NGOs, Knowledge Production and Global Humanist Advocacy: The Limits of Expertise 9780367249595, 9780429285172

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NGOs, Knowledge Production and Global Humanist Advocacy

NGOs, Knowledge Production and Global Humanist Advocacy is an empirically and theoretically rich account of how international non-governmental organisations produce knowledge of and formulate understandings about the world around them. The author applies critical and sociological perspectives to analyse the social and political limits of knowledge generated in support of global advocacy efforts aimed at enhancing human rights and preventing violent conflicts. It is found that, despite their transnational networks and claims to humanist universality, the proximity of global advocates to Western power structures and elite social spaces delimits their worldviews and curtails the potential for radical departures from mainstream political thinking. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of international relations, human rights, the sociology of knowledge, peace and conflict studies, and critical security studies. Alistair Markland completed his doctorate at Aberystwyth University’s Department of International Politics. He now teaches politics and international relations at Aston University’s School of Languages and Social Science, UK. His research looks at the epistemic practices of transnational actors, global advocacy efforts around violent conflicts, and technology and human rights.

Worlding Beyond the West

Series Editors: Arlene B. Tickner, Universidad del Rosario, Colombia, David Blaney, Macalester College, USA and Inanna Hamati-Ataya, Cambridge University, UK

Historically, the International Relations (IR) discipline has established its boundaries, issues, and theories based upon Western experience and traditions of thought. This series explores the role of geocultural factors, institutions, and academic practices in creating the concepts, epistemologies, and methodologies through which IR knowledge is produced. This entails identifying alternatives for thinking about the “international” that are more in tune with local concerns and traditions outside the West. But it also implies provincializing Western IR and empirically studying the practice of producing IR knowledge at multiple sites within the so-called ‘West’.









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NGOs, Knowledge Production and Global Humanist Advocacy The Limits of Expertise

Alistair Markland

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Alistair Markland The right of Alistair Markland to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-367-24959-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-28517-2 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by codeMantra

Contents

List of figures Acknowledgements List of abbreviations

vii ix xi

6 Extracting knowledge: global advocates’ relations with domestic actors in post-war Sri Lanka

156

7 Conclusion: embattled knowledge, contested expertise— a bleak future for global humanist advocacy?

194

Appendix Index

203 213

Figures

4.1 4.2

4.3

4.4

4.5

4.6

4.7

4.8

The most common organisations of prior employment for full-time Amnesty International researchers or campaigners, as a percentage of the sample total (N = 222) The most common academic disciplines studied by full-time research or advocacy staff working at the International Crisis Group (bachelor’s degree or higher), as a percentage of the sample size (N = 73) The percentage of full-time research or advocacy staff at Amnesty International (N = 222), Human Rights Watch (N = 156) and the International Crisis Group (N = 80) that have past experience working at intergovernmental organisations The percentage of full-time research or advocacy staff at Amnesty International (N = 222), Human Rights Watch (N = 156) and the International Crisis Group (N = 80) that have past experience working as journalists or at media organisations The percentage of full-time research or advocacy staff who hold doctorates at Amnesty International (N = 222), Human Rights Watch (N = 156) and the International Crisis Group (N = 80) The percentage of full-time research or advocacy staff at Amnesty International (N = 222), Human Rights Watch (N = 156) and the International Crisis Group (N = 80) that have prior experience working in government or civil service The most common professional backgrounds of members of the International Crisis Group’s board of trustees as a percentage of the sample total, as measured by sector of employment (N = 30) The most common professional backgrounds of Human Rights Watch board members as a percentage of the sample total, as measured by sector of employment (N = 30)

83

89

91

93

94

95

96 99

viii Figures 4.9

The highest level of educational attainment (bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees) of Amnesty International (N = 257), Human Rights Watch (N = 161) and the International Crisis Group (N = 80) staff, as a percentage of sample total 4.10 The percentage of full-time research and advocacy staff at Amnesty International (N = 223), Human Rights Watch (N = 155) and the International Crisis Group (N = 76) educated at top-25-ranked academic institutions, as measured by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings (2018) 4.11 The percentage of full-time research or advocacy staff at Amnesty International (N = 223), Human Rights Watch (N = 155) and the International Crisis Group (N = 76) who have gained educational qualifications (bachelor’s degree or higher) from more than one country of study 6.1 The most frequently cited Sri Lankan media publications across all full-length reports published by the Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Crisis Group (May 2009 to January 2015) 6.2 Frequently cited Sri Lankan NGOs within Amnesty International and International Crisis Group reports (May 2009 to January 2015)

103

103

107

162 174

Acknowledgements

One of the core assertions of this book is that knowledge production is a process that is dependent on a particular constellation of social influences. Undeniably, this statement also rings true for this very research project. First, I would like to extend my appreciation to the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The ambitious scope and empirically rich nature of this research would not have been possible without the support of the ESRC’s +3 funding scheme that supported my doctoral studies at Aberystwyth University. I am also heavily indebted to my doctoral supervisors, Dr Berit Bliesemann de Guevara and Dr Inanna Hamati-Ataya. Their dedication to developing epistemics as an emerging sub-field within international studies is an important backdrop to this book. Before moving to Birmingham, I was lucky to be part of the broader research community at the Aberystwyth University’s Department of International Politics, where there is a strong intellectual engagement with the issue of knowledge production in International Relations. The opportunity to bounce ideas off colleagues there was invaluable in the development of this project. The research that lies behind this book involved substantial overseas fieldwork, where I was fortunate to meet many dozens of engaged and passionate individuals. I would like to thank all of the practitioners and activists in London, New York, Washington DC and Sri Lanka who selflessly agreed to meet and answer my queries regarding the functioning of global advocacy. The empirical dimensions of this book are profoundly dependent on their insights. In particular, I would like to acknowledge those activists based in Colombo and Jaffna who gave up their time to speak to me, despite a lingering climate of political risk and intimidation on this beautiful-yet-troubled island. Finally, I would like to extend my thanks to my parents for their love, encouragement and faith in my ability to overcome this scholarly journey. Alistair Markland August 2019

Abbreviations

AI AIUK AIUSA ANT BRICS BTF CPA CSCE CSIPA ECOSOC ESRC EU FFT GOSL GTF HRW ICG ICJ ICM IGO IHL INGO IR ITJP IWG LSE LTTE MRG NGO NYU OHCHR PEARL

Amnesty International Amnesty International UK Amnesty International USA Actor-Network Theory Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa British Tamil Forum Centre for Policy Alternatives Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe Columbia School of International and Public Affairs The United Nations Economic and Social Council Economic and Social Research Council European Union Freedom from Torture Government of Sri Lanka Global Tamil Forum Human Rights Watch International Crisis Group International Commission of Jurists International Committee Meeting Intergovernmental Organisation International Humanitarian Law International Non-Governmental Organisation International Relations The International Truth and Justice Project International Working Group on Sri Lanka London School of Economics and Political Science Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam Minority Rights Group Non-Governmental Organisation New York University Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights People for Equality and Relief in Lanka

xii Abbreviations R2P SLC SLPF SOAS TAG UoE UN UNHRC UNP UNSG USTPAC UTHRJ

Responsibility to Protect Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice Sri Lankan Freedom Party School of Oriental and African Studies Together Against Genocide University of Essex United Nations United Nations Human Rights Council United National Party United Nations Secretary General United States Tamil Political Action Council University Teachers for Human Rights Jaffna

1

Introduction Understanding the world through humanist advocacy

Knowledge production in global humanist advocacy Over the past decade, there has been a burgeoning interest among scholars of International Relations and related sub-disciplines in analysing how knowledge is produced, constituted and diffused across national boundaries. This research agenda includes studies of global knowledge production that have concentrated on a multiplicity of different political arenas, ranging from international security and crisis interventions to development, international organisations and global governance (Berling, 2015; Berling and Bueger, 2015; Bliesemann de Guevara and Kostić, 2017; Narayanaswamy, 2017; Sending, 2015). As post-colonial perspectives have highlighted, the (neo-)colonial, political and economic hegemony that Western actors have historically exercised over the international system has meant that Western ideologies and epistemologies have been privileged within many of these global fields (Hönke, 2012; Richmond, 2006; Said, 1997). While Western ideologies are heterogenous and often internally contradictory, this book focuses on a specific strand of Western thought that has had a vast impact on the way that global events, relations and objects have been interpreted, articulated and framed: liberal humanism. For over a century, a variety of actors have been responsible for the global projection of this human-centred strand of Western ideology. For example, these include the internationalist foreign policymakers of various nation states, the practitioners and bureaucrats of intergovernmental organisations, the researchers of the liberal academy and foreign correspondent journalists. While these are all important subjects for understanding different forms of global knowledge production, this book homes in on another influential actor within the humanist knowledge ecosystem—professional and globally operative advocates working for non-governmental organisations (NGOs). As the title suggests, this book focuses on the epistemic dimension of global humanist advocacy. First, advocacy can be defined as systematic attempts to influence ‘…policy- or decision-making related to particular issues and building social support both among like-minded organizations as well as in the wider population around these issues’ (Vakil, 1997: 2063).

2 Introduction Second, the qualifier global is added in reference to actors who work on political and social issues that are international or transnational in their nature (e.g. international human rights), and whose political activities transcend national boundaries. Organisationally, international NGOs and global think tanks have been at the forefront of global humanist advocacy since the latter half of the twentieth century. For the sake of conceptual clarity, NGOs can be defined as ‘…private actors pursuing public purposes’ (DeMars, 2005: 41). They are formal organisations (rather than informal associations) that are self-governing, not-for-profit (discounting for-profit corporations) and non-violent (discounting insurgent groups or militias) (Vakil, 1997: 2060). The use of the term in this book also excludes other civil society organisations like political parties, trade unions, professional associations and religious organisations. Meanwhile, international NGOs (INGOs) are those that ‘…operate simultaneously at different levels of the global system’ (Madon, 1999: 253). Because of their size and global influence, this book focuses primarily on an oligarchy of leading humanist INGOs. However, recognition is also given to the participation of smaller NGOs in transnational advocacy networks, as well as the role of local civil society groups in the extraction of knowledge from host societies. What I mean by liberal humanism is a universalist ideology that promotes the individual human agent as the primary ontological and ethical subject. It is a foundationalist worldview that denotes humanity’s universal capacity for reason and moral deliberation (Butler, 1999: 14). Both politically and philosophically, it commits to ideas of individual liberty and universal human betterment. In deploying this term to grasp the centrality of the human within liberal doxa, I am not emphasising ‘secular humanism’, or the strand of humanism that is explicitly hostile to religion or supernatural belief. Indeed, the very idealisation of a progressive human condition has a transcendental or ‘sacred’ quality, making it a quasi-religious phenomenon in the Durkheimian sense (Durkheim, 1915: 47). While there are many manifestations of universalism that have non-Western roots, and conceptions of human dignity are found in the world’s major religions, the lineage of liberal humanism studied here is grounded in a Judeo-Christian tradition (Hopgood, 2006: 8). Despite its appeal to universalism, it is therefore also a belief system inflected by its Western roots. The global humanist advocates that I study throughout this book are primarily advocates of human rights, non-violence and conflict prevention. The advocacy of these issues represents liberal humanism in practice, in the sense that these activities have developed as a pragmatic means to realise the ideals of freedom and universal human progress. As will be seen throughout this book, this pragmatism is important when considering how advocates orient themselves to political arenas. Given the anti-liberal challenge to liberal democracy currently being experienced in the West through the rise of Othering nationalisms, one might question the relevancy of this humanist paradigm in international politics.

Introduction  3 However, it is easy to forget that global humanism still has a strong cultural resonance in Europe, North America and in other parts of the world. The very popularity of the concept of a ‘culture war’ in mainstream political discourse, as opposed to a ‘cultural eclipse’, is a testament to the defensive posturing of liberal cosmopolitanism in opposition to hostile nativist values. Despite the growing strength of particularistic worldviews that emphasise bounded moral communities based on national, ethnic or racial lines, these universalist dispositions are not going down without a fight. However, while these ideals do have a broader societal resonance, it is important to note that—from a sociological perspective—they are particularly resonant among cosmopolitan elites (Goetze and Bliesemann de Guevara, 2014: 777). This is reflected in the bourgeois backgrounds of humanist advocacy practitioners analysed in Chapter 4, and the elite cosmopolitan character of Sri Lankan civil society seen in Chapter 6. Therefore, humanist advocacy also needs to be read sociologically as a relatively privileged practice populated by individuals with the requisite (economic, social and cultural) resources to access channels of global political influence. In empirical terms, the book focuses on three of the most prominent international NGOs that best represent global humanist advocacy: Amnesty International (AI), Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the International Crisis Group (ICG). Although they have slightly different approaches to humanist advocacy, AI and HRW are the world’s two largest and most influential human rights NGOs, while the ICG is a conflict prevention organisation unrivalled in its high-level political connections. Focusing on this upper stratum of organised global advocacy is justified to the extent that they have a political and cultural impact that far surpasses your average NGO. This impact is demonstrable by looking at the Global Go To Think Tank Index 2017, where HRW was ranked as the 26th in the list of ‘top think tanks worldwide’, while AI and the ICG were ranked 37th and 49th respectively (McGann, 2018: 56–57).1 Within the same report, these three NGOs were given particular recognition for running the ‘best advocacy campaign’, with HRW scoring first, AI fifth and the ICG tenth (ibid.: 106). The comparably large size of these organisations in human resource terms also makes them attractive organisations to research. As will be seen in Chapter 4, this is because their large quantities of full-time professionals enable a more systematic analysis of their advocacy cultures than a small N sample would allow for. Taken together, they also provide a broad temporal span for analysing the historical development of advocacy practice. As will be traced in Chapter 3, they provide three unique windows into the evolution of advocacy over a half-a-century-long period: AI was founded at the height of the Cold War in 1961, HRW emerged in the late Cold War period, and the ICG developed in the post-Cold War era. Understanding global advocacy to be an epistemic activity, this book conceptualises professional advocates working for these influential NGOs as ‘agents of knowledge’ (Stone, 2012: 339). In other words, not only do

4 Introduction these advocates project policy preferences and humanistic ideals to their targeted audiences, but they are also heavily invested in the production of knowledge. Drawing on Berger and Luckmann’s classic treatise on the sociology of knowledge, I define knowledge as ‘…the certainty that phenomena are real and that they possess specific characteristics’ (1966: 13). Humanist advocates are therefore engaged in the extraction, assemblage and transmission of phenomenal ‘realities’. It is through specific means of acquiring knowledge—or what practice turn scholars have defined as epistemic practices—that these representational ‘realities’ come into being (Bueger, 2015: 2). For example, in the case of prominent advocacy INGOs like AI, HRW and the ICG, these practices range from original documentation and fact-finding on particular regions, violent conflicts and repressive contexts, to the packaging of epistemic outputs and the dissemination of research to targeted consumers via reporting, savvy use of the contemporary media and direct, face-to-face lobbying efforts. However, this is not to suggest that knowledge generated in advocacy contexts is equivalent or wholly reducible to knowledges emanating from other political or social fields. As an inherently interested activity, one of my main contentions is that advocacy-based knowledge differs significantly in its logical underpinnings from nominally disinterested modes of knowledge production, such as in science or academia. Throughout the book I refer to advocacy-oriented knowledge to convey this specific epistemic logic.

The epistemic limits of advocacy-oriented knowledge Taking a sociological perspective that is inspired by the work of French social theorist Pierre Bourdieu, this book focuses on the different social dimensions of NGO practitioners’ lifeworlds that—in their totality—make up the conditions of possibility for advocacy-oriented knowledge production. The guiding research question is: what are the epistemic limits of global advocacy? In other words, how does the knowledge generated by global advocates become shaped and bounded? What are the main social mechanisms that contribute to the delimitation of humanist advocacy practitioners’ space of possibles (Bourdieu, 2004: 59)? This work therefore represents a critical intervention in the literature on global advocacy by emphasising the limits of knowledge produced in advocacy contexts. While drawing on existing approaches to global knowledge production, I also provide a novel adaptation of a Bourdieusian sociology of knowledge that is relevant to complex, decentralised, transnational and transorganisational contexts. The book therefore provides a broader contribution to the thriving literature on knowledge production and expertise in International Relations and global governance studies. By emphasising the social and human nature of global humanist advocacy, I also push back against a recent post-humanist trend that treats the technological dimension of knowledge production on a

Introduction  5 par with the human dimension. While acknowledging that the rate of technological innovation has certainly impacted the evolution of advocacy in recent years, I contend that it remains a specifically inter-human practice defined principally by social legitimacy, persuasion and dependency. With this literature and research problem mind, a key thread running throughout the text is the extent to which humanist advocates subsist within a condition of dependency. As non-governmental, non-profit actors who lack the autarkic means to subsist, authority is a finite and unstable resource. Despite rhetorical commitments to their ‘independence’, the cultivation of symbiotic relations with powerful stakeholders is a key means by which advocates can levy political influence and project epistemic authority. The knowledge that these actors purvey is therefore infused with power-political dependencies. It is therefore argued that, in their struggle for symbolic consecration from powerful stakeholders, advocates are incentivised to pursue an interested mode of knowledge production that favours conformity to dominant epistemic parameters. Despite the romanticised image of the non-governmental activist speaking truth to power, the symbiotic relations in which they are enmeshed, and their professional, political, social and epistemological proximity to their core consumers, often results in advocates’ co-option by dominant governance logics. For example, this is observable in the adoption of a more commercial mode of knowledge production, as with the eschewal of lengthy forms of reporting that are poorly synchronised with policy and media cycles in favour of more succinct means of communicating advocacy to its targeted audiences. While in some cases this approach may be considered benign, I also demonstrate how these trends can have potentially perverse implications, especially when—in the pursuit of epistemic authority—advocates adopt exclusionary practices that lead to the marginalisation of alternative or critical voices. The notion that non-governmental actors’ structural heteronomy underpins their cognitive limits is not an entirely new assertion. For instance, looking at the development of US-based think tanks, Medvetz has mobilised a Bourdieusian framework to argue that think tanks’ fundamental need for political recognition, funding and media attention limits their ‘…capacity to challenge the unspoken premises of policy debate, to ask original questions, and to offer policy prescriptions that run counter to the interests of financial donors, politicians, or media institutions’ (2012: 7). Where this book advances beyond past sociological studies of advocacy-oriented knowledge production is in the revelation of contextually specific dependencies through multiple levels and scales of analysis. Therefore, rather than reducing socio-political dependency to a single overarching social structure or homogenous episteme, each of the book’s empirical chapters focuses on a different scale of analysis. In other words, there is no overarching ‘global advocacy’ metafield. It is necessary to avoid this reductionism because of the complexity and multi-dimensionality of advocates’ stratified lifeworlds.

6 Introduction Instead, I focus on four main aspects: how advocacy organisations’ market-like relations with consumers and producers shape their epistemic limits over time; how the professional, educational and cultural backgrounds of humanist advocacy practitioners structure their dispositions; how issue or country-specific networks that bring together advocates, activists and policy consumers from multiple organisations develop their own logics that influence epistemic limits on a given political issue; and finally, how advocacy-oriented knowledge is mediated when it is extracted from host societies. In their totality, these mediatory influences are argued to place significant constraints on advocates’ knowledge. By analysing the production of knowledge according to separate yet co-existing structural relations and sub-spaces (studied separately within four empirical chapters), this research provides a nuanced and holistic sociological account of how advocates’ dependencies operate at different levels, ranging from the organisational to the individual, and the macro to the micro.

Structure of the book This book is divided into five core chapters. The first of these chapters clarifies the text’s conceptual and analytical approach and locates the book within a strand of critical scholarship on advocacy and knowledge production. Based on original research, the succeeding four chapters are empirical, with each one exploring a separate sociological dimension of global humanist advocacy. The research for these chapters is based on extensive fieldwork and data collection. This includes nearly 50 semi-structured interviews conducted with a range of practitioners, including professional NGO advocates, Sri Lankan civil society and media actors, Tamil diaspora activists, United Nations officials and policymakers. With the aim of studying both metropolitan spaces of advocacy alongside domestic spaces of extraction, fieldwork was conducted in London, New York City, Washington DC and Sri Lanka. This qualitative and inter-personal engagement with the advocacy networks in question was complemented by the collection and collation of biographical, occupational and educational data relating to 503 full-time employees and 83 board members at AI, HRW and the ICG (see the Appendix for complete data). In order to frame the research problem being addressed, Chapter 2 begins with a literature review covering critiques of global advocacy and the emergence of the politics of knowledge and expertise as distinct areas of academic study. This concise overview of the scholarly literature also points towards important theoretical trends that relate to the evolving way in which knowledge production in International Relations has been (re)conceptualised in relation to key social and philosophical thinkers including Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu and Bruno Latour. In reaction to the fragmentary tendencies within prior studies of global advocacy and

Introduction  7 INGO knowledge production, this chapter argues in favour of applying a revised Bourdieusian framework to gauging the limits of advocacy-oriented knowledge; one which emphasises the plurality of social spaces that humanist advocates are immersed within. Responding to post-humanist critiques that emphasise the non-human dimension of politics in an age of technological proliferation and datafication, Chapter 2 also defends the relevancy of emphasising inter-human relations when studying humanist advocacy. Beginning the empirical analysis, Chapter 3 provides an overview of the long-term pressures that AI, HRW and the ICG have faced through their organisational histories. It centralises the notion that advocacy NGOs are organisational actors striving for pride-of-place within competitive knowledge markets. In doing so, it emphasises their condition of dependence in relation to their primary consumers, and their sensitivity to changing market conditions and the broader political milieu. By tracing their histories, these conditions are seen to create specific legitimacy dilemmas that have shaped and reshaped their epistemic practices over time, such as growing attention scarcity in an age of informational saturation. This chapter also highlight contemporary trends relating to the growing demand for advocates to cater to an increasingly diverse and globally dispersed constellation of consumers, which feeds into risk-averse forms of advocacy practice. More alarmingly, I also emphasise how intensified competition incentivises a more commercial and subservient mode of advocacy that is deferential to existing political and thematic orthodoxies. While leading advocacy NGOs are the primary unit of analysis in Chapter 3, Chapter 4 switches the focus to the practitioners employed by AI, HRW and the ICG. In doing so, it endeavours to unearth the dispositions and background knowledges that are embedded within the human agent. The bulk of Chapter 4 therefore seeks to delineate the occupational, educational and cultural spheres that advocacy practitioners traverse prior to joining these INGOs. These different spheres, which range from the legal profession, social and political science education, intergovernmental organisations, to the media and research institutions, inculcate particular assemblages of practical know-how among employees, which, in turn, help to reinforce (and sometimes challenge) organisational practices. A key finding of this chapter is the significant concentration of practitioners with prior employment within institutions that also act as reciprocal consumers for humanist advocacy organisations, including UN agencies, liberal-leaning think-tanks and news media outlets, as well as the revolving-door trajectories between high-level government posts and INGOs’ boards of trustees. It is argued that these overlaps have a doxic effect, as practitioners’ sense of epistemic possibility is bounded by prior relations with these consumers. At the end of the chapter, these pre-acquired ways of knowing are weighed against specific disciplining and socialising practices that staff are subject to when joining an advocacy NGO.

8 Introduction Switching the parameters of the book’s sociological analysis, Chapter 5 proceeds to look at how epistemic orthodoxies can form through the structuration of issue- or country-specific advocacy networks. To do so, I focus specifically on the crystallisation of a network of global advocates working on issues linked to post-conflict reconciliation and accountability in the context of Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict. This chapter maps out the hierarchies and organising principles that emerged through this network. In particular, it observes how the network became stratified according to its members’ relative proximity to the governance logics espoused by global advocates’ dominant consumers. The structural delineation of Sri Lanka’s post-war global advocacy space unveils ideas related to liberal peace governance that emerged as an epistemic orthodoxy in contradistinction to a set of perceivably radical heterodoxies promoted by Tamil diaspora activists. Overall, this chapter demonstrates how advocates’ epistemic horizons can be delimited through the co-option of smaller transorganisational networks by the logics of powerful policy gatekeepers. Global advocates working in the areas of human rights and conflict prevention earn a significant degree of their legitimacy through the extraction of on-the-ground knowledge. Recognising this, Chapter 6 studies how foreign NGO advocates’ trips to local spaces of knowledge extraction help to mediate their knowledge about a given political problem. Looking at post-war Sri Lanka as an extractive space, this final empirical chapter asks whether the logics that foreign practitioners are exposed to inside the South Asian island reinforce or challenge their existing conceptions of the country’s ethnic conflict. I pay particular attention to their exposure to the local political arena, the domestic media and civil society partners, as well as their engagement with conflict-related victims. It is observed that this extractive space contains both homologous and heterologous elements when compared to the kinds of logics that foreign advocates are exposed to at the global level. On the one hand, engaging with victims can generate affective attachments to the subjects of violence. On the other, foreign NGO researchers’ extractive experience is also heavily bounded due to an over-dependence on a relatively narrow constellation of English-language media outlets and urban, liberally minded gatekeepers. Finally, the conclusory chapter synthesises the book’s findings relating to the doxic parameters of advocacy-oriented knowledge production. I emphasise the persistence of a condition of dependency across the plurality of spaces that humanist advocates traverse. This condition of dependency is then problematised through questioning the viability of advocates’ claims to disinterested universalism. Despite their self-projected image as moral agents in international affairs, their epistemic practices—often guided by dominant political logics—can sometimes have perverse political effects, including the potential suppression of marginalised voices. Finally, this demystification of advocates’ façade of universalism is then linked to further

Introduction  9 avenues for research into the future sustainability of liberal humanistic advocacy in the context of eroding Western hegemony.

Note 1 The top-ranked countries are primarily foreign and international affairs policy institutes. No human rights organisations are ranked higher than AI or HRW. As opposed to research institutes, AI, HRW and the ICG are among the topranked international NGOs on the list.

References Berger, Peter L., and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966). Berling, Trine Villumsen, The International Political Sociology of Security: Rethinking Theory and Practice (Abingdon: Taylor & Francis, 2015). Berling, Trine Villumsen, and Christian Bueger, ‘Security Expertise: An Introduction’, in Trine Villumsen Berling and Christian Bueger (eds.) Security Expertise: Practice, Power, Responsibility (Abingdon: Taylor & Francis, 2015), pp. 1–18. Bliesemann de Guevara, Berit, and Roland Kostić, ‘Knowledge Production In/ About Conflict and Intervention: Finding ‘Facts’, Telling ‘Truth’’, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 11 (2017), pp. 1–20. Bourdieu, Pierre, Science of Science and Reflexivity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004). Bueger, Christian, ‘Making Things Known: Epistemic Practices, the United Nations, and the Translation of Piracy’, International Political Sociology, 9 (2015), pp. 1–18. Butler, Judith, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (2nd ed. London: Routledge, 1999). DeMars, William E., NGOs and Transnational Networks: Wild Cards in World Politics (London: Pluto, 2005). Durkheim, Emile, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (London: Macmillan, 1915). Goetze Catherine, and Berit Bliesemann de Guevara, ‘Cosmopolitanism and the Culture of Peacebuilding’, Review of International Studies, 40 (4) (2014), pp. 771–802. Hopgood, Stephen, Keepers of the Flame: Understanding Amnesty International (London: Cornell University Press, 2006). Hönke, Jana, ‘Governing (In)Security in a Postcolonial World: Transnational Entanglements and the Worldliness of “Local” Practice’, Security Dialogue, 43(5) (2012), pp. 383–401. Madon, Shirin, ‘International NGOs: Networking, Information Flows and Learning’, The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 8 (1999), pp. 251–261. McGann, James G., ‘2017 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report’, Global Go To Think Tank Index Reports Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program (2018). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania. Medvetz, Thomas, Think Tanks in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012). Narayanaswamy, Lata, Gender, Power and Knowledge for Development (London: Routledge, 2017).

10 Introduction Said, Edward, Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World (New York: Vintake Books, 1997). Sending, Ole Jacob, The Politics of Expertise: Competing for Authority in Global Governance (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015). Stone, Diane, ‘Agents of Knowledge’, in David Levi-Faur (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Governance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 339–352. Richmond, Oliver, ‘The Problem of Peace: Understanding the “Liberal Peace”’, Conflict, Security and Development, 6(3) (2006), pp. 291–314. Vakil, Anna C., ‘Confronting the Classification Problem: Toward a Taxonomy of NGOs’, World Development, 25 (1997), pp. 2057–2070.

2

Mapping the logics of knowledge production in global advocacy

Analysing the logics of global advocacy This chapter maps out the social logics of global advocacy, and how these logics underpin the particular mode of knowledge production that humanist advocates engage in. Reviewing past and present debates around the nature of advocacy and politically oriented knowledge production, I settle on a theoretical and conceptual framework that is geared towards studying the social and political dimensions of advocacy-oriented knowledge production. This framework sits within a tradition of critical scholarship that, rather than deferring to actors’ self-representations or notions of principled action, considers advocates’ structural imperatives and proximity to sites of political or social power. While technological developments have certainly brought about changes in the character of humanist advocacy, it remains a fundamentally inter-human activity dependent on social relations. This logic of dependence entails studying the relations between global advocates and their key stakeholders, and how struggles for authority shape their epistemic horizons. Nevertheless, the framework developed here goes beyond existing materialist, Foucauldian or Bourdieusian perspectives by emphasising global advocates’ multifaceted and multiscalar lifeworlds, as well as the dispositional dimension of epistemic practice. Therefore, the logic of global advocacy is not simply structured by a homogenous field or discourse, but is mediated through a plurality of social influences. Humanist advocacy-oriented knowledge therefore needs to be studied in relation to a multiplicity of social and political pressures.

From liberal idealism to the materialist critique of advocacy organisations Alongside a more general interest in non-state actors, IR scholars’ attention to humanist advocacy surged in the aftermath of the Cold War. With the backdrop of the End of History, this literature is defined principally by its constructivism and normative liberal idealism (Fukuyama, 1992). In opposition to the past dominance of state-centric thinking, Mary Kaldor

12  Mapping the logics of knowledge production declared that ‘global civil society’ was as an opportunity for ‘human emancipation’ in an emerging post-Westphalian world (2003: 46). Sharing in this liberal triumphalist zeitgeist, constructivist perspectives in the late 1990s focused attention on the capacity of non-governmental advocates, as ‘norm entrepreneurs’, to reshape global norms through persuasion, socialisation and fostering a ‘logic of appropriateness’ (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998: 895–896). Juxtaposed with actors motivated by instrumentalism (e.g. forprofit actors) or causal beliefs (e.g. epistemic communities), Keck and Sikkink argued that these advocates were conceptually distinct due to their mobilisation around principled values; beliefs that were seen as acting as a kind of social glue that bound them together within ‘transnational advocacy networks’ (1998: 30, 1999: 89). Furthermore, the emphasis on the moral agency of these non-governmental actors was, under the label of ‘information politics’, coupled with an appreciation of their instrumental use of knowledge (Keck and Sikkink, 1998: 19). However, such an interest in knowledge was mainly restricted to its strategic framing for the purpose of issue dramatisation and attention seeking. Contrasting with the optimistic idealism of the liberal-constructivist literature, an array of more critical theses followed at the turn of the millennium. In an article titled ‘The NGO Scramble’ published in International Security in 2002, Cooley and Ron favoured seeing NGOs as insecure actors driven by the imperative of organisational sustenance (2002: 6). Influenced by Olsonian interest group theory, authors including Bob (2005, 2010), Bloodgood (2011) and Prakash and Gugerty (2010) deployed a market analogy that eroded the distinction between instrumentality and altruism. Instead of being primarily principled actors, advocates’ choices were—like their for-profit counterparts in the private sector—theorised to be motivated by supply and demand pressures and resource scarcity. These publications were supported by specific empirical case studies, focused on prominent human rights organisations like AI and HRW, aimed at unveiling some of the dysfunctionalities and disproportionalities in reporting arising from instrumental or material imperatives (Englehart, 2012; Ron et al., 2005). For instance, a neo-Marxist critique offered by Gordon et al. (2000) lamented the lack of attention paid by human rights advocates to socio-economic issues and structures. In dialogue with its detractors, HRW executive director Kenneth Roth (2004) published an article in Human Rights Quarterly that sought to blunt these kinds of critiques through an appeal to pragmatism. Humanist advocates were doing their best to leverage influence under conditions of considerable constraint. What we see in these two competing perspectives—the idealistic and the cynically materialist—is a cleavage between those accounts that centralise the motivating impulse of humanistic altruism, and those that point to structural pressures that distort those normative impulses. The liberal idealist perspective is deferential to the spoken beliefs and goals articulated by humanist advocates, be it non-violence or human emancipation from

Mapping the logics of knowledge production  13 discrimination and authoritarian oppression. Based on their socialisation within the international system and their legal and political institutionalisation, this form of constructivism centralises the power of advocates’ ideals; a force to be reckoned with in international politics (Risse and Sikkink, 1999: 4–5). In contrast, the critical approaches highlighted above see these ideals as constrained by economic and organisational imperatives. However, although these latter perspectives succeed in breaking with the common-sense idealism projected by advocates themselves (and explanations of their own altruistic behaviours), they are limited by their narrow emphasis on material interests. In contrast, a parallel critical discourse has developed in IR that focuses on the social and political analysis of global knowledge production. Drawing on the sociology of expertise, the sociology of knowledge, and broader post-positivist currents in philosophy and the social sciences, this literature has emerged across various sub-disciplinary areas, ranging from global governance to international security, peacebuilding and the study of non-governmental or think-tank advocacy. By shifting the analytical lens towards knowledge and expertise, these studies have moved beyond materialist critiques, opening up space for a critical questioning of how knowledge is infused with social and ideational forms of power.

Towards a critical agenda for studying knowledge production in international relations Paralleling the emergence of global advocacy as a distinct area of academic enquiry in the post-Cold War period, a distinct scholarly interest in studying the role of knowledge and expertise in IR has coalesced over the past twoand-a-half decades. These approaches have evolved from an initial focus on so-called ‘epistemic communities’ to a far more critical research agenda which includes Foucauldian and discourse-based approaches, as well as sociologically informed perspectives that account for how knowledge is influenced by social structures. The first wave of scholarship concerning the knowledge practices of non-governmental actors in world politics manifested in Peter Haas’s (1992) epistemic communities. However, this approach was limited to the extent that it only focused on the causal role of epistemic communities in international affairs (Bueger, 2014: 41). The emphasis here was on demonstrating that—in opposition to the neorealist paradigm—expert actors really could contribute to international politics by acting as ‘cognitive baggage handlers’ for governments and political institutions (Haas, 1992: 27). This literature promoted a misguided distinction between epistemic actors, with their shared causal beliefs and scientific knowledge claims, and global advocates, who were treated as a separate species. In the words of Antoniades, ‘[w]hat distinguishes these communities from other agents such as interest groups, advocacy coalitions and transnational networks is their authoritative claim on knowledge’ (2003: 27). However, when looking at the growth and

14  Mapping the logics of knowledge production trajectory of the think-tank industry, this rigid juxtaposition is evidently problematic. As Brooks and Cil have argued, the expansion of a highly competitive think-tank market during the 1980s and 1990s (particularly in the United States) saw an increasing blurring of the lines between research and advocacy organisations (2016: 37). Writing in 2001, Gough and Shackley (2001) expanded the notion of epistemic communities to include relations between NGOs and policy actors, as well as highlighting the pacifying impact that ‘insider strategies’ can have on advocacy groups. This brought the concept of epistemic communities somewhat closer to a research agenda that would critically problematise the power-political role of knowledge in international affairs. The interest of IR scholars in the subject of knowledge production has undeniably been influenced by the post-structuralist thought of Michel Foucault. Foucault has exercised a growing influence over the post-positivist social sciences since the 1980s. In particular, Foucault’s work has provided a critical impetus to the study of knowledge, with its emphasis on how power permeates through knowledge formations and how power-knowledge constitutes subjectivities (1972: 135–140). In this sense, the Foucauldian influence opened up space for questioning the limits of knowledge through tracing the genealogies of discourse. A variety of IR topics—ranging from security, to the liberal peace, human rights and global governance expertise—have subsequently been studied through a Foucauldian lens (Campbell, 1992; Kennedy, 2001; Manokha, 2009; Richmond, 2010). In recent years, this influence has spread to the study of knowledge production by think-tanks and advocacy organisations, as with Grigat’s interpretation of the International Crisis Group as enacting liberal governmentality through its promotion of liberal peace, and in Bake and Zöhrer’s analysis of how discursive practices in human rights reporting contribute to the construction of authenticity (Bake and Zöhrer, 2017; Grigat, 2014). The Foucauldian privileging of discourse has also extended to post-colonial perspectives, as with Hochmüller and Müller’s (2014) critique of the ICG’s Euro-centric and statist discourse on Mexico’s security crisis, and Heathershaw’s (2011) contention that ICG reporting on central Asia is part of a Western geopolitical discourse of state failure. However, while these Foucauldian and post-colonial approaches have certainly been useful in advancing a critical research agenda on the politics of knowledge production, they tend to be limited in their reduction of knowledge to homogenised discourses. As David Lewis has argued, ‘[w]hile Foucault develops a productive framework through which to critique a single dominant discourse, in a highly contested international system a Foucauldian gaze leaves its own blind spots, concealing from view important new dynamics of power, agency and discursive practice in international relations’ (2017: 8). Rather than focusing on language per se, other studies of political knowledge production have instead attempted to ground the study of ‘epistemes’ in the concrete, empirical analysis of epistemic practices and

Mapping the logics of knowledge production  15 methodologies. These alternative perspectives have drawn from a variety of interdisciplinary influences, ranging from the sociology of knowledge, critical legal studies, cultural studies, communication studies, organisational studies, to science, technology and society studies (STS) (Berling, 2015; Bliesemann de Guevara, 2014a; Bueger, 2014; Bueger and Gadinger, 2014; Sending and Neumann, 2011; Simons, 2014). Working outside the Foucauldian frame, some authors have sought to expand the study of epistemic practices to consider their social, structural and contextual underpinnings. One such perspective has been to examine the organisational culture of specific advocacy organisations, as with Bliesemann de Guevara’s (2014a) analysis of how the International Crisis Group’s methodology is anchored in a particular self-mythology, and Hopgood’s (2006) ethnographic study of the working culture inside AI’s headquarters. Another framework looks towards ‘…wider material and ideological structures’, as with Bliesemann de Guevara and Kostić’s emphasis on ‘…the influence of contemporary neoliberalism on general knowledge production structures in Western societies’ (2017: 1). Pointing towards the neoliberalisation of relations between the producers and consumers of policy-relevant knowledge, this also links to the deployment of the concept of the ‘knowledge market’ as a heuristic device to explain how epistemic practice is shaped by supply and demand pressures (Abelson, 2016; Bliesemann de Guevara, 2014b; Koddenbrock, 2014; Meyer, 2017; Rüb, 2006: 350–351). The critical sociology of French social theorist Pierre Bourdieu has also been enlisted to study expertise and epistemic practices in international politics (Berling, 2015; Sending, 2015). One of Bourdieusian sociology’s key contributions to the conceptualisation of knowledge production has been its ability to go beyond the Foucauldian interpretation of knowledge as productive of social reality, by emphasising the co-productive relationship between knowledge (both conscious and tacit), practical dispositions, and structured social relations. Bourdieu’s own research, which covered a plethora of topics ranging from the ethnographic study of Algerian Berbers to his seminal work on the French class structure, sought to redefine the relationship between power, knowledge and practice through the development of a distinctive conceptual framework (1977, 1984). Bourdieu’s ‘structuralist constructivism’ sees actors invested inside game-like social structures (which he calls social ‘fields’) that, in turn, shape the practical sensibilities of those actors (1989: 14). At the same time, these dispositional sensibilities (or what he calls the ‘habitus’) help to align the practices of the invested actors to the ‘common sense’ expectations (or ‘doxa’) of a particular field (Bourdieu, 1990: 53). The propensity of actors to seek legitimacy (or what Bourdieu calls symbolic, social or cultural ‘capital’) is also a key dimension of field theory, with different fields having varying principles of legitimation and hierarchisation—principles which are also a central stake for actors invested in a field (1989: 17). This quest for legitimacy is a key notion that will be returned to in the final section of this chapter, as it implies that the

16  Mapping the logics of knowledge production relative authority of knowledge producers is dependent on social or political recognition. Regarding the political sociology of knowing, a Bourdieusian lens also provides a critical extension of the Foucauldian interest in power/knowledge, through recognising that …knowledge or practices do not become dominant because of their intrinsic value but because they emerge as socially recognised form of worldviews and behaviours; and commonly this happens through a complex struggle in which dissenting and alternative knowledge forms or practices have been socially deconstructed and discarded (Goetze, 2017: 27) Field theory has subsequently been deployed by a growing number of scholars in IR to delineate the tacit struggles that help to determine the logics that guide governance practices and knowledge production. As Sending argues in relation to fields of global governance, ‘[w]ithin these fields, actors compete with each other to be recognized as authorities on what is to be governed, how, and why. Actors are compelled to seek such recognition in terms of any given field’s dominant evaluation criteria’ (2015: 11). Similarly, Berling deploys Bourdieu to explore the ‘…basic struggles determining what is valued in the field and what is considered worthless’ within the European field of security (2015: 107). Closer to the problematique of this book, Gordon has analysed how the relative positioning of human rights NGOs in ‘Israeli social space’, including their relative proximity to sites of political, judicial and economic power, shapes both their legitimacy and the kinds of strategies that are available to them (2008: 30). However, whilst the concept of the field has been drawn on readily by a number of sociologically inspired scholars in IR, the aspect of Bourdieu’s conceptual framework that aims at grasping the agential dimension of practice—the habitus—has received much less attention. There are some exceptions here. For instance, Catherine Goetze has traced how ‘…the humanist and bourgeois discourse of peace has been preserved’ within the habitus of peacebuilding practitioners across generations (2017: 11). Similarly, Goetze and Bliesemann de Guevara have systematically analysed the habitus of UN statebuilders in Kosovo through surveying their social, educational and professional characteristics and ideological and intellectual dispositions (2012: 198–199). With these studies aside, the general favouring of the structuralist dimension of Bourdieu’s theory at the expense of its dispositional dimension leads to analyses like Sending’s work on The Politics of Expertise, which shifts attention to the ‘…articulate, and more or less strategic, attempts at gaining recognition in the field, rather than in an inarticulate “practical sense”’ (2015: 29). This strategic and structuralist reading of Bourdieu’s sociology sits alongside the simplistic and totalising assumption that ‘[g]lobal governance is made up of more or less distinct and autonomous fields whose logic and boundaries can

Mapping the logics of knowledge production  17 be uncovered by analyzing their genesis’ (ibid.: 11). This reductionist application of field theory has opened up these accounts to critique on the basis of over-determination, over-generalisation and alleged structural rigidity (Kosmatopoulos, 2014: 601). Principally, the most forceful disapproval has emanated from those working within the pragmatist tradition of social theory. I will now turn to this pragmatist challenge.

The pragmatist challenge A deep methodological, ontological and epistemological critique has been levied against the kinds of critical studies of knowledge production outlined above by scholars inspired by exponents of pragmatism and network or assemblage thinking. The strongest criticism emanates from proponents of actor-network theory (ANT), led by the likes of Bruno Latour (2007), John Law (1992) and Michel Callon (1986), with origins in the field of STS. Some of the main contentions put forward by ANT scholars are that social formations are inherently unstable, that traditional sociology has an anthropocentric bias that requires correcting through considering the agency of non-human ‘actants’ and that social scientific enquiry needs to be reoriented towards the micro-processual examination of how fragile social formations are networked together. The ANT framework, which has developed its own alternative conceptual vocabulary geared towards its primarily ethnographic methodology, has been applied to questions of political expertise and global knowledge production through debates among individuals engaged in the sub-disciplinary areas of international political sociology and international practice theory (Best and Walters, 2013; Bueger, 2013). In relation to the problematique posed by this book, this approach has been directly applied to the topic of epistemic practice in political organisations through, for instance, Bueger’s study of the ‘epistemic infrastructure’ constituting the production of knowledge about piracy at the United Nations (2015:  2). The framework has also been applied to the specific question of NGO knowledge production in Kosmatopoulos’s (2014) work on how—focusing on the micro-technical aspects of conflict reporting—the ICG succeeds in assembling ‘crisis’. Based on ANT’s fragile ontology and the perception that international phenomena are definitionally unstable, one criticism leveraged against Bourdieusian sociology relates to its alleged structural determinism (Leander, 2011: 297). As Bueger argues, ‘[e]pistemic practices likewise continuously unfold, the construction of objects is never complete, but requires ongoing maintenance work by which the elements required to construct the object are held together and temporarily stable representations of the object are produced’ (2015: 7). Bourdieu’s field theory is therefore judged to be overly presumptuous in imposing a priori structures on its objects of study. Bracketed under the banner of ‘modernist thought’, the strand of critical sociology outlined at the end of the previous section is seen as perpetuating a concept of power that is ‘rigid and elastic’, and

18  Mapping the logics of knowledge production which ‘…place[s] institutions, individuals and interests within structural and structured straightjackets’ (Kosmatopoulos, 2014: 601). Rather than resorting to the abstract concept of ‘social forces’ to explain social behaviour, Latour’s rallying cry for ANT is for researchers to ‘just follow the actors’ (2007: 12). This presents a direct challenge to Bourdieu’s habitus, which— with its emphasis on tacit knowledge—is aimed at transcending the ‘substantialism’ of actors’ self-representations (1998: 14). Therefore, a contention of ANT’s main proponents is that the endeavour to penetrate beyond actor’s self-understandings is an unjustly arrogant one (Schinkel, 2007: 710). However, in riposte to these criticisms, it is the contention of this book that investigating the important role of background knowledge, which can sometimes exist beyond an individual’s reflexive consciousness, is not a futile or distortionary exercise. Given that tacit forms of knowing are a fundamental aspect of human cognition, such an enterprise is necessary in the pursuit of a holistic understanding of epistemic practice. While one of the goals of ANT is to avoid imposing a priori ontological assumptions on its research subjects, this approach lacks the conceptual tools needed to avoid the blind inheritance (and thus reproduction) of common-sense assumptions. Instead, a Bourdieusian framework is geared towards an epistemic break with that which is taken-for-granted among both researchers and researched. From this perspective, the notion that ANT can arrive at a more authentic account of social reality via the descriptive tracing of connections between actants appears to be somewhat naïve. The attention placed on micro- and techno-political processes is more likely to obscure the influence of meso- and macro-level phenomena. This is especially problematic when one considers the disciplinary subject matter at hand: global advocacy ‘networks’ tend to stretch widely, usually beyond the narrow ethnographic gaze of ANT scholarship. Switching the focus to the technical aspects of reporting by non-governmental advocates also risks depoliticising an inherently political subject matter. In its assertion of a ‘flat’ ontology, the ANT approach risks obscuring the role of power, social struggle and hierarchies in the interplay between politics and knowledge. Finally, while ANT enables descriptive accounts of how assemblages of epistemic practice are put together, its aversion to the analysis of power means that it is ill-equipped to explain why certain assemblages emerge at the expense of others. Given that the research problem of this book relates to the limits and potentials of advocacy-oriented knowledge production, a theoretical and conceptual framework that can grasp power inequities and hierarchies is a necessary starting point for such an investigation.

Recognising advocates’ multifaceted lifeworlds Despite the riposte I have provided to some of the critiques of the pragmatist perspectives, I do see the need to take heed of some of their warnings in terms of avoiding the imposition of pre-cooked and top-down conceptual

Mapping the logics of knowledge production  19 and theoretical tools. What is needed, therefore, is a methodology that is attentive to the relationship between the empirical phenomenon being studied and the guiding concepts used in its analysis. This means, rather than transposing a ready-made form of field theory to the study of global advocacy, a more contingent and flexible application is required. In other words, there is no delineable ‘global advocacy’ metafield. Advocates’ lifeworlds are far too multifaceted for this kind of reductionism. In resisting the totalising pressure of structuralist sociological accounts of knowledge production, the ‘interstitial fields’ perspective adopted by Vauchez (2011: 341), Stampnitzky (2013: 47) and Medvetz (2012: 25) is a step in the right direction. Rather than assuming that a given field of social or political activity is autonomous vis-à-vis other fields, this approach proposes accounting for the relations between fields. For example, studying the development of US think-tanks in the United States, Medvetz has developed this concept to argue that think-tanks—as hybrid actors suspended between the adjacent fields of policy, journalism and academia—have used the blurring of inter-field boundaries to carve out a distinct social microcosm (2012: 25). This approach has been criticised by Eyal and Pok for its ‘… teleology of the “field-in-the-making”’ (2015: 44). In other words, it is overly presumptuous in perceiving processes of institutionalisation taking place within the permeable and hybrid space between fields. Alternatively, rather than grasping for autonomisation, Stampnitzky’s study of terrorism experts has instead deployed the concept of an ‘interstitial field’ to explain how expert discourses on terrorism have been permeable to a plurality of hybrid influences (2013: 47). According to Stampnitzky, ‘[r]ather than a purely political or analytical concept, expert discourse on “terrorism” must be understood as operating at the contested boundary between politics and science, between academic expertise and the state’ (ibid.: 13). The interstitial approach uses the notion of inter-field suspension to highlight the hybridisation of knowledge, as well as its permeability to a plurality of social spaces. However, there are some limitations to this perspective. First, in emphasising suspension, it inadvertently suggests a relative degree of detachment from the adjacent fields in question. For instance, because of the politicised nature of the discourse in question, Stampnitzky found that terrorism experts failed to fully establish their scientific credentials because of their proximity to the political field (ibid.: 195). Here, the explanatory capacity lies precisely in the antithetical relationship between competing forms of authority, such as the tension between scientific and political legitimacy. Yet, this conceptual framework is less useful in explaining co-immersion: that is, actors or experts who are fully fledged members of multiple social spaces. A second limitation of this approach relates to scale. As with traditional field theory, the interstitial perspective relies on macrosocial categories (e.g. academia, journalism or politics) that are broad in nature. Alternatively, one can conceive of social spaces that are more situational, dynamic and not wholly reducible to the overarching organising

20  Mapping the logics of knowledge production principles of adjacent fields or the relations between them. Macrosocial concepts are problematic to the extent that they encourage abstraction beyond the complex networks that many knowledge producers—especially in global contexts—are embedded in. A move towards greater context specificity demands more flexibility in conceiving conditions of possibility that can only be observed across different scales of analysis—macro, meso and micro. It is impossible to deny that the sheer quantity of actors operating across borders has proliferated in recent decades. For example, between 1960 and 1999, the number of international NGOs operating globally increased from less than 1,300 to over 17,000—a more than 1,200 percent increase in five decades (Davies, 2013: 153 and 157). Meanwhile, the current Union of International Associations’ ‘Yearbook of International Organizations’ (2019) lists over 38,000 active intergovernmental organisations and international NGOs. Any study of knowledge production in a global context needs to take heed of the specific conditions that arise from more intensified and complex forms of transborder connectivity. In cases of global complexity, Bourdieusian field theory might not be best equipped to grasp such heterogeneous conditions facing knowledge production. Therefore, at least in the case of global advocacy practitioners whose epistemic practices and dispositions are shaped by a plurality of networks and background influences— an interrogation of how knowledge is preconstructed demands a shift away from solely using the macro-structural concept of the ‘field’— interstitial or otherwise. One response to the problem of transnationality has been to theorise about ‘transnational’ or ‘global’ fields (Buchholz, 2016; Go, 2008). Yet again, this conceptualisation suffers from an over-abstraction whereby conditions of possibility are reduced to macrolevel organising principles. Such an approach overlooks the simultaneous co-immersion of transnational actors in social spaces that are variable in scale. For example, Kauppi and Madsen are right to point out that ‘…transnational power elites are neither entirely international nor national but effectively transnational, and it is precisely from this vantage position that they can exercise power relying on both national and international resources and capitals’ (2014: 327). However, their ambition to unify the deployment of national and international resources within fields of global governance involves a disregard for the separation that exists between these scales. Here, attempts to fold global, regional, national and sub-national spaces into an overarching metafield is problematic to the extent that, at each scale of analysis, there exist social microcosms that are not anatomical functions of a greater whole. Therefore, this problem of metasocial abstraction calls for a plural and multiscalar response to studying conditions of possibility for knowledge production—one that is contextually and empirically sensitive to the specific actor(s) being studied. This book therefore locates global humanist advocates within a plurality of social structures, ranging from the position of advocacy organisations in knowledge markets (Chapter 3), the influence of various professional and

Mapping the logics of knowledge production  21 educational sectors on advocacy practitioners’ dispositions and working cultures (Chapter 4), the meso-level social spaces that form around specific advocacy networks (Chapter 5) and humanist advocates and researchers’ traversal of local spaces of knowledge extraction (Chapter 6). Although the social spaces that global humanist advocates traverse are not necessarily reducible to one-another, it is still possible to analyse the structural relations between them through the concepts of homology and heterology. In other words, comparisons can be made between the social spaces in question according to their relative degree of structural alignment. The concept of heterology (structural misalignment) is reflected in Alex Veit and Klaus Schlichte’s emphasis on the ‘conflictive logic’ facing external statebuilders who, in the context of their embedment within separate ‘arenas’, ‘…find themselves confronted with centrifugal social and political forces that they must pull together in order to be able to continue operating in an organised fashion’ (2012: 168). Meanwhile, homologies (structural alignment) can also exist between separate spheres that knowledge producers are embedded in. For example, this can be the case where transnational practitioners interact with local spaces that are partially structured by external logics. This was the case in Hochmüller and Müller’s study of the ICG’s networks inside Mexico, where the organisation partnered with ‘…already transnationalised local governance importers’ (2014: 717). In Bourdieu’s terms, these encounters can potentially have a doxic effect, where …[w]hen owing to the quasi-perfect fit between the objective structures and the internalized structures which results from the logic of simple reproduction, the established cosmological and political order is perceived not as arbitrary, i.e. as one possible order among others, but as a self-evident and natural order which goes without saying and therefore goes unquestioned (1977: 166) Such doxic and orthodoxic homologies will be analysed in Chapters 5 and 6, where I will delineate and then compare global advocates’ co-immersion within both political arenas and local spaces of knowledge extraction. Just like the multiple array of social, political and organisational structures that global advocates are immersed within, the humanist habitus that this book homes in on is also conceptualised as plural. The plural habitus is shaped by the advocates’ traversal of different networks and social spaces, generating ingrained dispositions that (re-)align their ‘feel for the game’ in each of these separate spaces (Bourdieu, 1990: 82). The plural habitus opens up the possibility for potentially contradictory dispositions to co-exist, even if tacitly so. Allowing for the possibility of internal contradictions makes it more difficult to reduce the habitus to a single organising principle. Judith Butler correctly identifies the problem with such homogenising forms of critique, arguing that ‘[t]he effort to identify the enemy as singular in form is

22  Mapping the logics of knowledge production a reverse-discourse that uncritically mimics the strategy of the oppressor instead of offering a different set of terms’ (1999: 19). Employing a different set of terms, a plural conceptualisation of the habitus also allows for the transposition of epistemic practices across divergent social spaces. For example, a conflict expert educated and pre-socialised within human rights networks may be pre-disposed to approach wartime violence from a liberal justice perspective—as was the case with the reporting of the ICG on the Sri Lankan Civil War (ICG, 2007, 2010, 2018). Looking at the culture of global humanist advocacy, the question of how the habitus becomes aligned by a plurality of background factors will be addressed in Chapter 4, where I examine how advocates’ varying social, educational and professional backgrounds shape their feel for the game of global advocacy.

