In addition, we examine empirically the strategic choice of organizations to create and use networks in their advocacy rather than take this as given. We deploy this framework in considering his­tori­cal examples and then, with the goal of developing new theoretical insights into NGO advocacy, dig deeper into how transnational advocacy—which we reconceptualize as transcalar advocacy—is conducted in the current era. CHALLENGES TO THE BOOMERANG MODEL

The foundational role of the boomerang model, as well as the larger and more nuanced role of Activists beyond Borders, leads us to reevaluate its empirical underpinnings in order to assess how reality may have outgrown theory. Keck and Sikkink’s model starts from three claims, each of which we now see as problematic: (1) north­ern NGOs direct and drive transnational advocacy campaigns even if they do not initiate them, (2) transnational advocacy is most effective when based on network forms of organization and power, and (3) north­ern NGOs exchange resources and access to po­liti­cal opportunities for south­ern NGOs’ legitimacy and local information. Recent empirical data have yielded several observations that challenge these assumptions and prompted the idea of transcalar, rather than transnational, advocacy presented in this book. First, there has been a shift in the relative power of north­ern and south­ern partners, such that south­ern organizations are no longer reliant on north­ern partners to address local blockages and can even lead north­ern NGOs in engaging international policy-­making processes. Second, advocacy is shaped by opportunities as well as constraints. We note that even the closing po­liti­cal space for international (north­ern) NGOs has been accompanied by increased agency and access for national NGOs. Third, new transcalar campaigns are characterized by a greater diversity of actors, strategies, targets, and goals across the blossoming numbers of new campaigns. This section examines each of these changes in advocacy in the twenty-­first century in some detail, before presenting an alternative transcalar theory of global advocacy by NGOs. Changing Relative Power

In many low-­and middle-­income countries, where local blockages his­tori­cally have prompted international advocacy, economic growth, increasing democra-

12 / Pallas and Bloodgood

tization, and greater interest from international policy makers in local perspectives has improved the agency of local NGOs (Pallas and Nguyen 2018). At the same time, increasing competition, pub­lic critiques, and national laws restricting foreign NGO activities have created new limits on the resources and influence of international NGOs (Dupuy et al. 2016). As a result, the predictions of the origi­nal model no longer hold true in many situations. A decline in the need for or availability of north­ern partners, combined with increasing formal access to international organizations, has fundamentally changed the incentives surrounding network formation for low-­and middle-­income country actors. In new human rights issues, such as access to water and medicines, NGOs based in south­ern countries have frequently found their interests more closely aligned with those of their home governments than with INGOs. In these cases, government partnerships bring greater rewards than international networks (Nelson and Dorsey 2008). New diversity in partners and arenas for activism, combined with technological innovations, have expanded the strategic choices available to NGOs for activism on transnational issues. We thus see a broader range of organizational types and structures active in new locations using new techniques against a broader range of targets than could have been envisioned in the 1990s. North­ ern NGOs seeking to build global agendas must likewise negotiate this changed landscape. Closing and Opening Space

The global architecture is increasingly characterized by closing po­liti­cal space for civil society and NGOs. New national regulations limiting the activities of foreign organizations and blocking national organizations from accepting funding from foreign sources have created more restrictive po­liti­cal and economic contexts for INGOs (Rutzen 2015; Sidel 2008; Christensen and Weinstein 2013; Dupuy et al. 2016; Carothers and Brechenmacher 2014). These new regulations are not universal, however, creating a patchwork of open and closed spaces. National laws on foreign organizations are particularly limiting of North–South networking, as weak or threatened authoritarian and newly transitioned democratic governments seek to limit the autonomy and efficacy of organizations that might challenge their rule. Laws in Russia, Egypt, Vietnam, Tunisia, Hungary, Poland, and China severely limit foreign funding of national NGOs and thus the ability of national NGOs to engage in global campaigns (Dupuy et al. 2017). Not just access to funding is limited; new national relations also restrict NGOs’ ability to form as well as operate po­liti­cally, limiting either the goals or missions of nonprofit organizations or the range of activities they can undertake (Christensen and Weingast 2013; Bloodgood and Tremblay-­Boire 2018). The spread of national regulations that raise barriers to establishment for

Introduction / 13

national NGOs, restrict their range of activities, or provide governments new powers of dissolution are likely to dampen the activities of both international and national NGOs. National laws that limit flows of foreign funding and the operation of international NGOs in-­country may have more mixed effects on NGOs, however. National regulations that limit the civic space for international NGOs of­ten increase the space for national organizations. In China, Russia, Vietnam, and Poland, for example, laws that limited international NGOs also provided for more reliable registration practices, clear standards for obtaining official status as recognized organizations, and increased access to government officials and resources, at least for selected national NGOs (Hsu and Teets 2016; Heiss and Kelley 2017). North­ern NGOs are thus facing increased competition nationally and internationally. Rising NGOs in Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC countries) with access to national governments as well as the resources (economic and professional) to engage in activism on transnational issues challenge north­ ern NGOs’ monopolies on advocacy around issues such as access to water, access to HIV/AIDS medicines, labor and migration practices, climate change, and the Sustainable Development Goals. In part, growing competition among north­ern NGOs, plus national regulations, has led to the nationalization of NGOs, a process akin to multinational corporations building local branches to access local markets. International NGOs such as Greenpeace and Transparency International have created wholly national entities both as an adaptive response to government constraints on foreign organizations (for example, Russia and Ethiopia) and as an opportunity to access new national spaces (for example, Vietnam and Brazil). Some NGOs have increased decentralization to reach closer to the grass roots while others have increased centralization to protect their reputations (Wong and Stroup 2017; Crack 2018). National and international NGOs are also experiencing new opportunities internationally. The opening of international organizations and the fragmentation of global governance have reduced state control over international forums of policy-making and given NGOs more substantive and regularized opportunities for targeted advocacy on transnational issues. Increasing numbers of intergovernmental organizations have given NGOs more inclusive, formal, and generous provisions for participation and consultation (Tallberg et al. 2015). In addition, state control over policy-making at the international level has shrunk with the development of a greater diversity of institutional arrangements for governance, in­clud­ing private-­pub­lic partnerships, multistakeholder agreements, and private standards arrangements. NGOs now have direct input into standards for mining, forestry, fishing, foreign aid, communication, and finance, among others, through organizations such as the Forestry Stewardship Council, the Marine Stewardship Council, the Extractive Industries Transparency

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Initiative, the International Aid Transparency Initiative, and the International Standards Organization. We observe that increasingly transnational NGO advocacy campaigns respond to policy opportunities rather than only reacting to government obstacles (Abbott et al. 2016; Anderson 2000; Dellmuth and Bloodgood 2019). As international organizations headquartered in the global North and South mature, and if the growth of access to transnational actors slows, we expect advocacy to adapt to the changing landscape and follow international ­policy-making to other forms of global governance institutions (Ding­ werth 2008b; Green 2013; Abbott et al. 2016; Hadden and Jasny 2019; ­Uhlin, this volume). Diversity of Actors

The range of organizations engaged in transnational advocacy now shows unprecedented diversity, in­clud­ing very local farmers groups, associations of mayors, virtual groups existing mostly online, public-­private partnerships, business associations, and networks of networks. Charnovitz’s (1997) survey of transnational advocacy from the early days included a broad range of organizations, from women’s social groups to religious groups and experts and business associations. The simultaneous move of the locus of transnational advocacy to the global and the local levels (Wapner 1996) and the development of information communications technology (Margetts et al. 2015) has allowed the blossoming of advocacy organizations previously unimaginable in transnational advocacy. Examples abound from studies of local unions in China (Teets 2013) to lawyers’ groups in Argentina (Sikkink 1997) to student organizations in Latin America (von Bülow 2010), fishermen around the world (Petterson 2018), and chiefs in Kenya (Cloward 2015). Indeed, even as the number of INGOs seems to have stabilized (Bush and Hadden 2019), the space for new types of actors in transnational advocacy has increased. Advocacy organizations are engaging in a wider variety of strategies to influence states’ and firms’ behaviors on transnational issues as well. Examples include digital advocacy (Margetts et al. 2015; Hall and Ireland 2016; von Bülow 2010), establishing regulatory clubs and public-­private partnerships (Crack 2017; Dingwerth 2008b; Auld et al. 2009), insider advocacy in international organizations (Tallberg and Dellmuth 2017), and going it alone (Nelson-­Nuñez and Cartwright 2018). BUILDING A NEW GROUNDED THEORY

To build a new grounded theory of transcalar advocacy that better reflects current developments in NGO advocacy and activism, we asked the contributors to this volume to explicitly address four questions.

Introduction / 15

1. How does transcalar advocacy differ from older conceptions of transnational advocacy? 2. Where and when does transcalar advocacy occur? 3. Who initiates and who participates in transcalar advocacy? When are alliances and partnerships created, if at all? 4. How scalable is this theory? What data/methods are needed to make it generalizable? The answers to these questions suggested that important developments in two particular areas are crucial to understanding the changing nature and impacts of transcalar advocacy. First, the global structures in which NGOs operate are shifting in terms of the nature of power and where this is held and the geographic locations where policies are made. This in turn suggests important shifts in where advocacy should be targeted. Second, the agency of NGOs is changing and thus advocates have a larger diversity of available partners, strategies, and potential campaigns open to them, producing a more interesting set of policy outcomes and NGOs behaviors. ARCHITECTURE AND ADVOCATES

The trends discussed so far demonstrate that changes in both the structure of international politics and the agents have shifted in intrinsic ways. Past literature on the boomerang model inspired by Keck and Sikkink of­ten treats the boomerang as either structure or agent. Those authors who see the boomerang model as a model of an agent in world politics (e.g., Alaimo 2016; Yang 2017; Erdem 2015; Roger and Dauvergne 2016) of­ten see the model as immutable and necessarily involving a particular type of network behavior between a local CSO, INGO, national government ally, and international organization. Those authors who see the boomerang model as a structure (e.g., Thomas and Mitras 2017; Siegman and Schiphorst 2016; Murdie and Urpelainen 2015) of­ten allow a greater degree of flexibility and strategic choice among agents, in­clud­ing local CSOs, INGOs, state agencies, and/or international organizations, which are allying, campaigning, and interacting in a variety of different fashions across national boundaries and international forums. We argue that research needs to consider the interactions of national and global institutional architecture with the agency of national and global advocates to break free from previous stagnation in the transnational advocacy literature. Changing Architecture

Changing patterns in NGO network formation and advocacy strategies occur, in part, in response to changes in po­liti­cal structures and norms that have cre-

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ated new opportunities for some actors while curtailing the opportunities or power of others. These changes include the opening up of many IOs to greater NGO input, an increase in regionalism and the devolution of IO authority to regional or national subunits, and new South–South partnerships among NGOs and states. At an increasingly local level, we see the proliferation of restrictions on the activities of INGOs, decentralization of authority within states, and increasing sensitivity to the ways that global norms and practices affect local conditions. More democratic governance can lead to NGOs working through local government. In this volume, Maria Guadalupe Moog Rodrigues recounts how Brazilian activists deliberately forsook rallying international pressure to pursue advocacy via the national po­liti­cal system. Karisa Cloward describes how early transnational advocacy on female genital mutilation and early marriage targeting states has given way to a new arena in which state laws support NGOs’ efforts to combat gender-­based violence. At the regional level, integration can also shift the conduct of advocacy. Susan Appe describes the development of regional NGO networks within Latin America. Integration can also occur between global South states with similar economic and po­liti­cal interests, with NGO networks and partnerships following on cooperation between states (Appe, this volume). Taken together, these changes prompt a conceptual shift. Rather than conceiving of key aspects of NGO advocacy as “transnational,” that is, occurring across state boundaries, we argue it is importantly becoming “transcalar,” that is, occurring across the vari­ous scales or levels of ­local, national, regional, and global. We argue that the limited ability to connect with international partners, or the limited power or access of such partners, reshapes local NGO strategies for dealing with po­liti­cal obstacles. In this volume, Suparna Chaudhry and Andrew Heiss demonstrate the effects that variations in access have on NGOs’ location and operation, and thus the strategic incentives that authoritarian governments have to tighten NGO regulations at home and abroad. As a complement, Laura Henry and Lisa Sundstrom focus on differences in patterns of access and thus activism by NGOs from BRIC countries within global environmental governance regimes. Bloodgood examines two additional ways in which NGOs have responded to new limitations in po­liti­cal access: by networking online and by participating in the World Social Forum, which was held for the first time in the global North in 2016. At the same time, the reshaping of global governance institutions and increasing openness to NGO input potentially diminish the importance of NGO engagement with states. Campaigns developed by international NGOs can now have limited reference to local actors or domestic issues in any one state. In this volume, Anders Uhlin examines alternative explanations for patterns in new ac-

Introduction / 17

cess and the availability of allies within international organizations, which provide new opportunities for civil society organizations to engage in transcalar advocacy. Rather than simply being tools to circumvent state blockages, international organizations are increasingly important targets for NGO advocacy to shape global policy. Changes in the nature of global governance that have opened new arenas for advocacy by NGOs at new levels of scale, Jackie Smith (this volume) argues, and have thus created new spaces for a greater variety of types of advocates to operate, producing an evolving transnational advocacy ecosystem. Should the “transnational turn” in international organizations slow down in the future (Uhlin, this volume; Tallberg et al. 2016), we would expect transnational activists and transcalar advocacy to adapt again. Changing Advocates

Changes in global architecture have been paralleled by changes in the agency of advocates. Not only do we see new types of actors engaging in advocacy to change policies and practices with global reach, we also see changes in the behavior of existing advocacy actors, as they develop new strategies and partnerships. The impact of increased agency is most evident in the behavior of south­ern NGOs. South­ern NGOs have of­ten benefited from domestic economic growth, especially in countries that have recently risen to middle-­income status. Capacity-­ building efforts by north­ern donors and contracting conditions that require detailed planning and reporting have also developed south­ern NGO capacity. In this volume, Pallas and Nguyen demonstrate how these trends, combined with the receptiveness of international institution staff, has facilitated effective transnational advocacy by HIV/AIDS NGOs in Vietnam. Similarly, the growth of South–South networks, referenced above, reflects how high-­capacity NGOs in some south­ern states can now provide the resources and assistance to other south­ern NGOs that previously could only be provided by north­ern partners (Appe, this volume). In other cases, increasing awareness of global issues and the highly personal impacts of global policies can lead even unexpected a­ ctors to initiate transcalar advocacy, as Shana Starobin (this volume) describes in recounting how Maya beekeepers and peasant social movements in Mexico successfully opposed government permits for Monsanto to develop genetically modified soy plantations. Additional changes in NGO agency result from changes in the local po­liti­ cal environment. Restrictions on NGO formation or international partnerships can concentrate local resources in a smaller number of high-­capacity NGOs (Pallas and Nguyen, this volume). Restrictions on INGO activity can prompt international donors to increase giving to local NGOs, both by governments

18 / Pallas and Bloodgood

and in­di­vidual private donors (Chaudhry and Heiss, this volume). Interestingly, state restrictions on local NGOs’ formation or international partnerships do not necessarily preclude positive relationships between local NGOs and the state. Henry and Sundstrom (this volume) show how state co-­option of the civil society sector can actually facilitate vigorous transcalar advocacy by local NGOs, in­clud­ing active participation in international policy-­making forums. These changes can result in advocacy campaigns that are started by south­ ern NGOs but remain south­ern rather than reaching out to north­ern partners (Nelson and Dorsey 2007). These campaigns are either run “in house” by local NGOs that contain all necessary resources and capacities within themselves, or by NGOs that, as Appe shows in this volume, reach out to other south­ern NGOs for assistance while maintaining po­liti­cal control closer to home. It can also result in advocacy partnerships with nontraditional actors, in­clud­ing businesses or the national government. Lastly, local NGOs are able to affect global issues through advocacy at a variety of levels, in­clud­ing participating in international forums (Henry and Sundstrom, this volume), lobbying international policy makers present locally within a country (Pallas and Nguyen, this volume), restricting the actions of international actors via local po­liti­cal processes (Starobin, this volume), or conducting local advocacy on issues of international concern (Chaudhry and Heiss, this volume). This diversity of levels requires thinking of advocacy as transcalar rather than transnational; not all actors move or network across borders because of their constraints or strategic choices, yet they still act on global issues. A MODEL FOR TRANSCALAR ADVOCACY

Changes in structure and agency have fundamentally altered the practice of transnational advocacy. Table I.1 highlights these changes. The conceptualization of advocacy as “transnational” is itself outmoded. Activism beyond the local is no longer defined primarily by activists in one country working to affect government or international organization policy and practice in another. We embrace Jan Aart Scholte’s vision of a model of activism that is transcalar (Scholte 2005; McKeon 2017), in which activists seeking to mitigate or leverage the power of global policies may adopt different scopes or scales of action, with arenas ranging from the local to the international, and with and without partners in other countries. This framing aligns with the current shifts toward multiscalar analy­sis in advocacy research and the deterritorialization of global policy-making ( Jessop 2009; Mayer 2013; Balboa 2018; Alejo 2019; von Bülow 2013).

Introduction / 19

Table I.1. From transnational to transcalar advocacy Boomerang Theory of Advocacy

Transcalar Theory of Advocacy

1. Southern activists initiate advocacy

1. Activists anywhere can initiate advocacy

2. Campaign becomes transnational through recruitment of nondomestic partners

2. C  ampaign is (or becomes) transcalar when its goals affect international norms or practices

3. S  trategic leverage comes from international NGOs (INGOs) engaging foreign policy makers and global public

3. S  trategic leverage comes from working on the scale(s) with best opportunity structures

4. INGOs are primary partners

4. P  artners are optional and chosen to suit the scale of advocacy. Can include businesses, government, or southern NGOs, as well as INGOs

5. T ypical target is southern activists’ government

5. Targets are any actors promulgating norms or practices that affect the local context, including INGOs

The widening of the po­liti­cal space changes the constellation of actors involved and the relationships among them. The opening of international organizations has created new opportunities embraced by transnational activists whose activity is no longer seen as driven largely by limitations and restrictions but also by new possibilities. Recent changes in the access and availability of partners in middle-­income as well as high-­income countries has reinforced shifts in the nature of advocacy, the actors involved, and the strategies they ­employ. We argue (Bloodgood and Pallas, this volume) that while the goals or impacts of new advocacy campaigns are transnational, in that they seek to affect policies and practices that travel across borders, the organizations involved and their selection of tactics and partners is not necessarily so. Transcalar advocacy involves a diverse set of groups, from the very local to the global, in­clud­ing NGOs as well as businesses, governments, farmers’ associations, and digital platforms for in­di­vidual participation. In this regard, it shares characteristics with Nelson and Dorsey’s (2007) conceptualization of “new rights advocacy,” which emphasizes a blurring of lines between the national and international as well as a diversification of NGO advocacy partners and targets in the promotion of human rights. A distinct feature of transcalar advocacy is the intent to seize opportunities for changing transnational policy or practice as well as working around

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institutional constraints to success. While domestic and international po­liti­cal institutions play important roles shaping transcalar advocacy, these provide opportunities as well as constraints for advocacy. We expect to see increased similarity between partners within any given advocacy campaign. Activists are likely to be closer in geographic proximity than in the past, generally coming from the same region, as well as closer in resource endowments, as compared with the older pattern of rich north­ern NGOs working with poorer south­ern NGOs. This is then likely to bring their interests and goals into closer alignment. Rather than trading legitimacy and local knowledge for financial resources, po­liti­cal access, and an increased likelihood of success, as was envisioned in the boomerang model, organizations coming from similar geographic and economic backgrounds are more likely to define their goals similarly and see a similar set of steps and strategies as necessary to reach these goals. We thus expect to see increased similarity of interests or behavior alongside an increased diversity of actor types within campaigns. At the same time, we also expect to see increased diversity between transcalar advocacy campaigns from different regions or economic strata, even when these are working on the same issue (potentially on opposite sides). We also expect to see strategic adaptation by a growing diversity of actors to shifts in the power and structure of the global architecture, producing innovations in tactics, organizational structure, and campaigning. Networks are not a necessity for transcalar advocacy but rather reflect a strategic choice by actors in some situations. Organizations will consider alliances with other actors, in­clud­ing INGOs, intergovernmental organizations, states, and corporations, but we do not expect to see networking for networking’s sake. New information communications technology has also widened the reach and visibility of even local campaigns on transnational issues at reduced cost. Increasing local capacity for organizations, along with restrictions on international NGO activities, has increased the importance of local actors in transnational politics. Finally, shifts in international organizations have opened new spaces for local actors. Many global agreements have reached criti­cal numbers of supporters (e.g., rights of children, rights of women, trade and investment, nonproliferation in small arms and weapons of mass destruction) and have become international law. These laws, and the norms that undergird them, must be implemented nationally. This opens new spaces for local actors to increase their stature by assisting with this norm diffusion process or by fighting back against norm internalization. With the reduced role and space for international partners (who previously captured much of the glory), local actors will receive a larger share of the credit for advocacy success.

PART I

NEW CHALLENGES The Changing Architecture of Global Governance

1 CLOSING SPACE AND THE RESTRUCTURING OF GLOBAL ACTIVISM Causes and Consequences of the Global Crackdown on NGOs SUPARNA CHAUDHRY AND ANDREW HEISS

I

n Janu­ary 2011, the Egyptian uprisings against President Hosni Mubarak pre sented an opportunity for domestic nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to leverage their knowledge and expertise to transform Egypt into a democratic state. However, just as these organizations began to take advantage of new levels of civic free­doms, successive Egyptian governments passed laws prohibiting po­ liti­cal advocacy and restricting foreign funding for domestic NGOs (Herrold 2020). Subsequently, international donors slashed funding for Egyptian NGOs to avoid being accused of offering them illegal support (Brechenmacher 2017). Egypt is not alone in its nonviolent crackdown on NGOs. India, ­Bolivia, Hungary, China, Russia, and others have required that funds to NGOs be routed through state-­owned banks, mandated that funds cannot be used for po­liti­cal purposes, or prohibited NGOs from accepting any funds from foreign sources (Carothers 2015; Dupuy, Ron, and Prakash 2015; Chaudhry 2016; Heiss 2017). The last two decades have seen a proliferation of laws designed to limit the influence of civil society organizations, with more than 130 countries obstructing, repressing, or closing the legal environment for civil society (Figure 1.1). This increasingly widespread crackdown on civil society is worrisome as both foreign aid and democracy assistance funds channeled toward NGOs have steadily increased over time. In 2012 alone, the US Agency on International Development (USAID) gave $4.3 billion to civil society organizations globally (Tierney et al. 2011). Donors prefer channeling funds directly to NGOs because giving directly to governments can create perverse incentives by relaxing governments’ budget constraints and can promote rent-­seeking among­ local elites (Gibson et al. 2005; Dietrich 2013). In addition to foreign aid, NGOs are also the primary targets of private philanthropy, both by foundations and in­di­vidual private donors. In 2016, private donors in the United States

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FIGURE 1.1.

CIVICUS monitor civic space ratings (Data from CIVICUS 2017) (Suparna Chaudhry and Andrew Heiss)

gave $22 billion to NGOs (Giving USA 2017). As a result, both international NGOs (INGOs) and domestic NGOs have grown exponentially across much of the developing world (Henderson 2003; Carothers and Ottaway 2005; Reimann 2006; Murdie 2014). While NGOs may be the preferred actor of the international community, states do not necessarily view the proliferation of NGOs as a positive development. What are the causes behind state crackdown on NGOs? What are its implications for the donor community as well as for NGO programing? Us­ing origi­nal data on laws creating barriers to entry, funding, and advocacy by NGOs across all countries from 1990 to 2013, as well as data on the amounts, nature, and target of aid flows from USAID and the Organisation for Economic Co-­ Operation and Development (OECD) countries, we systematically analyze the causes and consequences of state crackdown on NGOs. In addition, using a survey experiment of private individuals across the United States, we also examine how this crackdown may affect private aid flows to NGOs in repressive countries. We argue that many states are increasingly wary of the economic and po­ liti­cal costs NGOs impose. They subsequently engage in strategies to constrain and repress these groups. Importantly, to avoid the negative consequences associated with violent anti-­NGO crackdown, states have been increasingly relying on nonviolent laws and regulations to limit NGOs in their countries. Analyzing the implications of this crackdown, we find that while official

Closing Space and the Restructuring of Global Activism / 25

aid donors scale back on their commitments in repressive countries, we also find that they redirect funds away from foreign NGOs and contentious causes to domestic groups and tamer causes, respectively. Moreover, we find that in­di­ vidual private donors are also responsive to the legal difficulties that NGOs face abroad and are more likely to donate to legally besieged NGOs. With shifts in the nature of access and funding stemming from closed legal space, we show that north­ern actors are no longer necessarily in the most powerful position to initiate or implement successful advocacy campaigns. Given diminishing opportunities for transnational boomerang effects and the curtailed nature of North–South partnerships, both private as well as official, donors are empowering many south­ern NGOs to work together. We are thus seeing a transcalar turn in NGO advocacy as many global issues are now pursued via local actors rather than international networks. Here, we first explain the conditions under which states repress NGOs, paying specific attention to the strategies that states use for doing so. We then explore the consequences of this crackdown on both official and private donors and on NGO programming. Finally, we reflect on the implications of these changing po­liti­cal and economic conditions on the future of NGO advocacy. CAUSES OF STATE REPRESSION OF NGOS

The growth and proliferation of NGOs in the 1990s prompted much scholarly and policy optimism about state-­NGO relationships. Reimann (2006) argued that NGOs and states share a set of mutual goals and enjoy a “symbiotic relationship.” However, while NGOs provide a number of economic and po­liti­cal benefits to elites, it is only recently that scholars have started analyzing the costs that NGOs impose on states. From an economic perspective, the foreign aid community prefers NGOs since they overcome many failures associated with channeling funds through the state (Dietrich 2013). They provide services to large parts of the population in the global South, especially where governments are unable to do so on a consistent basis. However, Chaudhry (2016) argues that NGOs can also challenge a state’s economic interests. When development has adverse consequences and ­results in displacement of population, lobbying by advocacy NGOs can also affect the level of donor contributions. For example, states may find environmental NGOs costly if they perceive that such groups reduce their access to resources. Moreover, during armed conflicts and civil unrest, NGO shaming campaigns can lead to reductions in foreign aid and cutbacks in the economic benefits accrued by preferential trading agreements and foreign direct investment (Keck and Sikkink 1998; Barry, Clay, and Flynn 2013; Chaudhry 2016).

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From a po­liti­cal perspective, NGOs can help autocrats maintain regime stability and remain in power by providing services and expertise. They bestow international reputation and offset domestic institutional challenges to the ruling party (Heiss 2019). Relying on NGOs for po­liti­cal ends, however, poses risks for democratic, authoritarian, and transitioning regimes. State perception of NGOs as po­liti­cally threatening changed in the early 2000s following the West­ern-­coordinated overthrow of the Slobodan Milošević regime and the success of the Color Revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan (Carothers and Brechenmacher 2014). Incumbents feared that civil society groups had the potential to organize a successful electoral opposition or even a revolutionary movement. Recent research by Kendra Dupuy, James Ron, and Aseem Prakash (2016) argues that states perceive foreign aid to NGOs as supporting po­liti­cal opponents. They provide systematic evidence that in the aftermath of competitive elections, governments of­ten take new legal steps to limit these groups’ funding. Similarly Darin Christensen and Jeremy Weinstein (2013) argue that governments restrict foreign funding for NGOs when they perceive the regime as being vulnerable to domestic challengers. This recent literature has made important advances in exploring the nature of threats NGOs pose to different kinds of governments as well as some of the conditions under which states crack down on NGOs. However, we lack a more thorough understanding of all the repressive strategies that states use against NGOs and the strategic choices involved in using them to target NGOs, which we will explain. STRATEGIES OF STATE REPRESSION OF NGOS

To offset the challenges NGOs pose, states have used both violent and nonviolent strategies to restrict the space available for civil society. Violent crackdowns, in­clud­ing arrests, disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and attacks on NGO offices, garner substantial press attention and are of­ten the pub­lic face of the ongoing global crackdown on civil society. Front Line Defenders, a Dublin-­ based group that aims to protect human rights defenders at risk, notes that false arrests, fabricated prosecutions, and unfair trials of these activists are the most common forms of overt crackdown against such NGOs (Front Line Defenders 2016). Governments are also increasingly using legislation to repress NGOs. However, not all NGO-­related legislation is necessarily aimed at restricting NGOs. Laws and regulations establish standards for appropriate organizational behavior and set penalties for violations (North 1990), produce convergent prac-

Closing Space and the Restructuring of Global Activism / 27

Civil society regulations. Top row: Number of legal barriers to NGO activity per country over time (de jure legislation). (Data from Christensen and Weinstein 2013; Chaudhry 2016.) Bottom row: Average civil society regulatory ­environment (CSRE) per country over time (de facto environment). (Data from Heiss 2017; Coppedge et al. 2018.) (Suparna Chaudhry and Andrew Heiss)

FIGURE 1.2.

tices, and prevent malfeasance that threatens to undermine confidence in the entire NGO community (O’Neill 2009; Bloodgood and Tremblay-­Boire 2016). Here we focus primarily on the impact of restrictive or anti-­NGO laws. Unlike benign regulations, anti-­NGO laws are intended to have a negative effect on the NGO community, creating barriers to their entry, funding, and advocacy. As fig­ ure 1.2 shows, the regulatory barriers for civil society organizations to enter, receive funding, and advocate have been rising steadily. Barriers to entry include using the law to discourage, slow down, or prohibit the establishment of NGOs. Many states have burdensome registration requirements, restrictions on the formation of new groups, arbitrary grounds for denying registration, and stricter entry requirements for international organizations. As discussed in chapter 8 in the case of Vietnam (Pallas and Nguyen),

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these requirements, such as having at least five people with university degrees in the organization, requiring a certain amount of cash as capital, office space, and so forth, can of­ten place undue burden on the formation and registration of local NGOs. Barriers to funding include laws that restrict the ability of NGOs to secure financial resources for their programs. States restrict NGO finances based on the origin of funds, how those funds are channeled, and which issues these funds can be used toward. Restrictions against foreign-­funded NGOs or against groups that work on issues that are not regime-­compatible—for instance, human rights, elections, media, youth groups, among others—have become the most pervasive form of crackdown, and much research has looked specifically at funding regulations (see Jalali 2008; Mikaïl 2013; Dupuy, Ron, and Prakash 2015, 2016). Finally, barriers to advocacy include laws that prevent NGOs from engag­ ing in pub­lic policy advocacy and impose burdens on organizational free­dom of expression. These laws also enable countries to bar NGOs from working on po­liti­cal issues, where “po­liti­cal” is intentionally left vague to lend an easy cover for governments to crack down on NGOs they perceive as po­liti­cally threatening. However, as Henry and Sundstrom show in chapter 10, there is variation even among authoritarian regimes in how regimes target NGOs and which activities are deemed “po­liti­cal.” States are calculated in their use of these regulatory strategies based on the timing and nature of threat NGOs pose. Chaudhry (2016) argues that states cannot use violence against all NGOs, despite its effectiveness against groups posing immediate threats to the regime. There are many reasons violence can fail: state agents may refuse to implement violent orders, violence may increase the state’s criminal liability, reduce its legitimacy internationally, and violate human rights treaties or preferential trading agreements. Violent crackdown may also result in further mobilization of the population against the regime. Rather than close civic space through violence, most states today prefer to use formal legislation and administrative rules to control, restrict, and eliminate NGO activity. These legal strategies overcome the negative consequences associated with violence and are less likely to invite condemnation from the international community. Numerous new studies also look at the effect of diffusion and human rights treaties on states’ propensity to impose anti-­NGO laws. Marlies Glasius, Jelmer Schalk, and Meta De Lange (2020) argue that states learn from their regional environments: when they observe other states enacting NGO restrictions, they may be inspired to do the same. Kristin Bakke, Neil Mitchell, and Hannah Smidt (2020) argue that states that have ratified human rights treaties impose more

Closing Space and the Restructuring of Global Activism / 29

restrictions on civil society if they have severe abuses to hide. However, nonratifying governments do not impose such laws, even if they commit severe abuses. Now we explore the impact of anti-­NGO crackdown on both donors and NGOs. CONSEQUENCES OF STATE REPRESSION OF NGOS

Restricting the space and resources available to civil society organizations has measurable consequences for state-­based donor agencies, for private donors (both foundations and individuals), and for NGOs themselves. Official Aid Donors

Emerging research provides evidence that state-­based aid agencies are responsive to legal restrictions on NGOs, particularly since these agencies rely heavily on NGOs for aid delivery. Dupuy and Prakash (2018) examine the effects of the adoption of restrictive NGO finance laws on foreign aid and find that while multilateral and diasporic donors do not reduce aid following the imposition of laws restricting NGO funding, there is a 32 percent decline in bilateral aid inflows. While their research points to the worrying trend of reduced foreign aid to countries after the passage of restrictive financing law for NGOs, important questions remain unanswered. Do aid agencies respond similarly when faced with countries enacting additional barriers to entry and advocacy? Further, many donor agencies are actively working to find solutions and help besieged advocacy networks. Instead of simply scaling back their operations, do donors respond by shifting aid allocation to different kinds of targets and issue areas? To answer these questions, we use origi­nal data on civil society restrictions across all aid-­receiving 140 countries from 1981 to 2013 and assess the impact of legal restrictions on NGOs on total flows of foreign aid, how aid is distributed, and which issues are funded. We find that donor agencies respond to domestic crackdowns on NGOs by scaling back their operations and reducing total aid commitments. More specifically, additional anti-­NGO legal barriers—­ and barriers to advocacy in particular—decrease the amount of official development assistance (ODA) given by OECD countries (Chaudhry and Heiss 2018). Figure 1.3 highlights the predictions from this model, showing how— on average—­the addition of a new barrier to advocacy decreases ODA by $100 million and reduces the amount donors give for contentious causes (i.e., democracy promotion and human rights) by a full percentage point. In addition to scaling back in countries with anti-­NGO legislation, we also find that facing additional barriers to advocacy, donors redirect funds within restrictive countries. Donors decrease funds for po­liti­cally sensitive causes in favor

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FIGURE 1.3. Barriers to advocacy and aid. Predicted official development a­ ssistance (ODA) and proportion of contentious aid across a range of differences from the average number of anti-­advocacy laws in a typical country. The dark line shows average of 500 draws from posterior distribution. (Suparna Chaudhry and Andrew Heiss)

of tamer issues that are more compatible with the governments of those countries. These findings support recent research that donors, in particular, democracy assistance agencies, tame their programming when confronting dictators (Bush 2015). These dynamics are also visible in the case of Vietnam discussed in chapter 8 (Pallas and Nguyen), where a number of INGOs interviewed were found not to work in law and justice due to the sensitive nature of these issues. Finally, facing increased barriers to funding, USAID, in particular, channels more aid to domestic over foreign NGOs. Since previous research has documented that governments of­ten perceive foreign, particularly West­ern, NGOs as external interference in domestic politics, boosting aid channeled to domestic NGOs is likely to assuage these concerns. This finding also reflects USAID’s perception that increasing assistance to respected local NGOs can help keep the regulatory environment from worsening. Local NGOs can help both diplomatic and lobbying efforts as well as spark domestic outrage against restrictive legislation (United States Agency for International Development 2014, 2015; Redacted 2016). For instance, local activists allied together and were trained by USAID to undertake campaigns against similar repressive legislation, in­ clud­ing a 2011 law in Cambodia and a 2016 law in Kyrgyzstan (Lelik 2016). In cases like this, instead of a traditional boomerang, advocacy becomes more of a South–South partnership (Appe, this volume) in response to democratic backsliding. These results are robust to both the passage of anti-­NGO legislation (see

Closing Space and the Restructuring of Global Activism / 31

Christensen and Weinstein 2013; Chaudhry 2016) and the de facto implementation of these laws. Simply counting the number of anti-­NGO laws misses the effect of their de facto implementation as laws can be benignly routine, dangerously dormant, or outrightly restrictive. To address this disconnect we can use newer datasets to measure the de facto implementation of civil society laws. The Varieties of Democracy (V-­Dem) project (Coppedge et al. 2018) includes observed measures of civil society restriction and can be used to examine the effects of de facto administrative crackdown. For instance, the civil society regulatory environment index (CSRE) combines two indexes from V ­ -­Dem: civil society repression and civil society entry and exit regulations (Heiss 2017; Chaudhry and Heiss 2018a). Thus, our findings regarding shifts in traditional patterns of transnational advocacy are generalizable to different kinds of regimes across the world. While our results join the recent wave of research looking at official donors’ responses to the repression of NGOs, we know little about how in­di­vidual private donors act toward besieged groups in the global South. Now we summarize our research addressing this question. Individual Private Donors

State crackdown on NGOs can also influence ordinary citizens’ perception of these organizations and their patterns of charitable giving toward them. States vilify NGOs and frequently use negative pub­lic rhetoric against them. For instance, in Russia, Hungary, and Kyrgyzstan, many organizations are pub­ licly condemned as “foreign agents,” which has Cold War–era connotations of being a spy or a traitor. This kind of vilification even occurs in consolidated democracies—­Canadian government officials have described environmental NGOs as “radicals,” “revolutionaries,” “terrorists,” and “adversaries” (Potter 2012). Such attacks on NGOs, in conjunction with negative media coverage of their activities, could encourage pub­lic suspicion of foreign NGOs and increase pub­lic distrust of these organizations. Surveying 1,473 recipients of democracy assistance, Joel Barkan (2012) finds that 37 percent of the organizations receiving this aid felt that the greatest risk was being labeled an “agent” or “stooge” of outside countries. This proportion rises to almost half (48 percent) for respondents living in countries classified as “Not Free” by Freedom House, indicating that the fear of being called out by host governments and the media is indeed real and warranted. To assess whether individuals are more or less likely to donate to legally besieged NGOs, we use a survey experiment fielded in the United States (Chaud­ hry and Heiss 2020). Our survey experiment was fielded through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Our target population is the portion of Ameri­cans hypothetically willing to donate money for human rights and humanitarian work abroad. Our convenience sample (March 2018, N = 531) generally approximates the charac-

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teristics of our target population, since it is younger, more educated, wealthier, and more likely to donate to charities than nationally representative samples. We find that learning about repressive NGO environments increases generosity and that already likely donors are willing to donate substantially more to legally restricted nonprofits. This generosity persists when mediated by two important organization-­level heuristics: issue area and funding source. Learning about crackdown increases individuals’ willingness to donate to privately funded nonprofits. This may be because the survival of the NGO appears to be in question and the donors’ assessment might be that their donation actually makes a difference. These results are particularly substantive for privately funded human rights NGOs facing crackdown, with donors showing an increased willingness to not just donate to them but also to donate more to them. Overall, respondents indicated willingness to donate 26 percent more to legally restricted NGOs, with this effect persisting when mediated by other organizational heuristics such as issue area, with respondents willing to donate 64 percent more to privately funded human rights NGOs. These findings are only a first entrée into this question. Our survey captures a convenience sample and thus does not reflect the general US population. Future research should test the generalizability of our findings to in­di­vidual donors in other countries. For instance, the nonprofit sector in the United States relies more heavily on government funding than in Europe. In the latter, large organizations like Amnesty International and Médecins Sans Frontières receive very little support from their home governments (Stroup 2012). This may imply that donors in European countries will have different preferences when choosing to donate to government and privately funded organizations. Future research should also look more narrowly at donors who regularly give to international causes, as these individuals are likely more aware of po­liti­cal trends in the countries where their preferred organizations work. NGO Programming and Missions

Finally, we analyze how this crackdown and its consequent impact on donors influences the strategies of NGOs themselves. In many countries in the global South, domestic donations are inconsistent. Citizens in many countries are of­ ten too poor to support these groups or may prefer to channel funds to groups working in noncontentious areas such as health and education (Dupuy, Ron, and Prakash 2015; Ron, Pandya, and Crow 2016; Brechenmacher 2017). Further, potential domestic philanthropists are of­ten deterred by dismal tax incentives, threats to take away business permits, or have a general fear of retribution (Hudson Institute 2015; Baoumi 2016). Therefore, when faced with legal restrictions, many NGOs are forced to

Closing Space and the Restructuring of Global Activism / 33

shut down. Examining the regulatory offensive against NGOs in Ethiopia, Dupuy, Ron, and Prakash (2015) find that legislation against foreign-­funded NGOs shut down a majority of the NGOs in the country’s human rights sector. With fewer NGOs—and in many cases, with the disappearance of trusted NGO partners—donors may be more hesitant to channel money to remaining NGOs, especially those with whom they have not previously partnered. These laws may also limit the effectiveness of organizations. Looking at the effect of these laws on NGO shaming activities, Smidt et al. (2020) find that while a lower number of restrictions may actually motivate NGOs to reach out to international allies to increase shaming, a higher number of restrictions end up silencing these groups by constraining their monitoring and information-­ sharing activities. Andrew Heiss (2017) argues that authoritarian states typically impose two forms of anti-­civil-­society laws. Gatekeeping laws limit an organization’s instrumental needs, making it difficult for NGOs to obtain money, register, or ensure long-­term stability in their host countries (corresponding with barriers to entry and funding). These laws are not intended to change how an organization runs—they instead make it more difficult for NGOs to survive. Second, program-­capture laws target organizational principles and are explicitly designed to distort NGO missions in favor of the regime. These laws include barriers to advocacy, which force po­liti­cally oriented NGOs to cease their po­liti­cal missions. Program-­capture regulations can also be more subtle, such as China’s 2017 foreign NGO law that includes a provision that all non-­Chinese NGOs work with a government agency approved by the Ministry of Public Security. These supervisory agencies have the power to approve or deny many aspects of NGO programming, in­clud­ing contact and collaboration with other organizations (International Center for Not-­for-­Profit Law 2017b). Hence the difficult dilemma facing NGOs under restriction: when facing gatekeeping regulations, NGOs must spend more time and money ensuring organizational survival at the expense of pursuing their mission; and when facing program-­capture regulations, NGOs must either tame their programming and shift their core mission, vision, and values to remain in compliance or run the risk of expulsion from the country, again at the expense of pursuing their mission. Heiss (2017) finds that organizations with enough programmatic and instrumental flexibility are able to protect their missions and continue their programs by creatively working around regulations. NGOs that have substantial funding, a broad portfolio of programs, and professionalized staff are able to relocate their offices prior to inspection, remove branding from buildings and vehicles, rely on domestic staff with more familiarity with the country, or even move entirely out of the country and work from abroad. In contrast, organizations that are underfunded, understaffed, or that have a limited set of possible

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programs tend to shut down and cancel their programming when faced with increasing regulations. Even organizations that are able to continue to work under harsh restrictions of­ten do so at reduced efficiency. For instance, the majority of democracy aid to Egypt after the 2011 uprisings went to NGOs that had to spend considerable resources to maintain their activities, leaving little for grassroots organizations (Herrold 2020). However, our survey experiment on the effect of legal crackdowns on in­ di­vidual private philanthropy offers some possible solutions for NGO funding and advocacy strategies (Chaudhry and Heiss 2020). First, given that donors take crackdowns into account while making philanthropic decisions, NGOs may benefit from publicizing that they are targets of government repression. While this may not be enough to sway the average US citizen, our results show that it can convince already likely donors to donate to give more to legally besieged NGOs. Second, our study highlights the importance of framing issue areas. Our results indicate that in­di­vidual private donors are likely to view some human rights NGOs with suspicion, especially compared to humanitarian organizations. However, human rights groups undertake a variety of programs, and communicating the nature of their work and specifying the main target of the organization’s efforts can allay pub­lic fears. Finally, if NGOs receive a majority of their funding from nongovernmental sources and are pub­lic about it, they may be able to convince average donors that they are contributing to the organization’s ability to resist the crackdown. CONCLUSION

Transformations in transnational advocacy over the past few decades have created new opportunities for south­ern actors in the international arena, with a greater diversity of NGOs with ever-­increasing po­liti­cal power. However, accompanying this expansion of international opportunities is an ongoing government backlash against NGOs. This global crackdown takes many forms and has had vari­ous consequences on foreign aid, private philanthropy, and NGO programming. According to the boomerang model, NGOs can be costly to weak authoritarian leaders due to their ability to engage in naming and shaming (Keck and Sikkink 1998). However, given empirical developments since the late 1990s, this model does not fully capture the nature of state responses to transnational advocacy networks as well as the role of local actors in them. It is not just authoritarian leaders who are limiting challenges to their rule by implementing policies that ensure demobilization of civil society groups. Over 130 states— in­clud­ing many democracies—have cracked down on advocacy networks due

Closing Space and the Restructuring of Global Activism / 35

to their ability to influence electoral politics, mobilize aid, and challenge states’ economic and security interests (Chaudhry 2016). Therefore, international partnerships or reaching out to international actors may no longer even be a viable option for some local NGOs. This has profound implications for the future of NGO advocacy. Anti-­ NGO legislation is increasingly preventing North–South links. Laws against entry of foreign NGOs or foreign funding of local NGOs pose immense bar­ riers to transnational networking, which inhibit traditional boomerang relationships. However, the empirical realities previously discussed show that instead of simply seeing a decline in transnational advocacy, we are seeing a turn to transcalar advocacy. Many campaigns are now dominated by south­ern NGOs advocating for issues of global importance. In a number of countries, domestic NGOs have been able to ally together and stop repressive government actions even against them. For instance, in ­Kenya, in De­cem­ber 2013, NGOs successfully pressured parliament to not adopt a newly proposed law that capped foreign funding contributions toward civil society organizations to 15 percent. The bill was defeated by a close margin of 83– 73 votes, and one of the reasons attributed to its defeat was the “organizationally dense coalition of international and local activists” who lobbied Kenyan Members of Parliament (Dupuy and Ron 2016). Since then, this coalition has withstood numerous other attempts by the Kenyan government to impose restrictions on civil society. Thus, instead of traditional boomerang relationships between North–South actors, we are seeing transcalar relationships between South–South actors. As Pallas and Nguyen show in chapter 8, effective advocacy by south­ern NGOs does not necessarily require the resources, expertise, or po­liti­cal connections of north­ern NGOs. Further, as Appe shows in chapter 3, these South–South networks and partnerships, centered on knowledge and information-­sharing, can play a prominent role in strengthening civil society regionally. Our results in this chapter also show that donors such as USAID are responding to repressive laws by increasing funding to local NGOs. Thus, we also foresee an “inverse boomerang” effect wherein US and European actors reach out to partners in lower-­and middle-­income countries to develop networks with greater legitimacy in the eyes of both the pub­lic and target governments. While it is still too early to say whether this increased giving to local NGOs can change the balance of power between north­ern and south­ern actors, we see immense potential for local NGO advocacy to have global effects, even in the face of anti-­NGO legislation.

2 OPENING UP OF INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS ANDERS UHLIN

T

he opening up of international organizations (IOs) to the participation of civil society organizations (CSOs) and other nonstate actors has been a significant trend in world politics since the 1990s. Here, CSO is used as a generic concept, covering a broad range of nonstate and nonprofit actors, in­clud­ing NGOs, social movement organizations, trade unions, and such. The increased access to IOs for these kinds of actors is a major feature of the changing architecture of global governance, which has had important consequences for advocacy beyond borders. Reviewing extant research in this field, this chapter provides an empirical account of the pattern of increased IO access for CSOs. It further elaborates on how this opening up can be conceptualized and analyzed in terms of more open po­liti­cal opportunity structures. Various explanations to the increased openness of IOs are considered. Finally, implications of the opening up of IOs for civil society advocacy are discussed. Civil society advocacy can be transnational in several different respects (Piper and Uhlin 2004, 5). The issues may be of a transnational character. The actors may be transnational in the sense of in­clud­ing citizens from different states. The methods used may be transnational (for instance internet-­based mobilization and campaigns). The targets of activism may be IOs or other global governance arrangements, thus requiring cross-­border interaction. Finally, the actors may hold transnational worldviews. Extant research has highlighted the transnational nature of the­ actors engaged in advocacy but of­ten has not paid sufficient attention to the transnational character of issues and targets of advocacy. The concept of tran­ scalar advocacy proposed in this volume highlights the transnational nature of issues addressed and the targeted institutions. This chapter suggests that the opening up of IOs has contributed to a shift from transnational (defined by the mixed nationalities of actors) to transcalar (focusing on the cross-­border character of issues and targets) civil society advocacy.