The post-humanist turn A final criticism levied against critical-sociological accounts of knowledge production that I wish to evaluate is linked to what can be defined as the ‘post-humanist’ turn in philosophy and the social sciences. This is particularly important to address given the book’s focus on humanist practitioners. This trend in social, political and international theory chimes with the emphasis that the aforementioned pragmatist critique places on unstable assemblages and non-human agency. In an age of connectivity, algorithms, Big Data and impending environmental catastrophe, international politics is seen by some as having undergone a paradigmatic shift away from the modernist ideals of progress and rationality (Chandler, 2018: xv). It is in this context that Mark Duffield talks about the ‘…consolidation of the cybernetic episteme and the coming post-social world’ (2018: 58). Given this emphasis on the transformational impact of both technology and a growing awareness of human vulnerability vis-à-vis nature, the proponents of post-human thought advocate for rethinking social and political theory to consider ‘… the various hybrids of material, biological, social and technological components that populate our world’ (Acuto and Curtis, 2014: 2). Regarding the topic of this book, this implies placing greater emphasis on the technical and non-human dimensions of knowledge production in global advocacy, such as the ‘agency’ expressed by freshly adopted technologies like social media, algorithms and remote sensing. While it has become somewhat of a cliché to highlight the pace of technological development since the turn of the century, it is clear that the growth of global connectivity (as well as a heightened sense of environmental vulnerability) has helped to stimulate calls for a methodological, ontological and epistemological retooling along post-humanist lines. For David Chandler, it is the Anthropocene—the recognition of humanity’s fundamentally symbiotic relationship with the environment—that has brought about a new ‘ontopolitics’ within contemporary modes of governance (2018: 9). This ontology highlights contingency, complexity and resilience in opposition to

Mapping the logics of knowledge production  23 the traditional modernist ideals of linear causality and deductive theorising. Similarly, studying the ‘computational turn’ in and the datafication of humanitarian aid and services, Duffield has argued that humanitarian practice is increasingly governed cybernetically through computer modelling, algorithms and Big Data (2018: 9). This involves the relative devaluation of human agency, with these analyses placing a premium on the revolutionary influence of technologies in the simultaneous realignment of both governance and knowledge practices. Comparing the field of humanitarianism to that of advocacy, the first paragraph within the preface of Duffield’s Post-Humanitarianism: Governing Precarity in the Digital World published in 2018 states that ‘…advocacy groups were already using satellite imagery in the usually dangerous work of documenting sites of possible human rights abuse, by identifying things like burnt buildings or disturbed ground safely from the air’ (ibid.: viii). The implication here is that, just like the more service-oriented practice of humanitarian governance, the practice of global advocacy has also been gripped by a technological and methodological revolution. Yet, is it fair to construct an equivalence between these two linked-yet-separate fields of humanist practice? Humanist advocacy has certainly been rocked by technological developments in recent years, not least of which is the availability of new forms of data collection. For example, McPherson et al. outline how the increasing use of open-source investigations as a means of human rights fact-finding, on top of the growing participation of technologists in the field of human rights, challenges the traditional expertise of professional advocates (Forthcoming 2019). Social media has also brought about profound changes in the practice of humanist advocacy, subjecting advocates to the intermediary influence of Twitter and Facebook algorithms, creating new audiences, and potentially lowering the playing field for new actors to exert political influence (McPherson, 2018: 190). According to Johansson and Scaramuzzino, the ubiquity of digital technologies in advocacy practice means that it is no longer just a pursuit of political influence, but it is now also ‘…an act of seeking and claiming political presence’ (2019: 2). Visibility in the digital realm is therefore now a key dimension of contemporary advocacy. But do these changes represent a revolution in the nature of global humanist advocacy and its associated epistemic practices? Should we herald the dawn of a new cybernetic episteme as Duffield has claimed for humanitarianism? Do these changes demand new theoretical tools in a way that is comparable to those hailing the advent of the Anthropocene? To begin to answer these questions, one first needs to look empirically at the extent to which the epistemic practices of humanist advocacy have undergone a drastic methodological shift. The first thing to note is that the humanist advocacy organisations studied in this book still rely primarily on qualitative methods, with a premium placed on witness interviews and detailed, textually dense reporting. There appears to be a relative lag in the uptake

24  Mapping the logics of knowledge production of data or statistically driven approaches thanks to the field’s anchorage in the liberal arts and in legal and journalistic traditions. According to Emerson et al., this is partly because ‘[e]thically, rights advocates are committed to the individual human story’ (2018: 167). While Duffield emphasises the devaluation of grounded knowledge production resulting from the distance from local conditions that digital humanitarianism provides, humanist advocates’ claimed proximity to those suffering from violent conflict or rights abuses is actually a legitimating force which mandates qualitative methods that are able to project individual victimhood (2018: 8). This notion of proximal legitimacy will be returned to in Chapters 4 and 6. There is also a difference between humanist advocacy and the humanitarian field that Duffield describes in terms of the availability of reliable data. For instance, reliable datasets are not always forthcoming when it comes to keystone issues for humanist advocates such as crimes against humanity, extrajudicial killings, torture and enforced disappearances (Rall et al., 2016: 187). This problem is particularly acute for advocates operating in societies stricken by violent conflict, as illustrated by the difficulty of estimating the number of civilian deaths in the aftermath of the Sri Lankan Civil War. Two years after the end of the conflict, a UN Panel of Experts came to a figure of 40,000, but acknowledged that ‘…there is still no reliable figure for civilian deaths’, and that ‘[o]nly a proper investigation can lead to the identification of all the victims and to the formulation of an accurate figure for the total number of civilian deaths’ (United Nations, 2011: 41). Access issues and the gatekeeping power that hostile governments exercise over humanist advocates and researchers mean that such data are rarely unearthed. Meanwhile, although online platforms do expand opportunities for data collection, Ella McPherson highlights the difficulties that human rights researchers face in verifying digitally sourced content: …unlike in a traditional face-to-face interview, human rights practitioners using spontaneous or solicited digital information from civilian witnesses are not present at the moment of production. As such, they cannot rely on their direct perceptions of identity clues, communication cues, and contexts to verify civilian witnesses’ accounts. Instead, they must use digitally mediated content and metadata as a starting point, which can be distorted and manipulated (2018: 196–197) Overall, these limits on datafication for humanist advocacy should warn scholars not to put the proverbial cart before the horse. Not all political and social spheres move at the same pace when it comes to technological transformation. The testimony of Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg to the Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees in April 2018, where US lawmakers appeared confused by the social media giant’s basic business model, is a stark illustration of the gap that still exists between the tech

Mapping the logics of knowledge production  25 industry and mainstream political arenas (Stewart, 2019). Therefore, whilst acknowledging that technological change has certainly altered the character (rather than the nature) of humanist advocacy, this book casts doubt on the notion that humanist advocacy has undergone a post-humanist revolution. Instead, I argue that humanist advocacy has retained its human and social dimension, in both a political and methodological sense. Yet, new technologies do play an intermediary role to the extent that they affect how knowledge products are packaged and projected to the consumers of advocacy. As will be explored in the next chapter, they have impacted the scale and character of the knowledge markets that advocates are immersed in, in terms of both the cacophony of competing voices that digital medias enable and the accessibility of potential consumers. Adopting new technologies and employing new forms of data can also play a legitimising role. The use of satellite imagery in human rights reports can ‘…transform a reader into a witness’, while ‘[e]xpressing quantitative information with visuals can lend urgency to messages and make stories more memorable’ (Emerson et al., 2018: 162; Rall et al., 2016: 187). Nevertheless, advocacy is still fundamentally defined by the inter-human relations between (1) advocates attempting to levy political influence (the producers) and (2) the policymakers, decision-makers and publics that they are seeking to influence (the consumers). Unlike the logic of post-human governance that guides Duffield’s (post-)humanitarian practitioners, this is primarily a logic of persuasion. Persuasion still fundamentally revolves around social, inter-human relations; relations which—as will be outlined below—are built on legitimacy, trust and a socio-political co-dependence between the producers and consumers of knowledge. Therefore, in contrast to the Latourian insistence on placing non-human agency on par with human agency, I emphasise that the knowledge produced according to this advocacy logic is defined primarily by the inter-subjective constructions of specifically human agents.

The social logics of knowledge production in global advocacy According to Bourdieu, scientific knowledge production is defined principally by its purported disinterestedness (2004: 53). In contrast, advocacy can be defined as ‘…systematic efforts (as opposed to sporadic outbursts) by actors that seek to further specific policy goals’ (Prakash and Gugerty, 2010: 1). Therefore, knowledge produced for the purpose of advocacy can be distinguished by its interestedness regarding policy outcomes. This falls into line with the ‘knowledge markets’ approach, which contends that politically oriented knowledge producers face strong incentives to produce knowledge that is ‘success-oriented’ (Bliesemann de Guevara, 2014a: 623). Yet, advocates do also need to emphasise their cognitive independence from policymakers for the sake of their own internal and external credibility. This generates a paradox whereby practitioners balance their inherently interested and politicised orientation regarding policy outcomes with the desire to foster perceptions

26  Mapping the logics of knowledge production of disinterested autonomy from political arenas. Just as Medvetz sees thinktanks as a hybrid class of actor topologically suspended between the realms of academia, politics and journalism, advocacy organisations who take on significant epistemic functions are caught between the spheres of social science and political activism (2012: 24). Therefore, one way of mapping out advocacy-oriented knowledge is along a spectrum that runs between the ideal types of autonomous and heteronomous knowledge production (ibid.: 85–86). However, the semi-dependent and quasi-governmental character of many advocacy relationships means that there is a risk that the necessity of cognitive independence may be diluted, thus skewing this spectrum in favour of (denied) interestedness. When it comes to global humanist advocacy, this interestedness manifests in strategic considerations that can shape knowledge production in different ways. Such considerations can impact the scope of research, thematic choices, ideological presumptions and causal narratives. For example, a recent study by Suparna Chaudhry found that AI’s choice of human rights violations to report on in India, including salient issues like violence against women, was influenced by the organisation’s drive to expand its membership (2019: 14). The same author also found that ‘…INGOs may be less likely to report on regions that are less populated and less wealthy, or on those that have ongoing conflicts’, as well as concluding that ‘…their strategic reporting may inevitably silence some issues, privileging information and data on certain kinds of abuses over others’ (ibid.: 3). Similarly, strategic concerns have also been used to justify HRW’s lack of reporting on economic, social and cultural rights issues, based on a desire to avoid entanglement in political discussions pertaining to distributive justice (Roth, 2004: 69). There is also an ideological slant to these epistemic distortions. For instance, Hochmüller and Müller have shown how the ICG has promoted a specifically neoliberal multiculturalist model for governing the relationship between ethnic minorities in Latin America (2014: 715). Similarly, the imperative of making knowledge impactful and consumable can also encourage the adoption of reductionist causal narratives, as with Morten Bøås’ study of the ICG’s reporting on Sierra Leone and Liberia, which found that the organisation sought to explain instability through an ‘opportunistic warlord’ narrative, suggesting that these conflicts could be resolved by simply removing ‘evildoers’ (2014: 655). Yet why do advocates engage in epistemic practices in the first place? In an ideal ‘epistocracy’, knowledge is produced instrumentally for the purpose of expert-driven governance and evidence-based policymaking (Brennan, 2016: 67). However, as Christina Boswell has argued, especially in political fields with high stakes, the legitimising function of knowledge is also central (2009: 7). Knowledge plays a symbolic function by consecrating the advocate as an epistemically reliable and trustworthy actor. Epistemic authority enables distinction in political arenas characterised by a multiplicity of competing voices. The endowment of legitimacy is a relational process,

Mapping the logics of knowledge production  27 requiring a process of recognition between two or more parties. In other words, knowledge producers must convince knowledge consumers of their credentials. As suggested in the introductory chapter, this can be defined as a logic of dependence, whereby producers must demonstrate the requisite characteristics in order to garner the recognition of consumers. This dependence is especially acute given that humanist advocacy NGOs are notfor-profit organisations who lack any autarkic means to subsist. Therefore, they rely primarily on donors (both governmental and non-governmental) for their material reproduction. Economic sustenance does not occur automatically but is itself an outcome of symbolic consecration from the consumers of advocacy. In Bourdieusian terms, this is a conversion of symbolic into economic capital. When it comes to humanist advocacy, those consumers tend to be political gatekeepers (usually encompassing politicians, civil servants, intergovernmental officials and institutional foundations) whose standards for recognition are bound up with the concerns of governance, as well as ideological pressures and political legitimacy. These political imperatives suggest that expertise alone is not enough for an advocates’ legitimation. Advocates must also acquire sufficient political respectability (i.e. not advocating policy positions or engaging in discourses that are beyond the pale in the eyes of those political gatekeepers), offline and online presence (such as through the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) accreditation and social media visibility) and social capital (such as inter-personal contacts with political and philanthropic elites). This political and social symbiosis with the consumers of advocacy-oriented knowledge, which subsequently structures the boundary between acceptable and heretical knowledge, is an important thread running through this book. Despite leading humanist advocates’ claims to be merely in the business of ‘ground-based and solutions-oriented research’ and ‘uncovering the facts’ through rigorous field research and triangulation, we must consider how their relationships with actors wielding political and economic power can both explicitly and tacitly shape their epistemic boundaries (HRW, 2015; ICG, 2015). Of course, the logic shaping non-governmental advocates’ knowledge production cannot purely be defined by this political relationality. There are other dependencies at play. For instance, in centralising the concept of the habitus, Chapter 4 will demonstrate that the epistemic culture of global advocacy is also influenced heavily by the social, educational and professional backgrounds of the practitioners who operate leading humanist advocacy organisations. In this sense, the types of advocacy-oriented knowledge produced by groups like AI, HRW and the ICG also depends on the dispositions of the staff members, paid supporters and board members who constitute each organisation. Furthermore, as Chapter 6 will explore, advocacy-researchers operating overseas are also dependent on local networks, gatekeepers and civil society partners to produce knowledge about

28  Mapping the logics of knowledge production host countries. Therefore, despite the powerful logic of political subservience outlined above, it is also important to highlight the plurally mediated and contingent dimensions of global advocacy and knowledge production that are also at play.

Conclusion At its core, global humanist advocacy is defined by inter-human relations between advocates and their stakeholders. It is an activity characterised by attempts at persuasion and appeals to legitimacy vis-à-vis consecrating stakeholders, or what I have defined as a ‘logic of dependency’. Principally, advocates are dependent on those that have the means to either aid in the transmutation of advocacy-oriented knowledge into policy practice or to ensure their material reproduction through the solicitation of donor funding. Knowledge produced for the purpose of advocacy is subsequently inflected with social and political pressures emanating from these dependencies. Yet, thanks to the stratified networks that transnational advocates operate across, these dependencies are multifaceted. Therefore, rather than placing advocates within a homogenous social structure, the following chapters will consider a plurality of socio-political pressures that shape their epistemic limits. Reflecting the multiscalar nature of global advocacy, the analytical lens will shift from studying the organisation as the primary unit of analysis (Chapter 3) to individual humanist practitioners and the mediation of their professional dispositions (Chapter 4), and then on to the trans-organisational networks—both transnational and domestic— that bring together humanist advocates working on a particular country or issue area (Chapters 5 and 6). Overall, each of the following empirical chapters will illuminate how the logic of dependency plays out at different levels of analysis, and the different ways that advocacy-oriented knowledge is mediated and delimited.

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3

Advocacy in the knowledge market Organisational legitimacy and the evolution of epistemic practice

Introduction As emphasised in the previous chapter, global advocacy is guided by a logic of dependence. This logic is partly defined by relations between advocates and the various stakeholders who have consecratory power over advocates. If we apply a market analogy to these associations, advocates are the producers of advocacy-oriented knowledge who stand in relation to a set of knowledge consumers. In their totality, these producer-consumer relations, alongside relations between different producers, form an advocates’ knowledge market. This chapter will use this concept of the knowledge market to contextualise the development of three large humanist international NGOs—Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Crisis Group. By looking at each organisations’ shifting knowledge market since their genesis, I will trace the macro-level structural incentives for emergent epistemic practices. Taking the organisation as the primary unit of analysis, I consider how each NGOs’ constellation of consumers and rival or complementary producers provided evolving sources of legitimisation and opportunities for recalibrating knowledge production over time. Remaining attentive to their unique experiences, this chapter will trace each organisations’ historical trajectory separately. Nevertheless, the final section of this chapter will also highlight some of the convergent trends across the three cases. In particular, I will focus on a convergent set of legitimacy dilemmas that each organisation has had to navigate over time, including pressures to internationalise and the problem of informational saturation.

Conceptualising the knowledge market Before I begin the analysis of each of the chosen organisations’ respective knowledge markets, I will first clarify why I have opted for this economistic concept to analyse the development of advocacy NGOs’ epistemic practices, and not the orthodox Bourdieusian concept of the ‘social field’. First, it should be recognised that some scholars working in the tradition of organisational sociology have deployed the concept of ‘organisational field’ to aid

Advocacy in the knowledge market  35 in thinking relationally about an organisation’s position within a particular social microcosm (Emirbayer and Johnson, 2008; DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). However, because the organisation—a collective institution rather than an individual human agent—is centralised as the primary unit of analysis, this approach goes far beyond the original intention of Bourdieu’s field theory. This is problematic when looking at large, hydra-headed international NGOs operating within multiple advocacy arenas. These organisations are not simply homogenous institutions acting within any single unified social space. As outlined in the previous chapter, cognisance of the problems associated with reducing the epistemic practices of transnational actors to a single unified field led both Stampnitzky and Medvetz to assert the analytical utility of seeing politically oriented knowledge producers as suspended between multiple intersecting fields (2013: 5–6; 2012: 24–25). In this sense, the global advocacy organisations studied here can be positioned at the intersection of multiple networks, from their connections with high-level policy circles (both national and international, governmental and inter-governmental), the media (both domestic and global) and a plurality of specific thematic and professional spheres such as human rights, international law, security governance and conflict prevention. Any attempt to trace an advocacy NGO’s evolving epistemic practice therefore has to take into consideration this ‘interstitial’ position, wherein ‘…the researcher is simultaneously (and unevenly) an academic, journalist, adviser and fundraiser, and is thus engaged in moment-to-moment positioning and repositioning in order to establish credibility in relevant fields’ (Williams, 2018: 2). Building on this idea of interstitially, each advocacy organisation’s external environment can be conceptualised as a constellation of stakeholders, between which it is relationally suspended. These stakeholders include both the producers and consumers of advocacy products. This constellation constitutes the advocacy organisation’s knowledge market, within which it acts as a producer struggling against rival suppliers to offer their products to an array of policy consumers (Rüb, 2006: 350–351). It is in these enmeshed relations that an advocates’ condition of dependence can be seen most clearly. Advocates who want to remain relevant to contemporary policy trends must tailor their knowledge production to demand pressures in order to ensure continued prestige and political access. By mapping out consumer-producer and producer-producer relations over time, and the principles of legitimation that govern these relationships, one can begin to reconstitute the relational logics guiding epistemic practice at the organisational level. However, perhaps due to fears of economic reductionism, this approach has yet to be deployed extensively within empirical studies of global advocacy and knowledge production. Consequently, the concept of the knowledge market has been somewhat underspecified; having only been used to explain relatively broad notions regarding struggles for expert authority and the pre-eminence of ‘success-oriented’ over ‘problem-oriented’ framings

36  Advocacy in the knowledge market (Bliesemann de Guevara, 2014: 623). If this market analogy is to bear fruit as a relational perspective on knowledge production, then it requires greater specificity through in-depth empirical cases. Furthermore, rather than assuming that knowledge markets function according to generic laws, greater attention needs to be paid to divergent types of market relations across cases. Just as different types of markets operate dissimilarly in the economic sphere, so too should one expect to find variation in markets of epistemic goods. Therefore, to further develop this knowledge markets framework for the study of global advocacy, a more refined set of concepts is required to grasp advocates’ specific relations with their stakeholders over time. The first key distinction that needs to be made is between different types of consumers. When it comes to the market for policy-relevant knowledge, an advocacy organisation’s consumers can differ in their degree of reciprocity. First, a large bulk of an advocacy organisation’s published materials are publicly available online (e.g. reports, briefings, blogs and audio-visual content). Because of the accessible nature of these outputs, a significant degree of consumption occurs without eliciting any financial or symbolic returns. These products are freely available to non-reciprocal consumers. This contrasts with reciprocal consumers who exist in a symbiotic relationship with advocates. They generate demand by reciprocating benefits to advocacyoriented knowledge producers. A further distinction can be made between reciprocal consumers who supply non-governmental advocates with financial sustenance—such as the large foundations that make up a significant percentage of HRW and the ICG’s funding (e.g. the Ford Foundation and the Open Society Institute)—and those who primarily provide symbolic sustenance, such as mass media outlets who generate publicity that enhances an advocacy NGO’s public presence. In highlighting the importance of symbolic consecration, I draw directly on Bourdieu who emphasised the centrality of ‘agents of consecration’ within markets of cultural goods (1993: 121). This distinction allows one to supersede economically reductionist accounts of the knowledge market. Thinking about such consecratory relations is particularly pertinent in the case of non-governmental advocacy due to these organisations’ highly dependent condition as non-profit entities. Their long-term success relies on both a demonstration of their overall symbolic worth and a minimum quantity of financial sustenance to ensure their continued operation as institutions. The strategies that advocacy organisations adopt to assert their symbolic utility depends in part on the opportunities that historical circumstances throw up. As will be explored in Chapters 5 and 6, these strategies include investments in (1) advocacy spaces that bring together networks of actors lobbying on a particular issue area and (2) extractive spaces that encompass the networks of foreign advocates operating inside a host country. In the knowledge market, these investments aid in the process of symbolic consecration through the recognition of their political engagement and grounded expertise. In turn, these symbolic profits can increase their chances of being

Advocacy in the knowledge market  37 rewarded through endowments from grant-providing donors; a transmutation that secures long-term financial sustenance. Nevertheless, these producer-consumer relations encompass just one dimension of an advocacy organisation’s knowledge market. Conversely, one also needs to account for producer-producer relations. As with producerconsumer relations, a distinction can also be made between different types of producers. Where knowledge actors share a mutually held discourse or policy positions, they can be defined as complementary producers. Advocacy organisations who are in such an alignment are not only co-producers of knowledge, but they are also co-legitimators. For example, as oligopolistic producers in the area of human rights, AI and HRW have historically been co-invested in the international success and legitimacy of the discourse of civil and political rights. This is an important insight when thinking about the boundaries of perceivably legitimate forms of knowledge production, as networks of advocates become co-invested in the reproduction of orthodox discourses, as well as the marginalisation of rival heterodoxies. The way in which these processes of reproduction and marginalisation play out will be explored in more detail in Chapter 5. However, a relative scarcity of financial sustenance (e.g. competition for donor-provided grants) and symbolic consecration (e.g. competition for policy consumers’ time and attention) means that even such complementary relations can have competitive undercurrents. The evolution of advocates’ epistemic practices therefore needs to be read against this backdrop—where producers pursue strategies of distinction vis-à-vis rival producers. Some of these rival producers can act as hostile agents. These rivals present a direct threat to advocates’ legitimacy, as will be seen later in the case of HRW’s discursive struggle against supporters of the Reagan administration over the latter’s support for abusive regimes in Latin America. The density of rival producers at any given point in time is also important. Online media has helped to saturate contemporary advocates’ knowledge markets with competing producers, threatening traditional sources of sustenance and consecration. This growing density has stimulated significant changes in the knowledge productive process, as evidenced by moves to shorten the production cycle of advocacy-related materials and attempts to make epistemic products more easily and immediately digestible. To proceed, this chapter will apply the knowledge markets framework to the respective histories of the three chosen NGO case studies. These historical accounts will consider the foundational conditions that these organisations were exposed to during their formative years, as well as the evolving market conditions they have subsequently been subjected to. Through their foundation and development, these conditions are defined partly by the available consumers of their advocacy products, as well as the specific constellation of rival producers operating in the same knowledge market. In order to gauge the supply and demand trends emanating from these relations, these conditions are read in the context of broader political, social and economic trajectories.

38  Advocacy in the knowledge market AI, HRW and the ICG were founded in 1961, 1978 and 1995 respectively. The following historical analysis therefore covers over half a century of shifting relations. These organisations represent large advocacy organisations who have had significant impacts on their respective knowledge markets. They provide three unique-yet-complementary windows into how humanist advocates’ epistemic practices have changed over time. Their respective histories will be divided into three main time periods, each with its own set of macro-political and social conditions and shifting market relations. The first period, covering AI’s foundation until the East-West détente of the 1970s, is primarily defined by Cold War bipolarity. The second era occurred during the time of HRW’s emergence and expansion during the 1970s and 1980s, where the backdrop of an increasingly partisan US policy arena spurred the innovation of new forms of epistemic practice. Third, significant attention is also paid to the years succeeding the end of the Cold War, a period that saw the formation of the ICG in the context of an emboldened liberal interventionism among Western states, as well as the increasing saturation of each organisations’ knowledge markets spurred by the rise of the mass media and new communications technologies. Once the trajectories of these NGOs have been analysed separately, the chapter shall finish by looking at some of the convergent trends observed across the three cases.

Amnesty International Led by British barrister and Labour Party activist Peter Benenson, AI was founded in 1961 with the aim of publicising and demanding the release of ‘prisoners of conscience’—non-violent individuals imprisoned on the basis of their political beliefs, faith or ethnicity. Even though the UN General Assembly had adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 13 years before AI’s establishment, human rights norms were still at an embryonic stage of development. They were promoted internationally by only a handful of influential advocacy groups and lacked extensive legal codification within international law. Out of the advocates working on rights-related issues in the immediate post-WWII period, many—both in the East and in the West—had become fronts for global influence as part of the East-West Cold War rivalry (Madsen, 2011: 268). For instance, the majority of AI’s founders had been active in the British chapter of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ)—an organisation that had an explicit anti-communist bias, close relations with the US Council on Foreign Relations, and received covert funding from the CIA (Dezalay and Garth, 2002: 64 and 71; Tolley, 2010: 30). During these years, much of the Western human rights movement had been co-opted by the US government’s geopolitical strategy of containment. Influenced by the ideological conflict of the Cold War, as well as reflecting the British Left’s concerns with right-wing regimes in Spain, Portugal and Greece, the late 1950s and early 1960s also saw the creation of communist-backed ‘amnesty’ campaigns for leftist political prisoners

Advocacy in the knowledge market  39 (Buchanan, 2002: 578–579). While these campaigns would provide a foundational model for AI, Benenson sought to establish an organisation that was contrary to its contemporaries’ overtly pro-communist bias—attempting to compensate for past amnesty campaigns’ lack of focus on Soviet prisoners (ibid.). Similarly, disillusioned by the ICJ’s sole focus on political prisoners behind the iron curtain, AI’s founders sought to create an organisation that would transcend the ideological partisanship of the Cold War (Dezalay and Garth, 2009: 124). In this context, the emergent organisation pursued two primary sources of symbolic consecration: first, it sought to publicise itself through the media, and second, it aimed to create a sizeable and active membership base. In direct contradistinction to the ICJ’s elite-oriented and legalistic approach, Amnesty’s founders focused much of their attention on fostering media recognition. Yet, this pursuit of media publicity was itself enabled by prior elite-level networks inherited through their involvement with the ICJ’s UK branch. In the words of Dezalay and Garth, ‘[n]ext to the masses of militants were the great names whose authority could be mobilized during missions to increase the potential media audience’ (2002: 71). Therefore, during AI’s early years, it drew support from sympathetic journalists who could act as symbolic consecrators, including the editor of The Observer who was a personal friend of Peter Benenson (ibid.). However, AI’s membership would provide financial sustenance by providing paid contributions. Members would also become additional reciprocal consumers both via their activism on behalf of the Amnesty brand and by allowing the organisation to claim a representative form of legitimacy through their involvement in its decision-making processes. While such a model would later be rejected by future human rights NGOs like HRW, the absence of any rival human rights advocacy groups with a mass movement model during the 1950s provided an opportunity for AI to sustain itself through fostering a membership among Western Europe’s cosmopolitan middle classes. Declining party allegiance in the United Kingdom, as well as the parallel popularity of new social movements and other Cold War-transcending peace groups such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, suggest that there was a receptive audience of recruits seeking novel forms of humanist solidarity (Buchanan, 2002: 595). By combining a mass membership model with a direct focus on media publicity, AI developed a knowledge market that was distinctly public in character. This orientation required the organisation to assert itself as a public authority through the pursuit of three main forms of legitimacy: democratic, epistemic and moral. In regard to the former, Benenson himself had been convinced by the need for an emphasis on a social movement model through his disillusionment with what he perceived as the overly legalistic work of the ICJ (Rabben, 2001). This was realised through fostering local Amnesty affiliate groups and the establishment of nationally based ‘sections’ in each country where AI was operative. Under the ‘Prisoner of

40  Advocacy in the knowledge market Conscience’ approach to campaigning, the practice of assigning individual prisoners to local Amnesty groups helped generate a sense of personalised ownership among its local members (Rodio and Schmitz, 2010: 446). Country sections were handed a degree of democratic decision-making power through their ability to elect delegates to the organisation’s International Committee Meetings (ICMs) (Winston, 2001: 31). Although this formal authority was somewhat circumscribed by an overload of proposals made by various national sections and the relative infrequency of ICMs, it did provide national representatives with a deliberative voice in AI’s long-term development (Wendy, 2012: 92–93). However, most importantly for AI’s early growth, the adoption of a semi-federated, membership-based model created an energised army of activist-volunteers from which it could draw both financial and symbolic support. Second, key to AI’s early pursuit of distinction against rival NGOs and amnesty campaigns—many of whom were divided along Cold War lines— was the assertion of its neutrality. This had a direct impact on its early epistemic practice. The backdrop of geopolitical conflict led to the ‘Rule of Threes’, whereby a balance was maintained between the West, East and Third World countries when assigning prisoners to be ‘adopted’ by local Amnesty groups (Hopgood, 2006: 100). Political detachment necessitated a geographically divided approach to research and reporting. The desire to be seen as transcending the messiness of political partisanship was also followed by a so-called ‘Work on Own Country’ rule, which denied AI members the permission to advocate on behalf of individuals of the same national origin (Clark, 2010: 13). Overall, the research ethos instituted by its founders, seeking moral and epistemological transcendence, led to research that supressed identity and difference, such as through the denial of the first-person voice in Amnesty publications, in the mould of emotionally detached and positivist social science (Hopgood, 2006: 209). According to Stephen Hopgood, an author who has conducted ethnographic work on AI’s International Secretariat, ‘[i]t is not just about the temporal priority of research (i.e. that it must come first); it is about the key role research plays as AI’s foundational practice, that of bearing witness. It has special, moral authority. Research practice embodies the ethos’ (ibid.: 26). Instead of drawing on an internationally sanctioned framework, AI sought to produce its moral legitimacy through a specific type of epistemic practice. AI’s initial emphasis on prisoners of conscience focused the organisation’s attention on an object of knowledge production that represented a pure form of innocent victimhood (Korey, 1998: 166). On the one hand, narrowing the thematic scope to political prisoners allowed for a greater emphasis on regional or country-based expertise, enabling the organisation to fulfil its founders’ internationalist aspirations. On the other hand, AI’s foundational epistemic practice also revolved around the provision of thoroughly triangulated and yet stripped-down and highly decontextualised accounts of unjust imprisonment, resulting in representations characterised

Advocacy in the knowledge market  41 by an undeniable and ‘unflinching realism’—a moral vantage point from which AI could call for action, unhindered by potential accusations of political bias (Hopgood, 2006: 206). Facticity was to be constructed through the raw simplicity of victims’ suffering. Based on this early struggle to assert its authority, AI developed a highly distinctive epistemic culture. Yet, despite this rhetorical ‘post-ideological’ transcendentalism, the underlying symbols and discourses adopted by the fledgling organisation were still essentially liberal and Western in character, such as the emblematic barbed-wire candle; a logo that echoed distinctly Christian imagery. This reflected the organisation’s appeal to a specific cross-section of Western Europe’s middle classes, including a high concentration of non-conformist protestants among its first generation of activists (ibid.: 57–58). Throughout the 1960s, as the organisation developed from amateurish activism into a more bureaucratic entity, primacy was given to the institutionalisation of its epistemic and moral authority. In becoming a formal international NGO with a formal structure and constitutive parts, a large research department emerged within the organisation’s International Secretariat (Korey, 1998: 166). Despite the parallel emphasis on grassroots mobilisation, activism was to be subordinated to research, and not vice versa. This manifested in the adoption of a new statute in 1968 that, despite devolving some policymaking powers to the membership, handed significant authority to secretariat staff through their role in interpreting policy and dealing with the NGO’s day-to-day operations (AI, 2017b).1 Therefore, although the organisation also sought consecration as a public authority through fostering representative legitimacy, it was the researchers with their epistemic and moral authority who would provide leadership. This empowerment of AI’s epistemic functions had a significant impact on the organisation’s long-term trajectory. It cemented the influence of its researchers and the symbolic value of their expertise. Yet, over the course of AI’s history, exogenous developments and shifting opportunity structures would alter this foundational legitimacy calculus. Lacking the same wealthy, institutional sources of sustenance as the other two NGOs studied in this chapter, AI’s reliance on membership contributions placed it in a financially precarious position (Hopgood, 2006: 61). Membership growth became an economic necessity. AI’s history can therefore be read as a prolonged process of expansion driven by this central imperative. Alongside a burgeoning and increasingly diverse membership, this expansionism involved a gradual thematic extension beyond the organisation’s original specialisation in prisoners of conscience, as well as its entry into new advocacy arenas. These expansionist processes reflected shifting market relations. This reasserted the vision of the organisation as a public-facing entity, exposing it to a proliferating number of reciprocal consumers—a process of enhanced ‘publicisation’. At the same time, it also had to contend with a growing number of rival producers. Over the course of its historical development, navigating the legitimacy dilemmas brought

42  Advocacy in the knowledge market up by these changing relations resulted in a reshaping of some of the organisation’s core epistemic practices. From 1968 onwards, through revisions to its statute and decisions made at its biannual committee meetings, AI began a long-term process of thematic mission creep. This included expanding its work to cover issues such as the death penalty, torture, the right to a fair trial and extrajudicial killings (Clark, 2010: 39; Rodio and Schmitz, 2010: 449). Some of these reorientations were motivated by changing patterns of abuse and new forms of violence, as reflected in Amnesty’s pioneering work on enforced disappearances in Latin America during the 1970s. (NGO Monitor, 2014). AI’s rapid growth in these years culminated in it being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977—a significant act of symbolic consecration that further stimulated the cycle of expansion (Nobel Prize, 2017). Against the backdrop of its work on torture and disappearances, a Legal Department was established alongside a permanent Campaign Department within the International Secretariat, in 1973 and 1974 respectively, ‘…not only to further mobilize members of the public on behalf of prisoners, but also to apply AI’s knowledge and experience of human rights problems to efforts to develop legal norms at the UN’ (Clark, 2010: 7–8 and 55). Thematic expansion paralleled investments into new consecratory relations, manifesting in the extension of the organisation’s lobbying capacity at the UN throughout the 1970s. In the same year as its attainment of the Nobel Peace Prize, AI professionalised its representation to the UN through the establishment of a New York office (Martens, 2006: 25). The NGO subsequently became intimately involved in the UN system, contributing to the behind-the-scenes articulation of new formal human rights standards, and bringing its staff into close contact with a new social space of advocacy that encompassed UN officials, member states’ representatives and other NGOs (Clark, 2010: 62; Terlingen, 2011: 135). Advancements in the position of human rights at the UN, including the enactment of the International Covenant on Economic and Social and Cultural Rights (1976), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1976), the UN Human Rights Committee’s adoption of a direct monitoring function after 1977 and the creation of the Special Rapporteur system in 1979, contributed to an increasingly symbiotic relationship between AI and these emergent human rights-based mechanisms and sympathetic (although mostly Northern European) diplomats (Clark, 2010: 57 and 62; Terlingen, 2011: 135 and 145). In addition to this growing symbiosis with the United Nations, the US government—especially after human rights became embedded as part of US  foreign policy following Jimmy Carter’s election—also provided an opportunity for the expansion of AI’s advocacy capacity during the 1970s (Terlingen, 2011: 144). This manifested in close relations with Congressional and State Department officials, as well as the establishment of a Washington Liaison Office in 1976 (Korey, 1998: 168). This increasing orientation towards the United States can also be linked to another major long-term development

Advocacy in the knowledge market  43 in AI history: the rapid growth of its US section (AIUSA). Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the exponential growth of AIUSA had a significant impact on the overall composition of its membership. Culturally speaking, the burgeoning US membership saturated AIUSA with individuals who, unlike AI’s predominantly British founders, were much more politically engaged, having come of age during the civil rights movement and protests against the Vietnam War (Hopgood, 2006: 107). Departing from the traditional focus on prisoners of conscience, these activists sought to campaign on a much broader spectrum of human rights-related problems, particularly in relation to thematic issues like minority and women’s rights (Hopgood, 2011: 77). According to Hopgood, underpinning these new perspectives was a utilitarian, pragmatist philosophy that sought to leverage the organisation’s prestige for the achievement of identity-based political goals (Hopgood, 2006: 211–212). Because AI’s central organs were financially reliant on income from its federated country sections, AIUSA’s financial leverage was also heightened in relation to the rest of the organisation—adding substantial weight to its voice at committee meetings (ibid.: 108). The new influx’s demographic and ideological divergence from its previous European core contributed to a protracted internal symbolic struggle over the organisation’s leadership, including a contestation over the strategies through which legitimacy was to be sought (ibid.: 145). While the entrenched authority of its researchers and the NGO’s cumbersome mechanisms for democratic decision-making ensured that changes were slow to be realised, the membership-driven impetus for reform resulted in greater mission creep. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, AI’s mandate expanded to encompass refugees, violations by non-state actors, sexual orientation, forced deportation and housing destruction (NGO Monitor, 2017). The end of the Cold War only intensified these processes. Responding to demands to address emergent international issues, AI was compelled to reorient itself to a new political era—addressing issues like ethnic conflict, global development and inequality (Rodio and Schmitz, 2010: 447). In particular, the atrocities in Bosnia and Rwanda stimulated a greater emphasis on crisis response and conflict-based reporting (Hopgood, 2006: 136–137). Against the backdrop of a broader NGO coalition campaigning against landmines in the 1990s, AI’s growing interest in violent conflict culminated in the expansion of its mandate to include opposition to weapons of war at its 1999 ICM in Cape Town (NGO Monitor, 2017). Subsequently, the proliferating espousal of new issue areas accelerated in the early 2000s, with a shift to a ‘full spectrum’ approach to human rights at its Dakar ICM in 2001, and a wave of new themes adopted during its Mexico City ICM in 2003, including children’s rights, AIDS, nuclear weapons testing and violence against women (ibid.). This saw a further movement towards thematic expertise at the expense of a regional- or country-centred approach, which was reflected in human resource terms through an enlargement of the organisation’s campaign staff (Hopgood, 2011: 94).

44  Advocacy in the knowledge market At the same time, with the advent of 24-hours news reporting, AI also had to respond to dramatic changes in the media sphere. From 1993 onwards, AI adopted a more press-friendly orientation, issuing extra shortened press releases at the expense of long-form reporting (Ron et al., 2005: 573). The drive towards media-friendly soundbites was also influenced by the rapid growth of, and competition from, HRW. As an organisation that specialised in media-savviness, HRW became a significant challenger to AI’s dominance of the human rights media space (Hopgood, 2006: 107–108). This was exacerbated by HRW’s close relations with the US news media. Therefore, in the context of a saturated media environment and increasing inter-INGO competition for the attention of political and media gatekeepers, the emergence of HRW posed a direct challenge to AI’s authority. Together, these external developments reverberated internally, helping to shift the balance of power from the traditional organisational vision of moral transcendence and research-driven advocacy to a reformist perspective that emphasised greater political and media engagement (ibid.: 11). This transition was gradually realised through the 1990s and 2000s. Media exposure, an expanding membership and relations with a wider set of political stakeholders heightened the imperative for the professional management of its public image and brand identity. This lent impetus to professional and managerial reforms from the early 1990s onwards, including the importation of corporate jargon, greater management oversight of the International Secretariat after 1994, and a reorganisation of the INGO’s pay structure in 1998 (ibid.: 133–135). With a freeze in pay for staff on the lowest salaries and an increase for those on the top stratum, this reflected a departure from the organisation’s traditional egalitarian ethos, and a submission to the broader invasion of the Western non-profit sector by an increasingly neoliberal culture (ibid.). Stagnant membership growth and income in the late 2000s and early 2010s only further stimulated this impetus for reform, leading to an emphasis on decentralisation and internationalisation (NGO Monitor, 2017). With the aim of broadening its appeal beyond its saturated Western base, AI underwent a ‘Global Transition Program’ aimed at the diffusion of centralised functions (including research) to globally dispersed regional offices (ibid.). Overall, throughout the course of its nearly six-decade-long evolution, AI has had to contend with seismic shifts in its external operating environment. Shifting market relations—which include both a proliferating number of reciprocal consumers and an exponential growth in the quantity of rival producers—have prompted a realignment in the means through which it has sought external legitimacy, which has also had a knock-on effect on its epistemic practices. Unlike the other two advocacy organisations studied in this chapter, AI’s membership model made it particularly porous and responsive to external social and political changes. In the twenty-first century, this has led to a globally operative organisation that, rather than its original emphasis on research-driven practice,

Advocacy in the knowledge market  45 is increasingly oriented towards campaign-driven knowledge production. While the next two sections will focus on the respective evolutions of HRW and the ICG, the final section of this chapter will return to analyse, in a comparative way, some of the convergent market dynamics that have led to such historic transformations.

Human Rights Watch Throughout the 1970s, a confluence of domestic political factors in the United States, including the aftermath of the civil rights movement, leftist opposition to the Vietnam War and Congressional resistance to Kissingerian foreign policy, culminated in the ‘Americanisation’ of human rights (Slezkine, 2014: 346). Carter’s ascendance to the presidency in 1977 subsequently helped to embed human rights as a central aspect of US foreign policy. The administration’s human rights policies, including the linkage of bilateral military and economic assistance to human rights performance and the formation of a Human Rights Bureau within the State Department, provided a major opening for humanist advocacy from NGOs (Montgomery, 2002: 456). While AI had certainly benefited from an expanding US membership during these years, it was to be challenged by the founding of HRW (then known as Helsinki Watch). This organisation was formed in 1978 in New York, mandated to monitor the implementation of civil and political rights obligations made within the 1975 Helsinki Final Act—a product of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE). While AI and HRW would come to share much in common, including a mutual emphasis on political and civil rights (rather than economic, social or cultural rights), the latter’s foundational model would diverge significantly from that of its older cousin. While AI had been formed with the aspiration to become a distinctly public entity, manifesting in its adoption of a democratic membership model, the fledgling HRW’s formation should be read through its proximity to a specific network of political, media and philanthropic elites within the United States. While AI had been formed by a group consisting of primarily middleclass British lawyers, the key figures involved in HRW’s creation were positioned at the upper echelons of the US political establishment. Four key figures were involved in Helsinki Watch’s foundation: Arthur Goldberg, previously a Supreme Court Justice and US Ambassador to the United Nations, and head of the US delegation to the CSCE; McGeorge Bundy, former National Security Advisor, president of the Ford Foundation and ‘a member of the cosmopolitan and learned bourgeoisie’; Robert L. Bernstein, wealthy publisher and founder of the Fund for Free Expression; and, finally, Aryeh Neier, then National Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (Dezalay and Garth, 2002: 137). In his work as part of the US delegation to the CSCE, Goldberg had become convinced of the need for a US-based public pressure group to push the US government to uphold

46  Advocacy in the knowledge market the Helsinki Accord’s human rights provisions (Korey, 1998: 348). Goldberg subsequently came into contact with Bundy who agreed to finance the project through an initial 400,000 USD donation from the Ford Foundation, while Bernstein—who had a personal interest in Soviet dissidents through his previous work with the Fund For Free Expression—was chosen to lead the new Watch group (ibid.: 349 and 341–342). Aryeh Neier was also a co-founding member and would later become instrumental in articulating a global vision for the NGO (ibid.: 343). These individuals helped underpin Helsinki Watch’s three-pronged orientation: to powerful liberal-leaning institutional foundations, the US foreign policy establishment and the elite media. Both financially, politically and symbolically, its foundational model was dependent on its ability to aggressively market itself to a wealthy American philanthropic base (Hopgood, 2006: 141). Having provided the start-up funding, Bundy’s Ford Foundation was instrumental in this regard. In the decades following the Second World War, the Ford Foundation had played a central role within the US political establishment through the financing of major liberal think-tanks and research institutes such as the Brookings Institute and the Institute for Policy Studies (Rich, 2005: 47 and 58). However, during the 1970s—in the context of increasing Left-Right political polarisation and competition from new advocacy-oriented conservative think-tanks (e.g. the Heritage Foundation)— Bundy helped realign its support away from funding research-centric organisations and towards supporting more engaged activism—with a particular emphasis on civil and human rights advocacy (Dezalay and Garth, 2009: 69–70). HRW’s formation cannot therefore be devolved from the intensified ideological competition within the US political establishment. As Dezalay and Garth have argued [t]his third postwar generation of the human rights movement, in contrast to Amnesty International, was willing to adopt a more elitist profile and to pursue ambitions that were more politically oriented. Rather than following a secret strategy among notables of the state, as had been the case earlier, these distinguished professionals decided to invest in the terrain of human rights to contest the orientation of a new ultraconservative right (ibid.: 132) In terms of its research and advocacy, the early HRW became explicitly oriented towards the US government. In the words of Korey, it ‘…was rooted in the American scene and utilized its connections with the American power structure to affect governments on human rights issues’ (1998: 361–362). Aided by Bernstein’s association with the elite press, this was complemented by a strong media-centric advocacy strategy that would eventually allow the organisation to supersede AI as the go-to human rights source for the US news media (Welch, 2001: 100).

Advocacy in the knowledge market  47 Formally, Helsinki Watch was modelled as an American mirror to the Moscow Helsinki Group, established by dissidents in the Soviet Union (Slezkine, 2014: 354). As a Watch committee, it was ostensibly analogous to its sister groups within the Eastern bloc; organisations mandated to monitor their own governments’ compliance with the Helsinki Accord (ibid.: 349–350). In theory, as a domestic Watch group, this should have meant that it would monitor the US government’s compliance with the Helsinki Final Act. However, thanks in part to the personal investment of Helsinki Watch’s founders in the issue of civil and political rights in the Eastern bloc, and warm relations with members of the US government seeking non-governmental reportage of Soviet human rights violations, this official model was eschewed in favour of an orientation that was much more internationally focused and aligned with US foreign policy (Korey, 1998: 237; Slezkine, 2014: 353). The triumph of this model was made evident in the emphasis of Helsinki Watch’s early reporting on the Eastern bloc, as well as the forced resignation of David Fishlow, the NGO’s first executive director, due to his misplaced specialisation in domestic (rather than international) civil rights issues (Slezkine, 2014: 353). Methodologically, a combination of a media strategy that sought condemnation-through-publicity, a monitoring mandate and an anchorage in the Helsinki Accords enabled the development of the organisation’s ‘shaming methodology’, revolving around the public denouncement of Eastern bloc governments’ treatment of dissidents based on states’ codified obligations (Brooks and Cil, 2016: 43). By anchoring itself in the CSCE, Helsinki Watch provided a precedent for its future advocacy focus on the embedment of human rights commitments and rules within formally sanctioned legal and institutional frameworks. Helsinki Watch’s foundational methodology must also be seen in the context of competition over reporting on political prisoners from the longer established AI (Wong, 2012: 118–119). The thematic isomorphism between these two organisations was a testament to how influential AI had been in shaping the standardised Western approach to non-governmental human rights advocacy. However, in direct contrast to AI’s open, visa-regulated fact-finding method (which was based on AI’s ‘post-ideological’ ethos), Helsinki Watch adopted a much more instrumentalist and pragmatic approach through its embrace of secretive investigations behind the iron curtain (Watson, 2004: 443–444). The early HRW also opted for a much more concentrated and centralised structure than AI, enabling greater flexibility in its strategic decision-making (Wong, 2012: 127). However, this contradistinction against AI’s public-oriented model came at the cost of tying itself to a narrow constellation of powerful reciprocal consumers who had relatively homogenous political interests. This tightly knit liberal, US-based political, philanthropic and media nexus constituted a highly profitable audience for the fledgling Helsinki Watch—in both a financial and a symbolic sense. Existing in a dependent relationship vis-àvis this restricted market proved to be financially lucrative, especially as

48  Advocacy in the knowledge market the organisation became closely aligned with the strategic interests of the wealthy Ford Foundation (and later the Open Society Institute). Yet, it was also symbolically efficacious due to the publicity and recognition it could generate through its high-level political connections and privileged access to the prestige press. Although the NGO would eventually seek to become increasingly universally oriented, diversifying beyond its US base, such a trajectory would be constrained by its entrenched relationship with this restricted knowledge market. During its formative years, through its rhetorical embrace of human rights, the Carter administration had provided Helsinki Watch with a powerful reciprocal consumer. The transition to a Reagan White House in 1981, with its hawkish push to renew Cold War tensions and its relative ambivalence towards international human rights issues, caused a major rupture in its knowledge market. This rupture was to have paradoxical effects. First, departing from a human rights-centred foreign policy, the Reagan government professed American exceptionalism by stressing the superiority of specifically American (not humanist) values over the Soviet’s ‘Evil Empire’ (Orentlicher, 1990: 87–88; Slezkine, 2014: 356). Because Helsinki Watch had been founded in a symbiotic relationship with a liberal political establishment that had been sympathetic to its cause, the executive’s sudden rightward, anti-human rights shift and rejection of détente posed a direct threat to the NGO’s legitimacy. While the Reagan administration did attempt to mobilise the rhetoric of rights, such as in the cases of Cuba and Nicaragua, this was done in an explicitly instrumentalist, realpolitik way that threatened the universalist foundation of human rights discourses (Orentlicher, 1990: 88–89). This was confounded by a visible hypocrisy that emerged from the administration’s suppression of criticism of US allies, such as abuses by El Salvador’s armed forces (ibid.: 90). Through its ambivalence to human rights, the new US executive created a partial incentive for HRW to supersede its US-centrism. However, the Reagan administration also provided an opportunity for further domestic engagement. Political polarisation between the now-dispossessed liberals and the New Right generated demand by the former for ammunition to attack the new administration. Through the establishment of Americas Watch in 1981, the organisation was able to pursue an adversarial strategy towards Reagan’s foreign policy—specifically through its scrutiny of military aid to US-backed groups in Latin America (Slezkine, 2014: 358–359). Washington DC became ‘…the principal battleground for the newly established Americas Watch’ (ibid.). Despite the risks, engaging with this polarised domestic political battlefield enabled HRW to double down on its domestic support among liberal-leaning actors within the political, media and philanthropic spheres. However, Americas Watch’s criticism of the Reagan administration did prompt a backlash. Active attempts were made by the executive and rightwing think-tanks to discredit critical advocacy voices, thus exposing the organisation to a vocal cohort of rival knowledge producers. They became hostile agents. For instance, in response to a joint Americas Watch-American

Advocacy in the knowledge market  49 Civil Liberties Union report on violations by the Salvadorian government, the then Assistant Secretary of Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs Elliott Abrams issued a response dismissing it as ‘…a document prepared with political objectives…obviously slanted and totally one-sided in all its presentation’ (Orentlicher, 1990: 91). This increasingly competitive market of antagonistic knowledge producers subsequently pushed Americas Watch towards methodological innovation. It spurred the adoption of a much stricter, risk-averse and positivist approach to research. A greater emphasis was placed on the raw facticity of the human rights report, as well as adding to the organisation’s long-term culture of deferring to the initiative and expertise of individual researchers (Wong, 2012: 132). Highlighting these innovations, Montgomery argues that: This dramatically altered the reporting methods of Americas Watch and set a new standard for the international human rights movement in several important ways. To ensure its credibility and engage the U.S. government in debate over military aid to the Salvadoran military, Americas Watch began issuing frequent, lengthy, and meticulously documented reports that became increasingly difficult to repudiate or discredit. Because these debates centered primarily on facts of abuse, it was important for Americas Watch to document its findings as completely as possible. In addition, frequent reports were necessary to counter the U.S. government’s claims of recent improvements when the facts showed otherwise. (2002: 458–459) However, arguably the most radical methodological innovation coming from this spat with the New Right was the adoption of international humanitarian law (IHL) as part of its evolving ‘shaming methodology’ (HRW Legal Advisor, 2015). This was a significant development to the extent that it allowed the organisation to supersede its past anchorage in the Helsinki Accords and human rights covenants of the late 1970s. By incorporating IHL within its mandate, Americas Watch legitimised its advocacy on conflict-related human rights issues through adopting an explicitly codified framework, while also adding a veneer of legal objectivity to its research (Slezkine, 2014: 358). Despite the domestic origins of these innovations, they also pushed the organisation beyond its traditional comfort zone. The adoption of IHL, by freeing up space to work on the conduct of both governmental and non-governmental parties to conflict, set a precedent for the organisation’s exponential mission creep throughout the 1980s and onwards (Watson, 2004: 444). Under Aryeh Neier’s leadership, the organisation expanded with the establishment of the West European-based International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights in 1982, Asia Watch in 1985, Africa Watch in 1988, and Middle East Watch in 1989 (HRW, 2017b; Slezkine, 2014: 359–360). Although nominally separate, these appendages remained under the centralised control of Neier, the executive director (Wong, 2012: 126). On the one hand, this steady proliferation represented the first phase in the

50  Advocacy in the knowledge market NGO’s long-term transition from a purely American human rights group into a more universal one. On the other hand, given its deep ties to domestic political, philanthropic and media elites, this would prove to be a gradual process. Eventually, in 1988, the previously segmented ‘Watch Committees’ merged under the banner of ‘Human Rights Watch’ (HRW, 2017b). As HRW expanded its global activities, it would increasingly become enmeshed within a wider network of reciprocal consumers. This was effectively a transition from a restricted American market, to a much more public and international one. In response to these developments, the organisation would undergo far-reaching reforms—especially after a strategic review funded by one of its main financial backers, the Ford Foundation (Brown, 2001: 81–82). This review was part of a broader reformist drive following Neier’s replacement by Kenneth Roth, a US Attorney, in 1993. It stimulated centralising reforms aimed at enhancing brand identity, including tying the organisation’s regional organs more explicitly to the centralised HRW brand (Korey, 1998: 350). The pursuit of a coherent global identity also produced structural and bureaucratic reforms, with the addition of extra layers of centralised oversight for its research and advocacy functions, including the creation of a senior management team and a ‘Program Director’ aimed at streamlining its reporting practices and ensuring message discipline across its thematic and regional campaigns (Wong, 2012: 127 and 131–132). The logic here was that ‘[c]oherence through a clearly defined senior administrative team would provide the organization with a clear identity that would prevent and eliminate confused perceptions of the organization as well as balkanization tendencies’ (Korey, 1998: 349). This professionalisation also meant increasingly specialised directorship positions: the Program Director would oversee research, the Advocacy Director would coordinate advocacy from Washington DC, the Communications Director would focus on media strategy, and the position of General Counsel would vet questions regarding policy and legal issues (ibid.: 350–351). Through the centralised setting of priorities, HRW’s revamped management structure also allowed for a greater emphasis on geographical breadth, further adding momentum to the long-term internationalisation of the organisation’s mandate (ibid.: 349–350). The end of the Cold War and a shifting political paradigm in the early 1990s also provided new opportunities for thematic extension, as well as its engagement with a wider array of reciprocal consumers. Thematic expansion manifested in the creation of new programmatic divisions covering ‘Children’s Rights’, ‘Woman’s Rights’, ‘Health and Human Rights’, and ‘International Justice’, the latter of which cemented HRW’s role as a pro-active advocate for the institutionalisation of international legal mechanisms through the International Criminal Court (HRW, 2017b). The demise of Cold War politics also incentivised greater engagement with multilateral institutions, achieving consultative status at the UN in 1993 and expanding its EU lobbying with the establishment of a Brussels office in 1994 (Korey, 1998: 351 and 357). Despite being a latecomer

Advocacy in the knowledge market  51 to such multilateral fora, the organisation’s reputation within the UN system for reporting on conflict-related human rights issues was given a significant boost through its advocacy on Yugoslavia and Rwanda throughout the 1990s (ibid.: 353). While its creation of regional subsidiaries during the 1980s had placed much emphasis on geographical and country-based expertise, the external pressures faced by HRW during the course of the 1990s subsequently helped fashion it into more of an intensely advocacy-centric NGO; advocacy that was being diversified beyond its traditional orientation towards Washington DC. As with Amnesty’s reorganisation in the 1990s, HRW’s expansive post-Cold War reforms were undergone against the backdrop of an increasingly saturated information environment. While also facing intensified competition for political bandwidth and media publicity, HRW found itself much better prepared to exploit the advent of 24-hours news than its older cousin—largely thanks to its long-term connections with the Unites States news media (Hopgood, 2006: 142). Moving into the 2000s, the rise of digital platforms compounded the growing tendency towards campaign-driven practice. In recognition of the fast pace of the contemporary information environment, this manifested in a slight shift away from long-form, technical documentation, especially with the embrace of more digestible representations such as news releases, 3,000–5,000 word ‘pressers-plus’, and shorter blog pieces known as ‘Dispatches’ (HRW senior staff, 2016). At the same time, while still being centrally geared towards influencing decision-makers through the elite media, the advent of social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook provided new opportunities for greater public-facing advocacy (HRW International Justice Program Staff, 2016). As seen already, the anti-human rights stance of the Reagan administration generated a partial pressure for Helsinki Watch to move beyond its dependency on the US political system. This pattern was replicated under the G.W. Bush, Obama and Trump administrations. For instance, George Soros—one of HRW’s key financial backers—argued that the Global War on Terror had eroded the US governments’ ‘moral high ground’ in relation to human rights issues (Lynch, 2010). Being headquartered inside the Empire State Building in Manhattan, HRW has been perceived by many of its critics as a specifically North American organisation, and thus damages to the United States’ credibility can also threaten HRW’s legitimacy. This has added to the urgency for the organisation to internationalise its image. In recent years, Soros himself has helped to spearhead these efforts through an injection of funds. In 2010, the Soros-founded Open Society Institute—led by HRW co-founder Aryeh Neier—donated 100 million USD to HRW in order to ‘…expand and to deepen HRW’s global presence to more effectively protect and promote human rights around the world’ (HRW, 2010). Taken together, these post-Cold War efforts to diversify have multiplied HRW’s network of reciprocal consumers. New offices were established in major global cities, and a greater proportion of funding was sought from abroad,

52  Advocacy in the knowledge market with the explicit goal of achieving 50 percent of funds from non-US sources by 2020 (Lynch, 2010; Wong, 2012: 137). Finally, this internationalisation has also manifested in the expanded scope of its research, with its World Report 2019 covering more than 90 countries (HRW, 2019). However, despite its long-term pursuit of internationalisation, HRW has failed to fully supersede its traditional dependency on a narrow range of US-based liberal benefactors. The fact that the Open Society Institute— backed by an activist liberal billionaire financier—has played such a key role in its most recent wave of expansion succinctly illustrates this failure; a testament to the stickiness of its foundational model. Overall, in terms of its evolving knowledge market, HRW’s history can be read as a tension between its need to appease a narrow set of US-based and highly profitable (both financially and symbolically) consumers of its advocacy, and its role as an increasingly prominent actor within the international human rights network—a position that demands it appease a much broader range of potential consumers through taking on a more public persona. In parallel to HRW, the next section will demonstrate how the ICG has been affected by a similar tension between its foundational dependencies and the growth of its international portfolio. Furthermore, these are also dynamics that will be explored in more comparative analytical depth in the final section of this chapter.