Opening Up of International Organizations / 37

EMPIRICAL PATTERNS

The most comprehensive and systematic analy­sis of the opening up of IOs is the work by Jonas Tallberg and colleagues. In a seminal book, The Opening Up of International Organizations: Transnational Access in Global Governance, they provide an extremely rich analy­sis of the pattern of increased access for nonstate actors to IOs, what they call a “transnational turn in global governance” (Tallberg et al. 2013, 1). By covering 298 organizational bodies (such as ministerial councils, executive boards, committees, secretariats, courts, and so forth) from a stratified random sample of fifty IOs in the period 1950–2010 (Tallberg et al. 2013, 1), this book offers unique data. For the purpose of research on transnational civil society advocacy, however, it is unfortunate that the entities gaining access to IOs are conceptualized as “transnational actors” (TNAs). This broad category includes business representatives and scientific experts as well as CSOs, hence blurring the distinction between profit-­seeking transnational corporations and civil society actors mainly driven by normative concerns. Hence, the following account of the opening up of IOs refers not only to the opening up for civil society but also for business and other nonstate actors. Tallberg and colleagues (2013, 74) show a rapid expansion of TNA access to IOs, especially since 1990. As shown in table 2.1, the percentage of IOs (in their sample of fifty IOs) providing access to nonstate actors increased from 33 percent in 1950 to 90 percent in 2010. The process of opening up IOs of­ten involved the diffusion of very specific institutional models of participatory governance (Sommerer and Tallberg 2019). Even if the general opening up of IOs increased tremendously in the early 1990s, a few IOs provided significant access to nonstate actors as early as the 1920s. At that time the League of Nations and the International Labor Organization (ILO) were actually more open than most contemporary IOs, although they became more closed in the 1930s and 1940s when international cooperation in general declined (Charnowitz 1997). The United Nations (UN) has been a pioneer in engaging with CSOs (Charnowitz 2015). In 1948, the Conference of Non-­Governmental Organizations in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations (CONGO) was set up. The UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) now has some 3,500 NGOs with consultative status. After being the target of significant civil society protests in the 1980s and 1990s, the World Bank has been particularly keen to engage with CSOs. It has some 120 civil society specialists among its staff (Scholte 2016, 716). Tallberg and colleagues clearly demonstrate that the “transnational turn” is not limited to a few large IOs. Now IOs in all issue areas and all parts of the world have opened up

38 / Anders Uhlin

Table 2.1. Frequency of international organizations and bodies with transnational actor access over time IO bodies All bodies Year

IOs

Open bodies

All IOs

Open IOs

N

N

%

N

N

%

1950

 30

  6

20.0

 9

 3

33.3

1960

 48

 12

25.0

12

 5

41.7

1970

 97

 28

28.9

25

11

44.0

1980

137

 56

40.9

32

19

59.4

1990

176

 69

39.2

41

23

56.1

2000

251

137

54.6

49

35

71.4

2010

294

208

70.8

50

45

90.0

Note: Based on a sample of fifty international organizations (IOs). Source: Jonas Tallberg, Thomas Sommerer, Theresa Squatrito, and Christer Jönsson, The Opening Up of International Organizations: Transnational Access in Global Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), table 3.4. © Cambridge University Press. Reproduced with permission of Cambridge University Press through PLSclear.

for nonstate participation. This is not a matter of one specific type of access that is diffused across IOs. Rather, there is a “rich and growing repertoire of participatory arrangements” (Tallberg et al. 2013, 54), in­clud­ing accreditation, policy consultations, seats on official committees and boards, evaluation exercises, and participation in actual regulation (Scholte 2016, 715). Even if the general pattern is one of almost universal opening up, there are significant variations across issue areas, policy functions, and world regions. IOs in the field of human rights tend to be the most open. Greatest access is provided in the policy function of monitoring and enforcement of final agreements. In addition, IOs based in the Americas and Europe tend to be most open. The least open IOs are found in the issue area of security. Decision-­making is the policy function that remains the least open to nonstate actors. IOs based in Africa and Asia are still less open than other IOs (Tallberg et al. 2013, 3 and 75– 82). Nevertheless, there has been substantial growth in IO openness even in Africa and Asia (Armstrong et al. 2011; Tallberg et al. 2013, 80), and we will return to the implications of this in the following analy­sis. Importantly, IOs tend to be selective in granting access to nonstate actors. “Broad and unconditional involvement for all facets of civil society is the exception rather than the rule” (Tallberg et al. 2013, 259). Some types of CSOs

Opening Up of International Organizations / 39

are invited while others are denied access. Moderate NGOs perceived as useful for the IO tend to get access whereas more radical social movement organizations tend to be excluded (O’Brien et al. 2000, 212; McKeon 2009, 130). Such “hierarchies of access” to IOs tend to favor geographically, socioeconomically, and culturally privileged groups. For example, in sub-­Saharan Africa the openness of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to civil society has been biased in favor of “urban, professional, propertied, male, and culturally West­ern circles” (Scholte 2012, 187). Case studies have demonstrated the limited space for radical advocacy groups within the global governance of migration (Wise 2018) and the environment (Ciplet 2019). Parallel to the general opening up of IOs we have also seen very tight security and restricted access to summit venues of major IOs, especially global economic institutions that have previously been targeted by protesters, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, European Union (EU) and G7/8 (Della Porta et al. 2006). The policing of transnational protest has developed at the same time as most IOs have opened up for the participation of less criti­cal CSOs. Even if Asia still features some of the least open IOs, the “transnational turn” has certainly affected IOs in this part of the world. A prominent example is the Asian Development Bank (ADB), which prior to the 1990s was considered one of the IOs that were most closed to civil society. Now the ADB has a strong norm on civil society engagement and many specific rules and procedures facilitating the participation of CSOs in vari­ous phases of its policy process. CSOs are invited to ADB annual meetings and vari­ous consultation processes. There is an “NGO and Civil Society Center,” and many departments and some Resident Missions work closely with CSOs. Some members of the board of directors have proved to be sympathetic to certain civil society concerns. While the ADB, like most other IOs, has provided the most access to relatively non­critical CSOs considered useful for the bank, such as the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), criti­cal advocacy CSOs have not been excluded. Radical critics of neoliberal global governance in general, and ADB in particular, such as Focus on the Global South and the Freedom from Debt Coalition, have participated in ADB Annual Meetings and other official ADB events on a more or less regular basis (Uhlin 2016). To a lesser extent the Association of South­east Asian Nations (ASEAN) has also opened up for civil society engagement. Not even this extremely state-­ centric IO with mainly nondemocratic member states has been immune to the “transnational turn” in global governance. As part of a “people-­oriented” discourse that emerged in the 2000s, the ASEAN has acknowledged CSOs as sig-

40 / Anders Uhlin

nificant actors. Some South­east Asian CSOs have been involved in the development of certain ASEAN policies, most notably the creation of a regional human rights mechanism and policies for the protection of migrant workers’ rights. There have also been symbolic interface meetings between heads of states and representatives of CSOs at some ASEAN summits. Access has mainly been limited to certain well-­connected CSOs with offices in Jakarta (where the ASEAN Secretariat is located), professional staff, and good contacts in the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Indonesian Human Rights Working Group (HRWG) is one example. Accreditation rules remain highly restrictive, in practice excluding even moderately criti­cal independent CSOs. Moreover, there is no norm on civil society participation. Civil society access has mainly been of an informal and ad hoc character, of­ten going through the governments of postauthoritarian states, especially Indonesia (Gerard 2014; Uhlin 2016). In sum, there is a clear empirical pattern of IOs opening up to civil society and other nonstate participation, especially since the early 1990s. This “transnational turn” in global governance has included most IOs across issue areas and world regions. However, the quality of access is of­ten quite limited and tends to vary significantly by IO. Moreover, access is typically not granted equally to all kinds of civil society actors. The range of actors gaining access varies across IOs. There are “hierarchies of access” discriminating against generally marginalized groups and radical critics of dominant IOs. The next section will discuss how the processes of opening up of IOs can be conceptualized as expanding po­liti­cal opportunity structures. CONCEPTUALIZING THE OPENING UP OF IOS

The opening up of IOs has been analyzed in terms of a process moving from closed to more open po­liti­cal opportunities or po­liti­cal opportunity structures. Originally used in social movement research to capture how formal po­liti­cal institutions in national polities constitute opportunities and constraints for the mobilization of social movements, the concept of po­liti­cal opportunity structure has been expanded to the analy­sis of all kinds of civil society advocacy beyond the nation-­state (McCarthy 1998; Tarrow 2005; Dellmuth and Bloodgood 2019). The degree of openness of an institution can be analyzed in terms of the access granted to external actors and the presence or absence of elite allies within the institution (Kalm and Uhlin 2015, 63). Hence, the po­liti­cal opportunity structure related to an IO has two main components: access and elite allies. Access refers to “formal and informal institutional features that determine the level and types of admission” of civil society actors to an IO (Kalm and Uhlin 2015, 6; Joachim and Locher 2009, 8–11). Institutional access can be

Opening Up of International Organizations / 41

both formal (based in treatise, rules, and procedures) and informal (developed through custom and practices) (Tallberg et al. 2013, 8). Important dimensions of access include its depth, that is, the quality of CSO engagement ranging from shallow (pub­lic disclosure of certain documents) to deep (full participation in decision-­making), the range of actors with access, its permanence, and its codification (Tallberg 2013, 26–28). Put differently, when analyzing civil society access to IOs we should ask the following questions: What are the rules and norms on access? Which institutional bodies offer access? Which CSOs are granted access and which are not? What is the depth of access? (Uhlin 2016, 23–25). The concept of elite allies refers to IO officials or politicians representing influential member states who have similar interests as, or are generally sympathetic to, CSOs (Uhlin 2016, 24). The existence of elite allies is an important dimension of the po­liti­cal opportunity structure of an IO. Unlike access, which is determined by institutional features, elite allies refer to specific actors. Having politicians in IO member states as elite allies can be particularly important for CSOs seeking to influence IO policies (Pallas and Uhlin 2014). In sum, the opening up of IOs can be conceptualized as a process of expanding po­liti­cal opportunity structures, in­clud­ing institutional access and the emergence of elite allies among IO and government officials. The question is then, how this process toward more open po­liti­cal opportunity structures related to IOs can be explained. EXPLAINING THE OPENING UP OF IOS

How can the empirical pattern just outlined be explained? Why have the vast majority of IOs opened up for engagement with civil society and other nonstate actors? And why did this trend become stronger in the 1990s? There are several theoretical explanations for the opening up of IOs in the literature. One is that IOs open up because they find the participation of nonstate actors useful. CSOs meet a “functional demand” for resolving governance problems (Raustiala 1997; Koremenos 2008). This rational institutionalist explanation receives strong empirical support in the analy­sis of Tallberg and colleagues. They find that IOs tended to be more open where nonstate actors could “contribute to the solution of specific governance problems, in particular the monitoring of compliance and local implementation of IO policy” (Tallberg et al. 2013, 137). A sec­ond explanation is of­ten referred to as “strategic legitimation.” According to this theory, IOs open up not because they really believe that nonstate participation will be useful for their activities, but because their legitimacy has been challenged and opening up is seen as a way to regain legitimacy. Unlike in the “functional demand” theory, CSOs and not only IOs and states play an impor-

42 / Anders Uhlin

tant role. IOs open up as a response to civil society protest (O’Brien et al. 2000; Kissling and Steffek 2008, 210–11; Fioramonti 2014) and the general “politicization” of IOs (Zürn 2014). Tallberg and colleagues find support for this theory of protests and strategic legitimation as driving forces only in the case of large economic IOs, in­clud­ing the WTO, IMF, the World Bank, and the European Union, since the late 1990s. Beyond this specific time period and type of IOs there is little evidence of strategic legitimation (2013, 3 and 138). Nevertheless, other case studies have indicated that opening up as strategic legitimation following protests is a process that can be found beyond the large global financial institutions. The experience of the ADB and to a lesser extent ASEAN also follows this pattern of increased access following civil society pressure (Uhlin 2016, 184–85). This suggests that nonstate access to IOs might not only be a matter of top-­down institutional design. In some cases, civil society activists have contributed to the opening up of IOs through their advocacy. This bottom­up explanation complements the top-­down explanation of “functional demand.” A third explanation to the opening up of IOs is “norm socialization” (Willets 2000; Friedman et al. 2005; Reimann 2006). According to this constructivist theory, civil society participation has developed into a norm in global governance. Tallberg and colleagues find some empirical support for this theory from the mid-­1990s. However, a domestic democracy norm in IO member states seems to have more explanatory power than a global civil society norm (Tallberg et al. 2013, 138). This does not mean that all democratic states provide substantial access for civil society actors to (global) governance arrangements. Despite its democratic credentials, Japan has, for example, limited civil society access to G7/8 summits held in the country. In this case, civil society access was not institutionalized but depended on the po­liti­cal preferences of the incumbent responsible for the summit (Szczepanska 2018). Tallberg and colleagues explain variation in TNA access to IOs by highlighting two driving forces: functional demand and domestic democracy in IO members (Tallberg et al. 2013, 3). IOs operating in fields where there has been a perceived need to include nonstate actors in order to increase the efficiency of IO policy-making and implementation provide the most access. This includes, for instance, international development, where NGOs with knowledge of the local context can be hired to carry out specific development projects. Domestic democratic standards within the member states of an IO also increase the likelihood that the IO will provide substantial access to nonstate actors. Non­ demo­cratic regimes that tend to repress domestic civil societies typically have the same skeptical attitude toward CSOs in the context of IOs. A third factor that, according to Tallberg and colleagues, explains the variation in TNA access to IOs is sovereignty costs. This refers to states’ unwillingness to give up decision-­making power in central areas, such as security. This is the main con-

Opening Up of International Organizations / 43

straint on TNA access and can explain why there is typically less access in decision-­ making than in other phases of the policy process and why certain issue areas, such as military security, are markedly less open to nonstate actors. In order to explain why there was a marked increase in TNA access to IOs in the early 1990s, Tallberg and colleagues highlight the end of the Cold War, which led to deeper and broader international cooperation; democratization in many parts of the world; and lessened sovereignty concerns (Tallberg et al. 2013, 15). Available data do not cover the most recent developments. The data­ set of Tallberg and colleagues, for instance, does not go beyond 2010. However, there are at least anecdotal indications of a slowing down of the “transnational turn” and possibly even a reversal of the trend of opening up of IOs. If this is so, it should not come as a surprise as several of the factors that contributed to this trend after 1990 have now changed. Current world politics is characterized by more focus on state sovereignty, less commitment to international cooperation, and processes of autocratization and democratic setbacks in many parts of the world. This is a global po­liti­cal climate that is less favorable for broad and deep civil society participation in global policy-making. To sum up, the functional demand for assistance in solving governance problems seems to be a significant driving force behind the “transnational turn” in global governance. IO leaders believe that they need the help of certain nonstate actors. However, in many cases the opening up is a matter of strategic legitimation by IOs under pressure from civil society protests more than genuine engagement with CSOs. Several researchers have also referred to the global diffusion of a pro–­civil society norm. Support for democratic norms within influential member states of an IO appears to have more explanatory power, however. The sovereignty costs for states related to the opening up of IOs contribute to explaining the variation of access granted across policy fields. The drastic increase in civil society access to IOs from 1990 can be explained by the end of the Cold War, which facilitated international cooperation, lessened sovereignty concerns, and led to processes of democratization in many parts of the world. This however, raises concerns about a possible reversal of the trend toward more open IOs, as many of the factors associated with the end of the Cold War now seems to be changing. OPENING UP OF IOS: IMPLICATIONS FOR CIVIL SOCIETY ADVOCACY STRATEGIES

The most obvious implication of the opening up of IOs for civil society advocacy is that the possible targets of advocacy have expanded. In the origi­nal boo­ merang pattern (Keck and Sikkink 1998, 13), the targets of transnational advocacy were governments in states that were not responsive to domestic civil

44 / Anders Uhlin

society actors. IOs fig­ured only as a possible intervening variable through which foreign CSOs and states could put pressure on the targeted state. The opening up of IOs has not only strengthened the possibilities for CSOs to use IOs to put more pressure on authoritarian states but, more significantly, also made IOs themselves into potential targets of advocacy campaigns. Much contemporary civil society advocacy is arguably more concerned with global issues and policy-­ making than problems within one specific state and is thus of a tran­scalar, rather than transnational, nature. In addition to this change in advocacy beyond borders, the general opening up of IOs and the variation in access across IOs and CSOs have also had more specific consequences for the advocacy strategies of civil society actors. One way of thinking about different civil society strategies when interacting with IOs is to distinguish between “inside,” “outside,” and “combined” strategies (Kalm and Uhlin 2015, 51–56; Fogarty 2011). Inside civil society advocacy refers to cases of direct interaction between civil society activists and IO representatives within the general institutional framework the IO provides. This might include CSOs seeking accreditation with an IO or accepting invitations to participate in vari­ous consultation processes or engaging in other lobbying activities related to the IO. Outside civil society advocacy refers to indirect civil society engagement with IOs, typically in the form of protest activities outside of IO summit venues or headquarters. The combined civil society strategy mixes inside lobbying with outside protest activities based on a belief that the pressure from outside protests could enhance the negotiating power of inside lobby­ ists, thus maximizing influence. Inside advocacy requires a degree of openness. An IO that is completely closed for nonstate actors can only be engaged through outside protest activities. Outside advocacy to some extent also depends on po­liti­cal opportunity structures. IO summits taking place in highly authoritarian states are generally not targeted by large civil society protests because of the fear of repression. Street demonstrations and other forms of more radical protest tend to only occur in countries with relatively open po­liti­cal opportunity structures for civil society activism (Kalm and Uhlin 2015, 118). Hence, we need to consider not only the po­liti­cal opportunity structure related to the institutional design of an IO, providing access and elite allies, but also the national po­liti­cal opportunity structures in IO member states. The po­liti­cal opportunity structure can be seen as a necessary, but not sufficient, factor explaining CSOs’ choice of strategy. Actor characteristics (such as goals and organizational identity) must also be considered (Kalm and U ­ hlin 2015, 56). Within a given po­liti­cal opportunity structure, civil society advocacy strategies depend on the goals of specific civil society actors. Those hav-

Opening Up of International Organizations / 45

ing rather modest, reformist goals tend to use inside lobbying in order to influence IOs, whereas those having more far-­reaching transformative goals tend to challenge IOs by outside protest activities. Advocacy strategies can also be linked to organizational identity. Civil society actors with a strong movement identity tend to prefer outside protest activities, whereas those with a formal institutional NGO identity typically engage in inside advocacy. Following this line of reasoning, some civil society actors choose the outside protest strategy even when the po­liti­cal opportunity structure is relatively open because inside lobby­ing would not be compatible with their radical goals and movement identity. They are “principled outsiders.” Others turn to outside protests because they are denied access. They are “forced outsiders.” There might also be “pragmatic outsiders” who choose the advocacy strategy based on a calculation of what they believe will maximize influence in a specific situation (Kalm and ­Uhlin 2015, 66–67). There are many examples of how the opening up (or relative closure) of IOs has influenced the advocacy strategies of civil society actors. Generally speaking, the relatively open po­liti­cal opportunity structure of EU institutions in the field of global development policies and practices has led to a strong focus on inside lobbying activities of CSOs targeting the European Union on these issues. Outside protest activities have been exceptions (Kalm and Uhlin 2015, 97). However, the po­liti­cal opportunity structure is not the same for all kinds of civil society actors. Whereas the general pattern is that resource rich CSOs based in the global North have much more access to IOs than have civil society actors from the global South, there has been an interesting movement in the opposite direction in the case of EU institutions dealing with development issues. The European Union’s policy on civil society relations in the field of development now has a strong focus on policy implementation by local CSOs in the global South (Kalm and Uhlin 2015, 82). This means that north­ern CSOs have experienced an increasingly closed po­liti­cal opportunity structure, especially in relation to the European Commission. The changing po­liti­cal opportunity structure has limited the role of many north­ern CSOs to one of capacity builders for south­ern CSOs, hence forcing them to modify their approach to advocacy (Carbone 2008). Interestingly, when IOs have opened up specifically for local CSOs from the global South and become more closed for north­ern CSOs, the “inverse boomerang” (Pallas 2017) has been activated. Following this pattern, northern-­ based international NGOs, facing problems in gaining meaningful access to an IO, reach out to local CSOs in the global South and manage to gain access to the IO through a renewed global campaign. Even if IOs based in the global North are still on average more open than

46 / Anders Uhlin

are IOs based in the global South, most IOs in Latin America, Africa, and Asia have opened up for some civil society participation during recent decades. This has created opportunities for civil society actors in the global South to engage in transcalar advocacy even without facilitation by more resource-­rich north­ ern CSOs. The ADB is a good example of this. The significant opening up of the ADB since the 1990s has provided advocacy opportunities for south­ern CSOs, especially those based in Manila, the Philippines, where the ADB headquarters are located. The NGO Forum on ADB, a network of CSOs and grassroots movements from across Asia, has become the most active advocacy group monitoring and trying to influence the ADB (Uhlin 2016, 91–95). The NGO Forum on ADB does not rely on alliances with north­ern CSOs, though it does cooperate with some north­ern-­based groups in specific advocacy campaigns. The opening up of the ADB has created opportunities for south­ern civil society actors with very limited access to major development IOs in the global North to criti­cally engage with a significant IO in the field of development. Pallas and Nguyen (this volume) observe a similar growth in inside lobbying of IOs by local NGOs, facilitated by increasing NGO capacity and IO interest in local perspectives. Another example of more open po­liti­cal opportunities for civil society ­actors in the global South is the case of ASEAN. This was for long a very closed IO. When it began to open up in the early 2000s, both inside and outside civil society advocacy became more frequent (Uhlin 2016, 102–3). The limited opening up of ASEAN has made the IO a relevant target for many South­east Asian civil society activists who used to ignore this regional institution. For Indonesian human rights groups, to take one example, the combination of democratization within the country and some opening up of the ASEAN has fundamentally changed conditions for advocacy. In the 1990s, when the authoritarian regime was still in place and the ASEAN remained completely closed to independent CSOs, the typical transnational advocacy followed the classic boomerang pattern (Keck and Sikkink 1998, 13). Indonesian human rights CSOs experienced a blockage to their authoritarian government and tried to reach out to international human rights NGOs, which could then try to engage foreign governments and IOs in campaigns putting pressure on the Indonesian government. In the current situation, by contrast, human rights activists in Indonesia can approach their own government directly—in the same way as other south­ ern CSOs have partnered with their governments, as shown by Appe (this volume) and Rodrigues (this volume)—and also target the ASEAN. Hence, Indonesian (and other regional) human rights CSOs have been very active in pressuring the ASEAN to set up a regional human rights commission (Tan

Opening Up of International Organizations / 47

2011). At the same time, the classic boomerang form of advocacy is still used, for instance in campaigns against human rights abuses in the Indonesian provinces of Aceh and Papua. Hence, there are multiple advocacy strategies that can be activated simultaneously. In sum, the almost universal opening up of IOs for participation of nonstate actors has led to an increase in the number of CSOs engaged in inside lobbying activities targeting IOs. Nevertheless, many civil society actors use outside protest activities too, either because they find the po­liti­cal opportunity structure closed for them (although it might be open for other CSOs) or because inside lobbying goes against their overall goals and organizational identity. The opening up of IOs has resulted in a greater diversity of actors engaged in tran­ scalar advocacy. In some cases, the opening of IOs has also led to the empowerment of south­ern NGO networks and increasing competition among north­ ern INGOs, as demonstrated in the opening up of the ADB and the changing focus of EU institutions in the field of development. The opening up of IOs has increased the complexity of civil society advocacy beyond borders. While the classic boomerang pattern is still applicable, there are now a number of other patterns that transcalar advocacy can follow. CONCLUSION

A major change in the architecture of global governance during the last d­ ecades has been the opening up of IOs to civil society and other nonstate actors. This has been a global trend affecting the vast majority of IOs across issue areas and world regions, although the degree of access granted and the types of civil ­society actors included vary a lot. This expansion of po­liti­cal opportunity structures for civil society activism has had significant consequences for civil society advocacy and has contributed to a trend from transnational to transcalar advocacy. Advocacy campaigns beyond the nation-­state are no longer limited to putting pressure on nondemocratic regimes. IOs have emerged as significant targets of transcalar activism. Whereas access to the most powerful global IOs with headquarters in the global North are still of­ten biased toward certain well-­ connected north­ern CSOs, the opening up of some south­ern IOs has created opportunities for south­ern CSOs to engage in transcalar advocacy that does not rely on facilitation by north­ern CSOs. Meanwhile, some north­ern CSOs have been forced to revise their advocacy strategy when IOs have focused more on direct interaction with local CSOs in the global South. A more open po­liti­ cal opportunity structure, in general, encourages more inside lobbying activities, but also relatively open IOs remain the targets of outside protests, indicat-

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ing that the po­liti­cal opportunity structure is not the only factor affecting the choice of civil society advocacy strategy, as organizational identities and goals of the civil society actors also need to be considered. The classic boomerang pattern is still relevant in some cases, but instead of engaging IOs to put pressure on a nonresponsive government in an authoritarian state, local, national, and international CSOs increasingly target IOs directly to influence policy-making concerning transnational issues. The open­ing up of IOs has significantly contributed to this shift in civil society advocacy away from the classic boomerang pattern to multiple forms of transcalar advocacy.

3 SOUTH–SOUTH NETWORKS AMONG NGOS SUSAN APPE

S

outh–South networking among NGOs occurs when NGOs in low-­and middle-­income south­ern countries turn to other NGOs and networks in their country, neighboring countries, and beyond in the global South for ideas, resources, support, and partnerships for advocacy on common issues. South– South networks increasingly have a role on the international, regional, and domestic stages. Like transnational advocacy networks, these networks are “bound together by shared values, a common discourse, and dense exchanges of information and services” (Keck and Sikkink 1998, 2). However, South–South networks also challenge existing theories about transnational advocacy that of­ten assume the South’s dependency on the North. Also called South–South cooperation and/or South–South partnerships, this chapter addresses South–South networks created and used by NGOs and other civil society actors. South–South networking represents “a broad framework for collaboration among countries of the South in the po­liti­cal, economic, social, cultural, environmental, and technical domains. Involving two or more developing countries, it can take place on a bilateral, regional, subregional or inter­regional basis. Developing countries share knowledge, skills, expertise, and resources to meet their development goals through concerted efforts” (United Nations Office for South–South Cooperation 2016). The framework allows for multiscalar change and counters “years of one-­ way travel” from the North to the South as well as the boomerang model of transnational activism. Notably, South–South cooperation is marked by mutual transfers of resources and expertise. It also increasingly emphasizes cooperation, rather than contestation, between national governments and local NGOs. As a result, South–South networking has the potential to “generate organizational and policy innovations” (Lewis 2017, 327). New roles for south­ern NGOs have helped magnify their power, creating opportunities for them to advance new discourses, share knowledge, and engage in global policy discussions. Further theoretical and empirical study about South–South networking among NGOs is warranted; however, scholars also observe the merit and need for continued

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criti­cal reflection about knowledge production and power asymmetries produced by and among north­ern and south­ern voices under the vari­ous models of South–South cooperation (see the timely and relevant edited volume by Mawdsley, Fourie, and Nauta 2019). The premise in this chapter is that indeed South–South cooperation has deep his­tori­cal roots. Its growing importance for NGOs in particular is tied to several of the shifts highlighted in this volume, such as the changing economic and po­liti­cal landscapes, in­clud­ing responses to global challenges such as migration, climate change, and most recently a global pandemic. To examine the basis of the current era of South–South cooperation and its significance for NGO advocacy, in the first section of this chapter I outline the shifting global landscape, which helps to contextualize the growing role of South–South networking. In the sec­ond section I briefly discuss the history of South–South partnerships. The last section of the chapter provides empirical examples and insights from the global south­ern stage and from Latin America, a region that has a strong history of South–South partnerships. CURRENT CONTEXT FOR SOUTH–SOUTH NETWORKS

Traditional understandings of transnational advocacy tend to position north­ ern countries as providers of knowledge, technology, and expertise to south­ern countries (Lewis 2017, 327) as well as power brokers on the international stage. South–South networks challenge these assumptions by observing that south­ ern countries can learn from one another. These networks have been further propelled by at least three current economic and global demographic changes, which include the changing global economy, shifts in the aid architecture, and the post-­2015 global development agenda. Changing Global Economy and the Economic Power of the South

The global economy is changing, which was the case prior to the 2020 global pandemic and undoubtedly continues as the world responds the global health crisis. By estimation, the global South accounts for 40 percent of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP) and this was estimated to rise to 55 percent by 2025 (Global South–South Development Expo 2017; United Nations Development Programme 2013; see also Bhattacharya 2014). South­ern countries have represented up to 65 percent of global economic growth (OECD 2010; Ordóñez 2014). Indeed, overall, economic indicators support that the standard of living has improved in low-­and middle-­income countries. In 1990, 47 percent of the global population in the developing world lived on less than $1.25 per day. In 2015, that percentage decreased to 14 percent, and other indicators

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show improvement such as greater literacy and school enrollment across the South (United Nations 2015). Furthermore, a greater share of the global middle class resides in the South; by 2030 it is estimated that more than 80 percent of the world’s middle class will be living in south­ern countries (United Nations Development Programme 2013). In addition, South–South trade has increased tremendously, tripling during the period from 1980 to 2011, from 8.1 percent to 26.7 percent respectively (United Nations Development Programme 2016) and has been shown to produce stronger benefits among south­ern countries in comparison to North– South trade (Mohanty, Franssen, and Saha 2019). This has allowed south­ern countries to emerge as global economic players, creating regional economic institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the New Development Bank (a multilateral bank created by Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), each with assets totaling $100 billion (Global South–South Development Expo 2017). As reported by the United Nations Development Program, “The combined GDP of eight major developing countries alone—­ Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa, and Turkey— now equals the GDP of the United States, still by far the world’s biggest national economy” (United Nations Development Programme 2013, 13). However, as of mid-­2020, the projections for economic growth in the global South (and more broadly globally) have changed. The economic fallout of the COVID-­19 global pandemic is still unfolding, but what is certain is a deep global recession. The economic implications have both short-­and long-­term consequences for countries in the global North and global South. Forecasting suggests a 5.2 percent decline in global GDP in 2020 (World Bank 2020), and global trade activity is predicted to fall anywhere from 13 percent to 32 percent ( Jack­ son, Weiss, and Nelson 2020). In particular, regions in the South, namely, Latin America and the Caribbean and Asia, were on a path to report significant annual growth in 2020. This growth has been halted by the global crisis and the uptick in the regions’ COVID-­19 cases. South­east Asia will likely see its worst economic performance in forty years due to the impeded service industry and the rising food prices (Timmer, Mercer-­Blackman, and Beyer 2020). Thus, despite the economic growth over the course of the last several decades, the economic landscape of global South, and the world in general, in the near and long term is uncertain. Post-­Aid World Conditions

Given the changes and the uncertainty in the global economy, the architecture of the international aid sys­tem has and will continue to experience adjustments. Under what has been called “post-­aid world” conditions, the relationships be-

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tween donors, governments, and NGOs are allowing for new aid configurations (Appe 2017; Banks, Hulme, and Edwards 2015; Keijzer, Klingebiel, and Scholtes, 2019; Mawdsley, Savadge, and Kim 2014) as “development agencies and organizations are scrambling to respond to what may well be the next paradigm shift within mainstream development theories and practices” (Mawdsley, Savadge, and Kim 2014, 30). The new aid architecture and the future of foreign aid and development cooperation was outlined at the 2011 Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan, South Korea. A post-­aid world, as discussed at the Busan conference, brings attention to the role of emerging economies, the private sector in development cooperation, and new approaches and broader financial aid instruments. Post-­aid world conditions will also likely influence traditional patterns of resource dependency and power asymmetries in development (Carbonnier and Sumner 2012), and, as a result, south­ern countries are reinvesting in South–South partnerships (Bhattacharya 2014, 63). As argued in this volume and elsewhere, South–South networks in particular provide responses and adaptive strategies to post-­aid world conditions in many regions (see Appe 2018 for a discussion on Latin America). Indeed, a post-­aid world underlines the emergence of new global economic players as donors. Angel Gurría, the Secretary-­General of the OECD, explains the changes: “Emerging economies now give over 100 times more aid to developing countries than they did in 1990” (Gurría 2011). New players in aid are grouped into country blocs that share economic interests and strategies: for examples, the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russian Federation, India, China, and South Africa); the MINT countries of Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Turkey; the IBSA countries of India, Brazil, and South Africa; the CIVETS countries of Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey, and South Africa; and the MIST countries of Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea, and Turkey. Furthermore, initiatives like the India-­UN Development Partnership Fund, which started in 2017 and is housed in the United Nations Fund for South–South Cooperation, have given south­ern countries like India more reach as donors. A recent example under the auspice of the fund is India’s provision of medical supplies and educational resources for COVID-­19 responses to the several Caribbean countries (United Nations Fund for South–South Cooperation 2020). These types of mechanisms are found also in emerging donor Arab states, such as the Islamic Development Bank, the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development, the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development, the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa, the Saudi Fund for Development, and the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development (United Nations Development Programme 2013; UN General Assembly 2019).

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Post-­2015 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals

In 2015, 193 countries set as a goal for the next fifteen years the achievement of seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets, by approving the new agenda for sustainable development called “Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.” The agenda aims to continue the work of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in place from 2000 to 2015. What is distinct about the SDGs is that they do not categorize “developed” and “developing” countries, rather, the goals are intended for all signatories. Additionally, the construction of the new sustainable agenda was based on widespread participation among actors in civil society, government, and the private sector (United Nations 2016; United Nations 2017). SDGs highlight not only the increasing economic power of the South but also its expanding access to the global po­liti­cal space. The process by which the SDGs developed has been considered very different from that of their predecessors, the MDGs. As Andrea Ordóñez highlights, “South­ern thinkers have contributed to the debate both by criti­cally reviewing the origi­nal MDGs and by bringing their own perspective to the future goals and targets” (Ordóñez 2014, 121). In addition, in the post-­2015 development agenda, South–South networks, coordination, and partnerships are positioned to provide strategies for implementation of the SDGs (Bhattacharya 2014; UN General Assembly 2019). OVERVIEW OF SOUTH–SOUTH PARTNERSHIP

Before outlining observations about South–South networking among NGOs, it is useful to summarize the history of South–South partnerships more broadly. This includes key milestones of South–South partnerships and evidence that the role of civil society is increasing. The brief overview also presents how new partnerships have been formed in the new millennium. Important Milestones in South–South Networking

South–South models have existed since the 1950s when countries of the global South came together as a result of colonialism and emergent pressures of the Cold War (Morais de Sae Silva 2010). Major milestones in its institutionalization include the 1955 Bandung conference (Indonesia) focused on Asia and Africa cooperation and the 1978 Plan of Action of Buenos Aires (Argentina), focused on Latin America and the Caribbean (Instituto de Comunicación y Desarrollo 2014, 51). South–South initiatives were more dormant during the oil crisis of the 1970s and the policy shifts of the 1980s that stunted economic

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growth. However, the turn of the twenty-­first century brought about a resurgence of South–South thinking for three main reasons. First, there was a banding together to accomplish the then MDGs. Second, the process of so-­called development was criticized and some searched for new paradigms. South–South partnerships offered opportunities that contrasted to development as usual. And third, emerging economies have taken on a more purposeful role in development as previously mentioned (Morais de Sae Silva 2010; Bhattacharya 2014; see also Appe 2018). South–South networks and cooperation play out in several ways, in­clud­ ing negotiating blocs, economic integration, project assistance, sectorial cooperation, technical assistance, education exchange, concessional loans, and humanitarian relief (Reality of Aid 2010, 3). Under the framework, as suggested, there is no intention of a one-­way transfer of resources; rather, South–South networks hinge on transfers and exchanges of technical expertise, knowledge and financial resources, and the use of capacity and power derived in the South. South–South networking has shifted the dependency on the aid system, declared commitment to social change, and promoted relationships built on solidarity not imperialism, militarization, and other conditionalities prevalent in other sources of development aid (Reality of Aid 2010). Increasing Role of Civil Society in the Global South

Most of the attention to South–South models has focused on government-­to-­ government relationships (Moilwa 2015; Instituto de Comunicación y Desarrollo 2014; Balbis Pérez 2013). These South–South partnerships are important; however, partnerships can involve a multitude of organizations such as NGOs, academia, think tanks, and other institutions. And despite the role of NGOs in development, there are very few studies that have examined their role in South– South models or which have addressed South–South networks among NGOs and organized civil society as part of the changing global landscape. What we have seen is the role of organized civil society more generally acknowledged in South–South networks and cooperation through international forums starting with the Second High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Paris in 2005. At that time, organized civil society was officially included in the global development agenda, then framed by the MDGs. In 2008, this continued at the Agenda Accra Action (AAA) when emerging South–South models of development were further highlighted (OCED 2008, §19.b). In 2009, at the UN conference on South–South Cooperation, organized civil society from around the global South made a statement specific to its role in South–South cooperation: “We call for an integrated approach to the South–South Cooperation with governments of the South committing resources for facilitating [organized civil so-

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ciety] processes. We believe that civil society can play an important role in furthering the objectives of the South–South cooperation. Governments should encourage and financially support civil society engagement, and recognize the key role they play in implementing and monitoring programs and policies. We urge for their structured inclusion in future deliberations and programs of the South–South Cooperation” (Reality of Aid 2010, 116). In 2010 at the High Level Event on South–South Cooperation and Capacity Development in Bogotá, Colombia, participation by organized civil society in South–South models continued with the statement that “civil society organizations and the private sector should be engaged in implementing [South– South cooperation] to tap their comparative advantages” (Steering Committee 2010, 5). Organized civil society gathered during these international platforms to influence proposals on the future of the development agenda and to call attention to South–South partnerships’ common issues such as the advancement of human rights, social justice, and sustainability (Asociación Latinoamericana de Organizaciones de Promoción al Desarrollo 2010). Formation of New South–South Partnerships

At the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in 2011 held in Busan, creating favorable environments for the work of organized civil society in development was a major focal point. From the Busan Partnership, the Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-­operation (GPEDC) was formed in 2012 and provided another platform to emphasize the importance of South– South models, middle-­income countries as development actors, and to promote learning and exchange about development experiences. Furthermore, GPEDC has launched its campaign to support global coordination and the realization of the SDGs. Additional agreements include the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development in 2015, the Agenda for Humanity of 2016, and the Paris Agreement of 2020. These agreements all make mention of the importance of South–South partnerships. The fortieth anniversary of the adoption of the 1978 Plan of Action of Buenos Aires (BAPA) was celebrated at the BAPA+40 in Argentina in 2019. The United Nations hosted the sec­ond High-­Level United Nations Conference on South–South Cooperation to recommit to South–South models in global development and their use in the implementation of the SDGs (United Nations 2019). The UN General Assembly endorsed the outcome document of the event, recognizing the importance of South–South partnerships in the achievement of the SDGs, their diversity in application, and that UN agencies can provide support in fostering their effectiveness (UN General Assembly 2019).

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SOUTH–SOUTH NETWORKS AMONG NGOS IN PRACTICE

The following provides observations about South–South networks in practice with attention given to the role of NGOs. We can make three observations: NGO South–South networks are providing opportunity to create new discourses about global relations; these networks are centered on knowledge and information sharing; and south­ern actors—in­clud­ing south­ern NGO leaders— are playing a more prominent role in global policy and advocacy discussions, even as South–South networks are keenly aware that north­ern actors remain involved and the COVID-­19 crisis presents major global challenges moving forward. Empirical and illustrative examples allow for further insight on these three observations about South–South networks among NGOs. Creating New Discourses Derived in the South

To influence traditional North–South dynamics, some argue that South–South partnership needs “to develop its own body of knowledge” (Andrade 2009, 1). Language, that is, words, their use, and meanings, within traditional North– South partnerships has been thought of as West­ern and neocolonial. For example, previous language by traditional north­ern bilateral and multilateral donors has been reworked to create the concept of “new development partnerships” (McEwan and Mawdsley 2012, 1186). South­ern countries are no longer using the term “recipient countries” more the term “partner countries” (McEwan and Mawdsley 2012, 1186). Still, evolving language in North–South development can be problematic and falsely authoritative particularly if it seeks to mask, or place blame, on development failures (see, for example, Harper-­Shipman’s [2019] sharp critique on the use of aid ownership in Africa). Thus, an emergent discourse for South–South partnerships suggests having a separate and “common set of guiding principles for the process” as well as creating South–South performance measurements (Bhattacharya 2014, 64). NGOs have a role here. Specifically, they have participated in reshaping the global discourse and setting guiding principles as it relates to South–South networks in order to make relationships more horizontal. For example, David Lewis notes the term “accompaniment” put into circulation by some Latin Ameri­can NGOs “as a counternarrative to the way that they felt that some international NGOs had used the term partnership merely to try to mask their unequal top-­ down relationships with their counterpart NGOs in the Global South” (Lewis 2014 as cited in Lewis 2017, 330). Even smaller-­scale South–South networks are reshaping the language of transnational linkages. Subnational South–South networks among NGOs demonstrate dynamics of exchange through language choice. The South–South

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partnership between the Federation of Antioqueña NGOs (FAONG) in Medellin, Colombia, and the Network Association of NGOs of Guayaquil in Ecua­ dor (AROG) provides an example (see Appe 2018). As research has shown, the South–South partnership among the two south­ern networks uses discourse such as “cooperation and sisterhood” colloquially among participants and in formal written agreements (Appe 2018). South­ern NGO leaders articulate the South–South partnership as having a wide regional impact by “generating spaces for networking and, yes, eventual programs for strengthening civil society regionally” (F. Castaño as cited in Appe 2018). Network leaders frame the partnership around mutuality and shared learning. South–South Knowledge and Information Sharing

With post-­aid world conditions and larger global conversations related to the legitimacy of organized civil society (Appe and Pallas 2018; Hayman 2016; Fowler 2016), south­ern NGOs have needed to look inward and learn from one another, within and outside of their respective countries. This is particularly the case given the autocratic tendencies several state powers put forth that have affected NGO activities. There is an expanding body of scholarship and policy debate about the “shrinking” or “closing” of space for NGOs due to restrictions placed by authoritarian and hybrid regimes (Carothers and Brechenmacher 2014; Toepler et al. 2020). In response to these po­liti­cal obstacles and constraints NGOs face and questions about the legitimacy of organized civil society, several South–South networks have been created at the regional level. For example, in Latin America, the Regional Initiative for Transparency and Accountability of Civil Society was created to respond to larger conversations and criticisms about organized civil society’s transparency and accountability. This South–South network of NGOs is leveraging new communication technology as it is a virtual center of information. It seeks to diffuse good practices in transparency and accountability through mutual learning methods (http://rendircuentas.org). Its website is a hub for its member NGOs across seven Latin Ameri­can countries around substantive themes related to civil society and accountability. Research has shown that these South–South networks produce collective texts from a south­ern perspective to exchange and share knowledge and to introduce and frame new practices for NGOs given the environmental challenges (see Appe 2016). Indeed, knowledge and information sharing among south­ern partners is prominent in Latin America. Another regional network is the Latin Ameri­can Network for Fair, Democratic, and Sustainable Cities (Red Latinoamericana por Ciudades Justas, Democráticas, y Sostenables [RLCJDS]), which seeks to build sustainable cities through active citizen participation in the local policy

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process. The network is made up of smaller networks and movements from more than fifty cities in ten countries, each with its own intervention models, structures, and membership base. The Latin Ameri­can Network for Fair, Democratic, and Sustainable Cities (RLCJDS) is a good example of knowledge and information sharing across several types of south­ern actors. The network uses the Como Vamos (www.bogotacomovamos.org/) (How Are We Doing) framework created in Bogotá, Colombia, by the Chamber of Commerce, media organizations, and local foundations to monitor Bogotá’s Development Plan. Como Vamos seeks to assess changes in indicators related to the quality of life issues. The Como Vamos model expanded to other cities in Colombia and then eventually was replicated in other Latin Ameri­can cities and helped to launch the South–South network of RLCJDS. As a South–South network, RLCJDS is committed to learning from south­ ern experiences. Its objectives include: (a) monitoring and influencing pub­lic policies, (b) creation of knowledge-­generating initiatives, (c) mobilization of the population toward active citizen participation, (d) creation of fairer cities and sustainability, and (e) evaluation of quality of life issues. In practice, the network provides timely and quality information that allows citizens to influence decision-­making; opens channels of communication and dialogue among the public, NGOs, and local government; and generates collaborations to promote equal opportunities and equity in the distribution of pub­lic goods and services. South­ern Thinkers Engaged in Global Policy and Advocacy Discussions

As noted for some time, there have been “few spaces where thinkers and scholars from Africa, Latin America and Asia can share their perspectives, and as a result there [had been limited] knowledge sharing about their realities, concerns, and priorities” (Ordóñez 2014, 122–23). However, more and more south­ern thinkers, many of whom are NGO leaders, are not only sharing and exchanging among themselves, but also their collective perspectives have been gaining traction in the international arena. Indeed, south­ern thinkers are more engaged in global policy discussions and advocacy. For example, the United Nations Office for South–South Cooperation has showcased South–South networking through its Global South–South Development Expo. Initiated in 2008, the Expo intends to bring to the forefront successful development models practiced in the South and highlight the work of NGOs in “response to the expressed needs and desire of stakeholders from the global South” (www.expo.unsouthsouth.org). South­ern actors are also influencing the SDGs and their implementation. Like the RLCJDS, using communication technologies, South–South networks among NGOs not only create in-­person spaces for information exchange but

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also provide online platforms. The South–South network South­ern Voice on Post-­MDG International Development Goals is one such example. Its motto is “Embedding Global South Research in the Delivery of the SDGs,” and since 2012, its objective has been to confront what it calls the “knowledge asymmetry” and “participation deficit” in global conversations about development (http://south­ernvoice.org). At its core are forty-­nine think tanks from Africa, Latin America, and Asia, which entered into the debate about the post­2015 agenda by providing “evidence-­based policy analyses by researchers from the countries of the Global South” (http://south­ernvoice.org). With its secre­ tariat currently located at the Centre for Policy Dialogue in Dhaka, Bangladesh, its vision is “a world in which power has been realigned between countries, resulting in fair and equitable engagement on global issues, and advancing a world in which people’s rights and needs are met and sustainable development is achieved” (http://south­ernvoice.org). Its mission is to promote “a power shift” in conversations about the SDGs. Indeed, the MDGs had been criticized for being too north­ern donor driven as they did not include all countries’ perspectives in their creation. With concerns about achieving the SDGs in the backdrop, these conversations have become even more resonant during the COVID-­19 crisis. The South­ ern Voice initiative launched a “digital knowledge hub” about COVID-­19, which provides an “interactive space [that] compiles research from countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America on the impact the pandemic is having on those regions” (http://south­ernvoice.org). It collates information provided by south­ern scholars, practitioners, and activists about the intersection of COVID-­19 and food security, educational priorities, remittances flows, and labor and productivity, among other development topics. However, there are caveats to increased south­ern engagement in these global discussions. Most of the experiences to date show that the North remains very much involved, of course not only in North–South partnerships but also across South–South networks. Most of­ten the North’s role in South–South models is provided through the sponsorship of spaces addressing alternative development frameworks. Like the United Nations Office for South–South Cooperation, other multinational institutions have created further initiatives. The World Bank funds the South–South Experience Exchange Facility to “improv[e] the catalytic role of South–South knowledge exchanges” (World Bank 2016). These spaces are financially sponsored and hosted by the North and seek to produce “workshops, publications, and institutional partnerships” about South–South relations (Abdenur and Sa Fonseca 2013, 1486). North­ern financial support extends South–South networks among NGOs. For example, the Initiative for Transparency and Accountability of Civil Society already outlined for informa-

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tion exchange and sharing was initiated with the help of several north­ern donors such as the National Endowment for Democracy in the United States. And the South–South partnership between FAONG and AROG, the South–South network across NGOs in Colombia and Ecuador already observed, was launched at an event funded by United Nation’s Development Program, the British Embassy, the European Union, and the World Bank. Likewise, many supporters of the South­ern Voice initiative are North­ern-­based, such as the International Development Research Center in Ottawa, Canada, the Hewitt Foundation, and the United Nations Foundation. CONCLUSION

South–South networks challenge what have become conventional understandings of North–South global organization and what we think we know about transnational NGO activism and action. South­ern NGOs and organized civil society in the South are indeed facing changes in their po­liti­cal, social, technological, and economic environments. As a result, mutual learning and new patterns of coordination are becoming multiscalar and transcalar in nature, shifting power dynamics, allowing for what a Brazilian NGO, Conectas, calls a clear “Global South perspective” (www.conectas.org) in global affairs. Like transnational advocacy networks, South–South networks at their core are “voluntary, reciprocal, and horizontal patterns of communication and exchange” (Keck and Sikkink 1998, 8). And at times, South–South networks are seeking to change state behavior like transnational advocacy networks. However, we see the causes and rationale of these networks broadening and responding to new global demands and emerging to be more consistent with the transcalar advocacy model. The changes in the landscape for both south­ern and north­ern actors can remind us of calls to toss out the “unhelpful binary thinking” of the North and South altogether (Lewis 2017, 327). In fact, John Gaventa (2002) argued that the North/South divide should end, that is, when taken together the North and the South can learn from each other particularly when thinking about NGOs and their work in participation and development (256). Like Gaventa, Lewis recently again asked how south­ern experiences might not only be exchanged horizontally between south­ern NGOs but also be able to help NGOs in the global North (Lewis 2017). Perhaps lessons can be learned from South–South partnerships and inform local and regional North–North partnerships that can also exist under a model of transcalar advocacy. Indeed, Lewis and others have argued that “many challenges facing organizations of the third sector in both rich and poor countries are increasingly common ones” (Lewis 2014, 1135). NGO action is changing, as boundaries are not clearly drawn in a glob-

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alized world (Lewis 2017). These changes present a widening opening for South–South networks, especially among NGOs. The South is gaining economic power—while acknowledging the uncertainty of the COVID-­19 global pandemic and its economic implications. Discussions about post-­aid world conditions continue and global development actors have pushed forward the post­2015 agenda with the implementation of the SDGs. As a result, South–South networks among NGOs are establishing new discourses, sharing knowledge and information within and across south­ern countries, and south­ern thinkers, of­ten NGO leaders through networks, are chiming in to global policy and advocacy discussions more directly and purposively. Indeed, while South–South networks must observe the continued involvement from north­ern actors, transnational advocacy networks can no longer be considered binary (North/South); that is, the model of south­ern NGOs pulling resources—financial, knowledge, technical, and po­liti­cal—from north­ern NGOs is outdated. Rather, transcalar advocacy and networking among south­ern NGOs will continue to explore effective practices for achieving human well-­being, which will be shared and contextualized across the globe.

4 POWER TO THE PEOPLE? Network Structures and the World Social Forum ELIZABETH A. BLOODGOOD

T

he World Social Forum (WSF), also known in French as the Forum Social Mondial (FSM), is an annual gathering of thousands of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) of all sizes from around the world and prides itself in its open, inclusive, decentralized character. Since the first WSF meeting in Brazil in 2001, the WSF has sought to serve as a platform to encourage participation by civil society actors in international affairs, although with the general purpose of challenging neoliberal globalization under the slogan “Another World Is Possible” (Smith et al. 2011, 29). This chapter uses social network analy­sis and the tool IssueCrawler, created and managed by the GovCom Foundation (www .issuecrawler.net), to examine the networks that emerged among the organizations participating in the meeting WSF held in Montreal in 2016. It demonstrates the utility of these tools in analyzing transcalar advocacy and offers several findings that reinforce the theory presented in this volume. The WSF is an ideal “laboratory” to examine networking, allowing close observation of hundreds of organizations of different scales and scopes. Past studies of NGO networking are biased toward large professional organizations (Wong 2012; Murdie 2014; Stroup 2012; Yanacopulos 2005), leaving open the question of whether hierarchies must inevitably arise whenever NGOs collaborate toward a common goal. Close study of the WSF provides an opportunity to investigate much smaller organizations, well below the reporting thresholds for most countries, and those that are of­ten difficult to study via traditional meth­ ods and thus to examine multiscalar participation in networks. The new theory of transcalar advocacy presented in this volume leads us to expect that a greater diversity of types and sizes of organizations are becoming active and important within the networks that form among NGOs. The research presented in this chapter makes several additional contributions that confirm and reinforce this theory. It finds that networks are likely to have geographic biases (i.e., being more local or regional than truly global). While the organizations in key network positions were not always north­ern NGOs, key organiza-

Network Structures and the World Social Forum / 63

tions were, on average, larger and better resourced organizations, although not always the richest organizations. Lastly, consistent with the argument of the edited volume, networks are not essential characteristics of NGO advocacy but reflect strategic choices. Not all organizations belonged to networks, and most organizations had relatively few network ties. Some organizations emerged as more important within networks than others, but these were not always the largest or the north­ern organizations. This chapter also demonstrates that web crawler methods are useful to study a wider range of organizations than traditionally captured within large international datasets, as long as it is possible to identify an active website for an organization. The tools available to research network links between NGOs have advanced remarkably since Keck and Sikkink’s 1998 book, Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Web crawlers, software written to track connections online between websites based on the identification of internet links (URLs, or web addresses), can quickly and reliably capture links from one web page to another. These digital links can provide information about whether one NGO identifies another as a partner (but is not recognized in return) or whether the identification is mutual, and how distant organizations (both geographically and issue focus) can be linked in sprawling networks. Web crawlers have limitations, however, particularly beyond organizations in Organisation for Economic Co-­Ooperation and Development (OECD) countries and in cases when organizations do not have the resources to develop and maintain their own websites. These organizations of­ten use Facebook or blogspots as stand-­ins, which web crawlers omit because of the false positives from the links built into these platforms. Finally, despite debate on the future of the WSF (FSM Final Program 2016, 41; McCallum and Stroup 2016), and its ambiguous status as an organization, it has value as a platform for smaller organizations, providing po­liti­cal space and leveling resource disparities for organizations to participate in global affairs when they would likely otherwise be crowded out. While these organizations are involved in transcalar advocacy on social justice, sustainable development, peace, and human rights issues, they are predominantly active in local and national forums. Without the WSF they would be unable to access the international level and the po­liti­cal forums on which international relations scholars’ expectations of NGO behavior and influence are premised. NETWORKS IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THEORY

Since the pioneering work of Keck and Sikkink in 1998, studies of NGOs have taken the network as NGOs’ dominant organizational form and primary source of po­liti­cal power and influence (Ward et al. 2011, 248). Theoretical accounts

64 / Elizabeth A. Bloodgood

of network formation have generally been functional, however, focusing on the members’ interest in using networks between organizations working on the same issue toward the same goals with common principles to share resources and information and to magnify their po­liti­cal pressure on governments or corporations (Keck and Sikkink 1998; Ohanyan 2009; DeMars 2005). Networks were seen as a means to subvert obstacles of­ten stemming from state opposition (Brysk 1992; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Risse, Ropp and Sikkink 1999) or to coordinate joint efforts (Bob 2005; Ohanyan 2009). Research has evolved to examine the unintended effects of networking among NGOs, in­clud­ing the creation of power disparities (Hertel 2006) and agenda control over issue emergence (Carpenter 2007b) as well as the new sources of power in networks from brokerage positions (Murdie and Davis 2012) and the influence of networks on policy (Wong 2012; Stroup 2012; Yanacopoulos 2005; Ohanyan 2009; ­DeMars 2005). As contributors to this volume argue, a greater variety of organizations, from more diverse geographic and economic backgrounds, are building networks nationally and internationally to influence transnational issues. However, there is little research on the factors that drive NGOs to join networks or the characteristics that determine their position within networks. Katz and Anheier (2005) find that networks among INGOs in the Union of International Association’s Yearbook of International Organizations tend to be sparse, geographically concentrated (North America and Europe), and overlapping (perhaps replicating) existing sources of po­liti­cal power (Lon­don; New York; Wash­ing­ton, DC; and Brussels). This suggests that geographic location is an important factor to understand the ability of NGOs to network. Observers have noted in practice the importance of geography in who actually participates in different WSF ­meetings. On average, between 60 percent and 75 percent of the participants in a particular WSF (or national social forum meetings) are from close by (Smith et al. 2011, 31; Reese et al. 2012, 65). The importance of geographic proximity in networking is likely tied to both the issue interests of organizations and the relatively greater expense of building and maintaining international networks. Issue area and resources are expected to shape NGO networking behavior. Amanda Murdie and David Davis (2012) find that hybrid organizations, those working in more than one issue, are particularly likely to serve as important connections within networks. Helen Yanacopolous (2005, 97–98) argues that coalitions, a particularly stable and well-­institutionalized form of network, are a strategy NGOs use to reduce uncertainty in their environments and obtain necessary resources for their survival. More network links could thus be expected to and from better-­resourced organizations, both as cause and effect. Organizations concerned about their access to resources would seek out connections

Network Structures and the World Social Forum / 65

with organizations enjoying more resources, and consequently better-­off organizations are likely to have more network connections because this is, in part, how they survived and maintained (or grew) their resources. Thus, the size and resources of an organization should also affect its networking behavior. In a departure from previous research, this volume leads to the expectation that not all organizations will network, and that small as well as larger organizations engage in strategic networking behavior. There are geographic biases, however, to NGO networks, which tend to concentrate regionally. Nevertheless, some organizations gain power from their positions in networks, particularly as bridges between other organizations, positions that might not require having the greatest amount of resources to obtain. DATA FROM THE MONTREAL WSF 2016

A number of types of individuals and organizations participated in the WSF in Montreal in 2016, in­clud­ing journalists, scholars, artists, and individuals. The analy­sis in this chapter is limited to the organized groups registered for the WSF in Montreal, with entries as organizations under the “groups” category on the website (https://fsm2016.org). Although groups choose where and how to categorize and register themselves, the nature of the WSF and its own participation rules ensure that the resulting list of organizations is consistent with standard definitions of NGOs (see, for example, Martens 2002). Party representatives and military organizations cannot participate, while government decision-­makers can only participate in their in­di­vidual (and not official) capacities (https://fsm2016.org). In addition, registrants are asked about their organization’s physical address, leadership, and for the name and contact information of a representative, ensuring at least some minimal organizational structure. The organizations registered at the WSF in Montreal thus meet established definitions as NGOs. Data for this chapter come from the information provided by organizations when they registered. Beginning in June 2016, the name, website, physical address, coordinator, director or head official, and information on resources and issue area were collected for all registered organizations. This information was collected from the publicly available WSF website, which was captured using the program HTTracker. The discussion forum on the WSF website, where registered organizations could connect and exchange information, events, and comments, was also captured using the program HTTracker. Information on the links made between participants and organizations was captured on June 15, July 15, August 15, and Janu­ary 15 to examine the development of networks at regular intervals in the lead-­up to the WSF meeting, and then to capture any

66 / Elizabeth A. Bloodgood

subsequent activity during and after the August meeting. Participants’ links to organizations (as indicated by their number of followers) as of Janu­ary 15 (well after the WSF concluded), as well as the websites of organizations that had registered as of August 1, were used to compile network data for the registered organizations. Network behavior on the WSF website (measured in terms of numbers of participants who commented on or followed an organization’s page) provides a means to examine networking among organizations too small or too poor to be able to build a website and connect digitally. IssueCrawler was used for more sophisticated analy­sis of the web links among the organizations registered for the Montreal WSF. An interactor crawl of depth 3 was performed for links between organizations registered for the WSF (using the web addresses they provided), examining the first web address they provided and up to two more nested pages per website. The raw data is available from IssueCrawler here: www.issuecrawler.net. To assess the quality of the data collected, this study conducted several analyses. A difference of means test for the average size of the networks found in the IssueCrawler analy­sis compared with the discussion forums on the WSF website reveals there is a statistically significant difference (t = 3.766, p = 0.0002). Unsurprisingly, organizations networking within the broader internet have on average more network links (measured in terms of connections from other organizations to their organization) than do organizations within the temporally and spatially constrained WSF website. Age, the number of languages an organization uses, and its issue interests are not significantly associated with whether an organization has an independent website (versus no website, a Facebook page, or a blogspot page), however. Only size (number of staff) is very weakly associated with whether the organization has a website and is networked more broadly on the internet (t  = -­1.74). This suggests that IssueCrawler captures some but not all of the networking behavior of organizations, even small ones, so long as they have an active website. There is, however, a very different scale to the networks online versus within the WSF (an average of forty-­five as compared to ten links, with dramatically different standard deviations of 313 links compared to five). The medians of these measures of networking are much closer, however, at nine for IssueCrawler in-­links and four for followers in the WSF digital forum. METHODS

Given the finding of significant differences between the nature of organizations and networking within the WSF platform and the internet, the analy­sis that follows tests all hypotheses, to the extent possible, against WSF organizations’

Network Structures and the World Social Forum / 67

networks as measured by IssueCrawler and their participation in WSF discussion forums. Four hypotheses in particular are examined based on the theory of transcalar advocacy. First, I expect to see clear regional (geographic) preferences in networking behavior, as like organizations seek to partner with one another. Second and third, I expect the age and size of an organization to be positively correlated with the number of network connections, as networks take time and money to build. I do not expect all organizations to build networks, however, as this is a strategic choice and not a necessity for transcalar advocacy. The strategic choice to network is operationalized as whether the organization chose to explicitly connect to other organizations by posting comments or liking their WSF page or listing the web address of the organization on their webpage or not. Fourth, I expect to find that key bridging organizations within the network, linking together different parts of a network, are not the largest organizations but influential nonetheless. Because of the small size of the organizations examined, there is a considerable amount of missing data on many observations, particularly concerning resource endowment. Statistical analy­sis of the factors driving NGO networking using ordinary least square regression is thus combined with a deeper analy­ sis of the more extreme organizations to see if the outcomes of the statistical analy­sis seem to hold. NETWORKS AT THE WSF IN MONTREAL, 2016

The 2016 meeting in Montreal was the first meeting of the WSF in North America and the first time the WSF had left the global South (https://fsm2016.org). According to the WSF final report, 1,182 organizations from 125 countries participated in the events, but only 30 percent of the participants were from organizational delegations—the majority (43 percent) were curious individuals, many selecting to attend at the last minute (FSM Activity Report 2016, 5–6). This is confirmed by news coverage of the smaller than expected registrations and attendance at the WSF in Montreal, the smallest attendance since the first WSF in Porte Allegre, Brazil, in 2001 (“World Social Forum shifts into gear despite setbacks,” DW.COM; “Le Forum social mondial de Montreal s’ouvre dans la douleur,” RDI, August 8, 2016; “World Social Forum optimistic about Montreal event despite visa setbacks,” CTV, August 8, 2016; “Forum social mondial—­ Les organisateurs craignent une faible participation,” ICI Radio-­Canada, August 8. 2016). Organizers expected 80 percent of the participants to be from North America; in the end 58 percent were from North America with an additional 21 percent from Europe (FSM Final Report 2016, 7). The most popu­ lar countries of origin were Canada, the United States, France, and Morocco.

68 / Elizabeth A. Bloodgood

Most sessions were held in a combination of French, English, and Spanish, with available simultaneous or whisper translation. However, there were initial complaints from some groups that English was relatively less represented than in the past. Parts of the website, and some reports, were only available in French, for example, the interview with Sarah Sultani, July 2016. The WSF covered a vast number of topics via self-­organized sessions (“self-­managed activities”). The top issues of interest to participants were human rights and social justice, the environment, and education (FSM Final Report 2016, 8). These demographics create the possibility that there may have been variations in networks across issues as well as language and nation of origin among participants of the 2016 WSF. The networks among the organizations participating in the Montreal WSF in August 2016 were, on the whole, relatively sparse, evenly distributed, and decentralized and thus generally horizontal and symmetrical. This finding is consistent with the WSF Principles, “The World Social Forum is a plural, diversified, non-­denominational, non-­governmental and non-­partisan space which connects, through decentralized networks, the groups, and movements, engaged in concrete actions at the local or international level who aim to build another world” (World Social Forum, Charter of Principles 2001). Degree centrality measures the number of links (or ties) an organization has to other organizations in the network. Average degree centrality assesses how active and interconnected a network is, and ranges between 0 and 1 where 0 means organizations are equally (more regularly) connected and 1 means that one organization dominates all others by virtue of its connectivity (Wasserman and Faust 1994, 177). The group degree centrality for the 2016 WSF in Montreal, as of August 2016, just prior to its start, was 0.101, suggesting relatively equal numbers of connections among most organizations in the network. Thus, in most cases, one organization did not have predominance over others within the networks that formed. According to social network analy­sis of online connections (within the inter­net from website to website, outside of the WSF forums) among only the groups registered for the WSF with websites that were their own (excluding Facebook pages and blog spaces such as Word Press), 137 NGOs or one-­third of the sample had degree centrality of 0, meaning they were not connected within the networks. At the other end of the spectrum were organizations such as Amnesty International and Oxfam Quebec. These organizations played important roles in organizing the WSF and were active participants, with seven appearances and four appearances in the FSM Final Program respectively. Two common network measures can be used to assess the importance of an organization in a network in terms of its centrality in the network. Degree prestige, or outdegree centrality, is defined as the number of links going from a given node to

Network Structures and the World Social Forum / 69

others. Degree prestige thus measures the efforts an organization makes to connect to other organizations to increase the extent of its reach and its recognition as an organization active in a given area. Authority, or indegree centrality, is defined as the number of links into a given node from others and is a measure of the extent to which other NGOs wish to be seen as associated with this organization and follow its information and/or activities. In the literature this is seen as a form of deference (Stroup and Wong 2017). Amnesty International, for example, has a degree prestige value of 11, accounting for 2.8 percent of the entire network’s value, and an authority measure of 156. Oxfam Quebec has a degree prestige value of 15, accounting for 3.8 percent of the entire network’s value, and an authority value of 47. These measures suggest that some of the larger participants, such as Amnesty and Oxfam, especially those organizing panels providing funding for the Montreal meeting, were sought after by numerous smaller organizations (high numbers of links into the organization), but that the larger organizations did not actively seek to link to these smaller ones (lower numbers of links from the organization). Figure 4.1 presents a diagram of the networks between the organizations that participated in the 2016 WSF and had active websites and network connections to another WSF 2016 organization. Fifty-­two organizations had a gap between authority (indegree) and prestige (outdegree) of more than fifty links, in­clud­ing Equiterre, Amnesty International Canada, International Peace Bureau, Friedrich-­Ebert-­Stiftung, Public Service Alliance of Canada, and Platform of French NGOs for Palestine, suggesting that they are in high demand as partners. Seventy-­three organizations had more out-­links than in-­links, in­clud­ing Canadian Boat to Gaza, Attac Germany, Caritas France, Association des Scouts du Canada, Solidarity, and OpenStreetMap Montreal, suggesting they are seeking partners. Although the numbers of observations for staff are limited, and impressionistic evaluations of the size of the organization as small, medium, or large are problematic, there is some suggestion that the organizations with more in-­links than out-­links are larger (average 36 versus 12 staff members, average size 1.6 versus 1.3 on a scale of 1 to 3 with 1 small and 3 large). However, these differences are statistically insignificant. Group betweenness centralization, as assessed by the Social Network Visualizer, an open-­source network diagramming and analy­sis software (http:// socnetv.org), is a measure of the extent to which all nodes in a network are located between (or play an important role in connecting) other parts of a network. Betweenness measures the ability of one organization to serve to control contacts or the flow of information or other resources between two or more other organizations. It assumes flows along the shortest path, and other longer paths can still connect the two nodes or sets of nodes around the organiza-

70 / Elizabeth A. Bloodgood

FIGURE 4.1. World Social Forum (WSF) 2016 network diagram. Web crawl of WSF 2016 participant organizations with active websites using Issuecrawler.net by Govcomm.org Foundation, beginning crawl of depth 3 with 36 nodes. Size of node represents number of links to or from website. Arrows show in and out links. (Elizabeth Bloodgood)

tion hoping to serve as gatekeeper or intermediary (http://socnetv.org). The group betweenness centralization value for the groups registered for the WSF as of August 1, 2016, just before the event began, was 0.057 on a scale of 0 to 1, where 0 is when all nodes have exactly the same betweenness and 1 is when one node falls on the lines connecting all other nodes (Wasserman and Faust 1994, 192). This indicates a relatively even distribution of control among organizations within the WSF. Network average clustering coefficient is used to assess how close the network is, as well as the rise of cliques or tight subnetwork groups within the

Network Structures and the World Social Forum / 71

larger network (Watts and Strogatz 1998). The network average clustering coefficient for the WSF 2016 is 0.005, on a scale of 0 to 1, suggesting that there were very few subgroups or cliques, reinforcing the outcome that the network was largely open and flat. Closeness centrality is a measure of the proportion of the nodes in the network that an organization can reach in ratio to the average distance from a node to the other nodes that it can reach, which assesses how close to the middle of the network an organization is (Wasserman and Faust 1994, 201). The average closeness within the WSF 2016 network was 0.068, on a scale of 0 to 1, with limited variance, suggesting that NGOs were quite evenly placed within the network. Thus, across the basic network measures of in-­degree and out-­degree centrality, as well as betweenness and closeness, the network links formed among the organizations participating in the 2016 Montreal WSF were flat, regular (evenly distributed), and balanced. NGOS IN WSF NETWORKS

Despite the regular, flat, balanced nature of the WSF network, there is considerable variation among the organizations that participated, in terms of their size, resources, age, issue area, home countries, language, and organizational structures. Table 4.1 presents the averages for the organizations registered for the WSF in 2016 as well as the maximum and minimum values, to give a sense of the participating organizations on each of these characteristics. First, networks are not an essential characteristic of NGO advocacy, as there are a significant number of NGOs that are not networked within the WSF discussion forums or online. Of the organizations that participated in the 2016 WSF in Montreal with active websites (not Facebook pages or blogspots), seventy-­one had no in-­links and 268 had no out-­links to other organizations, or 18 percent and 35 percent of organizations respectively. Second, WSF organizers and critics worried about the effects of locating in Canada, as opposed to Brazil, Africa, or India, on participation in the WSF. This suggests a belief that geography has an important effect on networking. I hypothesized that organizations from north­ern countries (i.e., the OECD) had larger networks at the WSF 2016 Montreal. Despite the international interests of the WSF, organizations tended to have regional biases in their networking (Rohrschneider and Dalton 2002). I find that geography did have a significant effect on networking. There was more network participation (degree centrality and followers in WSF forums) by organizations from Canada versus the rest of the world, and this effect is statistically significant (t = -­4.0032, p = 0.0001 and t= -­4.8014, p = 0.0000). Difference of means tests for network activity and

Table 4.1. Descriptive statistics of World Social Forum 2016 registered organizations Variable

Description

n

Age

Number of years of operation of organization

 530

Size

Impressionist measure of small, medium, or large

 866

Staff

Number of paid staff members

 162

Branches

Number of associated organizations under the organization’s control

 871

Region

Region of country listed in registration as where organization is located

 875

English/ French

Language of information on website

 881

Justice Development Rights Education

The issues in which the organization is active

Centralization

Forum Social Mondial (FSM) donor

Mean

Minimum

Maximum

1

320

1

  3

16

1

108

4

0

200

1

  9

0.45/0.64

0

  1

 881

0.02 0.13 0.39 0.003

0

  1

Whether the organization identifies a leader or top position for accountability

 879

0.72

0

  1

Whether organization is listed as a contributor in the FSM final report

1116

0.05

0

  1

27

1.2

Network Structures and the World Social Forum / 73

placement by country of origin are only statistically significant for Canada, however, and not for the United States, France, Brazil, or Morocco (the next largest geographic locations). There is a weak, but significant, correlation between the regional location of an NGO and the size of its network, measured in terms of in-­degree and out-­degree (r = 0.15, p = 0.003 for both) and connections in the WSF forum (r = 0.09, p = 0.007). Third, larger organizations, measured in terms of numbers of staff or bud­ get, are typically expected to have larger networks. They have more resources to spend on building networks, in­clud­ing better website development, staff for developing contacts, and money for travel and shared campaigning (Yanacopoulos 2005). Yet this study finds that the relationship between the size of an organization, measured in terms of their staff size, branches, or impressionistically based on the information provided on their activities, is not as significant as expected. There is a statistically significant, but substantively small, negative association between size and closeness centrality (standardized for the size of the network) (correlation coefficient r = -­0.1056, p = 0.037) and a statistically significant but small positive association between size and in-­degree centrality (standardized for the size of the network) (r = 0.1764, p = 0.0005). Smaller organizations tend to be more centrally linked (closer to more organizations) but have fewer in-­links to them. Larger organizations also had more followers within the WSF forum (r = 0.1158, p = 0.0007). This finding only holds for the impressionistic size measure, however, and not for staff (for which there is much less data, n = 112 versus n = 316) or number of branches. Thus, to the extent that size affects networking, this relationship is much less significant or substantively important than previously believed, once smaller organizations are included. Past research leads to the hypothesis that the richest organizations in the population are not the most essential organizations for networking (Murdie and Davis 2012). While they may have more links, they are generally not the key organizations connecting parts of the network. In other words, they have low values for measures of betweenness but high values for centrality measured in terms of total numbers of in-­links or out-­links. This hypothesis is supported by both the IssueCrawler and WSF forum data. There is no correlation between staff as a measure of richness and betweenness centrality (r  = 0.0534, p = 0.5759). Interestingly, there is also no correlation between being a WSF donor (a possible measure of the relative wealth or influence of an organization) and number of staff (r = 0.0993, p= 0.2085). There is an association, however, between being a WSF donor and the number of followers an organization has in the WSF discussion forums (r = 0.1010, p = 0.0008) and between being a WSF donor and betweenness centrality (standardized for the size of the network) (r = 0.2021, p = 0.000). This suggests that WSF donor organizations are

74 / Elizabeth A. Bloodgood

not the richest organizations in the population, but they are the most invested or engaged. WSF donor organizations are listed on the WSF 2016 Montreal website and in their final report as contributors, but without dollar amounts. Being a donor organization is statistically significantly and substantively positively associated with betweenness centrality (r = 0.2005, p = 0.0001) and indegree centrality (r = 0.2558, p = 0.0000). Fourth, older organizations are expected to have larger networks, both as a function of the time needed to network and because networks are a successful strategy for some NGOs and thus larger networks help NGOs to live longer (Yanacopolous 2005). There is evidence that the age of an organization is statistically significantly and positively correlated with in-­degree and out-­degree (r = 0.1321, p = 0.0186; 0.1706, p = 0.0023), but not with other network measures. This suggests that there may be residual power for North–North networks within the WSF as well as international politics more generally. Older organizations, which tend to be located in the North, have larger networks than newer, rising south­ern NGOs and South–South networks. While this correlation analy­sis is suggestive, multivariate regression analy­ sis better assesses the relative contribution of each factor while controlling for the others. These results are presented in table 4.2 with standardized measures of in-­degree and out-­degree (standardized in-­degree and out-­degree are the percentage of all links that go in or out of an organization as opposed to the number of links, to control for the size of the population of organizations networking and variations in the density of networks) from IssueCrawler (internet links) as well as the number of followers in the WSF discussion forums. The regression analy­sis generally confirms the bivariate results, revealing a statistically significant relationship between geography (the region of the NGO’s headquarters) and networking behavior at the 2016 Montreal WSF, as well as weaker (in terms of substantive impact) or less consistent effects (in terms of variable statistical significance) for the effects of resources (measured as size as well as having an updated website) on network behaviors. Geography was very important in the constitution of this particular WSF, and thus the networks that formed, because it was held in the global North for the first time and was more expensive for many organizations to attend. Issue area and language have significant effects on networking (as either measured by IssueCrawler results or followers within the WSF group forum) in selected instances—NGOs in justice and rights have significantly larger networks than those in other issues. A higher degree of centralization (having a clear leader for accountability) decreases networking (measured in terms of IssueCrawler results and within the WSF group forum), which suggests more organizational development and the potential for leadership within organizations to drive networking as a strategic activity. Age,

Table 4.2. Multivariate regression analysis

Outdegree, % Standardized

Indegree, % Standardized

Forum ­Social ­Mondial ­Discussion Group Network

Age

−0.0003 (0.002)

0.003 (0.002)

0.004 (0.007)

Size

−0.181* (0.11)

0.156** (0.08)

0.244 (0.31)

0.024 (0.03)

0.164* (0.09)

0.084 (0.12)

0.781* (0.46)

Geographic region

0.109** (0.04)

English

−0.154 (0.16)

French

0.138 (0.19)

0.468*** (0.14)

0.711 (0.46)

Website updated?

0.071 (0.30)

0.394* (0.22)

1.051* (0.62)

Justice

0.282 (0.60)

0.885** (0.45)

1.445 (1.64)

Development

0.132 (0.26)

Rights

0.241 (0.15)

−0.059 (0.20) 0.231** (0.11) −0.635 (0.69)

0.070 (0.68) 1.196*** (0.42)

Education

−0.880 (0.93)

Centralization

−0.300* (0.16)

0.028 (0.12)

−1.72*** (0.44)

World Social Forum donor

0.543* (0.30)

0.816*** (0.22)

1.25 (0.99)

N

314

314

R2

0.08

0.17

3.764 (3.26)

519 0.10

NOTE: Standard error in parentheses. * significant at the 90% level, ** 95%, and *** 99%.

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however, does not have a statistically significant effect on networking in any of the models, which suggests that newer organizations use networks as strategically and effectively as older organizations. Two other interesting findings emerge in the analy­sis. First, members of the organizational committees’ organizations, in­clud­ing Fonds de Solidarité FTQ, Confederation des syndicats nationaux (CSN), Oxfam Quebec, and Attac, played key roles in making the WSF in Montreal work, as did contributors (WSF donors). They have statistically significantly more links online but not more followers within the WSF discussion forum, as can be seen in table 4.2. Second, the WSF may serve to teach organizations how to network more effectively. The more that organizations participated in the WSF group forum, the more likely they were to have functioning websites. This outcome might be the result of active information exchange within the forums on how to improve their website or from inquiries from other organizations providing an incentive, and even potential resources, for an organization to improve its website. This finding may suggest that the WSF serves as a platform to help organizations jump from a smaller arena to a larger one and from more local activities to advocacy with a greater geographic reach. The direction of the effect may run the other way, however, as more tech-­savvy organizations may also be those more likely and able to participate on the WSF platform. Anecdotally, the contributions were low tech, and the platform was intentionally very easy to use, but the statistical analy­sis (which only includes the Janu­ary 2015 data) cannot determine the direction of the effect. ORGANIZATIONAL SNAPSHOTS

The last section of this chapter examines in more detail organizations that occupy particularly privileged positions within the WSF networks compared with those that are least networked, to check for key characteristics missed by the larger quantitative analy­sis and to confirm the role of age, geographic location, and technological sophistication (a variant of resources) in explaining organizations’ networking behavior. In addition, this is an opportunity to examine the number and nature of sessions at the WSF they participated in, as this is another means of assessing networking among groups (Byrd and Jasny 2010). In the IssueCrawler analy­sis of WSF organizations, the organization with the highest in-­degree and out-­degree counts as well as the minimum betweenness and closeness centrality was the CSN (csn.qc.ca). This suggests that the CSN might have exceptional abilities to exert influence on other organizations at the WSF. Centrality increases its ability to reach many organizations and be-

Network Structures and the World Social Forum / 77

tweenness provides the means to serve as a gatekeeper between core parts of the network. The CSN, located in Montreal, was a sponsor for the 2016 WSF in Montreal. CSN was created in 1921 and has more than two thousand organizational members (unions/syndicats) as well as 325,000 workers within its eight federations and thirty central committees (www.csn.qc.ca). It is thus a large, well-­financed organization committed to organizing unions, with a centralized structure and avid social media presence. CSN is thus well positioned within Quebec to play an important organizing role within the WSF and has the resources, institutional background, and structure to take a leading role in any network formation. At least five different organizations associated with CSN registered for the WSF and were involved in the discussion forums, with relatively large numbers of participants (six on average). These organizations were named as participants in thirteen of the 1,059 self-­organized activities in the program. The smallest networks among the organizations registered for the WSF were those of the organizations that did not have websites or had only Facebook pages or blogspots that cannot be used in IssueCrawler. Of the 884 organizations registered for the WSF as of August 1 (just prior to its start), more than five hundred organizations fell into this category. Despite their lack of access and mobility in the broader internet, some of these organizations did have a relatively large following within WSF forums (on average 9 followers, with a range between 0 and 22 and a standard deviation of 5). Organizations such as the Agency for Integrated Development in Congo (ADIC) provided full information on their leadership and organization on the WSF website, had eleven followers in the WSF group forums and a relatively developed profile on Facebook, but were not named participants in any of the self-­organized activities or sessions in the WSF program. The smallest networks in the World Social Forum discussion pages are the USAF, an organization from Italy without a website and only one follower, and Forum Canario Saharaui, with no participants on the WSF discussion forum but a Facebook page (with 297 likes and 279 followers (www.facebook.com). No additional information was found on the WSF website or in Google searches for “USAF,” and yet the organization organized and sponsored a self-­organized ­activity during the WSF on “AFRICA haute et forte sans guerre, sans separatisms et sans terrorisme” (FSM Final Program 2016, 38). This is a reminder that networking is not everything in terms of influence on events on the ground. The Facebook page for Forum Canario Saharaui contained posts largely in Spanish, with some French and Arabic, concerning the reception of Moroccan immigrants in Spain. Limited information was available, beyond a link to a blogspot website and a Twitter handle. The English text states that the organization is an

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international relations organization, but a more detailed Spanish description expressed a more narrow concern with the return of people from West­ern Sahara to Morocco (www.facebook.com). Another small organization, with only one participant on the WSF forum, was the Urban Social Forum (USF) Semarang Extension Volunteer Group. Digital evidence for this organization consists of a Facebook page and website for an event, the 4th USF, which was held in Semarang, Indonesia, in 2016, a mirror of the WSF with the banner “another city is possible” (https://urbansocialforum.or.id). A Google search showed a website for the event, with a schedule and funders list, but limited organizational information. Common to all of these organizations was their size, limited organizational development, lack of website (or very minimal website), south­ern location and focus, and a primary language other than English or French. Neither the Forum Canario Saharaui nor the USF Semarang Extension Volunteer Group can be found by name in the final WSF program. The largest network on the WSF discussion pages, as measured by the num­ ber of participants (twenty-­three), is Amis de la Terre de Québec, the Quebec branch of Friends of the Earth (http://atquebec.org) founded in 1969 (http:// atquebec.org). The group has 1,682 members in Quebec and seven full-­time staff, in­clud­ing Jean Cloutier (president), who was very active in the discussion forums of the WSF. Fifteen local, regional, and national partners are listed on the NGO’s website (http://atquebec.org), in­clud­ing L’Association pour la Taxa­ tion des Transactions financières pour l’Aide aux Citoyens (ATTAC-­Quebec), a major organizer and player at the WSF, suggesting a strong interest in, and effort toward, networking and forming alliances. Equally large (twenty-­three participants on the WSF forum) is the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (http:// ggjalliance.org), a “national alliance of United States–based grassroots organiz­ ing (GRO) groups organizing to build an agenda for power for working and poor people and communities of color” (http://ggjalliance.org) founded in 2005 in San Antonio, Texas, with five staff members (http://ggjalliance.org). The website states that “today we are over 55 member organizations strong, with dozens of key relationships with international social movements” and the organization has “connected more than 500 United States–based grassroots organizations with international counterparts.” “Drawing lessons from the World Social Forum, GGJ helped spearhead the first United States Social Forum and played a lead role in organizing the USSF2010 in Detroit” (http://ggjalliance .org). Common to both of these organizations is their relatively large size (both staff and membership) as well as their deliberate network strategy, international reach, and developed websites. Amis de la Terre de Quebec organized and sponsored one panel in the WSF (FSM Final Program 2016, 75) as did the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (FSM Final Program 2016, 45).

Network Structures and the World Social Forum / 79

CONCLUSIONS

This chapter argues that the WSF provides an excellent opportunity to examine the behavior of smaller NGOs, of­ten below the thresholds of observation by scholars and governments, and to examine patterns of networking across organization types. Among these organizations, we observe a greater diversity of networking behavior than traditionally expected in theory. The WSF has largely remained true to its principles—the networks between the organizations that participate are generally horizontal, regular, and evenly distributed. There is thus reason to believe that the WSF has the potential to provide the global analogue to a vital national civil society necessary for promoting and maintaining global democracy (Teivainen 2002). There are important variations among the networking behaviors of in­di­ vidual NGOs, as expected by the participants in this edited volume, that are worth more attention. Surprisingly, in light of the work of past scholars, issue has less effect than expected on networking. Consistent with the expectations of this volume, however, size and geography play important roles in explaining variations in the networks of organizations participating in the WSF. Donors to the WSF, while not the richest organizations, play important roles in bringing networks together, with higher betweenness and closeness scores. Resources do affect networking, but not in a straightforward linear fashion. Larger organizations have higher levels of network links into, but not necessarily links out from, their organization. Networks, even at the relatively horizontal WSF, do embody and reinforce power for larger organizations and replicate geographic patterns of influence. As Scott Byrd and Lorien Jasny note, “Dominance and power at the Forums, while not formal or instrumental, may be more subtly displayed by organizations or networks of organizations that are more centrally located in the multiorganizational field at large” (Byrd and Jasny 2011, 365). Organizations’ ability to self-­select as influential allows more room for activist NGOs from the South to shape networks and lead campaigns. Large organizations and long-­standing participants are particularly likely to have increased weight in the network and attract increased interest from other organizations, thus increasing their influence. This suggests that there might be some residual impact of north­ern NGOs’ networks, as these tend to be older and more established than south­ern NGOs. Some critics go much further, asserting that the WSF has become “co-­opted by the more elite, institutionalized, and reformist forces” (Conway 2013, 53) and thus turned into little more than an NGO trade fair (Pena and Davies 2014; Santos 2006b). This chapter also demonstrates the utility of tools of formal social network analy­sis for understanding the behavior of advocacy networks as a whole as

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well as in­di­vidual organizations’ (nodes) position within them. Keck and Sikkink’s work used ideas of networking to good effect in order to understand the relationships that develop between partners in transnational advocacy. Technological advances in software to create web crawlers and the expansion of NGOs’ web presence have made networks increasingly easy to document and examine. Formal network analy­sis adds another layer to the analy­sis, as network properties that emerge from the behavior of in­di­vidual actors may be very different from that of any of the members intended or envisioned and result in power distributions that cannot be seen by looking at the resources of the in­di­vidual actors. Eigenvector, or betweenness, captures the crucial role that entrepreneurial midsized organizations can play in connecting networks to build larger networks. In turn, these organizations gain power as gatekeepers (Carpenter 2011) between the parts of the network. This analy­sis also demonstrates that small NGOs are prevalent within networks and issue campaigns, and we need better tools to capture their activities and impacts. Internet scraping of websites improves on the capture of information on a diversity of organization types, abilities, and activities compared to existing institutional datasets, like the Union of International Associations’ Yearbook of International Organizations. But internet data collection still imposes an artificial threshold for observation—that of having a functional website. This echoes one of the larger messages of this edited volume. Although geographic location and scale do not predetermine advocacy organizations’ ability to influence global politics, their ability to obtain visibility from at least the correct targets and partners does.

5 POWER SHIFTS, PARADIGM SHIFTS, AND TRANSNATIONAL ADVOCACY ECOSYSTEMS JACKIE SMITH

W

hen Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink published Activists beyond Borders in the late 1990s, their primary audience was international relations (IR) scholars based in the global North. The discipline’s focus on states and interstate politics had prevented serious consideration of the variety of forces out­ side the interests of leading states that shape global politics. Thus, Keck and Sik­ kink’s work focused largely on how nonstate actors shape global norms, and how they mobilize networks to promote state compliance with those norms. For mainstream IR thinking of the time, the significance of any actor—and thus the rationale for any effort to bring attention to transnational advocacy networks—­ lies in its ability to shape the actions of states. States and interstate politics have thus remained at the core of much of the IR-­based research on transnational advocacy—­although this is changing, as contributions to this volume help demonstrate. Research that interrogates basic hierarchies of the world-­sys­tem and considers how these are produced and reproduced through interactions among diverse actors has not been a main focus of IR’s scholarly agenda. This Euro­centric and modernist bias in the “mainstream” scholarly literature privileges perspectives from the global North and obscures or “erases” the experience of colonialism (Connell 2007; Conway 2017). Scholars from outside the global North especially have helped point to the problem of “methodological nationalism,” whereby our theory and data reify states and portray them as what Samir Amin called “ahistoric invariables” (Escobar 1988; Santos 2006a; Connell 2007). This volume stresses that the changes in global geopolitics since the introduction of Keck and Sikkink’s boomerang model show that states and the interstate sys­tem change with time, and this affects how we think about transnational advocacy. It is also important to consider how the voices of scholars and activists from outside the West­ern modernist tradition affect our understandings and theories of contemporary global politics. In particular, as the field

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incorporates more insights from south­ern scholars and evidence from movements in the global South, there is greater appreciation for different perspectives on how power operates, both in the interstate sys­tem and within civil society. Drawing from Raewyn Connell’s analy­sis, we can work to interrogate the dualistic portrayals of global/local, homogeneity/difference, and the centralization/­ dispersion of power that permeate west­ern, modernist logics to reveal more complex realities. As we reassess our theories about how transnational advocacy networks operate, we can draw from a wealth of evidence about translocal struggles (Desai 2015) that have been growing over recent decades, much of it written by participants in those struggles (thus breaking down one more dualism, that of academic versus experiential knowledge). This provides invaluable insights into how social change advocates operate in a more fluid and dynamic global po­liti­cal order made up of a variety of po­liti­cal actors with different ­capabilities. In this chapter, I offer a perspective from sociology and social movements, which has had limited engagement from the field of IOs. I consider how epistemological, disciplinary, and methodological factors have shaped mainstream scholarly debates about transnational advocacy networks and strategies. I argue that attention to more diverse perspectives on global politics can aid our understanding of the operation of power and global advocacy networks. In what follows, I discuss how changes in the global geopo­liti­cal context affect the operation of transscalar advocacy networks and the strategies they use to effect change. I then provide an overview of some of the evidence coresearchers and I (Smith et al. 2018) have collected to help uncover changing patterns of transnational activist organizations and the networks they form with IOs and NGOs. I then draw from this work as well as from case studies of vari­ous activist campaigns to explore how activists are understanding and framing their struggles to advance social change. How have these important changes in geopolitics and organizational structures affected the discourses of advocacy? The chapter concludes with reflections on transcalar politics as reflecting today’s complex and vibrant advocacy ecosystems. CHANGING GLOBAL CONTEXTS OF TRANSCALAR ACTIVISM

The introduction to this volume points to three important changes in the global po­liti­cal arena in the intervening years since Activists beyond Borders that are likely to affect the character of organizing. These include the organization of power in the world and resulting opportunities and constraints for change advocates, expanded numbers and capacities of nonstate actors, and changes in what constitutes national versus transnational politics. I discuss each of these

Power Shifts, Paradigm Shifts, and Transnational Advocacy Ecosystems / 83

changes and how they are likely to affect movement strategies and the types of evidence that we need to assess the utility of our editors’ hypothesis that transcalar—­rather than transnational—activism is a more useful way to understand these struggles. First, there are changes in the organization of power on a world scale. For scholars this is reflected not only in the changed institutional arrangements— includ­ing a proliferation of global and especially regional interstate organizations and treaty bodies—but also in the decline of US hegemony and rise of new state competitors (Arrighi [1994] 2010; Arrighi and Silver 1999). The proliferation of IGOs to which activists might appeal may enhance the prospects of engaging the boomerang model, but the changing geopo­liti­cal climate also affects governments’ susceptibility to boomerang pressure. And as the introduction points out, the greater array of regional IGOs creates opportunities for offending states to evade pressure from, for example, US and European states brought through international lending agencies (Evans and Rodríguez-­Garavito 2018). In addition, it is important to consider how global integration has affected the character of states. Analysts point to the ways global economic integration represents the transfer of state authority to interstate institutions as well as the internal devolution of power from central governments to more localized authorities and the transfer of state power to private (corporate) entities through neoliberal privatization policies (Markoff 1999). State capacities to shape their domestic economies have thus been reduced. This is more true for states of the global South—which already had limited capacities in this regard due to colonial histories and development policies of the post–World War II era—than for those of the global North—which largely directed the policies of neoliberal globalization. At the same time, states are expected to ensure favorable conditions for the operation of capital and thus require at least the capacity to provide a compliant labor force and to secure and protect private property. Together these tendencies produced what Peter Evans calls the “lean, mean state” (Evans 1995, 1997a, 1997b). In terms of the boomerang model, the strengthening of neoliberal trade agreements meant that even states in the global North could do less to respond to activist pressures via “boomerangs” than they could in the past, since trade rules supersede human rights in terms of their legal force. Human rights and environmental protections became unfair trade barriers in the context of the World Trade Organization (WTO). This has had a chilling effect on activism. As it transformed state power, neoliberal globalization also brought substantial expansion of corporate power and the consolidation of what Leslie Sklair has called the “transnational capitalist class” (Robinson 2014; Sklair 2001). Re-

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cent decades have seen steady growth and concentration in transnational corporations, and a 2016 study showed that of the world’s one hundred largest economies, sixty-­nine are corporations and just thirty-­one are states (Global Justice Now! 2016). This is up from a near parity in 2000 with fifty-­one corporations and forty-­nine states (Anderson and Cavanaugh 2000). This financial power of corporations has been accompanied by growing corporate influence in both national and global politics. Studies of transnational activism have pointed to a growth in corporate lobbying in the United Nations since the early 1990s (Adams and Martens 2015; Bruno and Karliner 2002), and Anders ­Uhlin’s chapter in this volume also identifies new openings in IOs to corporate influence since the 1990s. Given these changes in the organization of power at the global scale, the contributors to this book expect to see adjustments to social movement strategies and targets. Now I discuss how existing evidence can offer some preliminary assessments of this claim. First, it is important to note that changes in the organization of power on a global scale include substantial growth in the organizational capacities and infrastructures for transcalar advocacy. Not only has there been tremendous growth in the numbers of transnational activist organizations, but also more local and national organizations are becoming engaged in global politics—either by engaging global issues in local and national contexts or by operating across scales via translocal networks or through direct interventions in intergovernmental arenas that have become more accessible and open to a variety of national and subnational actors (see, e.g., Desai 2015). The research my colleagues and I have conducted documents dramatic growth in the population of transnationally organized social movement organizations (TSMOs), and fig­ure 5.1 (Smith et al. 2018) summarizes the overall growth trend. These numbers represent just the tip of the iceberg of the overall population of nonstate organizations relevant to our study of transcalar advocacy. As the numbers of transnational social movement organizations (TSMOs) are expanding, my coresearchers and I also see other changes in the structure of these organizations that suggest adaptations by activists to changing global po­ liti­cal opportunities and constraints. For instance, more TSMOs are organized with particular regional identities. Whereas around 5 percent of all ­TSMOs were regional in structure in the 1970s, by 2000 this fig­ure was a third of all ­TSMOs, and by 2013 more than 37 percent of all TSMOs were organized around a regional identity (Smith et al. 2018). Alongside the growth of new organizations, possibilities for communication and coordination among organizations has increased with expanding digital communications and the proliferation of opportunities for activists to meet face to face. UN global conferences began drawing significantly larger NGO partici-

Power Shifts, Paradigm Shifts, and Transnational Advocacy Ecosystems / 85

Number of transnational social movement organizations, 1953–2013. Data on international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) whose mission is to promote social change, broadly defined. (Data from Union of International Associations, Yearbook of International Organizations, multiple years.) ( Jackie Smith)

FIGURE 5.1.

pation beginning in the early 1990s, and their rapid sequencing in the first half of the 1990s especially enabled frequent and repeated contacts among organizers working to address criti­cal global problems such as environmental degradation, human rights, and trade and development (Willetts 1996; Smith 2008; von Bülow 2010). The politics of networking—both among activists themselves and between activists and state or IGO officials and other global actors—was an essential element of global conferencing, and an important, if less recognized, outcome of the work in these spaces was the learning, po­liti­cal socialization, strategizing, and relationship-­building by activists (Moghadam 2012; Prügl and Meyer 1999; Smith and Kutz-­Flamenbaum 2017). By the 2000s, the transnational organizing capacity of social movement actors had changed enough to enable large-­scale gatherings of movement actors to convene outside interstate contexts. The most visible of such gatherings is the World Social Forum process, which itself intensified transcalar organizing by inspiring a host of local, national, and regional social forums (Santos 2006b; Smith et al. 2011; Smith et al. 2014). Having their own autonomous gathering spaces to discuss global problems and develop priorities and strategies for advancing change allowed social change advocates to develop global analyses and strategic alternatives to state-­led policy agendas and priorities (Bond 2007; ­Pianta 2001; Smith and Wiest 2012). A third important change in the global arena has made it more likely that more people would organize at diverse scales around a common set of concerns.