International Crisis Group The ICG was founded in 1995 in starkly different circumstances to AI and HRW. While the older human rights NGOs were, respectively, the products of the early and later Cold War periods, the ICG came to be defined by events at the eclipse of bipolarity and the emergent politics of liberal interventionism. In analysing the ICG’s foundational conditions, one must consider the shifting sense of political possibilities—and the role that non-governmental actors could perceivably play in the realisation of these possibilities—in the context of a post-Cold War transatlantic triumphalism. Broadly speaking, this included a new spirit of interventionism made possible by receding geopolitical frictions between East and West. Especially for more liberal minded Western foreign policy elites, the end of the Cold War expanded the conceptual boundaries of where (geographically) and how (by which means) state and non-state parties could engage internationally. This meant an enlarged interventionary toolkit and a shifting conception of where these tools could be legitimately deployed. Yet, the demise of bipolarity was not a sufficient condition for the realisation of a pro-active interventionism among Western foreign policy elites. Instead, the immediate demand was generated by concern for ethnic violence during the implosion of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s; events that took many Western governments, who at the time were caught up in the events of the Gulf War, by surprise (Glenny, 2000: 634–635). According to

Advocacy in the knowledge market  53 the ICG’s own foundational mythology, it was the reaction to this myopia, and the subsequent international political impasse over how to respond to fighting in Bosnia, that led to its emergence (ICG, 2010: 11). Against the backdrop of a splintering Yugoslavia, the formation of the ICG was enabled by polarisation within the Western security alliance, particularly during the Siege of Sarajevo by Bosnian-Serb forces. Widespread media coverage of the atrocities in Bosnia stimulated pro-interventionist sentiments. In addition to this, a protracted rift among the Western allies—particularly between the United States and Britain/France over the former’s unwillingness to contribute ground troops to the UN peacekeeping force (UNPROFOR) in the Yugoslav Wars—spurred a critical mass of influential parties to support the establishment of a new foreign policy instrument that would streamline international support for interventionary action (Glenny, 2000: 640). Reinforced by the ‘Never Again’ sentiments that followed the Rwandan genocide of 1994, these concerns culminated in the formal establishment of the ICG. As the ICG’s public self-narrative highlights, ‘Crisis Group was founded in 1995 as an international non-governmental organisation by a group of prominent statesmen who despaired at the international community’s failure to anticipate and respond effectively to the tragedies of Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia’ (ICG, 2017c). What this statement helps to emphasise is that the ICG was founded by foreign policy elites for foreign policy elites. This can be defined as a restricted market of knowledge consumers. The organisation’s foundation involved a select group of predominantly Western, pro-interventionist statesmen and wealthy philanthropists. For example, its formative visionaries included the ex-US diplomat and president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Morton Abramowitz, and British international political consultant and then World Bank official Mark Malloch Brown; meanwhile George Soros (who personally pursued a ‘global turn’ through his Open Society Institute after the collapse of East European communism) provided the initial seed funding (ICG, 2010; Stone, 2010: 279–280). Subsequently, Abramowitz and US Congressman Steven Solarz helped solicit political and financial backing from a range of high-profile stakeholders, including Martti Ahtisaari (Finland’s President), Gareth Evans (Australian Foreign Minister), Bernard Kouchner (co-founder of Medecins Sans Frontières), Ratan Tata (Indian industrialist), Peter Kooijmans (Dutch Foreign Minister) and Allan MacEachen (former Canadian Secretary of State for External Affairs) (ICG, 2010: 12 and 15). Structurally, functionally and practically speaking, the organisation that took shape came to reflect the specific foundational conditions described above. With the end of the Cold War and global publicity around ongoing ethnic conflicts, the ICG found its thematic niche as a conflict prevention organisation at a time when there was significant political will among foreign ministries for more pro-active, interventionist policies (ICG Senior Staff, 2015). As Kosmatopoulos has argued, this generated a specific operational logic revolving around its self-professed function as a ‘crisis sentinel’

54  Advocacy in the knowledge market (2014: 608). Against the backdrop of genocide in Rwanda and Bosnia, ICG reporting sought to generate a sense of immediacy and emergency that would spur interventionary action (ibid.: 604). The notion that the ICG took on a functional identity as a global surveillance actor was reinforced by the organisation’s future leader, Gareth Evans (2012), who argued that it succeeded in its early years precisely because it met an unfulfilled demand. It is crucial for a start to be seen to be adding value: meeting a need that is not currently being met well, sufficiently or at all. In the peace and security area the primary unmet need seen by Crisis Group’s founders was to compensate for the growing incapacity of governments to have an accurate take on what was happening on the ground—the issues that were resonating and the personalities that were driving them. For a variety of reasons, mainly security and budgetary, traditional diplomats have not been performing this function in as much breadth and depth as they previously have—it’s hard to get out and about when you are locked up in a fortress or have minimal staff resources—and both early warning and effective prevention capacity have suffered as a result. It was into this perceived void in grounded conflict expertise that the organisation would orient and market itself. To be able to do so authoritatively, it required an organisational methodology that would legitimise itself vis-à-vis its key stakeholders. Here, initial scepticism among more cautious European governments heightened the demand for an organisation with substantial epistemic authority (ICG, 2010: 13). Initial proposals for a more operational role were ditched in favour of an organisational model emphasising field-based—or what one senior ICG staffer described to me as ‘granular’—knowledge production and access to high-level policy figures (ibid.: 15 and 18; ICG Senior Staff, 2015). From an early stage, the ICG would try to distinguish itself through taking up divergent positions on issues such as the Bosnian election of 1996, where—contrary to broad international support—the organisation called for its postponement (ICG, 2010:  18). To be able to foster the perceived independence of its expertise over the specific issue areas it was engaged in, the organisation also adopted an atomised structure that devolved policy direction to project directors and individual, country-based researchers (ICG Senior Staff, 2015). However, while the ICG’s self-narrative puts a lot of emphasis on its early authority accumulated through its willingness to take contradistinctive stances, this is overshadowed by the strength of its condition of both political and financial dependency vis-à-vis a restricted market of Western foreign policy elites. More than merely courting controversy, its orientation and palatability towards these audiences, manifesting in its early development of a strong advocacy presence in Brussels, London, New York and Washington DC, reflected the opportunism provided by the ‘transatlantic triumph’ (ICG, 2010: 20, 2016: 6). The ICG ‘model’ could only operate effectively if it could both foster perceptions of its claimed independence while

Advocacy in the knowledge market  55 also mobilising its dependencies. Methodologically speaking, by grounding its research in elite interviews, the group’s reliance on high-level policy stakeholders also came to shape its approach to reporting (The Diplomat, 2017). This would also influence the evolution of its media strategy, with the specific targeting of the prestige press, including key Western outlets like The New York Times, The Guardian and Le Monde who acted as proxies for access to policy elites (Powers, 2014: 95). Normatively speaking, the nascent ICG also tapped into the popular humanist and victim-centred narratives reflected in Western media coverage of the Bosnian War, particularly in relation to the Siege of Sarajevo (ICG, 2010: 14). However, rather than embracing an explicit humanist framework, such as human rights in the case of AI and HRW, the ICG officially eschewed any codified normative affiliation, preferring a pragmatist approach to knowledge production and global advocacy. This enabled the NGO to tailor its research and policy recommendations to the specificities of particular reciprocal consumers and their varying interests across different conflicts. In a direct contradistinction to humanitarian, development or human rights groups, the ICG thus became distinguishable by its ability to make more nakedly political interventions, unhindered by mandatory commitments to codified norms. In both the 1990s and onwards, this commitment to instrumentalism (rather than normative deontologism) was particularly useful in its strong advocacy in favour of military interventions—bypassing the controversies that such interventions often invoke for other humanist advocates (ibid.: 15). Yet, while the ability to take divergent stances across different issues helped the organisation to appear more independent and non-partisan, its composition and proximity to a restricted market of Western policy consumers means that, in the words of Sonja Grigat, ‘[t]he ICG’s scientific research and policy advice is rooted firmly in the discourse on liberal peace, in which peaceful societies rest on democratic governance, market economy and the rule of law, as well as individual restraint from violence’ (2014: 567). The ICG’s initial focus was mostly confined to the Balkans, although it did expand its work to Central Africa in 1998 (ICG, 2010: 22). The relatively slow pace of growth in its early years can be attributed to a combination of budgetary constraints and high senior management turnover (ibid.: 8–9; Hazeldine, 2010: 25). Despite these restrictions, the ambition to globalise its activities was signalled with the moving of the organisation’s headquarters from London to Brussels, ‘…partly to demonstrate that Crisis Group was genuinely international, not just Anglo-American, in character’ (ICG, 2010: 20). However, following the accession of Gareth Evans to the presidency in 2000, the organisation underwent a much more rapid global expansion, funded by a 2.5 million USD injection from George Soros (ibid.: 6; Evans, 2012; ICG, 2017c). This expansionism, which involved a quintupling of the NGO’s staff size and budget, was motivated by perceived economies of scale, with the leadership believing that it ‘…needed to have a larger critical mass and multi-continent reach if it was to have real

56  Advocacy in the knowledge market visibility and impact with policy-makers’ (ICG, 2010: 23). The ambition was therefore to become a more thoroughly public entity. The ambition to diversify its global advocacy manifested in the establishment of offices in Abuja, Bishkek, Beijing, Bogotá, Dakar, Delhi, Islamabad and Nairobi, reflecting a ‘…greater appreciation of the importance of engagement with additional global and regional powers’ (ibid.: 5). The shifting international balance of power between traditional global powers and emergent economies was highlighted in the organisation’s 2016 strategic review, and was attributed to the necessity to focus on new global challenges: Violent extremism, climate change, economic crises, nuclear proliferation, organised crime, unauthorised or misapplied use of force, massive violations of international humanitarian and human rights laws and population shifts of a magnitude not seen since the end of the Second World War have emerged as phenomena that challenge the existing array of institutional, policy and legal tools. The retreat of traditional powers’ influence in some theatres and the return of great power tensions in others are changing the practice of diplomacy. (ICG, 2016: 2) In addition to the internationalisation of the ICG’s research and advocacy focus, the organisation was also responsive to external thematic trends throughout the 2000s. The advent of the Global War on Terror, coming at a time of ambitious expansionism, provided a major opportunity for the organisation. In terms of the organisation’s financial growth and sustenance, it had the effect of generating ‘…double-digit growth in state funding…’, and ‘…provided Evans with an improved platform on which to build a global role’ (Hazeldine, 2010: 27–28). Politically, it also further embedded the ICG as a key non-governmental node within the network of Western security governance and diplomatic circles. This manifested through an expansion of the NGO’s research on Islamic extremism, and the launching of major new projects across the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia and South Asia. Here, the organisation’s discourse shifted towards the production of narratives supporting the Global War on Terror, such as the ‘modernisation fallacy’ which assumed a link between poverty and violent extremism, and what one group of scholars criticised as ‘…dystopic characterizations of Islam’ in its research on Central Asia (ICG, 2010: 25; The Diplomat, 2017). During these years, the ICG’s growing function as a legitimising tool for Western foreign policy also manifested in its vocal support in favour of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine, with Gareth Evans personally involved in its conceptualisation through the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (Evans, 2012). Under the organisation’s own admission, R2P subsequently became ‘…in many ways a guiding standard for Crisis Group throughout [Evans’] tenure’ (ICG, 2010: 43). After the financial crisis of 2008, this period of increased state support gave way to frugality and interventionary fatigue. In the organisation’s own

Advocacy in the knowledge market  57 words, ‘[t]he global financial crisis that kicked off in autumn 2008 was a serious shock to the organisation, with all of Crisis Group’s key sources of funding hit hard by the market crash and the recession that followed’, leading to a budget deficit and a 10 percent cutback in expenditure (ibid.: 41; ICG, 2016: 5). Compared to the enthusiasm for the pro-active governance of violent conflict that characterised the ICG’s genesis, this dearth in financial support was compounded by an erosion of political will to support conflict prevention initiatives. This was particularly the case among the governmental donors who make up around half of the organisation’s income (ICG, 2014; ICG Senior Staff, 2015). According to one senior ICG staffer interviewed for this book, this has led to a partial shift away from conflict resolution and a move towards other thematic issues, ‘that are… obviously relevant but not bulls-eye on what we do’, such as global health or mass migration (ICG Senior Staff, 2015). While weary about the dangers of moving away from the core basis of its epistemic authority, a combination of increasing financial frugality from donors and the reallocation of funds away from peace and security portfolios has placed a top-down pressure on the organisation to gradually move its focus away from country-based expertise and towards more thematic, cross-cutting issues (ibid.; Evans, 2012). This has entailed a more generalist and integrated approach that seeks to tie together themes across its regional programmes. For instance, the ICG’s redesigned website includes ‘global issues’ sections, representing an attempt to integrate overlapping elements of its research under the thematic banners of ‘Jihad in Modern Conflict’, ‘Peace, Justice and Reconciliation’, ‘Gender, Peace and Security’, ‘Humanitarian Fallout of Conflict’, ‘The Boko Haram Insurgency’ and ‘From Early Warning to Early Action’ (ICG, 2017a, 2017b, 2017d, 2017e, 2017f, 2017g). These top-down pressures raise questions regarding the ICG’s dependency vis-à-vis Western foreign policy establishments. There is now arguably a greater pressure being exerted on the organisation for conformity, reflected in Simons’ description of the ICG as ‘a non-profit government research contractor’ (2014: 587). In recent years, the pressure placed on the ICG to more directly service its policymaking financiers has had a methodological impact. There has been an increasing recognition of the misalignment of the report-making and the policymaking cycles. Particularly after 2003, the organisation began to rapidly expand its media footprint, with an increase from 2,000 annual citations of the ICG in media outlets in 2002, to 5,000 in 2006 (ICG, 2010: 30). Mirroring the media diversification seen in the cases of AI and HRW, this was also accompanied by the embrace of alternative outputs—such as Q&As, press releases and op-eds by prominent board members—aimed at ‘connecting the dots’ between the NGO’s reportage on any given country or issue (ICG, 2016: 5; ICG Senior Staff; 2015). While there has been a more recent decline in publications in the traditional elite media, as observed by Brooks and Cil, more attention has been paid to other types of communication, including social media, podcasts, video content and its CrisisWatch bulletin (2016: 50–51; ICG, 2010: 43).

58  Advocacy in the knowledge market This methodological diversification has also been motivated by an increasingly saturated information environment. As with the other two NGOs studied in this chapter, the age of the mass media and the internet has seen an oversupply of policy-relevant knowledge from a growing plurality of rival producers; demanding greater agility and flexibility when communicating knowledge to policy audiences (ICG Director of Research, 2016; ICG, 2016: 5). Due to their long production cycle, this is not something that lengthy reports can provide. Paradoxically, this conundrum has also been coupled with an opportunity for distinction provided by the relative decline in foreign reporting outputs from the traditional global news media, particularly after the financial crisis (ICG, 2010: 41). In its own words, although ‘Crisis Group has never aspired to become a news agency…as old news sources fell away, the organisation has been increasingly seen as a primary source of information, and it has been evolving to meet the reality of the new information landscape’ (ibid.: 43). Nevertheless, despite these examples of methodological diversification, the organisation has been conscious of protecting the epistemic authority it has garnered from its self-juxtaposition against more campaign-oriented NGOs like AI. This sentiment was reflected in a speech by Gareth Evans (2012), who argued against following AI’s expansionist path and instead favouring niche-specialisation. This was also reflected in internal debates over the issue of Darfur in the mid-2000s, where a division emerged over whether the organisation should take on more of a public-facing advocacy role. The subsequent creation of the Enough Project in 2006, a grassroots campaign decoupled from the ICG, symbolised a victory for the narrower, more conservative conception of the NGO’s identity (ICG, 2010: 32). As an organisation with an expanding geographical and thematic portfolio at a time of informational oversupply, the ICG has had to carefully manage its external image in relation to an increasingly global (rather than merely Western) market of policy consumers, as well as seeking organisational distinction among a growing cacophony of rival knowledge producers. Therefore, not unlike AI and HRW, the ICG has also had to deal with the pressures involved with becoming an increasingly public-facing entity. However, even when compared to HRW’s long-term failure to supersede its own foundational dependencies, the ICG is still heavily indebted to a similarly narrow constellation of reciprocal consumers who had originally contributed to its creation in the mid-1990s.2 The organisation’s self-perception is one of a thoroughly independent global think-tank unafraid to challenge high-level foreign policy orthodoxies. In reality, this independence is most reflected in its relatively diffuse organisational structure, in which tactical direction on conflict situations is pragmatically devolved to small teams of researchers. However, this self-mythology obscures the organisation’s broader financial, strategic and symbolic dependency vis-à-vis a restricted market of Western foreign policy elites; a dependency that has shaped its response to external political pressures. Overall, this foundational dependence can be seen to underpin the historic tension between a desire to conserve its

Advocacy in the knowledge market  59 formative identity (as a producer of interventionary knowledge stemming from a set of crises specific to the 1990s) and the need to be responsive to the governments who are its primary reciprocal consumers.

Dependencies in the knowledge market Building on the respective historical analyses of the three INGOs’ evolving knowledge markets, I shall now dig deeper into some of the convergent trends that are observable across these case studies. In particular, I wish to reflect on some of the key consequences of advocates’ condition of dependence vis-à-vis their knowledge markets. These conditions have necessitated the navigation of specific legitimacy dilemmas emerging over the course of each organisations’ development. First, it is notable that all three INGOs have proactively attempted to foster an image of disinterested ‘independence’ from the sphere of politics. For example, a self-awareness of the symbolic importance of being seen to transcend political partisanship was evident during AI’s foundational years, with its strict adherence to the so-called Rule of Threes and the Work on Own Country regulation, as well as its refusal to accept funds stemming from governmental sources (AI, 2017a). HRW also follows the precedent of its older cousin through its own rejection of governmental funding (HRW, 2017a). While the ICG is highly dependent on government-sourced finance, its own attempt to construct an image of detached expertise is no less visible than the other two organisations. For example, the organisation’s most recent strategic review presented its ‘independence’ as the first entry in a list of its guiding principles (ICG, 2016: 3). Similarly, by stressing that 86 percent of the ICG’s budget is constituted by ‘core’ funding (i.e. funding not earmarked for specific projects), the organisation continually attempts to publicly assert its separation from governmental interests as part of its self-marketing (Powers, 2014: 98). However, while the consistency of these pronouncements suggests that the performance of political transcendence may bolster perceived legitimacy in the eyes of reciprocal consumers, the conceptual and empirical insights provided thus far cast doubt on whether advocates’ epistemic practices can truly be independent in any substantive sense. Again, this relates to the extent of their symbolic and economic dependencies. Empirically, this condition of dependence is seen in their proximity to key governmental, inter-governmental, media or philanthropic actors. For example, the cases of HRW and the ICG, where Western political elites played a major role in their genesis, show how foundational dependencies can have a vestigial influence on an advocacy organisation’s long-term trajectory. Because these advocacy NGOs exist in a state of dependence vis-à-vis their consumers, their discourses are not produced autonomously. Instead, their discourses are delimited by the orthodoxies of the knowledge market. These orthodoxies are at least partially structured by the constellation of

60  Advocacy in the knowledge market the producer-consumer and producer-producer relations at any given moment in time. The epistemic limits facing an advocate operating within a knowledge market is therefore a culmination of historically established expectations among key knowledge consumers (demand-driven orthodoxy) and competition between competing producers (supply-side orthodoxy). However, this is not to suggest that all actors have an equal capacity to shape such orthodoxies. These are not egalitarian free markets, especially as they concern high-level international politicking. Power over the shaping of discourse is not evenly distributed. These are hierarchically stratified networks of producers and consumers. When the political stakes are high, policy-relevant knowledge markets tend to contain a constellation of dominant consumers who, as well as seeking external input from other knowledge-producing actors, can themselves be highly invested in the process of production. This refers primarily to governance actors who are also invested in and contribute to the production of epistemic orthodoxies. For example, it would be difficult to envisage either the establishment of Helsinki Watch in 1978, or AI’s achievement of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977, without moves by the US Congress and the subsequent Carter administration to recognise human rights as part of the state’s official discourse during the same period. Similarly, the ICG arguably owes its existence to the authorisation of liberal interventionism by a critical mass of state parties during the early 1990s. The success of these three prominent organisations has thus in a large part depended on the external consecration of their competence and expertise by these powerful consumers, agents who have the capacity to impose their preferences on the humanist discourses being produced and the epistemic practices being enacted. Yet, as suggested by the responsivity of AI, HRW and the ICG to historical changes in the knowledge market, these orthodoxies are not stable over time. Advocacy-oriented knowledge evolves to keep pace with shifting interests and expectations. This precariousness dictates that these advocacy organisations must navigate legitimacy dilemmas brought up by shifting relations of production and consumption. The epistemic limits of global advocacy should therefore be seen as more than just a top-down imposition from dominant consumers, but also a result of a process through which organisations strategise or iteratively work their way through these predicaments over prolonged periods. This can also be a tacit process in which ‘…they internalize certain norms and beliefs about what is considered to be appropriate behaviour’ (Boswell, 2009: 48–49). Surveying the histories of these three organisations, there are two main legitimacy dilemmas that are worth highlighting. These are issues that can be related to convergent trends within global advocacy and policy-relevant knowledge production more broadly. The first refers to the tension between catering for a restricted advocacy-oriented knowledge market and the demand for advocates to establish themselves as public-facing authorities. Second, advocates have also

Advocacy in the knowledge market  61 been profoundly affected by the intensification of competition for political or media space within increasingly saturated knowledge markets. Globalisation and the panopticon of the public gaze Competition for attention in an unstable knowledge market necessitates that advocates pursue a constant struggle for distinction. This striving for pride of place within a market of rival producers necessitates striking a balance between generality and specificity. In other words, in marketing themselves, advocates must prove to reciprocal consumers both a general relevance to a broad theme or policy sphere and a specific relevance (a niche) that distinguishes them from competitors. For example, over the years AI and HRW have built up prestige both through a wide coverage of international political and civil rights issues, whilst also justifying their work in a more-or-less mutual opposition: HRW, a primarily US-based and media-oriented INGO, defines its legitimacy against AI’s ‘representative’ membership model, and vice versa. Similarly, the ICG has staked out its broad relevance to the area of conflict resolution and interventionary knowledge, while also investing heavily in extractive expertise on a specific set of conflict-afflicted countries. However, in a competitive market of producers vying for limited consumer attention, too much generic expertise can threaten an advocates’ distinctiveness, while too much specialisation can lead to irrelevance in a fast-moving political, media and digital context. The tension between specificity and generality is compounded by the fact that organisations like AI, HRW and the ICG must now satisfy a multiplicity of consumers, not all of whom share the same interests. In a restricted market, where there are fewer consecratory actors to whom an advocacy organisation must appeal, advocates can tailor their advocacy practices in more specific, niche-filling ways—they can establish efficient consecratory relations through matching the private interests of a limited constellation of stakeholders. This is a viable strategy when those stakeholders are particularly lucrative or powerful in their consecratory capacity. An advocacy NGO can foster dependencies with a smaller set of consumers who can provide ample financial and symbolic sustenance, rather than spreading investments across a wider range of potentially less profitable actors. Here, relations of patronage—or social capital—can be particularly important in maintaining a clientelistic relationship between producers and consumers. During their early years, both HRW and the ICG epitomised this form of restricted production. In the case of the former, the organisation was initially oriented to a relatively narrow market of liberal-leaning policymakers, philanthropists and media actors invested in the success of the Helsinki Accord’s human rights provisions. In the case of the latter, the ICG initially acted as a justificatory vehicle for conflict-related interventions for sections of the Western foreign policy establishment. Each organisations’ foundational

62  Advocacy in the knowledge market epistemic practices became oriented according to these respective sets of wealthy and politically influential reciprocal consumers; symbiotic relations that were bolstered by elite-level social ties. This type of restricted consumer market stands in contrast to AI’s longterm position within a public consumer market of potential fee-paying members. Unlike the closed elite circles that defined HRW’s and the ICG’s foundational conditions, Amnesty’s pursuit of a mass membership model has involved the organisation’s continual self-assertion as a public entity. While this ‘public’ has certainly been bounded to the extent that its members were originally constituted by Western European bourgeois liberals, it was both a quantitatively and qualitatively different kind of foundational condition to that experienced by AI’s younger peers. Rather than advocating primarily to a specific audience of policy or media elites, from the very beginning it needed to orient its epistemic practice towards a much broader array of potential members. In AI’s formative years, this manifested through explicit attempts—codified within the organisation’s internal lore and in its self-circumscribing regulations such as the Work on Own Country rule— to transcend political partisanship. Today, AI seeks to enhance its brand recognition in emerging markets by engaging with salient issues, as with its heavy advocacy focus on sexual violence against women within its work on India (Chaudhry, 2019: 14). Aside from the unique case of AI and its orientation towards membership growth, one also has to consider how macro-political, macro-social and macro-economic processes linked to globalisation and developments in communications and digital technologies have contributed to a broader ‘publicisation’ across the three case studies. This is most evident in the vigour to which these three organisations have pursued global expansionism, a phenomenon that has multiplied the number of consumer relations that they must contend with. Walton et al. have identified this trend as part of a broader legitimacy crisis facing international NGOs in the context of globalisation and shifting global polarity—with the relative decline of Western hegemony (Walton et al., 2016: 2781). Seeking to bolster their legitimacy in a more intensely inter-connected world, and perceiving potential economies of scale, all three of these organisations have attempted to further their universal reach—increasingly exposing them to a panopticon-like effect vis-àvis a diverse global public.3 As Kate Williams has argued in relation to both governmental and non-governmental policy analysts, [g]iven the diverse aims and interests involved in shifting knowledge into wider society, researchers must increasingly become ‘brokers’. The challenge for researchers is to balance the needs of external actors with the legitimate positioning of their individual and organizational identity and products (2018: 3)

Advocacy in the knowledge market  63 Criticising HRW’s reporting on the Israel-Gaza conflict in an op-ed in The New York Times, the organisation’s former Chair and co-founder Robert L. Bernstein (2009) lamented the erosion of its traditional distinction between open and closed societies. In response, HRW (2009) issued a press release stating that ‘Human Rights Watch does not believe that the human rights records of “closed” societies are the only ones deserving scrutiny’. This public spat emphasises the degree to which, over the course of its relatively short history, HRW has transitioned from an organisational model that was tied to a restricted market in the Cold War context—supporting US government efforts to enforce the human rights provisions of the Helsinki Accords behind the iron curtain—to a more universal mode of legitimacy production. While HRW has yet to extract itself fully from its dependence on a US-centred, liberal-leaning political-philanthropic complex, this long-term realignment is notable. In the case of the ICG, the organisation’s relatively atomised structure has enabled it to rapidly expand its global presence in a relatively short period of time—moving away from its traditional specialisation on the former Yugoslavia. Currently, the group has twelve offices spread across the globe and a permanent presence in 19 other cities internationally (ICG, 2019a). Although its establishment of new regional offices has plateaued in more recent years, internationalisation has continued to be a strategic goal for the organisation, with ‘[b]ecoming more global’ explicitly articulated as an organisational priority within its 2016 strategic review (ICG, 2016: 5). Indeed, one ICG staffer interviewed for this book emphasised the organisation’s recent diversification, in terms of both the backgrounds of employees and its range of advocacy targets (ICG Senior Staff, 2015). In the case of AI, internationalisation has for a long time been hindered by the overwhelming concentration of both its membership and its centralised organs in Western Europe and North America, as well as by the perceivably Western character of its foundational ethos. In 2011, Hopgood argued that ‘Amnesty’s style, brand image, icons (especially the candle in barbed wire and [Prisoners of Conscience]), working practices, let alone its history, all mark it out as a thoroughly Western, even European quasi-Christian form of moral activism, that will not secure serious membership in any of the BRICS, or elsewhere, that even approximates the 1 in 50 Dutch citizens who belong to it’ (Hopgood, 2011: 100). This projection may have underestimated the organisation’s ability to internationalise its image, with AI succeeding in expanding the number of members in the Global South as a proportion of its total membership, from 30 percent in 2013 to 40 percent in 2014—including a particularly rapid increase in members in India (AI, 2014: 7). Regarding its governance structure, AI’s Global Transition Program has involved a ‘…move from a single London-based centre to a more distributed system with organizational hubs dispersed across key regional capitals worldwide’ (Shetty, 2015). This represents a radical structural shift away from

64  Advocacy in the knowledge market the organisation’s traditional dependence on a centralised core of research staff within its London headquarters. Regarding the evolving scope of its research, this Closer to the Ground initiative has seen the diffusion of geographically specific knowledge productive functions to new regional hubs in Hong Kong, Johannesburg, Dakar and Nairobi (AIUK, 2013). Similarly, previous stipulations that limited more diverse participation in research, such as the Work on Own Country rule, have been scrapped (Hopgood, 2006: 98–99). As their knowledge markets have become increasingly enlarged, and their networks of reciprocation have become more complex and denser, these NGOs have adopted modes of legitimacy production that qualitatively differ to that of the narrow relations characterising HRW’s and the ICG’s formative years. In the age of the internet, the contemporary global advocacy organisation needs to market itself as a public authority, requiring a more universally oriented persona. When it comes to striking a balance between generality and specificity, a multiplication of reciprocal consumer relations puts more emphasis on the former. To achieve this, advocates increasingly assert their legitimacy through universal credentials that symbolically elevates them above the role of mere quasi-governmental research contractors. This universal legitimacy has been pursued through different strategies: from the beginning, AI sought a representational form of legitimacy through its global membership; in their formation, both AI and HRW tied themselves to the universal discourse of human rights; from the 1980s onwards, HRW sought anchorage in the supranational legal authority of international humanitarian law; and finally, the ICG has always been keen to promote itself as a global crisis ‘sentinel’ monitoring armed violence across continents (Kosmatopoulos, 2014: 608). Yet, the common denominator here is still international expansionism, with all three organisations pursuing global coverage as a means of asserting universal relevance. While the critical literature on transnational advocacy and nongovernmental knowledge production has tended to focus on the political (and frequently ‘neoliberal’) distortions imposed by catering to policy elites, I argue that this has missed out on the epistemic limits imposed through producing for expanded knowledge markets, or what can be defined as the panopticon of the public gaze (Foucault, 1977: 202–203).4 Rather than orienting epistemic practices to a restricted number of consumers with calculable interests, this public-oriented knowledge production needs to satisfy an amorphous and generalised Other. As Bourdieu argued in a lecture on the construction of public authority, being exposed to a universal audience can potentially have a censorial effect on the speaker: Private acts are invisible, they take place behind the scenes, backstage; the public, on the contrary, is conducted in view of everyone, before a universal audience, in which it is not possible to select, or to make an aside and say: ‘I’m talking to you in confidence’—it is immediately heard by everyone. An effect of radio and television is that confidences

Advocacy in the knowledge market  65 are made before millions of people. You can’t select people in the audience, and this universal audience means that official statements are omnibus statements, intended for everyone and for no one in particular. I believe that the anxiety theatrical situations create (stage fright) is due to this confrontation with a universal public to whom it is impossible to say anything concealed or inadmissible. (2014: 49) The more these advocacy organisations expand their global portfolios, the more cautious they need to be in self-regulating their conduct and outward image. As seen in the case of HRW’s and AI’s professionalising reforms during the 1990s, this self-regulation can manifest in explicit attempts to generate a coherent brand identity that is marketable to a mass audience. As these NGOs have invested in a proliferating number of national, international and transnational spaces of advocacy, they have needed to become more sensitive to a growing multiplicity of stakeholders. Not only must they persuade an increased plurality of reciprocal consumers, but investments into new advocacy spaces can potentially expose advocates to a wider array of hostile agents. They require the means to defend themselves against potential threats to credibility on multiple fronts, such as from governments unreceptive to interventionist discourse or human rights criticism. Furthermore, the scrutiny of the public gaze demands a strong degree of self-discipline, and potentially self-censorship. Highlighting the risks that digital platforms entail, Ella McPherson argues that: Serious mistakes can jeopardize an organization’s reputational integrity, particularly with respect to credibility and professionalism. The relative permanence of information published on social media, as well as the unpredictability of its circulation, means a mistake cannot be undone but must instead be overcome. Repairing a damaged reputation, which may involve performing credibility over time and rebuilding social capital, can divert precious resources from human rights NGOs’ core aims. Even if the mistake is quickly forgiven, it can…detract from the message and work of the organization. Because of the risk of mistakes that accompanies the use of social media, adopting this technology can result in slower and more resource-intensive practices than expectations might suggest. (2018: 202) Overall, these trends culminate in a form of advocacy-oriented knowledge production that is potentially more risk-averse than that which caters to a restricted constellation of consumers. As will be addressed in the following chapter, all three of these advocacy INGOs have developed specific procedures and processes aimed at ensuring the conformity and consistency of advocacyknowledge across their various outputs. When gauging the epistemic limits of transnational advocacy, this enhanced public exposure can reduce the space for these organisations to foster critical research. They are more likely ‘play it safe’ and defer to the orthodoxies of the expanded knowledge market.

66  Advocacy in the knowledge market Epistemic saturation The second legitimacy dilemma that I want to highlight relates to saturation at the supply-end of the knowledge market. As the Global Go To Think Tank Index Report 2018 states, …in the face of rapid technological advancements, think tanks now find themselves no longer the only actor in the knowledge brokerage industry, but as only one of the competitors in the ‘global marketplace of ideas,’ vying with other actors such as media organizations, advocacy groups, consulting and law firms (McGann, 2019: 21) The advent of the 24-hours news media, revolutions in digital communications and communications technologies, and the growth of online media platforms have also contributed to this saturation. This trend has had a significant qualitative impact on these knowledge markets, affecting the relationship between advocates and their reciprocal consumers through an intensification of the latter’s bandwidth dilemma. In the context of a deluge of information available to policymakers, decision-makers and media actors, this dilemma refers to the limited absorption capacity of knowledge consumers. This intensified competition for the attention of advocacy targets threatens the profitability (in both a financial and symbolic sense) of the symbiotic relations between advocates and their traditional consumers. This dilemma has subsequently pushed advocacy organisations like AI, HRW and the ICG towards new strategies for distinction and more efficient modes of knowledge production. In the struggle for relevance, rather than simply acting as agenda-setters, oversupply among competing producers heightens the necessity for NGOs to orient their advocacy according to popular political trends. Doxic instability within knowledge markets (i.e. rapid changes in pertinent issues at a given moment in time), which is exacerbated by an oversupply of information and the sheer pace at which the contemporary news cycle moves, requires that advocates spread their investments across a wider range of issues and advocacy arenas, feeding into thematic mission creep. This trend is observable across the three case studies, with AI’s and HRW’s growing investment in non-country specific issues such as minority rights and global health, and the ICG’s mission creep into ‘cross-cutting’ issues including gender-in-conflict, global migration and terrorism. In contrast to the image of the global advocate as a ‘norm entrepreneur’, idealised in the liberal constructivist literature, this thematic expansionism can instead be seen as a reaction to an increasingly high-tempo knowledge market (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998: 895). Epistemic saturation contributes to a mode of advocacy-oriented knowledge production that is far fickler and more subservient to the demands of

Advocacy in the knowledge market  67 knowledge consumers. This idea of subservience is supported by Neil Englehart’s study of AI and HRW’s reporting on North Korea, which found that the two organisations reported on the country more frequently during periods of international media visibility (2012: 66). Competitive pressures and the subsequent desire to demonstrate impact increasingly shape the kinds of issues that advocacy organisations seek to address. Top-down pressures to service donors and policy audiences also incentivise the production of knowledge that fits within a discourse that is palatable to those targeted consumers. For example, one ICG analyst (2016) interviewed for this book pointed to the organisation’s general inability to explore the links between violent conflict and economic injustice, a potentially sensitive issue given the strongly neoliberal orientation of many of its backers and high-level advocacy targets. On top of the topical or thematic influence on advocacy practice, supplyside saturation has also had a substantial influence on the production cycle of advocacy-related knowledge outputs. Within his work on The Rules of Art, Bourdieu distinguishes between ‘pure art’ that—thanks to its separation from the exigencies of the commercial market—is defined by its prolonged production cycle, and short-cycle commercial production ‘…aiming to minimize risks, by an advance adjustment to predictable demand and benefiting from commercial networks and procedures for marketing…designed to ensure the accelerated returns of profits by a rapid circulation of products which are fated to rapid obsolescence’ (1996: 142–143). This fits with the assertions made by past scholars of NGO advocacy, including Heins, Thrall et al. and Blitt, who see attention scarcity among journalists and politicians as necessitating the ‘…streamlining and repackaging [of] existing information for political consumption’ (2008: 144; 2014: 4; 2004: 356). AI, HRW and the ICG have responded to attention scarcity by altering the media through which they seek to project knowledge, as well as through a rationalisation of their messaging to their targeted constituencies. In terms of formats, all three of these organisations have embraced more succinct means of communicating with policy audiences (and to their membership in the case of AI), with moves away from lengthy reporting. They have embraced shorter and more digestible textual representations, such as blogs, as well as visual formats and prominent social media messaging platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Their embrace of online and social media has garnered symbolic recognition through the Global Go To Think Tank Index 2017, which correspondingly ranked AI, HRW and the ICG 6th, 7th and 25th for ‘best use of social media and networks’, and 1st, 12th and 28th for ‘best use of the internet’ (McGann, 2018: 127–128 and 133–134). Social media applications help advocates bypass traditional media gatekeepers, as well as reinforcing the drive to claim public visibility (Johansson and Scaramuzzino, 2019: 15). However, contemporary digital information politics also involves advocates seeking ‘algorithmic privilege’, such as through enhanced visibility on social media

68  Advocacy in the knowledge market timelines (McPherson et al., Forthcoming 2019). There can be a price to pay for this algorithmic privilege, as can be seen by the sensationalising effects of clickbait journalism (Wahl-Jorgensen et al., 2016: 812). What Anderson calls the ‘culture of the click’ encourages the production of audience-driven media content at the expense of autonomous analytical judgements on the epistemic, social or political merits of published content (Anderson, 2011: 555). This drive for visibility can also be seen in the growth of photojournalism. For instance, Rall et al. found that between 2010 and 2014, the number of photos in AI and HRW reports grew from 259 to 468 (2016: 180). During the same period, the authors also found a decline in the textual length of reports (ibid.: 179). These trends have not just had a superficial effect on the way advocacyoriented knowledge is represented, but they also have a qualitative effect. This is because concerns with policy impact and the digestibility of knowledge can take precedent over analytical depth. As past critics of mainstream human rights discourse have pointed out, there is a demand for ‘…a literalism and minimalism which strips events of their subjective meanings in a pursuit of objective legal facts’ (Wilson, 1997: 134). The above trend further heightens the pursuit of epistemological security through a decontextualising tendency. In the case of AI, with its imperative to service and grow its membership, analytical reductionism has manifested in a greater reliance on visual media, shortened soundbites and stripped-down messaging (AI  UN officer, 2016; Powers, 2014: 101). Similarly, HRW’s self-professed ‘shaming methodology’ can be seen to reduce human rights violations to the definitive categories of ‘victim’ and ‘violator’, binary ‘good versus evil’ narratives that can potentially distort the complexity of alleged abuses (Roth, 2004: 67). The ICG is also exposed to a similar pressure for simplification. While the ICG’s methodology developed in contradistinction to the standardised human rights approach, with an emphasis on a degree of complexification, its scholarly critics have also highlighted its reductionist tendencies. For example, in relation to the ICG’s work on the Democratic Republic of Congo, Koddenbrock has noted the application of a discourse of ‘functional pathologisation’, which (rather than appreciating the nuances of Congolese politics) reduced it to ‘…the Shakespearean trope of the presidential “inner circle”’, a simplification that the author correctly ascribes to ‘…its advocacy logics and its position in a “knowledge market”’ (2014: 670). Overall, while it would be unfair not to recognise the continued analytical depth provided in many of these three humanist advocacy NGOs’ research outputs, a consequence of these above trends has been an increasing shift away from knowledge-driven advocacy, and towards advocacy-driven knowledge. When comparing the three case studies, AI is arguably the most illustrative of this trend, with the organisation having undergone a long-term transition from a strong research-based culture, to now being a primarily campaigning-centred ‘movement’ organisation. As a current ICG staffer who had previously worked for AI noted:

Advocacy in the knowledge market  69 I think for a very long time the report was very central at Amnesty. Then, probably because of the membership element and the different type of tools available to Amnesty in terms of triggering change, the report was no longer seen as the main quandary for impact. And so the organisation has developed into a huge mass mobilisation organisation that, in a way, can be in the media because of a demonstration; not just because of a very well-researched paper. And that has to do with the history of that organisation (ICG Director of Research, 2016).

Conclusion This chapter has combined a historical approach that emphasises the trajectory of leading humanist organisations’ epistemic practices with a relational analysis of their embedment in market-like relations of production and consumption. While I have been attentive to the specificities of each case study, convergent pressures were identified that emerged from global advocates’ dependent relationality with their consumers and co-producers. Yet, rather than simply construing advocates’ changing epistemic practices as a topdown imposition stemming from their dominant consumers, I have provided a more nuanced perspective that emphasises the legitimacy dilemmas that each organisation has had to strategically and iteratively navigate over time. The two main legitimacy dilemmas that I have highlighted—namely the growing pressure to appease a multiplicity of consumers in a globalised knowledge market and the saturation of their knowledge markets with a cacophony of rival voices—have impacted both the scope and orientation of their knowledge production. Therefore, when questioning their epistemic limits, one must consider both the censorial effect of performing for an increasingly diverse global audience and the growing necessity to shorten the advocacy-oriented knowledge production cycle and the demand to make outputs more palatable to consumers. Both trends incentivise a greater deference to epistemic orthodoxies, while potentially undermining space for more critical voices in the area of humanist global advocacy. Out of 257 human rights NGOs sampled by Thrall et al., the wealthiest 10 percent had 92 percent of the sample’s Twitter followers, 90 percent of YouTube views and 81 percent of Facebook likes (Thrall et al., 2014: 143). This is an illustration of the oligarchical shape of the contemporary field of global humanist advocacy. While it provides economic and symbolic sustenance to an oligarchy of NGO Superpowers, the advocacy-oriented knowledge market also has delimiting effect by crowding out the avantgarde voices that are less aligned to its commercial imperatives. Overall, taking the relational pressures of the knowledge market into account, this chapter’s findings should act as a warning against assumptions that humanist advocacy-oriented knowledge is either purely meritocratic or structured primarily by a logic of principled action.

70  Advocacy in the knowledge market

Notes 1 The International Committee Meetings are now formally known as International Council Meetings, while the International Executive Committee is known as the International Board. The International Council is made up of representatives from national sections. The International Board is elected by the ICM and provides leadership for the movement between ICMs. 2 This continuity is evident in its current list of ‘supporters’, which primarily includes a narrow array of Western governments and a handful of large foundations (ICG, 2019b). 3 When referring to this ‘public’ effect I do not mean to suggest that they are oriented towards a general public (they are still more or less elitist institutions), but to the sheer multiplicity and diversity of actors they are potentially exposed to in the age of the internet. Their prominent social media presence illustrates this ‘public’ positionality. 4 The term ‘panopticon’ is borrowed from the ‘disciplinary’ language of Foucault (1977), which emphasises the regulation of the self.

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4

The epistemic culture of global advocacy

Introduction The previous chapter considered the forces of production, consumption, legitimation and dependency that shape advocates’ epistemic practices. By deploying the concept of the knowledge market, it highlighted the macro-level structural dimension of knowledge production. However, this perspective alone is limited to the extent that it does not look inside the ‘blackbox’ of the advocacy organisation. Neither does it consider the broader epistemic cultures that exist beyond the bounds of the formal organisation. To rectify this limitation, this chapter shifts the focus away from the organisation as the primary unit of analysis, and towards the individual humanist advocacy practitioners who constitute them. These professional advocates are immersed in a delineable epistemic culture which subsequently influences their practices and behaviours. Drawing on the Bourdieusian concept of the habitus, these behaviours are more than just a strategic alignment to attain organisational legitimation, but they are tacitly internalised as ‘practical sense’ (Bourdieu, 1990: 82). This chapter casts light on advocacy practitioners’ practical sensibilities through studying their professional, educational and cultural backgrounds. In the final section, the organisation will be brought back in to consider how institutional rules and norms contribute to the moulding of advocates’ practices. From knowledge markets to epistemic culture Superseding an approach that solely considers advocacy organisations as shaped by external relations, a more holistic understanding of global advocacy-oriented knowledge production necessitates attentiveness to the dynamics that manifest internally within those organisations. From an institutionalist perspective, one approach has been to look comparatively at organisational structures as generative of different practices. For instance, studies by Wong (2012) and Hendrix and Wong (2014) have used the internal distribution of institutional power within human rights NGOs to examine both the choice of advocacy practices as well as the efficacy of those

The epistemic culture of global advocacy  77 practices. While this is a valid form of enquiry, to the extent that the formal distribution of intra-organisational authority is partially determinative of how some advocacy practices are structured, an application of this approach to the analysis of knowledge production is limited by its lack of attention to the deeper socio-cultural structures that go beyond the division of the NGO into formal sub-organisational units. In other words, knowledge is not wholly reducible to the balance of power between an NGO’s internal organs, but it is also influenced by broader societal and cultural influences. Drawing on Edgar Schein, an alternative approach to internal organisational structure involves a consideration of the basic underlying assumptions that persist beyond the immediate visibility of formal representations of an NGO’s epistemic culture (2010: 24). While useful in highlighting the role of background knowledge, this deeper structuralism still relies on a bounded conceptualisation of an organisational structure that risks dissolving the active role of individual human agents in the production of culture and practice. The sole focus on internal organisational structure is inadequate as it misses out upon the kinds of dispositions, habits and practical know-how that are historically acquired by advocacy practitioners. An organisation’s epistemic practices should instead be conceived as a convergence between (1) the structural and legitimating imperatives highlighted in the previous chapter, and (2) the internalised cultures that exist within and across humanist advocacy groups. Why is it necessary to account for internalised socio-cultural factors? One objection to such an approach might be that it underplays the role of institutionalised procedures in shaping organisational behaviour, or that it minimises the importance of rational leadership in strategically orienting practice. However, while these are contributory factors when looking at the moulding of epistemic practice, when one looks at the cases of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Crisis Group, it is clear that their approaches to knowledge production are not a purely linear, topdown imposition of strategic imperatives. Instead, their advocacy-oriented knowledge production is subject to deliberation. While broad strategic goals are set by NGOs’ senior management, some decision-making authority is also devolved downwards. Decisions relating to knowledge production are often negotiated through internal debates and via collective, back-and-forth discussions between smaller teams of practitioners, their overseers and interested departments. In this sense, individual practitioners can impose their ideals, interests and cultures on an advocacy problematique. This can relate to the packaging, methodology, content, framing, or narrative of an output. Deliberation can take place at multiple stages: it can be used to pre-define the parameters of prospective research, or it can occur post hoc, when research findings are translated into a saleable advocacy product (Bliesemann de Guevara, 2014: 622). For example, in the case of AI, deliberations are very much part of the movement’s standardised practice, such as the parliamentary-style debates

78  The epistemic culture of global advocacy at Annual General Meetings that contribute to strategic decision-making (Hopgood, 2006: 203). While AI’s secretariat staff must follow a codified and rule-bound research etiquette, there is still much space for internal deliberation—especially when there are grey areas associated with the operationalisation of guidelines. For example, this can include programme-level meetings to discuss whether to apply the movement’s symbolic label of ‘Prisoner of Conscience’ to a particular individual (AI research staff, 2016). Similarly, both HRW and the ICG encourage a deference to expertise that enables deliberative practices to flourish. This is realised through the segmentation of these two NGOs into smaller teams of researchers and their immediate supervisors. Significant discretion over policy alignment on a given topic is devolved, and policy decisions are often mediated through these deliberations. At the ICG, much of this occurs around the early stage of research on a given topic, where proposals for new reports are discussed, bringing together a combination of perspectives (ICG director of research, 2016). This is followed by ‘…extensive debate among senior members of the organisation determining the condensed conflict framings and “solutions” presented in executive summaries and policy recommendations’ (Bliesemann de Guevara, 2014: 620). At HRW, a common deference to the expertise of researchers makes top-down impositions from senior management highly uncommon, with interventions only made if a given area of work is particularly costly (Wong, 2012: 132). Instead, most deliberation occurs between programme directors and their researchers, with the former retaining significant proposal power in conceiving of reports and their attendant policy recommendations (ibid.: 126). The potential for deliberative input is then further amplified by the division of workloads into projects. For instance, HRW researchers with cross-cutting thematic expertise can be embedded within multiple semi-independent communities—each with their own space for deliberation (HRW International Justice Program staff, 2016). Deliberative practices infuse knowledge production with a generative contingency that is dependent on the particular array of human agents that are engaged in it. Personality matters in these contexts. This highlights the need to account for the habitus of those very practitioners who contribute directly to the construction of knowledge. Yet, this raises the question: what assemblages of habits and embedded, practical know-how are consequential when it comes to the production of advocacy-oriented knowledge? To answer this question, one must first look at the socialising influences that advocates are exposed to prior to gaining employment. Second, one must also consider the role of the NGO itself in moulding and socialising its employees. In the context of the knowledge market, the previous chapter emphasised the positionality of AI, HRW and the ICG in relation to a diversity of reciprocal consumers, including policy, media and philanthropic actors. The capacity of these advocacy organisations to locate themselves between different spheres enables them to occupy what Eyal and Pok have defined as ‘spaces of opportunity’ (2015: 45). This interstitial positioning allows them

The epistemic culture of global advocacy  79 to foster links and competencies that aid them in their role as the salespeople of advocacy-oriented knowledge. Yet, on a deeper cultural level, relations with these exogenous fields can also involve the inculcation of different forms of practical know-how. Therefore, the habitus of non-governmental advocates ‘…is not static or eternal, because habitus is a combination of the social actor’s deeply ingrained identity and his or her less fixed, occupational identity’ (Everett, 2002: 65). Consequently, as Goetze and Bliesemann de Guevara have asserted, ‘[i]n order to understand the habitus of a specific actor, it is necessary to retrace the trajectory by which the actor’s capital configuration was built’ (2012: 208). In this sense, through prior socialisation, practitioners can be conceptualised as carriers of acquired dispositions that are imported into the advocacy organisation following recruitment. When studying advocacy practitioners from this dispositional perspective, one must look towards the social spheres of prior exposure that have had a durable impact on their practical knowledge. These include—but are not limited to—occupational, educational, cultural-ideological, religious or familial influences. As will be seen below, the data drawn upon within this chapter focus primarily on the former two, with some reflection also made on the cultural-ideological dimension. Therefore, the following section will explore AI, HRW and ICG practitioners’ exposure to a variety of professional and educational spheres. These range from the broader nonprofit sector, to the legal profession, the social sciences, the media and government. Some of these spheres are either primarily educational (e.g. social science education) or professional (e.g. intergovernmental organisations), while others contain aspects of both. The ambition here is not only to trace practitioner backgrounds, but also to give a sense of limits. I will therefore also reflect on the boundaries-to-entry to these organisations. This includes looking at the kinds of occupational and educational backgrounds that are absent from the case studies, as well as considering the social and cultural hurdles that delimit the membership of humanist organisations. As argued above, focusing the bulk of this chapter on background knowhow is justified to the extent that it recognises that human agents are carriers of durable dispositions. In this sense, their practical intuitions are not immediately re-aligned after they join an advocacy organisation. Such organisational-level socialisation would likely require a prolonged exposure. According to analytics provided by LinkedIn, the mean tenure for employees at AI, HRW and the ICG is 5.7, 5.9 and 5.2 years respectively (LinkedIn, 2017a–2017c).1 As a mean average, these figures include a combination of long-timers on permanent contracts, as well as those working on a short-term basis (e.g. fixed-term contracts, consultants and internships). Because durable dispositions are shaped diachronically, practitioners with the least exposure should be less inculcated into the habits and practical know-how of the advocacy organisation. Nevertheless, these NGOs do have practices in place that are geared towards socialising their employees. They inscribe practices that are geared towards generating a certain degree

80  The epistemic culture of global advocacy of internal uniformity. For instance, this can include training programmes for new recruits, as well as processes of quality control aimed at vetting knowledge outputs. Therefore, as a counterweight to the emphasis placed on pre-acquired cultures imported into the advocacy organisation, the final section of this chapter will also consider practitioners’ on-the-job socialisation. Methodology Principally, the empirical analysis provided in the following two sections is based upon unique datasets that were put together for this study (the relevant data are listed in the Appendix). Each of the datasets was compiled by coding biographical attributes of practitioners at AI, HRW and the ICG. This information was sought from the official websites of the three NGOs studied here, as well as using employees’ public pages on the professional and social networking website LinkedIn. This biographical data covers the career trajectories and educational backgrounds of both research and advocacy practitioners. Concentrating on these individuals—and not, for example, on volunteers or administrative, marketing and fundraising staff—is justified to the extent that they are most directly responsible for epistemic activities. Additionally, although this chapter is primarily focused on full-time professionals, data were also collected on board members across the three NGOs. In examining the pertinent background influences on advocacy practice, the descriptive data provided by the practitioner samples offer a strong indication as to the relevant fields that practitioners have traversed throughout their careers, and inversely, which occupational and educational sectors are absent among employees’ biographical profiles. In the case of HRW and the ICG, biographical data relating to full-time advocacy and research practitioners (and board members) were available directly through their respective webpages (HRW, 2017b, 2017f; ICG, 2017a, 2017b). Where certain information was missing from these public summaries, supplementary data were taken from the publicly available LinkedIn pages of HRW and ICG staff (LinkedIn, 2017b, 2017c). In total, the size of the practitioner samples was 164 for HRW, and 82 for the ICG. When calculating proportionality (i.e. the percentage of staff with a given descriptive indicator), the deployed sample sizes excluded individuals with missing information.2 In the case of AI’s webpages, biographical information for its employees was not available, although information was available for AI board members (AI, 2017a). The total AI sample of 257 research and advocacy practitioners was therefore drawn from LinkedIn pages (2017a). Being based primarily on aggregated descriptive data, the following analysis has some notable limitations. First, this study does not conduct any correlative or causal statistical tests. As such, the presented analysis will take care not to make any undue causal inferences when looking at the data alone. Second, except when examining past and present board members, the

The epistemic culture of global advocacy  81 data on NGO practitioners are also not longitudinal, but instead provide a contemporary snapshot of employee backgrounds as of late 2017. These data do not provide an indication of the kinds of historical changes that were referred to in the previous chapter. Another limitation is the scope of the biographical data: information on nationality, country-of-origin, family background, religion or other cultural-ideological background indicators was not systematically available. To supplement for these deficiencies, the chapter will also draw on other sources. This includes considering other secondary quantitative studies of organisations that share a strong biographical affinity with the current case studies, such as studies of UN practitioners. Finally, when mapping out the relevant professional and educational fields and related epistemic practices, the chapter will also use qualitative data taken from semi-structured interviews with AI, HRW and ICG practitioners, as well as drawing on the primary analysis of various published materials— including, for example, recruitment-related material made available by these organisations, such as job descriptions, and the curricula of common degree programmes studied by humanist advocates.

The professional culture of global advocacy The aim of this section is to draw attention to the main professional and educational fields that practitioners working at AI, HRW and the ICG have been exposed to during their careers. From a Bourdieusian perspective, through long-term exposure (e.g. within prior employment or by undergoing programmes of academic study), these ‘primary social experiences’ can have a structuring capacity over their dispositions and practical know-how (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 133–134). This section will therefore also seek to identify specific and transposable skillsets, practices and cultures that are associated with a variety of social spheres. The non-profit sector AI, HRW and the ICG are located within a broader non-profit sector. At a human level, this is reflected in the percentage of employees who have held previous employment at other NGOs. This proportion is 71 percent in the case of AI, and 51 percent and 38 percent for HRW and the ICG respectively. Historically speaking, the NGO sector became increasingly identifiable as a distinctive sphere over the latter half of the twentieth century. This was especially the case in liberal democratic countries where activist, voluntary and charitable organisations underwent professionalisation (Hilton et al., 2013: 64). Professionalised NGOs became increasingly homologous, adopting isomorphic structures and practices. Within the three cases examined here, this isomorphism extends to the career profiles of their employees. For example, one interviewee who had held research positions at both AI and the ICG commented on the ease of adaption when moving between them, thanks to parallels in both

82  The epistemic culture of global advocacy the dispositional profiles of staff members and in their working environments (ICG director of research, 2016). This is notable given that these organisations are oriented towards opposite poles of the spectrum between advocacy and research. Thus, experience and skillsets gained at one NGO are transferrable to similar types of organisation with similar institutional structures. Situating the practitioner samples within this broader NGO sector, two distinct career patterns are observable. First, as prestigious NGOs who are the leading humanist advocacy organisations, there is a degree of vertical upward mobility. This is a manifestation of the hierarchy within the third sector between low-budget NGOs, often with precarious working patterns, and the wealthier international NGOs who have the capacity to offer lucrative fixed-term salaries. This sectorial structure means that individuals aspiring for upward mobility often need to spend their early careers engaged in internships and short-term contracts before breaking through to the competitive and high-salary ‘upper tier’ of the sector (Oelberger, 2015). Past employment with a smaller NGO can therefore act as an entry certificate into larger organisations like AI, HRW and the ICG. A second trajectory involves horizontal movement between similar organisations. For example, out of the dataset compiled for this study, 9.5 percent of the AI sample had previously been employed at HRW, while 6.5 percent of the HRW sample had worked at AI. This cross-fertilisation is likely reinforced by the overlapping social networks that exist between researchers at both organisations. As Hopgood has argued, …at the researcher level there are long-term relationships between quite a few Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch staff…Some have worked for both organizations, sharing information and strategy that—through a strictly commercial lens—might be viewed as a kind of ‘intellectual property’ (2006: 140) With over 70 percent of its research and advocacy staff with prior employment at another NGO, AI has the strongest ties to the broader NGO sector. Surveying the specific kinds of organisations that AI recruits from, a combination of both other human rights groups (e.g. HRW) and humanitarian or development NGOs (e.g. Oxfam and Save the Children) can be seen (see Figure 4.1 for a comparative illustration). The appearance of the latter, and the large numbers recruited from the humanitarian and development sector as a whole (29 percent), suggests a valuation of prior professional experience that is not always specific to the area of human rights itself. First, this suggests transferability across a broader humanist enterprise. Second, rather than employing more recruits with specialist knowledge sourced from outside the NGO sector, there is a greater reliance on individuals with generic and portable skillsets relating to campaigning and other nonresearch functions coming from a range of advocacy- and non-advocacyfocused NGOs (Oelberger, 2015). This snapshot of the backgrounds of

The epistemic culture of global advocacy  83 20% 18% 16% 14% 12% 10% 8% 6% 4% 2% 0%

United Nations

Human Rights Watch

Oxfam

European Union institutions

BBC

Save the Children

Figure 4.1 The most common organisations of prior employment for full-time Amnesty International researchers or campaigners, as a percentage of the sample total (N = 222).