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To argue that recent years have seen growth of a transcalar politics oriented around transnational issues rather than boundary-­spanning identities or targets recognizes the intensified connections between global po­liti­cal decisions and local experiences of people around the world. This has enabled activists to develop shared, systemic analyses of the global causes of local grievances. Indeed, global economic integration has dramatically altered the daily lives of more of the world’s people, and this has been true for centuries, not decades. When scholars view transcalar politics as activism that addresses contentious transborder issues rather than (just) identities, it is clear that transcalar politics has always been integral to the national histories and politics of the formerly colonized states of the global South—from antislavery and colonial independence through the “IMF [International Monetary Fund] riots” of the 1970s and ’80s (Wallerstein 2014; Walton and Seddon 1994). What is novel in more recent decades is the intensified local effects of these relationships and the more widespread diffusion of their expressions in localities across the global North and South. This proliferation of activism across the North–South divide has sensitized more north­ern activists and publics to the enduring effects of colonial histories and the similarities between traditional imperialism and neoliberal practices. Exchanges among activists have revealed the patriarchy, militarism, and exploitation that drive globalized capitalism and have shown that protections of in­di­vidual rights (i.e., via boomerang strategies) is insufficient without efforts to transform these systemic logics. With the expansion of neoliberal policies and transnational corporations, activists everywhere who seek to address a “local” concern quickly learn that local targets had little power to address their needs, and that new strategies are needed to effect change at multiple levels and places. Alongside the intensification of globalization’s effects on local communities, modern communications enable more rapid and extensive flows of information around the world. Indeed, this enabled the “information politics” that was criti­ cal to activists’ leverage in the origi­nal boomerang model. But what might be changing from traditional conceptions of the boomerang effect is the content of information that is most commonly the focus of transcalar advocacy. Whereas the cases in Keck and Sikkink’s study represented largely flows of information about human rights practices in global South locales, more of the contemporary struggles we are seeing involve the exchange of information aimed at generating understandings of how particular global practices and policies affect different local communities (e.g., Nelson and Dorsey 2007). Activists of­ten point to the commonalities in at least the detrimental nature of these practices, if not in how these are actually experienced in particular locales. Developing a global analy­sis to understand the cause of activists’ grievances is a first step in articulating col-

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lective strategies for addressing these grievances, and movement spaces like the WSFs have provided activists with more opportunities to develop a systematic analy­sis that builds on past lessons from transnational advocacy. Significantly, unlike in state-­led spaces like UN conferences, activist spaces enabled critiques of globalized capitalism and the market epistemologies that pervade interstate arenas (Da Costa and McMichael 2007). ASSESSING EVIDENCE FOR TRANSCALAR ADVOCACY

In this section, I provide illustrations from some of the research that colleagues and I have done (e.g., Smith et al. 2018) that helps us assess the question of how best to talk about the forms of activism we see in the world today. Organizational Infrastructure

Based on the areas of change noted in this chapter, I explore first how changes in the architecture of global governance are related to patterns of activism by organizations that make up transcalar advocacy networks. I begin with the assumption put forward in the introduction that advocacy groups make strategic choices about the networks they create and use in their advocacy. Is there evidence that activists are adapting organizational strategies in response to global-­ level changes? Specifically, are there changes in the character of ties between TSMOs and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs)? Based on the analy­sis already presented, and in particular the decline of US influence and the rise of corporate influence in global institutions, the contributors to this volume would expect to see less boomerang-­like engagement by TSMOs with IGOs, given fewer opportunities for advancing movement aims. Smith’s work with activists in the World Social Forum process and my colleagues’ and my reading of sec­ondary accounts reveals a widespread frustration among activists with the extensiveness of corporate involvement in the United Nations and a critique of the pervasiveness of market epistemologies in global policy frameworks (Smith 2008; Smith and Wiest 2012; Smith, Plummer, and Hughes 2017). Whereas states’ human rights and environmental treaty commitments might provide some opportunities for leverage, experience shows that the institutional strength of trade agreements has allowed trade to supersede other treaty commitments. Moreover, states have proved unwilling or unable to enforce environmental and human rights laws on corporate actors. For many global advocacy groups, corporate influence, US intransigence on key global issues, and market ideology are core causes of the problems they seek to address. Therefore, it became increasingly obvious that working within IGOs could not achieve the changes they were seeking.

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TSMOs, or INGOs with missions to promote social change broadly defined, show interesting trends in their patterns of network ties (for more details on the methods, see Smith et al. 2018). More established groups were more likely to report ties to IGOs than newer groups, although the overall average number of ties grew slightly over time. Thus, while TSMOs are not all cutting themselves off from IGOs, more of the newer groups choose to not engage with IGOs. Nearly half of the groups founded after the Cold War reported no ties to IGOs, and the overall numbers of ties remain much lower than those of groups formed in earlier years. In addition to differences in how groups formed in different time periods chose to network with IGOs, we found that groups based in the global South also reported fewer average ties to IGOs than their north­ ern counterparts: 1.7 versus 2.3 average ties (for more on South–South linkages, see Appe this volume). We (Smith et al. 2018) also found important differences across issue areas. Comparing women’s and environmental TSMOs, we found that younger women’s groups were far less likely to report ties to multiple IGOs than their more established counterparts: 80 percent of groups formed prior to 1990 reported at least one tie with an IGO, while just 50 percent of groups formed in or after 1990 reported such a tie. For environmental groups, the fig­ures are smaller but in a similar direction: Just over 70 percent of older groups reported at least one tie to an IGO while just under 60 percent of newer groups did so. We also found evidence of strategic selection by TSMOs of the IGOs with which they engage. Newer environmental groups were less likely to form ties to general po­ liti­cal IGOs like the UN Economic and Social Council, but they were no different from more established groups in their ties to more operational IGOs, such as treaty monitoring bodies (see Smith et al. 2020). Although TSMO ties with IGOs are slowing or declining, we did not find declines in the numbers of ties reported to international NGOs. The overall average numbers of TSMO-­INGO ties increased slightly between 2003 and 2013, and we find similar rates of connection for older and newer groups, although more recently established groups tend to have fewer INGO ties. We had expected to find more extensive TSMO-­INGO ties in our dataset, given the importance of networking for many of these groups. However, because the Yearbook of International Organizations only reports ties to international NGOs and not to national or subnational NGOs, we are unable to fully capture the multiple scales of networking that we know are present in this arena from the many case studies and activist accounts, in­clud­ing the studies in this volume. The expansion of such ties clearly supports our contention of the growing importance of transcalar activism. Another relevant finding in our prior work is that organizations in the Year-

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Table 5.1.Transnational social movement organization ties to intergovernmental organizations by cohort, 2003 and 2013 Founded pre-1990

Founded in 1990 and later

Intergovernmental organization ties (number)

2003

2013

2003

2013

0 1–2 3–5 >5

34.9% 26.3% 24.9% 13.9%

26.7% 32.2% 23.6% 17.6%

48.1% 37.0% 10.3%  4.6%

48.0% 36.5% 10.9%  4.6%

Mean (s.d.) N Maximum ties

2.6 (3.4) 779  25

3.0 (4.0) 653  44

1.2 (2.0) 370  12

1.3 (2.1) 608  17

Note: Counts based on self-reported counts of ties to any UN agency or other regional or global intergovernmental organization (IGO), including treaty-monitoring bodies. Percentages are based on cases with any reported ties to IGOs or international nongovernmental organizations. Data from the Yearbook of International Associations.

book were less likely to report country memberships in their entries in more ­recent years. Whereas less than 10 percent failed to report country memberships in 1973, by 2003 one-­quarter, and by 2013 one-­third of all TSMOs did not report their memberships in terms of national identities. Note too that these growing percentages represent growing absolute numbers of TSMOs for each time point. This further supports our claims about the rise of transcalar politics centered on global issues. Advocacy groups appear less oriented around national identities and instead reflect the global nature of the issues they address. We believe these fig­ures reflect different organizational strategies that move away from the earlier organizational form of having national sections toward a structure consisting of coalitions of organizations organized around particular issues, constituencies, or at local or other scales. Such a change may simply reflect a functional shift, that is, that new communications technologies enable more decentralized organizational structures or that interorganizational competition has led to more diverse organizational forms. But it may also reflect changing strategies and organizational needs that discourage organizing around national identities and po­liti­cal structures and encourage more multiscalar organizing and less formal networking among diverse sets of actors in the changed po­liti­ cal environment in which TSMOs operate. To summarize, as expected, there were changes in the patterns of TSMO-­ IGO ties that corresponded to the changing po­liti­cal environment. The ties we observe between TSMOs and IGOs are becoming more diffuse over time as

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the newer groups that are forming are opting for different networking strategies than those of earlier cohorts. While not abandoning IGO ties altogether, it seems that TSMOs are engaging in more limited and perhaps strategic ways with IGOs, and this may be due to conscious decisions about the likelihood that working with IGOs can achieve the changes they seek. To the extent that organizing around a boomerang strategy requires regular ties with one or more IGOs, and given that more recent years have seen constraints in access to IGOs by more radical advocacy groups (see Uhlin’s chapter, this volume), this finding suggests that global advocacy groups are adapting their strategies and expanding their “toolbox.” This evidence supports the argument that there is enhanced organizational capacity for transcalar advocacy work, and that the organization of actors may be shifting away from nationally oriented identities and interstate institutions. In this emerging transcalar advocacy, people are more likely to organize around issues that transcend state boundaries rather than the national identities defined by the interstate polity. Discursive Shifts

What does it mean for us to consider transcalar politics as emphasizing the “issues under contention rather than the national identities”? What I think we are doing with this project is encouraging scholars to think beyond the conceptual prisons of the nation-­state and to consider that politics and societies are organized in ways that may not conform to our conceptual models (Smith and Kutz-­Flamenbaum 2010). If the state is seen as an “imagined community” reinforced through particular institutions and practices (Anderson 1991), and if we organize our scholarship around state-­defined containers, we miss important activities in which people engage that do not conform to these top-­down models and assumptions. For many activists, the primary concern is not over jurisdictional boundaries but over basic needs and survival. To the extent that state frameworks are useful for affecting these experiences, our theories will align with reality. But it is clear that people organizing to address concerns that have long been and are increasingly affected by translocal forces have been forming alliances and strategies that transgress established boundaries and institutionalized routines. Scholars need to adjust the lens through which they observe these realities to be able to see important realities that lie outside state-­centered and Eurocentric/modernist frames. In the analyses we (Smith et al. 2018) have done of changes in the transnational social movement sector, we have argued that there is evidence that more global advocacy work is taking place outside of the bounds of the interstate system. Some of the data we have presented—notably the changing patterns of ties to intergovernmental organizations—suggest that advocacy groups

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are looking to address their concerns outside of the formal structures of global politics. Indeed, the slogan of the World Social Forum, “another world is possible,” suggests that activists see a need to be more conscious agents in building and advancing alternatives to the global capitalist sys­tem that has left growing numbers of people struggling for access to the basic means of survival. This argument is reinforced by much of the literature written by participants in the WSF process and by observers reporting on the hundreds of workshops and campaigns that have engaged with and emerged through it (see, e.g., Fisher and Ponniah 2003; Bello 2003; Santos 2006b). There is strong evidence supporting the idea that the WSF process contributed directly to innovative developments in the global politics of climate change. In the mid-­1990s more radical activist formations—many connected with networks that were active in the WSFs—split off from the more reformist groups working within the formal Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) to press for a more anticapitalist approach to addressing the problem of climate change (Bond 2012; Goodman and Salleh 2013; Reitan and Gibson 2012). These activists pointed to the incompatibility between capitalism’s need for perpetual growth and the necessity for massive cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. This radical tendency in the movement contributed to Bolivia’s hosting the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba in April 2010. The Cochabamba conference was an important, hybrid form of global politics involving both states and movement a­ ctors in negotiations about how to address the climate crisis. Its final declaration named the global capitalist sys­tem as the cause of the global climate crisis and called on people’s movements—not states—to take the lead in advancing concrete actions for changes such as addressing ecological debt and for protecting the rights of nature. It transcended the sphere of interstate politics and supported the diffusion of transformative discourses and strategies that challenge basic power relations of the global interstate, capitalist order (Smith 2014). Politics in such spaces do not conform to the state-­oriented assumptions of the traditional boomerang model. Instead, they highlight the importance of centering the experiences and needs of groups most harmed by capitalist globalization and seeking leadership from those groups (Salleh 2016; Conway 2013; Bloodgood this volume). Thus, to the extent that these spaces are where movements are working to advance solutions to the deepening global crises that states have done little to address, research that continues to center interstate politics and formal po­liti­cal spaces overlooks evidence of emerging ideas and practices that may be transforming global social relations. There is growing evidence that the autonomous spaces in which transcalar advocacy is taking place are enabling the emergence of what Peter Evans and

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César Rodríguez-­Garavito refer to as new “epistemological resources” within transcalar advocacy networks (Evans and Rodríguez-­Garavito 2018, 37). By bringing diverse people from multiple social locations together in an intentional, interactive, and ongoing way, these networks have fueled the radicalization of activist discourses around more explicit critiques of globalized capitalism and notions of agency. For instance, Jackie Smith and Jacqueline Patterson (2018) show how frontline communities articulated identities as the “new climate protagonists” in the face of growing climate threats and state paralysis, and Kiyoteru Tsutsui (2018) argues that global human rights movements encouraged local groups to understand their capacities as movement actors in more transformative and global ways. We also see a transfer of concepts and ideas from subaltern groups to more privileged activists and more centralized spaces of power. Perhaps most visible are ideas such as “buen vivir” or the idea that society should be organized to promote basic well-­being and harmony with the natural world over perpetual economic growth. Other terms that have origins in subaltern populations—indigenous peoples and peasants—but have found their way to prominence in global advocacy and policy arenas are notions such as rights for Mother Earth and food sovereignty (Edelman and James 2011; McKeon 2015; McMichael 2008; Smith 2014). In addition to the emergence of new global spaces, transcalar advocacy networks are also fueling the proliferation of local spaces in which transcalar advocacy takes place. Through processes such as the World Social Forum’s encouragement of a series of local and regional social forums that linked global conversations and networks across time and space, activists are engaged in the work of “translation” of global analyses and strategies into the local contexts where people actually live (Carroll 2016; Merry 2006b; Santos 2005). In their analy­sis of the global human rights movement, for instance, Tsutsui and Smith see the emergence of a “sandwich effect” whereby advocates use both the traditional boomerang to bring pressure on states from above while simultaneously working to mobilize local constituencies to press local governments and institutions to conform to global human rights norms (Tsutsui and Smith 2018). This reflects the reality that international laws and norms must ultimately be enforced at local levels, and that states are not necessarily the agents working to implement international law—at least in the area of human rights. Paul Nel­ son and Ellen Dorsey (2007) point to another way activists have adapted their strategies for promoting economic, social, and cultural rights by supporting the sovereignty claims of south­ern governments against interventions by corporations and international trade and financial regimes. The logic is similar in that it reinforces the authority (and responsibility) of national and local authori-

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ties for protecting what are of­ten known as “positive rights.” As activist networks have gained greater experience in global institutions, they have elaborated strategies to point to institutional contradictions and to ensure that the norms articulated in global conventions are elaborated and institutionalized at the scales relevant to actual people (Nelson and Dorsey 2007; Smith 2008). In this way, transcalar networks are criti­cal participants in the global norm diffusion process, reinforcing people-­centered values over global norms that prioritize economic growth and trade. TRANSCALAR POLITICS AND PO­L ITI­C AL ECOSYSTEMS

Activists beyond Borders began an important effort to disrupt prevailing state-­ centric theories of how the world works. The work of interrogating basic assumptions about the organization of power in the global politics continues via transdisciplinary dialogues among scholars and activists from both the global North and South, helping move us “beyond the boomerang” toward greater clarity about the multiple ways movements work for social transformation. In their recent edited collection, Transnational Advocacy Networks: Twenty Years of Evolving Theory and Practice, Evans and Rodríguez-­Garavito advance the notion of “ecosystem” to describe how we might best conceptualize the changing strategies and logics of transnational advocacy networks. They argue that the concept of an ecosys­tem “encourages us to look at differentiation within the field of transnational advocacy and at the interconnections among its different elements. . . . As in any ecosystem, the field’s robustness will depend on the collaboration and complementarity among different types of issues, frames, organizational structures, actors, and strategies” (Evans and Rodríguez-­Garavito 2018, 11). Moreover, the concept of ecosystem, they argue, helps situate in­di­ vidual organizations, campaigns, and issues into their larger, evolving, contexts where a complex array of actors are engaged in ongoing and long-­term struggles to both define and defend claims and to constitute collective actors capable of advancing those claims. As Rodríguez-­Garavito states: The field of human rights should be understood as an ecosystem, more than as an institutional architecture or a unified movement. . . . As with every ecosystem, the emphasis should be on the highly diverse contributions of its mem­bers, and the relationships and connections among them.  .  .  . We are headed toward an ecosys­tem of human rights: a field with actors, strategies and frameworks that are much more varied, and, perhaps much more efficacious and egalitarian than those that have characterised the theory and prac-

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tice of human rights until now. Reflexive reconstruction is the response of those who recognise value in the critiques, but believe that they do not represent the end of an ideal and the struggle for human rights, but rather the need for new forms of thinking about and practicing them. (Rodríguez-­Garavito 2014, 4­ 0–42)

The emphasis here is on how activists learn from ongoing interactions and contention within and across advocacy networks. Reflexivity is a practice that is common in these networks and that contributes to the learning and strategic adaptation that has generated new possibilities and challenges for contemporary transcalar activism. A key lesson we might take from our intervention and from this larger volume is the need for scholars to transcend—just as the activists we study have done—conventional boundaries that structure our thinking and practice. This chapter emphasized the need to situate the interstate sys­tem within its world-­his­tori­cal context and to view advocacy as an evolving set of exchanges between elites and challengers. The arena of politics is being altered through this ongoing contention. A growing body of scholarship from diverse fields, in­clud­ ing that by researchers from outside the global metropoles, is especially useful in helping us accomplish this task. By breaking down our disciplinary and conceptual prisons we can further this important intellectual and po­liti­cal project of rethinking global politics and thereby deepening our understandings of changing transcalar advocacy networks.

PART II

CHANGING AGENCY AND ADVOCATES

6 DOWNSCALING CONTESTATION IN GLOBAL GMO GOVERNANCE Challenging Transnational Actors at the Subnational Level in Mexico SHANA M. STAROBIN

T

he multinational agribiotech firm Monsanto incited fervent opposition in Mexico when the company solicited permits in 2012 for the large-­scale planting of genetically modified (GM) soy on 253,500 hectares of land, located near ejido land, which is collectively owned and cultivated by campesinos (peasants) involved in apicultura (beekeeping) and milpa (traditional Maya subsistence agriculture). Milpa involves planting a diverse array of crops (in­clud­ing corn, squash, beans, and chiles) for household consumption in a dedicated area of communal land, similar to other forms of shifting cultivation. The opposition to Monsanto’s GM crop was led by a unique coalition of campesinos, beekeepers, peasant social movements, and their allies, in­clud­ing Greenpeace Mexico. The coalition contended that the introduction of GM soy threatened to “contaminate” the region’s high-­value honey exports to the European Union (EU) and undermine a key source of livelihood for thousands of families. Prevailing against the odds, the Maya beekeepers triumphed—both in Mexico’s highest courts and the court of pub­lic opinion. How did they succeed? Conventional wisdom guides us to examine the contributions of transnational advocacy networks (TANs) and key roles transnational NGOs like Greenpeace played in raising the international profile of the campaign and who captured and disseminated aerial photos of Mayas protesting in a human chain spelling “Ma’ OGM” (“No GMOs”), atop the ancient remnants of Chichén Itzá. Apart from this dramatic protest strategy, I argue that success hinged on other crucial variables, in­clud­ing the agency and effectiveness of a largely domestic coalition of stakeholders—beekeepers, indigenous peasant social movements, and Mexican NGOs—and the unique characteristics of the commodities (soy and honey) themselves (Starobin 2018).

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Maya beekeepers and their coalition of allies were not ideologues campaigning against particular approaches to agrarian change, like biotechnology, for moral or po­liti­cal ends guided by the agenda of transnational actors. Rather, the coalition was grounded in the authentic experiences and interests of indigenous producer communities and relied on their perspectives of agrarian change to bring nuance to their pursuit of policies to preserve the Yucatán (if not the rest of Mexico) as a GMO-­free zone. In this chapter, I discuss the empirical case of “beekeepers versus biotech.” This case draws on insights garnered from several waves of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in subsistence farming communities in Mexico in 2011 and 2012. Data gathered through fieldwork were supplemented with sec­ondary data, in­clud­ing news, legal, and policy documents, technical reports, civil society and international NGO reports, his­tori­cal documents, government documents, and official media reports. Iterative analy­sis and triangulation of research findings were used to analyze both primary and sec­ondary data. This case illuminates alternative social mechanisms beyond the boomerang for engaging with transnational actors at multiple scales and levels of governance (Starobin 2018). Employing a diverse repertoire of strategies to overcome power imbalances, beekeepers and their allies “downscaled” the forums for GMO contestation in response to externally driven, top-­down transnational market and regulatory pressures, ultimately building the requisite grassroots power to reshape biotech governance in Mexico (Starobin 2018, 2016). ALTERNATIVE MECHANISMS TO THE BOOMERANG: DOWNSCALING CONTESTATION

As discussed through­out this volume, one way seemingly localized social and environmental problems, and the communities affected by them, have garnered attention and galvanized support has been through TANs (Keck and Sikkink 1998). Transnational nonstate actors can leverage local problems to elicit global responses that, in turn, pressure transnational corporations to behave better in the jurisdictions where they operate and promote changes in international policy. Among their illustrative cases, Keck and Sikkink (1998) show how TANs were instrumental in launching a widespread and visible boycott of Nestle corporation’s products, after evidence emerged of the damages wrought by ­Nestle’s advertising of human milk alternatives to mothers in developing countries. Higher infant mortality rates were found among the young children of women who substituted the traditional practice of breastfeeding with infant formula (linked to malnutrition and contaminated waterborne illnesses). This boycott, in turn, pressured international institutions like the World Health Organiza­tion

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(WHO) to take action to regulate Nestle’s behavior (through the eventual passage of the 1981 WHO Code of Marketing for Breast-­Milk Substitutes). However, in the cases examined by Keck and Sikkink (1998), and unlike those central to this chapter, the policy problems emerged within domestic jurisdictions in relation to transnational markets and actors, like multinational corporations, but the venues for challenging those targets were global, not domestic. Moreover, the dominant actors leading the charge were generally not those directly affected by corporate transgressions but networks of international NGOs and experts, challenging corporate and state power from without (the “boomerang effect”). These conventional explanations offer some value in understanding the case of honey in Mexico, to the extent that highly organized interest groups achieved collective action and leveraged policy windows and focusing events to their advantage, like the salient regulatory event of an EU “honey crisis.” The boomerang theory remains largely insufficient for explaining unexpected instances where regulatory change and innovation actually favor the position and interests of ostensibly less powerful actors, like small farmers linked explicitly or indirectly to global markets. The vagaries of global markets and transnational governance efforts of­ten constrain rather than enhance producer access to markets, leaving small-­scale producers in precarious situations, seemingly with few alternatives. Starobin (2021) provides further discussion of alternative institutions that seek to address livelihood insecurity and vulnerability experienced by uncertified smallholders engaged in the production of commodities, like coffee, for volatile global markets. As Joonkoo Lee, Gary Gereffi, and Janet Beauvaisc (2009, 12327) note, stringent private standards in the agrifood sector, coupled with multiple competing governance structures, “shape the strategic options available to smallholders, who confront three basic choices: upgrading, downgrading, or exit.” Yet, as shown in the case of Mexican beekeepers and their allies and elaborated here, producers possess varying degrees of capacity for voice and agency (Starobin 2018; Hirschman 1970). In the absence of TANs intervening and operating with the interests of marginalized stakeholders in mind, local actors have had to devise other strategies to push forward their grievances, promote policy change, and innovate new institutions for tackling intractable problems at multiple scales. Paradoxically, even when confronted with global challenges, the solutions may not be global at all, but rather quite local in nature. In the case of honey in Mexico, I argue that we see small-­scale producers and their allies “downscaling” in the face of globalization. The term “downscaling” has been employed elsewhere to refer to the process of taking information known at large scales to make predictions at local scales as, for example, for the

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statistical modeling of climate change. “Downscaling” here refers to the process by which actors, by intent or default, relocate the forums for responding to ­problems manifesting from interactions with transnational markets, institutions, and actors—shifting scales and directions from a focus on “top-­down” institutional approaches to those that are “bottom-­up.” The case of subnational climate action in the United States offers a further illustration of how the mechanism of downscaling can work. In the wake of multiple failed national efforts to ratify a global treaty to address climate change (most notably President Trump’s withdrawal of the United States from the Paris [Climate] Agreement), governors, mayors, and civil society organizations across the United States have sought alternative strategies to advance greenhouse gas emissions reductions at the subnational level (Coglianese and Starobin 2017). While the problem of global climate change is decidedly global in nature, subnational jurisdictions, local municipalities, and NGOs of­ten operating at vari­ous scales have “downscaled” their efforts and venue choices to gain traction and advance policy progress at the grassroots level. Transcending Scale: An EU “Honey Crisis” in the Yucatán

A regulatory focusing event in the EU that first transcended scales—po­liti­cal ­jurisdictions and human-­ecological boundaries—compelling Mexican beekeepers and their allies to action, collectively worried about economic and livelihood consequences linked to regulations pending in the EU and expected to affect the Yucatán region’s high-­value honey exports. The European Court of Justice issued a precedent-­setting ruling in 2011 that newly characterized minute quantities of pollen found in honey as an “added ingredient” (Case C-­442/09, Bablok v. Fristaat Bayern, EUR-­Lex 62009CJ0442, at 8, Sep­tem­ber 6, 2011). Whereas previously pollen had been understood as a natural constituent of honey, the court’s ruling notably upended how trace amounts of pollen from GM crops would be treated; even if GM pollen grains appear unintentionally in honey, as happens when bees pollinate flowers, that honey would be deemed a genetically modified food, potentially requiring labeling if not other restrictions. Spread in local newspapers and by word of mouth, news of the EU ruling illuminated the ecological mechanisms of GMO contamination for Mexican beekeepers. Just as pollen from crops planted in fields in proximity to the hives of German beekeepers posed GMO “contamination” risks for German beekeepers, so too were the honey and hives of Yucatec subsistence farmers and beekeepers subject to possible contamination from transgenicos (transgenics) planted in the periphery of their own fields (Vandame 2012). Distressed by potential effects the EU ruling might have on beekeeping and cultivation of GM crops in Mexico, concerned stakeholders in the Yucatán

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came together for a regional assembly—the Peninsular Forum—in No­vem­ber 2011. The forum involved a diverse array of participants—from technical experts to campesino communities—scientists, civil society organizations, exporters of honey, and regional beekeepers’ associations. According to La Organización Nacional de Apicultores (The National Organization of Beekeepers), beekeepers in attendance numbered more than one hundred, with representation from all of Mexico’s thirty-­one states. Government officials involved with apiculture from the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food (SAGARPA) also participated (La Organización Nacional de Apicultores 2011). As a key initial gathering, the Peninsular Forum fomented an ongoing dialogue among its diverse participants regarding the potential effects of transgenicos on apiculture, honey production, and the vitality of traditional subsistence agriculture. This was the basis for a vibrant multistakeholder group, the Ma’ OGM Collective (Gómez González 2016). The focus of the Peninsular Forum and similar gatherings across the region was establishing a shared understanding among involved stakeholders of the potential risks to beekeeping, honey production, and traditional Maya agricultural practices posed by large-­scale commercialization of GM soy in the region, in addition to other environmental and pub­lic health spillover effects. Compared with the usual regulatory issues encountered by Mexican beekeepers, GM contamination constituted a new kind of problem. Typical factors hampering Maya campesinos’ efforts to sell their honey into export markets centered on common food safety and quality concerns that impede the international honey trade more generally, in­clud­ing the presence of chemical residues and unapproved medicines used to address pest problems in bee colonies (Starobin 2018). The questions of primary concern to beekeepers and their allies tended toward the practical. What were the known risks posed by cultivating GM soy in proximity to beekeeping in the Yucatán? Domesticated honeybees (Apis mellifera) tend to forage within a distance of one to two kilometers from their hives, on average, but scientists have documented foraging bees at distances of up to twelve kilometers from the hive (Beekman and Ratnieks 2000; Visscher and Seeley 1982). How far away, then, would a field of GM soy need to be from local beehives to represent a credible contamination threat? Other questions echoed concerns percolating globally in response to emerging evidence of spillover impacts to organic farms and commodity chains from GM commercialization (Gupta 2010)—namely, is coexistence of traditional agriculture and beekeeping alongside GM crop production even possible? Relatedly, stakeholders expressed concerns of spillover effects from GM cultivation to the lives and livelihoods of Maya campesinos and environmental health,

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in­clud­ing deforestation and large-­scale land clearing associated with industrial agriculture, the effects of drifting pesticides sprayed on fields of GM crops on wildlife (in­clud­ing bees and birds), contamination of local groundwater sources, and effects to traditional Maya agrarian practices and ways of life, in­clud­ing milpa (Vandame 2012). The success of the first Peninsular Forum in the Yucatán spawned additional forums in rural communities across the region (­ Gómez González 2016). Monsanto Seeks and Receives Permit for GM Soy in Mexico

The permit Monsanto sought out in 2012 from Mexico’s national agricultural agency, SAGARPA, covered the release of the herbicide glyphosate-­resistant, GM soy for commercial purposes. Monsanto intended to cultivate GM soy at a massive scale. Of the intended 253,500 hectares proposed for cultivation across multiple Mexican states, 60,000 hectares were slated for the Yucatán. The permit also covered the states of Campeche, Quintana Roo, San Luis Potosí, Veracruz, Tamaulipas, and Chiapas. Previously, a court order invalidated a permit to Monsanto to plant 30,000 hectares with “pilot sowing” of GM soy in the states of Campeche, Yucatán, and Quintana Roo (“Monsanto Loses to Beekeepers of Yucatán Peninsula,” Yucatán Times, August 6, 2012). Within Mexico, determinations to grant such a permit for commercialization, as well as the regulation of GMO products more broadly, are specifically handled under La Ley de Bio­ seguridad de Organismos Genéticamente Modificados (The Law on Biosecurity of Genetically Modified Organisms, LBGOM). This general GMO law further seeks “to ensure that these organisms are released, commercialized, exported, and imported with an adequate level of safety, which requires an evaluation of risks prior to their release and oversight of their effects after release” (https:// tinyurl.com, last accessed March 15, 2018). The LBGOM has certain requirements for the release of GMO products into the environment, in­clud­ing an experimental release, a release in a pilot program, and a commercial release. The experimental release requires “a study of the possible risks that the release could have on the environment and on the biological diversity” in addition to an authorization from the Secretariat of Health (https://tinyurl.com, last accessed March 15, 2018). Commercial releases are further dictated by concerns related to preserving biological diversity of animals and plants and GMO-­free zones established by SAGARPA. As a unit of the federal executive branch of the government of Mexico, SAGARPA possesses conflicting mandates as a government agency to advance “sustainable development” across Mexico’s diverse ecological, economic, and cultural landscape, allowing for “the sustainable exploitation of its resources, for a sustainable and balanced growth of the economic regions, the generation

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of attractive sources of employment, fostering settlement and permanence of inhabitants in rural areas and the strengthening of productivity and competitiveness of agricultural products, to consolidate the effective positioning and penetration of Mexican products in new markets, addressing the requirements and demands [of] consumers” (https://tinyurl.com, last accessed March 15, 2018). In the context of commercializing GM crops like corn and soy, advocates of indigenous producers and environmental activists have criticized SAGARPA as captured by corporate agribusiness, advancing industry interests along with those of the Mexican national government to modernize and industrialize agricultural production within the country. SAGARPA has been further accused of explicitly seeking to undermine the agrarian practices, like milpa, of indigenous Maya producers through misinformation, in addition to failures in enforcement where bans on GM soy were put in place, even in light of instances of illegal sowing. Irma Gómez González (2016) shows how the pattern of SAGARPA disseminating “misinformation” to indigenous producers manifests from a strong bias among Mexican agricultural authorities in favor of more “modern” agricultural production methods over traditional, indigenous forms of agriculture, like milpa, viewed as “backward” and out of step with Mexico’s trajectory toward improved productivity. According to Gómez González (2016), Mexican agricultural agents in the municipality of Holpechén encouraged modern Mennonite farmers to “surround” the land of indigenous communities with their own fields so as to passively disseminate new technologies and techniques to Maya campesinos. Ultimately, SAGARPA granted the permit to Monsanto through the National Service for Health, Food Safety, and Quality (SENASICA) on May 11, 2012. This was after the agency had received seventy-­five technical and scientific opinions during the pub­lic consultation period, from which thirty-­one biosecurity measures were purportedly established by overseeing authorities (SAGARPA 2012). Permission was given with the added endorsement of the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT), which did so despite what later emerged to be divergent technical opinions from within the agency that highlighted potential adverse environmental consequences in the Yucatán Peninsula (Colin 2016). Greenpeace Mexico’s campaign legal adviser, María Colin, composed a memo for the Oc­to­ber 2016 “Monsanto Tribunal” at The Hague, outlining the legal issues linked to SAGARPA’s permit to Monsanto for cultivation in the Yucatán. Reaching across Scales to Leverage Market and Regulatory Complexity

In response to SAGARPA granting Monsanto a permit for the commercial release of GM soy, in­di­vidual beekeepers and groups filed a lawsuit in February

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2012 in the First District Court in the state of Yucatán (file no. 286/2012). Two similar lawsuits were subsequently filed in the state of Campeche in June 2012 (file nos. 753/2012 and 762/2012, Second District Court in the State of Campeche). The core legal arguments that the beekeeper plaintiffs advanced leveraged the complexity of GMO markets and regulation in Mexico: the open spaces or “governance gaps” within a complex patchwork of conflicting rules from global to local scales. Regulatory heterogeneity persists in Mexico given the country’s partial harmonization with both the US and the EU combined with the absence of a clear hegemon in the global governance of GMOs (Bernauer 2003; Falkner and Gupta 2009; Raustiala and Victor 2004; Toke 2004). This regulatory complexity in turn manifested in legal apertures for beekeepers to challenge status quo regulations at vari­ous levels of government. Specifically, the beekeeper plaintiffs advanced a multipronged legal strategy and several core arguments in support of their position, drawing on a combination of domestic and international regulations and laws. They argued that the large-­scale planting of GM soy violated the beekeepers’ right to work, because honey production was a key regional economic activity, as well as their right to a healthy environment, given anticipated effects from deforestation and herbicide overuse. The plaintiffs argued that the granting of the permit demonstrated a lack of application of the precautionary principle, which Mexican regulators were principally obliged to consider as a signatory to the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (Gupta 2010; see also Vogel 2012 and Weiner 2011). This precautionary approach to regulating GMOs is, moreover, consistent with that of the EU and was likewise embedded in the justification for the EU’s origi­nal ban on honey potentially containing GM pollen grains (Bradford 2012). Mexican government authorities were further accused of violating both Maya producers’ right to free, prior, and informed consent of indigenous peoples and communities, in violation of Article 2 of the Constitution of the United Mexican States and Convention 169 of the International Labour Organization concerning Indigenous or Tribal Peoples. According to the Convention on Biological Diversity 1992 in Article 8( J), state signatories are obliged “to respect, preserve and maintain knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities . . . and promote their wider application with the approval and involvement of the holders of such knowledge, innovation and practices.” Lastly, the beekeepers contended that SAGARPA issued the permit against the recommendations of other government agencies that advised a precautionary approach be taken. Specifically, the National Institute of Ecology (INE), the National Commission for Biodiversity Knowledge and Use (CONABIO),

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and the National Commission for Protected Natural Areas (CONANP) recommended against issuing the permit on the grounds of the negative environmental consequences likely to emerge from GM soy cultivation in the region (Colin 2016). Denouncing Corporate (Mis)information through Community Science

As these cases wound their way through Mexico’s judicial system, beekeepers found that they not only had to prove that their rights had been violated but also had to wage an active counterinformation campaign against Monsanto and the regulatory agencies that acquiesced to the company’s position. Education became central to forming and strengthening the collaboration between beekeepers and their allies. This included buttressing relationships cultivated with local universities, like El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (ECOSUR), that helped with capacity building, and developing the research tools to challenge false information and validate their own claims about the interactions between commodities in local ecosystems. Understanding the scientific mechanics of honey and GM soy interactions became increasingly important as indigenous campesinos became frequent recipients of misinformation not only from biotech companies and other farmers engaged in planting in bordering areas but also from Mexican agricultural agency representatives. Both denied possible negative spillover effects and impacts from GM soy cultivation to honey. The message SAGARPA spun through the media and other pub­lic forums denied that the planting of GM soy posed risks for honey production or the marketing of Mexican honey. The story they told, akin to that echoed by Monsanto, was that the introduction of pollen grains from GM soy into the honey of nearby beekeepers could not happen, as if bees somehow read signs posted outside the soy fields declaring that their labor was not needed. According to their account, because soy flowers self-­pollinate, that is, they do not require active pollination by bees or other insects to ensure their fruitful production, the bees did not visit the soy flowers (“Monsanto to Mexico Honey Farmers: Our Soya Seeds Not to Blame for Woes,” Reuters, No­vem­ber 6, 2015). Moreover, because the harvest seasons for honey ( Janu­ary to June) and soy did not overlap, the risk of contamination from pollen supposedly did not exist. SAGARPA and Monsanto’s misinformation efforts eventually demanded that communities contrive the evidence to support their position—to disprove what Monsanto contended about the fundamentals of honeybee biology and foraging behavior (Villanueva-­Gutiérrez et al. 2014). Mounting evidence had already disproved government and industry accounts of honeybee interactions with soy flowers (Gómez González 2016). GM soy pollen was identified in

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hives two kilometers from fields growing GM soy (Vides and Vandame 2012). Samples of honey intended for export were, moreover, found to contain pollen from GM soybeans (Intertek 2012). In addition, tests for the presence of soy pollen in honey were undertaken by Maya beekeepers from villages located adjacent to experimental plots of GM soy, which were permitted in that region (to be distinguished from large-­scale commercial planting, which was not). Conditions in these villages offered a natural experiment—where bees, given proximity, would have the opportunity to forage on pollen and nectar from the soy plants in addition to the other wildflowers on which they usually forage. Villanueva-­Gutiérrez and colleagues (2014) analyzed pollen from honeycomb samples obtained from Las Flores, Campeche. Six of nine samples analyzed contained significant quantities of soy pollen, with two testing positive for the presence of GM soybean. These tests confirmed field observations that honeybees, Apis mellifera, in fact collect pollen and nectar from GM soybeans and incorporate them into honey. On the basis of their findings, Villanueva-­Gutiérrez and colleagues contended that GM soy cultivation is “an unacknowledged threat to apiculture and its economics in one of the world’s foremost honey producing areas,” with “the resultant risk for honey production in the Yucatán Peninsula and Mexico . . . evident in wholesale price reduction of 12% when GMO products are detected and honey consignments are rejected.” Policy and Legal Outcomes

Persuaded by beekeepers and their allies that the region’s high-­value honey production could not coexist alongside GM soy cultivation without negative economic and environmental consequences, the Yucatán state government declared that GM seeds would not be permitted for cultivation and further petitioned authorities of the Mexican federal government to create a “transgenic-­free zone” in Yucatán in March 2012 (“Amparo Prohíbe la Siembra de Transgénicos en Yucatán,” Yucatán Ahora, March 27, 2012). In principle, banning GMO cultivation from the entire state enabled the creation of a jurisdiction from which all honey producers would be de facto compliant with EU export standards— presuming prevention and enforcement in the event of illegal plantings and effective supply chain segregation of honey (see Gupta 2010 and Clapp 2008). Even with the declaration of a GMO-­free zone and endorsement from subnational government authorities in the Yucatán, the battle against national-­level agricultural agents at SAGARPA, which issued the permit to Monsanto, waged on for beekeepers on the peninsula, especially in Campeche. At the regional level, honey represented one of the most valuable export commodities, while the commercialization of soy and corn was an agricultural priority at the na-

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tional level, pitting subnational actors and interests against those of the Mexican federal government and transnational agribusiness. Protracted legal battles ensued for the next three years. In response to the lawsuit filed in the Second District Court of the State of Campeche, the judge suspended permission for GM cultivation beginning on June 28, 2012, until the issues raised by the beekeeper plaintiffs could be addressed. The judge’s decision, however, was overturned on Janu­ary 30, 2013, by the Court of Appeals of the Thirty-­First Circuit of the State of Campeche (Colin 2016). More than a year later, both the Second District Court of the State of Campeche (in March 2014) and the First District Court of the State of Yucatán ( July 2014) produced rulings in favor of Maya beekeepers and communities. Both rulings affirmed that issuing the permit to Monsanto without first consulting with indigenous communities violated the rights of Maya beekeepers to FPIC. The judges in turn voided the permit for commercial release of GM soy, requiring consultation with Maya communities prior to considering Monsanto’s permit application further. The Mexican newspaper La Jornada summarized the judges’ verdict to uphold the ban on commercial cultivation of GM soy in the Yucatán as being founded on the grounds that bees visit the soy plants, which in turn introduces GM soy pollen into the honey of Maya beekeepers (“Revés a Monsanto,” La Jornada, July 23, 2014). In response to these verdicts, which represented a major setback for Monsanto, seven motions for review were subsequently filed by the company, SENASICA, and the Federal Public Ministry, raising the case to the sec­ond chamber of the National Supreme Court of Justice. On No­vem­ber 4, 2015, the National Supreme Court of Justice affirmed the verdicts of the lower courts—the violations of FPIC and requirements for consultations with indigenous communities. Central to the high court ruling was the determination that the release of GM soy could significantly affect the environments in which Maya communities reside—with the potential to alter biodiversity and animal and plant health, especially linked to spillover effects from herbicide exposure. The judges cited studies from CONANP and the Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources of the State of Yucatán that provided evidence of the risks of the herbicide glyphosate—classified as a likely human carcinogen by the WHO in 2015—contaminating underground aquifers. Further taken into account by the Supreme Court of Justice were the warnings of CONANP and CONABIO about “bee pollination contaminating the genetic material from other organisms via pollen, as they have a [foraging] radius of 1–3 kilometers, or during periods of shortage of nectar up to 12 kilometres” (Colin 2016, 4). In sum, the Mexican courts affirmed the legitimacy of Maya beekeepers’ concerns regarding spillover effects from large-­scale cultivation of GM soy on

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their environmental quality, livelihoods, and way of life. The courts, moreover, clarified the facts of bee biology, the science that had become contested in Monsanto’s struggle to secure its permits, noting that bees indeed play a mediating role as agents of both pollination and GM contamination, making GM soy cultivation incompatible alongside honey production. CONCLUSION

Successful challenges to powerful transnational actors, such as multinational corporations, represent the exception, rather than the rule, especially for small-­ scale producers embedded in global production systems. Yet these least likely cases of modern-­day Davids vanquishing their Goliaths compel us to reconsider the limits of existing theories in helping us understand the constellation of variables and underlying social mechanisms at play. Conventional wisdom would lead us to expect that producers and firms engaged in the production of commodities destined for global markets possess the interest, if not also the capability, to shape the rules governing the production, distribution, and sale of goods in the vari­ous jurisdictions where they operate (Starobin 2013). We would, thus, expect that a powerful corporation like Monsanto would be poised to win (not lose) the regulatory battles it confronted, be it in the EU or Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, especially given the company’s history of influencing the formulation of global regulations for GMOs. Any successful effort to contest the influence of an international corporation would thus require advocacy at the international level, featuring international NGOs and leveraging the power of allies in national governments or international ­organizations. Yet, as shown in this chapter, even in a scenario where private transnational businesses typically dominate, less powerful actors, such as subsistence farmers and small-­scale beekeepers, can stymie the agenda of those with power, thwarting existing regimes and paradigms from the bottom up. By leveraging a transnational regulatory focusing event to downscale the forums for contestation of Mexican GMO policy to subnational levels, this diverse coalition of­ local actors vested in regionally valuable honey production thwarted the efforts of ­national-­and transnational-­level actors promoting the national commercialization of GM soy across Mexico (Starobin 2018). Central to the coalition’s organizing efforts and eventual legal challenges was the claim that large-­scale cultivation of GM soy risked undermining Maya indigenous peoples’ rights and livelihoods—namely, those whose subsistence depended on beekeeping and honey production, involving high-­value honey exports to the EU. They were able to advance this claim because of a number of factors, in­clud­ing their ability

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to access an independent judicial system, the existence of constitutional protections for minority rights, and Mexico’s own participation in an international protocol. Their efforts were further enhanced by the cultivation of local allies and the use of community science to combat misinformation and develop a body of evidence in support of their claims. Because of this legal context and these capacities, contesting a global trend—the introduction of GMOs in large-­scale agriculture—at the national and subnational levels was highly effective.

7 ASSESSING PROSPECTS FOR TRANSCALAR ACTIVISM AGAINST THE GLOBAL OIL INDUSTRY Lessons from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil MARIA GUADALUPE MOOG RODRIGUES

I

n the latter part of the twentieth century, the technological revolution and the acceleration of processes of social and economic globalization contributed to enhance the role of transnational advocacy networks (TANs) (as defined in Keck and Sikkink [1998]) as effective actors in processes of global governance. The TANs played instrumental roles in bringing states to the negotiating table and eventually forging consensus on key international agreements (Clark 2001; Landman 2005; Lanchberry 2006; Rodrigues 2015). Their activism (through boycotts and awareness campaigns) also influenced industries and corporations toward a higher degree of environmental and social accountability (Baccaro 2001; Yaziji and Doh 2009). Yet as the trends that brought TANs to prominence in processes of global governance have deepened in the twenty-­first century (Falkner 2003; Levy and Newell 2005), they have affected the very structure of TANs and their modes of operation. As such, we introduce the concept of transcalar activism to signal changes in the analytical “tool kit” of global activism studies. Advocacy networks now operate in a context marked by a diminishing role of the state in policy-making and policy implementation. In developing countries in particular, this has happened in part due to the democratization of policy-­ making and to processes of administrative decentralization. For the purposes of this research, the analy­sis focuses on the opening of spaces for participation of civil society organizations (CSOs), such as NGOs, social movements, and research institutes, in policy decisions at the state level (Hochstetler 2000; ­Grugel 2000; Veltmeyer and Petras 2000; Lemos and Looye 2003; Batley and Rose 2011; Ojeda 2012) and the transferring of some of the state’s policy implementation roles to subnational administrative units and to civil society (in the form of stakeholders’ committees, public-­private partnerships, and pub­lic ser-

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vice contracts with NGOs, for instance) (Kumler and Lemos 2008; Brinker­hoff and Brinkerhoff 2011; Risley 2015). If state agencies are increasingly viewed as partners of CSOs, what does this tell us about boomerang strategies, which were once among the signature strategies of advocacy networks? Concurrent with the smaller role of the state in policy implementation is the growing role business interests in governance schemes play, both domestically and globally, in areas such as poverty alleviation, human rights, and socioenvironmental issues (under the rubric of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), and sustainable development governance initiatives) (Dobers and Halme 2009; Steurer 2010; Lister 2011). This trend has been accompanied by the growing independence of national and multinational corporations from state controls, but this latter issue will not be fully explored here. It does, however, demand further inquiry about the role that an increased volume of available corporate funding is having on the multiplication of CSOs in developing countries and beyond. I contend that transnational activism can only be properly evaluated through a multilevel analy­sis, one that accounts for its local, national, and international dimensions (Rodrigues 2004). In the case of transcalar activism, the same applies. Thus, I selected to study transcalar activism through a case that clearly allows for the understanding of how this type of activism unfolds at all three spatial scales. I investigate the advocacy of local and national socioenvironmental organizations in Brazil, and most recently, the escalation of their transnational mobilization, against the expansion of the global oil industry. The bulk of my study, however, focuses on activism against the expansion of oil and gas infrastructure in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Specifically, this chapter asks how tran­scalar advocacy efforts have been affected by administrative decentralization and increasing opportunities for civil society organizations to participate in socio­ environmental governance schemes with pub­lic agencies and private corporations to manage the local impacts of the oil industry. This chapter reveals po­liti­cal and technical challenges CSOs face when participating in development governance schemes. It concludes that such challenges hinder CSOs’ impetus for sustained advocacy. As such, it presents the “other” face of Appe’s (this volume) analy­sis of South–South development cooperation in international aid schemes. For Appe, democratization and administrative decentralization create opportunities for south­ern CSOs to break their dependence on traditional “gatekeepers” of North–South aid, a more promising conclusion than mine. This study also presents a counterpoint to the findings of Pallas and Nguyen (this volume). While in Vietnam the limited number of NGOs provides leverage that propels them into the policy-­making sphere, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the proliferation of CSOs, stimulated by the opening

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of the state to civil society and by the proliferation of private funding for socio­ environmental governance schemes, has constrained CSOs’ transcalar advocacy potential. In light of the growing polarization of Brazil’s politics since 2016, one operational assumption of this study must be qualified. The opportunities for civil society organizations to participate in socioenvironmental governance schemes with pub­lic agencies and private corporations, which had increased since Brazil’s return to democracy in 1988, have come to a halt since the inauguration of the Bolsonaro administration in 2019. The scrutiny over the finances of international NGOs operating in Brazil (www.reuters.com), the antagonism against global schemes to support the environment (www.bloomberg.com), and the vicious dismantling of environmental institutions and policies (at www.reuters .com) of the Bolsonaro administration has been widely documented. This tragic conjuncture, however, does not invalidate the main arguments and conclusions of this study. In fact, they strengthen them. Bolsonaro’s swift weakening of federal environmental agencies such as the federal environmental agency, Instituto Brasileiro de Meio Ambiente (IBAMA), and the agency in charge of monitor­ ing forest burnings, Instituto Brasileiro de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE), further exemplifies the structural weakness of Brazilian environmental agencies. Bolsonaro’s supporters at the state and municipal levels (in Rio de Janeiro in particular) have paid him lip service through select acts of antagonism against CSOs (https://casafluminense.org), but for the most part, they have not felt the need to erode further agencies that, for the reasons discussed in this study, have struggled to enforce a socioenvironmental policy framework for decades. Data for this research derived from several field trips to Brazil between 2002 and 2014. I interviewed more than thirty activists, representatives from affected communities, government officials, and staff in the state-­controlled Brazilian oil giant Petrobras. Petrobras was once fully owned by the Brazilian government. Today, the state owns 55.7 percent of the company’s shares and voting rights, with the remaining shares in private hands. I also visited areas affected by the oil industry, and areas that have benefited from reparation and mitigation efforts that involved the joint efforts and resources of local NGOs and Petrobras. I attended meetings of stakeholders in specific governance arrangements and had access to evaluation and monitoring reports, strategic plans to enhance Petrobras environmental performance, contracts on partnerships between NGOs and state agencies, and news articles on the oil industry in Rio de Janeiro and in Brazil. Finally, data on efforts to move the advocacy against the effects of the oil industry to transnational arenas derived from interviews with select Brazilian activists working in organizations involved in transnational activism related to the oil industry and with staff in international foundations supporting their

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activism as well as documentation and press releases by the advocacy groups involved in these efforts. Interviews referenced here occurred between 2002 and 2014. They are part of a research agenda that spanned over twenty years. I requested formal permission from interviewees to record their interview and to recognize them by name and function in academic works (recordings remain on file with the author). All representatives of CSOs are widely known, locally and nationally, for their activism and for leading organizations committed to social and environmental sustainability around the Guanabara Bay and beyond. I chose not to anonymize interviewees because it would not prevent them from being recognized. In addition, and most importantly, international visibility remains one important layer of protection for local activists. ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISM AND THE OIL INDUSTRY IN THE GUANABARA BAY

In the early hours of Janu­ary 18, 2000, the Refinaria Duque de Caxias (REDUC), an oil refinery owned by Petrobras, spilled 1.3 million liters of oil in the Guanabara Bay, one of Rio de Janeiro’s touristic treasures and a vital, though greatly degraded, regional ecosystem. The spill generated a 40-­kilometer-­square-­wide oil stain. For reference purposes only, the BBC News world edition of No­vem­ ber 19, 2002, lists the Guanabara Bay accident alongside (though not equivalent to) the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska and Iraq’s release of oil during the Gulf War (http://news.bbc.co.uk). The consequences for the ecosys­tem and for the populations directly dependent on it, such as fishing communities and crab collectors, were devastating. Fish, crustaceans, and birds died either immediately or after a few weeks following the accident. The oil covered beaches, some of which are important touristic destinations, and marshes, which are important breeding grounds and sources of food for several species (Época n. 89, Jan. 31, 2000; “Mancha da Vergonha,” Isto É n. 1582, Jan. 26, 2000). Though the reaction of Rio de Janeiro’s civil society was immediate and intense, its strength, temporary coordination, and relative effectiveness in the immediate aftermath of the accident was the consequence of a long and difficult effort at bringing civil society voices to the local and state policy-­making processes. This effort began in the early 1990s, with Brazil’s return to democratic rule. Since the mid-­1980s, local civil society groups were concerned with environmental issues in the Guanabara Bay basin. Neighborhood organizations participated in the monitoring of sanitation projects in the area (Porto 1998; Pereira and Porto 1998), residents’ associations challenged private companies located around the bay demanding that they increase accountability to human and environmental health, and labor unions systematically accused private com-

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panies and governmental agencies of ignoring legislation on the environment and on the provision of social services (Acselrad and Mello 2000). Of particular importance were the actions of the Po­liti­cal Committee for the Sanitation of Rio de Janeiro’s “Baixada” (Comitê Político pelo Saneamento da Baixada Fluminense). The committee supported by the national NGO Federação de Órgãos para Assistência Social e Educacional (FASE), which will become instrumental in the transnational advocacy efforts discussed later in this study, monitored the provision of sanitation services to the communities surrounding the bay. Between 1995 and 1998, CSOs formed the movement Baia Viva (Bay Alive), which demanded that sanitation policies be formulated considering the entirety of the bay’s ecosys­tem dynamic (Programa Baia Cidadã [Program Bay and Citizenship]) (interview with Elmo Amador). In the immediate aftermath of the oil spill, activists mobilized media outlets, initiated a lawsuit to demand reparations from Petrobras, organized volunteers in cleanup efforts, and entered into collaborative schemes with Petrobras for the provision of socio­ environmental goods (Rodrigues 2018). Brazilian newspapers published almost daily editorials about the accident. For instance, “Licoes do Vazamento” (Lessons of the oil spill) in Jornal do ­Brasil, Janu­ary 25, 2000; “Baia a Longo Prazo” (The Bay in the long term) in Jornal do Brasil, Janu­ary 27, 2000; “Verdade da Petrobras” (Petrobras’ Truth) in Jornal do Brasil, Janu­ary 28, 2000, and then almost monthly for the entire year. International media covered the accident extensively (e.g., the Sun, the Guardian, the BBC, the New York Times, the Wash­ing­ton Post, and CNN). Though media coverage itself is an indirect indicator of the level of activism of local environmental organizations, it is telling that most articles refer specifically to the work of environmental NGOs on behalf of the bay’s ecosys­tem and surrounding communities, or cite their staff as reliable sources (namely, Elmo Amador, of the movement Baia Viva; members of the union of oil workers, Sindicato dos Petroleiros do Rio de Janeiro (SINDIPETRO); and Sergio Ricardo Lima, of the NGO Os Verdes). With the support of the NGO Os Verdes and later of Greenpeace Brazil, representatives of the Guanabara Bay fishing colonies initiated a lawsuit against Petrobras a year after the spill. The lawsuit demanded monetary compensation for more than 18,000 fishermen and their families for the months in which they were unable to fish in the bay and accused Petrobras of not complying with legislation on environmental crimes, since its oil refinery, REDUC, lacked environmental licensing (interview with Sergio Ricardo Lima, environmentalist from Os Verdes and witness in the lawsuit, July 3, 2008, Rio de Janeiro). In 2005, Petrobras was found guilty and ordered to compensate fishing communities, but the company appealed the decision. This protracted conflict between

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fishing communities and Petrobras would eventually become the focal point of transcalar advocacy efforts initiated in 2012 and discussed later in this study. Analysts of environmental NGOs working on behalf of the Guanabara Bay ecosys­tem noted that they “have strong capacity to mobilize volunteers and professionals on issues related to the preservation of nature with the goal of revitalizing an awareness of solidarity, which manifests itself in the civic and volunteer effort” (Mattos and Drummond 2005, 188). In fact, activists mobilized the community for cleanup efforts immediately after the accident. Dora Negreiros, the executive director of the Instituto Baia da Guanabara, remembers: “We spent a full day sending emails and the response was surprising! There were people who wanted to come from different states. We ourselves were not prepared to deal with such a response. There were more volunteers than tasks to ­accomplish. . . . There were so many people coming in!” (interview July 17, 2002, Niteroi, RJ). Another activist recalls the initiative in fishing villages (­Sergio Ricardo de Lima, cited elsewhere): “I was called by fishermen at dawn. . . . When I got there it all looked like a scene from the movie Blade Runner—the waves saturated with oil breaking on the shore. . . . It was 5:00 am and the mobilization [of volunteers for the clean up] had already started.” In light of the strength of the reaction of civil society, both Petrobras and the po­liti­cal establishment rushed to engage environmental organizations in a dialogue, which eventually led to the highly controversial “Environmental Pact between Petrobras and Civil Society (See “Pacto Ambiental da Petrobras com a Sociedade” [Environmental Pact between Petrobras and Civil Society], on file with the author, signed by twenty-­four representatives of civil society organizations in May 15, 2000). Clearly, Petrobras engaged with CSOs as a strategy to mitigate the negative impact of the oil spill on its corporate image, but the engagement leading to the pact must also be credited to the mobilization and activism of local socioenvironmental CSOs. Although a thorough analy­sis of the impact of the Environmental Pact on both the NGOs directly involved in it and on local civil society organizations in general is out of the scope of this chapter, it is important to highlight that Petrobras committed to funding a consortium of NGOs (known as the Blue Bay Consortium or Consorcio Baia Azul), a series of impact studies of oil operations in the bay, and assorted projects of restoration of cultural assets, environmental education, and income generation. The pact created opportunities for partnership projects funded by Petrobras and implemented by NGOs. In the criti­cal assessment of an activist, the pact was a form of co-­optation (Sergio R. de Lima). Amador also agrees with de Lima and noted that “Petrobras bought out too many people! Almost everybody!” (interview with Amador). This assessment is similar to the one offered

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by Rogerio Rocco, the regional director, of the NGO Onda Azul, the main NGO in charge of recruiting other civil society organizations for participation in the dialogue with Petrobras. Despite recognizing the risk of co-­optation, he emphasized the sense of opportunity that sectors of the environmental movement anticipated from the pact (interview, Rio de Janeiro, July 9, 2002). The consortium, however, was an unmitigated failure. First, it led to further divisions in the local environmental movement. Some local groups saw the Environmental Pact as a blatant attempt at co-­optation, “[only] if the NGO signs it, it can receive funding” (Elmo Amador), yet others saw it as a transformative opportunity, both for NGOs and for the populations and the ecosystems they served, to revitalize the Guanabara Bay. Second, participation in the consortium contributed to eroding the legitimacy of some NGOs vis-­à-­vis their beneficiary populations, foreshadowing a trend that would be further accentuated among Brazilian local and national socioenvironmental organizations in the following decades. Members of the consortium lacked the capacity to meet the schedule of activities and to disburse allocated resources, as the volume of said resources, and related accounting obligations, was beyond anything they had ever experienced. Unable to deliver concrete benefits promised to affected communities, local organizations lost credibility. Finally, participation in the consortium and in other funding schemes conceived by both Petrobras and state environmental agencies depleted the institutional capacity of already fragile organizations. For instance, studies commissioned to NGOs and local research institutions were neither completed nor used to determine reparations (interviews with Isaura Fraga, state deputy secretary for the environment, July 17, 2002, RJ, Elizabeth Calazans, Petrobras, and Napoleao Miranda, ISER researcher, July 2, 2002, RJ). The entire process lacked transparency, leading to a further erosion of the credibility of CSOs and limiting their resources and impetus for monitoring the environmental performance of the oil industry. The pact is an illustration of the challenges NGOs and grassroots movements face when they engage in socioenvironmental governance schemes with state agencies and private corporations. Although Petrobras remains, formally, a state-­owned company, its shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange. The pact imposed serious burdens on CSOs. First, many organizations were stretched too thin in their capacity to attend meetings and provide technically sound input to policies. Second, the turn to a “project by project” dynamic of participation in policy implementation and mitigation of environmental harm has affected NGOs’ technical capacity as well as their mission. According to observers, many NGOs have become consulting businesses (interviews with ­Ricardo Portugal, journalist and founder of the NGO GDN, April 8, 2008; Nova Igucu, Marcos Domingues, staff in the NGO Campo, February 18, 2008,

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RJ; and with Lara Moutinho, Superintendent for Environmental Education, State Secretariat of Education, March 29, 2008, RJ). Tasks and priorities are of­ ten determined as a function of projects’ funding cycles. These tasks of­ten consume the time of staffers and the energy of the organization, leading it to focus on whichever activity is being prioritized by the donor, while of­ten neglecting its origi­nal mandate or target issues. Po­liti­cally, project funding has dimmed the already fragile prospects for the formation of advocacy networks and other collaborative initiatives among NGOs locally, nationally, and internationally. Despite the failure of the partnership between Petrobras and the NGOs in the consortium in the wake of the 2000 oil spill, the company became, since 2003, the largest sponsor of environmental projects, art, and culture in Brazil (Moutinho 2015, 805). It has distributed more than $200 million to NGOs for the implementation of environmental and social projects (http://sites.petrobras .com.br). Massive private resources combined with processes of decentraliza­ tion, or fragmentation, of state and municipal environmental agencies (as mandated by Brazil’s democratic constitution of 1988) have increased demands for CSOs’ involvement in policy design and implementation while encouraging an unprecedented proliferation of local and national CSOs. These trends have affected the nature of and potential for transcalar advocacy against the oil industry rooted in the Brazilian experience. EXPLORING THE PROSPECTS FOR TRANSCALAR ACTIVISM AGAINST THE OIL INDUSTRY

Despite the challenges already discussed, increasingly, and only quite recently, sectors of the Rio de Janeiro (and Brazilian) environmental movement have reinitiated attempts at working collaboratively to demand structural change from the oil industry. These efforts converge in their critique of private funding directed to socioenvironmental initiatives and in demands for a proactive role for state environmental agencies in regulating extractive industries. The continued legal dispute between Petrobras and the fishing communities affected by the 2000 oil spill has become an important catalyst both for advocacy criti­cal of the project-­based model of environmentalism that became the norm in Rio de Janeiro after the accident in the bay and for demands for stricter regulation of development initiatives. In 2005, local courts ruled in favor of fishing communities’ demand for reparation by Petrobras for the damages the oil spill caused. The company appealed the decision, but the initial ruling was upheld. Sixteen years later, however, when Rio de Janeiro hosted the Olympic Games and the Guanabara Bay became the site of sailing competitions, fishing folk still had not received reparations owed by Petrobras. Finally, in De­cem­ber

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2019, the parties agreed to a settlement of less than $2,000 for each of the more than twelve thousand fishing families affected (a subgroup of this constituency is still contesting the agreement) (www.osaogoncalo.com.br). In part because of the duration of the lawsuit and the accelerated occupation of the Guanabara Bay ecosys­tem by oil infrastructure, fishing communities have increased their activism. The Association of Men and Women of the Sea (AHOMAR) has taken the lead in this process. Since 2007, one of AHOMAR’s main targets has been the major Petrobras Petrochemical Complex (COMPERJ), located a few miles from the bay. In 2012 AHOMAR became the catalyst for a transnational campaign on behalf of the Guanabara Bay fishing communities and against Petrobras’s operations. As any skilled activist would recommend, and the literature on transnational activism would attest, the United Nations’ Conference Rio + 20 (the twentieth-­ year follow-­up to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992) hosted by Rio de Janeiro in 2012, would be the perfect setting for local activists to highlight the environmental degradation of the Guanabara Bay ecosystem, and for international environmental groups concerned with the environmental impact of the global oil industry to deepen their understanding of its impact on the bay. During the civil society parallel event to Rio + 20, the think tank Transnational Institute (TIN) organized a “toxic tour” of the Guanabara Bay that included, among several stops, a visit to Petrobras’s Refinaria Duque de Caxias (REDUC). The event, widely advertised by Friends of the Earth–Brazil, created an opportunity for national and international activists to learn about the struggles of fishing communities around the bay and the grassroots organizations that advocate on their behalf, among them the ­AHOMAR (for instance, blog by Oilwatch activist at www.ejolt.org). Four days after the tour, the two representatives from AHOMAR who had spoken to activists about the effects of oil, mining, and steel projects on the bay were murdered (Friends of the Earth International at www.foei.org). Although the 2012 United Nations conference created opportunities for direct interactions between activists on issues of common interest, the United Nations did not become the main setting for lobbying or protests by the transnational campaign to leverage a response from the Brazilian government to the crimes. In other words, activists chose not to resort to the classical boomerang pattern of activism. Instead of seeking the visibility provided by lobbying multi­ lateral development institutions “outside” Brazil to effect change domestically, CSOs acted forcefully, but locally. Within a week of the end of Rio + 20, local and national civil society organizations issued a manifesto directed to the Brazilian justice system, to local authorities responsible for maintaining security in the area, and to Petrobras. It demanded an investigation, both of the crimes and of

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the role of economic interests in threatening fishing communities in the region. In the manifesto CSOs also demanded that Petrobras begin negotiations with fishing communities around the bay. One hundred and eighty-­seven organizations and forty-­eight individuals (professors, journalists, activists) signed the Manifesto de Repudio pelo assassinato dos Pescadores lideres da ­AHOMAR, June 29, 2012, Rio de Janeiro, which was widely disseminated on websites of Brazilian and international NGOs. Brazilian websites included those of Federação de Órgãos para Assistência Social e Educacional (FASE), Terra de Direitos, Instituto Brasileiro de Análises Sociais e Econômicas (IBASE), several workers unions, and the Brazilian Bar Association. Internationally, it was disseminated on websites of Friends of the Earth International, Oilwatch, and Amnesty USA and on other media. The number and nature of the organizations signing the manifesto exemplify a different structure of advocacy networking in the twenty-­first century from what Keck and Sikkink (1998) studied in the twentieth century, one that is illustrative of the changes that demand the theoretical reassessment proposed in this volume. Horizontality is evident. Although Friends of the Earth (FOE) International signed the manifesto, it did not do so “in the name” of its affiliated organizations, either in industrialized or developing countries. Eighteen other FOE groups, from FOE US and FOE Europe, to FOE Uganda and FOE Nepal independently signed the document. Another interesting aspect is the number of organizations from the global South that signed the manifesto (seventeen, excluding those from Brazil), when compared with the number of groups headquartered in or associated to organizations in the global North (eight). These numbers exclude the chapters of FOE, a total of nineteen: eight from the global South, nine from Europe and the United States, and FOE International. Most signatories, as is to be expected, were from Brazil. But here too one notices a different pattern from similar documents that in the past have demanded action from governments or international organizations. The most traditional and long-­established Brazilian civil society organizations at the national level, such as FASE, IBASE, Instituto de Estudos Socio-­Economicos (INESC), the Socioenvironmental Institute (ISA), and the Forum on Climate Change and Social Justice, to name some, all participated in the initiative and gave it ample visibility through their websites and media connections. The large majority of signatories, however, were small grassroots organizations, working among the communities around the Guanabara Bay and from as far away as the Amazon region. Clearly, new information technologies have facilitated dissemination of information about specific initiatives and democratized access to them. In the past, national and international advocacy organizations in developing countries like Brazil struggled to make available timely information to their local partners

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and to get fast feedback from them during campaigns, as local partners of­ten did not have access to a computer or even a fax machine. Today, however, even activists working in the least resourced organizations and in the most remote locations are likely to have real-­time access to collective advocacy initiatives. This is unsurprising, since in 2011, Brazil ranked fifth in the world for internet users (https://datareportal.com). Between 1990 and 2018 internet usage reached 70 percent of the population (https://data.worldbank.org). As Chacon (2019, 6) observes, information technologies have opened possibilities for regular citizens to make “their voices and causes heard.” Information technologies also seem to have been a determining factor in AHOMAR’s selection of campaign strategies. Activism unfolded mainly in cyber­ space, with information dissemination efforts and calls for action emerging in a decentralized fashion. Amnesty USA, for instance, called its supporters to send letters to the Brazilian ambassador in the United States, to the Brazilian federal secretary for human rights, and to the state-­level authority in charge of security in Rio de Janeiro (“Urgent Action—Activists at Risk in Brazil after others killed,” at www.amnestyusa.org). Others opted for joint media events, such as the presentation of the NGOs’ manifesto to the Brazilian Lawyers Association. The single most utilized strategy during the campaign was the dissemination of information about the killing of AHOMAR’s activists in both the electronic and print media. On a smaller scale, activist organizations disseminated reports and studies that informed audiences about the larger context of an unjust pattern of economic development and exploitation of natural resources plaguing the Guanabara Bay and its populations. The specific target audiences for such studies and reports, if there were any, could not be easily identified. This resonates with Joel Pruce and Alexandra Budabin’s claim “that recent uses of information have a weaker relationship to directly impacting po­liti­cal disputes or threats to human dignity” (Pruce and Budabin 2016) and thus the importance of carefully strategizing about audiences or targets of information produced and disseminated. Molly Land and Jay Aaronson make a similar point (2018). With the relatively quick resolution of the crimes (see http://blogs.oglobo .globo.com), transnational strategies subsided. For all of the transnational activism demanding justice for the crimes and accountability from Petrobras for socioenvironmental challenges in the bay, English was the dominant language between campaign participants outside Brazil. Though space constraints limit an in-­depth assessment of the impact of the language barrier in the sustainability of advocacy, the limits of the campaign on behalf of the rights of fishing communities in the bay demonstrate power asymmetries in transnational activism brought about by the dominance of the English language. Since the 2012 campaign, fishing communities around the Guanabara Bay

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have consolidated partnerships and explored conditions for the escalation of their activism. Though North–South alliances exist (mainly with OilWatch), the main drivers of transcalar activism are Brazilian organizations headquartered in Brazil’s southeast region, in­clud­ing Rio de Janeiro, working on initiatives through­out the country. The mission of the majority of such organizations is the protection of human rights (as is the case of Plataforma Dhesca Brasil, an umbrella group composed of forty organizations working on human rights, and economic, environmental, social and cultural rights; Terra de Direitos; Conectas; and Global Justice). These organizations work closely with groups that have his­tori­cally defended socioenvironmental rights in Brazil (such as FASE, the Movement of those Affected by Large Dams, Movimento dos Atingidos por Barragens [MAB], and Instituto Polis). In interviews, activists highlight both the strengths and challenges of sustaining transcalar activism. As Brazil is now seen by north­ern NGOs as a rising economic power, its civil society organizations have moved from being recipients of funding and technical assistance to potentially generating them. This has led INGOs to establish national offices in the country. Pioneer Brazilian NGOs (such as FASE, IBASE, INESC) have been among the most affected by the diminishing material support from INGOs, and from the competition they have encountered from their former donors, for funds and for po­liti­cal clout, since the former donors now operate as domestic entities (Andrade 2009; Aurelio Vianna, Ford Foundation Brazil, interview on July 7, 2014, RJ). Although national and local arenas have been the primary focus of activ­ ism, the network has also joined with human rights groups through­out Brazil to include the Guanabara Bay/COMPERJ among the cases evaluated by a mission of the United Nations Working Group on Human Rights to Brazil in 2015 (Letter to the UN Working Group on No­vem­ber 25, 2015, signed by Conectas, FASE, IBASE and fifteen other Brazilian human rights organizations). The UN Working Group organized a discussion forum with Petrobras and affected populations under the auspices of the local office of the United Nations (https://nacoesunidas.org). These initiatives were informed by a seminal study commissioned by Plataforma Dhesca Faustino and Furtado, 2013, which served as the basis for dialogue with federal and state agencies, such as the Rio de Janeiro’s Attorney General’s office, the National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES) (one of the main funders of COMPERJ), and the state environmental agency and state secretariat for human rights. The dialogue, however, has not led to any significant compromise. In 2018, CSOs brought the grievances of populations affected by the COMPERJ to the Attorney General’s office (Ministerio Publico), which initiated a court action against Petrobras, the state of Rio de Janeiro and its agency for environmental licensing on charges

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that the defendants caused environmental, social, and health harm in the municipality of Itaborai, site of COMPERJ (Ação Civil Publica Ambiental, Ref.: Inquérito Civil n.o 314/09 [MPRJ 200800200748] [and others], presented to the Civil Court, Itaborai, in June 26, 2018). Parallel to the local activism against the oil industry in Rio de Janeiro, the NGO FASE has been at the forefront of a national effort. In June 2015, the NGO FASE organized a meeting among representatives of communities affected by the oil industry through­out Brazil. At the end of the meeting participants announced the launch of the national campaign “Nem um Poço a Mais!” (“Not another oil well!). Campaign coordinators vowed to maintain a pattern of horizontality in the relationship among members and in their specific choices of strategies and priorities (http://fase.org.br). An important strategy in this latest campaign is the sharing of advocacy experiences among affected communities. During the meeting, participants listened to a presentation by Ecuadorian activist Fernando Farjado on the experience of the Campaign Yasunidos against oil exploration the Yasuni Park in the Ecuadorian rainforest. FASE has been a pioneer in efforts to organize face-­to-­face meetings among populations affected by transnational industries. For all the merits of the strategy, FASE officers, as did their peers at IBASE and Global Justice, acknowledge the difficulties of maintaining horizontality and of meeting face to face. In addition to transportation costs, which remain much higher in the developing world than in developed countries, language and cultural barriers are not easily overcome (interviews with Julina Malerba, Coordenadora do Nucleo de Jusitica e Direito Ambiental da FASE e Leticia Rangel Tura, Diretora Executiva Nacional, FASE, RJ, Julho 11, 2014). Activists in Latin America do not intend to make English the lingua franca in these meetings. It would be interesting to assess whether the use of Spanish would generate power distortions, in light of the fact that many indigenous peoples affected by the oil industry in Latin America do not speak Spanish as their first language. Limited economic resources and language barriers challenge the formation of transnational networks as well as transcalar advocacy beyond Latin America. FASE activists report encountering the same difficulties in their effort to build solidarity among communities affected by mining operations of Brazil’s multi­ national company Vale, with the goal of holding the company accountable for the impact of its operations across the globe. With limited participation by north­ern NGOs in these efforts (Oilwatch SurAmerica is the notable exception), transcalar advocacy may be hindered due to the sheer lack of material ­resources and limited technical capacity by potential members, the lack of a shared common language being yet another difficulty. There is an incipient effort among activists from the campaign “Not an-

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other oil well!” to coordinate initiatives with those of the international campaign against fracking (“No fracking Brasil”) spearheaded by the international NGO 350.org. At this point, both campaigns (“Not another well” and “No fracking Brasil”) seem to be unfolding mostly on cyberspace, which raises serious questions about their effectiveness (see warnings by Gladwell [2010], Khamis [2017], and Dookhoo and Dodd [2019]). Both campaigns have a very diffuse target (the oil industry and the dominant economic model that heavily relies on nonrenewable energy sources). As a consequence, activists have struggled to locate transnational, and for that matter even local and national, arenas for their activism. It remains unclear whether cyberspace is a sufficient arena/scale to promote structural changes in the global pattern of exploitation of natural resources. In the words of Brazilian activist Mauren Santos, coordinator of socioenvironmental justice in the Heinrich Böll Foundation, “We do use email and iPhones, of course, but we can’t effectively handle the volume of information. At one point, there are so many emails [with different demands] that it is impossible to keep the focus, and yet we cannot ignore the existence of this [cyber]space. Though the information is transparent, there is not coordination, no focus. NGOs are lagging behind in using technology tools more effectively” (interview, July 16, 2014, Rio de Janeiro). CONCLUSIONS

This study aimed to advance understanding of how socioenvironmental activism has been affected since the late 1990s by two trends: democratization, in particular, administrative decentralization, and myriad pressures on corporations for the development of socially and environmentally sustainable images and portfolio. I argued that such trends have increased opportunities for CSOs to participate in socioenvironmental governance schemes with both pub­ lic agencies and private corporations, but they have also imposed challenges to effective transcalar advocacy. Redemocratization, in Brazil and through­out Latin America, has intensified processes of administrative decentralization and of participatory policy-­ making. Civil society has thus experienced new opportunities for dialogue and co-­implementation of policies with state agencies. Local organizations’ success in addressing their grievances using local channels sidelines the relevance of the boomerang pattern of activism and reveals at least one way in which our understanding of transnational advocacy may be better served by embracing the concept of transcalar advocacy. Yet formal engagement with pub­lic and private agencies in socioenvironmental governance schemes, for all its merits, has imposed po­liti­cal and capacity burdens on CSOs that have at times weakened

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their activism. Likewise, while such engagement has increased the range of potential partners of local CSOs, it has also led to competition, rather than cooperation, among them. Globally, arenas of interstate deliberation have multiplied. While the United Nations sys­tem remains one locus of transcalar activism on behalf of socio­ environmental and humanitarian causes, it is no longer the main one. Both nations and civil societies in the global South have strived to create alternative regional and cross-­regional arenas of transcalar deliberation. Yet, these alternative settings do not provide the same level of visibility to activism that the United Nations sys­tem once did. Transcalar activism has begun to explore alternative spaces for action, from regional organizations to cyberspace, but the impact of this strategy remains unclear. As states’ capacity to control the movement of goods, peoples, ideas, funds, and even species across borders decreases, their role as arbiters of conflicts tends to become more limited. Targeting the state to leverage change may no longer be the most productive strategy activists can use, particularly when dealing with powerful corporations in strategic industries. What seems certain is that the signature “boomerang” pattern of transnational network activism is no longer the main tool in activists’ “toolbox.” As globalization of the economy and of communication technologies progresses, corporations have become increasingly aware of the importance of projecting a responsible corporate image. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has  thus become a widely embraced strategy within the oil industry and beyond. While in­di­vidual NGOs may have benefited from a proliferation of CSR funding opportunities in areas of rapid and intense development, civil society activism as a whole has not fared as well. Co-­optation is a problem, but more of­ ten a project-­funding model has limited activism through other means. Project funding has not only generated competition among CSOs but also fragmented their missions. This fragmentation has reduced the energy of activists for coordinating strategies toward a common goal. Despite this, coordinated efforts do happen, but in developing countries they seem to be increasingly less dependent on support from north­ern NGOs. South–South advocacy campaigns, however, face unique constraints, such as lack of funding, language barriers, and diffuse arenas for activism. Finally, although activism in cyberspace has played an important role in connecting activists for immediate purposes (such as signing a petition or manifesto), it has yet to prove that it may be an effective scale in which to promote structural change.

8 TRANSNATIONAL ADVOCACY AND INCREASING LOCAL AGENCY Vietnamese NGOs in the HIV/AIDS Sector CHRISTOPHER L. PALLAS AND LAN PHUONG NGUYEN

T

he academic discourse on advocacy by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in low-­or middle-­income countries targeting nondomestic actors has his­tori­cally focused on partnerships between these “south­ern” actors and NGOs in high-­income or “north­ern” states (e.g., Keck and Sikkink 1998; Bob 2005; Carpenter 2007a). However, the emphasis on North–South partnerships in the literature can give rise to the assumption that effective transnational advocacy by south­ern NGOs requires the resources, expertise, or po­liti­cal connections of north­ern NGOs. Even as south­ern NGOs have expanded their capacity and resource base, little research has been done on their potential to target nondomestic actors without the aid of north­ern NGOs. The experience of Vietnamese NGOs challenges this mode of thinking. Vietnamese NGOs (VNGOs), particularly those working in the HIV/AIDS sector, have had significant success in their efforts to change the policies and practices of bilateral and multilateral agencies and institutions toward Vietnam. They have done so largely without north­ern NGO partners and in an environment in which many international NGOs are strongly disincentivized to participate in advocacy on policy related to Vietnam. The experiences of VNGOs thus highlight the changing context of advocacy, while VNGOs’ engagement with transnational actors around both domestic and international policies emphasizes the usefulness of the transcalar framework. This chapter poses two questions. First, how have Vietnamese NGOs working in the HIV/AIDS sector affected nondomestic actors without close north­ ern NGO partnership? Second, to what extent does the experience of Vietnamese NGOs suggest the potential for independent transcalar advocacy by NGOs in other south­ern states?

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To investigate these questions, we (an academic and practitioner team) c­ onducted a novel case study of VNGOs working in the HIV/AIDS sector, interviewing staff at the most prominent Hanoi-­based VNGOs and triangulating this data with interviews with the VNGOs’ interlocutors in national government, international NGOs, foreign governments, and intergovernmental organizations. These data were supplemented by a review of policy documents from actors in the sector and participant observation of a multistakeholder conference. Data were analyzed thematically using an inductive, grounded-­theory process to identify VNGO advocacy efforts, the outcomes of those efforts, and the mechanisms driving the effectiveness of successful efforts. The research finds that VNGOs have been effective in changing the policy or practices of nondomestic actors for several reasons. VNGOs working in HIV/AIDS select as the targets of their advocacy those nondomestic agencies and organizations that are interested in or in need of local perspectives or knowledge. VNGO staff are highly credible, well-­educated professionals who have built long-­term relationships with their interlocutors and carefully identify points where an alignment of VNGO and transnational actor agendas makes transnational actors amenable to VNGO input. Lastly, in the HIV/AIDS sector local NGOs are relatively scarce due to government restrictions on NGO formation, and VNGOs are also willing to leverage this relative scarcity to enhance their negotiating power. These tactics are very similar to the insider lobbying tactics employed by many north­ern NGOs, especially NGOs with strong technical expertise, high organizational capacity, and professionalized leadership (Mosley 2011; cf. Dinh et al. 2020). This suggests a certain convergence, that is, that north­ern and south­ern NGO advocacy behavior may become increasingly similar because both sets of NGOs face the same lobbying targets and adopt similar lobby­ing techniques to achieve success. The broader question, then, is whether NGOs in other south­ern contexts can adopt the tactics that make VNGOs effective in their advocacy. We tentatively suggest that, in time, they can. Vietnam’s regulation of the VNGO sector has had the effect of concentrating resources in a limited number of VNGOs and enhancing the professionalization of VNGO staff. This situation, combined with high demand among international actors for local NGOs’ expertise (see Uhlin, this volume), has increased the agency of local NGOs. While the organizational capacity and resources seen in Vietnam are not yet common in many south­ern states, they are evolving naturally as more south­ern economies reach middle-­income level and local NGOs acquire more resources and experience (see Appe, this volume). Moreover, international actors’ need for and interest in local expertise are not unique to Vietnam. Insider lobbying is less dependent

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on pressure or coercion than outside tactics, and transnational and local agendas are of­ten aligned (at least at the level of broad goals or objectives) on many development issues. Thus, we argue that the Vietnamese experience is likely a leading indicator of local NGO agency emerging in other middle-­income countries. This chapter proceeds in six parts. First, it presents the origins of the current research and the methodology under which it was conducted. It then pre­ sents two sections of empirical findings, one on the Vietnamese context and one on the advocacy activities of VNGOs. Fourth, it analyzes the mechanisms of VNGO influence, connecting VNGO strategy with specific details of their operating context to identify factors facilitating their advocacy effectiveness. Fifth, it assesses the likelihood that these factors will facilitate independent tran­scalar advocacy by NGOs in other low-­or middle-­income countries. The chapter concludes with a discussion of limitations and future research. CASE SELECTION AND METHODOLOGY

The lead researcher origi­nally chose Vietnam to explore transcalar advocacy by south­ern NGOs due to the work of two Vietnamese NGOs: the Institute for ­Social and Development Studies (ISDS) and the Center for Supporting Community Development Initiatives (SCDI). Both were key national players in the field of pub­lic health, and particularly in HIV/AIDS. In addition, both were actively engaging global pub­lic health institutions, in­clud­ing UNAIDS and the WHO, on HIV/AIDs issues. Their work suggested that Vietnamese NGO advocacy represented a criti­cal case with the potential to challenge conventional wisdom and generate new theory. On this basis, Pallas sought and received funding to examine transcalar NGO advocacy via a case study in Vietnam. After arrival in Vietnam, the research expanded to encompass more broadly Hanoi-­ based civil society organizations working in the HIV/AIDS sector. Nguyen, a Vietnamese practitioner working for a major VNGO in the HIV/AIDS sector, joined the study, contributing local knowledge and perspective. The study involved in-­depth interviews with twenty-­six staff members from the Vietnamese government, international donors, international NGOs, and Vietnamese CSOs; participant observation at CSO events in Vietnam; and analy­sis of documentary sources. Research was conducted during a ten-­week period in 2012. Respondents were selected purposively, using chain referrals from multiple starting points to sample across multiple communities and ensure a diversity of perspectives. In particular, we sought to interview both local NGOs and the nondomestic targets of their advocacy, to examine the effects of advocacy from both sides. Interviews were carried out under a protocol designed to protect the anonymity of respondents discussing potentially sensi-

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tive subjects. Interviews used a semistructured questionnaire to ensure comparability across interviews. All interviews were audio-­recorded and transcribed, except when the subject declined recording. Data were analyzed thematically during 2012 and 2013 using a grounded theory process to derive hypotheses explaining VNGO advocacy effectiveness. Our emphasis was on understanding the characteristics of VNGOs and their operating environment and on identifying VNGO advocacy efforts and the specific outcomes of those efforts. We defined effectiveness in advocacy as observable change in the policies or behaviors of the target of the advocacy (cf. Buffardi, Pekkanen, and Smith 2017; Mosley 2011). Where we identified instances of effective advocacy, we analyzed advocacy strategy and tactics to identify the mechanisms of impact. THE VIETNAMESE CONTEXT

The Vietnamese context diverges significantly from the typical context of the transnational advocacy described in the boomerang literature, both in the will­ing­ ness of north­ern NGOs to become engaged and the capacities of local NGOs. These variations result from government skepticism regarding foreign NGOs and the local civil society sector, of which VNGOs are a part. In the view of the Vietnamese government, the concept of civil society, of which NGOs are a part, is a West­ern idea imported into Vietnam and artificially planted there. Vietnam Communist Party officials view the term “civil society” itself as sensitive and avoid using the term in concrete contexts (such as workshop papers) or in conversations with researchers (Hannah 2007; Vu 2019). The Vietnamese government is also cognizant of the role played by civil society organizations in pro-­democracy movements in other countries (United Nations Development Program 2011; Dinh et al. 2020; cf. Thayer 2008) and may view NGOs as social critics with the potential to destabilize the social order (Nguyen 2019). The government points to a group of government-­funded “mass organizations,” such as the Trade Union, the Women’s Union, and the Farmer ­Association, as examples of indigenous civil society (see Khuat 2007) and has actively restricted the creation of West­ern-­style NGOs. This government skepticism toward NGOs has had two effects. The first is to sharply limit the interest of north­ern NGOs in assisting Vietnamese NGOs in advocacy. A number of international NGOs based in the global North are active as development implementers in Vietnam. The work of many of these organizations would naturally be assisted by advocacy on local issues. This is particularly true in the HIV/AIDS sector. The subpopulations most affected by HIV/AIDS in Vietnam are all highly stigmatized there: female sex workers, injection drug users, and men who have sex with men. The government considers sex work and

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injection drug use “social evils,” and the government has pursued a number of problematic policies, in­clud­ing interning drug users and sex workers in detention centers. However, although a number of bilateral donors and multilateral technical agencies have pursued low-­key efforts to reshape Vietnamese policy, in­clud­ing ending the internment of sex workers, almost no north­ern NGOs have become actively and publicly engaged in advocacy on Vietnamese issues. Many of the north­ern NGOs active in Vietnam work with the Vietnamese government in the course of the NGOs’ development activities and do not want to be seen as challenging the government’s policy or practices, especially in sensitive areas like human rights. As a respondent from one international organization noted, “It’s also fair to say that international NGOs in Vietnam tend not to work in the realm of law and justice area. Maybe it’s too sensitive” (interview 14). The respondent continued, “Except for one exception that I just thought of, no international NGO has come and said we want to kind of work on this area.” Another respondent noted that whereas in other countries foreign NGOs wishing to engage the government sought out local NGO partners to legitimate their positions, in Vietnam, “It’s almost the opposite” (interview 2), that is, that foreign NGOs avoided pub­lic association with local NGOs. Government sensitivity also leads to donor caution in funding advocacy. As one VNGO respondent noted, “Advocacy is not something that many donors want to give money to.” Due to the limited number of VNGOs active in the HIV/AIDS sector, inter­ view numbers are withheld for respondents from Vietnamese organizations to preserve anonymity and inhibit triangulating any one organization or respondent identity across multiple statements. The sec­ond effect is the promulgation of government regulations restricting the formation of local NGOs. Registering an organization is difficult. Vietnamese NGOs typically register as technical organizations overseen by the Viet­nam Union of Science and Technology Associations (VUSTA). Registration requires a minimum of five university-­educated staff, a certain level of cash holdings, and a physical office. As a result, relatively few formal NGOs exist, but those that do tend to have professional staff and relatively high levels of ­resources. The scarcity of VNGOs in the HIV/AIDS sector has further increased the capacities of the organizations present. Five VNGOs play prominent roles in HIV/AIDS work in Hanoi and the north­ern part of the country, although other VNGOs play less prominent roles. The major VNGOs have received significant capacity-­building support and work closely with international donors. They also manage networks of unregistered community-­based organizations (CBOs), civil society groups that fail to meet the government requirements for registration and usually cannot legally receive funding directly from foreign donors.

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As a result of these factors, data from Vietnam runs counter to prevailing ideas about transnational advocacy as described in the existing literature. On the one hand, north­ern organizations are reluctant to become involved in Vietnamese policy advocacy, despite some obvious needs. Thus, there are few nondomestic NGO partners assisting VNGOs in their advocacy efforts. On the other, because of the legal constraints already noted, Vietnamese NGOs possess significant financial resources and highly educated staff. Because of their high capacity these VNGOs, along with one unusually professionalized CBO, form the focus of our examination of Vietnamese transcalar advocacy. Vietnamese Engagement in Transcalar Advocacy

The research identified a number of instances in which VNGOs have targeted domestic actors. Vietnamese NGOs occasionally have done so using traditional boomerang strategies, working with the limited set of foreign NGOs willing to engage in policy advocacy related to Vietnam. As one VNGO respondent noted regarding human rights, “We work with Human Rights Watch, we work with Open Society, to bring the issue out. . . . We had a lot of discussion [with] the [International AIDS] Alliance directors.” However, these instances are rare and are unconnected with observable policy change. Instead, the majority of tran­scalar advocacy by VNGOs involves independent engagement with international actors seeking to change their policies or practices regarding Vietnam. As one VNGO respondent noted, sometimes an international NGO partner helps create the opportunities for independent advocacy even if there is no subsequent collaboration in advocacy. As one respondent explained, “Sometimes they introduce us to people, and then we have a connection with the people, and then we can communicate with them directly.” Even more commonly, VNGOs engage with foreign government and technical agency representatives posted to or visiting Vietnam. A respondent recounted some examples: “We had a visit of a UN rapporteur on human rights and health last year. I was in a meeting with the UN rapporteur on culture. Then there’s . . . [a] meeting with the U.S. embassy, with USAID. We bring topics to international forums, or to meet with the people.” Such activities have been effective on a number of fronts. Encouraging Foreign Donor Engagement with Vietnam

Nearly all of Vietnam’s HIV/AIDS response is funded by foreign donors, particularly the Global Fund and the US government’s President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). In 2018, President Trump signed a bill reauthoriz­ ing funding for PEPFAR until 2023. Vietnamese NGOs have engaged with both of these donors. The engagement with PEPFAR was relatively minor but highlights VNGOs inclusion in high-­level decisions. One VNGO respondent re-

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counted: “When the delegation . . . of the parliament of the US [sic] came to Vietnam, for, I think, for the decision that if Vietnam should be included in the PEPFAR or not . . . I was invited to the meeting with the delegation. And then, in the meeting some member of the US Parliament asked that if the US support Vietnam HIV/AIDS, the US Government would like to work with the civil society sector in Vietnam. . . . I was invited to say something.” Vietnamese NGOs played a stronger role in the success of Vietnam’s proposal for funding from the Global Fund in 2009. The Global Fund (formally the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria) is a multilateral donor and one of the world’s largest dispensers of funding to fight its target diseases. Countries seeking Global Fund money must prepare detailed proposals, and funding is awarded competitively. One of the Global Fund’s requirements is multistakeholder involvement at the national level in managing Global Fund grants. Although Vietnam had submitted several successful proposals to the Global Fund, the 2009 proposal was the first one prepared with Vietnamese civil society participation. Vietnamese NGO support, in­clud­ing a presentation on Vietnamese NGOs’ role in the process in an international forum while the Global Fund was considering Vietnam’s proposal, was influential in the success of the proposal. One VNGO presenter recounted that, “People said that to me afterwards, that [my presentation] helped to explain to the people who can decide about which proposal would win. . . . So, we won the proposal, and I think of course, there is a lot of factors, [but] effectiveness in speaking in the right place with the right people helps, as well.” Shaping International Actors’ Policies and Practices in Vietnam

VNGOs working in the HIV/AIDS sector have used formal dialogues to challenge donor policies and practices, with varying degrees of success. One VNGO, for instance, recounted using a meeting with PEPFAR representatives to challenge (unsuccessfully) the metrics PEPFAR used to measure outreach in its evaluations. The same VNGO reported building relationships through other engagements: “Sometimes we also try to influence the donor formally in terms of like in one of our symposiums. Now the last international symposium it was really like the first national discussion of sexual equality. We did organize a donor dialogue roundtable where we invited some important donors and really advocated for more funding and support for sexually based research, and programs.” This engagement, in turn, appeared to influence donor practice. The respondent noted, “From some donors we got quite a bit of positive confirmation in the dialogues,” in­clud­ing support from a major international donor for the ­VNGO’s program on sexuality.

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Other organizations report similar experiences influencing the practices of international donors. One highly professionalized community-­based organization (not officially registered as a VNGO) reported: We’ve done that [sought to influence donors] for quite some time, quite a lot. [Name withheld] foundation does not fund policy advocacy. They do not fund any networking activities, but [our organization] applied for a grant . . . on policy advocacy networking and [we] were able to persuade the selection committee that this was really necessary for the community of people with HIV. After that [we] got the grant for doing what [we] wanted. Another example is with [a sec­ond donor]. And they also called for a grant application on social entrepreneurship for the poor [in rural areas]. . . . [We] also applied for the grant and [our] application was on social entrepreneurship but in the city, in urban areas. [We] were going to persuade the selection committee that the poor in urban areas also have to face a lot of difficulties especially when they are marginalized populations. [Our] application fought to the very final round. [We] didn’t get the grant but the selection committee said [our] application made them have to think again about the criteria of selecting appropriate candidates. (Translated from Vietnamese by authors)

Likewise, a number of representatives from donors and technical agencies reported an openness to VNGO input and confirmed that VNGOs had influenced their organizations’ policies and practices. As a leader from one technical agency responded, “‘Did they influence us?’ Yes. Definitely” (interview 15). VNGOs’ transcalar advocacy goes beyond shaping donor policies specifically toward Vietnam. VNGOs have also engaged in global policy-­making by advocating for compulsory licensing for medicines and a change in the Global Fund’s global grant-­making strategy. While it is difficult to identify specific VNGO influences when working on issues of this scale, VNGO engagement in such advocacy reflects a level of agency on par with many north­ern NGOs. It also emphasizes the blurring of domestic and international politics that mark the shift from transnational advocacy to transcalar advocacy. WHAT FACILITATES VNGO ADVOCACY EFFECTIVENESS?

The data on Vietnamese advocacy indicate clearly that Vietnamese NGOs in the HIV/AIDS sector engaged with non-­Vietnamese actors in numerous instances during a relatively short time period. While the study did not request data for a delimited time frame, responses generally highlighted events within the ten years prior to the study. Moreover, VNGOs and international actors

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agreed that VNGOs had influenced actor behavior or policy in discernable ways, a typical test for effectiveness in advocacy. The influence and participation reported were achieved independently rather than in partnership with superiorly resourced north­ern NGOs. While north­ern NGOs, at times, helped VNGOs to make contacts with policy makers, there is no evidence of active coordination or collaboration in the advocacy itself. This pattern sharply contradicts the pattern observed in the literature on transnational advocacy insofar as Vietnamese NGOs were able to engage nondomestic actors without the assistance of an international network of NGO partners. Thus, in this section we ask: How were VNGOs able to achieve this level of participation and influence? We find that VNGOs pursued an effective insider lobbying strategy, developing and using personal connections with key policy makers and capitalizing on donors’ need for information on Vietnam and on VNGOs’ ability to offer a credible local perspective. Their leverage was also magnified by high levels of professionalism, the relative scarcity of competing organizations, and occasional collaboration. An Insider Strategy

The key to VNGO influence on the policies and practices of international actors working in Vietnam is personal engagement with key actor staff. As one technical agency staff person explained: “The way those things [VNGO input] would come about would be very informal. What happens is, you get to know the people in these organizations. You meet them at workshops and you have lunch with them or you have drinks with them. I have of­ten had drinks or lunch with [a certain VNGO leader] and we will just talk about what’s going on in Vietnam” (interview 14). From a VNGO perspective, this person-­to-­person approach fit naturally within the culture of Vietnam. As one VNGO leader explained, “if we want to have a real discussion, real engagement we’ve got to have a physical forum. We’ve got to get people to meet face to face.” Personal relationships enable ­VNGOs to identify points of potential alignment between their organizations and their international counterparts. Responses from interviewees indicated that international actors’ receptivity to VNGO input varied by actor. Some actors had strong, predetermined agendas. Others, especially multilateral technical agencies, were more flexible. VNGOs and some CBOs were aware of this and apparently targeted their appeals to match audience receptivity. As one VNGO leader explained, “So, I mean it’s just like cards, that if you play the cards at the right moment . . . you can win the game.” Relationships also allow VNGOs and international actors to identify areas of common interest. As a technical agency staff person explained about conversations with the staff person’s Vietnamese

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NGO counterpart, “He talks about stuff that he’s engaged on, that he thinks is important and so do I” (interview 14). Alignment between VNGOs and international actors, and the potential for influence this entails, is also enhanced by the actors’ need for local input to advance their agendas or the actors’ value for having a local perspective. One respondent recounted how, after speaking at an international meeting, “people came to me and said, ‘Oh, it was very powerful, because we have never heard from Vietnam. We never heard from civil society in Vietnam.’” Similarly, a VNGO leader recounted how certain connections started because an international donor “was looking for a researcher within the country to do a research paper on HIV policy,” and the VNGO leader was qualified; “it [was] published in English and Vietnamese. We had a roundtable to have a discussion, and people came.” This sort of interest facilitates VNGO influence and creates opportunities for VNGOs to showcase their expertise. Significantly, this insider strategy relies on connections, local knowledge, and credibility rather than material resources. VNGOs that do conduct domestic advocacy use a similar insider strategy in attempts to influence the government. Discussing insider strategies in this context, one leader explained: “It doesn’t require a lot of money. It requires that you have the money when you need to spend it, and you need the people who are able to navigate around the system. You need to have a lot of connections inside the sys­tem to know what is happening, and which button to push, and when the opportunity arises.” The same could readily be said about VNGOs’ engagement with international actors regarding their policies toward Vietnam. Professionalism, Scarcity, and Coordination

The statements above reveal that Vietnamese NGO influence is a two-­part equation: VNGOs seek influence in their insider strategies, but international actors are also interested in local perspectives and information. Yet the interest of (at least some) donors and technical agencies in local input is hardly unique to Vietnam. While the undemocratic nature of the Vietnamese government appears to enhance the interest of some international actors in a grassroots perspective, this situation exists in numerous low-­and middle-­income countries where governments are of­ten only nominally democratic or governance is marred by corruption. Moreover, the openness of international actor staff to VNGO input was identified in multiple international organizations working on a wide variety of issues related to HIV/AIDS. These factors suggest that VNGO influence results not from unusual receptivity by the international actors engaging with Vietnam, but rather from characteristics of the VNGO community in the HIV/AIDS sector.