AI staff appears to be congruent with the historical structural shift from research-driven advocacy to more advocacy-centric practice, as identified in the previous chapter. Yet, because individuals not responsible for work relating to research or campaigning were excluded from these datasets, these proportions do not fully capture the extent to which AI has been impacted by top-down organisational restructuring, that, since Pierre Sane’s premiership as Secretary-General in the 1990s, downsized the overall number of research staff (Hopgood, 2006: 131). Thus, as Hopgood has highlighted, [t]he Program Directors who head Amnesty’s regionally-focused research teams now report to Senior Directors who are not regional experts or experienced researchers. Once the [International Secretariat’s] research function is fragmented it is unlikely to be recentralised. Campaigns and communications, along with law, strategy and policy, will be AI’s main driving forces based in London (2011: 99) Taking into account the homologies between similar types of humanist organisations, this strategic imperative is only likely to reinforce AI’s dependence on recruits sourced from the broader NGO sector. Law and human rights Another observable dispositional influence that specifically impacts AI and HRW (and the ICG to a much lesser extent) is their relationship with legal practice. HRW is distinctive in the degree to which it fuses advocacy-led

84  The epistemic culture of global advocacy research and legal expertise, with 31 percent of its research and advocacy staff having previously worked inside the legal profession. Mirroring the previous chapter’s emphasis on the development of its highly legalistic methodology, 55 percent of the HRW sample hold degrees in law. This is complemented by the 23 percent of current HRW board members who have an educational background in law, including individuals with experience at top Manhattan-headquartered law firms like Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP (HRW, 2017c, 2017d). Meanwhile, although AI relies more on employees with campaigns-oriented skillsets sourced from inside the broader NGO sector, legal literacy is still important for its research and advocacy functions, with 15 percent of the staff sample having had previous employment within the legal profession, and 38 percent holding academic degrees in law. This centrality of legal expertise within human rights practice can be related to the development of human rights as an increasingly autonomous profession. According to Dezalay and Garth, this assertion of legal practice over human rights is related to the development of trans-organisational networks between opportunistic donors, human rights NGOs and the legal academy (2006: 252). In the context of a growing interest in human rights as a topic of concern in the United States throughout the 1970s and 1980s, connections with both academic and non-academic lawyers helped supply the fledgling field with a form of epistemic authority that was grounded in a technocratic and objective language. One key manifestation of this professionalising process was the emergence of human rights education as both a sub-discipline of legal studies and later an interdisciplinary subject. Therefore, while the first human rights institute was established within the University of Louvain’s law school in 1968, the past three decades have seen a proliferation of human rights degree schemes within higher education (Suárez and Bromley, 2012: 256). According to Suárez and Bromley, this expansion has been driven by the growth of the international human rights infrastructure, as well as by demand for specialist expertise from human rights NGOs (ibid). As O’Flaherty and Ulrich have contended, human rights training and education was characterised by growing depth, breadth and rigour in the post-Cold War period in response to the expansion of human rights field missions (especially after the Yugoslav Wars) and the spread of human rights concerns to the fields of peacebuilding, development and humanitarianism—particularly across UN agencies (2009: 4). Looking at the staff samples of the two human rights NGOs studied here, 30 percent of AI employees had received a university-level degree that had ‘human rights’ in the title, while the proportion was 9 percent for HRW. The disparity between these percentages is not necessarily an indication that AI staff have had a greater human rights-centric education than HRW, but it is instead a reflection of their divergent recruitment streams. With its International Secretariat headquartered in London, AI draws significantly on three institutions that offer tailored human rights degree schemes:

The epistemic culture of global advocacy  85 the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and the University of Essex (UoE) (LSE, 2018, SOAS, 2018; UoE, 2018b). Meanwhile, being headquartered in Manhattan, nearly a quarter of the HRW employee sample had graduated from Columbia University. These divergent proportions are accounted for by the number of HRW recruits that have obtained a Master’s of International Affairs (MIA) from the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs (CSIPA) or a Juris Doctor from the Columbia School of Law, prestigious postgraduate programmes that provide significant opportunities for enrolled students to choose human rights as a specialism (Columbia School of Law, 2018a; CSIPA, 2018a). Aside from Columbia University, HRW also recruits heavily from other Ivy League law schools such as Harvard University and Yale University, as well as from the geographically proximate New York University (NYU) School of Law, with which it has a bespoke fellowship arrangement (HRW, 2018a). Studying these two organisations’ respective recruitment streams, it is evident that both AI and HRW have developed close, symbiotic relationships with US- and UK-based institutions that teach human rights. The epistemic practices of these NGOs have thus been able to mature in proximity to the Anglo-American legal field. For example, in partnership with AI, the University of Essex’s Human Rights Clinic has facilitated the involvement of postgraduate students in the production of a social media guide ‘…to assist Amnesty International researchers in using content sourced from social media platforms that may depict human rights violations’ (UoE, 2018a). Since 2014, the Columbia School of Law’s Human Rights Institute runs a ‘Human Rights Mentorship Program’, where ‘…each clinical student is connected to a mentor drawn from the global community of practicing human rights advocates. Each mentor has roughly three to ten years of practice experience in a diversity of human rights-related work areas, and is selected for their interest and skills in mentorship’ (Columbia School of Law, 2018b). Out of the 20 possible mentors available (as of the time of writing), six are staff members of HRW (ibid.). Yet, these relations between human rights NGOs and the legal academy are not just a contemporary development. For instance, as Dezalay and Garth have documented, HRW worked closely with legal scholars at NYU School of Law and American University while developing its methodological approach to international humanitarian law in the early 1980s (2006: 249). Looking at the postgraduate degrees on offer at these institutions, an orientation towards careers at human rights NGOs is evident in their online marketing materials. For example, the LLM in International Human Rights Law offered by the University of Essex tells prospective students that it aims ‘…to produce graduates who will be leaders in the field of international human rights law as advocates, field officers, legal advisers or researchers with governments and international and non-governmental organisations’ (UoE, 2018b). Similarly, the prospectus for the LSE’s MSc in Human Rights quotes

86  The epistemic culture of global advocacy a former student who went on to work for AI as a Campaigns, Projects and Networks Coordinator: I gained a sound understanding of the International Human Rights Framework and human rights advocacy during my degree. In my role now, I coordinate Amnesty’s global campaigns around women’s rights and gender equality, sexual orientation and gender identity, and indigenous people’s rights. I work on strategy to ensure human rights are respected, protected and fulfilled (LSE, 2018) The curricula and content of these postgraduate degrees also suggest a strong emphasis on training for non-governmental advocacy. Across the popular degree schemes studied by HRW and AI employees, an abundance of practical, advocacy-oriented courses and seminars are offered, including ‘Law, Rights and Social Change’ (SOAS), ‘Global Civil Society’ and ‘Social Change Organizations’ (LSE), ‘Advanced Human Rights Practicum’ (Columbia School of Law), ‘Advanced Skills Training for Human Rights Advocacy’ (Harvard School of Law) and a ‘Clinic on Policy Advocacy in Latin America’ (NYU School of Law) (ibid.; Columbia School of Law, 2018a; Harvard School of Law, 2018a; LSE, 2018; NYU School of Law,  2018). University-NGO partnerships facilitated by legal clinics and internship programmes only serve to strengthen the applied character of these degree schemes (Columbia School of Law, 2018c; UoE, 2018). Yet, rather than a top-down transition of advocacy training and skills from the academy into NGO practice, there is much more of a collaborative, reciprocal relationship at play. This circular transfer of knowledge is most evident in the case of students enrolled at CSIPA, where a course on advocacy methodology is taught by the advocacy director of HRW’s Children’s Rights Division (CSIPA, 2018a). Therefore, these degree schemes are not only responsive to their targeted labour market, but key employers like HRW can also exercise a direct influence on the structure of their future employees’ education. Aside from their practical orientation, these degree schemes also place a strong emphasis on thematic knowledge. The LSE’s interdisciplinary master’s degree in human rights offers a breadth of module choices ranging from the study of gender, development, religion, genocide, migration, terrorism, race and ethnicity, children’s rights to labour rights (LSE, 2018). This diversity can be partly ascribed to the diffuse structure of international human rights law, which has proliferated across many institutions and legal subfields (O’Flaherty and Ulrich, 2009: 11–12). Yet, this diversity of specialisms also corresponds with the trend towards thematic knowledge identified in the previous chapter, which has seen the three organisations increasingly invest in a wide array of cross-cutting issues. For example, the strong focus on the application of human rights to armed conflict, the laws of war and peacebuilding parallels the investment of AI and HRW in conflict-related

The epistemic culture of global advocacy  87 issues that occurred in the aftermath of genocides in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda (Columbia School of Law, 2018a; LSE, 2018; SOAS, 2018). Overall, having practitioners well-versed in a variety of thematic issues means they are better equipped to operate in a fast-moving and globalised knowledge market. This is not to suggest that regional expertise is always excluded from human rights education. For instance, the curriculum of SOAS’s MA in Human Rights Law includes the study of both Islamic and Chinese law, and its online prospectus asserts that ‘SOAS modules are designed not only to introduce students to the general fields of law, but also to provide an understanding of how generic legal structures and processes may operate in non-Western social and cultural settings’ (SOAS, 2018). Despite AI’s shift towards more thematic advocacy-driven practice, a considerable proportion of employees (9 percent) have been trained at SOAS, an institution at which regional applicability is a core intellectual concern. Yet, what does this pedagogical anchorage in the academic sub-field of human rights suggest about the limits of advocates’ epistemic practices? Tony Evans has warned about the potential dangers of the dominance of legalistic thought through the marginalisation of political and philosophical discourses about human rights, arguing that ‘…in as much as the politics of rights is considered at all, what passes for politics is framed within a set of rules that are incontrovertibly accepted, while the framework itself remains unquestioned’ (2005: 1062). As seen in the previous chapter, the three NGOs’ competitive media environments mean that concerns with the digestibility of epistemic products have increasingly taken precedent over analytical depth. While some institutions like SOAS offer a greater emphasis on regional applicability, the legalistic and thematic approach of most of the elite, private US law schools outlined above is only likely to reinforce the trend towards decontextualised knowledge production. From the perspective of the NGOs, the incentive for perpetuating this recruitment stream lies partly in the fact that appeals to legal expertise can infuse their advocacy-oriented knowledge products with greater epistemological security; especially in an uncertain knowledge market where the humanist discourse of rights is threatened by hostile agents, such as conservative, nativist or authoritarian voices. Yet, Sharp has argued that ‘[g]raduates of elite institutions often began life in relative privilege, and institutions like Harvard Law School tend to teach students to think like global power insiders, working within “the system,” rather than organizing a grassroots campaign from without to change or question the sorts of deeply embedded power structures that may contribute to human rights violations in the first place’ (2015: 72). This criticism is heightened by the concern that such a methodology may limit the capacity of these NGOs to address structural issues—particularly relating to the socio-economics of systematic violations or violent conflict (ibid.: 72–73). This critique is blunted somewhat by the fact that some university-taught human rights curricula do provide spaces for critical reflection. For example,

88  The epistemic culture of global advocacy both SOAS and the LSE’s respective human rights master’s degrees offer courses in post-colonial theory, a sub-field that provides an anti-colonial critique of the liberal humanism that is part of these organisations’ raison d’etre (LSE, 2018; SOAS, 2018). Even the Harvard School of Law provides a course that allows ‘…students to confront the limits of the human rights paradigm and its established methodologies, and consider alternate models’, and another that asks, ‘…does law construct inequities of economic opportunity and power’ (2018b, 2018c)? However, given the overwhelming practical focus of most of the degree schemes studied here, this reflexive critique may not necessarily become a widely shared or deeply embedded aspect of practitioners’ habitus. Instead, this critical knowledge might have value in pre-empting external criticisms of the work of human rights NGOs. However, given the structural necessity of epistemological security, it is not a part of the mainstream discourse promoted by these organisations. This non-translation of pre-acquired knowledge at the organisational level is an important insight, and shall be returned to in the final section of this chapter. Social science and qualitative methodologies Across the three case studies, social sciences and humanities graduates make up a vast proportion of their respective labour markets. This educational weighting reflects a demand for a set of ‘soft skills’ that match the modes of advocacy-knowledge production adopted by these organisations. As Goetze argues in relation to the desired soft skills within the UN: Nothing allows a recruiter to assess a candidate’s soft skills of researching, synthesizing, writing and communicating knowledge, conducting analysis, and gathering information without testing these capabilities directly—a major problem if organizations like the UN receive several thousand applications every week. Yet it is mainly in social science degrees that such soft skills are taught (2017: 108) Social scientific skills and knowledge is pervasive across the three advocacy organisations studied here. Most notably, politics and IR and related subdisciplines are the most commonly studied subjects for practitioners from AI (39 percent) and the ICG (67 percent), and the second most common degree qualification for HRW employees (33 percent) after legal studies. While AI and HRW have sought greater anchorage in the legalistic sub-field of human rights, the fact that the ICG has over double the proportion of politics graduates compared to HRW suggests that it is the archetypal organisation when it comes to mobilising political expertise. By surveying ICG job descriptions for internships advertised on its website, it becomes clear that this is not a matter of self-selection among recruits, but an ‘…undergraduate or

The epistemic culture of global advocacy  89 graduate degree in international relations, political science or related fields’ is a minimal entry requirement (ICG, 2018a, 2018b). The ‘methodology’ section of the ICG website bluntly presents a triad of self-purported features that make the ICG distinctive: ‘field research’, ‘sharp analysis’ and ‘highlevel advocacy’ (ICG, 2018c). The explicit stipulation of the need for past political education reflects these foci: the emphasis on transferring knowledge extracted directly from conflict-affected regions to key policy fora demands researchers who are well-versed in political analysis and qualitative research methods—techniques that are primarily taught in the social sciences. This extractive methodology, which places a premium on qualitative interviews with political elites and conflict parties, is also mirrored by the field-based fact-finding methods of AI and HRW that emphasise the gathering of direct testimony from witnesses and victims. In the case of the ICG, additional information can be gleaned by further breaking down the university education of its practitioners. As displayed in Figure 4.2, 10 percent of the sample had studied peace and conflict studies; the sub-disciplinary area that provides the knowledge base that is most relevant to the ICG’s conflict prevention mission. Furthermore, the concentration of ICG researchers and advocates with an educational background in regional studies (21 percent) and history (18 percent) is also notable. Taken together, these disciplines are likely to provide ICG analysts with the qualitative skills necessary for the contextual and historical analyses involved in reporting on violent conflict. Indeed, the provision of background knowledge within ICG reporting is one feature that makes its knowledge outputs distinctive, especially in relation to the other two NGOs studied here, whose reporting—usually grounded in appeals to abstract legal mechanisms and norms—tends to be more decontextualised (Bøås, 2014: 653).

Journalism & Media Peace & Conflict Philosophy Language Law History Regional Studies Politics & IR 0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

Figure 4.2 The most common academic disciplines studied by full-time research or advocacy staff working at the International Crisis Group (bachelor’s degree or higher), as a percentage of the sample size (N = 73).

90  The epistemic culture of global advocacy This notion is further reinforced when one looks at the career backgrounds of those within the ICG’s professional dataset who have held positions that are specific to a certain region or country. As a proportion of this narrowed sample (N = 56), evidence of residence in the relevant country or region was found in 77 percent of employee profiles (when looking for the location of past employment). These recruits are what in the parlance of foreign correspondence terms ‘long-timers’ (Hannerz, 2007: 302). Thus, rather than seeking more generic forms of expertise applicable across separate cases, this suggests a tendency to recruit individuals who already have some prior lived experience within conflict-afflicted regions. Although past on-the-ground experience varies considerably between employees (ranging from months to years or decades), it does play an important symbolic role. It allows the organisation to imbue its epistemic products with signals of authenticity; projecting ethnographic sensibility, or ‘extractive capital’. Additionally, these individuals are also valuable to the extent that they import previously acquired social capital in the form of local social networks, further enhancing their capacity for extractive knowledge production. International organisations As suggested in the previous chapter, intergovernmental organisations (IGOs) are a key policy consumer for globally operative advocacy NGOs. As international institutions that bring together a range of actors (governmental and non-governmental), they provide important avenues for deliberation and policy input for advocates seeking to influence various international issues. However, not only do IGOs offer a platform for global advocacy, but they also provide a professional infrastructure that intersects and overlaps with the NGO sector. This is suggested by the proportion of researchers from AI (37 percent), HRW (27 percent) and the ICG (35 percent) who have had previous employment at IGOs (see Figure 4.3). The disaggregated data show that these practitioners are drawn from a narrow range of IGOs, including the United Nations, the European Union (and its various organs), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the International Criminal Court and the World Bank. While some of these organisations provide transferrable experience and skills that are directly applicable to the advocacy work of the three NGOs studied here, the extent to which they relate closely to the adjacent fields of humanitarianism and refugees, development aid and transitional justice further highlights the interstitial positionality of these organisations. The affinity between these NGOs and IGOs is also likely bolstered by what Nowicka calls their ‘mobility infrastructure’: working within an IGO environment allows one to foster both professional and private connections with NGOs, and encourages a high level of physical mobility—something that is valued in the sphere of global advocacy (2006: 99). Socially, IGO-NGO interactions have been aided by NGOs’ geographical proximity to key IGO

The epistemic culture of global advocacy  91 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0%

Amnesty International

Human Rights Watch

International Crisis Group

Figure 4.3 The percentage of full-time research or advocacy staff at Amnesty International (N = 222), Human Rights Watch (N = 156) and the International Crisis Group (N = 80) that have past experience working at intergovernmental organisations.

stakeholders. For instance, the ICG’s headquarters in Brussels provides access to both NATO and EU institutions, while HRW’s central office in the Empire State Building is a mere 1.2 miles from the UN headquarters in Midtown Manhattan (Google Maps, 2018). Similarly, the establishment of advocacy offices in Brussels (HRW and AI), Geneva (HRW and AI) and New York (AI and ICG) has also facilitated closely knit ties with IGOs. The United Nations, with its various organs, agencies and missions, is by far the most prominent IGO when looking at the career backgrounds of AI, HRW and ICG staff. Here, the most common UN agencies of prior employment include the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNICEF and UNESCO. Others are drawn from specific UN missions or UN-backed judicial bodies, such as the United Nations Mission in Nepal, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the Special Court for Sierra Leone. Eighteen percent of the AI sample had past experience within the UN’s various sub-organs, while this proportion is 19 percent and 17.5 percent for HRW and the ICG respectively. These findings are complimented by Goetze’s survey of individuals working at UN peacebuilding missions, which found that—out of a sample of 1,573 peacebuilding staff—a total of around 400 took on NGO contracts before or after joining a UN mission (2017: 105). Overall, this suggests the presence of intersecting, bidirectional career trajectories between the UN and these NGOs. In the cases of both AI and HRW, this professional overlap can be at least partly explained by their convergent evolution vis-à-vis the UN’s human rights bodies and functions. As outlined in the previous chapter, AI began

92  The epistemic culture of global advocacy developing close ties with the UN from the 1970s onwards, while HRW invested heavily in its UN advocacy capacity in the immediate post-Cold War period. The intersectional consequences of this have been highlighted by Martens: As a result, NGOs today are basically involved in all processes and performances of the UN. In the human rights sector, for example, they deliver valuable information and profound research on human rights violations to UN commissions and committees, they provide knowledge and expertise during negotiation processes of international human rights law and declarations, and they monitor and supervise the implementation of human rights standards and principles (2006: 20) Such a symbiotic co-evolution has incentivised international NGOs to model themselves, and their human resources, on the professional templates provided by the UN. This has informed their recruitment choices, as they seek out individuals with specific expertise in the UN’s procedures and practices (ibid.: 20). This has an indirect bearing on the development of core advocacy methodologies. For instance, practitioners who make the transition from the UN’s various overseas field missions to working at an advocacy NGO can act as conduits for the transfer of professional skillsets that have been acquired through past pre-deployment or on-the-job training (O’Flaherty and Ulrich, 2009: 20). The UN can thus pre-condition future NGO employees who go on to work in similar extractive environments. Overall, in the context of the knowledge market, these trajectories are likely to reinforce the ‘co-productive’ relationship between these two sets of actors, as the epistemic practices of NGO producers and their IGO consumers become more aligned. Media and journalism Aside from IGOs, the previous chapter also highlighted the position of the news media as a key knowledge consumer. This centrality stems from the press’s intermediary and amplificatory position vis-à-vis a variety of other stakeholders (e.g. policymakers’ exposure to certain news outlets). As shown in Figure 4.4, at 33 percent of the practitioner sample, the ICG appears to recruit the most individuals with past experience working at media organisations. This proportion is 19 percent and 24 percent for AI and HRW respectively. Here, common media organisations of prior employment include the BBC, Reuters, the Associated Press, The New York Times, CNN, TIME, Al Jazeera and The Guardian. These outlets also correspond with Powers’ study of NGO publicity work, which found that ‘[f]or organizations whose primary aim is to impact policy makers, the prestige press is highly preferred. Newspapers like The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, and others are seen as proxies for access to elite policy makers. Receiving publicity in them is seen as a key way to enact policy changes’ (2014: 95). Having

The epistemic culture of global advocacy  93 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0%

Amnesty International

Human Rights Watch

International Crisis Group

Figure 4.4 The percentage of full-time research or advocacy staff at Amnesty International (N = 222), Human Rights Watch (N = 156) and the International Crisis Group (N = 80) that have past experience working as journalists or at media organisations.

employees who have previously worked at the same outlets that are targeted as part of their advocacy reinforces producer-consumer relations with these important stakeholders. Since HRW’s inception, its ability to exploit the news media has gone to the core of its self-purported ‘shaming methodology’, which emphasises the use of media publicity of human rights violations in order to ‘expose it to public opprobrium’ (Roth, 2004: 63). Yet, the concentration of former journalists working across the three NGOs has become ever more pertinent over the past two-and-a-half decades. As the previous chapter argued, these NGOs are increasingly exposed to the panopticon of public opinion and a fast-paced media cycle. The rise of digital and social media has only further heightened the necessity of acquiring expertise that is geared towards packaging and framing advocacy-oriented knowledge against the backdrop of a saturated media environment. In the analysis of common human rights degree programmes among advocates, little evidence was found that courses or modules on the use of digital technologies for advocacy were being provided. Instead, a division of labour among practitioners exists, with journalists and communications specialists brought in to ensure the maximum digestibility of advocacy products (ICG, 2017b).3 This is especially appropriate given that these organisations often need to convey complex political situations or highly technical legal frameworks to non-specialist audiences (HRW International Justice Program staff, 2016). Overall, just as the career trajectories stemming from the UN enables the transfer of epistemic practices relating to extractive knowledge, their intersection with the media field has a similar effect; albeit one that is reinforcing of the kinds of de-complexifying (and often sensationalising) tendencies identified in the previous chapter.

94  The epistemic culture of global advocacy Academia and think-tanks The fields of academic (including both public and private universities) and non-academic research institutes and think-tanks are two other relevant fields of practice. As seen in the sub-section on law and human rights above, both AI and HRW intersect partially with the academic sphere to the extent that they have built up close ties to the legal-human rights academy. For AI, 8.5 percent of the people in the practitioner sample have held posts at academic institutions, while 17 percent have worked at think-tanks. These proportions are 17 percent and 8 percent for HRW. Reflecting its strong research culture, the ICG surpasses the two human rights organisations with 38 percent and 48 percent respectively. By surveying the disaggregated data, it is observed that these proportions include a diversity of different institutions that are geographically sparse. While established US think-tanks such as the Council on Foreign Relations, the United States Institute of Peace, the RAND corporation and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace are well represented in this sample, they are not overwhelmingly dominant, and a wide range of other smaller research institutes and consultancies are also present. The degree to which the ICG draws on individuals with strong research profiles reflects the organisation’s amalgamated form: part think-tank and part advocacy organisation. According to one interviewee from the ICG, it is the emphasis that the organisation places on rigorous research that helps it attract research-minded recruits (ICG director of research, 2016). This attraction is reflected in the proportion of practitioners who hold doctorates (21 percent), as seen in Figure 4.5. This contrasts starkly with the more general and transferable campaigning-based skillsets seen in the case of AI, as well as with HRW’s greater reliance on individuals trained in the 25%

20%

15%

10%

5%

0%

Amnesty International

Human Rights Watch

International Crisis Group

Figure 4.5 The percentage of full-time research or advocacy staff who hold doctorates at Amnesty International (N = 222), Human Rights Watch (N = 156) and the International Crisis Group (N = 80).

The epistemic culture of global advocacy  95 standardised application of international law. Therefore, while the previous chapter found some evidence that the ICG has been drifting towards cross-cutting thematic issues, the above insights suggest that, in the words of its former President Gareth Evans (2012), ‘Crisis Group has resisted the temptation to broaden its focus…’. This resistance can be seen as part of the ICG’s reproduction of its epistemic authority and symbolic distinctiveness within the knowledge market. Rather than merely reproducing and advocating on behalf of ideas already in circulation in the knowledge market, it seeks to project its image as a critical antidote to existing policy (ICG, 2010: 13). By retaining a strong research profile among its employees, it can emphasise the originality and novelty of its research in a crowded field of rival advocates and think-tanks. Government and diplomacy I have already highlighted the centrality of NGO advocates’ educations in politics and IR. Aside from this pedagogical dimension, it is also important to consider how they intersect with the professional spheres of government and diplomacy. This is mainly because, as gatekeeping actors who control the mechanisms to transmute the knowledge produced by advocacy NGOs into policy practice, actors involved in governance, policymaking and decision-making are usually the principal targets for advocacy. The percentage of practitioners with experience working in government or the civil service is displayed in Figure 4.6. At 15 percent (AI), 8 percent (HRW) and 10 percent (ICG), this professional category is less well-represented among the three NGOs’ respective professional datasets when compared to most of

18% 16% 14% 12% 10% 8% 6% 4% 2% 0%

Amnesty International

Human Rights Watch

International Crisis Group

Figure 4.6 The percentage of full-time research or advocacy staff at Amnesty International (N = 222), Human Rights Watch (N = 156) and the International Crisis Group (N = 80) that have prior experience working in government or civil service.

96  The epistemic culture of global advocacy the other career backgrounds that have been overviewed already. However, although the majority of practitioners have not held such positions, there are other means by which these organisations intersect with the higher echelons of elite governance. For instance, AI’s US section has a bespoke internship arrangement with the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics (HKSIP), an institute that counts 15 former heads of state or government among its alumni (HKSIP, 2018; Ranker, 2018). Yet, AI does have a democratic governance structure, in which its governing board must be elected at biennial International Council Meetings. Thus, past and present AI boards have mostly been composed of individuals who have worked their way through its internal democracy, many at the level of country sections (AI, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2014, 2017a).4 This appears to shield the organisation from a disproportionate top-down influence by political or financial elites. The same cannot be said for either HRW or the ICG. As seen in the historical overview of HRW presented in the previous chapter, the Manhattan-based NGO has had strong historical ties to congressional and executive-level politicians and officials in the United States. For example, HRW’s current international board includes an ex-US ambassador, former assistants to the Nixon and Clinton presidencies, and other individuals with ties to the Democratic Party (HRW, 2017b). However, the presence of these elites at HRW pales in comparison to the concentration of political and diplomatic leaders among the ICG’s board of trustees (ICG, 2017a). At 61 percent of the ICG board sample, individuals with backgrounds in government and civil service outweigh all of the other professional categories that were coded for, while nearly a third of the sample had worked in diplomacy (see Figure 4.7). When one looks at both current and past board members, the concentration of senior

Media and Journalism Research Institutes and Think-Tanks Academia Diplomatic Field International Organisations Private Sector NGO and Third Sector Government and Civil Service 0%

10%

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30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

Figure 4.7 The most common professional backgrounds of members of the International Crisis Group’s board of trustees as a percentage of the sample total, as measured by sector of employment (N = 30).

The epistemic culture of global advocacy  97 political figures—including former heads of state, prime ministers and foreign ministers—is substantial. As seen in the previous chapter’s historical overview of the organisation, the ICG was established in the mid-1990s by a small group of leading Western foreign policy figures. It was designed to be a non-governmental instrument to address international crises such as those in Somalia, Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. The influence of foreign policy elites over the organisation was further entrenched during the presidency of Gareth Evans (former Australian foreign minister) between 1999 and 2009. In his own words, during these years he sought to run the ICG like a ‘private foreign office’ (ICG, 2010: 23). Therefore, mobilising upper-strata political connections, the ICG’s leadership team and board of trustees effectively acts like an entourage of senior diplomats, providing the organisation with political clout that far outweighs its size. Furthermore, a closer examination of their career trajectories shows that 95 percent of ICG trustees have held a position in more than one sector, while 39 percent had crossed four or more fields. These individuals move horizontally between senior positions within intersecting fields: between governments, foundations, multinational corporations and media organisations. These sector-traversing career trajectories reflect the board’s dominance by a highly mobile political class whose social and symbolic capital is transferrable across fields. This horizontal movement reflects the ICG’s position in a ‘prestige market’, in which it seeks to enhance its clout within high-level advocacy fora through the co-option of esteemed individuals (Goetze, 2017: 125). As Brooks and Cil have argued, the ‘ICG certainly is not the only advocacy group to have very well connected and well known people on its board, but it is fair to say that no group has greater elite representation’ (2016: 42). Meanwhile, as suggested in the previous sub-section, the predominantly research-based backgrounds of its full-time professional staff enable it to maintain a veneer of ‘independence’. In the context of the knowledge market, this can be interpreted as a strategy of combining indistinction, through trustees’ strong affinity with their reciprocal consumers, and distinction, by employing researchers who are mostly outsiders to the halls of governance. Overall, the relationship between these NGOs and government is somewhat paradoxical. Firstly, they are semi-autonomous, in that they require a degree of separation from government to retain their distinctiveness. They outwardly present themselves as acting from a universalist position, such as through claiming the status of non-partisan experts, via appeals to humanist values or by the objectivity of codified international treaties. This contrasts with the particularistic realpolitik of national governance and diplomacy. However, they also remain structurally dependent on governmental actors, who act as vehicles for the transmutation of advocacy into tangible action. As argued above, in the case of the ICG board, this intersection is extended to include strong social and political ties to various governments and foreign ministries. This is not a purely transactional relationship, but it

98  The epistemic culture of global advocacy is also bolstered by having a shared discourse. As the ICG’s autobiographical publication ‘Fifteen Years on the Frontlines’ put it in relation to its dialogue with European governments, ‘[w]e have to show that our colleagues on the ground know exactly what is going on and that we, here, speak the “EU language” and know what the EU and member states are debating and could realistically be asked to do on a particular issue’ (ICG, 2010: 49). This cultural affinity with the ICG’s main reciprocal consumers is only likely to lubricate the kind of market-like relations found in the previous chapter. The private sector and corporate elites The final background influence that needs to be considered is the NGOs’ relations with the private sector. Out of their respective employee samples, the proportions of staff members with prior experience working in the private sector is 18 percent (AI), 2 percent (HRW) and 11 percent (ICG). Generally, these percentages are lower than most of the other professional fields that have been considered in this chapter. However, the fact that nearly a fifth of the AI sample have held such positions is worthy of further reflection given the movement’s traditionally ascetic and anti-corporate culture. Furthermore, as the practitioner samples were limited to include only individuals involved specifically in research and advocacy (many, as has already been established, coming from non-profit organisations), the importation of individuals with prior experience at for-profit organisations would likely be higher if it was to include employees working on, for example, fundraising, administration and marketing—areas that are more amenable to a corporate skillset. In the case of AI, this snapshot can be interpreted as an end-product of the gradual neoliberalisation of the organisation from the 1990s onwards. As Hopgood has argued, ‘[t]his managerialism was part of the more general, globalization-inspired (I argue) infiltration of the mechanisms and ideas of capital into all areas of not-for-profit and private life, a development with which we are all too familiar now. It entailed a new conception of service, not as vocational obligation but as meeting the needs of the movement as consumers’ (2006: 134). Yet, this has not just been a top-down process of managerial reform, but it has also become manifested in the career profiles of staff across the organisation. This is congruent with AI’s long-term shift away from primarily research-centred practice, and towards a model that is geared towards membership growth and maximising the saleability of the Amnesty brand. As shown already, HRW and the ICG have also been impacted by this drive towards maximising the digestibility of epistemic goods in the context of a highly competitive knowledge market. While private sector experience is more concentrated among AI practitioners in comparison to HRW and the ICG, their intersection with the corporate sphere clearly manifests at the board level. Fifty percent of the HRW board sample showed evidence of employment within the private sector, while this figure was 46 percent and 36 percent for the

The epistemic culture of global advocacy  99 ICG and AI respectively. As suggested in the previous sub-section’s emphasis on the disparate presence of political leaders across the case studies, the structural difference between AI’s board (ascension through democratic process) and the HRW and ICG boards (appointment through patronage in a prestige market) means that the latter two appear to be much more elite-oriented. As Winston has argued in relation to HRW, its board ‘function[s] more like privately owned not-for-profit corporations run by small groups of individuals belonging to the human rights elite’ (2001: 31). This structural divergence is evident when looking at the specific careers of trustees with private sector backgrounds at both HRW and the ICG. In the case of the latter, corporate and financial elites sit alongside elites from political and diplomatic circles (ICG, 2017a). For example, the ICG board includes the chief executive of multinational oil company Statoil, billionaire investor George Soros and a handful of chief executives of financial corporations (ibid.). Meanwhile, looking more closely at the profiles of board members listed publicly on HRW’s webpage, it is evident that the high proportion of individuals coming from the private sector is partly a reflection of its intersection with an entourage of wealthy, primarily New York-based, corporate-philanthropic elites (HRW, 2017b). This is exemplified by the membership of individuals like Karen Ann Herskovitz, formerly married to billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, and Donna Slaight, whose family ranks as one of the wealthiest in Canada (Carsley-Mann, 2017; HRW, 2017e). The concentration of investment bankers among the board sample is also notable. Aside from the apparent links to Wall Street, the fact that as much as 17 percent (see Figure 4.8) of the sample had backgrounds in the artistic sphere—especially relating to New York City-based art galleries and theatres—illustrates the extent to which the current board is largely

Research Institutes and Think-Tanks Media and Journalism Artist Government and Civil Service Legal Profession NGO and Third Sector Private Sector 0%

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Figure 4.8 The most common professional backgrounds of Human Rights Watch board members as a percentage of the sample total, as measured by sector of employment (N = 30).

100  The epistemic culture of global advocacy the privy of individuals who combine both extensive economic wealth with high cultural capital. As Bourdieu’s disciple Loïc Wacquant has argued, this form of private philanthropy is a means by which economic elites are able to transmute their accumulated wealth into moral authority (2006: 268). This symbiotic relationship provides a means of financial sustenance for these patronage-based NGOs, while in return offering a mechanism to produce symbolic capital for their corporate benefactors. As part of this symbiotic relationship, trustees can also play a part in the strategic governance of these organisations. Thus, in exchange for influence over the organisation, ‘…members bring expertise in institution building to the organization, not the least of which is fund-raising’ (Brown, 2001: 78). In the case of HRW, board members are also given the opportunity to exercise oversight over specific areas of the organisation’s research and advocacy functions through joining its various advisory committees, which—meeting three-tofour times per year—are ‘…designed to provide the programmatic divisions at HRW with substantive and policy advice’ (HRW, 2017a). Overall, while it is difficult to demonstrate causal linkages between this interdependency with corporate elites and direct effects on every-day epistemic practices, it does raise questions about epistemic limits that are negotiated at the strategic level. For example, it may go some way in explaining the dearth of engagement by these organisations in issues relating to structural and socio-economic injustice (Brody et al., 2001: 53–54). According to HRW chief executive Kenneth Roth, such non-engagement is justified based on practicality—NGOs lack the political capital to engage in questions of distributive justice, and structural issues are not easily reducible to identifiable violators (Roth, 2004: 69). Yet, what this defence of the organisation’s methodology disregards is the fact that a potential challenge to structural issues would involve a critique of the very neoliberal economic system of which the organisation has been a major beneficiary. This corresponds with Hopgood’s assertion that ‘[t]he more reliant global humanists become on the successful functioning of the world economy to fund their expanding operations, the less likely that attention to social inequality will emerge’ (2013: 96). This quandary demands further research into the effects of this structural symbiosis on the epistemic limits of advocacy practice.

Boundaries Professional and educational boundaries So far, this chapter has considered professional and educational influences on the habitus of NGO advocates and researchers. Practitioners working across AI, HRW and the ICG are pre-conditioned by prior or ongoing relationships with a particular array of occupational and educational fields. However, when studying the limits of advocacy-oriented knowledge production, it is also important to consider the boundaries to entry into these organisations. This entails asking the following question: what types of backgrounds and expertise are not present within these organisations?

The epistemic culture of global advocacy  101 The previous section highlighted the interstitial position of these NGOs and their practitioners in relation to the NGO sector, the legal profession and its sub-field of human rights, IGOs, academia, think-tanks, governments and the corporate sphere. Although this list encompasses a variety of professional backgrounds, there are notable absences. Foremost among these is the lack of practitioners with military experience. This is despite the fact that all three of these NGOs have invested heavily in conflict-based reporting. In the case of both AI and HRW, the expansion of the human rights agenda to cover international humanitarian law throughout the 1980s and the 1990s meant the conduct of military actors became an increasingly central concern to their work—although HRW has been clear to avoid making judgements on issues relating to jus ad bellum (i.e. whether war is justified or not) (HRW, 2014). For the ICG, as a conflict prevention organisation, military matters are also a central concern. This apparent gulf between its purported expertise and the apparent dearth of direct military experience has resulted in criticism in the news media over the ICG’s willingness to recommend and support military intervention: In one sense, of course, the complete lack of consideration given to the potential dangers of recommending US military intervention is somewhat understandable. After all, ICG is not an organization that specializes in military affairs, military strategy or military history. In fact, its experts in the region that I have known over the past decade rarely have had any military experience. (Noe, 2015) One potential explanation for this absence of military experience is the aversion to violence that forms part of the liberal humanist ethos. This cultural dimension will be returned to in the following sub-section. Aside from a lack of ex-military personnel, there also appears to be a dearth of economists among researchers and advocates working at these NGOs. For instance, among the practitioner data samples, only 5 percent of employees at both AI and the ICG had a degree (bachelor’s and above) in economics or in a related sub-discipline, while this proportion was 6 percent at HRW. This is congruent with the observation that qualitative methods, rather than quantitative techniques, are the dominant mode of practice within these three organisations. This primacy can be related to the added symbolic value of qualitative knowledge for these NGOs. Although practitioners educated in political science (and other social sciences) at universities in the United States (e.g. at HRW) are more likely to have econometric literacy, the projection of ethnographic ‘authenticity’, through the use of interviews, testimony gathering and claims to ethnographic proximity, take precedence over the use of abstractive quantitative data (CSIPA, 2018c).5 These findings are supported by Rall et al. who argue that ‘[s]tatistical literacy remains lower than

102  The epistemic culture of global advocacy desired within the human rights advocacy world and there remains a lack of understanding of how both data and data visualization can be deployed most effectively to support human rights messages’ (2016: 188). As suggested in Chapter 2, these findings should temper the growing academic literature on the alleged datafication of humanist advocacy (Emerson et al., 2018: 168; McPherson et al., Forthcoming 2019; Piracés, 2018: 291). In addition to the educational backgrounds and the professional culture of practitioners, this absence of widespread datafication appears to have been limited by the quality and reliability of available data relating to human rights- and conflict-related issues, as well as the poor data infrastructure of advocates’ partners inside extractive spaces (Piracés, 2018: 291; Rall et al., 2016: 175). Where humanist NGOs have sought to deploy data-based methods, this has often been done in conjunction with external partners, as with cooperation between AI and the American Association for the Advancement of Science over the use of geospatial analysis (Rall et al., 2016: 186). Similarly, AI has also developed partnerships with six universities as part of its Digital Verification Corps, which relies on volunteers to verify opensource data about human rights violations (Fortune, 2018). The datasets collected and analysed for this book focus on full-time practitioners, and therefore do not capture the use of external data consultants. Finally, one other notable absence is the scarcity of individuals coming from religious institutions, such as from churches or their affiliated charities. Among both HRW and ICG, no evidence of religious affiliation was found when looking at advocates and researchers’ employment histories. Meanwhile, only 4 percent of AI practitioners showed evidence of prior employment at a religious organisation—a figure that is stark given the religiosity of its founders and the organisation’s use of Christian imagery. While this is not a direct signal of religiosity per se, it may provide some indication of the extent to which these organisations have developed as secular entities. While it has roots in the Judeo-Christian tradition, the missionary ethos now has more of a secular humanist character. Not only are the labour markets that these three NGOs recruit from anchored in a specific set of professional boundaries, but these careers trajectories are also underpinned by overlapping educational profiles. For instance, Figure 4.9 echoes the extent to which a postgraduate degree acts as a badge of entry for those seeking to become full-time advocacy professionals. Over the years, a ‘credentials creep’ has stemmed from a race-to-the-top in professional standards within an increasingly competitive sector (Alikhan, 2013). Relative to the wider third sector, these elite humanist organisations are able to pay relatively high salaries, and their prestigious brand names make them attractive to potential employees. An oversaturation of prospective recruits provides them with the liberty to target the upper quartile of the graduate labour market without being out-competed by rival recruiters. For example, illustrating this oversupply, HRW received over 1,000 applications for just three of its fellowship positions in 2014 (HRW, 2014). As overviewed

The epistemic culture of global advocacy  103 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%

Bachelor Amnesty International

Master Human Rights Watch

PhD International Crisis Group

Figure 4.9 The highest level of educational attainment (bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees) of Amnesty International (N  =  257), Human Rights Watch (N = 161) and the International Crisis Group (N = 80) staff, as a percentage of sample total. 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%

Human Rights Watch

International Crisis Group

Amnesty International

Figure 4.10 The percentage of full-time research and advocacy staff at Amnesty International (N = 223), Human Rights Watch (N = 155) and the International Crisis Group (N  =  76) educated at top-25-ranked academic institutions, as measured by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings (2018).

in the previous section, this escalating demand for the best-qualified recruits has been exacerbated by the development of human rights as a distinct professional career trajectory, and with the establishment of bespoke arrangements with prestigious universities. Aside from the necessity of holding a postgraduate degree, Figure 4.10 demonstrates the extent to which graduates from elite universities are concentrated among these three NGOs. Out of the three organisations, AI has the least elitist profile, with 23 percent of its practitioner sample having

104  The epistemic culture of global advocacy studied at a global top 25 university—as measured against the Times Higher Education World University Rankings (2018). Meanwhile, HRW and the ICG appear to have a higher concentration of individuals with awards from such universities, at 57 percent and 41 percent respectively. In the case of HRW, this high proportion mirrors the extent to which it recruits specifically from prestigious schools of law and government or public policy at Ivy League institutions, such as at Columbia University, Harvard University and Yale University. The collected data also show that all three NGOs have an overall majority of practitioners educated in the United States or the United Kingdom: 81 percent of HRW practitioners were educated at Anglo-American universities, while this proportion is 67 percent for both AI and the ICG. Thanks to the global pre-eminence of Anglo-American universities, this is partly a reflection of their concentrated recruitment of individuals from the more prestigious end of the graduate labour market. In the case of AI and HRW, who have their headquarters in London and New York respectively, geographical proximity is also likely to be another contributory factor. This can be observed in the most common universities that these NGOs recruit from: AI draws most proportionately from London-based institutions (e.g. SOAS, LSE), while HRW is most reliant on practitioners sourced from private universities in the north-east of the United States. The ICG’s recruitment stream is less geographically concentrated than either AI or HRW, but Anglo-American institutions are still the most represented. While the location of practitioner’s education is not a proxy for the nationality of NGO practitioners (for which systematic data were not available), this apparent dependence on the Anglo-American academy does raise questions regarding the national diversity of AI, HRW and ICG employees. Acting as recruitment hubs for these NGOs, the narrow geographical concentration of these universities is only likely to exacerbate inequality of access across a range of potential global constituencies. This appears to contrast with their internationalist ambitions. Furthermore, this inequality of access is also exacerbated by the location of these NGOs in expensive Western cities and the demand for a high level of cross-border mobility. For AI, HRW and the ICG, being headquartered in London, New York and Brussels respectively, such metropoles provide access to global centres of power, as well as acting as important recruitment nodes due to their proximity to large high-skill labour markets and prestigious universities (Goetze, 2017: 108–109). Yet, a by-product of this geographical preference is that it further narrows the number of potential candidates. A combination of visa requirements, the steep cost of living in such globalised cities, and the physical mobility needed to conduct transnational advocacy and extractive knowledge production, all contribute to marginalising certain constituencies from the recruitment pool. Here, the most excluded constituencies include those from poorer countries, those coming from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds, and individuals whose citizenship makes it more difficult to obtain visas. The fact that

The epistemic culture of global advocacy  105 all three of the NGOs examined here make use of unpaid volunteers and interns only furthers their tacit complicity in reproducing these structural inequalities (AI, 2017b; HRW, 2018b; ICG, 2017c). This caused a public embarrassment to HRW in December 2015 when a group of interns released a mock ‘report’ titled ‘Human Rights Watch Interns: Perpetuating a System of Inequality’: They pointed out the irony of an NGO which promotes equal opportunities in the world, not doing the same within their own company. Human Rights Watch promotes itself as ‘an equal opportunity employer that does not discriminate in its hiring practices and, in order to build the strongest possible workforce, actively seeks a diverse applicant pool’. Yet, unless you can afford living in Brussels, New York, Washington DC, London and Geneva without getting paid, you will not be part of this diverse applicant pool. Especially in the world of NGOs, you can only get a job in the industry if you’ve interned before (Barré, 2016) This elite-orientation is illustrated by the concentration of full-time practitioners educated at top-25 institutions (see Figure 4.10). In a highly competitive labour market, these institutions act as a proxy form of quality control, enabling these organisations to vet candidates based on the relative prestige of their awarding institutions. Yet, to give two examples, the LSE charges its overseas students 22,440 GBP for its MSc programme in Human Rights, while the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs charges an annual tuition fee of 53,036 USD (CSIPA, 2018b; LSE, 2018). Such a reliance on a small range of elite universities only narrows the socio-economic pool of potential recruits. Arguably more important than the country-of-origin is the underlying class dimension affecting these advocacy groups. Here, it is important to make a further distinction between those whose origins lie in high-income countries, and those whose country-of-origin is in lower-income countries. This is because the relative boundary-to-entry for each grouping differs considerably. In the case of the former, Hilton et al. have noted that in the latter half of the twentieth century, the United Kingdom’s NGO sector was influenced by the emergence of a grammar-school-educated middle class who, weaving their way through the spheres of politics, business and the third sector, came to replace the primarily upper middle-class, privately educated founders of organisations like AI (2013: 76). Here, it is the acquired educational capital—rather than economic capital—of this sub-class that provides a relative ease-of-access to the kinds of prestigious academic institutions and relevant professional fields that are part of the career trajectories observed across the three case studies. However, the situation is very different for those coming from low-income countries, where the relative barriers-to-entry are much higher. This is primarily thanks to the high-level

106  The epistemic culture of global advocacy of physical mobility, economic capital and English-language (and sometimes Francophone) competence needed to study abroad at prestigious Western universities (Goetze, 2017: 99). This inevitably restricts the pool of recruits coming from low-income countries to a narrow and relatively privileged socio-economic stratum, exacerbating the elite composition of these organisations. Cultural boundaries The recruitment streams outlined so far in this chapter go a long way in explaining the kinds of professional and educational profiles (and associated practical knowledge and skillsets) that are valued by AI, HRW and the ICG. As suggested above, by looking at the profiles that are markedly absent from these streams, one also gets a sense of their boundaries. Yet, a reliance on these indicators alone would miss out upon the cultural boundaries at play. This is especially pertinent when considering that those seeking employment at an advocacy NGO also exercise a self-selecting form of agency. In other words, the humanist NGO recruitment pool is not simply made up of those who just happen to have the right educational and professional qualifications, but it is also constituted by individuals who are actively motivated to seek out a career in humanist advocacy. It is only by grasping the cultural and ideological dispositions and identities of NGO practitioners that these motivations can be understood. As will be outlined below, these dispositions can be broadly delimited as liberal, humanist and cosmopolitan. Even if this is primarily a consequence of self-selection, the recruitment of individuals with such a delineable cultural profile has an implicitly exclusionary effect: those with dispositions that are misaligned with the cosmopolitanism fostered by these organisations are unlikely to seek out employment with them. Certain social indicators of cosmopolitan identity can be indirectly inferred from the collected practitioner datasets. As shown in Figure 4.11, around one-third of practitioners across all three organisations had been awarded degrees in more than one country of study, suggesting a significant degree of transnational mobility among practitioners. This transnationalism is further illustrated by the concentration of practitioners who have had experience in sectors that are considerably multinational in character, especially given the proportion coming from United Nations agencies. According to ICG co-founder Mort Abramowitz, [m]any [full-time staff] serve in difficult countries without the benefits that foreign diplomats get. They just get on with it in a style of, ‘have laptop, will travel’. Many are underpaid. But they continue to sign up year after year, because they think the work is important, they are given great freedom in their work, and they believe strongly in the purpose of the organisation (ICG, 2010: 6)

The epistemic culture of global advocacy  107 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0%

Amnesty International

Human Rights Watch

International Crisis Group

Figure 4.11 The percentage of full-time research or advocacy staff at Amnesty International (N = 223), Human Rights Watch (N = 155) and the International Crisis Group (N = 76) who have gained educational qualifications (bachelor’s degree or higher) from more than one country of study.

The emphasis here is on the linkage between practitioners’ worldviews and their willingness to embrace careers that involve extensive mobility, with all of its practical inconveniences. Reinforcing this linkage of mobility and ideology, past studies of transnational practitioners have related the disposition to travel to the spread of a Western bourgeois globalist idealism, which includes both a taste for overseas adventures and a preference for working in a multicultural environment (Hudson and Inkson, 2006: 308; Nowicka and Kaweh, 2016: 67). These inclinations are the result of both a cosmopolitan habitus, to the extent that the very nature of global advocacy attracts individuals who are pre-socialised via their upbringing and education to appreciate multicultural engagements, as well as the faculties of appreciation built up through individuals’ traversal of career networks that encourage extensive mobility—particularly among those coming from IGOs and other INGOs. Aside from transnational mobility, another social indicator that can be linked to cultural cosmopolitanism is the extent of multilingualism within these organisations. The data I have collected on practitioners’ qualifications in higher education show that significant numbers have studied languages: 17 percent in the case of AI, 16 percent for HRW and 15 percent for the ICG. This category includes a variety of European and non-European languages, as well as the study of literature, linguistics and translation. Here, the most common languages of study include English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Russian and German. The preference for multilingual fluency among staff members is also explicitly stipulated by the organisations themselves (AI, 2018; HRW, 2018b). The ICG website’s careers page boasts that its 110 staff members are ‘composed of around 40 nationalities and

108  The epistemic culture of global advocacy speaking over 40 languages’ (ICG, 2017c). Yet, how does this link to the cultural dispositions of NGO practitioners? According to scholarship on applied linguistics, while not directly causative, language is an important medium for cultural transfer (Duff, 2015: 60; Lam and Warriner, 2012: 195). Studying the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) through a Bourdieusian lens, Garrido argues that the organisation’s intersection between a plurality of cultural and linguistic fields fosters a cosmopolitan capital ‘…that saturates the fields of humanitarianism and international politics’ (2017: 361). Hypothetically, advocates’ global mobility and multilingualism makes them ripe for cosmopolitanism. However, as Garrido also finds in the case of the ICRC, such cosmopolitan openness does not prevent the emergence of linguistic hierarchies: as the lingua franca of international NGO administration and technocracy, English retains a dominant position through its use as a signal of disinterested neutrality, in contrast to perceivably ‘politicised’ local languages (ibid.: 362). Similarly, the NGOs studied in this chapter are also predominantly Anglophonic. Therefore, the cosmopolitan cultures at play here have a particular Western European and North American inflection. Why do these NGOs act as spaces that bring together individuals with such cosmopolitan dispositions? According to Heins, a cosmopolitanuniversalist orientation and the ‘…concern for the suffering of ordinary people were clearly among the general preconditions for the rise of NGOs and related social movements’ (2008: 62). Historically, these humanist NGOs developed and thrived in countries where a ‘post-nationalist’ culture was most pronounced; in ‘…a moral climate that tends to replace the old dualism of friends and foes, victors and vanquished, by the new dualism of perpetrators and victims’ (ibid.: 86). Therefore, in addition to the previous chapter’s emphasis on AI, HRW and the ICG’s responsivity to their knowledge markets, one also needs to acknowledge their porousness to this broader cosmopolitan cultural context. In more recent years, with the adoption of flagship liberal-cosmopolitan issues relating to—for example—gender, sexual orientation and support for refugees, this porousness has manifested within their thematic mission creep. The main adjacent professional and educational fields that were outlined in the previous section—especially the United Nations, the wider NGO sector and the sub-field of human rights—are culturally homologous in this regard. They too have been porous to a cosmopolitan cultural influence. Here, the homologous cosmopolitan cultures that exist across similar types of organisations (e.g. between the UN and the NGOs studied here) allow individuals endowed with a corresponding habitus to move more easily between them. Conversely, those who lack the requisite cosmopolitan capital necessary to take advantage of these transnational career trajectories are likely to be self-selectively excluded from potential employment. In terms of political or ideological orientation, this is observable in the absence of individuals recruited from conservative, nationalist or even far-left think-tanks or media

The epistemic culture of global advocacy  109 organisations. For example, within the disaggregated data across all three NGOs, individuals with backgrounds at research institutes are not drawn from prominent conservative think-tanks like the Heritage Foundation or the American Enterprise Institute, but from more progressive groups like the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace or the United States Institute of Peace. Likewise, media specialists are not taken from right-leaning outlets, but from the BBC, the New York Times, CNN, Al Jazeera, TIME and The Guardian—the centre to centre-left media that arguably shares the greatest affinity with the kind of cosmopolitan liberalism alluded to above (Mitchell et al., 2014). Yet, how does one define this liberal-cosmopolitan and humanist disposition? Although HRW or AI and the ICG have slightly divergent thematic foci (human rights versus conflict prevention), they appear to combine two distinctive logics: liberal moral idealism, with an emphasis on universal humanist concerns as a superior ethical position, and pragmatism, pro-actively operating within the institutional constraints of national and international politico-legal systems.6 While the original datasets used in this chapter to map out practitioner backgrounds do not cover these tendencies directly, past studies can provide some empirical basis for extending these logics to the current case studies. Regarding the former logic, Goetze has linked peacebuilding professionals working within the UN to the emergence of a globalised middle class whose ideological preferences lie in the promotion of liberal normality (2017: 78). In 2006, Coicaud published a survey of UN staff that, based on respondents’ answers, found idealistic reasons to be the dominant inspiration for pursuing their career path (2006: 17). More proximate to the case studies at hand, Klandermans published a survey of Dutch AI members that also found ideological motives to be central to participation in the movement: …they are socially and politically engaged, culturally educated, read newspapers and weekly magazines; watch the news, documentaries and educative programs. This characterises the Amnesty International participants as the typical new social movement crowd: highly educated, young, professionals, cosmopolitan, and adhering to so-called ‘post material values’ (Klandermans, 2011: 225) Similarly, discussing this liberal sensibility in the context of the human rights profession, Hopgood has argued that: Human rights workers must feel moral solidarity with those they help and must believe such an attachment exists to legitimize, to themselves and others, the work they do. It is not service work, despite efforts to evaluate outcomes using market notions such as utility and efficiency. Morality is more than and different from this. If staff members are

110  The epistemic culture of global advocacy alienated, they may as well work in a commercial job with better terms and conditions, and ethically speaking they probably should (2006: 39) Yet, this moral idealism is balanced against a strong sense of pragmatism. Empirically, both Klandermans’ (2011: 228) survey of AI members and Nowicka and Kaweh’s (2016: 56) study of UN professionals found a mixture of strong moral convictions alongside more utilitarian attitudes. Overall, these dispositions align with the logics guiding the epistemic practices of these advocacy organisations. As seen in the previous chapter, this is evident in AI’s, HRW’s and the ICG’s relative responsivity to their changing knowledge markets. Over time, epistemic practice has been pragmatically re-aligned to cater to shifting demand among knowledge consumers and to ensure distinction vis-à-vis their competitors. The above studies suggest that this utilitarian sensitivity is shared by NGO practitioners at a dispositional level. Thanks to their interstitial positionality, advocates broadly share with many of their reciprocal consumers a similar liberal governance agenda and a pragmatic preference for maximising the efficacy of advocacy. This is most clear in the degree to which there is a dispositional and cultural affinity between the practitioners studied here and individuals working in international organisations, many Western governments and the liberal prestige press. Yet, as suggested above, this affinity also overlaps with the kinds of symbiotic knowledge market relations identified in the previous chapter. Thus, not only do transnational advocates foster transactional relations with the consumers of their policy-relevant knowledge (including the likes of the UN, governmental actors and the media), but those same relations are also underpinned by a degree of cultural and ideological consensus. In Bourdieu’s terms, this convergence of objective structures with the subjective aspirations of both the consumers and the producers of advocacy- oriented knowledge is likely to have a doxic effect, whereby those reciprocal relations become naturalised: In a determinate social formation, the more stable the objective structures and the more fully they reproduce themselves in the agents’ dispositions, the greater the extent of the field of doxa, of that which is taken for granted. When owing to the quasi-perfect fit between the objective structures and the internalized structures which results from the logic of simple reproduction, the established cosmological and political order is perceived not as arbitrary, i.e. as one possible order among others, but as a self-evident and natural order which goes without saying and therefore goes unquestioned, the agents’ aspirations have the same limits as the objective conditions of which they are the product (1977: 166)

The epistemic culture of global advocacy  111 Based on this Bourdieusian understanding, a feedback loop is in operation: practitioners’ subjectivities both strengthen the social bonds that underpin the operation of their market relations vis-à-vis consumers of their epistemic products, while the structures of the knowledge market also encourage the reproduction of those same subjectivities. While further empirical research across the producer-consumer divide would be needed to fully test this process, it would mean that advocacy practitioners’ political imaginaries, and their sense of epistemic possibility, are co-produced by the consensus between them and the external actors with whom they share reciprocal relations. Meanwhile, their internal cultural homogeneity—which is reinforced by recruiting from a pool of individuals with restricted professional, educational and cosmopolitan profiles—ensures the pre-selective exclusion of epistemic heterodoxies.

Organisational mediation The above explication of advocacy practitioners’ backgrounds is one piece of the broader puzzle relating to the formation and delimitation of knowledge circulated and produced by global advocacy organisations. Yet, in seeking a holistic framework to analyse the construction of advocates’ epistemic parameters, studying the practitioner habitus is necessary but insufficient. This is partly because these inculcated subjectivities must contend with the phenomenal reality imposed by the kinds of structured, market-like forces outlined in the previous chapter. These structural pressures come to the fore when new researchers and advocates are recruited to the organisation: their pre-acquired dispositions must contend and be reconciled with the duties of organisational praxis. Practitioners’ prior exposure to the constellation of fields explored above helps to pre-align their habitus to the work of non-governmental advocacy. The homologies between these exogenous spheres and the sphere of advocacy enable the translation of practical knowledge between them. However, this smooth transition is not universal. This is because not all historically acquired dispositions are fully realisable in an organisational context. The individual agency of NGO practitioners is constrained by organisational structures, imperatives and procedures, as well as by the agency of other individuals (e.g. managerial staff and employees) whose brief lies outside of the parameters of research and advocacy (e.g. administration, fundraising and marketing). As Kate Williams has noted, the imperative to project a coherent institutional identity is more central to NGOs than it is to other types of research organisations (e.g. academia), and consequently, ‘…institutional parameters permeate the decisions of individual researchers through the processes of defining, identifying and setting research agendas’, while ‘…an organization’s history of ideological and epistemological positions is a key factor in shaping intellectual interventions or outputs’ (2018: 6–7).

112  The epistemic culture of global advocacy One illustration of this is the non-translation of academic knowledge at the ICG. Despite the significant proportion of ICG staff who have PhDs and prior employment in academic institutions, institutional realities can override critical engagement with academic literatures. For example, looking at the ICG’s reporting on radical Islam in Central Asia, The Diplomat (2017) found a dearth of engagement with the critical academic literature; a literature that has discredited reductionist theories and causal claims (e.g. modernisation theory) present in ICG reporting. Furthermore, the presence of critical approaches to advocacy and conflict- or human rights-related issues within common graduate degree schemes, such as at SOAS or Harvard, do not necessarily translate in the context of organisational praxis. Practitioners at AI and HRW may have been educated in socio-economic rights issues via their human rights education, but the translation of these issues into advocacy practice is limited by the self-circumscribing methodological limits promoted by these organisations. As HRW executive director Kenneth Roth has stated regarding the organisation’s non-engagement in the philosophical discourse on human rights: Certainly, interesting philosophical debates can be had about whether the concept of human rights should embrace positive as well as negative rights. Since consensus in such debates is probably unattainable, the international human rights movement, in my view, has no choice but to rest on a positive-law justification for its work. That is, unless there are concrete and broadly understandable reasons to deviate from existing law, we must defend human rights law largely as written if we are to have any legitimacy and force to our work (2004: 64) In other words, the central imperative of maximising organisational legitimacy delimits advocacy-oriented knowledge by overriding intellectual engagement with more critical humanist discourses. A similar pattern is discernible across the three case studies. Yet, this raises the question: for newly recruited NGO practitioners, what processes and practices are they exposed to that interfere with (or potentially reinforce) their pre-acquired dispositions? What socialising influences are practitioners exposed to during their membership of an advocacy organisation? To answer these questions, one needs to look at the moulding practices and procedures that exist inside the ‘blackbox’ of the NGO. These include quality control, training programmes, and other practices that help to foster communal bonds within an advocacy organisation. As Williams has observes, [t]hink-tanks and government agencies manage the risk of conflicting policy proposals through formal and informal monitoring and feedback processes. Larger organizations, such as multilaterals, tend to operate

The epistemic culture of global advocacy  113 on a more formal basis, whereas smaller organizations, such as niche advocacy think-tanks, tend to rely on informal ongoing assistance and mutual feedback (2018: 7) Therefore, large advocacy INGOs like AI, HRW and the ICG deploy regulatory mechanisms including quality control and peer-oversight to ensure a degree of internal uniformity. With its highly bureaucratised structure and strictly rule-bound behaviour, AI is the primary exemplar of this kind of internal regulatory practice. Here, the emergence of self-circumscribing practices has logically followed from the organisation’s mass membership structure: its full-time professional staff are accountable to policy dictates established through its democratic processes. Consequently, the AI has developed many layers of oversight aimed at vetting and streamlining its advocacy-oriented knowledge outputs. This includes a chain of review and approval processes that is mobilised to enact the organisation’s highly stringent and inflexible approach to writing and publishing, ensuring that all outputs fit within the Amnesty mould. While the number of layers varies depending on the number of AI organs invested in the particular piece of advocacy or research, a single product can—on top of the relevant specialist researcher—be subject to review by the head of region, the head of Research Office, individuals from the Legal Office, the Secretary General’s Office, the Press and Publications Department, a nominated member of the International Executive Committee and, finally, the Secretary General herself/ himself (AI research staff, 2016; Hopgood, 2006: 89–90). This process can be applied to a diversity of materials, including reports, press releases and submissions to governments or intergovernmental institutions. Because of its strong media footprint, which demands a degree of agility and flexibility, HRW does not possess the same number of formal layers of peer-accountability as AI. Yet, as suggested in the previous chapter, HRW’s internal processes of quality control did increase after the Ford Foundationled reforms of the early 1990s, with the addition of new layers of oversight and a greater emphasis placed on unifying the international NGO’s advocacy agenda (Wong, 2012: 127). Today, HRW’s Legal and Policy office constitutes a primary layer of oversight, with a particularly strong emphasis on streamlining knowledge for media and political consumption, maintaining cross-divisional consistency, as well as thoroughly vetting the use of technical or legal terminology (HRW International Justice Program staff, 2016; HRW senior staff, 2016). With a diffuse structure providing a greater level of autonomy to teams of researchers, the ICG has the weakest oversight out of the three NGOs examined here. In line with the vaguer nature of the ICG’s ‘conflict prevention’ mandate, its processes of quality control place less stress on imposing topdown guidelines or rules. Instead, oversight is geared towards ensuring rigour, internal consistency, balance and horizontal learning between different

114  The epistemic culture of global advocacy areas of research (ICG director of research, 2016). Here, uniformity is an aspiration regarding the way reports are formatted (for instance, reflecting Gareth Evans’ establishment of a maximum-25-pages rule) and to the extent that they fit within what Simons (2014: 589) has called the ‘crisis recipe’: outputs must succinctly combine an emphasis on threats, uncertainty and immediacy, while also refraining from providing too much contextual information and maintaining a balance between divergent stakeholders to the given conflict situation (Kosmatopoulos, 2014: 604–605). The policy recommendations included in ICG reporting are also subject to review from various stakeholders. Here, ‘[t]he policy prescriptions attached to Crisis Group reports are settled with input from field and senior staff, and Board members, as well as consultation with governments, inter-governmental organisations, academics and other think-tanks and NGOs’ (ICG, 2015). As Bøås has noted, ‘[t]he extent to which such external quality assurance is sought is not formalised, however, and depends on whether the reports’ authors and their office manager deem it necessary’ (2014: 656). Nevertheless, the persistence of this external oversight emphasises the desire to make outputs palatable to the organisation’s primary reciprocal consumers. Aside from the mediation of knowledge through both formal and informal processes of quality control, other practices relating to the attuning of an NGO’s internal epistemic culture are also evident. Here, one can observe practices that directly contribute to the moulding of employees’ practical know-how. On a formal level, new recruits are subject to socialisation through in-work training. For example, new ICG employees are subject to a managerially led induction programme aimed at specific skills (e.g. report writing, communication, field research and security), as well as a system of mentorship (ICG director of research, 2016). Less formally, such acculturation is aided by having a concentration of staff within the confines of their headquarters. This is particularly relevant for AI and HRW, both of whom have large central offices. The case of AI’s London headquarters is particularly illustrative of this thanks to its long-term spatial continuity—Peter Benenson House, 1 Easton Street has hosted the International Secretariat since 1983 (Hopgood, 2006: 22). As Hopgood and others have commented, low staff turnover has helped the organisation foster a distinct monocultural community inside the walls of Peter Benenson House (ibid.: 35; Welch, 2001: 97). However, as these three organisations have globalised their activities and established new offices across continents, their teams of researchers and advocates have also become increasingly disconnected, potentially undermining this communal dimension. The NGOs studied here have needed to put in place specific practices that address this issue. For example, both HRW and the ICG regularly schedule international meetings to ensure face-toface contact between a globally diffuse body of employees. HRW uses yearly meet-ups in New York City, involving workshops and networking events, to aid intra-organisational relationship-building (HRW International Justice

The epistemic culture of global advocacy  115 Program staff, 2016). Similarly, the ICG hosts staff retreats for each of its regional programmes, as well as a separate annual meeting for its senior staff (ICG director of research, 2016). Therefore, in lieu of daily face-toface interaction, these practices ensure a degree of communal cohesiveness among teams of advocates and researchers. From a managerial perspective, both formal and informal practices of vetting and socialisation are instrumental in ensuring practical alignment with the NGO’s standardised methodologies. In the context of the knowledge market, ensuring consistency of epistemic products—and preventing research that exceeds organisational mandates or political expectations— is important when it comes to protecting organisational legitimacy. While much of the background knowledge and skillsets necessary for effective operation in the knowledge market are acquired before practitioners are recruited to the NGO, the practices of oversight and acculturation highlighted here ensure that market-induced imperatives are embedded within the organisation’s working culture. Overall, these socialising practices are likely to reinforce the bounded professional culture that was highlighted in the previous section.

Conclusion This chapter has provided a detailed insight into the epistemic culture of humanist advocacy. It has done so by shifting the analytical scope to advocates’ exposure to professional, educational, cultural and organisational influences. On the one hand, full-time researchers and advocates at AI, HRW and the ICG act as ‘carriers’ of particular dispositions and practical knowhow gained through their educational trajectories and prior employment in adjacent sectors. These career patterns reflect a relatively narrow set of occupational and educational pathways of entry for these organisations; a factor that appears to exclude certain constituencies from employment, such as the socio-economically disadvantaged. This boundedness is seemingly reinforced by the pre-selective attraction of individuals pre-disposed to work in a liberal-cosmopolitan working environment. While further study is needed in this area, the homologies that exist between employee backgrounds and the kinds of reciprocal consumers identified in the previous chapter, such as policymakers, the media and intergovernmental actors, are likely to have a doxic effect: practitioners’ sense of epistemic possibility is pre-shaped by prior relationships with those very consumers. This is most vividly illustrated in the extent to which the three case studies have developed overlapping professional ties with the United Nations and liberal media outlets. In addition to pre-acquired dispositional influences, the previous section highlighted the role of socialising processes that take place within each NGO. Practices including the formal vetting of knowledge outputs and training programmes enable the practical internalisation of the kind of structural market forces highlighted in the previous chapter.

116  The epistemic culture of global advocacy Taken together, this chapter and the previous one have provided a sociological account of the knowledge ecosystems in operation across these influential advocacy organisations. This has been done by highlighting how both external market dynamics and practitioners’ pre-acquired background influences can shape epistemic practice. However, because the analytical scope has so far relied on institutional boundaries of the organisation as a benchmark for the analysis, I have yet to provide a fully holistic account of the epistemic limits of global advocacy. As suggested by the interstitial positionality of these INGOs vis-à-vis a variety of exogenous fields, advocates’ personal and professional networks transcend the borders of the individual NGO. To account for this stratified reality, the following two chapters will seek to complement the organisationally specific analysis provided here with one that focuses on trans-organisational spaces. Using the case of post-war Sri Lanka as an empirical grounding, this includes examining practitioners’ embedment within issue-specific advocacy networks, as well as observing the extractive spaces that they are exposed to when conducting in-country fieldwork and fact-finding.

Notes 1 The aggregated data are only available to premium subscription LinkedIn users. 2 When this occurs, the relevant sample size will be indicated. 3 This is evident, for instance, in the ICG website’s segregation of country, advocacy and communication specialists. 4 Former directors of AI country sections are well represented among AI boards. These insights are based on looking at the profiles of board members between 2017 and 2007. 5 Out of the common postgraduate degrees among HRW practitioners, the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs places positivistic methods at the core of its curricula. 6 This two-dimensional logic mirrors Nowicka’s study of UN professionals, which found a combination of idealism, an interest in foreign cultures and pragmatism as primary motivating factors in pursuing their career paths (Nowicka and Kaweh, 2016: 56).

References Alikhan, Faris, ‘The Peril of Credential Creep in Foreign Policy’, U.S. News & World Report (2 October 2013), available at: {www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/worldreport/2013/10/02/the-peril-of-credential-creep-in-foreign-policy} accessed 4 January 2018. Amnesty International, ‘Deputy Director For Research (EU, Turkey And Balkans) (2018)’, available at: {https://careers.amnesty.org/vacancy/deputy-director-forresearch-eu-turkey-and-balkans---london-2169/2195/description} accessed 2 March 2018. Amnesty International, ‘International Board’ (2017a), available at: {www.amnesty. org/en/about-us/international-board} accessed 14 December 2017.

The epistemic culture of global advocacy  117 Amnesty International, ‘International Board’ (17 January 2013) available at: {https:// web.archive.org/web/20130117080845/www.amnesty.org:80/en/who-we-are/ our-people/international-executive-committee} accessed 11 January 2018. Amnesty International, ‘International Board’ (26 December 2014), available at: {https://web.archive.org/web/20141226031210/www.amnesty.org/en/who-we-are/ our-people/international-board} accessed 11 January 2018. Amnesty International, ‘International Executive Committee’ (12 January 2007) available at: {https://web.archive.org/web/20070112020206/web.amnesty.org/pages/ aboutai-iec-eng} accessed 11 January 2018. Amnesty International, ‘International Executive Committee’ (16 January 2009) available at: {https://web.archive.org/web/20090116010317/www.amnesty.org/en/ who-we-are/our-people/international-executive-committee} accessed 11 January 2018. Amnesty International, ‘International Executive Committee’ (17 January 2011) available at: {https://web.archive.org/web/20110117010012/www.amnesty.org/en/whowe-are/our-people/international-executive-committee} accessed 11 January 2018. Amnesty International, ‘Turkey Team Volunteer – London Office’ (2017b), available at: {https://careers.amnesty.org/vacancy/turkey-team-volunteer---london- office2177/2203/description} accessed 23 January 2018. Amnesty International research staff, personal interview with AI research staff, London (3 February 2016), personal interview by Alistair Markland. Barré, Alix, ‘Unpaid Internships Widen Inequalities in the Job Market’, Café Babel (23 February 2016), available at: {www.cafebabel.co.uk/brussels/article/ unpaid-internships-widen-inequalities-in-the-job-market.html} accessed 4 January 2018. Bliesemann de Guevara, Berit, ‘On Methodology and Myths: Exploring the International Crisis Group’s Organisational Culture’, Third World Quarterly, 35 (2014), pp. 616–633. Bourdieu, Pierre, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). Bourdieu, Pierre, The Logic of Practice (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1990). Bourdieu, Pierre, and Loïc Wacquant, ‘The Purpose of Reflexive Sociology’ in P. Bourdieu and L. Wacquant (eds.) An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992), pp. 61–216. Brody, Reed, Smita Narula, Arvind Ganesan, Joe Stork, Joseph Buttigieg, Jacinda Swanson, and Neve Gordon, ‘Human Rights and Global Capitalism: A Roundtable Discussion with Human Rights Watch’, Rethinking Marxism, 13 (2001), pp. 52–71. Brooks, Stephen, and Pinar Cil, ‘Blending Advocacy and Research: The Attributes and Brand Identities of the Foremost Human Rights Advocacy Think Tanks’, in D.E. Abelson, S. Brooks and X. Hua (eds.) Think Tanks, Foreign Policy and Geo-Politics: Pathways to Influence (Abingdon: Taylor & Francis, 2016), pp. 37–62. Brown, Widney, ‘Human Rights Watch: An Overview’, in Claude E. Welch (ed.) NGOs and Human Rights: Promise and Performance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), pp. 72–84. Bøås, Morten, ‘“Hunting Ghosts of a Difficult Past”: The International Crisis Group and the Production of “Crisis Knowledge” in the Mano River Basin wars’, Third World Quarterly, 35(4) (2014), pp. 652–668.

118  The epistemic culture of global advocacy Carsley-Mann, Serena, ‘The 39 Richest Canadians Ranked By Wealth’ (2 February 2017), available at: {www.kiwireport.com/39-richest-canadians-ranked-wealth/} accessed 15 December 2017. Coicaud, Jean-Marc, ‘International Organizations as a Profession: Professional Mobility and Power Distribution’, in World Institute for Development Economics Research Paper (United Nations University, 2006), pp. 1–49. Columbia School of International and Public Affairs, ‘Human Rights and Humanitarian Policy (HRHP)’ (2018a), available at: {http://bulletin.columbia.edu/sipa/ concentrations/hrhp/#requirementstext} accessed 15 February 2018. Columbia School of International and Public Affairs, ‘Master of International Affairs’ (2018b), available at: {https://sipa.columbia.edu/academics/programs/masterinternational-affairs} accessed 15 February 2018. Columbia School of International and Public Affairs, ‘SIPA Curricula’ (2018c), available at: {http://bulletin.columbia.edu/sipa} accessed 15 February 2018. Columbia School of Law, ‘Courses: Search Results’ (2018a), available at: {www.law. columbia.edu/courses/search-results?curriculumType=All&courseName=& courseNumber=&instructorId=&schoolYear=121&term=Fall&term=Spring& startTime=&endTime=&categoryId=23&points=&evalMethods=&writing Credit=true} accessed 15 February 2018. Columbia School of Law, ‘Human Rights Clinic Mentorship Program’ (2018b), available at: {www.law.columbia.edu/human-rights-institute/clinic-mentors} accessed 15 February 2018. Columbia School of Law, ‘Overview of the Human Rights Clinic’ (2018c), available at: {www.law.columbia.edu/clinics/human-rights-clinic} accessed 15 February 2018. Dezalay, Yves, and Bryant G. Garth, ‘From the Cold War to Kosovo: The Rise and Renewal of the Field of International Human Rights’, Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 2 (2006), pp. 231–255. Duff, Patricia A., ‘Transnationalism, Multilingualism, and Identity’, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 35 (2015), pp. 57–80. Emerson, John, Margaret L. Satterthwaite, and Anshul Vikram Pandey, ‘The Challenging Power of Data Visualization for Human Rights Advocacy’ in Molly K. Land and Jay D. Aronson (eds.) New Technologies for Human Rights Law and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 162–187. Everett, Jeffery, ‘Organizational Research and the Praxeology of Pierre Bourdieu’, Organizational Research Methods, 5 (2002), pp. 56–80. Evans, Gareth, ‘The International Crisis Group: The Role of a Global NGO in Preventing and Resolving Deadly Conflict’, gevans.org (17 May 2012), available at: {www.gevans.org/speeches/speech471.html} accessed 17 July 2017. Evans, Tony, ‘International Human Rights Law as Power/Knowledge’, Human Rights Quarterly, 27 (2005), pp. 1046–1068. Eyal, Gil, and Grace Pok, ‘What Is Security Expertise? From the Sociology of Professions to the Analysis of Networks of Expertise’, in T.V. Berling and C. Bueger (eds.) Security Expertise: Practice, Power, Responsibility (London: Routledge, 2015), pp. 37–59. Fortune, Conor, ‘Digitally Dissecting Atrocities – Amnesty International’s Open Source Investigations’, Amnesty International (26 September 2018), available at: {www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/09/digitally-dissecting-atrocities-amnestyinternationals-open-source-investigations} accessed 1 June 2019.

The epistemic culture of global advocacy  119 Garrido, Maria Rosa, ‘Multilingualism and Cosmopolitanism in the Construction of a Humanitarian Elite’, Social Semiotics, 27 (2017), pp. 359–369. Goetze, Catherine, The Distinction of Peace: A Social Analysis of Peacebuilding (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017). Goetze, Catherine, and Berit Bliesemann de Guevara, ‘The “Statebuilding Habitus”: UN staff and the cultural dimension of liberal interventionism in Kosovo’, in Berit Bliesemann de Guevara (ed.) Statebuilding and State-Formation (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012), pp. 198–213. Google Maps, ‘Empire State Building – United Nations Secretariat Building, 405 E 42nd St, New York, NY 10017, USA’ (2018), available at: {www.google.co.uk/maps/ dir/Empire+State+Building,+New+York,+NY,+USA/United+Nations+Secretariat+ Building,+405+E+42nd+St,+New+York,+NY+10017,+USA/@40.7475653,-73.979 77,15.75z/data=!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x89c259a9aeb1c6b5:0x35b1cfbc89a6097f !2m2!1d-73.9857577!2d40.7485413!1m5!1m1!1s0x89c2591c5b5896d7:0x5b6f3d4ed b00a068!2m2!1d-73.9674772!2d40.7491608!3e2?hl=en} accessed 17 January 2018. Hannerz, Ulf, ‘Foreign Correspondents and the Varieties of Cosmopolitanism’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 33 (2007), pp. 299–311. Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, ‘Amnesty International’ (2018), available at: {http://iop.harvard.edu/get-involved/internships-careers/directorsinternship-program/amnesty-international} accessed 18 February 2018. Harvard Law School, ‘Course Catalog’ (2018a), available at: {http://hls.harvard.edu/ academics/curriculum/catalog/index.html} accessed 15 February 2018. Harvard Law School, ‘Human Rights Advocacy’ (2018b), available at: {http://hls. harvard.edu/academics/curriculum/catalog/default.aspx?o=72008} accessed 15 February 2018. Harvard Law School, ‘Law, Inequality, and Power: The Legal Construction of 21st Century Capitalism’ (2018c), available at: {http://hls.harvard.edu/academics/ curriculum/catalog/default.aspx?o=71930} accessed 15 February 2018. Heins, Volker, Nongovernmental Organizations in International Society: Struggles Over Recognition (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). Hendrix, Cullen, and Wendy Wong, ‘Knowing Your Audience: How the Structure of International Relations and Organizational Choices Affect Amnesty International’s Advocacy’, The Review of International Organizations, 9 (2014), pp. 29–58. Hilton, Matthew, James McKay, Nicholas Crowson and Jean-François Mouhot, The Politics of Expertise: How NGOs Shaped Modern Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). Hopgood, Stephen, Keepers of the Flame: Understanding Amnesty International (London: Cornell University Press, 2006). Hopgood, Stephen, The Endtimes of Human Rights (London: Cornell University Press, 2013). Hudson, Sheena, and Kerr Inkson, ‘Volunteer Overseas Development Workers: The Hero’s Adventure and Personal Transformation’, Career Development International, 11 (2006), pp. 304–320. Human Rights Watch, ‘2015–2016 Fellowships in International Human Rights’ (2018a), available at: {www.hrw.org/news/2014/08/08/2015-2016-fellowships-internationalhuman-rights} accessed 6 January 2018. Human Rights Watch, ‘Advisory Committees’ (2017a), available at: {www.hrw.org/ about/people/advisory-committees} accessed 16 January 2017.

120  The epistemic culture of global advocacy Human Rights Watch, ‘Board of Directors’ (2017b), available at: {www.hrw.org/ about/people/board-directors} accessed 15 December 2017. Human Rights Watch, ‘Bruce Rabb’ (2017c), available at: {www.hrw.org/about/ people/bruce-rabb} accessed 15 December 2017; Human Rights Watch, ‘David Lakhdhir’, available at: {www.hrw.org/about/people/david-lakhdhir} accessed 15 December 2017. Human Rights Watch, ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ (2018b), available at: {www. hrw.org/frequently-asked-questions-faq} accessed 4 January 2018. Human Rights Watch, ‘David Lakhdhir’ (2017d), available at: {www.hrw.org/about/ people/david-lakhdhir} accessed 15 December 2017. Human Rights Watch, ‘Karen Herskovitz Ackman’ (2017e), available at: {www.hrw. org/about/people/karen-herskovitz-ackman} accessed 15 December 2017. Human Rights Watch, ‘People’ (2017f), available at: {www.hrw.org/about/people} accessed 4 December 2017. Human Rights Watch, ‘Q&A: 2014 Hostilities between Israel and Hamas’ (3 August 2014), available at: {www.hrw.org/news/2014/08/03/qa-2014-hostilities-betweenisrael-and-hamas} accessed 23 February 2018. Human Rights Watch International Justice Program staff, conference call interview with HRW International Justice Program staff member (7 April 2016), by Alistair Markland. Human Rights Watch senior staff, personal interview with HRW senior staff member, New York (27 April 2016), by Alistair Markland. International Crisis Group, ‘About’ (2015), available at: {www.crisisgroup.org/en/ about.aspx} accessed 28 April 2015. International Crisis Group, ‘Board of Trustees’ (2017a), available at: {www.crisisgroup.org/who-we-are/board} accessed 15 December 2017. International Crisis Group, ‘Central Africa Project Volunteer’ (2018a), available at: {http://jobs.crisisgroup.org/o/central-africa-project-volunteer-intern} available at 5 January 2018. International Crisis Group, ‘EU Advocacy and Research Volunteer’ (2018b), available at: {http://jobs.crisisgroup.org/o/eu-advocacy-research-volunteer-intern} available at 5 January 2018. International Crisis Group, Fifteen Years on the Frontlines (Brussels: 2010). International Crisis Group, ‘How We Work’ (2018c), available at: {www.crisisgroup. org/how-we-work/methodology} accessed 21 February 2018. International Crisis Group, ‘Our People’ (2017b), available at: {www.crisisgroup.org/ who-we-are/our-people} accessed 1 December 2017. International Crisis Group, ‘Welcome to the International Crisis Group Careers Page’ (2017c), available at: {http://jobs.crisisgroup.org/} accessed 5 January 2018. International Crisis Group director of research, conference call interview with ICG director of research (8 April 2016), by Alistair Markland. Klandermans, Bert, ‘Who Participates and Why?’, in Wilco de Jonge, Brianne McGonigle Leyh, Anja Mihr and Lars van Troost (eds.) Amnesty International 50 Years - Reflections and Perspectives (Utrecht: Amnesty International and The Netherlands Institute of Human Rights, 2011), pp. 221–240. Kosmatopoulos, Nikolas, ‘Sentinel Matters: The Techno-Politics of International Crisis in Lebanon (and Beyond)’, Third World Quarterly, 35 (2014), pp. 598–615.

The epistemic culture of global advocacy  121 Lam, Wan Shun Eva, and Doris S. Warriner, ‘Transnationalism and literacy: Investigating the mobility of people, languages, texts, and practices in contexts of migration’, Reading Research Quarterly, 47 (2012), pp. 191–215. LinkedIn, ‘Amnesty International’ (2017a), available at: {www.linkedin.com/ company/162441} accessed 21 November 2017. LinkedIn, ‘Human Rights Watch’ (2017b), available at: {www.linkedin.com/ company/17544} accessed 4 December 2017. LinkedIn, ‘International Crisis Group’ (2017c), available at: {www.linkedin.com/ company/164416} accessed 1 December 2017. London School of Economics and Political Science, ‘MSc Human Rights’ (2018), available at: {www.lse.ac.uk/study-at-lse/Graduate/Degree-programmes-2018/ MSc-Human-Rights} accessed 15 February 2018. Martens, Kerstin, ‘Professionalised Representation of Human Rights NGOs to the United Nations’, The International Journal of Human Rights, 10 (2006), pp. 19–30. McPherson, Ella, Isabel Guenette Thornton and Matt Mahmoudi ‘Open Source Investigations and the Technology-Driven Knowledge Controversy in Human Rights Fact-Finding’ in Alexa Koenig, Sam Dubberley and Daragh Murray, (eds.) Digital Witness: Using Open Source Information for Human Rights Investigation, Documentation and Accountability (Oxford: Oxford University Press, Forthcoming 2019). Mitchell, Amy, Jeffrey Gottfried, Jocelyn Kiley and Katerina Eva Matsa, ‘Political Polarization & Media Habits’ (21 October 2014), Pew Research Center, available at: {www.journalism.org/2014/10/21/political-polarization-media-habits} accessed 2 March 2018. New York University School of Law, ‘Course Descriptions’, available at: {http://its. law.nyu.edu/courses/index.cfm?#searchResults2} accessed 15 February 2018. Noe, Nicholas, ‘When NGOs Call For Military Intervention in Syria: The Case of the International Crisis Group’, Huffington Post (September 2015), available at: {www. huffingtonpost.com/nicholas-noe/when-ngos-call-for-intervention_b_8136362. html} accessed 17 July 2017. Nowicka, Magdalena, Transnational Professionals and Their Cosmopolitan Universes (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2006). Nowicka, Magdalena, and Ramin Kaweh, ‘Looking at the Practice of UN Professionals: Strategies for Managing Difference and the Emergence of Cosmopolitanism Identity’, in M. Rovisco and M. Nowicka (eds.) Cosmopolitanism in Practice (Farnham: Ashgate, 2016), pp. 51–71. Oelberger, Carrie, ‘How Does Professionalization Impact International Human Rights Organizations?’, OpenDemocracy (7 May 2015), available at: {www.open democracy.net/openglobalrights/carrie-oelberger/how-does-professionalizationimpact-international-human-rights-org} accessed 16 February 2018. O’Flaherty, Michael, and George Ulrich, ‘The Professionalization of Human Rights Field Work’, Journal of Human Rights Practice, 2 (2009), pp. 1–27. Piracés, Enrique, ‘The Future of Human Rights Technology: A Practitioners View’ in K.L. Molly and Jay D. Aronson (eds.) New Technologies for Human Rights Law and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 289–308. Powers, Matthew, ‘The Structural Organization of NGO Publicity Work: Explaining Divergent Publicity Strategies at Humanitarian and Human Rights Organizations’, International Journal of Communication, 8 (2014), pp. 90–107.

122  The epistemic culture of global advocacy Rall, Katharina, Margaret L. Satterthwaite, Anshul Vikram Pandey, John Emerson, Jeremy Boy, Oded Nov, and Enrico Bertini, ‘Data Visualization for Human Rights Advocacy’, Journal of Human Rights Practice, 8(2) (2016), p. 171–197. Ranker, ‘Famous John F. Kennedy School of Government Alumni’ (2018), available at: {www.ranker.com/list/famous-john-f-kennedy-school-of-government-alumni-andstudents/reference} accessed 18 February 2018. Roth, Kenneth, ‘Defending Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: Practical Issues Faced by an International Human Rights Organization’, Human Rights Quarterly, 26 (2004), pp. 63–73. Schein, Edgar H., Organizational Culture and Leadership (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010). School of Oriental and African Studies School of Law, ‘MA Human Rights Law’ (2018), available at: {www.soas.ac.uk/law/programmes/ma/mahumrightslaw} accessed 15 February 2018. Sharp, Dustin N., ‘Human Rights Fact-Finding and the Reproduction of Hierarchies’, in P. Alston and S. Knuckey (eds.) The Transformation of Human Rights Fact-Finding (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 69–87. Simons, Greg, ‘The International Crisis Group and the Manufacturing and Communicating of Crises’, Third World Quarterly, 35 (2014), pp. 581–597. Suárez, David, and Patricia Bromley, ‘Professionalizing a Global Social Movement: Universities and Human Rights’, American Journal of Education, 118 (2012), pp. 253–280. The Diplomat, ‘Understanding Islamic Radicalization in Central Asia’ (20 January 2017), available at: {http://thediplomat.com/2017/01/understanding-islamicradicalization-in-central-asia} accessed 17 July 2017. Times Higher Education, ‘World University Rankings 2018’ (2018), available at: {www. timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2018/world-ranking#!/ page/0/length/25/sort_by/rank/sort_order/asc/cols/stats} accessed 1 December 2017. University of Essex, ‘Human Rights Centre Clinic’ (2018a), available at: {www1. essex.ac.uk/hrc/careers/clinic/} accessed 15 February 2018. University of Essex, ‘Postgraduate Course: LLM International Human Rights Law’ (2018b), available at: {www.essex.ac.uk/courses/pg00637/1/llm-international-humanrights-law} accessed 15 February 2018. Wacquant, Loïc, ‘Pierre Bourdieu’, in R. Stones (ed.) Key Contemporary Thinkers (London: Macmillan, 2006), pp. 261–277. Welch, Claude E., ‘Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch: A Comparison’, in Claude E. Welch (ed.) NGOs and Human Rights: Promise and Performance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), pp. 85–118. Williams, Kate, ‘Three Strategies for Attaining Legitimacy in Policy Knowledge: Coherence in Identity, Process and Outcome’, Public Administration, (2018), pp. 1–17. Winston, Morton E., ‘Assessing the Effectiveness of International Human Rights NGOs’, in C. E. Welch (ed.) NGOs and Human Rights: Promise and Performance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), pp. 25–54. Wong, Wendy H., Internal Affairs: How the Structure of NGOs Transforms Human Rights (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012).

5

The epistemic limits of global advocacy on post-war Sri Lanka

Introduction As outlined in Chapter 2, global advocacy, conceptualised as an epistemic activity, is defined to a large degree by market-like relations between its producers and its consumers, as well as relations among producers. However, these relations not only have an impact at the organisational level (between an NGO and its knowledge market), but their effects can also be observed among smaller groups of practitioners. Reflecting this reality, this chapter will explore how networks of advocacy practitioners working on a specific issue area—what I define as global advocacy spaces—can also mediate knowledge production. By zooming in the analytical lens, we can see how advocates’ relations and social or political dependencies play out at the meso-level. This shift in the scale of the analysis is necessary to the extent that the meso-level mediation of knowledge production within smaller trans-organisational networks is not wholly reducible to either organisational logics or the macro-level logics of the knowledge market. In order to remain cognisant of the specificities of global advocacy relations in different contexts, this is done through an in-depth case study looking at foreign NGO advocacy and reporting on reconciliation and accountability in the aftermath of the Sri Lankan Civil War. The first section of this chapter explores the social, historical and political processes that precipitated the emergence of increasingly symbiotic relations between advocates working on Sri Lanka after the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in May 2009 and their targeted policy audiences. Applying a revisionist Bourdieusian framework, I argue that these processes of convergence led to the crystallisation of a structured advocacy space after 2010, encompassing a network of global advocates, governmental actors, UN officials and Tamil diaspora activists. The second section will then map out this global advocacy space according to its geographical distribution, its division between core and peripheral sub-spaces and its hierarchising principles. Finally, the last section of this chapter will address how structures of dependence between NGO advocates and their policy audience generated distinct epistemic limits through the construction of orthodox (and the exclusion of heterodox) discourses about Sri Lanka as an object of governance.

124  Epistemic limits of global advocacy

The emergence of Sri Lanka’s global advocacy space The peace process and the logic of conflict mediation Between 1983 and 2009, a brutal and bitter ethnic civil war was fought in Sri Lanka between the armed forces of the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) and the separatist LTTE. International actors became involved at different stages of the protracted conflict. This included direct Indian military intervention after the signing of the Indo-Sri Lankan Peace Accord in 1987, the Norwegian-, EU-, US- and Japanese-led peace process from 2000 to 2006, and military aid and support from various foreign governments during the conflict’s final phase from 2006 to 2009.1 At the turn of the millennium, a series of developments, including externally facilitated peace talks, the expansion of foreign aid, the growth of the Sri Lankan diaspora, as well as the global response to the humanitarian crisis brought about by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, all contributed to the internationalisation of the conflict.2 In other words, there was a multiplication in foreign actors with a political or economic investment in resolving the island’s ethnic conflict. This internationalisation was not just isolated to the engagement of foreign governments, but it also involved the growth of international financing for domestic civil society organisations and, in parallel, increasing interest from foreign NGOs. While a handful of large human rights NGOs like AI and HRW had been sporadically advocating and reporting on issues related to Sri Lanka since the early 1970s and late 1980s respectively, an emerging international aid complex after 2000 ensured that most NGO activities conformed to ‘…a liberal peacebuilding model characterized by a simultaneous pursuit of economic and political reform alongside measures to resolve the conflict’ (AI research staff, 2016; HRW senior staff, 2016; Walton, 2012: 21–22).3 It is in this context that the character of global advocates’ engagements became reflective of the pervasive imperatives of the peace process. For example, smaller groups like the Forum of Federations and the London-based NGO Forum on Sri Lanka primarily invested in advocacy related to conflict mediation, including attempts to strengthen the LTTE’s negotiating capacity, encouraging the LTTE to accept a federal solution to the Tamil Question, as well as countering both the government’s and the rebel group’s war-related propaganda (Salter, 2015: 113; US Counsel staff, 2016). Here, the logic of maintaining the island’s fragile peace took precedent. As Keenan has argued, an implication of this ‘discourse of constructive engagement’, driven largely by international donors, was a de-emphasis on the scrutiny of the warring parties’ conduct, with human rights relegated from the core international agenda (2006a: 477, 2006b: 101). The collapse of the peace process and in the final war However, with the election of Mahinda Rajapaksa as President in November 2005 on a Sinhala nationalist platform, and with the eventual collapse

Epistemic limits of global advocacy  125 of the internationally sponsored peace talks that led to a resumption of armed conflict after 2006, significant changes in the nature of foreign engagement occurred. Here, two partially conflicting dynamics slowly began to replace the previously dominant emphasis on conflict mediation. First, the escalating scope of conflict-related violence generated the objective conditions for greater scrutiny directed at the conduct of both the LTTE and the government forces and their paramilitary proxies. This was reflected in the observable increase in human rights-focused reporting by the largest INGOs working on the country: AI (2008), HRW (2007, 2008a, 2008b) and the ICG (2007, 2008). Despite the GOSL’s attempt to suppress information coming out of the war zone by restricting access to journalists and intimidating NGOs and domestic critics, knowledge of the extent of civilian casualties, alleged violations of international humanitarian law (IHL) and crimes against humanity did filter through to global advocates (US Counsel staff, 2016).4 There was some interface between these global advocates and a handful of international policy audiences, a handful of whom were willing to levy pressure on the Sri Lankan government in an attempt to alleviate the ongoing humanitarian crisis. For example, in October 2008 the European Commission established an investigation into whether Sri Lanka was violating its obligations as part of its bilateral trade preference commitments with the EU (European Commission, 2009).5 Similarly, informal talks at the UN Security Council, involving both humanitarian NGOs and advocacy NGOs, were co-hosted by the French and British Foreign Ministers just one week prior to the war’s end (Becker, 2012: 157). Nevertheless, a second dynamic after 2006 saw a gradual shift in the positions of key international actors, including the United States, the United Kingdom and India, away from attempts to revive the peace process and towards de facto support for the military defeat of the LTTE (Kurtz and Jaganathan, 2016: 104–105). Despite its concerns about the prevalence of enforced disappearances and the deterioration of media freedoms, the United States increasingly favoured a military resolution of the civil war. This position was reinforced by the Buch Administration’s foreign policy, which did not look kindly upon terror tactics deployed by the LTTE, and which sought to compete with China’s growing diplomatic clout in Sri Lanka and South Asia more broadly (ICG analyst, 2016; ICG consultant, 2016; Salter, 2016: 323). Voices in support of international intervention in Sri Lanka were also dampened by parallel events in 2008 and 2009, including the Bush-Obama transition, the global financial crisis, the Lashkar-e-Taiba attacks in Mumbai and Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip (Kurtz and Jaganathan, 2016: 98; Weiss, 2012: 221). Therefore, although there were concerns over the conduct of the Sri Lankan military and its paramilitary proxies, the impact of broader foreign policy realignments and concurrent global distractions worked to constrain the efficacy of humanist advocacy during the final years and months of the war. Despite this, the degree of investment of foreign NGOs on this issue, as well as the initiation of a limited dialogue

126  Epistemic limits of global advocacy between advocacy practitioners and some Western and UN policy audiences, brought foreign actors interested in war-related human rights issues closer together. The immediate post-war period An international consensus on the issue of accountability for war-related abuses did not emerge in the immediate post-war period, despite continued advocacy from global advocates and Tamil diaspora activists. On the 26 and 27 May 2009, less than a fortnight after the Sri Lankan military’s declaration of victory over the LTTE, a special session of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) was held in which an EU-sponsored resolution calling for an international inquiry into rights violations by the Sri Lankan government was soundly defeated (Council of the European Union, 2009). With the fighting over, much of the sense of urgency among international policymakers, including foreign governments and the UN, began to dissipate, despite ongoing concerns about the mass detention of internally displaced persons in military-run camps (Becker, 2012: 170). The military victory that the GOSL had achieved over the LTTE had given it significant domestic—and to a certain extent international—political capital that offered the government significant room for manoeuvre. In the weeks and months following the end of the conflict, it was able to make rhetorical commitments to reconciliatory reforms to its international partners, whilst continuing a domestic political programme of aggressive Sinhala nationalism and growing authoritarianism (LLRC, 2011). While lip service was paid to reconciliation regarding the island’s ethnic divisions, allusions to accountability for large-scale human rights violations and alleged war crimes were markedly absent. As for non-governmental advocacy during this period of relative disengagement, a few trends can be observed. First, since the final phase of the conflict, external NGO researchers found it difficult to gain on-the-ground access to conduct extractive research. The denial of visas issued to foreign NGO professionals applying to visit Sri Lanka, combined with the risk of harassment facing both international practitioners and their domestic contacts—including victims and their families—placed limits on the amount of original documentation that they could produce.6 Although constrained access certainly limited their knowledge productive capacities, it also stimulated foreign NGOs to redouble their advocacy efforts on the international stage. According to one ICG staffer, denial of work visas and the shutting down of their office in Colombo actually enabled an untethering from the imperative to appease the GOSL, a factor that helped the organisation lead the charge on calls for an investigation into alleged war crimes with the publication of its War Crimes in Sri Lanka report (ICG analyst, 2016; ICG, 2010b).

Epistemic limits of global advocacy  127 The post-war period also saw the formation of a number of new, predominantly Western-based, advocacy organisations. Like their larger INGO counterparts, these freshly created NGOs became primarily focused on accountability and human rights-related issues. These include the London-based Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice (SLC) and the International Truth and Justice Project Sri Lanka (ITJP) (ITJP 2016; SLC, 2016). At the same time, other smaller NGOs with broader geographical mandates, like the UKbased Freedom from Torture (FFT) and Minority Rights Group International (MRG), also became increasingly invested in Sri Lanka as a country of concern (FFT, 2016; MRG, 2016).7 These investments by Western NGOs were also mirrored by advocacy among Tamil diaspora activists. Indeed, a number of events affecting Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora communities at the end of the civil war, including both the collapse of the LTTE and its global proxies and the galvanising of diaspora-based activism in reaction to the scale of violence directed at ethnic Tamils during the final stages of the conflict, led to the foundation and consolidation of an array of diaspora-led advocacy organisations. For example, People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL) and British Tamils Forum (BTF) were originally set up in the United States in 2005 and the United Kingdom in 2006 respectively; both of which morphed into eliteoriented advocacy groups emphasising human rights and war crimes-related issues, as well as support for Tamil self-determination (BTF representative, 2016; PEARL, 2016a). Other diaspora groups founded during the end-of-war and immediate post-war periods continued to reflect these themes, including the US- and UK-based Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), the United States Tamil Political Action Council (USTPAC) and the Global Tamil Forum (GTF) (GTF, 2016; TAG, 2016a; USTPAC, 2016).8 As will be explored below, this post-war growth of advocacy organisations can be seen as part of an emerging social space with its own specific discourse and structure. The crystallisation of Sri Lanka’s global advocacy space After 2010, the temporary dissipation of immediate international concern that preceded the end of the war was slowly succeeded by growing anxiety about the political trajectory of Rajapaksa’s Sri Lanka. This represented a shift from the non-interventionist perception that Sri Lanka was able to undergo post-conflict reconciliation on a purely voluntary basis, and that the GOSL needed time and space to heal its divisions, to a more interventionist mode of engagement that construed the country as a problematic and illiberal entity. In the face of growing authoritarian governance and impunity for war-time abuses, a revision occurred around what was perceived to be politically necessary to prevent a future return to instability: greater reconciliation between the island’s ethnic communities through the active promotion of accountability and justice policies. This trend brought a critical mass

128  Epistemic limits of global advocacy of international actors, including the US and EU governments and certain officials and bodies within the UN, into greater alignment with an increasingly saturated network of foreign advocates—including both larger and smaller NGOs, as well as Tamil diaspora activists—who were promoting issues linked to reconciliation, accountability, human rights and alleged war crimes. By 2011, these developments had led to an increasingly symbiotic relationship between the two sets of actors. It is in this context of growing co-dependence that liberal governance logics began to structure an emergent global advocacy space. However, before exploring these dynamics, this sub-section will first take a look at some of the precipitating developments that allowed for such a structuration to occur, including domestic political pressures on the legislatures of key states calling for greater intervention and the growing perception that Sri Lanka was becoming an international pariah. After the start of the final phase of the Sri Lankan Civil War, some governments faced domestic pressure to pursue a more interventionist and critical foreign policy on Sri Lanka. This was most acute in the United Kingdom, where British Tamil activists were able to use parliamentary elections and party politics to push for a more critical stance against the GOSL (BTF representative, 2016). While the UK government had mixed and sometimes contradictory political interests relating to Sri Lanka, the concentration of British Tamil voters in swing-vote constituencies helped to politicise Tamil-related issues around UK elections (Borger, 2010). To a somewhat lesser degree, legislative pressure was also experienced in the US context, where advocates were able to elicit the support of congressional allies to push the Obama Administration towards a more interventionist stance (Becker, 2012: 160; US Counsel staff, 2016).9 Some domestic political pressure was also experienced in India, where Tamil political parties became increasingly critical after the final days of the war (Pattanaik, 2014: 634). Overall, the pressure from Tamil diaspora advocates, as well as the pro-activity of both established and emerging NGOs, fed into a growing frustration among international (and particularly Western) actors with Sri Lanka’s lack of progress on reconciliatory reforms and its increasingly illiberal governance. This was especially the case after the passage of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution in September 2010, which removed checks on Presidential power (The Economist, 2010). The perception of President Rajapaksa as a recalcitrant despot in the Western imagination was reinforced by the June 2011 airing of Channel 4’s Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields, a provocative film that was used as an advocacy tool by INGOs to urge policymakers and diplomats to take allegations of war crimes seriously (Macrae, 2011).10 The problematisation of Rajapaksa’s authoritarian governance formed an important backdrop to the convergence of advocates with Western policymakers around issues of accountability and justice for war-time atrocities and continuing post-war rights abuses. Yet, in itself, NGO advocacy was not sufficient to shift foreign policy priorities. What also mattered was

Epistemic limits of global advocacy  129 key governments’ global political calculations. Within the US context, a strategic political concern that manifested inside the State Department was the GOSL’s growing ties with China, and the potential geopolitical consequences that stemmed from this; particularly regarding China’s influence over the Palk Strait, a major trading route, as well as control over the Indian Ocean more generally (ICG analyst, 2016; GTF activist, 2016). While some US policymakers feared that aggressive human rights criticism might further alienate Sri Lanka, a belief emerged that accountability could be used as a tool to discipline the GOSL’s recalcitrant behaviour (Weiss, 2012: 179). Those favouring the latter stance were complemented by a broader trajectory within the Obama Administration towards pursuing a multilateral foreign policy. Sri Lanka therefore came to be seen by some officials as an opportunity for US multilateral re-engagement on the global stage (and at the UNHRC in Geneva particularly). This came in the wake of the unilateralism of the Bush years. Thus, Eileen Donahoe—US Ambassador to the UNHRC—personally took up the issue by the end of 2011 (ICG analyst, 2016; SLC staff 2016; Ratner, 2012: 808). Accountability therefore became a potential weapon for levying pressure on the GOSL in order to push the country away from China and towards liberalisation and reconciliation. This weaponisation of accountability was also helped by the fact that the President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s own brother, Sri Lankan Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, held US citizenship. Because of the Defence Secretary’s links to alleged war crimes committed during the final phase of the conflict, this gave the United States a unique point of leverage over the GOSL, enhancing the potential instrumental benefits of pursuing accountability (Goodman, 2016). Alongside shifting foreign policy priorities among various states, parallel developments were also occurring at the UN. Here, momentum within the UN system for some form of accountability process must be seen in the context of its almost complete lack of action during the final years and months of the civil war. This inaction, which was influenced by anti-interventionist opposition at the UN Security Council, was criticised by the UN’s Internal Review Panel on Sri Lanka: Throughout the final stages of the conflict, Member States did not hold a single formal meeting on Sri Lanka, whether at the Security Council, the Human Rights Council or the General Assembly. Unable to agree on placing Sri Lanka on its agenda, the Security Council held several ‘informal interactive dialogue’ meetings, for which there were no written records and no formal outcomes. At the meetings, senior Secretariat officials presented prepared statements that focused largely on the humanitarian situation. They did not emphasize the responsibilities of the Government or clearly explain the link between Government and LTTE action and the obstacles to humanitarian assistance. Nor did they give full information on the deaths of civilians (UN, 2012)

130  Epistemic limits of global advocacy Combined with high-level advocacy from INGOs and the support of some senior UN officials, pressure for an enquiry into accountability began to build inside the office of the UN Secretary-General (UNSG) in New York (UN official, 2016b). This ultimately led to the establishment of a ‘Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka’ in June 2010, followed by the publication of its so-called ‘Darusman Report’ in March 2011. While its limited mandate and politically sensitive nature prevented the report from making far-reaching recommendations, such as referring Sri Lanka to the International Criminal Court, it did initiate the process through which the Internal Review Panel was established (Ratner, 2012: 802). With the publication of the UN Internal Review Panel report, some reformist officials within the UN began to see Sri Lanka as a paradigmatic example of UN system failure (UN official, 2016a). This broader discontent with the functioning of the UN system provided a backdrop for an increasing investment of certain UN officials in New York with the distinct advocacy space that was beginning to evolve around the issue of post-conflict accountability. The coming together of these actors with global advocates is further highlighted by the fact that both of these panels involved significant consultation with INGOs, particularly with the AI, HRW and the ICG (ibid.; UN official, 2016b).11 However, the flurry of activity around these panels was not followed up by the UNSG in New York. Instead, Ban Ki-Moon passed jurisdiction over the issue of accountability to Geneva by sending the Darusman Report to the UNHRC and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) (United Nations Information Centre for Western Europe, 2011). Despite the failure of the EU to get a critical resolution passed in Geneva in the immediate aftermath of the war, the UNHRC became the new focal point for the issue after 2011. This brought the network of advocacy organisations highlighted above into closer relations with Member States at the UNHRC, with the pro-accountability block led by the United States under the stewardship of Ambassador Eileen Donahoe, and the OHCHR itself. This began a sequential process through which three increasingly critical US-sponsored resolutions were passed at the UNHRC in its March 2012, March 2013 and March 2014 sessions; the latter of which succeeded in mandating an OHCHR investigation into alleged human rights abuses (UNHRC, 2012, 2013, 2014). What can be observed in this post-war period, especially from mid-2010 to late 2011, was not only a greater concern among international actors with the past and present conduct of the GOSL, but also an increasing investment in relations with the burgeoning network of global advocates working on the same issues. As already highlighted, these investments were driven by partially divergent logics, ranging from domestic political pressures to demonstrate solidarity with Sri Lankan Tamils, to the construction of Rajapaksa’s Sri Lanka as an increasingly authoritarian and anti-Western entity in need of limited liberal governance reform, as well as the desire by some UN officials for a restoration of UN functionality on human rights

Epistemic limits of global advocacy  131 issues in the context of systematic failures. The primary aim was to shame the Sri Lankan government into changing its practices. Although these international actors were driven into this new territory by different imperatives, it was their convergence around a similar policy problem that helped crystallise the network into a distinct social space with its own social logic. This process of social formation involved a growing symbiosis between the actors involved. While foreign policy audiences sought NGO input and legitimation for the reformulation of their policies relating to Sri Lanka, advocates became increasingly reliant on Western and UN policy audiences as allies in the promotion of their advocacy agendas. This symbiotic condition provided the basis upon which political logics could dominate the advocacy space, and this subsequently helped to shape the structure of the space itself. This included the importation of a specific logic of liberal peace governance, which itself can be divided into different aspects. First, it espoused the assumption supported by many foreign NGOs that reconciliation and accountability reforms were necessary to quell residual antagonisms that might lead to future instability in Sri Lanka. This conceptualisation of the relationship between justice and peace effectively instrumentalised justice for the overarching imperative of suppressing any likelihood of future ethnic conflict on the island, as well as centralising a definition of justice that was linked to a universalist approach to rights and institutional reform. Therefore, peace was conceived as stemming from liberal reforms on a universalist Western model that emphasised physical-integrity, political and civil rights, as well as the need for distanced non-partisanship in the formulation of interventionist remedies. Second, the dominant Western conception of liberal peace that emerged after 2010 also included a particular vision of Sri Lanka’s political system. In the post-war context, this was related to the perception that Sri Lanka was a semi-functioning liberal democracy in need of liberal reforms to induce full functionality. This included an acceptance of the country as a non-federal state. The grievances of the island’s different ethnic communities came to be seen as reparable within a more-or-less unitary framework, albeit alongside the promotion of respect for minority rights and a degree of devolution along the lines of the 13th Amendment to the Sri Lankan constitution (a 1987 amendment that was never fully implemented, which sought to devolve power to provincial councils) (Bandarage, 2012: 110).12 The dominant policy logic in question also emphasised a multilateral and non-confrontational form of interventionism. This was in tune with the desired approach of the Obama Administration, as well as the diplomatic character of the political institutions through which these issues were raised (primarily the UN but also the Commonwealth of Nations in 2013). A key implication of this diplomatic style was that, especially after the UNHRC became the major platform for pushing the issue of accountability in 2012, it became necessary to gain the support of potential allies within the international arena. Similarly, its proponents also needed to remain conscious of domestic political sensitivities, such as

132  Epistemic limits of global advocacy aggressive Sinhalese nationalism and anti-interventionist sentiments, in order to avoid totally alienating the GOSL and driving it further into the arms of China. The growing symbiosis between Western and UN policy actors and foreign NGO advocates meant that the dominant image of liberal peace espoused by the former permeated and helped to structure relations within the emerging advocacy space. This model of liberal peace governance had a dichotomising impact on the network of international advocates who had been working on Sri Lanka in the post-war period. Principally, it led to a juxtaposition within the advocacy network between a core group of primarily professional practitioners, who were proximate to the dominant conception of liberal peace espoused by key Western and UN policymakers, and a periphery, who diverged from this mainstream standpoint. Furthermore, the governance logics that were imported into the network also helped to erect epistemic boundaries through a delineation of orthodox knowledge, which was roughly aligned with the dominant conception of post-conflict liberal peace, and heterodox knowledge, which represented ideas and policy positions that violated the bounds of acceptability among key policy audiences. In order to dissect this process of structuration in more detail, the next two sections of this chapter will focus on mapping out the relational processes of social and doxic division.

Mapping Sri Lanka’s post-war transnational advocacy space Geographical nodes The post-war period in Sri Lanka saw a growth in foreign NGOs interested in promoting ethnic reconciliation and accountability for war-time human rights violations and alleged war crimes. Influenced by the GOSL’s crackdown on foreign NGO activities, advocates intensified their lobbying in a handful of primarily Western capitals. Although foreign advocacy practitioners and Tamil diaspora activists were engaged in other countries, notably Canada and Germany, the three main geographical nodes of the emergent advocacy space were London, Geneva and Washington, DC. London in particular experienced the development of a critical mass of organisations working on Sri Lanka in the post-war period, including ICG, HRW, AI, FFT, ITJP and the International Working Group (IWG) on Sri Lanka, as well as individuals from British Tamil groups such as BTF and TAG. As discussed in the previous section, the strong electoral incentives for governmental engagement, largely stemming from the United Kingdom’s large diaspora population and Britain’s long-term colonial links to Sri Lanka, provided a conducive environment for critical advocacy on the country. As described by one AI research staff (2016), it was in this context that an ‘informal advocacy group’ formed in London after the war. The development of relations between both long-term and newly formed groups was facilitated

Epistemic limits of global advocacy  133 by their London-based proximity, which allowed for regular informal meetings and collective consultations with the Foreign  & Commonwealth Office and other government departments (ibid.; SLC staff, 2016). On top of targeting the British political arena, London-based groups like IWG also bore a lot of the responsibility for preparing and coordinating international action at the UNHRC in Geneva (US Counsel staff, 2016). NGOs and consultants with a direct presence in Geneva also took on some of this organisational responsibility. This included the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), FORUM-ASIA and the International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism (IMADR), among others (ibid.; ICJ, 2016; FORUM-ASIA, 2016; IMADR, 2016). From the March 2012 UNHRC session onwards, Geneva became an important platform for direct contact between advocates from across the global network, thus deepening the transnational character of the advocacy space itself. As a multilateral forum, the UNHRC also facilitated the convergence of a number of different stakeholders, bringing them into direct interface over the same policy issues—reconciliation, accountability and human rights in the post-war context. It enabled a close dialogue to develop between foreign NGO advocates and high-level diplomats, politicians, UN practitioners, Tamil diaspora activists and Sri Lankan civil society (TAG director, 2016).13 Although not as sizeable as the London grouping or as transnational as Geneva, a parallel network of advocates developed in the United States, albeit one that was linked to the broader lobbying industry in Washington DC. The final months of the war saw an intensification of service-oriented humanitarian groups working on Sri Lanka within the United States, some of whom actively supressed discussion about ongoing war-related human rights violations due to the fear of losing humanitarian access inside the country (ICG consultant, 2016). At the same time, a smaller constellation of advocates interested in reconciliation and accountability scaled up executive and congressional lobbying. This smaller network continued to function in the post-war period, and included individuals working with the US Counsel on Sri Lanka (US Counsel), the Congressionally funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and practitioners from HRW and AI’s offices in the US capital (US Counsel staff, 2016). Policymakers within the United States Congress and State Department officials were the primary targets of this tightly knit group of DC-based advocates. While its marginality as a country of concern in US foreign policy circles was an inhibiting factor for advocacy on Sri Lanka, strong transatlantic links were forged between US groups and their counterparts in Europe. This interface was further strengthened by the common use of social media, as well as the relative mobility of professional advocates (ibid.).14 Here, online communication tools such as email chains and Twitter helped to improve transatlantic civil society relations. Furthermore, partly due to the nature of the profession, many if not most foreign advocacy practitioners and researchers working on Sri Lanka travelled frequently, taking part in panel

134  Epistemic limits of global advocacy events and formal or informal meetings hosted by their overseas counterparts (ibid.). Both online and offline forms of inter-connectivity enhanced the global character of the advocacy space in question, further integrating advocates from across its three main geographical nodes. Epistemic, organisational and social legitimacy As with Bourdieu’s field theory, the foreign NGO practitioners who became invested in Sri Lanka’s post-war advocacy space were involved in a relational and tacit struggle to maximise their positions within the social space’s hierarchy. Advocates who achieved a more prominent position in this hierarchy were better positioned to speak authoritatively to both policy audiences and other advocates. Subsequently, the dominant voices that emerged from these struggles could set the terms of the debate of the advocacy problematique. The distribution of agenda-setting power within the global advocacy space was linked to actors’ struggle over the legitimacy to speak. Drawing on the Bourdieusian concept of capital, this was a struggle to maximise symbolically efficacious cultural and social resources. Certain advocacy-related attributes enabled the ascension of some advocacy voices at the expense of others. These forms of legitimacy included expertise, organisational prestige and social capital. First, advocates in this case study enhanced their credibility with both policymakers and their peers working for rival advocacy groups through an emphasis on epistemic authority. While engaging in direct forms of knowledge production like fact-finding and field-based reporting was not an endeavour shared by all NGOs engaged on Sri Lanka, it featured prevalently. The most distinguished organisation in this regard was the ICG, which produced 13 separate reports covering a wide range of topics between the end of the war in May 2009 and Rajapaksa’s electoral defeat in January 2015 (ICG, 2016).15 Compared to the relative diversity of ICG research, which covered a number of thematic areas within its conflict prevention mandate, much of the documentation and reporting by other foreign NGOs focused on issues related to post-conflict accountability and justice for war-related abuses.16 There was a saturation of humanist—and particularly human rights—voices invested in the advocacy space. This saturation, combined with strategies of distinction sought by NGOs, allowed the broader accountability agenda to become segmented into narrower thematic areas.17 In some cases, thematic specialisation was also complemented by methodological specialisation. For example, FFT and ITJP emphasised expertise through the production of legal knowledge relating to torture and sexual violence (FFT, 2011; Pettitt, 2011; Sooka, 2014).18 The knowledge-driven advocacy of these actors contributed to the ascension of particular sub-themes within post-war advocacy on Sri Lanka, including concerns about alleged war crimes, aided by the ICG’s extensive documentation within its War Crimes in Sri Lanka report, and torture and sexual violence by security services, reflected in the reporting of FFT, ITJP, ICG and HRW (ibid.; ICG, 2010, 2011; HRW, 2013).