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One of the most notable characteristics of the sector is the high level of professionalism among the VNGOs active in it. Lead staff are typically highly educated and fluent English speakers. While some VNGOs have sprung up and disappeared over the years, key VNGOs in the HIV/AIDS sector are also long-­ term players, usually with five or more years of experience focusing on HIV/ AIDS issues. While certain activities overlap, each organization has its own approach to the HIV/AIDS issue or its own focus areas, and staff are typically able to discuss their work in sophisticated, specific terms. The Vietnamese sector differs significantly from many low-­income countries in which NGO work is of­ten rent-­seeking and entrepreneurial, an alternative means of employment in the face of a weak formal sector. The NGOs in such countries of­ten appear and disappear rapidly, shift focus to chase trends in donor aid, and parrot ­donor language. The professionalism of the VNGOs results directly from government registration requirements. Nearly all Hanoi-­based NGOs are registered under the Vietnam Union for Science and Technology Associations. As one leader explained: “Under VUSTA for example, if you want to set up an NGO, first of all you must have something to do with research and training. Then you must have at least five people with university degrees. You must have a certain amount of cash as capital. You must have an office space. So, yes, that’s why the NGOs are more professional.” In addition to enhancing professionalism, these requirements lead to a relative scarcity of VNGOs in the HIV/AIDS sector. This scarcity gives VNGOs greater leverage with donors. While advocacy is a sensitive issue in Vietnam, it has an important place in the fight against HIV/AIDS because things like social stigma and drug policy play a key role in whether individuals seek testing or treatment, and in how the disease spreads. However, one VNGO leader explained, “It is actually not easy to find in Vietnam, an effective NGO that also is interested in advocacy.” If a donor is interested in encouraging local advocacy in Vietnam and working with a genuine partner (as opposed to a subcontractor), there are few VNGOs to choose from. This can give VNGOs influence in requesting changes in donor policies or practices. The community-­based organization previously described, which persuaded a donor to fund its advocacy, explained, “back then there was only [our CBO] who worked with people with HIV. In [the donor’s] objectives they had to give some small grants to Vietnamese organizations so they were more willing . . .to take risk.” Scarcity can also reduce competition. Respondents reported little competition among VNGOs at the time of the research because of abundant funding and the small number of VNGOs. While there was also relatively little coordination, coordination did sometimes occur in policy advocacy. As one leader de-

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scribed, “We of­ten have a core group, and for the core group we of­ten have the united plan.” Such coordination further limits the abilities of donors or technical agencies interested in working with Vietnamese NGOs to play organizations against one another or to persuade organizations to realign themselves with donor interests. BEYOND THE BOOMERANG: IS THE VNGO EXPERIENCE PREDICTIVE OF A BROADER TREND?

The capacity of VNGOs to engage in transcalar advocacy without north­ern partners is both striking and significant. It suggests a new level of agency for south­ern NGOs that runs counter to the historic pattern of south­ern NGO reliance on north­ern NGO assistance for effective transnational advocacy and the problematic power disparities such reliance entails. Indeed, when compared with the general literature on NGO advocacy, we find that VNGO strategies are quite similar to those used by north­ern NGOs and that key enabling factors— such as the presence of professional leaders and the development of valuable expertise—are precisely those that enable effective insider strategy in north­ern NGOs (see, for example, Mosley 2011; Buffardi, Pekkanen, and Smith 2017). Interestingly, recent research by other scholars into VNGOs’ domestic advocacy strategies also finds a pattern of insider lobbying (Vu 2019; Dinh et al. 2020). In short, VNGOs possess within themselves many of the qualities that the literature on transnational advocacy suggests must be supplied by north­ ern NGO partners. We suggest that this level of agency is not unique to Vietnam but is also present or forthcoming in other middle-­income countries. As mentioned, the interest of international actors in local perspectives is not unique to Vietnam. What is unusual in Vietnam is the credibility of the local NGOs, their relationships with international actors, and their relatively high levels of leverage in their negotiations with donors and technical agencies. The tendency toward insider lobbying may be magnified by Vietnam’s authoritarian context (Vu 2019; Dinh et al. 2020). Nonetheless, the characteristics that enable VNGOs to engage well with international actors may be replicated in other middle-­income countries. Economic development is typically accompanied by growth of the formal sector and higher levels of education in the general population. Such trends can reduce the number of local NGOs developed as make-­work entrepreneurial projects by individuals unable to find formal sector work or pursuing greater financial returns as NGO leaders. They also increase the pool of educated staff available as NGO employees. Competition between NGOs and the private sector may, in fact, yield positive benefits

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by enhancing the likelihood that NGO staff take their jobs out of interest in an NGO’s mission rather than financial necessity. Greater professionalism and a clearer sense that local NGOs are motivated by conviction rather than profit can increase the credibility of local NGOs with international counterparts. At the same time, better financial resources may make NGOs more durable. As noted, influential NGOs in Vietnam have a long-­term presence in the HIV/AIDS sector, typically outlasting several rotations of international actor staff. This kind of longevity further enhances NGO credibility and makes local NGOs a useful source for information for international actors seeking to know the history of a particular issue area. Long-­term presence, along with organizational and in­di­vidual credibility, is also crucial for developing the sort of personal relationships that make the insider lobbying observed in Vietnam possible. Competition between local NGOs may be greater in other countries with fewer restrictions on NGO formation (Rodrigues, this volume). Thus, the leverage held by VNGOs is unlikely to be quickly duplicated in many other states. Such leverage, however, is based on an implicit ability to say “No” to potential donors, to withhold participation until the NGO’s conditions are met. If middle-­income countries develop indigenous funding for local NGOs, for example, through local foundations or a tradition of member giving, indigenous funding sources may give local NGOs leverage vis-­à-­vis foreign donors. Even where the environment in state is unconducive to local fundraising, South– South funding may expand the number of donors open to local NGOs and allow local NGOs to find partners more aligned with their values and agenda (Moilwa 2015). In countries or regions where these things exist, local NGO effectiveness in engaging with international actors seems likely to improve more quickly than in other places. CONCLUSION

Typical depictions of transnational advocacy by NGOs from low-­and middle-­ income countries assume that local NGOs undertake lobbying of nondomestic actors via networks with NGOs from high-­income countries. As noted in the introduction to this volume (Pallas and Bloodgood), this pattern is rooted in a his­tori­cal reality in which south­ern NGOs have of­ten lacked the resources, access, or expertise to effectively engage international policy makers or foreign audiences. While this pattern is empirically based, it inhibits recognizing the increasing agency of south­ern NGOs and may generate a default assumption that south­ern NGOs are always and arbitrarily dependent on north­ern assistance. It also assumes that the policy blockages south­ern NGOs face are primarily at the domestic level, while their sources of assistance are primarily international.

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Data from Vietnam challenge such assumptions. VNGOs have repeatedly sought to shape the policies and behavior of foreign actors toward Vietnam, in­ clud­ing the policies and practices of bilateral donors and multilateral techni­cal agencies. These efforts highlight the fact that international actors can themselves be a source of policy obstacles (as well as potential allies in addressing domestic blockages). Indeed, the ability of Vietnamese NGOs to attempt to shape foreign actors’ influence forms a useful counterpoint to Bob’s (2005, 2012) accounts of foreign NGOs as exploiting and reframing local debates. The data also show that foreign NGOs may choose to partner with the local government to the exclusion of engagement with local NGOs. These findings emphasize the increasing blurriness of traditional divisions and the importance of shifting from a transnational to a transcalar framework. VNGOs’ advocacy efforts have been repeatedly effective, with both V ­ NGOs and international actors identifying specific instances in which VNGO lobbying changed the international actors’ policies or practices. VNGOs exhibit effective insider lobbying, using their professionalism and local knowledge to build long-­term relationships with foreign actors and leverage their local perspective for policy influence. These findings suggest that, with regard to transcalar advocacy without north­ern NGO partners, the literature and theories on advocacy effectiveness developed in north­ern contexts may be increasingly relevant to the activities of high-­capacity south­ern NGOs. NGOs in other south­ern settings do not benefit from the scarcity of local NGOs prompted by Vietnam’s strict regulations (Rodrigues, this volume), although Suparna Chaudhry and Andrew Heiss (this volume) discuss how this is changing. However, NGOs elsewhere of­ten benefit from similar interest among donors and technical agencies in organizations with a local perspective (Uhlin, this volume). Researchers in a number of other contexts, in­clud­ing Appe, Rod­rigues, and Starobin in this volume, have reported increasing levels of independent advocacy, and these reports cluster in middle-­income countries. Rod­rigues (this volume) also notes the increasing prevalence of insider lobbying. As the NGO sector matures, particularly in middle-­income countries, local NGOs may increase in professionalism and credibility and financial independence, increasing their ability to engage in advocacy and effectively influence international actors.

9 COMPLIANT STATES, RELUCTANT COMMUNITIES? Transcalar Activism against Gender-­Based Violence KARISA CLOWARD

T

here have been empirical changes in the methods and organization of transnational advocacy since the 1990s. This evolution in practice in turn requires an evolution in theory, as our theoretical tools must keep pace with the reality on the ground. This chapter addresses the question of what is changing empirically in transnational advocacy, specifically arguing that while south­ern states were generally portrayed as resistant adopters or outright opponents of a range of international norms in the early transnational advocacy literature, many states have become much more responsive to international norm promotion efforts since the late 1990s, at least in certain issue areas. As a result, theoretical frameworks like Keck and Sikkink’s boomerang model, which identify states as the primary impediment to norm change and thus the primary target of transnational advocacy, may need to be rethought, and a turn to transcalar advocacy is increasingly appropriate. As such, this chapter engages with the question of who initiates and who participates in such transcalar advocacy, and of how the targets of advocacy respond. In particular, it argues that theory on transnational advocacy should take more seriously the possibility of willing state adoption and even internalization of international norms, which will enable it to look beyond state compliance to issues of actual efficacy in normative campaigns— even if states are fully complying with their international obligations, the underlying problems that initially motivated the campaigns may not be resolved. This chapter investigates transcalar advocacy around the issue of gender-­ based violence (GBV), with particular attention to campaigns against female genital mutilation (FGM) and early marriage. The World Health Organization (WHO) (2020) defines FGM as a practice comprising “all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-­medical reasons.” Early marriage is defined as the marriage of children and adolescents under the age of eighteen. Though existing literature on transnational advocacy against GBV usefully considers

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the interplay between international, state, and domestic actors in the pursuit of women’s rights, the attention has been mainly on activists’ own actions and their ability to elicit policy changes and policy implementation from the state. Yet because GBV is primarily carried out in “private” spaces and because many states have already taken positive legal and policy action against GBV, one must also consider activists’ (and states’) ability to elicit change from in­di­vidual gender violence perpetrators. The first section of this chapter reveals the state-­centric focus of much of the early international norms literature and argues the limitations of such a focus for the study of transnational campaigns against GBV. In the sec­ond section, I articulate a set of expectations for how individuals might behave similarly to and differently from states in response to transcalar activism targeting their behavior. The empirical evidence in the subsequent sections then homes in on the outcomes of the transcalar campaigns against FGM and early marriage. While the third section describes the campaigns themselves and the fourth section details the widespread legal and policy actions states have taken in response to these campaigns, the fifth section demonstrates that such legal and policy changes appear only weakly correlated with more substantive behavior changes around the practices of FGM and early marriage. Since this implies that it is necessary to study the impact of transcalar activism on individuals and communities and not just on states, the sixth section then reports findings about the conditions under which activism against FGM and early marriage has been effective at the local level. TRANSNATIONAL ACTIVISM AND NORM PROMOTION TARGETING STATES

Within the early literature on the promotion of principled international norms (e.g., Finnemore and Sikkink 1998; Florini 2000; Klotz 1995; Nadelmann 1990; Price 1998; Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink 1999, 2013; Smith, Chatfield, and Pagnucco 1997; Tarrow 2005), Keck and Sikkink’s (1998) “boomerang” model has been particularly influential, conceptualizing norm change processes in terms of stages of change and investigating the relationships between and strategies employed by norm entrepreneurs to elicit this change. Following Finnemore and Sikkink (1998, 891), I define a norm as a shared “standard of appropriate behavior for actors with a given identity.” The key characteristic of a norm is that it carries a “prescriptive . . . quality of ‘oughtness.’” A sec­ond wave of the literature has subsequently placed increasing emphasis on domestic sources of variation in the effectiveness of such efforts, recognizing that international norms do not enter a normative vacuum at the domestic level (e.g., Acharya 2011; Checkel 1999, 87; Cortell and Davis 2000, 75; Jetschke 2011, 4; Jetschke and Liese 2013, 35; Payne 2001, 42; Wiener 2009, 177).

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But both strands of the literature have focused primarily on the ways in which international norms influence state behavior, with more limited attention to the mechanisms by which international norms might diffuse at the subnational level or among nonstate actors, thereby challenging local norms (Simmons 2010, 292). This is due in part to the types of international norms these scholars have examined: for transnational campaigns related to topics as varied as chemical weapons, landmines, Apartheid, forced “disappearances,” suffrage, and large dam construction, the state is the natural referent because the state is typically the actor violating international norms (Keck and Sikkink 1998; ­Khagram 2004; Klotz 1995; Legro 1997; Price 1998; Ropp and Sikkink 1999). This helps explain, for example, the boomerang model’s assumption that it is actors both “above” and “below” the state who are united in their support for some “progressive” international norm and who are jointly applying pressure to a resistant state (Keck and Sikkink 1998). But states are not always the only or even the primary impediment to norm change. To begin with, despite the boomerang model’s claim that sustained domestic pressure is criti­cal to states’ decisions to change their behavior (Keck and Sikkink 1998), sometimes states adopt international norms prior to widespread domestic demand for norm compliance, and even in the face of outright resistance from domestic audiences (Cortell and Davis 2000, 74–75; Simmons 2009, 200). Notably, for instance, several dozen countries have introduced legislative gender quotas or reserved seats for women (Dahlerup 2006), of­ten in the absence of any significant domestic mobilization on behalf of quotas (Krook 2006, 313). But while something like quota policy can be implemented directly by the state even in the face of domestic opposition or indifference, states that attempt to implement laws and policies governing the behavior of nonstate actors face potential hurdles related to their capabilities (Chayes and Chayes 1993, 194; 1995, 14). States are likely to have limited enforcement capacity where the activity in question can be concealed to some degree (Nadelmann 1990, 486), and especially where many people reject the underlying norm associated with the law or policy—consider the failure of Prohibition in the United States. Enforcement challenges are further compounded in weak or failed states where people have significantly greater free­dom to evade policies that conflict with their own interests and beliefs, as with routinely flouted laws against poaching of endangered and threatened species in a number of Af­ri­can countries (Rowcliffe, Merode, and Cowlishaw 2004; Wilkie and Carpenter 1999). The upshot is that just as the international community is rarely able to force states to comply with norms with which they do not agree, states are rarely able to force their citizens to comply with norms with which they do not agree. The limitations of a state-­centric approach are particularly apparent when it comes to evaluating the impact of transnational activism against gender-­based violence,

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since such violence is almost universally carried out in private spaces by family members and intimate partners. Governments may undertake international and domestic legislative and policy action to combat GBV, but there are limits to the state’s power to control private interactions among individuals (especially where those interactions are sanctioned by local cultural norms) even if it is highly motivated to do so (Ibhawoh 2000, 857). Nonetheless, in­di­vidual and community-­level norm change has not his­tori­cally been a major focus of the literature, as in Keck and Sikkink’s (1998, 180, 192) investigation of the effectiveness of the transnational network on violence against women in targeting states and international organizations. This focus presumably reflects the moment at which they were writing: in the late 1990s, many states were resistant if not openly hostile to international normative pressure around GBV (Keck and Sikkink 1998, 193), and so an emphasis on changing national laws and policies could be seen as an important step in the process of norm promotion. However, the reality today is that for a number of practices within the GBV umbrella, something akin to a norm cascade has occurred or is occurring at the state level, necessitating a shift in focus from state compliance to behavior change in the general population. More recent GBV literature has started to consider the role of the general pub­lic in inhibiting norm change, though in some cases the actions of the state and of activists themselves continue to dominate the discussion ( Johnson 2009, 11–13; Merry 2006a, 215–16; Sundstrom 2005, 422, 442). For example, Alison Brysk’s analy­sis of the transnational anti-­ FGM campaign discusses how activists’ framing of FGM contributes to variation in the extent of local abandonment of the practice (Baer and Brysk 2009, 102–4; Brysk 2013, 271–73). In more recent work she emphasizes that international norms and domestic laws cannot alone end practices like FGM and early marriage that are socially embedded, and that “global governance and law are most effective when combined with social mobilization” that includes grassroots groups with the ability to translate international norms in local terms and to carefully challenge the power of local social norms (Brysk 2018, 274, 278). Neil Englehart and Melissa Miller (2014, 39–40) similarly consider the challenges of translating legal commitments into action in the face of competing social norms, finding that ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) has a stronger positive impact on governments’ enforcement of women’s po­liti­cal rights than their enforcement of women’s social rights (using a measure of social rights that includes marriage rights and FGM protections), likely due to the relative simplicity of extending po­liti­cal rights versus changing deeply held societal beliefs about cultural practices. More work in this vein is warranted. None of the preceding is intended to suggest that domestic laws and poli-

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cies are irrelevant, or that enforcement limitations absolve states of responsibility to protect women from GBV. Nor is it to paper over meaningful cross-­ national differences in the type and aggressiveness of states’ legal and policy actions targeting GBV among their populations, or in their commitment to effectively implementing those actions. David Richards and Jillienne Haglund (2015, xii) make the point that “simply because violence against women is widespread, despite many legal prohibitions and protections, does not mean laws that address it are unimportant or ineffective.” They find substantial variation in national laws covering several forms of GBV, in­clud­ing variation in terms of whether they apply to all women equally, whether customary law takes precedence over national law, whether the burden of proof is unduly placed on the accuser, whether sentencing is light or reduced, whether laws are unenforceable or difficult to apply, and whether laws involve explicit guarantees with respect to a specific form of GBV or simply use broader legal provisions (e.g., provisions governing assault) to adjudicate cases of GBV (Richards and Haglund 2015, ­76–78). They further find that stronger legal protections are associated with higher levels of enforcement of those protections as well as with lower levels of gender inequality on the United Nation’s (UN) Gender Inequality In­ dex, though they are unable to directly test the impact of laws on actual levels of GBV (Richards and Haglund 2015, 116–17, 120, 138). In addition, Brysk (2018, 279–80) looks beyond GBV law itself to argue that state responsibility extends to providing the liberal democratic rights and economic security that empower activists and grassroots groups to actually do the important work of bringing rights-­based messages to communities and that give women a seat at the policy-­making table. The point here is simply to emphasize the importance of continuing to investigate advocacy’s impact even after states have taken formal action, and even if one concludes that those states are sincere in their attempts to address GBV. State compliance remains the midpoint of the story and not the end of it, and one must crack open domestic and community politics and culture to understand whether and under what conditions meaningful improvements in women’s lives are likely to occur as a consequence of transnational activism and state action. TRANSCALAR ACTIVISM AND NORM PROMOTION TARGETING INDIVIDUALS

There is thus a need to investigate individuals and communities as the primary targets of activism rather than simply as spoilers or sec­ondary characters. It is important to pay attention to how transcalar activism actually works when it is promoting norms that address individual-­level behavior and to consider the

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ways in which private individuals and other loosely defined groups might behave both similarly and differently in response to international norm pressure relative to states or even nonstate organizations such as corporations, industry associations, and insurgent groups (Börzel et al. 2011; DeSombre 2006; Greenhill, Mosley, and Prakash 2009; Jo and Thomson 2014; Prakash and P ­ otoski 2007). Individuals ought to act like organizational targets of international norms in some respects, especially given that much state-­centric transnational advocacy theory makes assumptions about states as unitary actors that extrapolate from individual-­level social-­psychological arguments. First, the neighborhood and socialization effects sometimes observed among states (Bell, Clay, and Murdie 2012; Greenhill 2010) should be relevant for individuals as well. International norms should diffuse more rapidly and be more quickly adopted when those around the target, whether other countries or one’s actual friends and neighbors, have already taken up the international norm. Second, the state-­focused international norms literature has noted the outsized impact that powerful states and states with “moral stature” have on the uptake of international norms by less powerful states (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998, 901), and one can similarly expect that community elites who take up international norms will speed the process of norm change at the local level. Third, individuals, like states, should be expected to act strategically in the international arena. Just as states weigh the preferences of the international community against their own preferences and the preferences of their citizens when making decisions about norm compliance, so too should individuals take the wishes of transcalar activists and their own communities into account. Far from being passive recipients of activism, individuals can be expected to react accord­ ing to their interests, sometimes in ways that international norm promoters will not anticipate, thus altering the practice of local norms rather than rejecting them outright, or attempting to hide noncompliant behavior or otherwise deceive activists. Just as some states sign international treaties because they anticipate financial or reputational benefits from doing so, some individuals may profess allegiance to international norms because they wish to be perceived as “modern” or to receive material assistance from activists. However, there are important ways in which individuals are different from states and nonstate organizations, suggesting they deserve scholarly attention in their own right. In particular, states and other corporate bodies are large enough and cohesive enough that their compliance with international norms can be monitored by activists, enabling the activists to hold them individually accountable for their behavior (Brysk 2005, 26). Activists can directly pressure states and organizations to make pub­lic commitments to international norms (such as treaty ratification) and then leverage such “cheap talk” into actual behavior

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change by drawing international attention to norm violations (Keck and Sikkink 1998), and in some cases they may be able to impose individualized sanctions on norm violators. Private individuals and other leaderless groups, on the other hand, are generally too small or loosely defined to be targeted with “naming and shaming” tactics or negative material sanctions, and they generally are not asked to make binding pub­lic commitments to international norms because activists cannot easily observe their compliance. As a result, while eliciting pub­lic commitments may be a necessary early stage in the process of state-­level norm change, the same cannot be said at the in­di­vidual level. (False) rhetorical commitments may still occur at this level, but it will be more difficult for transcalar activists to use those commitments to their direct advantage. Relatedly, the share of international norm adopters who are instrumentally motivated to change their actual behavior should on average be smaller for individuals than for states and other monitored organizations. Existing models of norm diffusion at the state level have argued that while norm leaders may be truly committed to the international norm, the bulk of later norm adopters (the norm followers) emulate the norm leaders for strategic reasons (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998, 895). However, at the community level the absence of systematic monitoring capability by either transcalar activists or the state should make leveraged behavior change less likely because actual compliance cannot be distinguished from claims of compliance, and thus most people will only truly change their behavior if activists succeed in convincing them of the international norm’s validity. Only the tail end of norm adopters is likely to change their behavior for instrumental reasons, if a large majority of their community has already made the change and is now exerting pressure on stragglers to follow suit. Thus, when promoting norms among individuals, imposing a top-­down legal regime will be less effective than employing a bottom-­up strategy of persuasion. And what separates norm leaders from norm followers at the in­di­vidual level is unlikely to be motive per se, but rather commitment and opportunity— relative to norm followers, norm leaders are likely to have stronger or earlier attachment to the international norm and face lower barriers to defection from any competing local norm. Since persuading people to relinquish long-­held values and beliefs is not a simple matter, the barriers to producing a norm cascade among individuals and communities may turn out to be higher than the barriers to producing a norm cascade among states. And given the centrality of persuasion as a mechanism, how high those barriers are should hinge on both the identity of norm promoters and the persuasive strategies they employ. First, persuasion will be easier if the targets of norm promotion are reasonably open to the norm promoters ex ante, willing to listen to what activists have to say even if they prove reluctant to embrace the message (for example, because the activists have moral authority

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or are otherwise respected). Where, however, the targets of activism are suspicious of or hostile toward norm promoters from the start (for example, anti-­ West­ern sentiment is relatively common in the Middle East and in Russia), the chances of meaningful behavior change should decline, and one may even observe a backlash in which attachment to challenged local norms actually spreads. Second, if activists must persuade individuals of the validity of the international norm, then it is important to consider the conditions under which they are most likely to provide a persuasive message. Here the salience of the international and competing local norms to their respective communities should shape message quality—a highly salient international norm may drive some NGOs to take up the cause only because West­ern donors prioritize it and thus they may be unmotivated to seek out and pursue best practice strategies to promote the norm, and a highly salient local norm may cause local NGOs to shirk in the pro­motion of the international norm for fear of upsetting members of their community. TRANSCALAR ADVOCACY AGAINST FGM AND EARLY MARRIAGE

Regarding the issues of FGM and early marriage, one can observe substantial success in efforts to spread the international norms against these practices among states. Though one may question the extent to which states have truly internalized these norms, an increasingly large number of states have made discursive commitments to them and have implemented corresponding legal prohibitions of the practices in combination with other nonlegal policy actions. A state-­level norm cascade is all but complete in the case of FGM and is well underway in the case of early marriage. Yet even as the international and national legal and policy landscapes have changed dramatically in the last couple of decades, the reality for many women has not. Modern transcalar activism against FGM and early marriage emerged in the 1970s amid increasing international attention to GBV and to “harmful traditional practices” affecting women and girls. Activism against these practices gained momentum with a 1979 WHO seminar in Khartoum, Sudan (World Health Organization 1979), and that same year the UN General Assembly adopted CEDAW’s list of issues and recognized harmful customary practices and child marriages as violations of women’s human rights (United Nations Children’s Fund 2013, 10). CEDAW was followed by the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in 1989 and the Af­ri­can Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child in 1990, both of which called for the protection of children from harmful traditional practices, and by the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action in 1995, which called for the abandonment of both FGM and early marriage.

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Since the mid-­1990s, the United Nations and other international and regional organizations have reinforced their opposition to these practices through additional treaties and consensus documents such as the 2005 Protocol to the Af­ri­can Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in ­Africa (the Maputo Protocol), and more recently, the 2015 UN Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations Population Fund and United Nations Children’s Fund 2016, 6). Many other types of actors are also engaged in promoting the international norms against FGM and early marriage, in­clud­ing multilateral and bilateral aid agencies; national and local government agencies; international, national, and local development and women’s rights NGOs; foundations; churches; and media. Some of these have additionally built vari­ous net­works, in­clud­ing the Donors Working Group on FGM/C, the Inter-­Afri­can Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children, the Working Group on Girls, the Forum on Marriage and the Rights of Women and Girls, and Girls Not Brides. There has been a particularly sustained campaign against FGM. As far back as 1990, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women singled out FGM among other harmful traditional practices in its General Recommendation No. 14 (United Nations 1990), and since then vari­ous other UN bodies have issued resolutions, statements, and reports calling for the elimination of FGM (United Nations Commission on the Status of Women 2009, 2011; United Nations General Assembly resolution 2012). The Donors Working Group on FGM/C assists in coordinating the anti-­FGM efforts of twenty-­ five institutional donors, plus the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), in a large-­scale, multi-­million-­ dollar joint program to promote the abandonment of FGM in seventeen countries that began in 2008 (United Nations Population Fund and United Nations Children’s Fund 2013a, 4). Transcalar efforts to combat early marriage have taken off only in the last few years, with the advent in 2011 of the civil society network Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage. Created in response to a mandate from the Elders, a group of former presidents and other prominent global fig­ures formed by Nelson Mandela to address human rights issues, Girls Not Brides now has more than 1,400 member organizations in more than one hundred countries (Girls Not Brides 2020). Since its founding, the UN General Assembly and the UN Human Rights Council have issued resolutions geared toward ending the practice, and in 2012 the first International Day of the Girl Child focused on early marriage. Both the Af­ri­can Union and South Asian countries have launched campaigns and regional action plans focused on early marriage in the past decade (United Nations General Assembly 2016), and in 2016

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UNFPA and UNICEF undertook a new joint campaign against child marriage in twelve countries (Girls Not Brides 2016). The early development of the network around FGM roughly conformed to Keck and Sikkink’s boomerang pattern, starting with domestic initiatives by civil society organizations in countries like Burkina Faso and Sudan (Boulware-­ Miller 1985, 159) before expanding to the international arena and gaining momentum, visibility, and new financial resources. However, West­ern feminists have been criticized for seeming to dominate the network and ignore Af­ri­can voices, particularly in the early years of the campaign (Boyle and Corl 2010, 198; Boyle and Preves 2000, 713). The more recent campaign on early marriage also links NGOs, intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), and states from both the global North and South, though without an obvious boomerang. Both campaigns have successfully framed their respective issues as violations of women’s human rights and put increasing pressure on traditional transnational advocacy network targets—states and IGOs—to take action through international and domestic law and policy. But what makes recent activism against both FGM and early marriage transcalar is that these actors operate at the international, national, and local levels simultaneously and that especially because the norms have already cascaded through the international and even the national levels, much of the important activity is being undertaken now by local actors in the global South. Many of the local NGOs and other civil society groups engaging in the campaigns against FGM and early marriage (as well as nontraditional ­local activists such as church leaders and chiefs) are not direct members of a transnational advocacy network but have nonetheless been influenced by the salience of the norms against FGM and early marriage at the international level as they go about their local work and are thus pursuing transnational goals. STATE-­L EVEL NORM CASCADES AROUND FGM AND EARLY MARRIAGE

States have nonetheless been active players in these campaigns. States’ commitments to the international norms against FGM and early marriage can be observed, first of all, in ratifications of and accessions to relevant international treaties. Indeed, all but seven UN member states are parties to CEDAW, and all but three are parties to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. In Africa, forty-­ nine of fifty-­five countries are parties to the Af­ri­can Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, and forty-­two are parties to the Maputo Protocol. State Action on FGM

States’ commitments can also be observed through national laws and policies, and indeed a state-­level norm cascade is clearly visible around the issue of FGM.

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Of the twenty-­nine Af­ri­can and Middle East­ern countries in which FGM is practiced, twenty-­six have enacted some form of legislation or constitutional decree against the practice, though the scope of the legislation and associated penalties vary (United Nations Children’s Fund 2013, 8; United Nations Population Fund and United Nations Children’s Fund 2016, 18). The passage of these laws appears in fact to be a direct response to international pressure rather than domestic demand. While the Central Af­ri­can Repub­lic and Guinea passed legislation against FGM in the mid-­1960s, the laws in the other twenty-­four countries were mostly enacted within a relatively short period of time in the 1990s or 2000s and shared many common features rather than being unique to each domestic environment, suggesting that they were drawn from a common external source (Boyle 2002, 95; Boyle and Preves 2000). Enforcement of the laws in the major practicing countries has generally been limited (Boyle and Corl 2010, 199–200), partly because enforcement hinges on reports from members of communities that practice FGM, who frequently object to the laws’ provisions, and partly because police of­ten fail to pursue cases due to their reluctance to interfere in cultural practices and to their limited financial resources (United Nations Population Fund and United Nations Children’s Fund 2016, 21). In 2018, the UNFPA–UNICEF Joint Programme on FGM/C (2019, 19) tracked just 131 arrests and thirty convictions related to FGM across eight Programme countries. Countries have also implemented a range of policy instruments such as national action and strategic plans and national committees to complement legal prohibitions against FGM (and in at least two countries—Cameroon and Mali—that lack formal laws) (United Nations Population Fund and United Nations Children’s Fund 2012, 11; 2016, 19). And at least ten countries now have a national government budget line dedicated to FGM (United Nations Population Fund and United Nations Children’s Fund 2016, 20). What is notable here is the high degree of formal commitment to abolishing FGM, though there is certainly variation in the comprehensiveness of states’ formal efforts and in the level of po­liti­cal will and capacity to fully execute and enforce those efforts (United Nations Population Fund and United Nations Children’s Fund 2016, 55). At the high end of state action, Burkina Faso has been particularly aggressive in tackling FGM. It first passed anti-­FGM legislation in 1996 and passed a broader reproductive health law in 2005 that prohibited harmful traditional practices (United Nations Children’s Fund 2013). The laws cover practitioners of FGM and anyone who knows a girl has been cut and fails to report it, and the government has set up a toll-­free hotline, SOS Excision, where people can anonymously report impending plans to subject girls to FGM. Between 2015

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and 2018, 188 people were arrested under the anti-­FGM law, but perhaps more importantly, 119 of them were convicted or sanctioned (United Nations Population Fund and United Nations Children’s Fund 2019, 62). Burkina Faso also created the National Committee to Fight the Practice of Excision in 1990, and starting in 2001 has held an annual National Day against FGM/C (United Nations Children’s Fund 2013). The country has adopted four national plans of action to eliminate FGM starting in 1992 and has had a national budget line for FGM since 1997 (United Nations Population Fund and United Nations Children’s Fund 2019, 61). In Kenya, President Daniel arap Moi issued several presidential decrees against FGM starting in the 1980s (United Nations Children’s Fund 2013, 10), and the Kenyan Parliament passed the Children’s Act in 2001, which outlawed FGM before the age of eighteen. The Kenyan government further institutionalized its position against FGM with the 2011 Prohibition of FGM Act, which expanded prohibition of the practice to include adult women and criminalized the act of bringing a girl or woman either into or out of Kenya for the purpose of having her undergo FGM. Enforcement of the Children’s Act and the Prohibition of FGM Act has been limited until recently, in part because people were not aware of the laws (United Nations Population Fund n.d.), and sentencing has frequently been light (Equality Now 2014, 25; National Stakeholders Forum on Female Genital Mutilation 2007), but between 2015 and 2018 272 cases went to court, 105 of which resulted in a conviction or sanction (United Nations Population Fund and United Nations Children’s Fund 2019, 82). In 1999, the government initiated a National Plan of Action for the Elimination of Female Genital Mutilation in Kenya, a National Secretariat for FGM/C was created within the Ministry of Gender in 2008, and a National Committee on the Abandonment of FGM/C was created in 2009 to bring together both governmental and nongovernmental stakeholders (United Nations Population Fund and United Nations Children’s Fund 2013b, 17–18). In 2010, Kenya’s cabinet approved a National Policy on the Abandonment of Female Genital Mutilation. As provided for in the Prohibition of FGM Act, an Anti-­Female Genital Mutilation Board was created in 2013 to manage government efforts and muster resources. Kenya has a national budget line dedicated to FGM, and in 2015 doubled its budgetary commitment to the Anti-­FGM Board (United Nations Population Fund and United Nations Children’s Fund 2016). State Action on Early Marriage

There has been an expansion of legal protections and policy action with respect to early marriage as well, though the state-­level norm cascade is still in progress since a dedicated campaign against the practice has only been active for a

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few years. Between 1990 and 2000, at least twenty-­five countries in the global South raised the legal minimum age of marriage for women or introduced a legal minimum for the first time (International Planned Parenthood Federation and International Women’s Rights Action Watch 2000, as cited in National Research Council 2005). As of 2010, 158 countries had set the legal minimum age of marriage for women without parental consent at eighteen (though 146 allowed marriage before age eighteen with parental consent or the approval of a pertinent authority), compared to 180 countries with the same minimum for men (United Nations Population Division, Department for Economic and Social Affairs 2011, 1). This is somewhat complicated by the fact that many countries also have systems of customary and/or religious laws governing marriage that may contradict national laws (United Nations Children’s Fund 2001, 7). It is sometimes unclear whether national laws have legal precedence over customary laws, and in practice the latter of­ten trumps the former. Enforcement of the laws has, however, been limited (Girls Not Brides 2016, 18). But since the introduction of the Girls Not Brides network and its associated campaign, legal reforms have accelerated in more than a dozen countries, ranging from raising the minimum age of marriage to eighteen, to eliminating parental consent exceptions, to strengthening penalties for violating the law (Girls Not Brides 2016, 18). Cases of early marriage are also increasingly being adjudicated in national courts (United Nations General Assembly 2016). And national plans of action to address early marriage have been or are now being adopted in at least eighteen countries, whereas no country had such a plan in 2011. The rapid pace of new state action against early marriage is notable, though as with FGM, these actions are being driven more by international mobilization than by domestic constituencies—a UN Women (2016) report on child marriage legislation in three Latin Ameri­can countries states explicitly that child marriage was not a priority issue for domestic civil society groups. Instead, the passage of new marriage laws was a direct response to recommendations made by the CEDAW and CRC Committees, and the laws in fact had to overcome some popu­lar resistance. Nepal is a good example of a country that has taken substantial legal and policy action to combat early marriage. It has ratified both CEDAW and the CRC, and the 2015 Nepalese constitution specifically prohibits child marriage. The 1963 National Code (Muluki Ain) likewise prohibits marriage before the age of eighteen for both girls and boys under any circumstances, and before the age of twenty without parental consent, imposing imprisonment of up to three years and/or fines of up to 10,000 rupees for violating the law. Those who abet an underage marriage (e.g., priests or matchmakers) are also subject to imprisonment and fines, and collected fines are paid to the child in question

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(Inter-­Parliamentary Union and World Health Organization 2016). In 2014, Nepal adopted the Kathmandu Call for Action to End Child Marriage in South Asia (United Nations General Assembly 2016), and the government has since adopted a National Strategy to End Child Marriage (2015–30) with the support of UNICEF and the civil society partnership Girls Not Brides Nepal as well as a national action plan focused on implementation. Nepal is additionally one of the twelve focus countries of the UNICEF–UNFPA Global Programme to Accelerate Action to End Child Marriage (Girls Not Brides 2016). Though there is certainly variation across countries in governments’ commitment to the international norms against FGM and early marriage, the evidence suggests that transcalar advocacy against FGM has largely succeeded at the national level, and that advocacy against early marriage is currently succeeding even though a concerted campaign against the practice has only emerged within the past decade. PREVALENCE OF FGM AND EARLY MARRIAGE

Despite evidence of state-­level norm cascades, practices like FGM and early marriage persist. An estimated 200 million women and girls alive today have undergone FGM (United Nations Children’s Fund 2016), with as many as three million Af­ri­can girls at risk annually (United Nations Children’s Fund 2013, 114). FGM is practiced in twenty-­nine countries in Africa and the Middle East, in Indonesia and among some isolated groups elsewhere in Asia and in South America (United Nations Children’s Fund 2016), and among immigrant communities in North America and Europe. Early marriages occur in all regions of the world, and survey data suggest approximately 650 million women alive today were married before age eighteen and that some twelve million girls marry before age eighteen each year (United Nations Population Fund and United Nations Children’s Fund 2018, 8). Globally, roughly one in five women aged twenty to forty-­nine were married by the time they turned eighteen, in­clud­ ing 41 percent of women in West and Central Africa, 35 percent in east­ern and south­ern Africa, and 30 percent in South Asia (United Nations Children’s Fund 2018, 10). There have been meaningful declines in the prevalence rates of both FGM and early marriage, however. The incidence of FGM has begun to decline in more than half of the twenty-­nine Af­ri­can and Middle East­ern countries in which it is practiced. Recent cross-­national data show that women and girls aged fifteen to nineteen are significantly less likely to report having undergone FGM than women aged forty-­five to forty-­nine (United Nations Children’s Fund 2013, 99). Early marriage has also become somewhat less common over

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time. The percentage of women aged twenty to twenty-­four who had married by age eighteen dropped from 33 percent in 1985 to 26 percent in 2010, and the percentage who had married by age fifteen dropped from 12 percent to 8 percent (United Nations Children’s Fund 2014). Still, some of the decline in prevalence may be due to underreporting of FGM and early marriage among younger women who are more aware of or particularly sensitive to legislation and activism against FGM and early marriage (National Research Council 2005, 418; United Nations Children’s Fund 2013, 88). Moreover, state-­level actions appear to be only weakly correlated with patterns of decline in FGM and early marriage prevalence. Certainly, national laws and policies can be helpful under the right conditions. They can create an enabling environment that makes it easier for people who want to abandon these practices to do so (Shell-­Duncan et al. 2013) and should be more effective when produced through a consultative process that engages with a variety of domestic stakeholders (United Nations Children’s Fund 2010). Yet state action, even where it is sincere and fairly aggressive, is insufficient to induce change in these practices and does not appear to be one of the more important factors driving change. With respect to FGM, countries like Djibouti and Senegal, which passed laws against the practice in 1995 and 1999, respectively, have seen no decline in nationwide prevalence. Guinea and Burkina Faso also have long-­standing laws against FGM, yet these countries only started to see a decline in prevalence in the last few years, and some of the reported decline in the Burkinabe case appears to be the result of underreporting in surveys following the introduction and subsequent aggressive enforcement of its anti-­FGM law (United Nations Children’s Fund 2013). Conversely, countries like Liberia and Nigeria have experienced a marked decline in the prevalence of FGM, despite the fact that Liberia has no law prohibiting FGM and Nigeria only introduced a national law in 2015 (United Nations Population Fund and United Nations Children’s Fund 2016, 18). Sierra Leone also has no national legislation and yet is seeing a modest decline in the practice. Indeed, Boyle and Corl (2010, 201) have argued that criminalization of FGM is not significantly associated with declines in prevalence, and a number of in­di­vidual country case studies reach similar conclusions. Matilda Ako and Patricia Akweongo (2009) found that the national law prohibiting FGM in Ghana was insufficient to produce that country’s modest decline in FGM prevalence, though underreporting of the practice did increase ( Jackson et al. 2003). Bettina Shell-­Duncan and colleagues (2013) found that a major effect of the Senegalese law was to drive the practice of FGM underground. And even in countries like Kenya, where a strong legal and policy framework is matched by substantial declines in FGM prevalence (United Nations Human Rights Coun-

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cil 2015), there is no compelling evidence that the decline is a result of the law. In a study of Maasai and Samburu communities in Kenya, Karisa Cloward (2016) found that the Children’s Act prohibiting both FGM and early marriage did not dissuade people from engaging in the practices and instead only caused people to hide cases of FGM and early marriage from the authorities. Many laws and policies addressing early marriage have been introduced only recently, and so it would be unrealistic to expect a significant impact on early marriage prevalence. But looking at countries with older laws does not instill much confidence in a meaningful connection between law and behavior. On the positive side, a study by Belinda Maswikwa and colleagues (2015) of twelve Af­ri­can countries found that those with laws that set the minimum age of marriage at eighteen without exceptions had rates of child marriage that were 40 percent lower than the countries that lacked such laws. But the study’s conclusions are based on cross-­sectional rather than time series data, introducing significant causality questions. Rather than stricter marriage laws producing lower rates of early marriage, it may be that countries with lower rates of early marriage choose to adopt stricter marriage laws. If one looks not at static prevalence of early marriage but rather rates of decline, state-­level actions appear to have limited explanatory power. The introduction of stronger marriage laws in Asia, for instance, was followed by only a slight decline in prevalence (Inter-­Parliamentary Union and World Health Organization 2016, 5). Nepal, for instance, continues to have one of the highest early marriage prevalence rates in the world. Moreover, most of the in­di­vidual Asian countries that have seen a marked decline in early marriage prevalence (Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines) have legal regimes in place that allow for exceptions to the minimum age of marriage in the case of parental consent or particular religious traditions (Inter-­Parliamentary Union and World Health Organization 2016, 3, 11–12). In South America and the Caribbean many countries have strong laws on age of marriage (Heymann and McNeill 2013) but have seen no decline in prevalence (United Nations Children’s Fund 2014), while a number of Middle East­ern and North Af­ri­can countries with weak legal regimes (Heymann and McNeill 2013; United Nations General Assembly 2016) have seen substantial declines in prevalence (United Nations Children’s Fund 2014). LOCAL RESPONSES TO DIRECT ACTIVISM AGAINST FGM AND EARLY MARRIAGE

If legal and policy reforms alone cannot end these practices because conflicting local norms are strong and state enforcement capacity is of­ten limited, it is then criti­cal to explore the conditions under which direct efforts to persuade individuals and communities are effective.

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Drawing on the insights developed above and on my research among Maasai and Samburu communities in Kenya, a number of factors are shaping the impact of transcalar activism on the actual practice of FGM and early marriage. First, neighborhood and socialization effects are visible, as individuals are more willing to abandon FGM and early marriage when co-­ethnics in their communities have already done so. I found evidence of diffusion of behavior change through communities because later adopters were able to directly observe that girls who had not undergone these practices were still able to lead successful lives (Cloward 2016, 201). Second, this diffusion was accelerated where influential community elites were among the set of norm leaders, because the presence of powerful individuals and those with “moral stature” among the first movers gave potential norm followers confidence that their own defections from the local norms supporting FGM and early marriage would not be severely punished (Cloward 2015, 400). Third, it is important to be aware that individuals who have been exposed to transcalar activism against FGM and early marriage of­ten respond strategically to the fact that they now face competing international and local norms. Some attempt to hide that they are continuing to adhere to the local norms and make false rhetorical commitments to the international norms when in the presence of transcalar activists, because they seek reputational or material benefits from those activists. Using a survey experiment, I found that respondents who believed the audience for the survey was international rather than local were significantly less likely to admit that they planned to subject their daughters to FGM or that their daughters had been married underage. Qualitative interviews bore out these findings, revealing that community members knew what activists wanted to hear and used this knowledge both to try to appear “modern” in the eyes of those activists as well as to avoid jeopardizing development funding from NGOs and IGOs (Cloward 2014). Although much of this mirrors how international norms scholars have conceptualized state responses to transnational activism, there are other ways in which the processes of norm change around FGM and early marriage at the ­local level have diverged from the logic of state-­level arguments. While activists in some cases have been able to leverage states’ (false) rhetorical commitments to international norms through accountability politics (Risse and Sikkink 1999), activists have had limited ability to monitor whether specific individuals are vio­lating the international norms against FGM and early marriage and to sanction them accordingly. Indeed, my research shows that outside activists generally do not stay long enough in a community to independently verify behavior and thus must rely on individuals’ self-­reporting and on sec­ondhand accounts (Cloward 2016, 218). In addition, although there have been instances of communal pub­lic declarations of abandonment of FGM and early marriage,

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particularly in West Africa, there is little evidence that either activists or the communities that have made these declarations are penalizing individuals who fail to uphold the commitments made therein (United Nations Children’s Fund 2008, 35). Because activists have not been able to use rhetorical commitments to elicit more meaningful changes from individuals, persuasion has been activists’ primary tool. Genuine persuasion is difficult, and indeed patterns of change in the prevalence of FGM and early marriage suggest slow and sometimes uneven shifts rather than a sudden norm cascade. Nonetheless, persuasive strategies can be successful, and it appears that sustained, high-­quality on-­the-­ground activism may do a better job than formal law of explaining cross-­national and local variation in rates of decline of FGM and early marriage (though some change can certainly be ascribed to changing sociodemographic conditions such as urbanization and educational expansion). At the local level, I found that communities with a longer history of dense civil society activism against FGM and early marriage have seen an earlier and more marked decline in prevalence, particularly where activists have pursued best practices in designing their programming, such as tailoring projects to specific local contexts, avoiding framing FGM and early marriage as cultural problems, and recruiting local influencers to their cause (Cloward 2016, 64, 169, 202). This finding is in line with Bonny Ibhawow’s (2000, 843–44, 855) argument in favor of adapting rather than rejecting local cultures so as to promote a complementarity with national and universal human rights standards on women’s and children’s rights: that to resolve the conflict between international and local norms requires activists to “harness the power of cultural legitimacy” and adopt an inclusive strategy that both draws from local cultures and ensures that weaker groups within the cultural community have a voice. The finding is also in line with those from empirical studies of anti-­FGM and anti-­early-­marriage programs conducted in a number of other countries. For instance, Anna Winterbottom, Jonneke Koomen, and Gemma Burford (2009) found that framing FGM as a cultural problem made Maasai communities in Tanzania resistant to educational campaigns, while a field experiment in north­ ern Ghana showed that community-­based education about FGM was more effective than livelihood skills training for girls and women in reducing the incidence of the practice (Feldman-­Jacobs and Ryniak 2006, 15). With respect to early marriage, Sanyukta Mathur, Manisha Mehta, and Anju Malhotra (2004, 51) found that a multidimensional approach combining social and economic components led to a reduction in early marriage in urban areas of Nepal. Multiple studies have evaluated the Tostan Village Empowerment Program’s work in Senegal, where the NGO addresses FGM and early marriage as one part of

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an eighteen-­month-­long basic education program in which locally recruited facilitators guide participants through topics related to health, education, and welfare in a way that takes into account community-­identified needs and local social norms (Cislaghi 2018; Cislaghi, Gillespie, and Mackie 2016, 138; Mackie 2000). At least partly as a result of the program, over five thousand separate Senegalese villages have held pub­lic ceremonies in which they have declared their abandonment of FGM and early marriage (Diop et al. 2003; United Nations Children’s Fund 2013, 13). Pre-­and post-­intervention surveys in south­ern Senegal also showed a decline in the prevalence of FGM among daughters of women exposed to the human rights-­based program (Diop and Askew 2009, 313; Diop et al. 2004, 23) as well as a decline in the prevalence of marriages before age fifteen in intervention villages (United Nations Children’s Fund 2008, 51). At the national level, the intensity and quality of direct activism and associated support for girls also seem to have explanatory power. A country like Kenya that has seen a substantial decline in FGM prevalence also has had local civil society groups addressing the issue for several decades (Cloward 2016, 3). Bangladesh, which has experienced a reduction in early marriage prevalence, has long had early marriage prevention programs focused on girls’ empowerment and community mobilization (Malhotra et al. 2011) as well as programs working successfully to increase girls’ sec­ondary school enrollment (Hervish and Feldman-­Jacobs 2011), and the country now has a coalition of civil society organizations addressing early marriage via a national partnership with Girls Not Brides (Girls Not Brides 2016). CONCLUSION

Certainly, some states are part of the problem when it comes to the transcalar campaign against FGM and early marriage, and others could be doing more, but many are making a good-­faith effort to address these practices with only modest success. All of this implies that scholars should reevaluate the conventional understanding of who initiates and who participates in transcalar advocacy, and of how the targets of advocacy respond. Particularly for transcalar campaigns addressing practices undertaken by individuals, empirical changes in how states have responded to advocacy mean that states can sometimes be norm entrepreneurs in their own domestic arenas, and citizens can be the reluctant targets holding fast to local norms. Under such circumstances, a shift in thinking and in analytical approach is warranted. More attention needs to be paid to the density and quality of direct activism targeting communities and individuals, to the strategies these activists

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employ, to the conditions under which such activism is likely to be positively received, and to the potential roadblocks impeding norm change at the local level. Beyond the issues of FGM and early marriage, such a shift in focus would also be advantageous in the study of a host of other transcalar campaigns for which the targeted behavior is undertaken by individuals or families and cannot be adequately changed by legal regulation alone. Potential applications include other GBV and women’s rights campaigns, in­clud­ing those against intimate partner and family violence, sexual violence, sexual harassment, honor killings, force feeding, bride burning, veiling, widow inheritance, and purdah (Brysk 2013; Raymond et al. 2014; Manchandia 2005). One can envision additional applications to environmental campaigns such as those against cut-­and-­ burn charcoal production, whaling, overfishing, poaching of endangered and threatened species, and community conservation (Balboa 2018; Blok 2008; Jacquet and Pauly 2007; Rowcliffe, Merode, and Cowlishaw 2004) as well as to pub­lic health campaigns to promote condom use and vaccinations ( Jegede 2007; MacPhail and Campbell 2001). Wherever local norms lag behind international expectations, it is worth considering how individuals and communities will respond to transcalar activism.

10 CHANGING CLIMATES IN RUSSIA AND CHINA NGOs and Transcalar Climate Advocacy in Authoritarian States LAURA A. HENRY AND LISA MCINTOSH SUNDSTROM

B

etween 2006 and 2015, Chinese civil society participation at global climate conferences increased significantly, while Russian NGO attendance stagnated and remained low despite some fluctuation from year to year. Both the Chinese and Russian governments have been key negotiating parties at the annual Conference of Parties (COPs) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and both states are major global emitters of greenhouse gases, with China in first place and Russia in fourth. As of 2016, Russia stood in fifth place, if the European Union (twenty-­eight states) is counted as a single entity (World Resources Institute 2020). Officials from these authoritarian regimes have expressed similar concerns that climate agreements should not constrain economic development and that their state’s specific characteristics should be taken into account in the design of any new climate agreements. Given these similarities, what explains the strikingly different roles that domestic civil society actors from Russia and China have played in transcalar activism around global climate governance? We argue that this variation in civil society participation in global governance is rooted in domestic politics. Previous analyses have shown that democratic states will generate more transnational NGO participation than authoritarian states (Hanegraaff et al. 2015; Lee 2010; Smith and Wiest 2005, 632, 637). Yet under certain circumstances, authoritarian regimes can actually encourage NGO participation (Andonova, Hale, and Roger 2017, 259). Beyond a simple dictatorship-­democracy dichotomy, these two cases demonstrate aspects of po­ liti­cal regimes that affect NGOs’ capacity and interest in engaging with global governance structures. These characteristics are closely tied to state-­society relations that can vary significantly even across authoritarian states. When the state is able to control and direct civil society, or co-­opt interests within it, the state’s

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orientation toward civil society and the transnational policy issue at stake becomes a significant factor influencing NGOs’ transcalar activism. Following Pallas and Bloodgood (this volume), we consider the chang­ing dynamics in how NGOs from middle-­income states such as Brazil, Russia, India, China, or South Africa (the BRICS) participate in transcalar advocacy. We explore these propositions by comparing participation patterns in the U ­ NFCCC COP meetings by NGOs from Russia and China. These states are significant emitters of greenhouse gases and also are both authoritarian states well known for their repression of criti­cal voices in civil society. Yet scholars should be wary of overstating the similarities between the Russian and Chinese regimes. We find that there are important differences that have led participation by representatives of Chinese CSOs at the UNFCCC Conferences of Parties to grow dramatically in recent years, while Russian NGO participation has been low and has stagnated. Throughout this chapter, when referring only to Chinese nonstate organizations, we call them “civil society organizations” (CSOs) rather than “nongovernmental organizations” (NGOs) due to the frequently blurred lines between state-­organized and NGOs in China and following scholarly convention. The differences between Russian and Chinese organizations’ styles and scales of engagement in global climate change negotiations expose a dynamic that runs counter to the classic transnational advocacy network model (Keck and Sikkink 1998). NGOs from these authoritarian regimes are able to engage in transcalar activism in greater numbers largely through the support of their home states rather than in defiance of them. In this case, NGOs use perceived domestic opportunities to more deeply engage in transcalar activism rather than seeking transcalar leverage in response to domestic threats. We discover that for these NGOs, varieties of authoritarianism that lead to different types of state-­society engagement and the state’s engagement in the specific transnational policy issue—in this case climate change—play a significant role in their ability to cross scales of po­liti­cal action. While both Russian and Chinese civil society organizations must navigate authoritarian po­liti­cal contexts in which state repression may limit their activities, organizations in both states have grown in capacity since 2000 and have been able to take advantage of new opportunities for NGO participation in global governance. Russian NGOs, with tighter connections to INGOs but unfavorable relations with the state, are much less present in climate conferences than Chinese CSOs, which have experienced greater constructive policy dialogue with the Chinese government. Paradoxically, Chinese NGOs in a one-­party state have more opportunities to engage with the UNFCCC and influence the domestic climate policy agenda, while Russian NGOs in a “competitive authoritarian” regime with multiparty elections face a hostile and exclusionary state on climate policy. This pattern sug-

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gests divergence from the boomerang pattern in traditional transnational advocacy theory, where international NGO allies are expected to boost the capacity of NGOs in norm-­violating states who face repression as a result of their dissent. Our analy­sis is based on systematic comparisons between NGO participation patterns and modes of engagement with both the state and global climate negotiations (annual UNFCCC COP meetings), using both quantitative data on organizations’ and in­di­vidual NGO delegates’ participation between 2006 and 2015, and qualitative accounts of Russian and Chinese NGOs’ approaches to climate policy internationally and domestically. The Russian case study is enhanced by our field research conducted in Moscow in May–June 2014 as part of research for a larger project on NGO participation in global governance initiatives. We conducted five interviews at that time with Russian NGO representatives directly involved in climate activism. The 2014 field research in Moscow included a total of twenty-­one interviews as well as two off-­the-­record meetings and one email response to questions related to the overall project. Interviews were conducted in a semistructured format, with a list of standard questions asked of each participant, but with flexibility to ask follow-­up questions as the discussion proceeded or questions that were specific to the activities of the particular organization in question. Each interview followed a recruitment and consent protocol approved by the Behavioural Research Ethics Board of the University of British Columbia, Canada (Certificate #H13–01862, approved Sep­tem­ber 20, 2013). In addition, our analy­sis benefits from our long-­standing research on Russian climate policy, which included additional field interviews with a wide range of other actors, both governmental and nongovernmental, beginning in 2005. THEORY: DETERMINANTS OF NGO PARTICIPATION IN GLOBAL CLIMATE GOVERNANCE

Many scholars have argued that NGOs’ participation in global governance increases its legitimacy and democratic character (Bernstein 2005; Cadman 2011; Scholte 2007). But what causes levels of NGO participation to vary across states and time? In this chapter, we investigate what determines variations in the quantity and quality of NGO participation across countries. Keck and Sikkink’s boomerang model would seem to suggest that for NGOs from undemocratic states, the assistance of INGOs and partners based in the global North would be an important component of their ability to act across borders to place pressure on their home country. Yet new varieties of transcalar activism have proliferated over the past few decades, leading to new patterns of NGO mobilization at the global level.

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NGO participation in the UNFCCC exhibits persistent variation by state. A small but growing literature examines how national-­level characteristics shape participation in global climate governance. Sarah Stroup’s pathbreaking work in this area demonstrated that even for international NGOs headquartered in the West, domestic environments shape “varieties of activism,” leading to different forms of advocacy (Stroup 2012). A number of scholars posit that NGOs engaged in global governance tend to come disproportionately from more democratic states (Hanegraaff et al. 2015; Lee 2010; Smith and Wiest 2005, 632, 637). However, Tobias Böhmelt and coauthors identify what they called the “democracy-­civil society paradox”: NGOs generally enhance state participation in international environmental agreements, but this positive relationship becomes less salient the higher the level of democracy (Böhmelt, Koubi, and Bernauer 2014). Andrew Heiss and Tana Johnson (2016) point out the “internal, interactive, and institutional factors,” in­clud­ing regime type, that shape INGOs’ behaviour in different contexts. Brandon Derman documents persistent differences in po­liti­cal opportunities for NGOs working on climate change, even among advanced industrial democracies, due to more centralized or more fragmented policy-­making on climate (Derman 2015). Other studies show that states from the developing world face significant barriers to participation in the UNFCCC process (Roberts and Parks 2007). Liliana Andonova, Thomas Hale, and Charles Roger argue, as we do, that in closed po­liti­cal environments, “ambitious national policies can make a major difference in opening venues for transnational initiatives” (Andonova, Hale, and Roger 2017, 254). Their findings run counter to boomerang pattern expectations that NGO participation in global governance is a response to the absence or weakness of state policy on a given issue area. We take a finer-­grained approach to consider the specific qualities of domestic po­liti­cal institutions and policies that shape the participation of NGOs in global governance regimes. Our comparison of Russian NGOs’ and Chinese CSOs’ participation in global climate governance over time highlights enduring regime characteristics that vary across states as well as policy-­specific factors that shape global engagement. Enduring regime characteristics can include (1) how the state interacts with social organizations (adversarial versus cooperative relations and the presence of GONGOs) and (2) how open po­liti­cal space is for civil society to organize freely (the po­liti­cal-­legal spheres that shape NGO activity). Policy-­specific characteristics include the degree of state engagement in the issue addressed by the global governance initiative, either through robust domestic policy-­making or active participation at the international level. State engagement will of course be shaped by the economic or po­liti­cal incentives in that policy area. In authoritarian contexts, when the state is engaged in the policy sector, NGO partici-

Changing Climates in Russia and China / 163

pation may be encouraged to amplify state preferences. The level of NGO engagement will nonetheless be affected by the particular variety of state-­society relations that exist in that authoritarian regime. NGO PARTICIPATION IN THE UNFCCC: THE CASES OF RUSSIA AND CHINA

The UNFCCC originated at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 to facilitate the creation of a regime to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the parties to the convention. As an agreement among states, the UNFCCC does not offer many opportunities for direct NGO participation within the formal negotiation process. NGOs have been largely limited to holding observer status (Gulbrandsen and Andresen 2004, 59–60; Betsill 2007, 48; Fisher 2010). Despite these limitations, NGOs have played a significant role in promoting climate agreements, influencing the content of agreements, and promoting innovation in global climate politics (Gulbrandsen and Andresen 2004; Andonova, Betsill, and ­Bulkeley 2009; Fisher 2010). The number of nonstate actors at UNFCCC COP meetings has increased over time (Bernauer 2013; Hanegraaff et al. 2015; Allan 2018). In 1995, observer organizations sent approximately nine hundred delegates to COP 1. In 2009, at COP 15 in Copenhagen, a record high of more than twelve thousand observer organization delegates attended, while over seven thousand delegates attended the COP 21 Paris conference in 2015. This level of participation indicates the significance of the UNFCCC as the key venue for addressing the global climate crisis as well as the determination of NGOs to be part of the solution. NGOs work globally to pressure the UNFCCC Secretariat and other major powers on the design of the climate agreement, and domestically to influence their own delegations to ratify, and later to implement their commitments. At the meetings, NGOs play diverse roles, many informal (Allan 2017; Caniglia, Brulle, and Szasz 2015), in­clud­ing producing reports on negotiating points, meeting informally with state delegations, lobbying for stakeholder interests, hosting side events, providing information to the press, taking advantage of limited opportunities to speak formally, and protesting outside of the conference (Derman 2014, 31; Leonardo Nassar de Oliveira 2015). Additionally, some NGOs have worked closely with delegations from developing states, providing them with expertise to increase their technical capacity. Bernauer suggests that approximately 70 percent of state delegations include NGO representatives (Bernauer 2013, 437), a phenomenon embraced most notably by states from the West (Böhmelt, Koubi, and Bernauer 2014). NGOs require considerable funds and know-­how to attend the UNFCCC conferences. Hence, it is un-

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surprising that NGOs from the global North dominate NGO participant lists, while NGOs from the global South are considerably fewer. Our data on Chinese and Russian NGO participation include both organizations represented by delegates and numbers of in­di­vidual NGO delegates. Counting UNFCCC NGO participants according to country of origin is difficult First, NGOs may register as official observer organizations, allowing them to send delegates under their name. Many NGOs do not undergo the accreditation process to register as official observers. Instead, groups may participate under the umbrella of another international NGO, or they may be included as part of official state delegations. In addition, some groups are intermittent participants, and others attend in an unofficial capacity. Thus, in the data represented here, we have made our best effort to capture actual attendance by Russian and Chinese NGO delegates at the annual UNFCCC COPs by combing through lists of participants in NGO and state delegations to locate NGO representatives. This is an approach that we consider to be largely accurate, albeit not perfect. Table 10.1 shows numbers of Russian and Chinese NGOs with delegates attending the COP meetings 2006–15, whether under their own organizational delegation or in the delegation of another NGO observer organization from a different country or a state delegation. Chinese CSO participation increases over time, resulting in almost eight times the number of participating NGOs in 2015 as compared with 2006. The Russian case stands out as exceptional for NGOs’ low level of engagement; six of Russia’s ten admitted (previously known as accredited) NGO observer organizations have not attended COPs with their own delegations for many years. In recent years, Russian NGO delegates have attended largely within the delegations of other international NGOs, such as the Heinrich Böll Foundation or Climate Action Network. In 2015, while only one Russian NGO attended with its own observer delegation of four delegates, nine other Russian NGOs actually had delegates present, with a total of thirteen delegates (77 percent of total Russian delegates) attending under non-­Russian organizational delegations. In 2015, China had thirty-­one attending NGO observers, which is not a high number given the country’s population size, but each observer NGO tends to bring a sizeable number of delegates to the COP. In addition, there are several Taiwan-­based NGOs listed with “China” as their country, but we have excluded those from our analy­sis. Our dataset reveals that the average number of delegates per Russian NGO represented at the 2015 COP meetings is 1.7, and the median number is just one delegate; while the average for Chinese delegates per Chinese NGO observer is 5.9 and the median is five. In addition, very few

Changing Climates in Russia and China / 165

Table 10.1. Chinese and Russian organization and delegate participation by year Conference of Parties (COP) Year

Russia

China

# of orgs

# of delegates

# of orgs

# of delegates

2006 (COP 12)

 2

 2

 4

 49

2007 (COP 13)

 6

14

 3

 76

2008 (COP 14)

 1

 3

 5

 74

2009 (COP 15)

 8

16

14

170

2010 (COP 16)

 7

11

14

136

2011 (COP 17)

 5

 5

19

203

2012 (COP 18)

 7

 8

23

201

2013 (COP 19)

 7

10

25

144

2014 (COP 20)

 4

 4

28

134

2015 (COP 21)

10

17

31

176

Note: Counting attendance both as own organization and under umbrella NGOs. Data from United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Chinese NGO delegates attend under non-­Chinese organizational delegations; in 2015, only nine out of 176 delegates (5 percent) attended under such “umbrella” NGO delegations. Our data also indicate that both Chinese and Russian NGOs only very rarely attend as state delegates. At most only one NGO delegate appears in each state’s delegation each year, and of­ten there appear to be none. Table 10.1 shows the total numbers of delegates for Russia and China attending the COP meetings from 2006 to 2015, whether as part of their own NGO’s delegation or in another NGO’s or state’s delegation. Although Russian and Chinese NGO attendance numbers (both organizations and in­di­vidual delegates) have fluctuated across COP meetings, these fluctuations are consistent with variations in aggregate numbers of NGO delegates at COP conferences from year to year. For example, the 2015 COP 21 conference in Paris was heavily attended by delegates due to the anticipated breakthrough agreement. Russian delegates comprised 0.1 percent of total NGO delegates in 2014 and 0.3 percent in 2015, while Chinese delegates comprised 3.4 percent of 2014 delegates and 2.8 percent of 2015 delegates. The general

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trends are for Chinese participation to increase over time, while Russian NGO participation is relatively stagnant, albeit fluctuating from year to year. While it may be unsurprising that Chinese participation is much higher than Russian participation given that Russia’s population is one-­tenth the size of China’s, the rapidly increasing sizes of delegations and numbers of NGOs attending from China, and increasing percentage of overall organizations and delegates attending, compared to stagnant participation from Russia, presents a puzzle requiring explanation. EXPLAINING NGO PARTICIPATION IN GLOBAL GOVERNANCE: AUTHORITARIANISM, STATE-­S OCIETY ENGAGEMENT, AND DOMESTIC POLICY

What explains the strikingly different trends in Russian NGO and Chinese CSO participation in the UNFCCC process? We argue that the explanation lies in domestic factors rooted in each state’s variety of authoritarianism and approach to climate policy. Although both Russia and China are governed by authoritarian regimes, they embody different conceptions of state-­society engagement. The Russian state has a more repressive strategy toward civil society, while the Chinese state has developed a co-­optation strategy. Enduring differences in how the state engages social organizations cannot entirely explain shorter-­term changes in NGO/CSO participation at the global level, however. We argue that a contributing factor is that Chinese civil society and Chinese environmental organizations have been evolving rapidly in the past decade as the state increasingly facilitates their presence, provided they assist in achieving national goals, fostering a reservoir of CSOs that are available to participate globally. In contrast, the po­liti­cal context for Russian NGOs has become more repressive over the past five years, weakening the environmental movement and foreclosing opportunities to cooperate with the Russian government. Most significantly, however, the state’s engagement in the transnational issue addressed by a global governance initiative can result in increased NGO participation. As China developed its domestic climate policy and became more deeply engaged in UNFCCC negotiations, it both strengthened the opportunities for domestic CSOs working on climate and allowed them to further develop their role at the UNFCCC as actors who could amplify the state’s policy preferences at the global level. In addition to these “push” factors propelling Chinese NGOs to global venues, it may also be that Chinese CSO mobilization plays a role in “pulling” the Chinese government to engage more deeply in climate policy. In Russia, the lack of attention to climate policy domestically, in

Changing Climates in Russia and China / 167

addition to repressive policies toward NGOs, further precludes state-­NGO partnerships. Finally, the Russian government has no incentive to facilitate NGO attendance at the UNFCCC given that Russian NGOs are more likely to criticize Russia’s state delegation than to support it at global venues. Varieties of NGO Mobilization under Authoritarianism: State-­Society Relations

Russian NGOs and Chinese CSOs face some similar obstacles, such as a legacy of Communist organizational monopoly and contemporary efforts to control ­independent mobilization. In both countries, environmental organizations are regarded as one of the strongest areas of civil society mobilization (Henry 2010; Marks 2010, 982). Yet China generally has less criti­cal forms of environmental mobilization than Russia (Ho 2001, 897). In China in the mid-­2000s, ­Phillip Stalley and Dongning Yang reported that “the reality is that most working in the environmental arena do not seek to challenge the government or even influence policy. Rather, they are focused on apo­liti­cal campaigns . . . or enhancing environmental awareness” (Stalley and Yang 2006, 337). A number of scholars have recently focused on key differences more generally between Russian and Chinese civil society relationships with the state. The Chinese state has his­tori­cally viewed state and society not as being entirely distinct realms but instead as united by “the search for order, stability and prosperity” (Richter and Hatch 2013, 326; see also Hsu 2014). The Chinese Communist regime tends to be keenly attuned to emerging societal demands and responds to them in a more sophisticated manner than many other authoritarian regimes do; Timothy Hildebrandt dubs it “societally sensitive, disaggregated corporatism” (2013, 12). Moreover, CSOs in the country also largely concur with the view that their role is to help the state to achieve its pub­lic interest goals, and they adopt a “strategically self-­limiting” approach, which falls between the two poles of co-­optation and outright opposition (Hildebrandt 2013, 13; see also Tang and Zhan 2008). It is important to distinguish between full co-­optation by the state and Chinese CSOs’ ability to find room to influence pub­lic policy. In particular, Jessica Teets (2016) finds in her examination of Chinese environmental policy that organizations occasionally manage to gain entry into policy networks of state officials and social organizations. When they attain access, they can significantly shift environmental policy through their advocacy “by reshaping policy makers’ understanding of the problem and set of solutions” (Teets 2016, 2). CSOs in China have been, counterintuitively, able to exploit the state regulatory procedures required of them, especially (prior to 2016) the need to be sponsored

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by a state agency, in order to acquire influence on policy discussions. No such regular mechanism exists in Russia to facilitate channels of policy discussion between NGOs and state officials. By contrast, scholars seem to agree that the contemporary Russian regime sees a rigid separation between the state and civil society and largely views its role as controlling civil society. Sarah Henderson (2011) chronicles this shift from a negligent to vigilant state under President Putin. Government repression of any independent or criti­cal NGOs is high, and very few opportunities exist for autonomous civil society actors to build channels of communication or constructive dialogue with government actors (Richter and Hatch 2013, 355– 36). At the same time, NGOs and independent journalists have tended to view themselves as working in opposition to the government, almost “at war,” particularly as explicit laws have been enacted that severely constrain their independent capacity (Repnikova 2016, 17–18). Despite these different traditions of state-­society relations, a number of authors have noted a convergence over time between Russian and Chinese NGO regulation, particularly concerning foreign sources of funding (paralleling trends in NGO regulation worldwide; see Chaudhry and Heiss, this volume; Bloodgood, Tremblay-­Boire, and Prakash 2014; Dupuy, Ron, and Prakash 2016). The Russian government adopted the Law on Foreign Agents in 2012, punishing organizations engaging in “po­liti­cal activity” for receiving funding from outside the country (Federal Law No. 121-­FZ), with over 150 Russian NGOs listed over time on the foreign agents registry (Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation 2017). Ecodefense, a regular attendee of UNFCCC COP meetings, was the first environmental organization targeted by the law in July 2014, although it has continued to fight the classification (Digges 2016; Slivyak interview). In addition, the 2014 Law on Undesirable Organizations (Federal Law No. 129-­FZ) has ejected a number of foreign donors from Russia. The Chinese government appears to have taken a lesson from Russian NGO regulations in the Overseas NGO Management Law, in effect as of Janu­ary 1, 2017, that restricts the ability of NGOs to accept foreign funding (Civic Free­ dom Monitor: China n.d.). This law is concerned mostly with clarifying regulatory oversight of foreign NGOs operating in China. Some Chinese CSO activists have worried about the new reporting requirements it creates for foreign NGOs’ Chinese partners and the fact that it bars foreign NGO activity that is po­liti­cal, religious, or undermines national security (Art. 47) without defining those terms (Chinese National People’s Congress 2016; Plantan 2016). These laws potentially restrict the material capacity of NGOs to operate generally, but more specifically, to attend UNFCCC meetings as observers outside state delegations. For example, Ecodefense and Ural Ecological Union have

Changing Climates in Russia and China / 169

been able to attend regularly for many years through funding from the ­Heinrich Böll Foundation (Slivyak interview; UNFCCC COP participant records). Some researchers have pointed to a similar situation of Chinese CSOs relying on foreign foundations for financial support of their climate-­related activity. Here again, the Heinrich Böll Foundation seems to be particularly active, especially via the China Civil Climate Action Network within the Chinese Association for NGO Cooperation (CANGO) (Schroeder 2011, 8). CANGO has sent roughly half a dozen delegates to each COP meeting in recent years (UNFCCC participant records). These opportunities for Russian and Chinese NGOs may shrink under laws that restrict foreign funding. Policy Characteristics of Russian and Chinese State Engagement with Climate Change

In addition to models of state-­society engagement, each state’s level of engagement in climate policy, internationally and domestically, shapes NGO behavior. Russia and China are both significant greenhouse gas emitters. Russia accounted for 17 percent of global emissions in 1990, the baseline year for the Kyoto Protocol, and 5 percent in 2014 (Olivier et al. 2015, 12). China emitted approximately 30 percent of greenhouse gases globally in 2014, having doubled its emissions since 2002 (Olivier et al. 2015, 11). Chinese and Russian state officials agree that the effects of climate change could be devastating in both states (Buckley 2015; Pettersen 2013). However, pub­lic opinion polls suggest that climate change is an important issue for only small minorities of citizens in both Russia and China (Pew Research Center 2015). Despite similarly significant emissions, national vulnerability to climate change effects, and weak issue salience among citizens, Russia and China have taken different approaches toward international climate negotiations. China is arguably the most important player in global climate negotiations (Hilton and Kerr 2016), while Russia’s significance to the UNFCCC is in decline (Stalley 2015). Despite some shared orientations toward issues of sovereignty and economic development, Russia and China have not cooperated closely within the UNFCCC framework; China has more of­ten allied itself with Brazil, India, and South Africa in the so-­called BASIC group (Hallding et al. 2013). Russia is exceptional among middle-­income states for its Annex 1 status and binding target for emissions reductions during the first Kyoto period, 2008– 12. Russia formally withdrew from the sec­ond Kyoto period (2013–20) but is participating in the Paris climate agreement. Overall, Russia has been a laggard in both international climate negotiations and domestic policy. Domestically, there was a brief period of enthusiasm for energy efficiency during the Medvedev presidency’s “modernization” agenda in 2008–12 (Henry and Sundstrom

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2012), but even then policy development was exceedingly slow. In 2009, Russia produced a Climate Doctrine that recognized the contribution of human activity to climate change. However, domestic measures have not added up to a coherent climate policy in Russia. NGO activists frequently blame this on the state’s dependence on oil and gas revenues (Hartog 2015; N. Smith 2016, Chuprov interview). As several observers have noted, the primary motivations for limited government efforts to reduce emissions have been the economic benefits from technological improvements, with climate concerns being only a sec­ondary driver (Henry and Sundstrom 2012; Kokorin and Korppoo 2014). In 2015, Russia submitted its “Intended Nationally Determined Contribution” (INDC) to the UNFCCC, pledging 15–25 percent below 1990 emission levels by 2030 (Climate Action Tracker 2016). Both of these targets are assessed by independent observers as relatively weak, unlikely to surpass the emissions reductions that business-­as-­usual estimates project if forest carbon sinks are counted (Kokorin and Korppoo 2014, 4; Korppoo and Gassan-­Zade 2014, 226; Carbon Brief 2015). China, by contrast, has been increasingly active in UNFCCC climate negotiations, shifting from a largely oppositional stance to a constructive force (Stalley 2015, 203). China’s role in international climate talks was of­ten seen as obstructionist, most notably in the 2009 COP 15 in Copenhagen. Begin­ning in 2011, China began to play a more constructive role that Isabel Hilton and Oliver Kerr argue was linked to a new domestic model of economic development that acknowledged slower growth and focused on services, domestic consumption, and innovation (Hilton and Kerr 2016, 51). Bruce Gilley has characterized China’s approach to climate change as “environmental authoritarian­ism,” defined as a centralized approach designed to produce “a rapid and comprehensive response” (Gilley 2012, 288). Kelly Gallagher and Xiaowei Xuan argue that energy intensity and carbon intensity served as “a new weapon to push the transition of the development model” that could be used as a “a responsibility-­ evaluation system” for local officials (2019, 103). The development of China’s domestic climate policy began in earnest 1998 with the creation of the National Coordination Committee on Climate Change, replaced by the multiagency National Leading Group to Address Climate Change (NLGACC) in 2007. The Chinese government introduced binding national targets on energy intensity in its eleventh Five Year Plan (2006–10) (Hilton and Kerr 2016, 49) and has taken numerous other measures to facilitate low carbon development. In 2014, in an important breakthrough agreement with the United States, China announced that its emissions would peak by 2030 or earlier and that it would increase the share of renewable energy to 20 percent by 2030. Ultimately, China simply has a much more robust climate policy domes-

Changing Climates in Russia and China / 171

tically than Russia does. A comparison of climate policy across five states and the European Union finds that China is much more active than Russia in experimenting with climate policy domestically (Compston and Bailey 2016). For example, China launched pilot emissions trading schemes in six regions in 2013, established feed in-­tariff rates for renewable energy, banned new coal-­ fired power plants in some regions, and established fuel economy standards in 2005 (Compston and Bailey 2016). Russia has developed none of these policies. Russian and Chinese NGOs engaging with the UNFCCC and domestic climate policies must confront these varying degrees of receptiveness of state actors to policy action on climate change. The government’s willingness to act both affects and is affected by NGO efforts to engage in dialogue with state actors to advocate for policies on climate change mitigation and adaptation. While this circular process is difficult to untangle, the evidence suggests that China’s domestic policy-­making on climate offers opportunities for state-­society partnerships. In addition, governments are more likely to welcome CSO/NGO participation in global governance when these groups amplify the state’s preferences in negotiations. NGOs have reacted to these differences in their government’s orientation toward climate policy. Russian NGOs’ participation in UNFCCC COPs lags far behind Chinese CSOs, and they tend to participate in COPs indirectly. WWF-­ Russia and Greenpeace Russia participate as part of their international-­level organizations. In addition, seven Russian NGOs are members of the Climate Action Network East­ern Europe, Caucasus, and Central Asia (CAN East­ern Europe, Caucasus, and Central Asia 2021). Despite weak participation at the global level, Russian NGOs still work to agitate for stronger government climate policy through media communication to raise awareness about climate change among the Russian pub­lic and collaboration with experts to produce research on climate change effects in Russia and to propose policy options (Kokorin interview; Slivyak interview; Stetsenko interview). The Russian state limits the ability of (and incentives for) NGOs to play an active role in shaping global climate governance, both due to its generally repressive approach to civil society and its reluctant stance on the issue of climate change. The Russian state’s declining engagement in the Kyoto Protocol during the sec­ond commitment period, and its decision to “stay behind the two largest emitters” the United States and China (Kokorin interview), coincided with the stagnation of NGO engagement. In the Chinese case, the ability of CSOs to influence the state remains much debated. Peter Ho (2001) argued that the greening of Chinese state agencies and policies, in­clud­ing increased efforts to monitor environmental conditions, facilitated the growth of environmental CSOs. Chinese CSOs are increasingly

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active on climate change. The China Civil Climate Change Action Network, a coalition representing sixty CSOs, was formed in 2009 to press for greater participation (Friends of Nature 2009, as cited in Gilley 2012, 291; Schroeder 2011). The China Youth Climate Action Network brings together six youth-­ oriented environmental groups and numerous higher education institutions (Koehn 2016). Chinese CSOs active on climate issues at the international level tend to have close relationships with government agencies and to see participation in the COP meetings as a way to increase their standing with the government. Writing in 2012, Gilley stated: “of the 10 Chinese groups accredited as civil society observers to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)  .  .  . , at least five  .  .  . are government-­affiliated groups (­UNFCCC 2011)” (Gilley 2012, 292). At the international level, Chinese CSOs were likely to “align their official positions with . . . national norms” (Lo 2010, 1015), such as the principle of “common but differentiated responsibility,” and to support the Chinese government in demanding more action from developed states (Schroeder 2008). Thus, Chinese organizations’ motivations for attending seem to be driven more by partnering to achieve national government policy priorities than in the Russian case where NGOs are more criti­cal of the state. CONCLUSION

Increasingly, scholars recognize the role that domestic factors play in determining whether and how NGOs participate in global governance. Our research shows that this scholarship can be developed further by moving beyond the democracy-­dictatorship dichotomy to consider other ways in which regime type and domestic policy-­making shape NGOs’ transcalar activism beyond the boomerang model. Deeply rooted patterns of state-­society engagement and domestic policy-­making will shape NGO participation globally. Even in authoritarian regimes, the levels of transcalar activism in which NGOs engage, and their ability to contribute to government policy on transnational issues, depends on the presence of certain basic features of state-­society relations, such as routes of regular dialogue between NGOs and state actors responsible for a policy area. In effect, “varieties of authoritarianism” matter for both effective participation in global governance by NGOs from closed po­liti­cal regimes and for the likelihood that the norms and policies of a transnational policy issue will be channeled to specific domestic po­liti­cal arenas. Chinese CSOs, building on their supportive relationship with state agencies domestically, can reinforce the Chinese government’s influence in global governance. Certainly, there are distinct advantages for a state if its delegation

Changing Climates in Russia and China / 173

is complemented with a large contingent of like-­minded NGOs as official observers. Practically, this type of joint effort allows Chinese representatives, both state and nonstate, to participate in more venues and in greater numbers, monitoring the talks and potentially influencing the negotiations in a direction that is favorable to Chinese preferences. This benefit only holds, however, if the Chinese state is relatively confident that the NGOs are “singing with the choir” on climate policy. In the Russian case, where the state delegation is aware that many NGOs are criti­cal of its lackluster climate policy domestically, there are few advantages to be gained by a roster of Russian NGOs attending COP meetings. Moreover, the recent restrictions on funding to NGOs from outside the country combined with a domestic government uninterested in climate policy have made it ever more difficult for Russian NGOs to marshal funds to attend COP meetings with their own NGO observer delegation. What we have shown, however, is that this divergence is rooted in issues that go beyond climate policy. Instead, the state-­society development trajectories of both Russia and China predispose the states to either cultivate NGO partners or to suppress them as opponents. Indeed, over time, variation in each state shows that the Chinese government has become more intentional in encouraging CSOs that can help to carry out state policy while the Russian government has attempted to further constrain the space for NGO activism. In the origi­nal boomerang model, the authoritarian repression of civil society activists at home provided the impetus for activists to reach out to transnational advocacy networks. In contrast, a transcalar advocacy framework can account for regional or national variations among authoritarian regimes that can either encourage or discourage NGOs from participating in advocacy beyond their borders, with participation facilitated at times through partnership with their governments and at other times through the support of international NGO allies.

CONCLUSION Toward an Empirically Grounded Theory of Transcalar Advocacy ELIZABETH A. BLOODGOOD AND CHRISTOPHER L. PALLAS

T

he case studies in this volume illustrate how the boomerang theory of transnational activism fails to adequately explain many recent instances of advocacy. In Brazil and other Latin Ameri­can states, we witness south­ern NGOs reacting to local blockages by recruiting support from their own governments or other south­ern NGOs, rather than international NGOs based in the global North (Rodrigues, this volume; Appe, this volume). In many countries, international NGO partners are difficult to access, leading NGOs to work alone or only with local NGO partners (Chaudhry and Heiss, this volume). In some cases, high-­capacity NGOs may conduct advocacy alone even if international NGO partners are available (Pallas and Nguyen, this volume). Where networks do form, they may be among south­ern actors, in­clud­ing NGOs, businesses, and governments, attempting to manage the effects of global challenges like climate change or GMOs on local populations rather than between south­ern and north­ ern actors seeking a global solution to local challenges (Starobin, this volume; Henry and Sundstrom, this volume). International organizations are increasingly amenable to such south­ern input (Uhlin, this volume). Taken together, these cases call into question the core assumptions about transnational advocacy by south­ern NGOs and about advocacy networks that are latent both in the boomerang theory and in much of the larger body of literature on transnational advocacy. Transnational advocacy, as traditionally understood, has required networking between south­ern and north­ern NGOs. The former organizations are unable to access or influence local government policy but can provide information and legitimacy to more resource-­rich north­ern ­INGOs that have the means of applying pressure to norm-­resistant governments via alliances with north­ern governments and international organizations. The core model, the boomerang, thus has three basic premises: (1) fundamental and persistent power imbalances between north­ern and south­ern NGOs, (2) networking as essential to NGO power, and (3) alliances between north­

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ern governments and international organizations as necessary to pressure norm-­ resistant south­ern governments. The evidence in the cases in this volume challenges these assumptions by highlighting south­ern NGOs’ increasing agency, north­ern NGOs’ declining access and growing legitimacy challenges, and the changes in global architecture that have allowed south­ern NGOs to successfully lead campaigns at home and abroad. Modeling these trends requires a new theory, focused on transcalar advocacy. Transcalar advocacy is defined by interactions across levels or scales, ranging from local communities to global policy-­making forums, and includes both local responses to global phenomena and global responses to local phenomena. The common defining feature of transcalar advocacy is organizations’ efforts to change policy or practice on issues with global implications, even if the organization and advocacy are located within one country rather than operating across borders. Often there are multiple campaigns coordinated by actors at different scales working toward similar goals on international issues. Transcalar advocacy is characterized by increased geographic proximity, as we see increasing numbers of national and regional networks, partnerships, and campaigns. Because of the number of new types of actors involved in advocacy on global issues, as well as the increased variation in scales of advocacy, transcalar advocacy exhibits greater diversity across campaigns but increased similarity of actors within each campaign. Organizations tend to work together on the same scale, in the same region, with similar resource endowments, strengths, and weakness. However, on a given issue, the number and types of campaigns that are active are increasingly varied because there is less coordination or centralization between them. Lastly, transcalar advocacy is designed to seize opportunities as well as work around constraints. Government partners and international institutions still have important roles to play in transcalar advocacy. Local policies can place limitations or constraints on NGOs, but they can also provide opportunities enabling and encouraging nonstate advocacy. Indeed, as the cases of Chinese and Russian climate advocacy and Brazilian opposition to the oil industry show, the state can play a crucial role as a partner to local activists (Henry and Sundstrom, this volume; Rodrigues, this volume). Even state restrictions designed to control NGOs or limit their influence can catalyze organizational transformation and yield new opportunities for advocacy (Chaudhry and Heiss, this volume; Pallas and Nguyen, this volume). The argument presented here is based on the empirical observations of contemporary advocacy in the preceding chapters. Our new theory of tran­ scalar advocacy is premised on the finding that the changing architecture of the international sys­tem has led to changes in the nature and activities of trans-

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national advocates—both who advocates and the way advocacy is conducted. New theory is needed for academics wishing to better understand or predict the behavior of activists, the formation or nonformation of advocacy partnerships, and the outcomes of campaigns, as well as for practitioners wishing to better position their own organizations to conduct effective advocacy in a changing po­liti­cal landscape. How then do these trends coalesce into a theory of transcalar advocacy? In this conclusion, we begin by mapping the strategic choices affecting the advocacy behavior of NGOs initiating advocacy, contrasting the current choice sets of NGOs with those implicit in earlier literature. We then show how changing agency and architecture affect NGOs’ selections from among the available choices. Finally, on the basis of these observations, we formulate a series of predictive hypotheses about common trends and patterns in transcalar advocacy. PAST AND PRESENT CHOICE SETS FOR NGOS ENGAGING IN ADVOCACY

Traditional theories of transnational advocacy, particularly the boomerang pattern, envisioned different choice sets for international and local NGOs. Moreover, choice sets for each were limited. For local NGOs, transnational advocacy occurred in response to a local blockage. The goal of advocacy was always domestic influence. The focus on local blockages constrained the choice of possible targets. These might be the government, businesses, or an international institution, but the focus was always on their domestic activities or policies. Initially, local NGOs were assumed to undertake activism in concert with one another, or a single local NGO might undertake advocacy alone, using outside strategies. Failure to effect change via local challenges led to a sec­ond iteration of advocacy, still using an outside strategy, to bring international pressure to bear on the local targets. To achieve this, local NGOs had only a single choice of international partner type, that is, international NGOs. Other local actors, such as the government or businesses, were assumed to be part of the problem (cf. Keck and Sikkink 1998). Most international partners, such as the media, were assumed to be out of reach. Local NGOs might be able to choose among different international NGOs (Pallas and Urpelainen 2013), but the number of potential international allies was limited when compared with the number of local problems (Bob 2005). Local NGOs were viewed to be similarly constrained in their available strategies. Shut out of authoritarian national decision-­making forums, local NGOs were forced to seek network partners who could assist their outside advocacy campaigns. South­ern NGO advocacy campaigns thus generally consisted of convincing powerful friends abroad to use carrots and sticks to pressure the south­ern NGOs’ home states to accept international norms (at

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least instrumentally) and then naming and shaming violators of these international agreements (Ron, Ramos, and Rodgers 2005; Hafner-­Burton 2008; Krain 2012; Hendrix and Wong 2013). International NGOs, presumed to be based in the global North, faced a different, but also constrained, choice set. INGOs could network down to local (south­ern) NGOs to gain the information and legitimacy needed to launch campaigns with their national (north­ern) governments. INGOs could also look to international organizations as partners to help increase the resonance and volume of their campaign and to encourage north­ern governments to put pressure on south­ern governments to change policy in ways consistent with international norms. While south­ern NGOs might initiate network formation by reaching out to north­ern NGOs, generally INGOs would initiate international advocacy, since they would begin the lobbying of nonnational actors and did so, at least in part, on the basis of their own preferred strategies and interests (Nelson 2000; Bob 2005; Pallas and Urpelainen 2013). INGOs sought to generate sufficient agreement on the nature of norm noncompliance and the importance of a norm to create a wave of pressure (following a tipping point) on norm-­resistant states (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998; Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink 2005). To do so, INGOs used a combination of inside advocacy, in­clud­ing lobbying within governments and international organizations according to their status (consultative status at the UN, for example) and outside advocacy, in­clud­ing pub­lic information and awareness raising, mobilization of pub­lic opinion and mass demonstrations, and naming and shaming (e.g., Dalton 1994; Tarrow 2005; Hertel 2006; Carpenter 2007a). If a sufficient number of government and pub­lic allies were mobilized, the INGO accomplished its goal, satisfied its donors and/or members, and increased its efficacy and visibility. Figure C.1 illustrates these differences between south­ern and north­ern NGO choice sets. It maps NGOs’ choices to the boomerang pattern and, for the sake of simplicity, translates them into a linear account. We recognize that actual NGO decision-­making may be more fluid and involve multiple iterations, but our model does not preclude such use. A norm spiral (as per Risse 2000 and Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink 1999) would involve multiple passes through these decision points, with each pass occasioned by action or inaction of the advocacy target. As noted in the volume introduction, dichotomizing local and international NGOs or south­ern and north­ern NGOs poses long-­term problems to the health and validity of any advocacy theory as south­ern and north­ern NGOs converge in their capacities and po­liti­cal access and as local actors repeatedly demonstrate their ability to exert influence on global policy without international networks. Recent research on multiscalar advocacy emphasizes this trend, highlighting the

FIGURE C.1.

Boomerang model revisited. IO, international organization; SNGO, south­ern nongovernmental organization. (Elizabeth Bloodgood and Christopher Pallas)

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flexibility of organizations in developing campaigns operating in different locales and featuring different scopes of action (e.g., Mayer 2013; Balboa 2018). Thus, as we move toward a transcalar theory of advocacy, we envision a single series of choice sets for all NGOs. Figure C.2 presents the options available to NGOs seeking to engage in advocacy to change policy or practice with international implications in our model of transcalar advocacy. Advocacy organizations begin the process by selecting the level at which they wish to engage policy or practice, from the local to the national to the transnational or global. We differentiate between transnational and global in response to prior critiques that transnational advocacy campaigns have of­ten lacked a truly global scope. Most have involved relatively few actors from a limited number of states and thus were transnational rather than global. Campaigns on air pollution and acid rain, for example, of­ten involved only Mexico, the United States, and Canada (Pralle 2006), while campaigns on the Amazon of­ ten involved actors from one European country targeting Ecuador (McAteer and Pulver 2009; Pieck and Moog 2009). Global advocacy campaigns, such as the anti-­landmine ban (Rutherford 2011), arms control (Krause 2002; Carpenter 2011), debt forgiveness (Busby 2007), the establishment of the International Criminal Court (Glasius 2002), and climate change (Newell 2008; Duwe 2001), while garnering more pub­lic and academic attention, are likely rarer than transnational campaigns involving actors from two or three countries. We also include very local campaigns in our theory of transcalar advocacy, such as Maasai chiefs in Kenya opposed to Kenyan law banning female genital mutilation (Cloward 2015; https://iwpr.net) or groups of fishermen working against climate change as a threat to fish stocks and their livelihood such as the Pacific Fishery Management Council (www.pcouncil.org). While these actors cannot reach typical forums for international politics, their campaigns can have a considerable impact on the creation and implementation of policy at the local and national level as well as practices that scale up to impact international politics. Moreover, for some actors, working on the local or national scale is a strategic choice. In India, for example, the Right to Food campaign is based on Indian interpretations of the right to life rather than drawing on international norms. While elements of the campaign draw on international law, the organizations involved work via India’s legal structures and eschew international partners in order to retain local control (Hertel 2016). Last, we note that the level of a campaign is not necessarily static. As observed earlier, activists may make multiple passes through this decision-­making process as their campaigns progress. Sophisticated campaigns may move up (or possibly down) levels to better achieve their goals or to capitalize on advocacy

FIGURE C.2.