Epistemic limits of global advocacy  135 For the large INGOs working on Sri Lanka, namely, AI, HRW and the ICG (known colloquially as the ‘Big Three’), another marker of respectability is their accumulated organisational prestige. Their researchers and advocates working on Sri Lanka were able to draw upon the global reputation of their employers (see Chapter 3 for a historical account of how this reputation was established over time). For example, the ICG’s post-war engagement in high-level advocacy on human rights and accountability—a  relative anomaly compared to its core conflict prevention mandate—benefited from the presence of former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour, who served as its President and CEO from 2009 to 2014 (ICG analyst, 2016). Markers of organisational credibility, such as the ICG’s elite-level affiliations, can therefore induce greater recognition and perceptions of reliability from policy audiences; especially from policymakers and decision-makers who may not have the time or capacity to fully familiarise themselves personally with all of the individuals within an advocacy network (Bliesemann de Guevara, 2014: 564; Bøås, 2014: 653). Similarly, Sri Lanka specialists working for larger and more prominent organisations were able to draw upon institutionalised channels of access to the policy world. This included the benefit of having offices located near to key policy audiences, as well as the privileged access to UN bodies provided to ECOSOC-accredited NGOs.19 While the ability to draw on the prestige and resources provided by larger advocacy organisations is certainly beneficial, it is not in itself a substitute for the accumulation of social capital. In the context of the global advocacy network being mapped out here, social capital can be gauged partly by the degree to which advocates successfully forged and maintained close ties with policy audiences and other stakeholders over time, and partly by their level of integration into the overall network of advocates. The hierarchising role of social capital was particularly important in this case study due to the confidential and sensitive nature of much of the information that was shared within the advocacy network. One of the key ingredients to fostering sustainable advocacy relations is practitioners’ ability to maintain perceptions of trustworthiness. Yet, trust operates as a finite resource that takes time and reciprocal engagement before it manifests. Therefore, durable advocacy relations require temporally sustained social investments with a range of stakeholders. Within the context of an advocacy space populated by both smaller and larger NGOs, economies and diseconomies of scale can also be seen to influence the distribution of social capital. For example, some smaller and nimbler advocacy groups, unencumbered by bureaucratic checks-and-balances, were able to occupy authoritative positions in the global advocacy space, despite lacking the prestige associated with membership of more universally recognised NGO brands. For example, this meant that although practitioners from smaller groups like US Counsel and IWG lacked the same epistemic authority or organisational legitimacy as groups like ICG, AI and HRW, they were able to draw upon their

136  Epistemic limits of global advocacy experience working on the country dating back to the 1990s, experiences that allowed them to construct sustained and influential advocacy relations over the years, making them uniquely placed to take on leadership roles within the network of advocates (AI research staff, 2016). In their totality, epistemic authority, organisational prestige and social capital elevated certain actors within Sri Lanka’s post-war advocacy space. However, they alone do not account for its overall structuration. In a Bourdieusian sense, I consider these cultural and social capitals as secondary principles of hierarchisation that are subordinate to the advocacy space’s primary symbolic capital. As will be explored below, this distribution of symbolic power between different attributes is based on the mapping of the advocacy network between core and peripheral sub-spaces. In isolation, the secondary principles outlined above cannot account for the overall shape of the advocacy space in question. Instead, one must look to the structuring role of heteronomous policy logics in constructing the social space’s most fundamental divisions. Divisions One of the principal distinctions that can be made when mapping Sri Lanka’s post-war global advocacy space is the division between its core network and its periphery. A tightly knit group of professional and predominantly Western-based advocates occupied the core part of the network. For various reasons, including the relative marginality of Sri Lanka as a global topic of concern, there has always been a small pool of full-time NGO practitioners working on the country. Therefore, it is unsurprising that an inner grouping coalesced. While it would be wrong to see this sub-space as static or unchanging, the existence and subsistence of this inner grouping was made evident through qualitative interviews. Based on a triangulation of responses from interviewed practitioners (some of whom were asked to directly interpret membership of this core), the ICG, IWG, US Counsel, SLC, AI and the ITJP were cited most frequently (ibid.; PEARL staff; FFT staff; SLC staff). The functioning of this inner circle was also observable in the amount of informal communication and coordination between its members over the years. Although NGOs can be driven towards competitive tendencies, particularly on the macro, inter-organisational level (as seen in Chapter 3), this core network of advocates was collegial and collusive. The limited size and resources that were available to much of the groups created a perceived need to amplify a shared advocacy message. Similarly, cooperation also enabled a division of labour through which individual practitioners were able to maximise thematic and methodological specialisation, thus circumventing duplication. On the other hand, practitioners with large stocks of social capital, such as those from US Counsel and IWG, were able to take on leadership roles within the network by accepting responsibility for organising

Epistemic limits of global advocacy  137 and coordinating collective advocacy efforts (AI research staff, 2016). With the goal of maximising their impact on policy, a key impact of this collusive trend was the harmonisation of advocacy-oriented knowledge across the network. One interviewee described this collusive tendency as amounting to a ‘narrative-fixing cartel’ (TAG director, 2016). In other words, the interconnected character of this core led to the negotiation and diffusion of policy ideas, narratives and framings between the actors involved. This was most evident in pre-lobbying consultations conducted by leading members of the network. For example, this was observed in the weeks prior to UNHRC sessions, as well as in the collective pre-agreement of responses to important political developments inside Sri Lanka (AI, 2010).20 The capacity of these actors to elevate particular forms of knowledge, such as reporting and advocacy around post-conflict accountability and justice, stemmed partly from their ability to coordinate a collective advocacy voice, and partly from the authority and legitimacy they had accumulated within the global advocacy space. As highlighted already, much of this legitimacy was rooted in advocates’ perceived expertise, organisational prestige or social capital. However, these factors alone do not entirely account for why certain epistemic orthodoxies emerged at the expense of others. Similarly, these properties also fail to explain the major division within the advocacy space: between the core grouping and the marginalised periphery. Deploying a relational mode of analysis, it is important to unearth the main principle of hierarchisation that underpins this structural dichotomisation. This entails posing the following question: What is it that makes the core authoritative in opposition to the periphery? As part of the global advocacy space being mapped here, the periphery denotes a specific sub-region of that space which is defined in a negative relation to the core. While the core is a sub-space of structurally advantaged actors, the periphery is occupied by the structurally disadvantaged. Empirically speaking, this sub-space is substantiated by two sources. First, it is evidenced through core network members’ practices of active disavowal and marginalisation. Second, this was corroborated by observing marginalised individuals’ reflections on their maladjustment in relation to the mainstream group of advocates. The group of Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora organisations that proliferated after the end of the civil war were the primary constituency occupying this relatively peripheral position.21 Yet, it is true that, hypothetically, any individual defined negatively in relation to the core could also be considered as part of this periphery. Thus, if Sinhalese nationalist organisations—who could also be defined negatively in relation to foreign advocacy NGOs through their anti-liberal tendencies—had engaged substantially in global advocacy, they also would have occupied this peripheral sub-space. Therefore, while the periphery is not the sole domain of Tamil diaspora activists, focusing the analysis on them here is justified both due to their significant investment in transnational advocacy and by the evident pattern of marginalisation that was directed towards them.

138  Epistemic limits of global advocacy Sociologically, this marginalised position was made empirically clear through studying the practices of exclusion of diaspora voices by Western advocates; a pattern that was triangulated through research interviews on both sides of the diaspora-foreign NGO divide (TAG director, 2016; PEARL staff, 2016; ICG consultant, 2016).22 Within the advocacy network, these marginalising practices included exclusion from informal meetings and online dialogues, denial of participation in official panel events—particularly in Geneva—and public criticism by advocacy NGOs directed at diaspora activists. More specifically, there was a consistent tendency for Western-based NGOs and international NGOs to bypass Tamil diaspora organisations when arranging informal consultations (TAG director, 2016). While there was some dialogue between diaspora NGOs and organisations like ITJP, IWG and US Counsel, close relations—and thus diasporic participation in the core network—were hindered by both their divergent political imperatives, and the perception among foreign NGOs that such groups represented a threat to their independence and credibility (US Counsel staff, 2016; Tamil diaspora researcher, 2016). This jitteriness about being associated with perceivably recalcitrant and partisan diaspora groups was also experienced during past UNHRC sessions in Geneva, where advocacy NGOs refused to share a platform with Tamil diaspora activists at side-events and panels (AI research staff, 2016; PEARL staff, 2016; TAG director, 2016; Tamil diaspora researcher, 2016). In the Geneva context, this marginalisation from the foreign NGO grouping stimulated diaspora advocates, including BTF, PEARL, USTPAC, TAG and Canadian Tamil Congress, to establish their own coordinated lobbying capacities (BTF representative, 2016). While many of these exclusionary practices were informal or private in nature, the ICG’s report on The Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora after the LTTE demonstrated professional advocates’ capacity to publicly problematise and discipline diaspora groups’ support for a nationalist solution to the Tamil Question (ICG, 2010a). Political legitimacy What is it that drives the practices of marginalisation referred to above? While it would be wrong to claim a total parity of expertise between the core group of foreign NGOs and the diaspora organisations, especially considering the finance that was available to the latter which enabled them to hire more full-time professionals, I contend that epistemic authority was not the main principle of distinction here. If expertise was the main structuring principle at play, it would struggle to account for either certain diaspora groups’ investment in professional advocacy-oriented research and reporting, or some of the smaller NGOs’ comparative lack of investment in epistemic practices (TAG, 2016b; PEARL, 2016b). Another illustration is the fact that a former ICG consultant, brought in on the basis of their expertise on Sri Lanka, was also involved in research on behalf of TAG

Epistemic limits of global advocacy  139 despite symbolic discrepancy between the perceivably eminent position of the former and the relative marginalisation of the latter (ICG consultant, 2016). Therefore, while those like the International Crisis Group, who invested the most resources in bolstering their epistemic authority through extensive reporting, were able to distinguish their knowledge within the core network, it fails to explain the advocacy space’s major structural division. Neither does social capital fully explain the emergence of a peripheral sub-space. While some dialogue existed between diaspora NGOs and some of the smaller Western advocacy groups, including the ITJP, FFT and the London-based REDRESS, diaspora organisations were able to cultivate ties with certain political constituencies despite the process of active social estrangement described above (PEARL staff, 2016; TAG director, 2016). For example, in the post-war period, Washington DC-based groups like USTPAC and PEARL established a degree of dialogue with individuals from Congress and the State Department, while BTF forged political alliances across the UK Parliament, and GTF succeeded in fostering political links in South Africa and India (BTF representative, 2016; PEARL staff, 2016; GTF activist, 2016). Therefore, any deficiency in social capital cannot be ascribed purely to a lack of social networking. Instead, this deficiency is related to the primary principle of hierarchisation operating within the advocacy space: the degree of alignment with its dominant logic of governance. As suggested at the end of the last section, Sri Lanka’s post-war global advocacy network manifested through the convergence of international advocates and a collection of primarily Western and UN policy audiences. The symbiotic condition that emerged from this convergence led to the colonisation of the advocacy space by heteronomous logics stemming from those adjacent spheres of foreign policy and governance. In their totality, these political logics largely conformed to powerful Western governments’ shifting conceptions of liberal peace in the post-war context. These logics were similar to what Nadarajah has defined as a political rationality of ‘liberal order making’, which ‘…is about strengthening some not-so-liberal subjects (such as the flawed states of the global South) against even less liberal ones (such as their “terrorist” challengers)’ (2018: 283). This involved an increasingly active interest in promoting the kinds of liberal reforms that were deemed necessary to bring about long-term stability in Sri Lanka. In reference to mapping out the advocacy space in question, the importation of these heteronomous logics of liberal governance played a major structuring role through their discriminatory capacity. These externally sourced policy logics therefore became the primary principle of hierarchisation. In other words, as the global advocacy space took shape, advocates who were in greater alignment with dominant conceptions of liberal peace governance became structurally advantaged through a legitimisation of their social status among both policy audiences and their peers, hence occupying elevated positions within the core network. At the same time, those who were seen to diverge from it, or

140  Epistemic limits of global advocacy even construed as a threat to its logical foundations—like the Tamil diaspora NGOs mentioned above—experienced social marginalisation. Because of the capacity of this liberal peace logic to institute a system of discrimination that manifested in a structural fissure within the network of advocates, it can be considered to operate similar to Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic capital (1989: 17). By establishing a symbiotic relation to policy audiences and their dominant conception of how Sri Lanka should be governed, the core group of NGOs were able to strengthen their input on the policy process, enhancing their ability to convert knowledge into tangible policy outcomes. This condition of relative dependence incentivised the inner circle, on the basis of ensuring smooth access to the policy process, to reproduce these governance logics. In boosting their political legitimacy, this complicity in the reproduction of these logics explains the extent to which the core network of NGOs actively engaged in practices of exclusion. Defending their political privilege, these NGOs sought to fend off perceived threats to the dominant vision of liberal peace. As the core network became relationally defined against the heterodoxies of the periphery, the hierarchical shape of the advocacy space gave structural incentives for advocates to engage in marginalising practices. At the same time, the limits of knowledge production in this politically sensitive case became intimately tied to processes of symbiosis, reproduction and exclusion. As the next section will explicate, these structural fissures culminated in an epistemic division between orthodox and heterodox forms of advocacy-oriented knowledge.

Epistemic boundaries in Sri Lanka’s global advocacy space Having mapped out Sri Lanka’s post-war global advocacy space according to actors’ positional distribution within it, I now wish to explore the implications that these structures of dependency have on the limits of advocacyoriented knowledge. This section will focus on the division of discourse between the consciously avowed (orthodoxy) and the consciously disavowed (heterodoxy). Because of the structural relationship between knowledge and the social relations through which knowledge becomes legitimised, this epistemic mapping reflects the partition of the advocacy space between its core and peripheral sub-spaces. The symbiotic relationship between the advocacy space’s core network and their primary policy audiences worked to provide strong incentives for the inner grouping to (re-)produce knowledge that was palatable to the latter. In contrast, Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora advocates occupying positions within the periphery did not experience the same degree of symbiosis with Western policy audiences, and thus they were less reliant on the consecrating power of these policymaking constituencies. As Walton argues, this is because rather than depending on an external consecration by international political gatekeepers, diaspora activists sourced their legitimacy internally from within the diaspora population (2015: 971).

Epistemic limits of global advocacy  141 This relative autonomy from international actors allowed for the formation of a distinctly heterodox body of knowledge, one that became negatively defined against the orthodoxies of the core grouping. The orthodoxies that developed during the advocacy space’s crystallisation largely came to reflect the conception of liberal peace governance espoused by key policy audiences. This revised logic of liberal peace brought together an assemblage of normative ideals and political assumptions. The main elements that I want to highlight here are those that have, in their combination, had the most structuring impact on the shape of the social space in question. This included the prioritisation of human rights issues, which came to be perceived as necessary for post-conflict reconciliation and longterm stability in Sri Lanka. It also included a specific imaginary of political community and statehood in Sri Lanka that accepted the fundamental legitimacy of the unitary state. Finally, the specific vision of liberal peace that evolved in the post-war period was also bounded by key Western and UN policy actors’ diplomatic and strategic imperatives; especially the desire to avoid alienating the Rajapaksa government and deference to diplomatic protocol within the UN institutions in Geneva. Human rights and methodological universalism As shown previously, foreign NGO advocacy and reporting after the Sri Lankan Civil War became focused on topics ranging from alleged war crimes, such as the shelling of hospitals, to the large-scale enforced disappearances of suspected LTTE cadres, as well as ongoing post-war violations of physical-integrity, civil and political rights and escalating authoritarianism. Here, the elevation of human rights-oriented advocacy had both a supply and demand dimension. On the one hand, the severity of war-related human rights abuses in Sri Lanka generated the empirical basis for the engagement of foreign NGOs on human rights issues. However, in the context of the convergence of these NGOs with Western and UN policy audiences on those same issues, one also needs to consider how advocacy became mediated through relations of dependency between the former and the latter. This dependency of advocates on the constellation of policy actors who had invested in the global advocacy space subsequently helped to construct a particular mode of human rights-oriented knowledge production in the post-war period. As will be argued below, the orthodoxies that emerged from this include an emphasis on methodological universalism, distanced non-partisanship and the rigid application of international legal frameworks. The prioritisation of human rights within Western policy actors’ post-war conceptions of liberal peace needs to be seen in relation to the imperative of reconciliation aimed at alleviating Sri Lanka’s deep ethnic and political divisions; discrepancies that were seen as major drivers of violent conflict on the island. Here, the desire to transcend these entrenched divisions elevated

142  Epistemic limits of global advocacy the status of knowledge that was universal and distanced from perceivably partisan interests. This generated a top-down pressure on international advocates to produce, frame and market their advocacy in a way that balanced the grievances of Sri Lanka’s different ethnic communities, as well as emphasising practitioners’ outsider status to the conflict (ICG, 2010a; HRW, 2015).23 Aside from both foreign NGO and diaspora engagement in human rights advocacy and reporting, this universalising pressure was also reflected in organisational branding. For example, the Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice was self-consciously established as an international and multi-ethnic organisation by a small group of volunteers, many of whom were of Sri Lankan Tamil origin, who wished to create a platform for bringing together diaspora and non-diaspora advocates (Sri Lanka Campaign staff, 2016). Comparably, TAG underwent a similar universalist rebranding from ‘Tamils Against Genocide’ to ‘Together Against Genocide’ (TAG, 2016). These examples reflected an imperative to be seen as transcending the messiness and bitterness of political partisanship inside Sri Lanka. While certain national political contexts provided some leverage to communal group advocacy, such as the relatively close ties between British Tamil diaspora groups and the UK Parliament, the centrality of the UNHRC in Geneva after March 2012 only heightened the struggle to project perceivably distanced and non-partisan knowledge about Sri Lanka. Here, the practices of marginalisation highlighted in the previous section aided the construction of a conceptual juxtaposition between the universally oriented and apolitical international advocate and the partisan and particularistic diaspora activist. Subsequently, the core grouping of foreign NGO practitioners became actively complicit in the definition of the advocacy space’s heterodoxies. This construction of heterodoxy was observable in the language of disavowal deployed by members of the core network of NGOs. For example, this was evident in an ICG report critiquing the dangers of diaspora-initiated strategic litigation on the basis of its ‘political bias’: For example, Tamils Against Genocide, reportedly raised over $500,000 to retain Bruce Fein, a former U.S. Associate Deputy Attorney General, to compile a report charging the Sri Lankan defence secretary and U.S. citizen, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, and former army chief and U.S. permanent resident, Sarath Fonseka, with genocide, war crimes and torture. The report, which TAG submitted to the U.S. Justice Department, aimed to initiate a grand jury investigation focused on documenting the alleged crimes of Sri Lankan officials while ignoring evidence of LTTE abuses. The overt political bias of TAG’s project has undermined its credibility rather than promoted accountability. A U.S. official familiar with the report said, ‘That [political bias] makes it [TAG] hard to take seriously’ (2010a: 15)

Epistemic limits of global advocacy  143 Advocacy by Tamil diaspora groups was therefore castigated for promoting perceivably communal or particularistic interests, and because of their suspected sympathies for a proscribed terrorist group. This castigation was most evident over the clash between foreign NGOs and many Tamil diaspora activists over the latter’s use of the language of ‘structural genocide’ to express the systematic persecution of ethnic Tamils by the Sri Lankan state; particularly in relation to the long-term degradation of social and cultural institutions in Tamil-majority areas of the island, the alleged war crimes in the final months of the war, and widespread sexual violence against Tamils by the Sri Lankan military. As Walton argues, INGOs and their foreign policy audiences interpreted this framing ‘…either as a signal of these groups’ strategic naivety or as a coded expression of a wider nationalist agenda’, rather than its more complex discursive and legitimising role within Tamil diaspora communities (2015: 959–960). While there are some advocates within the advocacy network’s inner grouping that sympathise with the shared trauma that underpins much of this expression of enduring victimisation at the hands of the Sri Lankan state, there was an almost unanimous disassociation from this heterodox terminology. As an epistemic heterodoxy underpinned by advocates’ dependency on key policy audiences, the promotion of the concept of ‘genocide’ by a number of diaspora NGOs entrenched their peripheral position within the global advocacy space, and in some cases limited access to elite-level policy circles, such as at the US State Department, UN and EU (BTF representative, 2016; ICG consultant, 2016). The backlash against this terminology by policymakers and Western-based NGOs alike also led to a degree of self-censorship among some diaspora activists, with its use also becoming a point of contention between certain diaspora groups (GTF activist, 2016; ICG consultant, 2016; PEARL staff, 2016).24 The language of ‘structural genocide’ was and still is a taboo within the legal cultures permeating the prominent human rights NGOs, and clashes with conservative interpretations of international law espoused by key policy audiences, especially at the UN level. The colonising political logics entering the global advocacy space ascribed symbolic value to advocacy that deferred to the rigid edifice of international humanitarian law, while conceptual stretching beyond its boundaries was construed by many as an act of heresy. Responses from interview participants from these NGOs revealed the inner grouping’s aversion to the ‘G word’, mostly due to the lack of legal verification of genocidal intent (AI research staff, 2016). It is therefore no surprise that any discussion of this terminology outside strict legal boundaries, such as Lemkinian or sociological interpretations of ‘structural’ or ‘cultural’ genocide, which focus on the gradual destruction of social and cultural institutions, or the use of the term as an expression of the long-term ethnic persecution of Tamils in the context of Sinhalese hegemony, was consistently met with hostility (Short, 2010; TAG director, 2016). It became one of the primary heterodoxies of Sri Lanka’s post-war global advocacy space.

144  Epistemic limits of global advocacy Conceptions of statehood A second major element of the orthodoxy-heterodoxy dichotomy was the divergent conceptions of statehood in Sri Lanka. What I want to argue here is that the dependence of foreign NGOs on Western and UN policy audiences generated deference to the latter’s broadly liberal and unitary conception of the Sri Lankan state. Here, differing interpretations of the nation state were significant to the extent that they underlay conflicting views about the kinds of reforms, remedies and interventions deemed necessary or applicable for the pursuit of ethnic reconciliation. Second, as will be explored below, Western policymakers’ support for a more-or-less unitary system of governance in Sri Lanka was another important component of the orthodox discourse, and it contributed to the suppression of diasporic advocacy relating to self-determination and Tamil nationalism. The deference of advocates to key foreign policy audiences extended to the latter’s vision of the nation state in Sri Lanka. This encompassed the perception that the Sri Lankan state was essentially a semi-functioning liberal democracy in need of liberal governance reforms, particularly around strengthening the rule of law, scaling back draconian anti-terrorism legislation, and pursuing ethnic reconciliation through a liberal multiculturalist model. This kind of problematisation of Sri Lankan statehood became reflected in much foreign NGO advocacy and reporting since before the end of the civil war (AI, 2012b; ICG, 2011). However, this conception of Sri Lanka’s system of governance contrasts with the popular position among many Tamil diaspora advocates which contends that Sri Lanka is, and always has been since independence from the British in 1948, a majoritarian ethnocracy incapable of reconciling its ethnic inequalities. The perception shared between policy audiences and many foreign advocacy practitioners, that the Sri Lankan state was capable of liberalisation through existing constitutional arrangements, therefore helped to suppress dialogue about the state’s structural biases; including its majoritarian governance structure that had fuelled decades of discrimination against the island’s non-Sinhalese and non-Buddhist communities. This, combined with the universalising and sanitising character of human rights knowledge, contributed to the exclusion of the language of ethnocracy, as well as the ethnic dimension of the civil war more broadly, from mainstream NGO narratives in the post-war period (TAG director, 2016).25 This orthodox conception of statehood also fed into de facto international backing for a unitary state in Sri Lanka. While some foreign policy actors and NGO advocates supported calls for devolution under the banner of ethnic reconciliation, these questions were largely seen as a domestic political issue, and thus outside the global interventionist logic characterising the post-war accountability agenda.26 In addition to the symbolic value ascribed to universalism and the pejorative connotation carried by Tamil nationalism and separatism stemming from the LTTE’s past monopoly of

Epistemic limits of global advocacy  145 these issues, international backing for a more-or-less centralised governance system in Sri Lanka contributed to the rejection and disciplining of diaspora advocacy relating to self-determination. Inside the peripheral sub-space within the advocacy network, this is most evident in the observation that the more radically nationalist groups were also those who experienced the greatest degree of marginalisation (PEARL staff, 2016).27 Being perceived as an active threat to the predominantly Western vision of liberal peace and reconciliation in Sri Lanka, Western advocacy practitioners pro-actively contributed to the construction of Tamil nationalism as an epistemic heterodoxy, partly through conflating non-violent support for self-determination with fetishisation of the LTTE. This disciplinary approach was most clearly articulated within the ICG’s report on The Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora after the LTTE, which repeatedly chastised Tamil diaspora activists for ‘embracing separatism’ and ‘pursuing the LTTE’s agenda’, arguing instead for ‘more realistic forms of political accommodation for Tamils on the island’ (2010a: 23–24). Here, ‘realism’ is both an allusion to the lack of political capital held by the Tamil population in post-war Sri Lanka, as well as key foreign governments’ (being the main targets of ICG advocacy) conception of the nature of the Sri Lankan state and the political possibilities therein. Diplomatic logics Aside from the invasion of the global advocacy space by a particular vision of liberal peace governance, the condition of dependence that existed between the core network of advocates and their political gatekeepers also involved a deference to the latter’s bottom-line diplomatic imperatives. These imperatives further disciplined the acceptable discourse, placing limits on the language of critique and the degree to which interventionist remedies could be projected. As will be argued below, these diplomatic logics partly stemmed from foreign governments’ relationships with the GOSL, as well as their broader political and strategic interests relating to Sri Lanka that were external to the issues of post-war reconciliation and accountability. Overall, these imperatives fed into both the socially acceptable tone and content of NGOs’ advocacy and reporting on Sri Lanka, whilst further castigating the perceived diplomatic insensitivities of Tamil diaspora advocates. Although, as argued in the first section of this chapter, Western governments like the United States began to weaponise accountability for the purpose of pushing the GOSL towards greater reconciliation in the post-war period, this strategy was balanced against diplomatic imperatives. First, given the degree of jingoistic Sinhalese nationalism following the victory over the LTTE in May 2009 (which was reflected in Mahinda Rajapaksa’s sweeping re-election as President in January 2010), there was a consciousness among international actors about the risk of provoking a domestic backlash against foreign interventionism (Höglund and Orjuela, 2012: 97–99).

146  Epistemic limits of global advocacy A more explicit weaponisation of accountability was therefore hindered by fears of further entrenching anti-Western sentiments and ethno-nationalist politics, the latter of which could further undermine reconciliation between the island’s ethnic communities. These anxieties were particularly acute given that the ‘…West-led push for accountability was understood, in both popular Sinhala-nationalist discourse and government policy, as diasporadriven, and therefore a serious threat to the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity’ (Nadarajah, 2018: 291). The desire not to totally alienate the GOSL was also reinforced by a broader strategic and geopolitical logic. This manifested as a fear among Western governments and India that too much hostility or distancing from the GOSL would push the country further towards China, something that was especially salient given its growing military and economic ties with China under Rajapaksa’s leadership (United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 2009; Salter, 2015: 412). Advocates’ adoption of a prosecutorial tone following their expulsion from the country at the end of the civil war was therefore also bounded by their dependence on the geopolitical interests of international policy audiences (ICG analyst, 2016). Therefore, the constrained interventionist logics of Western states also came to inform the orthodox discourse within the global advocacy space, to the extent that the core grouping of NGOs—positioned symbiotically in relation to those policy audiences—were compelled to conform to their diplomatic and strategic imperatives. The shift towards Geneva as a central node of transnational advocacy from March 2012 onwards also reinforced the saliency of these diplomatic logics. Here, there was a need for the pro-accountability coalition of states and non-governmental advocates to co-opt allies at the UNHRC. In particular, the active cooperation between international NGOs and the co-sponsors of the US-led UNHRC Resolutions in March 2012, March 2013 and March 2014 involved persuading a number of non-committal countries, including many from the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and those who were traditionally expected to vote politically against interventionism at the UNHRC, to vote in their favour. For example, this included shifting the positions of NAM members like India, Nigeria and Cameroon who had previously supported UNHRC Resolution S-11/1 (2009) (a whitewashing statement that helped to dissipate immediate pressure on the GOSL for its war-time abuses). This multilateral approach demanded a degree of conformity to the political sensitivities of these UNHRC Members, as well as the accepted protocol surrounding the UNHRC as both a diplomatic and human rights institution. Considering these dynamics outlined above, what was the impact of these policy logics in terms of the division between orthodox and heterodox knowledge? First, these diplomatic and strategic imperatives put pressure on the core network to take a more minimalistic approach within their advocacy and reporting. Indeed, the perceived need to produce analyses

Epistemic limits of global advocacy  147 and policy solutions that were not overly aggressive in relation to the GOSL, and which fitted within the parameters of the international community’s diplomatic leverage over Sri Lanka, was emphasised by interview participants from within the core network of advocates (FFT staff, 2016; ICG analyst, 2016). Inversely, this tempered mode of advocacy was contrasted with the rejectionist and maximalist stance of Tamil diaspora NGOs, whose perceived abrasiveness was construed as strategically counter-productive, both due to the risk of further alienating the GOSL and losing support from key international policy audiences. Not only did these diplomatic logics help shape the tone of global advocacy on Sri Lanka, but they also generated an imperative to balance criticism of the GOSL with that of the LTTE. Although the Rajapaksa government was increasingly seen as a pariah by many Western governments, the LTTE were still perceived as at least the greater of two evils, even after their defeat in May 2009. The strongly anti-terrorist stance of the US government with its legacy of the Global War on Terror, the proscription of the LTTE in many countries (including the entirety of the EU) and India’s aversion to the LTTE after its war with the group following the India’s military intervention in 1987, as well as the rebel group’s assassination of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, all combined to reinforce this stance. Thus, as well as needing to parry potential accusations of sympathy for the LTTE from pro-government supporters inside Sri Lanka, foreign NGOs’ cognisance of the sensitivities of their international audiences relating to the LTTE is reflected in repeated referrals to past LTTE abuses as caveats within their advocacy and reporting on the GOSL (AI, 2010: 25, 2012: 6). This distancing from the LTTE was a feature of the orthodox advocacy discourse on Sri Lanka, especially following the breakdown of the Ceasefire Agreement after 2006. In certain areas, this sensitivity to anti-LTTE sentiments also had a suppressive impact on foreign NGO knowledge production. For example, one interviewee who had direct consultancy experience at the ICG noted the inability of the organisation to report extensively on the radicalising potential of sexual violence against Tamil women, due to the potential for such an analysis to be misread as sympathising with Tamil militancy (ICG consultant, 2016). As for diaspora activists, many of whom formerly had either direct or indirect connections to the LTTE, these imperatives acted to further marginalise them from the mainstream debate. As with the practices of marginalisation aimed at disciplining Tamil nationalism, advocacy NGOs were also complicit in constructing an image of diaspora groups as recalcitrant LTTE fetishists. Despite the renunciation of armed struggle by most diaspora groups after May 2009, the potential for future militancy was problematised by Western advocates, as with the ICG’s 2010 report on the Tamil diaspora which concluded that ‘…governments concerned with Sri Lanka need to remain vigilant against any re-emergence of the Tigers as a militant force and to other potential forms of radicalisation and violence within the diaspora’ (ICG, 2010a: 24). Overall, the strong

148  Epistemic limits of global advocacy repudiation of the LTTE among humanist advocates fed into the dichotomisation between orthodox and heterodox knowledge, and the perceived failure of diaspora groups to distance themselves from the LTTE reaffirmed their exclusion from the core network of advocates.

Conclusion Using the case of foreign NGO advocacy on the Sri Lankan Civil War, this chapter has shown how relations of social and political dependence at the meso-level of issue specific networks can constrain the epistemic potentialities of global advocacy. In this case, the crystallisation of a distinct social space encompassing NGO practitioners and invested political gatekeepers involved the imposition of the latter’s governance logics over the former. These logics, revolving around shifting conceptions of liberal peace governance and denoting the kinds of post-conflict interventions that were perceived to be palatable to foreign policy audiences, became the global advocacy space’s primary organising principle. Although other cultural and social resources heightened the saliency of certain advocacy voices, including actors’ epistemic authority, organisational prestige and social capital, actors’ relative proximity to these dominant political logics divided the network between a privileged inner grouping and a marginalised periphery. The dependence of the inner grouping on their political gatekeepers (read: knowledge consumers) encouraged knowledge production that conformed to demands for methodological universalism, dominant conceptions of the nature of statehood in Sri Lanka, and Western diplomatic imperatives, while also incentivising practices of marginalisation aimed at diasporic actors who violated these norms. This narrowed the social space’s epistemic parameters, bifurcating the discourse between orthodox and heterodox poles. Although it is important to remain cognisant of the specificities of the case study at hand, some contingent generalisations can be proposed based on these findings. Principally, this chapter has highlighted the importance of mobilising a sociological understanding of epistemic dependency. This goes beyond the traditional economic or donor-centric perspectives popular in the traditional NGO literature. While the level of symbiosis between foreign NGOs and their policy audiences may vary on a case-by-case basis, the relational nature of global advocacy means that it is frequently likely to produce a deference towards those who control the means to transmute advocacy into policy practice. Where there is a significant convergence between advocates and powerful political gatekeepers, as was seen in post-war Sri Lanka, these relations can become structured in a way that incentivises complicity, elevating certain forms of knowledge whilst marginalising others. It is only through the reflexive study of these dynamics that attention can be brought to these processes of epistemic limitation; something that should alarm those concerned with questions of epistemic (in)justice, be they scholars or practitioners alike.

Epistemic limits of global advocacy  149

Notes 1 The Tokyo Conference on Reconstruction and Development of Sri Lanka in June 2003 also brought in Japan, the United States and EU as Co-Chairs of the peace process. For an exposition of international involvement in the peace process see Salter (2015). Following renewed fighting and the de facto breakdown of the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement in 2006, there was an upscaling of financial, strategic and military support from non-Western states like China and Pakistan. See Lewis (2010). 2 For an exploration of the internationalisation brought about by the peace process, see Goodhand and Walton (2009). 3 AI and HRW’s online research archives go as far back as the early 1990s (see AI, 2016; HRW, 2016). 4 After the UN were ordered to leave the war zone in late 2008, information was relayed via satellite phone to international advocates directly from doctors and priests trapped in the Vanni region. 5 The final report of the European Commission was not released until October 2009, months after the war had ended. However, the final report did heavily cite prominent international NGOs who had been advocating on human rights and related issues, including AI, HRW and ICG (see European Commission, 2009). 6 For example, due to limited access and protection risks, HRW only published one fully fledged report on Sri Lanka between the war’s end and 2012 (HRW senior staff, 2016). Similarly, one AI researcher recalled facing interrogation and intimidation on arrival in the country (AI research staff, 2016). 7 While FFT’s work on Sri Lanka pre-dates May 2009, its work on the country increased in the post-war period. This is evident in FFT’s online archive. According to MRG’s online archives, the organisation released its first full report on Sri Lanka in January 2011. 8 The UK-based arm of TAG was renamed ‘Together Against Genocide’ in 2015. 9 During the final months of the war, Washington-based advocates were able to convince the State Department to ask the Pentagon to work out a scenario for bringing a ship to evacuate civilians trapped in the war zone. After the end of the war, congressional pressure from individuals like Senator Patrick Leahy pushed the State Department to take a more critical stance by demanding reports from the Office of Global Criminal Justice.







150  Epistemic limits of global advocacy reflected in foreign NGO advocacy more broadly. This further enhances the transnational dimension of the advocacy space.



20 IWG hosted pre-Geneva consultations with civil society, including some involving Tamil diaspora groups (US Counsel staff, 2016). The ‘big three’ NGOs coordinated responses to developments, such as the joint decision to boycott the GOSL’s Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission in October 2010.

22 Interviews with diaspora advocates suggested a feeling of exclusion. At the same time, a number of interviewed foreign NGO practitioners actively distanced themselves from the perceivably ‘extreme’ Tamil diaspora and highlighted the sense of reluctance and unease about being associated with them in their advocacy work. 24 A general split has emerged between the perceivably more ‘radical’ diaspora organisations that use the ‘G Word’, including PEARL, BTF and TAG, and other groups who have tended to consciously avoid this language.

26 In September 2011, the United States Department of State (2011) signalled its support for the implementation of the limited devolution provisions within the 1987 13th Amendment to the 1978 Constitution of Sri Lanka. The ICG also vocalised its support for ‘maximum devolution’ and implementation of the 13th Amendment (2012: iii).

Epistemic limits of global advocacy  151

References Amnesty International, Locked Away: Sri Lanka’s Security Detainees (London: 2012a). Amnesty International, ‘Search’ (2016), available at: {www.amnesty.org/en/ search/?q=&sort=date&contentType=2564&country=38406&p=25} accessed 24 November 2016. Amnesty International, Sri Lanka: International Inquiry Needed to Address Alleged War Crimes (14 October 2010), available at: {www.amnesty.org/en/documents/ asa37/015/2010/en/} accessed 7 December 2016. Amnesty International, Sri Lanka: Reconciliation at a Crossroads: Continuing Impunity, Arbitrary Detentions, Torture and Enforced Disappearances: Amnesty International Submission to the UN Universal Periodic Review, October–November 2012 (London: 2012b). Amnesty International, Sri Lanka: Silencing Dissent (London: 2008); Human Rights Watch, Besieged, Displaced, and Detained: The Plight of Civilians in Sri Lanka’s Vanni Region (New York: 2008). Amnesty International, UN Human Rights Council Fourteenth Session: 31 May–18 June 2010: Amnesty International Written Statements (London: 2010). Amnesty International research staff, personal interview with AI research staff, London (3 February 2016), personal interview by Alistair Markland. Bandarage, Asoka, ‘Towards Peace with Justice in Sri Lanka: An Alternative Perspective’, India Quarterly: A Journal of International Affairs, 68 (2012), pp. 103–118. Becker, Jo, Campaigning for Justice: Human Rights Advocacy in Practice (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012). Bliesemann de Guevara, Berit, ‘Studying the International Crisis Group’, Third World Quarterly, 35 (2014), pp. 545–562. Borger, Julian, ‘Wikileaks Cables: David Miliband Focused on Sri Lankan War “To Win Votes”’, The Guardian (December 2010), available at: {www.theguardian. com/world/2010/dec/01/wikileaks-david-miliband-sri-lanka} accessed 29 November 2016. Bourdieu, Pierre, ‘Social Space and Symbolic Power’, Sociological Theory, 7 (1989), pp. 14–25. BTF, personal interview with the British Tamil Forum’s representative to the United Nations in Geneva, London (17 October 2016), by Alistair Markland. Bøås, Morten, ‘“Hunting Ghosts of a Difficult Past”: The International Crisis Group and the Production of “Crisis Knowledge” in the Mano River Basin wars’, Third World Quarterly, 35(4) (2014), pp. 652–668. Council of the European Union, ‘EU Press Statement: Human Rights Council – Special Session on Sri Lanka’ (May 2009), available at: {http://europa.eu/rapid/ press-release_PRES-09-158_en.htm} accessed 27 November 2016. ECOSOC, ‘List of Non-Governmental Organizations in Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council as of 1 September 2014’ (3 December 2014), available at: {http://csonet.org/content/documents/E-2014-INF-5%20Issued.pdf} accessed 19 December 2016. European Commission, Report on the Findings of the Investigation with Respect to the Effective Implementation of Certain Human Rights Conventions in Sri Lanka (Brussels: Commission of the European Communities, 2009). FORUM-ASIA, ‘UN Advocacy Programme’ (2016), available at: {www.forum-asia. org/?page_id=7542} accessed 5 December 2016.

152  Epistemic limits of global advocacy Freedom from Torture, ‘Sri Lanka’ (2016), available at: {www.freedomfromtorture. org/category/keywords/sri_lanka} accessed 28 November 2016. Freedom from Torture, Tainted Peace: Torture in Sri Lanka since May 2009 (London: 2015). Freedom from Torture staff, personal interview with Freedom from Torture staff, London (19 October 2016), by Alistair Markland. Global Tamil Forum, ‘About Us’ (2016), available at: {www.globaltamilforum.org/ about-us.aspx} accessed 28 November 2016. Global Tamil Forum activist, personal interview with Global Tamil Forum activist, London (20 November 2016), by Alistair Markland. Goodhand, Jonathan, and Oliver Walton, ‘The Limits of Liberal Peacebuilding? International Engagement in the Sri Lankan Peace Process’, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 3 (2009), pp. 303–323. Goodman, Ryan, ‘Road Map II: Legal Avenues to Prosecute a US Citizen for War Crimes—The Case of Gotabaya Rajapaksa’, Just Security (2016), available at: {www.justsecurity.org/13403/road-map-ii-laws-apply-prosecution-citizen-warcrimes-the-case-gotabaya-rajapaksa/} accessed 19 December 2016. Human Rights Watch, Recurring Nightmare: State Responsibility for “Disappearances” and Abductions in Sri Lanka (New York: 2008a). Human Rights Watch, ‘Reports’ (2016), available at: {www.hrw.org/publications? keyword=&date[value]&country[0]=9572&&page=1} accessed 24 November 2016. Human Rights Watch, Return to War: Human Rights under Siege (New York: 2007). Human Rights Watch, Trapped and Mistreated: LTTE Abuses against Civilians in the Vanni (New York: 2008b). Human Rights Watch, “We Live in Constant Fear”: Lack of Accountability for Police Abuse in Sri Lanka (New York: 2015). Human Rights Watch, “We Will Teach You a Lesson”: Sexual Violence Against Tamils by Sri Lankan Security Forces (New York: 2013). Human Rights Watch senior staff, personal interview with HRW senior staff member, New York (27 April 2016), by Alistair Markland. Höglund, Kristine and Camilla Orjuela, ‘Hybrid Peace Governance and Illiberal Peacebuilding in Sri Lanka’, Global Governance, 18 (2012), pp. 89–104. IMADR, ‘About’ (2016), available at: {http://imadr.org/about/} accessed 5 December 2016. International Commission of Jurists, ‘United Nations Programme’ (2016), available at: {www.icj.org/themes/united-nations-programme/} accessed 5 December 2016. International Crisis Group, Sri Lanka’s Human Rights Crisis (Colombo/Brussels: 2007). International Crisis Group, Sri Lanka’s Return to War: Limiting the Damage (Brussels: 2008). International Crisis Group, ‘Reports & Briefings’ (2016), available at: {www.crisis group.org/latest-updates/reports-and-briefings?location[]=41} accessed 5 December 2016. International Crisis Group, Reconciliation in Sri Lanka: Harder than ever (Colombo/ Brussels: 2011). International Crisis Group, Sri Lanka: Tamil Politics and the Quest for a Political Solution (Colombo/Brussels: 2012). International Crisis Group, The Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora after the LTTE (Brussels/Colombo: 2010a).

Epistemic limits of global advocacy  153 International Crisis Group, War Crimes in Sri Lanka (Colombo/Brussels: 2010b). International Crisis Group, Sri Lanka: Women’s Insecurity in the North and East (Colombo/Brussels: 2011). International Crisis Group analyst, phone interview with ICG analyst (16 April 2016), by Alistair Markland. International Crisis Group consultant, personal interview with former ICG consultant, New York (5 May 2016), by Alistair Markland. The International Truth and Justice Project Sri Lanka, ‘About Us’ (2016), available at: {www.itjpsl.com/} accessed 28 November 2016. Keenan, Alan, ‘Building a Democratic Middle-Ground: Professional Civil Society and the Politics of Human Rightsin Sri Lanka’s Peace Process’, in J. Mertus and J. Helsing (eds.) Human rights and conflict: exploring the links between rights, law, and peacebuilding (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2006a), pp. 459–505. Keenan, Alan, ‘The trouble with evenhandedness: On the politics of human rights and peace advocacy in Sri Lanka’, in M. Feher, G. Krikorian and Y. McKee (eds.) Nongovernmental Politics (New York: Zone Books, 2006b), pp. 88–117. Kurtz, Gerrit, and Madhan Mohan Jaganathan, ‘Protection in Peril: Counterterrorism Discourse and International Engagement in Sri Lanka in 2009’, Global Society, 30 (2016), pp. 104–105. Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission, ‘Report of the Commission of Inquiry on Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation’ (November 2011), available at: {www. priu.gov.lk/news_update/Current_Affairs/ca201112/FINAL%20LLRC%20 REPORT.pdf} accessed 28 November 2016. Lewis, David, ‘The failure of a liberal peace: Sri Lanka’s counter-insurgency in global perspective’, Conflict, Security & Development, 10 (2010), pp. 647–671. Macrae, Colin, ‘Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields’ (Channel 4, June 2011), available at: {www.channel4.com/programmes/sri-lankas-killing-fields/on-demand} accessed 29 November 2016. Minority Rights Group International, ‘Publications’ (2016), available at: {http:// minorityrights.org/publications/page/7/} accessed 28 November 2016. Nadarajah, Suthaharan, ‘The Tamil Proscriptions: Identities, Legitimacies, and Situated Practices’, Terrorism and Political Violence, 30(2) (2018), pp. 278–297. PEARL, ‘About Us’ (2016a), available at: {http://pearlaction.org/about-us/} accessed 28 November 2016. PEARL, ‘Publications’ (2016b), available at: {http://pearlaction.org/publication/} accessed 6 December 2016. PEARL staff, personal interview with PEARL staff, Washington DC (16 May 2016), by Alistair Markland. Pettitt, Jo, ‘Out of the Silence: New Evidence of Ongoing Torture in Sri Lanka’, Freedom from Torture (London: 2011). Pattanaik, Smruti S., ‘The Tamil Nadu Factor in Post-war Sri Lanka: Perspectives of Tamils and Muslims’, Strategic Analysis, 38 (2014), pp. 634–651. Ratner, Steven R., ‘Accountability and the Sri Lankan Civil War’, The American Journal of International Law, 106 (2012), pp. 795–808. Salter, Mark, To End a Civil War: Norway’s Peace Engagement in Sri Lanka (London: Hurst & Co., 2015). Short, Damien, ‘Cultural Genocide and Indigenous Peoples: A Sociological Approach’, The International Journal of Human Rights, 14 (2010), pp. 833–848.

154  Epistemic limits of global advocacy Sooka, Yasmin, ‘An Unfinished War: Torture and Sexual Violence in Sri Lanka 2009–2014’, The Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales and The International Truth & Justice Project Sri Lanka (London: 2014). Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice, ‘About’ (2016), available at: {www. srilankacampaign.org/about-us/what-we-do} accessed 28 November 2016. Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice staff, personal interview with SLC staff, London (5 February 2016), by Alistair Markland. TAG, ‘About’ (2016a), available at: {www.tamilsagainstgenocide.org/AboutTAG. aspx} accessed 28 November 2016. TAG, ‘Research’ (2016b), available at: {www.tamilsagainstgenocide.org/Research. aspx} accessed 6 December 2016. TAG director, personal interview with the director of TAG Europe, London (2 February 2016), by Alistair Markland. Tamil diaspora researcher, personal interview with Tamil diaspora researcher, Jaffna (16 January 2017), by Alistair Markland. The Economist, ‘Sri Lanka’s Constitutional Amendment: Eighteenth Time Unlucky’ (September 2010), available at: {www.economist.com/node/16992141} accessed 29 November 2016. US Counsel on Sri Lanka staff, personal interview with US Counsel on Sri Lanka staff, Washington, DC (12 May 2016), by Alistair Markland. USTPAC, ‘About USTPAC’ (2016), available at: {https://ustpac.org/about.html} accessed 28 November 2016. United Nations, Report of the Secretary-General’s Internal Review Panel on United Nations Action in Sri Lanka (New York: 2012). United Nations, Report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka (New York: 2011). United Nations Human Rights Council Resolution S-11/1, Assistance to Sri Lanka in the promotion and protection of human rights (27 May 2009), available at: {www. ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/SpecialSessions/Session11/Pages/11thSpecial Session.aspx} accessed 15 December 2016. United Nations Human Rights Council Resolution 19/2, Promoting Reconciliation and Accountability in Sri Lanka (22 March 2012), available at: {http://ap.ohchr. org/documents/dpage_e.aspx?si=A/HRC/RES/19/2}, accessed 30 November 2016. United Nations Human Rights Council Resolution 22/1, Promoting Reconciliation and Accountability in Sri Lanka (21 March 2013), available at: {http://ap.ohchr. org/documents/dpage_e.aspx?si=A/HRC/RES/22/1} accessed 30 November 2016. United Nations Human Rights Council Resolution 25/1, Promoting reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka (27 March 2014), available at: {http:// ap.ohchr.org/Documents/E/HRC/d_res_dec/A_HRC_25_L1rev1.doc} accessed 30 November 2016. United Nations Information Centre for Western Europe, ‘Human Rights Bodies to Decide on Full International Inquiry’ (2011), available at: {www.unric.org/en/ sri-lanka/27122-human-rights-bodies-to-decide-on-full-international-inquiry} accessed 30 November 2016. United Nations official, personal interview with UN official, New York (22 April 2016a), by Alistair Markland. United Nations official, personal interview with the former Chief of Staff to the Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka, New York (26 April 2016b), by Alistair Markland.

Epistemic limits of global advocacy  155 United States Department of State, ‘Press Conference at the American Center in Colombo’ (14 September 2011), available at: {www.state.gov/p/sca/rls/ rmks/2011/172423.htm}, accessed 19 December 2016. United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Sri Lanka: Recharting US Strategy After the War (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 2009). Walton, Oliver, ‘Between War and the Liberal Peace: The Politics of NGO Peacebuilding in Sri Lanka’, International Peacekeeping, 19 (2012), pp. 19–34. Walton, Oliver, ‘Framing Disputes and Organizational Legitimation: UK-based Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora Groups’ Use of the ‘Genocide’ Frame Since 2009’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 38 (2015), pp. 959–975. Weiss, Gordon The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers (New York: Vintage, 2012).

6

Extracting knowledge Global advocates’ relations with domestic actors in post-war Sri Lanka

Introduction: investing in an extractive space Why do global advocates invest so heavily in the extraction knowledge from proximal contexts? What is the logic driving NGOs to invest in relations with domestic partners and informants? These are questions, I argue, that have not been fully accounted for within the literature on global advocacy. However, international practitioners’ relation to domestic spaces of interaction has been analysed by scholars working in the sub-fields of intervention and statebuilding studies. Here, one of the main research problems has been to question the extent to which the interface between foreign interveners and local partners is substantive (or performative), and whether interventionary knowledge is challenged by these interactions (Autesserre, 2014; Bliesemann de Guevara, 2016; Smirl, 2012). This chapter will apply this problematique to the specific case of foreign NGOs operating inside post-civil war Sri Lanka. Do the logics of global advocacy spaces structure the way that practitioners engage local actors in a top-down fashion? Or conversely, do domestic relations independently mediate advocates’ political imaginaries? Taking the way in which the parallel literature on interventions and statebuilding has approached this problematique as a starting point, there is a strong argument put forth about the top-down, structured character of foreign practitioners’ domestic interactions. For example, referring to German politicians’ travels to conflict and post-conflict spaces, Bliesemann de Guevara (2016) has highlighted the symbolic efficacy of ‘on the ground’ knowledge within the democratic political field. Here, in-country field trips are oriented towards the accumulation of expert authority; accruing significant symbolic resonance thanks to the dominance of empiricist epistemologies and realist ontologies that put a premium on the production of directly experienced, tangible and authentic ‘facts’ (ibid.: 11–12). This contention is also reflected within the critical literature on human rights fact-finding, where—in the context of heightened uncertainty and factual contestation in the political and legal arenas—field missions by human rights fact-finders are construed as a co-productive practice—where the production of facticity is coupled with the production of political legitimacy (Mégret, 2015: 8).

Extracting knowledge  157 Understanding the production of proximate conflict knowledge as driven by top-down and externally driven imperatives, some authors have focused on potential reproductive or pathological tendencies. For example, both Autesserre and Smirl have referred to the structured nature of peacekeeping and statebuilding interventions, and the subsequent dislocation from local spaces of interaction that reinforce (rather than challenge) existing narratives and practices (Autesserre, 2014: 12; Smirl, 2012: 231). According to Smirl, ‘[t]he processual and structured experience of going “to the field” has very little to do with “the local” but rather is focused almost exclusively on “the international”, and “[t]he impact of these structured spaces is that it reinforces established ways of being, and ultimately of thinking and doing”’ (2012: 231 and 241). Similarly, interveners inhabiting Autesserre’s ‘Peaceland’ are argued to rely on pre-defined and simplistic narratives that are detached from local contexts, with the consequence being that ‘…they regularly misunderstand the phenomena they are trying to address, such as the causes of and potential solutions to violence’ (2014: 12). Here, the concept of ‘liminality’ has been invoked to describe the social, physical and epistemological separation of international actors from both their own societies-of-origin and local constituencies (ibid.: 5; Smirl, 2012: 241). Observing Sri Lanka’s post-war global advocacy space, the previous chapter defined expert authority as a legitimising principle. Imbuing advocacy materials, such as reports or policy briefings, with claims to an authentic understanding of domestic contexts can bolster perceptions of expertise, as well as the marketability of an NGO’s epistemic products. The widespread adoption of in-country fact-finding and witness-based reporting as central methods among human rights groups in the 1980s is a case in point. As Montgomery has argued, the unsympathetic policy environment under the Reagan and Bush administrations and associated attacks on NGO credibility necessitated the production of advocacy-oriented knowledge that was ostensibly evidence-based and grounded in ‘factual conditions’ (2004: 29–30). As this chapter explores, these extractive investments have been replicated by advocacy NGOs working on post-conflict Sri Lanka. With relatively high-opportunity costs, in terms of both time and financial expenditure, these extractive investments involve the transmutation of economic capital into expert capital; a form of credit that is efficient within global advocacy arenas. As such, an extractive space is at least partially structured by the legitimising pressures of global advocacy. One of the prevailing assumptions within the critical literature on interventions and statebuilding is that despite geographical proximity, topdown imperatives lead to a social and epistemic separation of foreign practitioners from the local environment in question. While NGO advocates’ investments into local spaces are also driven by external logics, it does not automatically follow that the qualitative character of NGO practitioners’ engagements with domestic constituencies mirrors that of intervenors or statebuilders. Exporting knowledge for transnational political consumption differs to the practice of service-delivery to host societies.

158  Extracting knowledge Based on the empirical fieldwork that is presented in this chapter, the framework of liminality used to emphasise the experiential division between international and local actors appears to be less applicable when it comes to the case of global advocates operating in conflict-stricken societies. Rather than seeing advocacy practitioners as occupying a liminal space, dislocated from local contexts, a more relevant framework from the statebuilding literature is provided by Veit and Schlichte, who highlight the co-existence of conflicting ‘arenas’, with the so-called ‘metropolis’ (i.e. agency headquarters) and ‘base camp’ (e.g. host country capital) being construed as separate spaces with their own logical orientations (2012: 168). Similarly, the advocacy practitioners studied as part of the research for this book can be observed as experiencing a dual habitation: they are both embedded within global advocacy spaces and enmeshed in domestic social networks. Driven by the political logics outlined in the previous chapter, foreign NGO practitioners make choices about how and who they engage with within a given domestic space. As a central site of advocacy practice, the logics of global advocacy help to orient advocates’ in-country field visits, subsequently structuring their host country experiences. However, the mediatory potential of the extractive space cannot be discounted. This is because extractive spaces exert a degree of agency that is at least semi-independent of the original logic of investment. As this chapter suggests, domestic spaces of interaction can feed back and influence the investing practitioners’ epistemic horizons. As with Veit and Schlichte’s concept of the ‘base camp’, the spatial disconnection from metropolitan arenas suggests that they have a generative or mediatory potential when it comes to the production of conflict-related knowledge by foreign actors, rather than being purely subservient to international logics (ibid.: 172). Building on this observation, this chapter serves as an inquiry into the way in which extractive spaces mediate the production of conflict-related knowledge by foreign NGO advocates, and additionally, whether such a mediation reinforces or challenges foreign practitioners pre-existing assumptions about violent conflict. This will also involve questioning the degree to which foreign advocates’ domestic space of interaction structurally differs from that of the global advocacy space outlined in the previous chapter. Therefore, the following study of Sri Lanka’s domestic environment will analyse both its structural similarities (homology) with and structural divergences (heterology) from the logics of transnational advocacy. Addressing this research problem, this chapter proceeds to analyse four key elements of advocacy practitioners’ domestic engagements in Sri Lanka: the influence of the national political arena; exposure to the domestic media; relations with domestic civil society; and finally, their interface with conflict-related witnesses.

The national political arena Constituting a central element of foreign advocacy practitioners’ host societies, the first mediatory influence I want to highlight here is that of the

Extracting knowledge  159 national political arena. This arena includes institutions of governance (the state apparatus), political actors (political parties and ruling elites), as well as dominant political narratives and belief systems. While the previous chapter emphasised the centrality of transnational networks in calibrating foreign advocacy practitioners’ epistemic horizons, this was not to suggest that these actors are entirely disconnected from the demands of national level politics. The national political arena is also generative of its own logics and orthodoxies. From the final years of the Sri Lankan Civil War through to the defeat of the Mahinda Rajapaksa government in the island’s presidential election in January 2015, the relationship between foreign NGOs and leading Sri Lankan political actors was highly antagonistic. Following the escalation of armed struggle between the Sri Lankan military and the floundering LTTE after 2006, lobbying and reporting by foreign advocates became increasingly critical of the ruling Mahinda Rajapaksa government (AI, 2008; HRW, 2007, 2008a, 2008b; ICG, 2008).1 As the destructive and indiscriminate nature of the military’s counter-insurgency campaign became increasingly evident in the final months and weeks of the war, this criticism only intensified, with the momentum of foreign NGO condemnation continuing into the post-war period (AI, 2009; HRW, 2009, 2010; ICG, 2010a, 2010b). At the same time, the Sri Lankan government inverted this criticism by initiating a crackdown on the activities of NGOs like AI, denouncing them as proLTTE sympathisers (Keerthisinghe, 2013). By physically restricting foreign NGO activities and promoting a hard-line nationalist ideology that rejected external intervention, the Rajapaksa government drove a political wedge between itself and foreign advocates working on the country (Matthews, 2009: 583). The imperatives espoused by global advocates, emphasising liberal internationalist principles, clashed with the logics circulating within the mainstream domestic political environment, highlighting inviolable sovereignty and an ethnocratic vision of the nation state. However, although the combination of majoritarian jingoism with government-led suppression and the denouncement of critical international voices did lead to a degree of alienation, this did not totally negate the latter’s mediatory influence over the former. While the Sri Lankan government’s aggressive Sinhalese nationalism and the associated hostility to foreign-led advocacy narrowed the potential for engagement between the two, the shifting post-war political environment also imposed itself as a phenomenal reality with its own boundaries of perceivably acceptable and unacceptable advocacy practice. Therefore, despite the antagonisms outlined above, there were means through which the logics of the national political arena came to inform foreign NGO practitioners’ conceptions of Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict and the perceivably workable remedies therein. Studying international NGOs’ adoption of the Ugandan government’s framings around the Lord’s Resistance Army, Fisher has warned against the failure to ascribe agency to foreign governments within studies of

160  Extracting knowledge non-governmental actors (2014: 687). Even in the case of post-war Sri Lanka, where the country’s reputational standing among Western actors was damaged by its pursuit of an excessively violent and uncompromising counter-insurgency strategy, the state still retained some capacity to shape international political narratives about itself—partly thanks to its involvement in multilateral institutions, including the Non-Aligned Movement, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, the G77 and the Commonwealth of Nations. During the final phase of the war, international ‘…scrutiny was actively resisted and countered by the government, which cultivated its own positional defiance of normative stances regarding civilian casualties incurred during their military defeat of the LTTE’ (Large 2016: 70). For example, the government was able to outmanoeuvre its critics at the Special Session of the UNHRC held in May 2009, where its Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations in Geneva, Dayan Jayatilleka, assembled a coalition of NAM states to defeat an EU-sponsored resolution supporting an international inquiry into rights violations (ibid.: 73–74; Council of the European Union, 2009). The succeeding years also saw millions spent on attempts to deflect international criticism. With the aim of lobbying UK, EU and UN officials, the Rajapaksa government reportedly paid a British PR firm 4.7 million USD per year in the post-war years, while also spending a total of 2.1 million USD on lobbyists in the United States (Pathirana, 2010; The Sunday Times, 2014). In 2018, a UK Member of Parliament was suspended for breaching parliamentary rules after conducting paid advocacy on behalf of the Sri Lankan government—lobbying directed against the critical 2014 UNHRC resolution (BBC News, 2018). Through aggressive lobbying and the promotion of counter-narratives, the Sri Lankan government attempted to calibrate diplomatic logics among its international peers. The diplomatic dialogue between the government and its foreign counterparts within Sri Lanka also needs to be considered as a means by which foreign actors became exposed to national political logics. For instance, the diplomatic missions of key international audiences, such as the US Embassy and the British High Commission in the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo, also acted as vectors through which the imperatives of the national political arena were able to influence international perceptions. Because of their proximity to government officials in Colombo, these embassy officials displayed a degree of sympathy for domestic political logics (SLC staff, 2016). This is notable to the extent that the foreign diplomatic entourage of various states constituted one of the primary points of contact for foreign practitioners operating from inside the host country, as well as being a target for their advocacy on the international stage (ICG analyst, 2016). Considering the previous chapter’s emphasis on the dependence of global advocates on key international policy audiences, one can begin to perceive how they are influenced by the doxic assumptions circulating in the national political arena. Therefore, it is through both bilateral means

Extracting knowledge  161 (e.g.  through embassies in Colombo) and multilateral dialogues (e.g. at UNHRC sessions) between the Sri Lankan government and advocates’ foreign policy audiences that these domestically sourced policy logics could travel and enter the global advocacy space. A consequence of this permeation was that their interface with foreign policy audiences necessitated a degree of deference to some of the political sensitivities in the latter. This reflects the preceding chapter’s assertion that diplomatic sensitivities contributed to the negotiation of the boundary between acceptable and transgressive knowledge. For example, in the case of the British government, despite parliamentary and sporadic government criticism of the Sri Lankan government, a more assertive foreign policy was hampered by close relations between the British High Commission in Sri Lanka and the Sri Lankan government—underpinned by the instrumental belief that ‘…Sri Lanka will be the next Hong Kong or Singapore in business terms’ (BTF representative, 2016). Here, diplomatic and global trade logics trumped humanist concerns at the ambassadorial level. Therefore, some of the major trends in Sri Lanka’s end-of-war and post-war political arena, including hostility to foreign interventionism, the strength of anti-terrorism discourse, and the overwhelmingly negative perception of the Tamil diaspora, came to inform the global advocacy space’s epistemic orthodoxy.

The domestic media environment At the end of the Sri Lankan Civil War, the relative dependence of foreign advocates on a relatively narrow range of national news sources was heightened by a decline in the number of permanent foreign correspondents based inside the country. This trend increased the episodic nature of external reporting on the country, consequently narrowing the depth and breadth of international coverage (Groundviews editorial staff, 2017). A further trend influencing foreign consumption of domestic news sources has been the rise of online and social media, which has bolstered the accessibility and visibility of Sri Lankan journalism (ibid.). At the same time, war-time and post-war restrictions on access placed on both foreign and domestic NGOs, which erected significant obstacles for NGO practitioners seeking to conduct in-country field research, also increased outsiders’ dependence on the island’s English-language media as a source of evidentiary knowledge and corroboration. As this section will proceed to argue, while national news outlets served as an important input for the production of global advocacy-oriented knowledge, they also acted as a mediatory filter, reflecting specific political and social tendencies. When gauging the influence of Sri Lanka’s media environment on transnational advocacy, one needs to consider its proximity to the country’s locus of political power in Colombo. In relation to Figure 6.1, all of the most frequently cited media outlets within the reporting of the so-called Big Three INGOs are headquartered in the island’s capital. While some of these sources (e.g. Groundviews) espoused a self-avowedly counter-hegemonic stance, other

162  Extracting knowledge

The Nation The Island The Sunday Leader Groundviews The Sunday Times Daily Mirror 0

20

40

60

80

100

120

Figure 6.1 The most frequently cited Sri Lankan media publications across all full-length reports published by the Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Crisis Group (May 2009 to ­January 2015).2

commonly referenced publications like The Nation and The Island were much more sympathetic to the Rajapaksa government (ibid.; Devapriya, 2017; Gooneratne, 2009).3 These sympathies were reinforced by personal conflicts of interest within Colombo’s wealthy business elite that controlled the private media. For instance, the former CEO of the powerful print media conglomerate Upali Newspapers (owner of The Island newspaper, among others), also held positions at Sri Lanka Telecom, a public company of which the government had significant shares and influence over (The Island, 2010). During the years of Mahinda Rajapaksa’s presidency, the government’s suppression of critical journalism only exacerbated outsiders’ dependency on a narrow range of media sources. In this climate anti-government voices faced violence, intimidation and censorship. In terms of direct censorship, the government’s Ministry of Parliamentary Reforms and Mass Media sought to rein in critical voices by blocking critical news websites in November 2011 (Reporters Without Borders, 2011). More violent means of suppression were also used, including the assassination of an editor of the anti-government The Sunday Leader in January 2009 (Reporters Without Borders, 2009). The same paper was subsequently forced to alter its editorial policy when it was overtaken by an ally of the Rajapaksa family in 2012 (Haviland, 2012). Encouraging self-censorship, this media crackdown reduced the space for media outlets to challenge mainstream ethno-nationalist political narratives. This exacerbated foreign NGO practitioners’ dependence on a mainstream set of news publications. Therefore, because foreign advocates’ exposure to and immersion within domestic media narratives

Extracting knowledge  163 fostered an attentiveness to the imperatives and expectations of the national political arena, Sri Lanka’s media space was an additional vector through which these dominant logics were projected towards them. However, it would be misleading to see this media space as merely a channel through which domestic political logics were transferred in an unmediated fashion. Instead, there needs to be a recognition of the refractive influence that media outlets had over knowledge about Sri Lanka. Here, it is important to note that the Sri Lankan media is divided across three different languages—Sinhala, Tamil and English. This division involves the atomisation of the country’s media discourses, with each language reflecting divergent political and social orientations. For instance, while the English and Tamil language medias have included greater scope for criticism of mainstream political logics, the Sinhala media has tended to project more ethno-nationalist perspectives (Groundviews editorial staff, 2017). However, the general lack of linguistic competence of foreign NGO advocates in Tamil and Sinhala increased their relative reliance on the country’s English language media. As reflected in Figure 6.1, all six of the most frequently referenced Sri Lankan publications within ICG, AI and HRW reporting were English medium. When gauging the influence of foreign practitioners’ exposure to domestic media, this mono-linguistic dependency is significant when considering the country’s relatively low English language proficiency (Department of Census and Statistics, 2001).4 In terms of its demographic orientation, English-language journalism tends to cater to the island’s predominantly Colombo-based urban elites (Groundviews editorial staff, 2017). When questioning the parameters of knowledge emanating from this section of the domestic media environment, its relatively narrow geographical, socio-economic, cultural and ideological reach becomes clear. One inherent blind-spot built into such a perspective includes a dearth in reportage of provincial- or district-level issues, along with a disproportionate emphasis on issues concerning the country’s urban population (ibid.). Yet, what do these trends say about the mediatory capacity of this journalistic space? To what extent did the above dynamics reinforce or challenge foreign advocates’ pre-conceptions about the issues they were researching and advocating on? While this Colombo-centrism increased the English language media’s proximity to the country’s locus of political power, its demographic distinctiveness also provided a degree of distance from ethno-nationalist narratives. Based on the selection of prominent publications shown in Figure 6.1, as well as interview participants’ own referrals to preferred sources (Groundviews, and Colombo Telegraph were commonly cited) there was also an evident liberal leaning in advocates’ exposure to the Sri Lankan media (HRW senior staff, 2016; Anonymous advocate A, 2016). For example, against the grain of popular opinion, Groundviews and the Colombo Telegraph both published articles that were supportive of a war crimes investigation and international involvement in accountability mechanisms (Fernando, 2011; Balasundaram, 2012; Tissainayagam, 2013).

164  Extracting knowledge An implication of this is that, while Sri Lanka’s broader domestic media environment contained some perspectives that were antagonistic in relation to the logics circulating within the global advocacy space (such as within more nationalist and anti-interventionist outlets like The Nation and The Island), there was also a significant degree of congruence, especially among the more liberal outlets. This is evident in the relative affinity between the country’s elite-oriented, English-medium journalistic discourse, with its overlapping framings and accessibility to international audiences, and its foreign NGO readership, suggesting a degree of homology between the two.

The influence of domestic civil society Domestic civil society is another key feature of advocates’ extractive space of interaction. Past studies of the interface between global advocates and domestic partners have emphasised their reciprocal, if not entirely equal, relationship (Bob, 2005; Keck and Sikkink, 1998: 200). In the words of Keck and Sikkink, ‘…international contacts amplify voices to which domestic governments are deaf, while the local work of target country activists legitimizes efforts of activists abroad’ (1998: 200). These relationships are simultaneously performative and substantive. First, they are a source of legitimacy to the degree that, through referrals to locally acquired research and analysis, they imbue global advocacy with an authentic and proximal grounding in the issues being addressed. Second, these relationships enable the practical functioning of the process of extracting knowledge from a host country. Through research collaborations, by acting as gatekeepers, and by feeding intelligence to global advocates seeking information about the onthe-ground situation, domestic partners can support the smooth running of knowledge production about a host country. Inversely, as with Keck and Sikkink’s ‘boomerang pattern’, global advocates are also seen by their domestic allies as access points to international fora (ibid, 12–13), something that is particularly highlighted in repressive contexts, such as in post-war Sri Lanka, where durable relationships with external actors were sought as a means of defying state repression (SACLS staff, 2017). With the liberalisation of the Sri Lankan economy in the late 1970s, a relaxation of barriers to foreign assistance enabled the rapid, externally driven growth of the NGO sector (Asian Development Bank, 2013: 2). Similarly, the expansion of civil society working specifically on peacebuilding, human rights and governance reform arose in reaction to widespread violence around the failed Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna insurrection in 1971 and the beginning of the LTTE’s separatist war in the 1980s (ibid.: 2–3; Orjuela, 2005a: 128). While in its broadest conception, Sri Lankan civil society includes a wide range of societal institutions, including student groups, trade unions, temple societies and funeral collectives, foreign advocates have been most engaged with liberal-minded and English-speaking civil society groups based in the country’s capital.

Extracting knowledge  165 Relations between foreign advocacy practitioners and leading members of Sri Lankan civil society were constructed over many years. Although the group of Sri Lankan actors that worked most closely with global advocates was relatively small, the sustained work on the country by key individuals, from organisations like AI, HRW, the ICG, IWG and SLC, enabled the development of strong inter-personal relationships to develop (Sri Lankan human rights activist, 2017). Much of this relationship-building pre-dated the end of the civil war, with some transnational professionals having past employment experience within Sri Lankan civil society itself (ICG, 2017; AI research staff, 2016). Despite government intimidation towards its domestic critics, and the limitations on access placed on foreign practitioners, relationship-building between the two continued in the post-war period. This process was aided by the UNHRC sessions in Geneva, where global advocates were able to liaise with Sri Lankan civil society actors who had the means to travel internationally (Sri Lankan human rights activist, 2017; SACLS staff, 2017; Transparency International staff, 2017). As an interface encompassing practical, symbolic and economic inter-dependencies, as well as strong inter-personal ties, these relationships became a major element of foreign practitioners’ domestic space of engagement. Therefore, Sri Lankan civil society needs to be considered as a social milieu with its own mediatory influence on external knowledge production about the country’s conflict and post-conflict situations. Civil war, authoritarianism and the stratification of Sri Lankan civil society Major trends in Sri Lanka’s recent history contributed to the social stratification of its civil society. This included the civil war waged between the LTTE and successive governments, as well as the authoritarianism and aggressive nationalism that became characteristic of Mahinda Rajapaksa’s ten-year presidency from 2005 to 2015. For instance, while the battle lines shifted throughout the 26-year-long war against the Tamil Tigers, the conflict’s geographical focus in the north and east had a distortionary impact on the development of civil society in those areas. There were two main elements at play here: a shrinking of civil society capacity in those parts of the island affected by the war, and the isolation of north-eastern civil society from the rest of the country. Multiple factors contributed to the stifling of the institutional capacity and long-term vitality of civil society based in the island’s north and east. A brain-drain, stimulated by the fleeing of the districts’ most highly qualified and best-educated individuals, resulted in a severe dearth in the supply of skilled practitioners who were necessary for the day-to-day functioning of local NGOs (Orjuela, 2005a: 129). This problem was compounded by the backdrop of war-time violence and intimidation in both military- and LTTE-controlled areas. Within government-controlled territory, military

166  Extracting knowledge officials curtailed the functioning of independent civil society—with a specific crackdown on peacebuilding and human rights activities (ibid.). At the same time, the LTTE also shut down freedom of expression and asserted direct authority over NGOs operating within its de facto state (ibid.: 130; UTHRJ, 2000). As well as direct suppression by the government, Indian and LTTE forces, the physical barriers erected between the conflicting parties also affected the development of civil society in the war-afflicted areas. A certain degree of movement was permitted during the ceasefire years (2002–2005), which ‘…paved the way for possibilities to (re)build links between northern and southern civil society, and increased communication with and understanding of the ethnic “other” and his/her war suffering’ (Orjuela, 2005b: 6). However, restrictions on travel and communication during the fighting was a major hindrance to the development of civil society in the north and east, as well as damaging their capacity to coordinate with organisations from other parts of the island, thus contributing to their relative isolation (Orjuela, 2005a: 129 and 134). A combination of recurrent security checkpoints, the closure of key roads and the regulation of visitors’ activities meant that even travel to government-controlled towns in the north was difficult for Colombo-based organisations (Sri Lankan human rights activist, 2017; Diakonia staff, 2017). Island-wide engagement by peacebuilding and human rights NGOs headquartered in the country’s capital, in terms of their capacity to run projects and workshops and to build alliances, was significantly curtailed (National Peace Council director, 2017). Overall, this led to a breakdown in dialogue across the island, with ‘…a lack of interaction between the northern and eastern war zone and the rest of the country, and a lack of information exchange between the north and the south and across ethnic and language boundaries’ (Orjuela, 2005a: 129). This had the effect of disempowering voices that were in proximity to the war zones, exacerbating the social schism between the island’s northern and mostly Tamil-led civil society, and the primarily Colombo-based and Sinhalese-led networks in the south. One of the main consequences of this was the weakening of the connections between the separate clusters. In terms of the flow of information between Sri Lanka’s divided civil society and its external spectators, the disproportionate suppression and isolation of actors based in proximity to the fighting led foreign NGOs to rely more on Colombo-based groups (Sri Lankan human rights activist, 2017; Adayaalam Centre researcher, 2017). As will be explored later in this section, this unevenness in capacities to enter into dialogue with global actors also had a considerable political influence, to the extent that the voices of Sri Lanka’s most accessible and privileged groups—with their particular sets of social and political dispositions—were heard the loudest. However, this is not to suggest that civil society outside of Sri Lanka’s war zones was not affected by the conflict and its aftermath. Heightened authoritarianism and the regulation of domestic NGO activities, particularly in the final stages of the conflict, also had a stifling impact on Sri Lankan

Extracting knowledge  167 civil society. This occurred against the backdrop of the broader social and political delegitimation of NGOs within the national political discourse following the collapse of the peace process, where a ‘…hostile climate included widespread public condemnation of NGOs by politicians, a parliamentary investigation into the activities of leading NGOs, a tightening of NGO regulations, an increase in negative media coverage of NGOs, and several incidents where NGO offices and staff were physically attacked’ (Walton, 2012: 20). The funding and expansion of the country’s NGO sector in the wake of the December 2004 Tsunami, which ‘…created an unruly funding environment and prompted widespread cases of NGO malpractice’, also helped to feed this growing hostility (ibid.: 21). It was in this context that civil society activists were increasingly seen by Sinhalese nationalists as ‘agents of the West’ (National Peace Council director, 2017). They were accused of ‘…engaging in activities prejudicial to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country; promoting a pro-Western, Judeo-Christian, and hence alien agenda; supporting Tamil separatism; and acting as traitors by making it difficult for the government to wage an effective war against terrorism’ (Edrisinha, 2010: 39). In March 2005, the Sri Lankan parliament established a select committee ‘…to investigate the financial management and accountability of NGOs that received foreign funding, and the impact of NGO activities on the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of the country’ (ibid.: 38). This was followed ‘…by a sustained and aggressive series of attacks on prominent NGOs and their leadership’ from Sinhalese nationalist leaders, as well as in the state media (ibid.: 39). For instance, according to one interviewee from Diakonia, a small Swedish foundation operating in Colombo, this included the intimidation and disruption of their peacebuilding projects and workshops by radical Buddhist nationalist groups (Diakonia staff, 2017). Similarly, another high-profile example was the effective dismantlement of the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, a prominent Colombo-based think-tank, after hosting a lecture on the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ by the ICG’s Gareth Evans in July 2007 (ICG analyst, 2016; International Centre for Ethnic Studies, 2007). As a former architect of the R2P doctrine, Evans’ lecture was unwelcomed in the context of heightened nationalism and anti-interventionism in the country. Yet, what was the structural impact of this crackdown on civil society? The overall effects, I argue, were paradoxical. On the one hand, these trends had a suppressive impact on civil society by constricting the space for criticism of the government, with politically sensitive work forced under the radar. This encouraged some NGOs to espouse more conservative positions, as well as encouraging greater conformity to the epistemic limits imposed by the government within a highly jingoistic climate (Anonymous Sri Lankan activist A, 2017). Yet, on the other hand, there is also evidence of an opposite trend. To some degree, anti-NGO attacks also spurred collective opposition to the Rajapaksa government (ibid.; Groundviews

168  Extracting knowledge editorial staff, 2017). In the words of an interviewee from one Colombobased think-tank, ‘…there was a clear line of engagement for civil society that was very much in opposition to the regime at the time’ (SACLS staff, 2017). Despite the obstacles outlined above, this self-juxtaposition in relation to the presidency of Mahinda Rajapaksa included cooperation across civil society’s internally divided clusters, with a degree of dialogue between Colombo-based groups and their weakened counterparts in the north and east (PEARL staff, 2016; Adayaalam Centre researcher, 2017). As will be explored below, this politicisation of Sri Lankan civil society created a complex relationship between domestic NGO actors and the country’s political arena. Sri Lankan civil society’s proximity to the national political arena As proposed in a brief published by the Asian Development Bank, ‘…[t]he dominant identity of NGOs in Sri Lanka has arguably been political and rights oriented, rather than economical and development oriented’ (2013: 3). Historically, even prior to the latter years of the war, Sri Lankan civil society was highly politicised, in both a deferential and an antagonistic sense. For example, there was a significant degree of cooperation, as well as some strains, with Chandrika Kumaratunga’s SLFP governments between 1994 and 2005 (Edrisinha, 2010: 37). However, relations soured after the election of Mahinda Rajapaksa in 2005. While some solidarity within the country’s liberal civil society developed in direct opposition to the ruling Rajapaksa government, this did not lead to their alienation or distancing from the national political arena. Inversely, particularly among Colombo-based NGOs, the crescendo of anti-Rajapaksa opposition in the post-war period brought civil society into greater alignment with political opposition within the country’s democratic sphere, manifesting as support for the SLFP’s centre-right adversaries, the United National Party (UNP) (ICG analyst, 2016; Adayaalam Centre researcher, 2017). This reached a climax during the presidential contest of January 2015, where a number of civil society organisations became involved in the electoral coalition that succeeded in ousting Mahinda Rajapaksa through the election of his former ministerial ally, Maithripala Sirisena, to the presidency (Groundviews editorial staff, 2017; National Peace Council director, 2017). However, this politicisation of Sri Lankan civil society must also be seen in a wider societal context. As one staff member from the Sri Lankan arm of Transparency International (2017) put it, rather than being detached from the political sphere, Sri Lanka has historically and culturally had a ‘politically-driven civil society’. This degree of political engagement has been justified by some by the need to push for ‘realistic’ policy alternatives, an allusion to the perceived need for deference to the majoritarian structure of the country’s political arena (National Peace Council director, 2017). This deference to and co-option by mainstream political logics can also be linked to a dispositional cautiousness among civil society leaders (Keenan,

Extracting knowledge  169 2006a: 489). Writing about leading civil society members’ absent critique of the exclusion of human rights issues from the discourse around the Sri Lankan peace process, Keenan argued that: The difficulties testify to the basic reluctance of people and organizations throughout Sri Lankan civil society to talk about, much less challenge, established relations of power. While the rhetoric of Sri Lankan politicians and political parties is often quite violently oppositional, the language and approach of those organizations and individuals who dominate the agenda of professional civil society tend to be quite mild and often indirect in their criticisms of those in power. The underlying assumption of most professional civil society interventions in the political domain seems to be that relations of unequal or unaccountable power are best approached quietly or through indirect means, if not simply ignored (ibid.: 474) Within Colombo-based civil society, this trend was arguably reinforced by its upper-middle class and upper-class character, including leading civil society actors’ inter-personal linkages with the country’s political and economic elites (Adayaalam Centre researcher, 2017; ICG analyst, 2016). During the years of heightened authoritarianism, these privileges— often linked to caste- and elite-level familial connections—helped to shield such groups from the worst of the repression targeted at NGOs; further exacerbating the structural inequality between activists in the country’s conflict-afflicted provinces and those based in the capital (Adayaalam Centre researcher, 2017). The immediate post-Rajapaksa period, which followed Sirisena’s victory in the presidential election of 2015, saw the involvement of leading civil society practitioners in government-established commissions and consultations. For example, the executive director of the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttun, was appointed as the Secretary of the new government’s Consultation Task Force on Reconciliation Mechanisms (Secretariat for Coordinating Reconciliation Mechanisms, 2017). Such moves equated to the effective co-option of sections of Colombo’s civil society, with a greater emphasis on political compromise in relation to residual conflict-related issues. This included a reduced urgency in relation to continued demands, emanating from the island’s Tamil-majority districts, for extensive devolution, constitutional reforms and international involvement in any future war-related justice mechanisms (Adayaalam Centre researcher, 2017; Anonymous Sri Lankan activist A, 2017; PEARL staff, 2016). Overall, these trends not only emphasised the degree to which Colombo’s NGO elite exists in proximity to Sri Lanka’s political arena, but also the effect this has had on its political and social orientation. The implications of this orientation will be considered in more detail below. However, before doing so, one must also explore the additional influence of the country’s

170  Extracting knowledge non-profit funding environment, including the structural implications of domestic NGOs’ dependence on international donors. International donor priorities and the financing of Sri Lankan civil society As its main source of sustenance since Sri Lanka’s transition to an open market economy in the late 1970s, international financing has played a major role in the long-term growth and structuring of Sri Lankan civil society (Orjuela, 2005a: 124). In 2013, the Asian Development Bank identified an over-reliance on foreign funds as one of the ‘major challenges’ facing Sri Lankan civil society, with very few sectors not dependent on external financial aid (2013: 4). In regard to conflict-related issues, Western donors (both governmental and non-governmental, large grant and small grant) have played a key role in bankrolling the country’s NGO sector (OECD, 2011a, 2011b).5 Because of its role in the cultivation and development of Sri Lankan civil society, this historic condition of dependence needs to be considered carefully. In the words of an interview participant from International Alert’s Colombo office, ‘…to be honest, a lot of the civil society here is dependent on donor funding. They’re dependent. That’s their financial model. They’re not able to generate local income, private sector or whatever’ (International Alert staff, 2017). This top-down relationship provides international donors with powerful leverage over their domestic partners; something that is reflected in the latter’s responsiveness to shifts in the funding environment. One example of this is the bandwagon effect around the increased availability of funds for transitional justice projects following the change of government in January 2015, in which domestic NGOs attempted to orient themselves towards the emergent, externally driven discourse of ‘transition’ (Transparency International staff, 2017; SACLS staff, 2017; Adayaalam Centre researcher, 2017). This mirrored the ‘peace rush’ that occurred during the years of the peace process, where ‘[t]he word “peace” […] bec[ame] a buzzword in unlocking funding opportunities’ (Orjuela, 2005b: 6). Overall, this emphasises the power-political dimension of the relation between international funders and their domestic partners, with the latter being vectors for the transfer of the imperatives of the former. As reflected in Keenan’s writing about the donor-recipient relationship within Sri Lankan civil society, it is necessary to go beyond perceiving donations as merely acts of generosity, and instead seeing them as ‘…aspects of deeply political relationships that bring with them certain responsibilities’ (Keenan, 2006a: 489). These political aspects are enveloped within the dependent and hierarchical relations between donors and recipients, and are institutionalised through funding practices and the business models that sustain these organisations. Considering this political dimension, donor funding of domestic civil society cannot be conceived as a neutral intervention, but one that acts upon

Extracting knowledge  171 and helps to constitute its structure. In the case of Sri Lankan civil society, the unevenness of foreign financing contributed to the reproduction of its structural inequalities—including its geographical and ethnic stratification. This has been exacerbated by the tendency to distribute large grants to an established oligarchy of high-capacity recipients based in Colombo (National Peace Council director, 2017). From the perspective of donors, this method of funding allocation is pursued because of the ease in liaising with a smaller set of trusted organisations, alongside the stipulation that finances are then sub-granted to provincial- or district-level organisations (Diakonia staff, 2017; Sri Lankan human rights activist, 2017). Yet, this system ‘…gives a lot of privilege, and a lot of unnecessary, and actually unhealthy, amount of power to Colombo-based organisations’ (Sri Lankan human rights activist 2017). The political implications of this are exposed by donors’ evident preference in working closely with perceivably moderate actors with whom they have a practical affinity, such as the shared technocratic (English) language of the professional third sector, and an ideological affinity, including a shared logical orientation towards the country’s ethnic conflict and related issues, as well as the perceivably necessary remedies therein (Orjuela, 2005a: 135). From the perspective of foreign advocates interacting with Sri Lankan civil society, this had the overall effect of amplifying the influence of a narrow section of the country’s civil society elite; allowing them to assert a degree of control over the narratives and logics circulating within global practitioners’ domestic space of interaction. The oligopolistic control of funds by a small collection of Colombo-based actors was further accentuated by shifting funding patterns in the post-war period. While not a universal trend across all donors and issue areas, the country experienced a broad decline in international funding for its civil society sector (Global Policy Forum, 2011; OECD, 2011a). For example, US foreign aid steadily dropped after a peak total of 97 million USD in disbursements to Sri Lanka in 2008, down to 33 million USD in 2015 (USAID, 2017).6 Similarly, funding from Norway—the principal supporter of Sri Lanka’s peace process and a significant contributor of aid—was phased out in the post-war period, declining from 38.9 million NOK (~5.9 million USD) in 2009 to just 675,000 NOK (~97,000 USD) in 2014 (Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation, 2017).7 A number of factors can be cited when considering the reasons for donor fatigue and the diminishing of external financing for Sri Lankan NGOs. These include the country’s attainment of lower middle-income status in January 2010, and—with the conclusion of the country’s 26-year-long civil war—the re-prioritisation of aid towards other global conflict-related issues (UNDP, 2017; Transparency International staff, 2017). Another reason is linked to the increased monitoring and suppression of civil society activities in the post-war years. For organisations working on sensitive issues like accountability and reconciliation, liaising with grant-makers was difficult, and the solicitation of funds required a level of flexibility that large-project donors were unwilling to offer

172  Extracting knowledge (Diakonia staff, 2017; SACLS staff, 2017). This shrinking of the donor supply increased competitiveness between domestic NGOs seeking financial sustenance (Diakonia staff, 2017). This subsequently had the effect of increasing inter-NGO rivalry within Sri Lankan civil society, and further heightening the inequality of access to external finance, with well-established groups— mostly based in the country’s capital—having the greatest capacity to access the dwindling supply of grants. The pre-eminence of Colombo’s civil society elite As outlined above, a combination of the disproportionate effects of the Sri Lankan Civil War, heightened authoritarian governance, and international funding patterns enabled the domination of the country’s civil society by a relatively small, Colombo-based liberal elite. Because of its influence, there is a need to consider the cultural and political inclinations of this dominant section of Sri Lankan civil society, as well as the social space it occupies. As Keenan summarises, ‘[w]hat is generally understood today in Sri Lanka by the term “civil society”—especially in the discourse and funding practices of international donors—is a relatively small set of well-established organizations, mostly based in the capital city, Colombo, and staffed by the English-speaking, generally cosmopolitan middle class’ (2006a: 464). These middle and upper classes represent an exclusive section of Sri Lankan civil society; one that is ‘…quite disconnected from the lower-profile, less professionalized, and more grassroots NGOs and popular movements that work on human-rights, justice, and governance issues outside of Colombo, as well as from the larger public with whom they work’ (Keenan, 2006b: 110). Even when in partnership with organisations and volunteer activists from outside the country’s capital, this does not represent a relationship between equals. For example, through the decontextualised extraction of information from war-afflicted areas, as well as with the tendency to host island-wide consultations and meetings in the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo-based groups were able to retain a disproportionate mediatory and gatekeeping capacity over the extractive flow of knowledge out of Sri Lanka during the war and post-war periods (Sri Lankan human rights activist, 2017). The knowledge that emanated towards global actors via Colombo-based civil society subsequently became coloured by the urban middle classes who had a disproportionate level of control over these processes. When considering the politics of extractive knowledge, the dominance of this socio-economic stratum over civil society is important due to its particular repertoire of social, cultural and political dispositions. In terms of general backgrounds, NGOs based in the capital have—since the mid-1990s— tended to be staffed by well- educated professionals, lawyers, academics and activists, with many having master’s degrees, PhDs or experience studying overseas (ibid.; Asian Development Bank, 2013: 7; Keenan, 2006a: 485). The

Extracting knowledge  173 English language, as well as being the lingua franca for Colombo-based NGOs, is also an important aspect of many Sri Lankan civil society practitioners’ habitus (National Peace Council director, 2017). Structurally encouraged by donor-driven demands for English-medium reporting and project proposal-writing, the English language puts these educated civil society elites into a direct interface with international (mostly Western) actors and discourses; socialising them within a liberal-cosmopolitan bubble that is set adrift from the rest of the populace. As one interviewee with experience of working with Sri Lankan civil society put it: [Colombo civil society are] not in conversation with the right forces, because a part of the elitism that comes out of that is the validity given to certain organisations and individuals by international organisations; the ones that get the fellowships to come to the US, the ones the groups are talking to, or journalists are talking to. It creates that elite circle. And then you end up spending most of your time in conversation with the West, rather than in conversation with the north and the east [of Sri Lanka], which is where the conversation should have been…But what I have seen is that a lot of the issues start to be framed in the narratives that come from the West—particularly the intellectual narratives. You see the same language repeated, that ‘we’re doing capacity building’ and ‘it’s a democratising project’ (ICG consultant, 2016) Writing about English-speaking Tajikistani aid workers, this reflects Heathershaw’s description of ‘professionals on the margins’ (2016: 93), domestic actors who experience a liminal suspension between the local and the global. The habitus of Sri Lanka NGO practitioners is moulded by this semi-liminal state. In other words, their normative and practical orientation is shaped by a negotiation between domestic political pressures and the influence of their external interlocutors. The normative consequence is, in the words of one senior Colombo-based NGO professional, ‘…a shared sense of values that fosters a closer relationship’ with international actors, be they donors, advocates or diplomats (Transparency International staff, 2017). Being driven by bureaucratic and professional expectations, it also produces epistemic practices that are externally facing and elite-oriented in character, as exemplified by the use of English language reports, workshops, seminars and academic publications (Keenan, 2006a: 488). Therefore, due to the combination of this Colombo-based elite’s pre-eminence over Sri Lankan civil society and its leading members’ close relationship with global discourses, it is necessary to consider the specific influence they have had on global advocates’ extractive space, and whether this apparent homology is potentially reinforcing of global knowledge about Sri Lanka. However, this cannot be gauged without first analysing the locus of foreign NGO advocates’ interactions.

174  Extracting knowledge The locus of foreign NGO engagement From the perspective of global advocates working on conflict-afflicted countries, the choice of their domestic partners should not be conceived as an apolitical one, but instead needs to be seen as a form of intervention that can affect both parties. In line with the so-called ‘boomerang pattern’, foreign NGO advocates can act as vectors through which domestic groups access international arenas (Keck and Sikkink, 1998: 200). Yet, as already suggested, this is not a unidirectional dependency. For global advocates, domestic civil society is a central source of extractive knowledge. As suggested by the most frequently cited organisations shown in Figure  6.2, post-war reporting by the ICG and AI drew significantly on the work of three domestic NGOs: University Teachers for Human Rights Jaffna (UTHRJ), Law and Society Trust (LST) and Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA). Beyond these three NGOs, the circle of organisations with whom foreign practitioners have engaged can be expanded to include, for example, consultations with domestic peacebuilding NGOs for the purpose of gathering intelligence about the on-the-ground situation, joint research with Sri Lankan think-tanks working on issues like accountability and transitional justice, and a coordination of global advocacy strategies with Sri Lankan NGOs engaged in lobbying in Geneva (International Alert staff, 2017; SACLS staff, 2017). However, this is still a relatively limited circle of contacts, with the majority based in the country’s capital. This is reflected by the fact that UTHRJ, LST and CPA are all well-established organisations that have operated from the south of the country (CPA, 2017; Law and Society Trust, 2017; UTHRJ, 2000).9 Additionally, the notion that there has been 30 25 20 15 10 5 0

Centre for Policy Alternatives

Law & Society Trust

UTHRJ

Figure 6.2 Frequently cited Sri Lankan NGOs within Amnesty International and International Crisis Group reports (May 2009 to January 2015).8

Extracting knowledge  175 a past tendency by global advocates to rely on a small number of mainly Colombo-based actors was corroborated by multiple Sri Lankan civil society practitioners interviewed as part of the research for this book (Adayaalam Centre researcher, 2017; Anonymous Sri Lankan activist A, 2017; National Peace Council director, 2017; Sri Lankan human rights activist, 2017). The problem of uneven local participation is not unique to this case study, but a wider phenomenon that has been observed by scholars studying peacebuilding in post-conflict contexts (Wilén and Chapaux, 2011: 534). With regard to Sri Lanka, the disproportionality in foreign practitioners’ domestic engagements was shaped by a number of factors. Principal among these was the relative ease of accessing certain constituencies, and the difficulty of contacting others. Here, the Western social, cultural and political orientation of Colombo’s civil society elite made them particularly appealing for foreign advocates. As already suggested, this affinity was reinforced by Colombo-based civil society’s English language proficiency, with a higher quantity of communications and publications available online in English through professional looking websites (Adayaalam Centre researcher, 2017). Thanks to the structuring role played by international donors over their discourse, these actors also shared the standardised dialect of the NGO world, with an emphasis on technical or legal buzz words like ‘capacity building’ or ‘transitional justice’ (Heathershaw, 2016: 89; ICG consultant, 2016). Inversely, foreign actors’ interactions with civil society operating outside the Colombo-centred English-medium bubble tended to rely on translators to act as intermediaries; something that, in the words of one prominent Sri Lankan human rights activist (2017), ‘…creates a whole lot of problems’. On top of this cultural and linguistic affinity, the suppression of civil society under the Rajapaksa presidency also had an influence on its accessibility to foreign NGO researchers and advocates. Both during the fighting and in its aftermath, security concerns had a major impact on the kind of work that foreign practitioners were willing to do inside Sri Lanka. These concerns relate to the practitioners conducting field-research within the country’s former war zones, who were at a greater danger of being harassed by the security services, as well as domestic informants that were exposed to risks of reprisal for engaging with foreign actors (HRW senior staff, 2016; National Peace Council director, 2017). As suggested by Rothenberg’s study of human rights fact-finding in Iraq, this is a broader phenomenon— applicable to other repressive contexts—which tends to leave ‘…investigators to rely on relatively small numbers of personal narratives’ (Rothenberg, 2015: 197). Indeed, in the case of war-time and post-war Sri Lanka, considerations of safety severely hampered foreign practitioners’ ability to travel outside Colombo, forcing them to count more heavily on distanced forms of communication, such as email or video conferencing (Anonymous Sri Lankan activist A, 2017; ICG analyst, 2016; Sri Lankan human rights activist, 2017; National Peace Council director, 2017). The severe level of risk for both foreign and domestic NGO practitioners also generated a finite economy of

176  Extracting knowledge trust, in which the former tended to restrict close cooperation to a narrow range of well-respected activists with whom they had built long-term relationships (SALCS staff, 2017). These limitations on in-country engagement also increased the relative importance of dialogue at the international level. This included bilateral meetings with travelling Sri Lankan activists, as well as multilateral dialogues such as contact between national and international critics of the Rajapaksa government at the UNHRC in Geneva, as well as foreign advocates’ hosting of civil society consultations in undisclosed locations (ibid.; AI research staff, 2016; Anonymous Sri Lankan activist B, 2017; Sri Lankan human rights activist, 2017). However, due to the relatively costly nature of overseas travel, not all Sri Lankan NGOs had the same capacity to access these fora, thus further accentuating the bias towards engaging with wealthier and well-travelled individuals from Colombo’s civil society elite. This is reflected by the composition of Sri Lankan groups active in Geneva, which until the change of government was dominated by Colombo-based organisations, with little representation of groups from the country’s north and east (Adayaalam Centre researcher, 2017; Anonymous Sri Lankan activist B, 2017). Global advocates have been conscious of these biases and attempts have been made to consult more broadly (HRW senior staff, 2016; Sri Lanka Campaign staff, 2016). For instance, individuals from the ICG, SLC and the ITJP cultivated extensive contacts in the country’s former war-afflicted areas, whereas AI retained close dialogue with families of the disappeared (Sri Lanka Campaign staff, 2016; Sri Lankan human rights activist, 2017). However, this type of engagement comes with its own problems. For instance, while there has been a significant interface with activists and groups in Jaffna, a formerly war-torn town that has traditionally been a locus of cultural and political life in the country’s Northern Province, other war-affected towns like Mullaitivu, Mannar and Sinhalese border villages have tended to be overlooked (Groundviews editorial staff, 2017). At the same time, foreign NGOs have also been criticised for their perceived bias in working on war-related issues in the north and east, and for ignoring the war’s impact on southern constituencies outside of Colombo, as well as the island’s Muslim minority (ibid.; International Alert staff, 2017; Sri Lankan human rights activist, 2017). There has been very little dialogue with Sinhalese nationalists—something that is problematic given their influence over the national political arena (National Peace Council director, 2017). Although it might be understandable that global advocacy might centralise the areas of the country that were most affected by the conflict, the lack of engagement with the representatives of a major portion of the country’s population has helped foster cynicism towards foreign NGOs, who have been accused of failing to translate their advocacy of technocratic and liberal interventionist solutions into something that a majority of the island’s Sinhalese-Buddhists can engage with (International Alert staff, 2017).

Extracting knowledge  177 Overall, these inconsistencies emphasise the narrowness of foreigners’ interactions, as well as their relative dependency on a limited number of domestic partners and informants. Yet, the resulting tensions between Sri Lanka’s different political, ethnic and religious constituencies—in terms of whose voice is heard by foreign actors—also highlight the highly politicised character of advocacy practitioners’ uneven entry into extractive spaces. Despite some reflexivity among global advocates and attempts to foster broader connections, these problems are not easily surmountable. The lingering effects of conflict, heightened authoritarianism, the financial and communicative discrepancies in the capacity of domestic actors to converse with foreign NGOs, and the physically bounded, time-constrained nature of host country field-trips, all conspired to limit the range of domestic voices that global advocates consulted in the post-war years. The broader impact of this narrow locus of domestic engagement, in terms of its potential to reify epistemic orthodoxies, will be considered at the end of this chapter. However, before doing so, one also needs to consider advocates’ interface with war-related victims and survivors.

Foreign NGOs’ engagement with victims in post-war Sri Lanka The symbolic value of victimhood Fact-finding by foreign advocates favours primary sources of evidence and direct methods of information gathering. This includes the production of knowledge about individuals who are proximately affected by violence. Thus, conflict-related victims, witnesses and survivors were an integral part of the fact-finding conducted by the core grouping of advocates analysed in the previous chapter. For example, the ICG’s War Crimes in Sri Lanka report was largely based on eyewitness statements and the documentation of IHL violations (2010b: 2); HRW’s war-time and post-war reporting on the island relied heavily on witness accounts (2010: 1, 2013: 10, 2015: 8); the ITJP drew on statements by survivors of torture and sexual violence (Sooka, 2014:  16); and SLC (2015) conducted focus groups with survivor communities in the country’s former war zones. These first-hand methods for the extraction of conflict knowledge served the function of maximising these actors’ perceived legitimacy within global advocacy fora. This credibility was established between the producers and consumers of this direct mode of knowledge extraction. Yet, this ascription of symbolic value to NGOs’ engagement with victims is not timeless or transcendental but based on a specific trajectory through which testimonial truth has been consecrated. According to Moon, this is predicated on a number of past developments, including the rise of testimonial autobiography after the Holocaust, and the centrality of victims within liberal states’ restorative justice processes and the field of transitional justice (2012: 882). As McLagan (2003) argues,

178  Extracting knowledge [t]estimonies are first person narratives in which an individual’s account of bodily suffering at the hands of oppressive governments or other agents come to stand for the oppression of a group. Rooted in dual Christian notions of witnessing and the body as the vehicle of suffering, testimony is a deeply persuasive cultural form that animates and moves western sensibilities. Overall, ‘[t]hese contexts together have converged to authorize the testimonial as a privileged mode of truth, and serve as the backdrop against which the representation of victim suffering in human rights reports should be read, interpreted and understood’ (Moon, 2012: 882). When it comes to global advocacy, there are a few characteristics that imbue proximal experiences of the conflict-zone and its victims with a unique symbolic resonance. First, Bake and Zöhrer argue that first-hand access to conflict-afflicted areas triggers ‘signifiers of truthfulness’ that ‘…are formed by and at the same time guide media and genre conventions and overarching techniques that the audience (and the author) expects a non-fiction text to relate to in order to signify “realism”’ (2017: 85). Therefore, within the context of favoured empiricist epistemologies and realist ontologies within the political field, as well as the demand for testimonial evidence within international law, firsthand knowledge can appeal to expectations about what constitutes evidentiary truth. Second, as Rothenberg argues, ‘…testimony infuses fact-finding reports with a sense of political and moral immediacy, defining the work as victim-centered and grounding research and advocacy efforts with an engagement with local context’, in addition to ‘…embody[ing] a sense of intimacy and a high level of specificity for referencing, revealing, and expressing the lived experience of political violence’ (2015: 193 and 197). By drawing on personal narratives, advocates’ victimology not only stimulates recognition of their proximal expertise, but it can also trigger the production of an ‘emotional’ form of capital (Bake and Zöhrer, 2017: 91; Moon 2012: 882). The efficacy of this emotional appeal is predicated on a humanist audience that retains ‘…the ethical disposition that connects the spectator with the distant sufferer’ (Chouliaraki, 2006: 187). While not universal, and often competing with a saturation of stories about the violation of human dignity (à la compassion fatigue), cosmopolitan dispositions that trigger empathetic engagement with distant suffering are common within many of the international fora with whom global advocates engage. For example, according to interviewees from international NGOs who had experience working on Sri Lanka in Geneva, the use of first-hand evidence and victims’ personal stories were effective in mobilising diplomats in favour of the successive UNHRC resolutions in 2012, 2013 and 2014. As one researcher from AI (2016) put it, ‘…the human element of suffering was understood by diplomats…the kind of direct testimony of someone who has had a real-life experience cuts through that […] bargaining over narratives’. Similarly, interview participants also highlighted the screening of Channel 4’s

Extracting knowledge  179 Sri Lankan Killing Fields, a documentary that provided first-hand accounts and graphic images of the alleged war crimes committed at the end of the Sri Lankan Civil War, which was subsequently used as a highly emotional advocacy tool to motivate decision-makers (ibid.; HRW Children’s Rights Division staff, 2016; US Counsel staff, 2016). Mediating victim knowledge The symbolic efficacy of direct accounts of suffering emphasises the externally facing character of these narratives within global advocacy. Having a presence in the field, and the subsequent ability to extract testimonies from those who are in proximity to violence and its aftermath, allowed global advocates to meet tacit demands from their policy audiences for perceivably unmediated, proximal knowledge about Sri Lanka’s conflict and post-conflict situation (Sharp, 2015: 77). Mirroring the first section of this chapter’s focus on the structuring capacity of international imperatives on foreign practitioners’ engagement with domestic actors, foreign advocates’ orientation towards global advocacy spaces also had implications for the way that victims and their narratives were appropriated and packaged for external consumption. Therefore, one also needs to consider how firsthand knowledge sourced directly from victims, witnesses and survivors is mediated through its translation into an epistemic product marketable to a global policy audience. Scholars working on human rights fact-finding have highlighted the distortionary problems associated with the strategic framing of testimonial evidence, including the potential for decontextualisation and the depoliticisation of victims’ stories (Moon, 2012: 884; Okafor, 2015: 57; Rothenberg, 2015: 200). For instance, Okafor has warned about the tension between the identification of reductionist causal narratives for the purpose of maximising advocacy impact, ‘…and the deeper historical, cultural, political, and economic subtext’ of a human rights violation (2015: 57). Similarly, discussing HRW’s reporting and its imperative to perform certainty, Moon argues that ‘…the claim to objectivity and universality is grounded in the dislocation of testimony from the historical, political and broader social interpretations of violence and suffering’, and that ‘…[v]ictim statements are meticulously pared down, stripped of any information—social and especially political—that might confer meaning on the reported violence. They appear as abstract, universal, timeless accounts that rely for effect on being elevated above all contextual interpretation’ (2012: 884). In the case of postwar Sri Lanka, interviewees with direct experience working with witnesses noted the frustration expressed by some regarding the demobilising power of the ‘victim box’ (and their desire for self-representation), as well as the omission of broader political or socio-economic issues affecting victims that are less central to a human rights framing of victimhood (such as land dispossession or continued militarisation in the island’s north and east), or

180  Extracting knowledge the exclusion of politically sensitive aspects of victims’ stories, such as allusions to Tamil nationalism or separatism (Adayaalam Centre researcher, 2017; ICG consultant, 2016; Sri Lankan human rights activist, 2017). Yet, first-hand knowledge is mediated not only by the external demand to package victim’s narratives for international policy audiences, but also by how NGO researchers access these sources. Given the obstacles to direct engagement within restrictive conflict or post-conflict settings, it is important to highlight that foreign NGO practitioners do not have totally even or unfiltered contact with victims, witnesses or survivors. Here, there are two main issues: self-censorship and gatekeeping. Based on the experiences of interviewees who had interacted with victims or their families in Sri Lanka, there was an emphasis on the variability in the willingness of witnesses to open up to foreign researchers. On the one hand, some victims and witnesses see their interlocutors as conduits through which their stories can be relayed to international fora (ibid.). However, as Okafor warns in relation to human rights fact-finding practice, the power asymmetry between researcher and researched ‘…may foster an atmosphere of undue deference to the fact-finder in which (through no fault of the fact-finder as such) the “native informant” feels too beholden, subordinated, or intimidated to question the fact-finder, and leads the team toward what the informant thinks the team wants to see or hear’ (2015: 58). For example, participants who had dialogue with former LTTE cadres noted interviewees’ general reluctance to speak freely or more contextually about their political choices beyond the category of individual victimhood, meaning that issues like support for Tamil nationalism or militancy were self-censored out of the conversation (Adayaalam Centre researcher, 2016; PEARL staff, 2016). The backdrop of widespread intimidation in post-war Sri Lanka only exacerbated the self-selection bias among potential testimony-providers, with those most exposed to security risks being the least willing to engage in dialogue with foreign practitioners. A second factor that acts as a filter for those taking testimony is their dependence on local gatekeepers. There is only a limited number of actors who are able to play a fixing role, and any reliance upon them for referrals to potential victims also subjects foreign researchers to a degree of selection bias. In the case of Sri Lanka, while there is a consciousness of the dangers of these dependencies, and there have been subsequent efforts to bypass intermediary fixers (especially among more experienced transnational practitioners), it is not a role that has been eliminated (SLC staff, 2016; Sri Lankan human rights activist, 2017). For instance, Sri Lankan civil society actors acted as important fixers for foreign NGO staff seeking contact with victims, witnesses, survivors and other informants (HRW Children’s Rights Division staff, 2016; Sri Lankan human rights activist, 2017). The power of gatekeepers to selectively refer foreign actors only to contacts whom they find most palatable—either personally or politically—highlights the potentially

Extracting knowledge  181 discriminatory capacity of this process. While this selection bias is not as Colombo-centric as global advocates’ broader exposure to Sri Lankan civil society, largely due to the concentration of the conflict’s victims in the island’s former war zones (being somewhat disconnected from the capital), there is still a dependence on a narrow range of English-speaking gatekeepers (Sri Lankan human rights activist, 2017). For example, there is a disproportionate reliance upon the Catholic clergy for fixing access to victims within the island’s north and east— something that was problematised by interviewees, given the fact that only a very small percentage of Sri Lankans are followers of Catholicism (Anonymous advocate B, 2016; TAG director, 2016). Finally, another potentially distortionary gatekeeping issue, brought up by SLC staff (2016), was the danger of using male interpreters to facilitate dialogue with female victims or witnesses; with, for instance, the (patriarchal) mistranslation of women’s issues when engaging with the mothers of disappeared individuals. The affective logic of victimhood So far in this section I have focused on the motivations behind foreign NGOs’ extraction of testimonial evidence, as well as how these testimonies are shaped by both external imperatives and practitioners’ mediated access to witnesses. In this sense, the translation of victim knowledge into advocacy-oriented knowledge is one that is subject to top-down pressures emanating from their embedment in global advocacy relations, as well as some of the practical domestic difficulties that foreign NGOs face when conducting in-country field research. A degree of incongruence between the subjective experience of victimhood and the representation of that victimhood in advocacy discourses mirrors the incongruence between the logic of being a victim—with all its complexities—and the logic of global advocacy. Yet, where does this leave the agency of victims, in terms of their own mediatory influence over the foreign NGOs with whom they engage? Here, what I would like to do briefly is to question the extent to which this topdown representation of the researcher-victim relationship underplays any potential reciprocity, and whether foreign NGO practitioners are affected by this engagement. In the words of one prominent Sri Lankan human rights activist (2017): I think most international groups have tried hard to project authentic messages, feelings, grievances [and] aspirations of survivors of violations, and families of victims, and communities of victims. As far as I know, of the people that I’ve spoken to, they have made extra efforts to meet with survivors, victim’s families and affected communities most of the time during their visits here. They go out of their way and spend a lot of time, energy and money to do that.

182  Extracting knowledge This notion of substantive engagement with victims was corroborated through interviews with multiple participants and appears especially evident for leading practitioners and activists who have worked on Sri Lanka for lengthy periods of time (ibid.; AI research staff, 2016; ITJP spokesperson, 2015). Contrary to the ideal of the distanced, dispassionate and desensitised documentation of testimonial evidence, a number of foreign NGO practitioners asserted an emotional connection with victims and their families. For example, discussing the organisation’s historic link with families of the disappeared, AI’s Sri Lanka researcher (2016) told me that ‘…what motivated me to continue [working on Sri Lanka] is that we have worked with amazing families and amazing activists from the country who were completely determined to campaign in the face of adversity’. The notion that exposure to victimhood was central to inspiring activism was also suggested by Frances Harrison, a former BBC correspondent during the country’s ceasefire who, in the post-war period, became involved with the ITJP after authoring a book—entitled Still Counting the Dead (2012)—about civilian casualties during the final phase of the civil war. Harrison, who is the ITJP’ spokesperson (2015), conveyed to me that she ‘…never intended to get into this [advocacy on Sri Lanka] at all. I was a journalist. I never intended to get into Sri Lanka. I happened to write a book about the end of the war, and, frankly, what I discovered was so horrific I didn’t let go of it after that’. These examples illustrate the need to consider the conflict between foreign NGO practitioners’ embedment within a global advocacy space, with its liberal governance-oriented logic, and the emotional attachments they developed through extractive knowledge practices. A similar tension has been noted in the literature on intervention and statebuilding, with Bliesemann de Guevara arguing that, in the context of German politicians’ field trips to conflict zones, ‘…while travel may not change what specifically MPs think about a policy issue, they do put an issue on their personal agenda and create some sort of emotional bond with a country, topic and/ or group of actors’ (2016: 64). In a similar vein, in their study of the divergent logics between different statebuilding ‘arenas’, Veit and Schlichte have noted the ‘…arduous position’ of ‘bush office’ statebuilding staff who are in greatest proximity to ‘local social life’; asserting that ‘[t]hey experience at first hand the clash between the two worlds and are often torn between the demands of their organisation and their connections in the local arena’ (2012: 176). When applying these insights to the case study at hand, the interface between foreign NGO practitioners and victims can be seen as a site in which an affectual orientation towards the latter is fostered among the former. This interface is generative of novel logics that sit uneasily aside the dominant governance logics fostered through global advocacy relations. Some of the implications of this logical tension, alongside foreign NGO advocates’ exposure to other divergent (and convergent) imperatives highlighted already in this chapter, will be explored in the next section.

Extracting knowledge  183

Conflictive logics? Sri Lanka’s global advocates experienced a dual habitation. On the one hand, the previous chapter explored how they were exposed to logics generated through relations with fellow advocates and international policy audiences. At the same time, they were also immersed in an extractive space. So far, this chapter has, first, considered the extent to which advocates’ extractive space is pre-structured by the logics guiding their investment, and second, explored four principal mediatory aspects of this extractive space: the national political arena, the local media environment, domestic civil society and contact with victims. Yet, how does the above explication of foreign NGO advocates’ domestic space of interaction speak to the book’s central research problem—the epistemic limits of global humanist advocacy? Does the transnational practice of knowledge extraction lead to a challenging or a reification of advocates’ political imaginaries? Similarly, is the extractive space mapped out here homologous to the global advocacy space delineated in the previous chapter, or does it diverge from it? Foreign advocates’ investment into extractive spaces exposes them to the social, political and cultural specificities of the domestic environment. It is therefore no surprise that, when compared with global spaces of interaction, these domestic sites contain some heterologous features. Foreign practitioners’ suspension between these two social spaces, combined with their need to navigate their divergent properties, reflects Veit and Schlichte’s emphasis on the ‘conflictive logic’ facing external statebuilders who, in the context of their embedment within separate ‘arenas’, ‘…find themselves confronted with centrifugal social and political forces that they must pull together in order to be able to continue operating in an organised fashion’ (2012: 168). While there was a significant degree of affinity between foreign NGOs and their domestic partners in post-war Sri Lanka, their differing positionality was made evident when inspecting the tensions between them. For example, this includes the disparate reactions of domestic and global advocates to the UNHRC’s February 2015 decision to delay the release of the OHCHR investigation report into rights violations and alleged war crimes. A clear division emerged between international NGOs like AI who supported the decision to delay (based on a belief that the OHCHR needed more time to investigate), and Sri Lankan civil society groups who were vocally opposed (AI, 2015; Anonymous human rights practitioner, 2017). These divergent positions were underpinned by the former’s proximity to diplomats and UN staff in Geneva, and the latter’s relative distance from this arena (Anonymous advocate B, 2016). Yet, not only does one need to consider domestic-transnational deviations in fundamental assumptions about what constitutes acceptable political action, but it is also necessary to emphasise the heterogenous nature of extractive spaces. Bearing in mind the charged and polarised context of a country ravaged by ethnic civil war, it is important to note external actors’ exposure

184  Extracting knowledge to a diversity of conflicting narratives. As Perera argues, the navigation of heterogenous perspectives is an inherent part of the extraction of knowledge from war-afflicted localities, and ‘…it is important to acknowledge that the narrative process that emerges from conflict knowledge production, and the types of interventions that narratives necessitate, are themselves a source of conflict, and should not be ignored’ (2017: 3). Despite the limits facing foreign advocates’ host country engagements, such as their disproportionate access to different ethnic, linguistic or socio-economic constituencies, these encounters must also be seen as generative of novel ways of doing and thinking about conflict or post-conflict issues, through which ‘…an intersubjective knowledge of local problems and external solutions is generated’ (Veit and Schlichte, 2012: 173–174). Therefore, even in the case of post-war Sri Lanka, where the locus of foreign practitioners’ engagement was relatively narrow, these interactions were not purely reproductive of prior perceptions, but instead had some degree of generative, ‘bottom up’ input on their epistemic horizons. As the previous section highlighted, principal among these influences was advocates’ interface with war-related victims, witnesses and survivors. Here, the affective logic of victimhood, with its first-hand proximity to suffering and the immediacy of demands for justice (providing a temporal distinction from the time frame of the international policy cycle), differs to the political and diplomatic logics of Sri Lanka’s global advocacy space. The presence of victims therefore imbued practitioners’ extractive space with a degree of heterology (or structural differentiation) when compared to the politically hierarchised structure of the global network. In turn, such an exposure—through fostering emotional attachments to the subjects of violence—constituted a heteronomous influence on practitioners, who subsequently had to navigate the tension between victim-oriented and governance-oriented advocacy. Nevertheless, these features of heterology were somewhat overshadowed by a multitude of convergences between advocates’ global and extractive spaces. This chapter has located two major homologies between them. The first refers to the parallels between the political logics outlined in the preceding chapter and the orthodoxies emanating from Sri Lanka’s national political arena. On the other hand, the second—and arguably the strongest homology of all—relates to the elite, liberal and international orientation of the actors and media to whom foreign advocates were most exposed. While an antagonistic relationship developed between the Rajapaksa government and foreign advocacy NGOs after the end of the Sri Lankans Civil War, this did not surmount to a total alienation from its logics. To the contrary, some of the orthodoxies emanating from the national political arena were congruent with expectations established through global advocacy relations. For example, this included a common rejection of maximalist advocacy positions—especially those espoused by Tamil nationalists; a reluctance to discuss or challenge the ethnocratic structure of the

Extracting knowledge  185 Sri Lankan state; and third, a shared aversion to Tamil diaspora activism. These orthodoxies presented themselves through dialogue with diplomats, the country’s mainstream media discourses, and interactions with more conservative and elite-oriented elements of Sri Lankan civil society. Certain assumptions produced in the national political arena, like the Rajapaksa government’s pro-active attempts to demonise the Tamil diaspora, extended towards these other spheres. This indirectly reinforced aspects of the global discourse, such as the shared pejorative perceptions (and a marginalisation) of Tamil diaspora advocates and their counter-hegemonic narratives about the Sri Lankan state.10 A second set of homologies were linked to domestic partners’ international orientations. As outlined in the third and fourth sections of this chapter, foreign NGO advocates in Sri Lanka were most exposed to the island’s English-medium and elite-oriented civil society and news media. This disproportionate engagement was influenced by a number of factors, including the political (i.e. liberal cosmopolitan) and cultural (e.g. tertiary education in Western institutions) affinity with Colombo’s English-speaking news outlets and civil society, as well as the conflict- and post-conflict suppression of NGOs in the island’s north and east, and the financing of Sri Lankan NGOs by international donors. In combination, these all represent additional isomorphic features of the extractive space of engagement. The homology at play here is particularly evident when considering the political affinities between the network of global advocates and their main domestic civil society partners. Despite some disagreements, such as over INGOs’ support for the delay of the 2015 OHCHR report, both espoused similar political stances. Ideologically, Colombo’s Western-oriented civil society elite shared much of the same liberal, cosmopolitan and multiculturalist dispositions as their foreign counterparts. In terms of Sri Lanka’s main conflict- and postconflict issues, they also shared similar epistemic horizons, with a strong mutual concern for issues like human rights, accountability, reconciliation and anti-authoritarianism. In the case of Sri Lankan civil society, what makes this homologous connection so strong is the isomorphism stemming from its dependency on international donors. As emphasised in the fourth section, the island’s NGO sector was largely dependent on foreign aid, and much of this funding came through a relatively narrow range of donors—including Western governments (e.g. the United States, the United Kingdom and Norway) and foundations, and multilateral institutions (e.g. the EU). This relationship between international financiers and their domestic clients was not merely transactional, but also impacted knowledge production: donors helped to orient the kinds of issues (and their boundaries) that Sri Lankan civil society addressed—especially through targeting projects around specific issues (e.g. human rights, post-war reconciliation and transitional justice). Donors were therefore distributors of epistemic limits as much as they were suppliers of project or programme funding. Here, government-based donors (and

186  Extracting knowledge to a certain degree, Western-based foundations) had a double role. Not only were they financing domestic civil society, but they were also engaged in supporting the political imperatives of key Western states throughout the Sri Lankan Civil War and in the post-war years. They became vectors for the transfer of policy logics to domestic Sri Lankan actors—logics that were congruent with those found in the global advocacy space. This relationality of domestic civil society to Western donors (and their political imperatives) therefore mirrors that of foreign NGOs’ dependency on a set of similar actors. Foreign NGO practitioners became exposed to a semi-homologous extractive space in which analogous logics (and subsequent epistemic orthodoxies) were circulating; something that was structurally determined by their mutually dependent relationship with (primarily) Western policy actors.