Basic process of transcalar advocacy. IO, international organization. (Elizabeth Bloodgood and Christopher Pallas)

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successes. The Right to Food campaign, for instance, has operated within Indian states and also at the national level (Hertel 2016). The Zapatistas received support for their bid for recognition at different times from a local Central Ameri­ can solidarity network as well as INGOs (Almeida 2007; Bob 2005). Cloward (this volume) shows how advocacy success at the international level must sometimes be followed by locally led, community-­focused efforts at norm change. There is a connection between the level on which organizations operate and the targets of their advocacy. In theory, the targets of advocacy organizations, no matter their size or location, can include everything from local, national, and foreign publics to national and foreign governments to national and foreign corporations to international organizations. In practice, however, we expect the target(s) of transcalar advocacy to be determined by both the issue, in particular which actors have the power or ability to change the relevant policy or practice, and the capacity and interests of the advocacy organization. As Mayer (2013, 163) notes, activists will focus their efforts on the arena “where contested decision-­making is taking place.” For example, human rights organizations seeking to improve working conditions in the textile industry in their country could target their home government or their local corporations but might find advocacy targeted at the foreign corporation that owns and operates the largest local textile company more effective. Rugmark, now Goodweave, is a real-­ world example. Rugmark is the result of south­ern NGOs’ advocacy targeting the carpet industry in India to end its use of child labor. NGOs, such as the South Asian Coalition of Child Servitude and the Bonded Labor Liberation Front, put pressure on carpet firms and manufacturers’ associations in India and lobbied NGOs and importers in Germany (a major importer of Indian carpets) to create a monitoring program to ensure good labor practices paid for by dues from the members (Nooruddin and Sokhey 2012, 69–70). Significantly, in our transcalar model, strategy selection precedes partner selection. With regards to strategy, we do not add new strategies to the toolbox that scholars have previously identified, but we argue that an advocacy organization’s type or location does not in and of itself determine the strategy of that organization. We argue that advocacy organizations select a campaign strategy to match their interests, capacity (in­clud­ing available partners), goals, and target(s). Networking, different modes of advocacy (inside or outside), and the use of normative or instrumental arguments, are all options available to advocacy organizations. Unlike in traditional models of transnational advocacy, we argue that NGOs’ selection of strategy determines their selection of their partners rather than the limited number of partners dictating their strategy. Strategy, in turn, informs partner selection. As we have noted, south­ern NGOs pursuing an inside strategy may not need north­ern partners (Pallas and

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Nguyen, this volume) or may eschew north­ern involvement to preserve the l­ ocal credibility of their campaign (Rodrigues, this volume). Working alone, working only with local or regional partners, or developing a more global network of allies are all options. NGOs may also shift strategies and partner selection over time. Pallas (2017), for instance, describes how certain European NGOs, blocked in their efforts to influence European policy makers, adopted a strategy of emphasizing the global nature of their policy positions and recruited south­ ern NGOs to substantiate those claims. South­ern outreach to north­ern NGOs in the classic boomerang model (see step 2 in Figure C.1) reflects a similar shift in strategy from locally based advocacy to internationally leveraged advocacy. Moreover, NGOs are not the only available partners. Transcalar advocacy campaigns feature a broader array of choices among partners. Advocacy organizations may select among government and corporate partners and among ­local and international NGOs. Indeed, the state can play a key role in facilitating NGO advocacy (Henry and Sundstrom, this volume). As will be discussed in more depth later, we expect that many organizations are strongly inclined to work with organizations more like themselves, as relationships may be easier to forge with greater common interests, shared understandings of the issue, and closely aligned goals (Rohrschneider and Dalton 2002; Jordan and van Tuijl 2000). For example, local organizations working to stop exploitation of oil resources in the Amazon in Ecuador had difficulty working with INGOs, despite the pub­lic attention and access these organizations brought. Local campaigns sought a different balance between environmental conservation and ­local economic needs than did large INGOs that cared less about local health and economic redistribution (Widener 2007). We remove any assumption about power imbalances among partners and which types of organizations are likely to take the lead. We also believe that partnerships are forged with multiple views on the resources, strengths, and capacities that each partner brings rather than the previous focus on material resources, local information, and legitimacy. For example, NGOs are now of­ten partners within multistakeholder initiatives to provide standards for behavior in a specific sector (for example, extractive resources or diamond markets). In these public-­private partnerships, NGOs work with government agencies and corporations to shape behavior and sector policy directly by monitoring codes of conduct. As monitors, NGOs bring credibility, transparency, and legitimacy to the partnership (Dingwerth 2008b; Haufler 2010). Cloward’s work (this volume) illustrates well how these choices come together. Early advocacy on FGM worked at the global level, targeting states. It used a combination of norm transformation and naming and shaming, supported by partnerships with international organizations like the United Nations,

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to bring about legal changes in countries where FGM is practiced. In a sec­ond wave of advocacy, because the global campaigning and subsequent changes in state policy did not yield the hoped-­for reduction of FGM, advocacy has shifted levels. Organizations in Kenya have elected to work on this issue at the community level, targeting individuals engaged in FGM. They have adopted a strategy of persuasion and norm promotion (in contrast with earlier efforts at law creation and enforcement). As a result, their best partners include local leaders with high social standing whose personal adoption of new norms creates free­dom or pressure for others to follow suit. Each set of choices affects not just the arena and mechanisms of advocacy but also campaign size and scope of action. Thus, as discussed in the volume introduction, we follow other scholars in describing these new patterns of advocacy as transcalar. In this volume, we do not focus on which choices of partners and strategies employed by different types of advocacy organizations are more or less likely to produce outcomes in line with the organizations’ goals. Po­liti­cal and policy outcomes are the result of the interaction of complex po­liti­cal processes, unexpected events, and even dumb luck, which are well beyond the scope of this volume. We instead focus on how shifts in the agency of nonstate actors and the architecture of global politics have altered the ways in which advocacy organizations operate and the range of choices available to them. IMPACT OF AGENCY AND ARCHITECTURE ON CHOICE SELECTION

While the range of choices available to advocacy organizations is now in theory larger than in the past, in practice any given organization makes strategic calculations between a more limited set of possible choices. In this section, we examine the factors that condition NGOs’ strategic behavior, which we have grouped into architecture and agency. Elements of both the changing global architecture of international politics and the nature of advocacy organizations’ agency in contemporary politics work together to shape the options NGOs have. Figure C.3 presents the steps in our model with the relevant mediating factors, with architecture on the top and agency on the bottom. The scale of a campaign depends in part on past campaigns by the organizations involved as well as other campaigns on the issue. There may be path dependence in campaigning, as organizations build networks, resources, expertise, and infrastructure suited for work on a particular level of activity. Alternatively, campaigns may experience scaling up as local groups join to form national groups and then foreign partners join to form global ones (e.g., Climate Action Network). Literature on “scale shift” within sociology (e.g., Tarrow and McAdam 2005; von Bülow 2013) leads to the expectation that globalization,

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Agency, architecture, and transcalar advocacy. IO, international ­organization. (Elizabeth Bloodgood and Christopher Pallas)

FIGURE C.3.

in combination with developing information communication technologies, can enable the diffusion of issues and tactics of contention and increased coordination at the transnational level. We argue that advocacy campaigns also seek to develop downward in order to obtain local buy-­in and effective implementation on the ground (for example, the Forest Stewardship Council or the Marine Stewardship Council) (Dingwerth 2008b; Balboa 2017). Advocacy campaigns against genetically modified organisms produced and distributed by Monsanto have been taken up by local beekeepers groups (Starobin, this volume), Maasai chiefs have led local campaigns against FGM regulations in Kenya, and mayors have implemented concrete actions against climate change. Given the need to implement global agreements in domestic policy and the of­ten-­decentralized nature of behavior and enforcement, there is room for local activism even in the most global of campaigns (Betsill and Bulkeley 2004; Cloward 2015). We argue that NGO capacity is likely the more important factor explaining their choice of scale for advocacy. More resources are required to launch international campaigns than national or local ones (Hanegraaff et al. 2015; Hanegraaff 2015a). Advocacy organizations need to gain access to arenas abroad either via social media/digital tools of engagement or physical presence in distant locations ( ­Joachim 2007). The challenge of sustaining an advocacy campaign at a larger scale is a particular deterrent to distant advocacy for lower capacity organiza-

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tions, unless they are able to establish strong partnerships with international NGOs to magnify or multiply their campaign ( Jordan and van Tuijl 2000). The target of a transcalar advocacy campaign depends on both the organizations’ access within the home country and abroad within international organizations. In cases in which there are open civic spaces domestically, we ­expect more engagement with the national government and national corporations. When there is less civic space at home, particularly if this is accompanied by more international access for a given organization or issue (for example democratization, human rights, or election monitoring), then we expect the organization to select a target abroad with the goal of then using international pressure and networks to boomerang back at home. Advocacy organizations also need to identify which actor is responsible for a given abuse or violation or which level of government has authority to change policy or behavior. For example, in many federal systems, responsibility for social issues such as health care and education rests with the subnational units rather than the central government. International affairs, security, and human rights, however, tend to be centralized and thus under the control of the federal authorities. The most direct approach an advocacy organization could take would be to target the responsible actor directly (e.g., lobbying energy companies or auto manufacturers to stop fossil fuel use/emissions) rather than targeting governments to set emission targets that might or might not be enforced and might or might not be sufficient to address the core issue. When multiple actors share responsibility for policy or practice on an issue, this can create multiple possible points of access for advocates, sometimes at different levels. All other things being equal, organizations will engage those targets most likely to be willing to change. Some campaigns have responded to recalcitrance by higher authorities by shifting scale to lower levels and targeting local government. For example, the Cities for Climate Protection Program sought to encourage local changes in policy by mayors to make up for the lack of action by federal and national governments (Betsill and Bulkeley 2004). The selection of an NGO’s campaign strategy depends not just on their scale of operation and chosen target(s) but also on a variety of organizational characteristics. Some organizations have identified themselves via particular practices. For instance, some NGOs will not work with government partners because of their commitment to independence or neutrality, while others will. The International Committee of the Red Cross will not name and shame, while Greenpeace must “bear witness” and Amnesty International depends on its rapid action bulletins. Differences in organizational resources and competencies also expand or curtail the strategy options available. Well-­positioned contacts and technical expertise and knowledge, especially about highly technical issues or

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difficult-­to-­access populations, may be necessary (or at least advantageous) for effective inside lobbying (Mosley 2011). Outside lobbying may require access to media or a large mailing list of easily mobilized supporters. Funding for advertising, the expertise to make well-­crafted videos (or the money to pay others to make them), and social media savvy are all considerations. Organizations will typically play to their strengths. Finally, the selection of partners (or the choice to forego networking) is also conditioned by structural and agential factors. These include the space for civil society to work with the state or be involved in core decision-­making processes, legal restrictions on the activities of different types of organizations (e.g., if NGOs cannot be involved in partisan politics), and the existence of regional organizations that might help coordination among NGOs. It is important to remember that potential partners are not just other NGOs. The ability of organizations to develop strong relationships with government depends in part on the government’s policy toward NGOs, as Henry and Sundstrom (this volume) observe in their comparison of China and Russia. Overlapping interests and complementary strengths can also lead to partnerships between activists and businesses (Starobin, this volume). PREDICTING COMMON CAMPAIGN TYPES

We argue that a new reality on the ground has caused advocacy organizations to remake themselves, demonstrating a greater variety of organizational forms, tactics, and targets for advocacy. Advocacy organizations need not be large, rich, north­ern, and liberal to succeed in engaging with issues of international significance. The availability of new international partnerships combined with shifting po­liti­cal openings at the local and global level have caused transnational advocacy to become transcalar, as organizations respond to new opportunities for advocacy as well as new constraints or limitations. On the basis of the evidence presented in this volume and other emerging cases of transcalar advocacy, many of which are also discussed in this volume, we argue that advocacy with international components or impacts is no longer typified by a boomerang pattern or marked by set roles for local (usually south­ern) and international (usually north­ern) NGOs. Actors’ power and available strategies are no longer determined by their position in a network. Instead, we argue that campaign formation follows a process that, while dynamic and complex, can be simplified to a series of decision points, each marked by a choice set. These are scale of advocacy, advocacy target, strategy, and the selection of partners (if any). Each of these choice sets is affected by the local and global po­liti­cal architecture and the agency (or lack thereof) of the NGOs

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involved. In this regard, the conduct of transcalar advocacy can be understood as a strategic response by activist organizations to shifting conditions on the ground, in­clud­ing po­liti­cal access, resource availability, formal regulations, and information communications technology (Margetts et al. 2015). This framework explains how organizations make decisions and what factors shape them. We note that our work, while conceived independently, shares significant similarities with contingency theory. Contingency theory argues that “organizational effectiveness results from fitting characteristics of the organization” in­clud­ing its environment, size, and strategy “to the contingencies that reflect the situation of the organizations” (Donaldson 2001, 1–2). From a contingency theory perspective, our work can be seen as identifying and refining the types of contingencies NGOs face when conducting transcalar advocacy. Our findings indicate the utility of bringing contingency theory into the international relations and NGO spaces. In particular, if we conceive of advocacy campaigns as metaorganizations, a contingency theory of advocacy would suggest that campaigns succeed when they are able to adapt properly to the contingencies they face and fail when they do not. If a campaign initiator chooses a suboptimal level of action, target, or strategy, for instance, that choice may undermine the effectiveness of their campaign. Indeed, recent scholarship suggests that an inability to adapt to changing conditions is diminishing the relevance of many powerful north­ern NGOs (Mitchell, Schmitz, and Bruno-­van Vijfeijken 2020). Insofar as we are able to predict the context and conditions under which advocacy is conducted, we can use this general framework to predict more specifically the likely composition and future of advocacy campaigns on international issues. On the basis of the empirical conditions captured in this volume, we offer five specific predictions. First, open international organizations and increasing democratic governance, combined with increasing local NGO capacity, will result in increasing similarity between organizations in a given advocacy campaign. The boomerang theory that local NGOs (small, weak, and locally oriented) would reach out to international NGOs (large, well-­resourced, and globally engaged), was predicated on the assumption that the former needed the latter’s leverage to achieve policy change and that the latter needed the former for information and legitimacy. These assumptions no longer hold true. Rational NGOs will choose a scale, target(s), and strategy that will maximize advocacy impact for the resources expended. For NGOs working in democratic locales, that will of­ ten mean choosing to work at a subnational or national scale and choosing domestic targets. While they may choose either an inside or outside strategy to engage those targets, the most cost-­effective partners will be those with similar

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interests, resource endowments, location, and normative inclinations. Such organizations will find it easier to collaborate with less fear of potential conflicts of interest or misrepresentation. This dynamic will continue to hold even in international campaigns focused on south­ern issues, provided that the target of the campaign is an institution or other actor open to NGO input. Collaborating with regional partners, actors that share the same language and concerns, will be more cost effective and less contentious that collaborating with dissimilar actors. Indeed, we offer a corollary to this prediction: in international forums, local NGOs from states with pro-­NGO policies (whether liberal democratic states or states with a co-­option strategy like China) will prefer partnering with government actors to partnering with NGOs from dissimilar states. While this discussion is focused mostly on NGOs from the global South, it may also hold true for NGOs from the global North. Faced with increasing independence from erstwhile south­ern partners and/or laws limiting their access to the local partners that supplied them with legitimacy and information, north­ern NGOs will increasingly choose to operate on the global scale, target­ ing global policy makers and partnering with other north­ern actors. Oxfam International’s Ripe for Change campaign, for instance, targets global super­ markets and agrobusinesses, while Environmental Defense Fund is partnering with Walmart to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (Willoughby and Gore 2018; Environmental Defense Fund 2019). Second, we expect to see a greater diversity among transcalar advocacy campaigns on the same issue. Increasing agency among south­ern NGOs, magnified by regional networking among south­ern NGOs and among south­ern states, will increase the diversity of perspectives on a variety of issues. When local organizations operating in more democratic contexts choose to address issues at the regional, national, or subnational scale and select related targets (such as their national government or domestic public), they are likely to choose strategies and partners that will increase their appeal to those local audiences. This will result in the proliferation of diverse, locally inflected policy positions on otherwise global issues. At the global level, advances in electronic communication and social media will allow like-­minded organizations to find each other. Building on our first prediction, above, once rational advocates decide to engage global targets, they will seek to identify partners with whom, because of similarities in strategy and outlook, a minimum of compromise or negotiation is necessary. This may result in competing and conflicting campaigns. For example, farmers and fisher­ men in areas closer to the equator and the poles are increasingly at risk for

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economic disaster from climate change, and they share with electric car companies and nuclear power operators an interest in efforts to reduce the use of fossil fuels for energy, leading to global-­level campaigning on this issue. Farmers and fishermen in more temperate areas, as well as the oil industry and traditional combustion car companies, may also engage in joint advocacy around fuel policy or climate change mitigation, but with an interest in preventing potentially costly new regulations. Third, transcalar advocacy will become increasingly recognized by scholars and policy makers as a distinct phenomenon. The primary reasons for this are similar: as organizations strategically target local and regional actors (as in our first prediction, above), local and regional authorities will recognize that they are being engaged on international issues. This awareness of the links between the local and international will be magnified by movements within national governments to foster government-­NGO partnerships. At the same time, scholars and international policy makers working on global issues will become increasingly aware of south­ern voices and national policies that (as per our sec­ ond prediction) diverge from the “standard” NGO positions promulgated by north­ern NGOs. Indeed, some of these increasingly prominent local tran­scalar campaigns may be in direct response to earlier policy interventions by networks of organizations led by INGOs, which now seem increasingly inappropriate or problematic. For example, new Amazonian rain forest organizations have become active since 2000 seeking to nationalize campaigns in Ecuador and Brazil in response to global conservation campaigns in the 1990s (Rodrigues 2003; Widener 2007). While these first three predictions are most relevant where NGOs are operating under democratic or otherwise NGO-­friendly governments, the trend toward transcalarity is not limited to such contexts. Our fourth prediction is that strong national government regulations on NGOs will produce a limited number of very strong, national, professional advocacy organizations engag­ ing foreign actors, of­ten with little or no partnership with other NGOs. National regulation (of­ten combined with restrictions on foreign NGO presence and narrow eligibility among local NGOs for foreign funding) will lead to the concentration of resources, both funding and professional expertise, in a few, high-­capacity NGOs. Where these organizations are at odds with their national governments, they will choose to target foreign actors, either to shape international policy toward their own country or to leverage their opposition to a national government policy. Such advocacy will typically be done in an inside fashion, particularly when engaging representatives of more open international organizations, to minimize costs and potential domestic backlash. These ad-

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vocacy campaigns will have fewer partnerships, because the NGOs’ high capacity limits the need for partners or because government regulations on foreign NGOs make such partnerships unavailable. Interestingly, where these organizations are aligned with their governments, we expect the same pattern to hold: these NGOs will target foreign policy makers using an inside strategy. To avoid undermining their good relationships with the government, they will ­partner primarily with government actors or other government-­approved NGOs. These patterns have been documented in Vietnam (Pallas and Nguyen, this volume), China (Hsu and Teets 2016; Henry and Sundstrom, this volume), Russia (Henry and Sundstrom, this volume), and Brazil (Rodrigues, this volume). Fifth, we also expect to see an increasing number of fully international advocacy campaigns without clear national footing (potentially even lacking national legal personality). As awareness of the transcalar nature of certain problems expands, advocates will begin to address given issues on multiple scales simultaneously, engaging multiple targets. For example, HIV/AIDS activists seeking to expand access to generic antiretrovirals may engage drug makers, national legislators, and international policy makers around the issues of patent control and intellectual property. In some instances, advocates will opt for a stateless, global approach because they lack support in their home countries. For example, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize and has participated in efforts to draft and pass a nuclear weapons ban treaty at the United Nations. They have had much less luck gaining traction for their campaign in their nominal home countries (the United Kingdom and the United States), in large part due to committed national interests in favor of deterrence via mutually assured destruction (Wittner 2003; www.icanw.org). Where activists engaging in global or multiscalar efforts choose an outside strategy, maximizing campaign participation becomes a potential means of increasing impact. Massive grassroots mobilization can also address international policy-­maker concerns with movement legitimacy (a mass movement may appear more legitimate than a professional NGO) and, through their amorphous nature, circumvent restrictions on NGO activities in closed states. Most importantly, improvements in digital information technology make it possible for individuals to share ideas and develop virtual communities on a scale not previously seen. For example, Avaaz is a digital advocacy organization founded by a Canadian with a website hosted in the United States, and a small staff of thirty to forty around the world. Avaaz has more than thirty million members but does not know from how many countries. It depends on the power of social media to increase awareness of issues by making campaigns go viral with limited physi­cal

Conclusion / 191

infrastructure and a budget of approximate $12 million (US) donated largely from individuals (www.theguardian.com). These features enable Avaaz to respond quickly in international appeals and with minimal national footprints. In this conclusion, we have offered a general framework for understanding the conduct of transcalar advocacy campaigns. Drawing on the empirical data presented in this volume and the broader body of NGO advocacy research, we suggest that the conduct of advocacy campaigns can be understood as a series of sequential, strategic choices by advocacy initiators: to choose the scale or level at which to conduct advocacy; to choose a specific target or targets; to choose a strategy, such as inside or outside lobbying, with which to engage those targets; and to select (or eschew) partners to assist in this effort. The ordering of decision points is similar to those implied in the boomerang theory and its successors, except insofar as we argue that the selection of strategy should rightly precede the selection of partners. The use of partners is necessitated or encouraged by a strategic choice, even if the partners themselves will also influence the conduct of the subsequent advocacy campaign (Pallas and Urpelainen 2013). This dynamic has become more evident as the power disparity between north­ ern and south­ern NGOs has diminished. We argue that the choices possible at each decision point have greatly expanded for both north­ern and south­ern NGOs as a result of changing global architecture and NGO agency. Moreover, we suggest that north­ern and south­ern NGOs face increasingly similar choice sets, and thus our advocacy framework should apply equally to all NGOs. Lastly, we suggest that the specific choices available to a given NGO and its selections from among them will be influenced by that NGO’s particular agency and the architecture governing the po­liti­cal space most relevant to the issue it seeks to address. In this regard, we are offering a contingency theory of NGO advocacy and campaign formation. This model improves on previous theories in several ways. It makes fewer assumptions about actors’ roles or capacities. An actor is no longer assumed to be constrained to make particular choices due to its place in the campaign formation process—south­ern NGOs are not assumed to need north­ern partners or to always pursue outside strategies, just as north­ern NGOs are no longer assumed to respond to south­ern initiation. Instead, all NGOs are treated the same, opening the door to analyses without North–South biases or assumptions. Moreover, our framework captures current empirical trends and explains a number of cases not predicted or adequately explicated by the traditional boomerang pattern. Significantly, it does so by expounding a new general theory rather than a narrow, special theory applicable only to one or more subsets

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of outlier cases. Indeed, our model may be applied retrospectively to understand his­tori­cal boomerang cases. Lastly, by showing how external and internal factors (i.e., po­liti­cal architecture and NGO agency) impact NGO choice sets, our framework can readily accommodate or adapt to future changes in NGOs’ agency or environment by identifying the resulting impact on NGOs’ choice sets. Our model, like its predecessor, makes predictions for the conduct of advocacy campaigns, although our predictions are more varied and are dependent on the advocacy context. Looking at the current trends in NGO agency and global architecture, we have offered five predictions for future trends in transcalar advocacy, related to the level, composition, and visibility of campaigns, their partner selection, and their geographic affiliations. Each of these predictions is amenable to empirical testing. This new theory offers substantial advantages to both academics and practitioners. It gives scholars of advocacy the ability to understand and model a much wider variety of campaigns and actors. Because the theory is developed in response to ongoing changes in global advocacy, it is more likely to explain new patterns than his­tori­cal models. At the same time, our analy­sis may prompt practitioners to consider a wider range of potential partners and strategies and help reduce north­ern biases and assumptions. Our contingency approach can also be expanded to explain campaign failure, which may be useful for practitioners and scholars seeking to understand why a campaign has not achieved its goals. As the cases in this book make clear, transcalar advocacy is already happening. Given the wide-­ranging effects of changes in global architecture and transnational agency, it is important for scholars and practitioners to recognize and understand this phenomenon. We hope that the model presented here will engender greater sensitivity to local population experiences and respect for local capacities, especially from international NGOs. For local NGOs, examining how colleagues in other contexts have seized opportunities may provide insights for new ways forward. Taken together, we hope that the ideas presented here may produce more representative and responsive advocacy and organizations that are better equipped to ensure the rights of marginalized populations and enhance the pub­lic good in global governance.

AFTERWORD JAN AART SCHOLTE

T

his volume would appear to be among the first books to incorporate the term “transcalar” in its title. One suspects that it will not be the last. Contemporary research is looking for adequate vocabulary to convey the notion that social relations involve an interplay of different configurations of geographical space. Earlier candidate words have included “transnational,” “multilevel,” “multi­scalar,” and “glocalization,” although these labels have their limitations, to be discussed shortly. More recently, the “transcalar” alternative has waited in the wings and perhaps now moves toward a full debut. While phonetically rather cumber­some, “transcalar” carries the wanted meaning of “across ranges.” The concept of transscalarity certainly works for this book. As the editors note in their introduction, shifting practices of civil society engagement (and, one might add, politics more generally) call for a new generation of theory. Where ideas of “transnational advocacy” and “boomerang effects” marked an important advance in knowledge twenty years ago (Keck and Sikkink 1998), today it is apparent that the spatial dynamics of world politics hold still greater complexity. There are more than two domains, in addition to the national and the international, and the interplay of these multiple arenas goes in more directions than a single boomerang trajectory. Against this backdrop, this afterword to Beyond the Boomerang develops three steps toward a transcalar understanding of world politics. The first step is to shift conceptions of social space from the national-­international binary to a multiplicity of domains, in­clud­ing global, regional, national, local, and proxi­ mate scales. The sec­ond step is to reorient geographical thinking from containers to crossings: conceiving of social spaces not as closed bordered realms, but as open porous fields. The third step is to move spatial constructions from reifications to combinations: from the notion of separate “levels” to the idea of integrated transcalar wholes. Together these three adjustments generate a different ontology of world politics, as has inspired this volume.

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FROM BINARY TO MULTIPLICITY

Much contemporary social thought reacts against binaries: the premise that society revolves around paired opposites. So, for example, we come to appreciate that class entails more than a bourgeois/proletarian binary. Gender more than man/woman. Race more than color/white. Sexuality more than gay/straight. Age more than old/young. Capacity more than abled/disabled. Identity more than other-­them/self-­us. Geopolitics more than East/West or North/South. Increasingly, we recognize that binary constructions can obscure more than they reveal. While drawing attention to certain qualities, a binary readily distracts from other aspects perhaps equally alive and valid. Such cautions also apply to conceptions of social space: the domains where people interact and interconnect. With respect to world politics, the convention of binaries has it that geography splits into domestic/foreign, home/abroad, national/international. Over recent decades the global/local binary has arisen as an alternative twofold division of social space. As with other binaries, such constructions set an “inside” against an “outside.” And people are constrained to place themselves and other phenomena either “here” or “there.” Without third and more options. Yet social relations involve more than a dualism of spaces, as more than a binary of classes, genders, races, sexualities, ages, capacities, and identities. Within the national sphere lie also provincial and local arenas. Within the international realm lie also global and regional fields. Straddling the national-­international divide are transborder configurations (e.g., Basque lands and Kurdistan) as well as many socially significant cross-­boundary geophysical formations, such as seas, river basins, and mountain ranges. In addition, world politics include proximate spaces: the office, the meeting place, the home. Meanwhile, digital communications introduce “virtual” spaces that largely transcend territorial grids. Thus, for example, an email address is not fixed to a territorial location, and even the most sophisticated online firewall cannot fully uphold a territorial state border. In short, social spaces are plural: far more than two. For the study of world politics—and the study of civil society within world politics—this multiplicity of spaces defies methodological nationalism, that is, the premise that social geography reduces to country units. With methodological nationalism, researchers frame questions, treat evidence, and develop answers always and only in terms of nation-­state-­countries. “Society” in this perspective means “Brazil,” “Kenya,” “Sweden.” “Thailand,” and so forth. Data means “statistics.” “Comparative” analy­sis means to compare countries. Methodological nationalism also prompts other spaces to be described with reference to the nation-­state-­country, through terms such as international, multi­national,

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transnational, subnational, and supranational. Again, the binary prevails: the nation-­state-­country on one side and its contrary on the other. To be sure, social research of recent decades has increasingly regarded methodological nationalism as an unsatisfactory oversimplification of po­liti­ cal geography. Large bodies of work now examine “globalization,” “regionalization,” and “localization” as expansions of important social spaces “above” and “below” the nation-­state-­country. In addition, feminist theory in particular has undone the public/private binary, thereby bringing proximate spaces such as the household into world politics. “Global,” “regional,” and “local” arenas are not merely a function of the national but also (by not in­clud­ing reference to the national in their name) constitute domains in their own right. Thus, global ecology is more than an aggregation of national ecologies. Regional economy is more than a sum of national economies. Local culture is more than a slice of national ­culture. Household politics are more than a microcosm of national politics. Likewise, social connections might be “transplanetary,” “transregional,” and “translocal” as well as “transnational.” Research may call for “globistics,” “registics,” and “locistics” as well as “statistics.” On such lines, Beyond the Boomerang understands social spaces to be plural, beyond the national/international binary. The geography of social relations— in­clud­ing the particular case of NGO activism—involves multiple settings, extents, ranges, and proportions. This insight is hardly abstruse; one might even say it is self-­evident. Still, after decades of critique (see Scholte 1993), many quarters of world politics research still fail to transcend the national/­international binary. In 2021 we—perhaps sadly—still require this book to resist stubborn habits of methodological nationalism inherited from early social science. FROM CONTAINERS TO CROSSINGS

Reconfiguring conceptions of social space involves not only a recognition of multiplicity but also of porosity. It is not just that world politics unfolds on vari­ous scales, but also that social transactions constantly traverse those scales. For this reason, the prefix “trans” (“across”) can attract favor over “inter” (“between”) and “multi” (“several”). Hence this book’s preference for the descriptor “trans-­scalar” rather than “multi-­scalar” or “inter-­scalar.” “Multi” conveys a sense of separation, where a first, a sec­ond, a third and more scales are discrete arenas. Meanwhile, “inter” can seem to stress the units that are linked rather than the links themselves. In contrast, “trans” emphasizes the crossings instead of the divisions. Methodological nationalism views the nation-­state-­country as a container, such that the vast majority of transactions and interdependencies unfold within

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the bounded (national) space (Taylor 1994). In this conception, border crossings are the margin, the exception, the aberration, the disruption. The core of social life transpires within the nation-­state-­country vessel, whose shell limits contacts with the outside. Economics is mainly national, with but occasional international interventions. Culture is mainly bounded, with but the odd foreign infiltration. Politics is mainly domestic, with but a sporadic external interruption. On these lines, the boomerang presents an exceptional departure from NGO advocacy, which otherwise “naturally” plays out within the national capsule. The implication is that activists normally stick to their “home ground” and only go beyond it when the national arena frustrates them. Yet, as the contributions to this volume continually indicate, moving across spaces is part of everyday life and politics. Cross-­border activism is not a deviation from the norm; it is a norm. Likewise, cross-­border communication is normal to culture, cross-­border trade is normal to economy, cross-­border conflict is normal to violence, and so on. Social spaces are never sealed off from each other however insistently some borders may be walled. Even checkpoints enable entry as well as restrict it. The container metaphor is misleading, albeit that its hold on modern po­liti­cal imaginations remains powerful. Container thinking is not limited to methodological nationalism. On the contrary, such emphasis of borders over crossings can also apply to other scales. Thus, for example, methodological localism can presume (and prescribe) that social connectivity normally stays within close ranges, only occasionally venturing out to links at distance. Similarly, methodological regionalism can conceive of (sub)continental blocs that have mostly internal relations (e.g., within Africa, within Europe, within South Asia) and only peripheral interregional contacts. In all of these cases—methodological localism and methodological regionalism as well as methodological nationalism—the bordered area is the focus and crossings into other spaces are the fringe. Of course, it is also unsustainable to pursue a methodological globalism that conceives of a “borderless world” and denies any geographical divisions. On the contrary, regions, countries, and locales are distinctive settings within global spheres. Each smaller range has its own specific expressions of (and sometimes also deviations from) planetary-­scale patterns. Hence, for instance, global warming is not uniform across all subglobal domains. Likewise, regional, national, and local location matters for the global distribution of resources, for the production and reception of global communications, for the formulation and application of global norms, and so on. Yet variations in social relations between regions, countries, and locales develop not only because these spaces are distinct from each other, but also and in good part because of the crossings that link them. Thus, for example, differ-

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ent places have the economic particularities that they do largely owing to their respective positions within global divisions of labor. National identities did not predate international encounters but substantially resulted from those encounters (Scholte 1995). Likewise, government within a given space arises to a great extent because of that government’s exchanges (diplomatic, military, technical, and such) with governments in other spaces; the state is a product of the interstate sys­tem as well as vice versa. In all of these cases, the border is a product of its traverses as much as the other way around. In sum, as the contributions to this volume constantly demonstrate, tran­ scalar crossings are just as prevalent and significant in world politics as intrascalar relations. It is not that NGOs and other social actors preexist within a bounded space (whether proximate, local, national, or regional in scale) and then only later make contact with a wider world. Rather, bridges between the supposed “inside” and the supposed “outside” pervade from the start, generating the actors who cross them as much as the reverse. Crossings rather than containers provide the main geographical motif of civil society and other politics. FROM REIFICATIONS TO COMBINATIONS

Having established that spaces in world politics are multifarious rather than dual, and that these spaces relate to each other by interchanges more than barriers, a third step in conceptualizing transcalarity moves from reifications to combinations. That is, rather than understanding scales as ontologically discrete spaces, one regards them as intertwined and co-­constituting qualities. Instead of being several separate spaces—a local realm, a national realm, a regional realm, and a global realm—scales are interrelated dimensions of a single “world” space. This general premise of interrelated spatial scales is not new, of course. Already half a century ago, certain theorists emphasized the mutual effects of national and international politics (Rosenau 1967). Already in the 1990s the term “glocalization” gained traction as a way to convey that the global never exists independently of the local (Robertson 1994; Swyngedouw 1997). However, the notion of transcalarity extends the principle of co-­constituting spaces beyond national-­international and local-­global binaries to a multidimensional ­geography. The issue of separation arose earlier when discussing the distinction between the prefixes “multi” and “trans,” in particular “multi-­scalar” versus “trans-­ scalar.” In studies of world politics one of­ten encounters the term “multi-­level” (Enderlein et al. 2010; Hooghe, Marks, and Schakel 2020). This language of “levels” reinforces the idea that the global, the regional, the national, the local, and the proximate are discrete arenas. With a hierarchical arrangement, the

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global “level” sits on top, with the regional, the national, the local, and the proxi­ mate “levels” occupying successively lower tiers. Like floors of a building, these levels exist as clearly divided domains: so one moves “up” from the proximate level/scale to the local level/scale to the national level/scale and then further to the regional level/scale, and finally to the global level/scale. Certainly governance actors can be legally constituted at one or the other level. Thus, for example, the city of New Delhi is formally established as a local government. The state of Rondônia is officially constructed as a provincial government. The Repub­lic of South Africa exists legally as a national government. The European Union is, in a juridical sense, a regional governance apparatus. The WHO is, formally, a global governance body. In constitutional terms, the different regulatory institutions are defined at one or the other “level.” Likewise, a civil society organization can be formally established at this or that “level.” Low Income Families of Toronto may be local in the sense that it registers with the relevant municipality. The North­ern Rangelands Trust may be provincial in terms of administering reserves in certain counties in Kenya. The Indonesian Athletics Association officially relates to a national field. The European Network on Debt and Development constructs its membership on regional lines. Amnesty International defines itself as a global movement with constituents across the planet. However, while an actor may be explicitly identified with a “level” its practices are by no means limited to the corresponding geographical scale. Hence, for instance, the operations of the United Nations are not confined to a global scale but also engage with regional, national, and local spaces. The Af­ri­can Union works not only in a regional arena but also in global, national, and ­local spheres. The government of Bolivia as a national state maneuvers as well in global, regional, and local domains. New York City is also encompassed in national, regional, and global networks. Each of these governing bodies is constituted at a particular level but acts across scales. The same point holds for civil society groups. A local community-­based organization may lobby a national parliament, join a regional network, and attend a global conference. A nationally registered NGO may pursue local projects, invoke regional directives, and obtain funds from a global foundation. A civil society organization with regional construction may address local developments, assemble national members, and appeal to global norms. A globally spread social movement may operate through local events, national customs, and regional infrastructures. In every such case, the civil society association is, in its practice, existing across—and combining—vari­ous scales simultaneously. All of these civil society activities are transcalar (local-­national-­regional-­global) phenomena.

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Here it can be useful to distinguish between a “world” space (as in “world politics”) and its vari­ous overlapping and mutually constituting scales. The “world” is then the overall expanse in which people live at a given point in time. Today’s “world” has planetary extent—a global world—but his­tori­cally other “worlds” have had different proportions, for example, the Mediterranean world or the Mongol Empire. The “world” is thus the overall geographical entity, and scales are dimensions within that whole. Put in this perspective, globality, regionality, nationality, and locality are not spaces in their own right but aspects, features, and qualities of the “world” space of our present age. In such a conception, civil society associations (as all other social and po­ liti­cal actors) operate in a world realm and negotiate its interrelated proximate, local, national, regional, global scales. Advocacy groups engage whatever combination of scales seems most effective to advance their cause. The vari­ous dimensions may shift in their relative prominence from one activity to another, or from one moment to another, but in one or the other way all of the scales are always relevant. Thus, any and every civil society campaign blends vari­ous scales within a world sphere, even when the campaigners themselves might not be aware of the relevance that each scale holds for their advocacy. Nor can the different scales be disentangled from one another. Conceptually we might distinguish global, regional, national, local, and proximate settings and influences, but actually the scalar features cannot be divided into separate concrete parts, that is, reified. It is not that the proximate, the local, the national, the regional, and the global are separate “factors,” that is, preexistent discrete spaces that then “interact.” We cannot assign proportions of causation to the different scales and determine that, say, the geography of a given civil society dynamic is 30 percent global, 15 percent regional, 35 percent national, 15 percent local, and 5 percent proximate. Social relations can never be isolated and measured at any “level.” Rather, spatial dynamics are always down to transscalar combinations within a world space. This afterword has developed an ontology of transcalarity. The term may strike some readers as unpalatable jargon, but hopefully the foregoing remarks have clarified and justified this alternative vocabulary. In any case, a somewhat jolting word can help to underline the radical reorientation involved. As elaborated, transcalar thinking entails three basic departures from conventional social knowledge, in­clud­ing mainstream research where world politics is understood as “international relations.” First, transcalarity reorients geographical mindsets from two-­sided to multifaceted conceptions of space. Sec­ond, tran­ scalarity shifts spatial ideas from enclosed realms to porous fields. Third, tran­ sca­larity moves geographical thought from reductionism (separated levels) to

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holism (combined dimensions). Together, these steps comprehensively recon­ struct understandings of “society.” A transition to transscalar ontology offers far-­reaching benefits for knowledge and practice. Theoretically, transcalarity provides a more precise and nuanced conception of social space, refusing the oversimplications of binaries, containers, and reifications. Methodologically, transcalarity opens doors to alternative constructions of data, beyond statistics and other country-­centered forms of evidence. Substantively, transcalarity enriches understandings of key concrete developments in contemporary history, in­clud­ing ecological changes, demographic trends, pandemics, digital communications, economic restructurings, reconfig­ured identities, and conflict transformations. Normatively, tran­ scalarity points away from both nationalism and universalism toward more creative and refined ways to appreciate and negotiate diversity and difference in world politics. To be sure, the shift to transcalarity in social research is demanding. This alternative knowledge construction requires taxing mental concentration and wholesale regeneration of evidence. Moreover, given the pervasive habits and enormous interests that are vested in methodological nationalism, moving to “transcalarism” cannot but involve protracted struggles of knowledge politics. This book with its audacious title takes a positive step in these efforts. May others take inspiration.

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CONTRIBUTORS

Susan Appe is assistant professor in the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy at the University at Albany, State University of New York. Elizabeth A. Bloodgood is associate professor of po­liti­cal science at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. Suparna Chaudhry is assistant professor of international affairs at Lewis and Clark College. Karisa Cloward is associate professor of po­liti­cal science at South­ern Methodist University. Andrew Heiss is assistant professor of pub­lic management and policy at Georgia State University. Laura A. Henry is professor of government at Bowdoin College. Lan Phuong Nguyen is senior program manager at Friends for International Tuberculosis Relief. Christopher L. Pallas is associate professor of conflict management at Kennesaw State University. Maria Guadalupe Moog Rodrigues is professor of po­liti­cal science at the College of the Holy Cross. Jan Aart Scholte is professor of global transformations and governance challenges at Leiden University. Jackie Smith is professor of sociology at the University of Pittsburgh. Shana M. Starobin is assistant professor of environmental studies and government at Bowdoin College. Lisa McIntosh Sundstrom is associate professor of po­liti­cal science at the University of British Columbia, Canada. Anders Uhlin is professor of po­liti­cal science at the Lund University, Sweden. Marisa von Bülow is a professor of po­liti­cal science at the University of Brasilia, Brazil.

INDEX

administrative decentralization, 110–12, 117, 123 Af­ri­can Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, 146, 148 Agenda Accra Action (AAA), 54 Amis de la Terre de Québec. See Friends of the Earth Amnesty International, 32, 68, 69, 185, 198 Amnesty USA, 119, 120 anti-­NGO legislation. See state regulation of NGOs, restrictive architecture. See global architecture Asian Development Bank (ADB), 39, 42, 46, 47 Association of Men and Women of the Sea (AHOMAR), 118, 119, 120 Association of South­east Asian Nations (ASEAN), 39–40, 42, 46 Baia Viva, 114 Bandung conference, 53 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, 146 Blade Runner, 115 Blue Bay Consortium. See Consorcio Baia Azul Bonded Labor Liberation Front, 181 boomerang model, 2–3, 15; Brazil, 1; challenges to, 10–14; female genital-­ mutilation, 148, impact of neoliberal globalization, 83; impact of shrinking civil society space, 34–35; information politics, 112; targets, 57; theory, 10–13; Vietnam, 172

Brazil, 86; Guanabara Bay, 113–22. See also transcalar advocacy Center for Supporting Community Development Initiatives (SCDI), 127 China: climate change, 169–71; Civil Climate Change Action Network, 172; Overseas NGO Management Law, 168; Youth Climate Action Network, 172. See also state partnerships with NGOs; state regulation of NGOs, restrictive; transcalar advocacy civil society organizations (CSOs), 160 Climate Action Network, 164, 183; East­ ern Europe, Caucasus, and Central Asia, 171 Comitê Político pelo Saneamento da Baixada Fluminense, 114 community-­based organizations (CBOs), 129 Como Vamos, 58 Conectas, 60, 121 Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN), 76–77 Consorcio Baia Azul, 115 contingency theory, 187, 191–92 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), 142, 146, 148, 151 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), 146, 151 corporate social responsibility (CSR), 111, 124 cyberspace, 120, 123–24

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democracy-­civil society paradox, 162 democratization, 11–12, 43, 46, 110, 111, 123 donors, 23–25; Brazil, 121; Egypt, 23; impact of capacity-­building efforts, 17; new aid configurations, 51–52, 56; official aid, 29–31, 35; private, 31–32, 34; response to state repression of NGOs, 17–18; Vietnam, 128–29, 130–32, 133, 135–38 downscaling, 5, 98, 99–100, 108 early marriage, 150–51, 152; local responses, 154–57; Nepal, 151–52, 154, 156; prevalence, 152–54. See also transcalar advocacy Ecodefense, 168–69 Egypt. See donors; state regulation of NGOs, restrictive El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (­ ECOSUR), 105 European Union, 42, 45, 60, 97, 100–1, 198 Federação de Órgãos para Assistência ­Social e Educacional (FASE), 114, 119, 121, 122 Federation of Antioqueña NGOs ­(FAONG), 57, 60 female genital-­mutilation, 148–49; Burkina Faso, 149–50, 153; Kenya, 150, 153– 54, 155, 157, 183; local responses, 154– 57; prevalence, 152–54. See also tran­ scalar advocacy foreign agents, 30. See also China; state regulation of NGOs, restrictive foreign aid. See international aid Forum on Climate Change and Social Justice, 119 Forum Sociale Mondial (FSM). See World Social Forum (WSF) Friends of the Earth, 119; Quebec, 78; Brazil, 118 gatekeeping laws, 33 genetically modified organisms (GMOs). See Mexico; Monsanto; Maya Bee­keepers Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage, 147, 151, 152, 157

global architecture: access to international organizations, 36–40; impact on south-­ south networks, 50–53; transcalar advocacy theory and, 5, 7, 12, 15–17, 20, 175–76, 183, 186–87, 191, 192; transnational social movements and, 87–90. See also po­liti­cal opportunity structures global economy, 50–51, 83–84, 86 Global Fund, 130–31, 132 Global Justice, 121, 122 global-­local linkages, 86–87, 92–93 Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-­operation (GPEDC), 55 Goodweave, 181 Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, 78 Greenpeace, 13, 185; Brazil, 114; Mexico, 97, 103; Russia, 171 Heinrich Boll Foundation, 123, 164, 169 High Level Event on South-­South Cooperation and Capacity Development, 55 High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness: Busan, 52, 55; Paris, 54 honeybees, 101, 105–106 India-­UN Development Partnership Fund, 52 information politics. See boomerang model inside advocacy, 44–45, 47; boomerang model assumptions, 8, 177; transcalar, 181, 185–86, 189, 191; Vietnam, 126– 27, 133–34, 136–38 Institute for Social and Development Studies (ISDS), 127 Instituto Baia da Guanabara, 115 Instituto Brasileiro de de Análises Sociais e Econômicas (IBASE), 119, 121, 122 Instituto Brasileiro de Meio Ambiente (­ IBAMA), 112 Instituto Brasileiro de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE), 112 Instituto de Estudos Socio-­Economicos (INESC), 119, 121 Instituto Polis, 121 international aid. See donors International Committee of the Red Cross, 39, 185

Index / 241

International Labor Organization (ILO), 37 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 39, 42, 86 international organizations (IOs), 4, 12, 13, 17, 19, 20; boomerang model and, 43–44; nonstate actor access to, 15, 36– 40, 41–48 inverse boomerang, 5, 35, 45 Latin Ameri­can Network for Fair, Democratic, and Sustainable Cities ­(RLCJDS), 57–58 League of Nations, 37 Manifesto de Repudio pelo assassinato des Pescadores lideres da AHOMAR, 118– 19, 120 Maputo Protocol, 147, 148 Maya beekeepers, 97–98, 100–2, 103–9 Mechanical Turk, 31–32 methodological nationalism, 81, 194– 196, 200 Mexico. See Greenpeace; NGO agency; transcalar advocacy milpa, 97, 102, 103 Monsanto, 17, 97, 102, 103, 105, 106–8 Movimento dos Atingidos por Barragens (MAB), 121 naming and shaming, 25, 33, 34, 144– 45, 176–77; female genital-­mutilation, 182–83; Red Cross, 185 nationalization, 4, 13, 189 neoliberal globalization, 62, 83–84, 86 Nepal. See early marriage Network Association of NGOs of Guayaquil in Ecuador (AROG), 57, 60 networks, 4, 20, 63–65, 71–76, 79. See also South-­South networks NGO agency: Mexico, 97, 99; state-­ society relationship and, 159–69, 171– 73; transcalar advocacy theory and, 7, 11–12, 15, 17–18, 175, 183, 186–87, 188, 191, 192; transnational advocacy theory and, 3, 8; Vietnam, 125, 126–27, 132, 136–38 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). See NGO agency; state partnerships

with NGOs; state regulation of NGOs, restrictive North-­South partnerships, 25, 56, 59, 125 Onda Azul, 115–16 outside advocacy, 44–45; boomerang model assumptions, 8, 176–77; opening up of international organizations, 44–47; transcalar, 181, 186, 187, 190, 191; Vietnam, 126–27 Os Verdes, 114 Oxfam: International, 188; Quebec, 68, 69, 76 Pacto Ambiental da Petrobas com a Sociedade, 115–17 Peninsular Forum, 100–2 Petrobras, 112–21 Plan of Action of Buenos Aires, 53 Plataforma Dhesca Brasil, 121 po­liti­cal ecosystem, 93–94 po­liti­cal opportunity structures, 40–41, 44–48 pro–civil society norm, 43 program-­capture laws, 33 Refinaria Duque de Caxias (REDUC), 113, 114, 188 Regional Initiative for Transparency and Accountability of Civil Society, 57 Rugmark. See Goodweave Russia: climate change, 169–71; Law on Foreign Agents, 31, 168. See also Greenpeace; state regulation of NGOs, restrictive; transcalar advocacy sandwich effect, 92 Secretaría de Agricultura y Desarrollo Rural (SAGARPA), 101, 102–3, 104– 5, 106 shrinking space. See state regulation of NGOs, restrictive Sindicato dos Petroleiros do Rio de Janeiro (SINDIPETRO), 114 social network analy­sis, 62, 68–71, 79–80 Socioenvironmental Institute (ISA), 119 South Asian Coalition of Child Servitude, 181

242 / Index

South­ern Voice on Post-­MDG International Development Goals, 59 South-­South cooperation. See South-­South networks South-­South funding, 137. See also India­UN Development Partnership Fund South-­South networks, 49–50, 52, 53–61, 124, 174 South-­South partnerships. See South-­ South networks state crackdown. See state regulation of NGOs, restrictive state partnerships with NGOs, 110–11, 160–61, 175; China, 171–72 state regulation of NGOs, restrictive, 12– 13, 16, 23, 26–29, 57; Brazil, 112; China, 33, 168–69; Egypt, 23, 34; Ethiopia; 33, Funding, 25–26, 29–32; Kenya, 35; Operations, 32–34; Russia, 168–69; Vietnam, 125–38 state repression. See state regulation of NGOs, restrictive State-­society relationship, 159–160, 163, 172, 173 Strategic legitimation, 41–42, 43 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 51, 53, 55, 58–59, 61 Terra de Direitos, 119, 121 transcalar advocacy: actors, 4, 20, 47; Brazil, 1, 117–23, 174; China, 159– 69, 171–73; choice sets, 176–77; definition, x, 5–6; early marriage, 139–40, 146–48, 157–58; female genital-­ mutilation, 139–40, 146–48, 157–58; impact of information technologies, 119–20; Mexico, 97–98, 99, 100–9; norm promotion, 140–46; partner selection, 181–83, 186; Russia, 159– 69, 171–72; scale selection, 183–85; strategy, 4–5, 16–17, 93, 181, 185–86; strengths and challenges, 121–23. targets, 43–44, 185; theory, 18–20, 175– 76, 186–92; Vietnam, 125–27, 130–38 transnational advocacy, 2–3, 10–11, 174– 175; choice sets, 176–77

Transnational Institute (TIN), 118 transnational network advocacy, 10–11, 63–64, 98 transnational social movement organizations, 84, 87–90 transnational turn, 37–40, 43 United Nations, 37, 84–85, 124; corporate involvement, 84, 87; Framework Convention on Climate Change ­(UNFCCC), 159–67, 170–72; gender-­ based violence, 147; Joint Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS), 127; Office of South-­South Cooperation, 54–55, 58, 59; Rio + 20, 118; Working Group on Human Rights to Brazil, 121 United States Agency on International Development (USAID), 23, 24, 30, 35 United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), 130–31 Ural Ecological Union, 168–69 Urban Social Forum (USF) Semerang Extension Volunteer Group, 78 Varieties of Democracy (V-­Dem), 31 Vietnam. See boomerang model; donors; inside advocacy; state regulation of NGOs, restrictive; transcalar advocacy; Vietnamese NGOs Vietnam Union of Science and Technology Associations (VUSTA), 129, 135 Vietnamese NGOs (VNGOs), 125–38 web crawler methods, 63; HTTracker, 65; IssueCrawler, 62, 66, 67, 76 World Bank, 1, 2, 37, 39, 42, 60; South-­ South Experience Exchange Facility, 59 World Health Organization (WHO), 98– 99, 139, 146, 198 World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, 91 World Social Forum (WSF), 62, 63, 85, 87, 91–93; Montreal, 65–66, 67–79 Yucatán. See Mexico