Conclusion: extractive space and epistemic limits Global advocates investing in extractive spaces make choices that are guided by their relations with international political gatekeepers. To some degree, their selection of civil society partners, media outlets and gatekeepers is pre-determined by these prior logics of investment. The logics of the global advocacy space contributed to the pre-structuration of the extractive space. Yet, does this mean that advocacy practitioners’ domestic engagements in Sri Lanka were a purely performative, superficial affair with little influence on their epistemic horizons? To the contrary, I have demonstrated that these interactions were not liminal or disconnected from the domestic space of interaction but were instead very much exposed to its own mediatory influences. As this chapter has shown, these mediatory influences on conflict-related advocacy stemmed from the country’s national political arena, domestic media environment, civil society elites and war-related witnesses. In opposition to more ‘top-down’ accounts of foreign practitioners’ domestic relations that tend to dissolve the agency of local partners, the explication of these mediatory factors highlights their impact on advocates’ epistemic horizons. What type of impact did these extractive influences have on foreign NGO practitioners’ socio-political imaginaries? As the last section suggested, the answer is somewhat paradoxical. To a certain extent, advocates’ extractive space included logics that were divergent from those of the global advocacy space delineated in the previous chapter. Principally, this included advocates’ interaction with war-related witnesses and survivors; something that exposed them to a logic of victimhood that was somewhat removed from the governance-centred imperatives of global advocacy. Through representing victim’s voices within a global advocacy arena, this affective logic pushed many foreign advocates towards more strident support for post-war accountability and justice. For example, listening to the aggrieved voices of conflict-related victims and survivors, and recognising the partisanship of

Extracting knowledge  187 past attempts at remedial justice, foreign NGO advocates argued strongly in favour of the involvement of foreign investigators, prosecutors and judges (for the assurance of neutrality) within a proposed ‘hybrid court’ looking at war-related human rights abuses and war crimes (HRW, 2015). However, while this relationship to victims and their families encouraged a critical conception of Sri Lanka’s legal process, this affective logic was not enough to substantially realign certain fundamental political assumptions relating to Sri Lanka. This is because this heterologous mediation was overshadowed by the extractive space’s homologous elements, with a substantial affinity between international policy logics and those logics circulating within the extractive space. This chapter found isomorphic features within Sri Lanka’s national political arena, the country’s English-language media and its globally oriented civil society elite. In the context of foreign NGO practitioners’ dual habitation within both global and domestic networks, the substantial homologies between the two spaces led to overlapping logics and epistemic orthodoxies. A cognisance of the domestic sensitivities among Sri Lanka’s Colombo-based elites meant that advocates were careful about contravening the bounds of acceptable discourse. Language that fundamentally challenged the legitimacy of the Sri Lankan state (such as talk of ‘ethnocracy’) was subdued. Meanwhile, the orientation towards domestic liberal media and civil society reinforced the ‘liberal peace’ approach to reporting on the country: the key means to remedy victims’ grievances was seen through legal means, such as by advancing criminal justice, rather than any substantial political reform, such as self-determination for the island’s northern and eastern provinces. This approach included a naïve conception of statehood in which the Sri Lankan state was perceived as having the capacity to undergo secular liberalising reforms. This ignores the kind of structural critique put forward by Tamil diaspora activists, who argued that the country was incapable of transitioning into a multicultural state due to its majoritarian structure. Overall, the bounded scope of foreign NGOs’ domestic interactions acted to reinforce the safe and minimalist approach to global advocacy that was highlighted in the previous chapter.

Notes 1 The Mahinda Rajapaksa-led Sri Lankan Freedom Party (SLFP) retained control of the country’s executive branch of government from November 2005 through to January 2015. 2 These figures are based on 21 separate full-length reports by the International Crisis Group (13), Amnesty International (6) and Human Rights Watch (2) published in the stated period (AI, 2016; HRW, 2016; ICG, 2016). 3 As a civil journalism platform established by the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), a prominent Colombo-based NGO, Groundviews is also a somewhat unique publication. According to its editorial staff, it was self-consciously established as a counter to mainstream media during the early years of the Rajapaksa government. To the contrary, The Nation was edited by a vocal and politically active Sinhalese nationalist, Malinda Seneviratnes, between 2011

188  Extracting knowledge and 2015 (Devapriya, 2017). Similarly, during the end-of-war and post-war periods, The Island espoused broadly pro-government positions. Highlighting its service to the defeat of the LTTE and alignment with the Sri Lankan military, one opinion piece published in 2009 boasted that ‘[t]he number of editorials of The Island reproduced by the army.lk is evidence of the faith the defence establishment had in UNL [Upali Newspapers Limited]’ (Gooneratne, 2009). 4 According to the 2001 census, out of the population over 10 years of age, 13.2% of ethnic Sinhalese, 24.1% of Sri Lankan Tamils, 8.7% of Indian Tamils and 20.6% of Sri Lankan Moors were able to speak English. 5 Sri Lanka’s largest donors, including the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank and Japan, do not engage in political or governance issues. Instead, Western foreign ministries and aid agencies have poured money into issues relating to peace/conflict, human rights and democracy promotion. According to Orjuela (2005b: 3 and 8), smaller Western countries like Sweden were more reliant on using aid agencies as foreign policy tools due to the lack of emphasis on bilateral diplomatic relations. 6 Total disbursements do not reveal all the trends in US funding. For instance, the considerable sum of 12 million USD was designated for ‘Conflict Mitigation and Reconciliation’ in 2011, and increased funding was made available for ‘Rule of Law and Human Rights’ after 2011—the years of successive US-led UNHRC pressure on Sri Lanka. 7 NOK to USD rate was based on the exchange value on 1 December for both respective years. 8 These numbers are based on 19 separate full-length reports by the International Crisis Group (13) and Amnesty International (6) published in the stated period (AI, 2016; HRW, 2016). 9 LST was founded in 1982, while CPA was founded in 1996, and both are advocacy-research NGOs based in Colombo.

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190  Extracting knowledge Fernando, Jude, ‘War Crimes Investigations in Sri Lanka: An Unpopular View’, Groundviews (26 August 2011), available at: {http://groundviews.org/2011/08/26/ war-crimes-investigations-in-sri-lanka-an-unpopular-view/}, accessed 28 May 2017. Fisher, Jonathan, ‘Framing Kony: Uganda’s War, Obama’s Advisers and the Nature of ‘Influence’ in Western Foreign Policy Making’, Third World Quarterly, 35 (2014), pp. 686–704. Global Policy Forum, ‘Sri Lanka: NGOs Face Funding Gap and Government Scrutiny’ (15 March 2011), available at: {www.globalpolicy.org/ngos/introduction/ 49951-sri-lanka-ngos-face-funding-gap-and-government-scrutiny.html}, accessed 24 May 2017. Gooneratne, Merrick, ‘Hats Off to Dedicated Journalists’, The Island (2 June 2009), available at: {www.island.lk/2009/06/02/opinion7.html}, accessed 25 May 2017. Groundviews editorial staff, personal interview with Groundviews editorial staff, Colombo (10 January 2017), by Alistair Markland. Harrison, Francis, Still Counting the Dead: Survivors of Sri Lanka’s Hidden War (London: Portobello Books, 2012). Haviland, Charles, ‘Sri Lanka Sunday Leader editor Frederica Jansz sacked’ (21 September 2012), BBC News, available at: {www.bbc.co.uk/news/worldasia-19680426} accessed 28 April 2017. Heathershaw, John, ‘Who Are the ‘International Community’? Development Professionals and Liminal Subjectivity’, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 10 (2016), pp. 77–96. Human Rights Watch, Besieged, Displaced, and Detained: The Plight of Civilians in Sri Lanka’s Vanni Region (New York: 2008a). Human Rights Watch, Legal Limbo: The Uncertain Fate of Detained LTTE Suspects in Sri Lanka (New York: 2010). Human Rights Watch, Recurring Nightmare: State Responsibility for “Disappearances” and Abductions in Sri Lanka (New York: 2008b). Human Rights Watch, ‘Reports’ (2016), available at: {www.hrw.org/publications? keyword=&date[value]&country[0]=9572&&page=1} accessed 24 November 2016. Human Rights Watch, Return to War: Human Rights under Siege (New York: 2007). Human Rights Watch, ‘Sri Lanka: UN Members Should Back Hybrid Court’ (16 September 2015), available at: {www.hrw.org/news/2015/09/16/sri-lanka-unmembers-should-back-hybrid-court} accessed 15 March 2018. Human Rights Watch, War on the Displaced: Sri Lankan Army and LTTE Abuses Against Civilians in the Vanni (New York: 2009). Human Rights Watch, “We Live in Constant Fear”: Lack of Accountability for Police Abuse in Sri Lanka (New York: 2015). Human Rights Watch, “We Will Teach You a Lesson”: Sexual Violence Against Tamils by Sri Lankan Security Forces (New York: 2013). Human Rights Watch Children’s Rights Division staff, personal interview with HRW Children’s Rights Division staff member, New York (3 May 2016), by Alistair Markland. Human Rights Watch senior staff, personal interview with HRW senior staff member, New York (27 April 2016), by Alistair Markland. International Alert staff, personal interview with International Alert Sri Lanka staff member, Colombo (11 January 2017), by Alistair Markland.

Extracting knowledge  191 International Centre for Ethnic Studies, ‘The Limits of State Sovereignty’ (29 July 2007), available at: {http://ices.lk/publications/the-limits-of-state-sovereignty/}, accessed 24 May 2017. International Crisis Group, ‘Alan Keenan’ (2017), available at: {www.crisisgroup. org/who-we-are/people/alan-keenan} accessed 4 May 2017. International Crisis Group, ‘Reports & Briefings’ (2016), available at: {www.crisisgroup. org/latest-updates/reports-and-briefings?location[]=41} accessed 5 December 2016. International Crisis Group, Sri Lanka: A Bitter Peace (Colombo/Brussels: 2010a). International Crisis Group, Sri Lanka’s Return to War: Limiting the Damage (Brussels: 2008). International Crisis Group, War Crimes in Sri Lanka (Colombo/Brussels: 2010b). International Crisis Group analyst, phone interview with ICG analyst (16 April 2016), by Alistair Markland. International Crisis Group consultant, personal interview with former ICG consultant, New York (5 May 2016), by Alistair Markland. ITJP spokesperson, personal interview with ITJP spokesperson, London (5 December 2015), by Alistair Markland. Keck, Margaret E., and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998). Keenan, Alan, ‘Building a Democratic Middle-Ground: Professional Civil Society and the Politics of Human Rights in Sri Lanka’s Peace Process’, in J. Mertus and J. Helsing (eds.) Human Rights and Conflict: Exploring the Links Between Rights, Law, and Peacebuilding (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2006a), pp. 459–505. Keenan, Alan, ‘The Trouble with Evenhandedness: On the Politics of Human Rights and Peace Advocacy in Sri Lanka’, in M. Feher, G. Krikorian and Y. McKee (eds.) Nongovernmental Politics (New York: Zone Books, 2006b), pp. 88–117. Keerthisinghe, Lakshman I., ‘Partisan Amnesty International Targets Sri Lanka’, Colombo Telegraph (9 May 2013), available at: {www.colombotelegraph.com/index. php/partisan-amnesty-international-targets-sri-lanka/}, accessed 24 May 2017. Large, Judith, Push Back: Sri Lanka’s Dance with Global Governance (London: Zed Books, 2016). Law and Society Trust, ‘About Law & Society Trust (LST)’ (2017), available at: {www.lawandsocietytrust.org/about-us.html} accessed 10 May 2017. Matthews, Bruce, ‘The Limits of International Engagement in Human Rights Situations: The Case of Sri Lanka’, Pacific Affairs, 82 (2009), pp. 577–596. McLagan, Meg, ‘Human Rights, Testimony, and Transnational Publicity’, The Scholar and Feminist Online, 2 (2003). Mégret, Frédéric, ‘Do Facts Exist, Can they Be “Found”, and Does it Matter?’ in P.  Alston and S. Knuckey (eds.) The Transformation of Human Rights FactFinding (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 27–48. Montgomery, Bruce P., ‘Fact-Finding by Human Rights Non-Governmental Organizations: Challenges, Strategies, and the Shaping of Archival Evidence’, Archivaria, 58 (2004), pp. 21–50. Moon, Claire, ‘What One Sees and How One Files Seeing: Human Rights Reporting, Representation and Action’, Sociology, 46 (2012), pp. 876–890. National Peace Council director, personal interview with the executive director of the National Peace Council of Sri Lanka, Colombo (13 January 2017), by Alistair Markland.

192  Extracting knowledge Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation, ‘Norwegian Aid Statistics’ (2017), available at: {www.norad.no/en/front/toolspublications/norwegian-aid-statistics? tab=geo} accessed 8 May 2017. OECD, ‘OECD DAC Evaluation of Donor Activities in Support of ConflictSensitive Development’ (11 February 2011a), available at: {www.oecd.org/ countries/srilanka/47119489.ppt}, accessed 25 May 2017. OECD, ‘Pawns of Peace: Evaluation of Norwegian peace efforts in Sri Lanka, 1997–2009’ (14 November 2011b), available at: {www.oecd.org/countries/ srilanka/49035074.pdf}, accessed 25 May 2017, p. 70 Orjuela, Camilla, ‘Civil Society in Civil War: The Case of Sri Lanka’, Civil Wars, 7 (2005a), pp. 120–137. Orjuela, Camilla, ‘Dilemmas of Civil Society Aid: Donors, NGOs and the Quest for Peace in Sri Lanka’, Peace and Democracy in South Asia, 1 (2005b), pp. 1–12. Okafor, Obiora C., ‘International Human Rights Fact-Finding Praxis: A TWAIL Perspective’, in P. Alston and S. Knuckey (eds.) The Transformation of Human Rights Fact-Finding (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 49–67. Pathirana, Saroj, ‘Sri Lanka “pays PR firm £3m to boost post-war image”’, BBC News (22 October 2010), available at: {www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia11606899}, accessed 25 May 2017. PEARL staff, personal interview with PEARL staff, Washington, DC (16 May 2016), by Alistair Markland. Perera, Sudakshini, ‘Bermuda Triangulation: Embracing the Messiness of Researching in Conflict’, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, (2017), pp. 1–16. Reporters Without Borders, ‘Government Blocks Critical News Websites, Says They Have to Register’ (8 November 2011), available at: {https://rsf.org/en/news/ government-blocks-critical-news-websites-says-they-have-register} accessed 15 March 2018. Reporters Without Borders, ‘Outrage at Fatal Shooting of Newspaper Editor in Colombo’ (20 January 2009), available at: {https://rsf.org/en/news/outrage-fatalshooting-newspaper-editor-colombo} accessed 28 April 2017. Rothenberg, Daniel, ‘The Complex Truth of Testimony: A Case Study of Human Rights Fact-Finding in Iraq’ in P. Alston and S. Knuckey (eds.) The Transformation of Human Rights Fact-Finding (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 191–211. SACLS staff, personal interview with South Asian Centre for Legal Studies staff, Colombo (19 January 2017), by Alistair Markland. Secretariat for Coordinating Reconciliation Mechanisms, ‘Consultations’ (2017), available at: {www.scrm.gov.lk/consultations}, accessed 24 May 2017. Sharp, Dustin N., ‘Human Rights Fact-Finding and the Reproduction of Hierarchies’, in P. Alston and S. Knuckey (eds.) The Transformation of Human Rights Fact-Finding (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 69–87. Smirl, Lisa, ‘The State We Are(n’t) In: Liminal Subjectivity in Aid Worker AutoBiographies’, in Berit Bliesemann de Guevara (ed.) Statebuilding and StateFormation (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012), pp. 230–245. Sooka, Yasmin, ‘An Unfinished War: Torture and Sexual Violence in Sri Lanka 2009–2014’, The Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales and The International Truth & Justice Project Sri Lanka (London: 2014). Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice, “How Can We Have Peace?” New Report Says Survivors’ Needs Must Drive Sri Lanka Reconciliation (24 March 2015), available at: {www.srilankacampaign.org/how-can-we-have-peace-new-report-sayssurvivors-needs-must-drive-sri-lanka-reconciliation/}, accessed 26 May 2017.

Extracting knowledge  193 Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice staff, personal interview with SLC staff, London (5 February 2016), by Alistair Markland. Sri Lankan human rights activist, personal interview with Sri Lankan human rights activist, Colombo (13 January 2017), by Alistair Markland. TAG director, personal interview with the director of TAG Europe, London (2 February 2016), by Alistair Markland. The Island, ‘Nimal Welgama New SLT Chairman’ (19 May 2010), available at: {www.island.lk/2010/05/19/news2.html} accessed 13 March 2018. The Sunday Times, ‘US probes monitoring MP’s huge deals with PR firms’ (24 August 2014), available at: {www.sundaytimes.lk/140824/columns/us-probes-monitoringmps-huge-deals-with-pr-firms-114679.html} accessed 25 May 2017. Tissainayagam, J.S., ‘Sri Lanka: The Time For An International Investigation Is Now’, Colombo Telegraph (21 November 2013), available at: {www.colombo telegraph.com/index.php/sri-lanka-the-time-for-an-international-investigationis-now/}, accessed 28 May 2017. Transparency International staff, personal interview with Transparency International Sri Lanka staff, Colombo (13 January 2017), by Alistair Markland. UNDP, ‘About Sri Lanka’ (2017), available at: {www.lk.undp.org/content/srilanka/ en/home/countryinfo.html} accessed 8 May 2017. University Teachers for Human Rights Jaffna, ‘History of the Organisation’ (January 2000), available at: {www.uthr.org/history.htm} accessed 10 May 2017. USAID, ‘U.S. Foreign Aid by Country: Sri Lanka’ (2017), available at: {https:// explorer.usaid.gov/cd/LKA} accessed 25 April 2017. US Counsel on Sri Lanka, personal interview with US Counsel on Sri Lanka staff, Washington DC (12 May 20916), by Alistair Markland. Veit, Alex and Klaus Schlichte, ‘Three Arenas: The Conflictive Logic of External Statebuilding’, in Berit Bliesemann de Guevara (ed.) Statebuilding and StateFormation (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012), pp. 167–181. Walton, Oliver, ‘Between War and the Liberal Peace: The Politics of NGO Peacebuilding in Sri Lanka’, International Peacekeeping, 19 (2012), pp. 19–34. Wilén, Nina and Vincent Chapaux, ‘Problems of Local Participation and Collaboration with the UN in a Post-Conflict Environment: Who are the ‘Locals’?’, Global Society, 25 (2011), pp. 531–548.

7

Conclusion Embattled knowledge, contested expertise—a bleak future for global humanist advocacy?

Overall, this book has provided a holistic sociological account of the production of advocacy-oriented knowledge. In particular, I have drawn attention to the centrality of global humanist advocates’ social dependencies in delimiting their epistemic horizons. Drawing on Bourdieu’s sociology of knowledge and epistemology, this conclusory chapter begins by summarising how the book’s main empirical findings cast light on the power dynamics that underpin the division of advocacy-oriented knowledge into doxic, orthodox and heterodox forms. I then question some of the key ethical and political problems that are exposed when one problematises the intersection between knowledge and socio-political power. This includes reflecting on the potential complicity of global humanist practitioners in marginalising critical advocacy voices. Finally, I will also consider what the book’s findings might tell us about the future development of humanist advocacy. Given the threats to prominent non-governmental advocates’ credibility as key voices speaking truth to power on a global stage, the long-term sustainability of their universal humanist projects is called into question.

Epistemic horizons In Bourdieu’s epistemology, doxa refers to a condition where ‘…the natural and social world appears as a self-evident’ (1977: 164). It is the body of background knowledge that delineates the thinkable from the unthinkable. Because it refers to unquestioned premises and presumptions, it represents the most powerful form of epistemic closure. Doxa sits in opposition to two types of foregrounded knowledge: orthodoxy and heterodoxy—both of which suggest an ‘…awareness and recognition of the possibility of different or antagonistic beliefs’ (ibid.). Therefore, while doxa ‘…delimits the universe of possible discourse’, orthodox knowledge defines acceptable ways of thinking, while at the same time consciously disavowing the heresies of heterodoxy (ibid.: 169–170). Doxic knowledge and orthodox knowledge are similar to the extent that they are aligned towards the perpetuation of existing epistemic horizons. Bourdieu links the strength of doxa in a given social formation to its degree of social and cultural homogeneity, while orthodoxy

Conclusion  195 emerges defensively against antagonistic beliefs (ibid.: 164). These concepts are not only useful in terms of epistemological reflection, but they can also be applied analytically to the book’s empirical findings in order to map out of the epistemic parameters of global humanist advocacy. How stable is the field of doxa when it comes to global humanist advocacy? Bourdieu’s Homo Academicus (1984), a seminal tome on knowledge production in French academia, argues that ‘[e]very position [in a social field] has corresponding presuppositions, a doxa, and the homology between the positions occupied by producers and those of their clients is the condition of this complicity’. Such a doxic parity between the producers and consumers of knowledge can be seen in the case of leading humanist advocates studied in Chapters 3 and 4. The advocacy-oriented knowledge markets of AI, HRW and the ICG are defined principally by symbiotic relations between these organisations and their primary political and symbolic consecrators. This symbiosis reinforces a commercial mode of knowledge production that is subservient to dominant political interests. Exacerbated by epistemic saturation and an intensification of competition between advocates in the age of social media algorithms, the oligarchical shape of the global humanist advocacy arena bolsters the existing doxa by encouraging complicity with centres of political power and the shutting out of critical or counter-hegemonic voices. As observed in Chapter 4, the narrow professional, educational and cultural backgrounds of practitioners ensure a homogenous epistemic culture among leading humanist advocacy organisations. The elite orientation of organisations like HRW and the ICG, as well as the revolving door between their senior staff and high-level governmental actors (who are also among the primary consumers of their advocacy), reinforces the doxic affinity between them. Overall, this condition of dependence produces an epistemic culture that is elitist, cosmopolitan, legalist, neoliberal, politically pragmatic and adverse to systemic change.

Disciplining epistemic heterodoxy: questions of epistemic justice Chapter 5 revealed the symbiotic relations between NGO advocates working on post-war Sri Lanka and the political gatekeepers that they relied upon to put international pressure on the Sri Lankan government. Following the end of the Sri Lankan Civil War, these dependencies encouraged advocates to adopt a politically oriented logic of liberal peace governance, including a liberal conception of Sri Lanka statehood that was blind to its ethnocratic biases, as well as encouraging diplomatic minimalism and a narrow legal conception of political development. Yet, as seen in Chapter 6, this discourse was not purely structured by top-down relations with political gatekeepers at the transnational level but was also mediated through NGO practitioners’ extractive relations. Aspects of this extractive space exposed global advocates

196 Conclusion to influences that were divergent from global political logics, such as their relations with conflict victims and its inculcation of an affective logic of victimhood. However, the homologous dimension of this extractive space, including advocates’ narrow engagement with internationally and liberally minded (and funded) Sri Lankan gatekeepers, was reproductive of the logics found within their global advocacy space. These global logics of liberal peace governance developed in explicit contradistinction to the radical and heterodox critique of the Sri Lankan state voiced by Tamil diaspora activists. Rather than an unspoken doxa, this position was foregrounded as a consciously aloof and defensive orthodoxy that sought to shore up its authority in opposition to the perceivably partisan diaspora advocate. As will be seen below, this exclusionary dynamic raises problematic philosophical and political questions regarding the potential role of global humanist advocates in perpetrating epistemic injustices. As seen in Chapter 5, the discourse about Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict that was promoted by Tamil diaspora activists was rooted in an experiential and familial proximity to violence perpetrated by the Sri Lankan state. It was informed by a long-term experience of oppression under ethnocratic governance. As one diaspora advocate put it, ‘…if a crime happened, for [Western advocates’] eyes it is a crime. For our eyes it is different, because it could be our relatives and our kin. It is more than a crime…for us it is a much larger pain’ (BTF representative, 2016). This immediacy, which surpasses that of foreign advocates’ sporadic interface with victims and survivors of the conflict, underpins the maximalism, autonomism and critical conception of statehood that forms the heterodoxic discourse within Sri Lanka’s post-war global advocacy space (ICG consultant, 2016). This diverges from the orthodox approach taken by primarily Western, non-diaspora advocates, relating to universalism and a legalistic conception of the inter-ethnic violence seen in Sri Lanka. In contrast to the Tamil diaspora’s proximity to suffering, the orthodoxies of the core grouping of global advocates were informed by their dependent relationship with dominant political audiences. Doxic boundaries were observed through their cognisance of these audiences’ diplomatic sensitivities, an unwillingness to engage in ethical questions of jus ad bellum (such as questioning the legitimacy of the war), and the near total absence of any critique of Western or UN complicity in the Sri Lankan government’s final war effort (ICG consultant, 2016; Kurtz and Jaganathan, 2016: 104–105; UN, 2012).1 One reaction to this observation might be so what? Such a co-option by powerful governmental gatekeepers might be defended by a logic of pragmatism. Forging alliances with sympathetic governments was instrumental to maximising pressure on the Sri Lankan state to pursue post-conflict accountability and reconciliation. It might be argued that the primary ethical obligations of global advocates are precisely in maximising the pursuit of their universal humanist goals as encoded in their formal mandates, and not in enabling space for heterodox voices.

Conclusion  197 However, based on the perspective of social epistemology, a strong ethical case can be made that this mode of epistemic practice is complicit in a form of epistemic injustice. As Miranda Fricker argues, ‘[t]his socially situated conception puts questions of social identity and power centre stage, and it is the prerequisite for the revelation of a certain ethical dimension to epistemic life—the dimension of justice and injustice’ (2007: vii). As this book has, first, centralised the analysis of self-professedly moral agents in global affairs, and second, unveiled the operation of power dynamics at both the macro-level of the knowledge market and the meso-level of issue-specific advocacy networks, I would argue that ethical reflections regarding advocates’ potential suppression of heterodoxies are particularly pertinent. As seen in the structural dichotomisation of Sri Lanka’s post-war global advocacy space, advocates who amassed social legitimacy vis-à-vis their proximity to dominant consumers were active participants in the exclusion and marginalisation of diasporic voices; voices representing some of the conflict’s primary victims.2 With privileged access to various national and international policy fora, this core grouping of advocates effectively acted as gatekeepers for the transmission of narratives to international policymakers and decision-makers. Given this social power, their capacity to discriminate through their choice of partnerships can be evaluated along the lines of epistemic justice. Here, discrimination on the basis of maximising political capital in an advocacy context can be designated—in Fricker’s terms—a form of ‘structural testimonial injustice’ (ibid.: 27). Heterodox knowledge was distanced from the mainstream not on its internal merit, but on its structural incompatibility with the imperatives of dominant governance logics. The global humanist advocates studied in this book are important sources not just for politicians or legal practitioners but also for academic audiences. On top of their thematic knowledge covering a host of contemporary issues, their investments in extractive knowledge production makes them attractive for researchers seeking to learn about human rights and conflict-related conditions in countries across the globe. However, rather than taking advocacyoriented knowledge at face value, the problems highlighted in this book should encourage both academic and non-academic readers to question the phenomenal realities projected by these nominally altruistic organisations. The presented findings should also encourage further study into how humanist advocates’ structural conditions of dependence can drive exclusionary forms of epistemic practice. Furthermore, given the commercialising trends influencing twenty-first-century advocacy, including the drive to maximise the saleability of advocacy-oriented knowledge in a competitive epistemic environment, these observations are likely to be replicated outside the scope of book’s case studies. Additional examination of how knowledge becomes structured by conditions of dependency is therefore needed to analyse how doxic and orthodoxic practices emerge across different advocacy contexts. As will be explored below, these insights also raise critical questions regarding the explicitly political effects of transnational advocacy.

198 Conclusion

Demystifying the façade of disinterested universalism In Colombia in October 2016, a plebiscite was held on the ratification of a peace deal between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), aimed at ending the five-decade-long conflict between the two warring parties. Based on the notion that the peace deal encouraged impunity for various human rights abuses committed by the FARC, HRW intervened in the referendum, supporting the successful ‘No’ campaign led by former president and right-wing hardliner Álvaro Uribe (Vivanco, 2016). This intervention was criticised for potentially swinging the result of the plebiscite (the peace deal was rejected by a margin of 50.21 percent to 49.78), legitimising the country’s hard right, ignoring support in favour of the peace deal coming from victims of FARC atrocities, and disregarding the fact that ‘…people living in provinces that have experienced high levels of ongoing violence have overwhelmingly voted in favor of the peace agreement’ (Grandin, 2016; Wilke, 2016). This provides a further example of how, on the basis of the application of an uncompromising onesize-fits-all methodology, global advocates can fail to account for the voices of communities living in direct proximity to violent conflict—a textbook example of their potential complicity in epistemic injustice. This is also an example of how, despite the façade of detached universalism engendered by appeals to international legal frameworks and disinterested expertise, these interventions can have thoroughly interested political consequences. These transnational advocates have, in the words of Bourdieu, ‘…an interest in disinterestedness’ (1998: 93). By unveiling their enmeshment in power-political relations at multiple levels (via their backgrounds, knowledge markets and global advocacy networks), this book has contributed to the demystification of this façade. This political dimension is observable in their transnational activities, through their complicity in the exclusion of heterodox voices for the purpose of political capital maximisation, and via the kinds of uneven engagements in extractive spaces seen in Chapter 6. In Hopgood’s future-oriented book titled The Endtimes of Human Rights, the author argues from a realist perspective that as the global system transitions into a neo-Westphalian order, the kinds of market-driven legitimacy dilemmas outlined in Chapter 3 of this book will see this inherent interestedness become more visible: Finding it harder and harder to get traction, international human rights and humanitarian organizations will turn increasingly to self-promotion. They will be concerned more than ever with themselves. Money pressure will exacerbate this trend because, given the difficulties inherent in providing the impact of global human rights, it is the symbolic value of human rights that will need to be monetized. We will see the substitution of the appearance of moral power for the reality of waning influence (2013: 20)

Conclusion  199 In February 2018, the United States’ National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency—an agency responsible for aerial intelligence—announced that it ‘…will provide raw imagery, expert review, and the use of an already developed digital app and publishing platform to several nonprofit organizations and think tanks’ (McLaughlin, 2018). Nominally, the specific aim was to provide advocates with information about human rights abuses within the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, although this must also be contextualised in relation to the Trump administration’s previous pursuit of a brinkmanship strategy on the Korean peninsula. Despite accepting the fact that this prospective collusion between non-governmental advocates and a Western intelligence agency contravenes its self-circumscribing policy, AI came out publicly in support of the move, stating that, ‘[a]ny shining of a light on a human rights abuse is a good thing’ (ibid.). Despite this book’s documentation of attempts by AI, HRW and the ICG to globalise their activities and de-anchor themselves from Western metropoles, this example illustrates the extent to which these kinds of organisations continue to be entrenched within and reliant upon Western power structures. Again, this dependency is justified and legitimated through an appeal to pragmatism and utilitarianism: collusion with these power structures enables humanist advocates to maximise their influence on the policy process, allowing them to fulfil their self-articulated mandates. However, the long-term sustainability of this model has been brought into question. In an increasingly multipolar world, in which illiberal actors appear to be ascendant, dependencies vis-à-vis liberal Western states are increasingly exposed. In reference to leading human rights advocates, Hopgood argues: But the alternative, siding with liberal states to reform the world, has I will argue an even more truncated shelf life. Once the alliance was made with money and liberal power, the core of moral authority, acting without self-interest, was gone. What had been seen as moral norms— applicable to all and justified as beyond ideology—were revealed to be social norms that advanced one conception of what constituted a good society. The opportunity to build global normative institutions using state power comes with a caveat, in other words: when the sovereign changes its mind and declares itself and its clients exempt from its own rules, the Global Human Rights Regime is left bereft of moral authority, its claim to universal legitimacy undermined, its compliance with state power exposed (2013: xiii) It is in this context that global humanist advocates, ‘…hand-maiden to neoliberal democracy, are unveiled as ideological, opening a legitimacy gap that has allowed their opponents to make increasing inroads against them’ (ibid.). The continued viability and capacity of humanist advocates’ current legitimacy calculus relies on a modernisation thesis: the idea that

200 Conclusion liberalisation and the global extension of Western-style rule of law are natural heirs to economic development. It is therefore highly problematic that the future prospects of the political and moral capital of leading humanist NGOs are anchored in such a problematic set of causal assumptions. This legitimacy crisis is particularly evident when looking outside of the doxic confines of Western liberal societies. For example, in post-colonial contexts such as contemporary Sri Lanka, the activities of both domestic and international NGOs have almost entirely negative connotations—perceived as a manifestation of neo-colonial interventionism. While there is recognition of the need to internationalise their activities, endeavours such as AI’s ‘Closer to the Ground’ strategy are unlikely to pacify such concerns. Moving forward, I believe that there are three potential outcomes. First, there is the possibility of global humanist advocates doubling down on their dependency vis-à-vis Western states, and a subsequent erosion of their global authority. Second, they could seek to uproot themselves from these power structures, attempting to truly globalise their activities. Third, the most likely option is a middle road between these two outcomes. Politically and economically, there are major obstacles facing transnational advocates seeking to extract themselves from existing dependencies. At a time of intensified competition for non-profit funding (especially after the 2008 financial crisis), it is hard to envision how humanist advocacy organisations might achieve material sustenance outside of the patronage of Western elites. As Dustin Sharp has argued, [m]any of those working at ‘top-tier’ global organizations like Human Rights Watch, Human Rights First, Amnesty International, and so on are highly educated elites, with degrees from prestigious universities where students are trained and socialized to think like global power insiders. Their training and mental maps are largely rooted in law, and not in community empowerment, dialogue facilitation, education, and so on (2018: 518) Shifting the epistemic culture of global humanist advocacy away from this elite-oriented model would require a significant bottom-up change at the level of education, skills and practical dispositions. Furthermore, any deeper international engagement beyond the generic application of universal frameworks would also open these organisations to accusations of overt politicisation. If a new NGO politics were to be built on the grounds of political solidarity, or a new global cosmopolitanism built upon the foundation of representational legitimacy (accepting ‘pluriversality’) rather than abstraction, the façade of universalism would be significantly undermined (Mignolo, 2014: 61). Due to the political sensitivities involved in the types of issues they work on (Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict is a case in point), this approach would require advocates to make explicitly political choices. Thus, any attempt to decolonise their activities

Conclusion  201 would necessitate an engagement in questions of difference, and to accept the limits of interventionary action. All of these factors suggest that the current model of global humanist advocacy is difficult to supersede. Yet, the counterargument that a divergence from this model would undermine ‘independence’ or lead to the ‘politicisation’ of their activities rings somewhat hollow, especially given the extent to which this book has unveiled their existing socio-political dependencies. This is therefore a dialogue that—rather than being supressed or confined to critical academic scholarship—should be encouraged among humanist advocates themselves.

Notes 1 Western military and intelligence support for the Sri Lankan armed forces is well documented. The United States was complicit in providing military training and surveillance, while the United Kingdom and other European countries provided small arms, ammunitions and military ground vehicles up until the end of the war. The UN’s failings during the final months of the Sri Lankan Civil War were documented in the UN Internal Review Panel (2012). 2 The scale of the Tamil diaspora is itself a consequence of decades of emigration driven by discrimination and persecution by the Sri Lankan state.

References Bourdieu, Pierre, Homo Academicus (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984). Bourdieu, Pierre, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). Bourdieu, Pierre, Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998). British Tamil Forum representative, personal interview with the BTF’s representative to the United Nations in Geneva, London (17 October 2016. By Alistair Markland. Fricker, Miranda, Epistemic injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing (Oxford University Press, 2007). Grandin, Greg, ‘Did Human Rights Watch Sabotage Colombia’s Peace Agreement?’, The Nation (3 October 2016), available at: {www.thenation.com/article/ did-human-rights-watch-sabotage-colombias-peace-agreement} accessed 8 March 2018. Hopgood, Stephen, The Endtimes of Human Rights (London: Cornell University Press, 2013). International Crisis Group consultant, personal interview with former ICG consultant, New York (5 May 2016), by Alistair Markland. Kurtz, Gerrit, and Madhan Mohan Jaganathan, ‘Protection in Peril: Counterterrorism Discourse and International Engagement in Sri Lanka in 2009’, Global Society, 30 (2016), pp. 104–105. McLaughlin, Jenna, ‘U.S. Spies to Partner With Human Rights Groups to Keep an Eye on North Korea’, Foreign Policy (21 February 2018), available at: {http:// foreignpolicy.com/2018/02/21/u-s-spies-to-partner-with-humanitarian-groupsto-keep-an-eye-on-north-korea} accessed 6 March 2018.

202 Conclusion Mignolo, Walter, ‘Who Speaks for the “Human” in Human Rights?’, in J.M. Barreto (ed.) Human Rights from a Third World Perspective: Critique, History and International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), pp. 44–64. Sharp, Dustin N., ‘Human Rights Fact-Finding and the Reproduction of Hierarchies’, in Philip Alston and S. Knuckey (eds.) The Transformation of Human Rights Fact-Finding (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 69–87. United Nations, Report of the Secretary-General’s Internal Review Panel on United Nations Action in Sri Lanka (New York: 2012). Vivanco, José Miguel, ‘Colombia Peace Deal’s Unwelcome Critic’, Human Rights Watch (16 August 2016), available at: {www.hrw.org/news/2016/08/16/colombiapeace-deals-unwelcome-critic} accessed 8 March 2018. Wilke, Christiane, ‘Thinking Justice Beyond Impunity: HRW and Colombia’, Warscapes (2 November 2016), available at: {www.warscapes.com/blog/thinkingjustice-beyond-impunity-hrw-an-colombia} accessed 8 March 2018.

Appendix

Occupational data

Table A1. Numbers of researchers or advocacy staff at Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Crisis Group with evidence of prior employment in each professional category Profession

Amnesty International

Human Rights Watch

International Crisis Group

NGO and third sector Government agency Legal profession Academic Research institute Journalist or media Intergovernmental Organisation Private Sector Humanitarian Domestic Politics National human rights institution Community organisation Religious Military Peacebuilding Peacekeeping

157 34 38 19 38 43 83 39 64 6 4 11 8 1 6 1

79 13 48 27 13 38 42 3 22 7 2 4 0 1 0 1

30 8 7 30 38 26 28 9 12 4 0 0 0 0 4 3

Table A2. Proportion of researchers or advocacy staff at Amnesty International (N = 222), Human Rights Watch (N = 156) and the International Crisis Group (N = 80) with evidence of prior employment in each professional category, as a percentage of the sample totals Profession

Amnesty International

Human Rights Watch

International Crisis Group

NGO and Third Sector Government agency Legal profession Academic Research institute Journalist or media

70.72 15.32 17.12 8.56 17.12 19.37

50.64 8.33 30.77 17.31 8.33 24.36

37.50 10.00 8.75 37.50 47.50 32.50 (Continued)

Profession

Amnesty International

Human Rights Watch

International Crisis Group

Intergovernmental Organisation Private Sector Humanitarian Domestic Politics National human rights institution Community organisation Religious Military Peacebuilding Peacekeeping

37.39 17.57 28.83 2.70 1.80 4.95 3.60 0.45 2.70 0.45

26.92 1.92 14.10 4.49 1.28 2.56 0.00 0.64 0.00 0.64

35.00 11.25 15.00 5.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 5.00 3.75

Table A3. Numbers and proportion of board members at Amnesty International (N = 11) with evidence of prior employment within each professional category Profession

Number

Proportion

NGO Development & Humanitarian Private Sector Academic Journalism/Media Law International Organisation Government and Civil Servant

6 4 4 4 3 2 1 1

54.55 36.36 36.36 36.36 27.27 18.18 9.09 9.09

Table A4. Numbers and proportion of board members at Human Rights Watch (N = 30) with evidence of prior employment in each professional category Profession

Number

Proportion

Private Sector NGO and Third Sector Legal Profession Government and Civil Service Artist Media and Journalism Research Institutes and Think-Tanks

15 12 7 5 5 4 4

50.00 40.00 23.33 16.67 16.67 13.33 13.33

Table A5. Numbers and proportion of board members at Human Rights Watch (N = 41) with evidence of prior employment in each professional category Professional background

Number

Proportion

Government and Civil Service NGO and Third Sector Private Sector

25 19 17

60.98 46.34 41.46

Professional background

Number

Proportion

International Organisations Diplomacy Academia Research Institutes and Think-Tanks Media and Journalism Legal Military Trade Union

15 13 12 11 10 3 2 1

36.59 31.71 29.27 26.83 24.39 7.32 4.88 2.44

Educational data

Table A6. Top countries where Amnesty International researchers and advocates were awarded educational degrees (bachelor’s or higher), listed by frequency and proportion (N = 223) Country of study

Number

Proportion

United Kingdom United States Italy France Canada Netherlands India Ireland South Africa Spain Belgium Nigeria Egypt Colombia Australia Chile New Zealand

121 34 26 12 11 9 8 7 7 6 5 5 4 4 4 3 3

54.26 15.25 11.66 5.38 4.93 4.04 3.59 3.14 3.14 2.69 2.24 2.24 1.79 1.79 1.79 1.35 1.35

Table A7. Top countries where Human Rights Watch researchers and advocates were awarded educational degrees (bachelor’s or higher), listed by frequency and proportion (N = 156) Country of study

Number

Proportion

United States United Kingdom France Canada

102 37 10 9

65.81 23.87 6.45 5.81

Table A8. Top countries where International Crisis Group researchers and advocates were awarded educational degrees (bachelor’s or higher), listed by frequency and proportion (N = 76) Country of Study

Number

Proportion

United States United Kingdom France Germany Switzerland Canada

30 24 12 3 3 3

39.47 31.58 15.79 3.95 3.95 3.95

Table A9. Top disciplines of education (bachelor’s or higher) of Amnesty International researchers and advocates, listed by frequency and proportion (N = 216) Discipline

Number

Proportion

Political Science & IR Law Human Rights Language Development Studies Regional Studies Journalism & Media History Peace and Conflict Social Science (other) Economics Sociology Philosophy Business STEM Arts & Humanities (other) Anthropology Geography

84 82 65 37 27 26 25 20 13 11 10 8 7 7 7 6 5 4

38.89 37.96 30.09 17.13 12.50 12.04 11.57 9.26 6.02 5.09 4.63 3.70 3.24 3.24 3.24 2.78 2.31 1.85

Table A10. Top disciplines of education (bachelor’s or higher) of Human Rights Watch researchers and advocates, listed by frequency and proportion (N = 150) Discipline

Number

Proportion

Law Political Science & IR Language Journalism & Media Human Rights Regional Studies Development Studies History Economics

82 49 24 15 14 13 12 12 9

54.67 32.67 16.00 10.00 9.33 8.67 8.00 8.00 6.00 (Continued)

Discipline Social Science (other) Sociology Philosophy Business STEM Arts & Humanities (other) Anthropology Geography Peace and Conflict

Number

Proportion

8 3 4 2 8 3 7 4 4

5.33 2.00 2.67 1.33 5.33 2.00 4.67 2.67 2.67

Table A11. Top disciplines of education (bachelor’s or higher) of International Crisis Group researchers and advocates, listed by frequency and proportion (N = 73) Discipline

Number

Proportion

Political Science & IR Regional Studies History Law Language Philosophy Peace and Conflict Journalism & Media Development Studies Economics Arts & Humanities (other) Social Science (other) Sociology Geography Human Rights Business STEM Anthropology

49 15 13 11 11 9 7 5 4 4 3 2 2 2 1 1 1 1

67.12 20.55 17.81 15.07 15.07 12.33 9.59 6.85 5.48 5.48 4.11 2.74 2.74 2.74 1.37 1.37 1.37 1.37

Table A12. Common universities where Amnesty International researchers and advocates were awarded their degrees (bachelor’s or higher), listed by frequency and proportion (N = 223) University

Number

Proportion

School of Oriental and African Studies London School of Economics and Political Science University of Essex Birkbeck, University of London University College London University of Oxford Harvard University Sapienza University of Rome McGill University University of Cambridge

20 17 13 7 7 7 6 6 6 6

8.97 7.62 5.83 3.14 3.14 3.14 2.69 2.69 2.69 2.69

Table A13. Common universities where Human Rights Watch researchers and advocates were awarded their degrees (bachelor’s or higher), listed by frequency and proportion (N = 155) University

Number

Proportion

Columbia University Harvard University New York University London School of Economics and Political Science Yale University University of California, Berkeley

35 14 13 10 9 8

22.58 9.03 8.39 6.45 5.81 5.16

Table A14. Common universities where International Crisis Group researchers and advocates were awarded their degrees (bachelor’s or higher), listed by frequency and proportion (N = 76) University

Number

Proportion

Harvard University University of Oxford London School of Economics and Political Science Columbia University Georgetown University Princeton University School of African and Oriental Studies

6 6 5 5 4 4 4

7.89 7.89 6.58 6.58 5.26 5.26 5.26

Table A15. The numbers of advocacy and research staff at Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Crisis Group who have studied at each globally ranked top 25 university University University of Oxford University of Cambridge California Institute of Technology Stanford University Massachusetts Institute of Technology Harvard University Princeton University Imperial College London University of Chicago Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich University of Pennsylvania Yale University

Amnesty International

Human Rights Watch

International Crisis Group

7 6 0

4 4 0

6 2 0

0 0

4 0

1 0

6 0 0

14 4 0

6 4 0

0 0

5 0

0 0

0

1

0

2

9

3 (Continued)

University Johns Hopkins University Columbia University University of California, LosAngeles University College London Duke University University of California, Berkeley Cornell University Northwestern University University of Michigan National University of Singapore University of Toronto Carnegie Mellon University LSE Total

Amnesty International

Human Rights Watch

International Crisis Group

1

4

3

4 2

35 0

5 0

7

3

1

0 1

1 8

0 0

0 2 0 1

3 0 4 0

0 1 0 0

2 0

2 0

1 0

17 52

10 89

5 31

Table A16. The proportions of advocacy and research staff at Amnesty International (N = 223), Human Rights Watch (N = 155) and the International Crisis Group (N = 76) who have studied at each globally ranked top 25 university University University of Oxford University of Cambridge California Institute of Technology Stanford University Massachusetts Institute of Technology Harvard University Princeton University Imperial College London University of Chicago Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich University of Pennsylvania Yale University

Amnesty International

Human Rights Watch

International Crisis Group

3.14 2.69 0.00

2.58 2.58 0.00

7.89 2.63 0.00

0.00 0.00

2.58 0.00

1.32 0.00

2.69 0.00 0.00

9.03 2.58 0.00

7.89 5.26 0.00

0.00 0.00

3.23 0.00

0.00 0.00

0.00

0.65

0.00

0.90

5.81

3.95

University Johns Hopkins University Columbia University University of California, Los Angeles University College London Duke University University of California, Berkeley Cornell University Northwestern University University of Michigan National University of Singapore University of Toronto Carnegie Mellon University LSE Total

Amnesty International

Human Rights Watch

International Crisis Group

0.45

2.58

3.95

1.79 0.90

22.58 0.00

6.58 0.00

3.14

1.94

1.32

0.00 0.45

0.65 5.16

0.00 0.00

0.00 0.90 0.00 0.45

1.94 0.00 2.58 0.00

0.00 1.32 0.00 0.00

0.90 0.00

1.29 0.00

1.32 0.00

7.62 23.32

6.45 57.42

6.58 40.79

Table A17. Highest educational attainment level of advocacy and research staff at Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Crisis Group

Amnesty International Human Rights Watch International Crisis Group

Bachelor

Master

PhD

N/A or Unknown

30 18 8

175 118 48

15 9 17

37 16 7

Table A18. Highest educational attainment level of advocacy and research staff at Amnesty International (N = 257), Human Rights Watch (N = 161) and the International Crisis Group (N = 80), as a proportion of the sample totals

Amnesty International Human Rights Watch International Crisis Group

Bachelor

Master

PhD

N/A or Unknown

12 11 10

68 73 60

6 6 21

14 10 9

Index

Note: Bold page numbers refer to tables; italic page numbers refer to figures and page numbers followed by “n” denote endnotes. Abramowitz, Morton 53, 106 actor-network theory (ANT) 17, 18 advocacy, defined 1 Ahtisaari, Martti 53 ‘algorithmic privilege’ 67–68 Amnesty International (AI) 3, 4, 7, 26, 27, 34, 37, 38, 82, 91; campaign-driven knowledge production 45; Cold War 39, 43; cultural backgrounds 106–109, 107; decision-making process 39; educational background 206–208, 211; elite-level networks 39; epistemic culture 41; Global Transition Program 44; ICJ 38, 39; ICMs 40; International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 42; International Covenant on Economic and Social and Cultural Rights 42; legitimacy 41; membership model 39, 40; moral authority 40, 44; Nobel Peace Prize 42; board members 204; ‘Prisoner of Conscience’ approach 39–40; proportion of researchers/advocacy staff 203–204, 210–211; public authority 39; publicisation 41; UN General Assembly 38; UN Human Rights Committee 42; ‘Work on Own Country’ rule 40 Anderson, Christopher 68 ANT see actor-network theory (ANT) Anthropocene 22, 23 Antoniades, Andreas 13 Autesserre, Séverine 157 Bake, Julika 14, 178 Benenson, Peter 38, 39

Berger, Peter L. 4 Berling, Trine Villumsen 16 Bernstein, Robert L. 45, 46, 63 Big Data 22, 23 Bliesemann de Guevara, Berit 15, 16, 79, 156 Bloodgood, Elizabeth A. 12 Bøås, Morten 26 Bob, Clifford 12 Boswell, Christina 26 Bourdieu, Pierre 4, 6, 15, 16, 21, 25, 36, 64, 67, 100, 110, 194–195, 198 Bourdieu’s field theory 15–17, 19, 35, 134 Bourdieusian sociology 4, 5, 7, 15, 16, 17, 76 British Tamils Forum (BTF) 127 Bromley, Patricia 84 Brooks, Stephen 14, 57, 97 Bueger, Christian 17 Bundy, McGeorge 45, 46 Bush, G.W. 51 Butler, Judith 21 Callon, Michel 17 campaign-driven knowledge production 45 Carter, Jimmy 42, 45, 60 Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) 174, 187n3 Chandler, David 22 Chaudhry, Suparna 26 Cil, Pinar 14, 57, 97 civil society organisations 2 Coicaud, Jean-Marc 109 Cold War 11, 38, 39, 43

214 Index Colombo’s civil society elite, preeminence 169; ‘boomerang pattern’ 174; cited organisations 174, 174; CPA 174; international organisations 173; limitations 176; lingering effects of conflict 177; LST 174; national political arena 176; ‘transitional justice’ 175; UTHRJ 174; war and post-war periods 172 Colombo Telegraph 163 Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) 45 constructivism 11, 13 Cooley, Alexander 12 Cosmopolitanism 3, 109 CPA see Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) cultural boundaries 106–111, 107 cultural capital 100 cultural homogeneity 111 Darusman Report (March 2011) 130 data-based methods 102 Dezalay, Yves 39, 46, 84, 85 The Diplomat 112 distributive justice 26 domestic civil society, post-war Sri Lanka: Colombo-based organisations 166; Colombo’s civil society elite (see Colombo’s civil society elite, pre-eminence); external knowledge production 165; international donor priorities 170–172; LTTE 165; national political arena 168–170; national political discourse 167; R2P doctrine 167; Tamil Tigers 165; wartime violence 165 Donahoe, Eileen 129 Duffield, Mark 22–25 Emerson, John 24 The Endtimes of Human Rights (Hopgood) 198 Englehart, Neil A. 67 epistemic authority 26, 135–136 epistemic boundaries, post-war Sri Lanka: diplomatic logics 145–148; ethnic reconciliation 144; human rights and methodological universalism 141–143; long-term stability 141; LTTE 144–145; orthodox conception 144; orthodoxyheterodoxy dichotomy 144;

post-conflict reconciliation 141; semifunctioning liberal democracy 144; Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora 140 epistemic communities 13, 14 epistemic culture 41; AI 77, 78; biographical affinity 81; Bourdieusian concept 76; career patterns 115; cultural boundaries 106–111, 107; decision-making authority 77; educational data 206–211; HRW 77, 78; ICG 77, 78; institutional power 76; internalised socio-cultural factors 77; intra-organisational authority 77; occupational data 80, 203–205; organisational legitimation 76; organisational mediation (see organisational mediation); organisational structure 77; policy alignment 78; post-war Sri Lanka 116; professional and educational boundaries 100–106, 103; professional culture (see professional culture, global advocacy); quality control 80 epistemic limits 7, 14, 18, 28, 64–65, 69, 87, 100, 112, 123, 140, 145, 167, 183, 194–195; advocacy-oriented knowledge 4–6; distributors of 185; extractive space and 186–187; of global advocacy 60, 116; of transnational advocacy 65 epistemic practices 4, 7, 8, 11, 22, 37, 38, 40, 42, 44, 59, 60, 64, 69, 76, 77, 81, 87, 93, 100, 110, 116, 173, 197; advocacy NGOs 34, 35; advocates engagement in 26; assemblages of 18; empirical analysis of 14–15; foundational 40, 61–62; global advocacy practitioners 20; of humanist advocacy 23; macrolevel structural incentives for 34; of NGOs 85, 92, 138; in political organisations 17 epistemic saturation: advocacy organisations 67; social media 67 epistocracy 26 Evans, Gareth 53–56, 58, 95, 97, 114 evidence-based policymaking 26 Eyal, Gil 19, 78 FARC see Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) Foucauldian IR 14 Foucault, Michel 6, 14 Fricker, Miranda 197

Index  215 Garrido, Maria Rosa 108 Garth, Bryant G. 39, 46, 84, 85 geospatial analysis 102 global advocacy, defined 2 global advocacy space 123–124, 128, 130–137, 139–146, 148, 158, 161, 164, 182–184, 186; emergence of Sri Lanka 124–132; foreign advocates’ orientation towards 179; logics of 156, 186, 196; Sri Lanka’s post-war 8 ,136, 140–148, 157, 196, 197 Global Go To Think Tank Index 2017 3, 67 Global Tamil Forum (GTF) 127, 139 Global Transition Program 44, 63 Goetze, Catherine 16, 79, 88, 91, 109 Goldberg, Arthur 45, 46 Gordon, Neve 12, 16 Gough, Clair 14 Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) 124–126, 128–129, 145–147 Grigat, Sonja 14 Groundviews 163 GTF see Global Tamil Forum (GTF) Gugerty, Mary Kay 12 Haas, Peter M. 13 Harrison, Frances: Still Counting the Dead 182 Heathershaw, John 14 Heins, Volker 67, 108 Helsinki Final Act (1975) 45, 47 Hendrix, Cullen 76 Heterodox knowledge 143–144, 195–197 Hilton, Matthew 105 Hochmüller, Markus 14, 21, 26 Homo Academicus (Bourdieu) 195 Hopgood, Stephen 15, 40, 43, 63, 82, 83, 98, 100, 109, 114, 198–199; The Endtimes of Human Rights 198 HRW see Human Rights Watch (HRW) humanitarianism 23, 24, 84, 90, 108 human rights 8, 12, 14, 22, 37; violations 26 Human Rights Quarterly (Roth) 12 Human Rights Watch (HRW) 3, 4, 7, 26, 27, 34, 36, 37, 38, 81–85, 91; CSCE 45; board members 204–205; cultural backgrounds 106–109, 107, 106, 207–208, 209, 211; foundational dependencies 52; Helsinki Final Act (1975) 45; Helsinki Watch’s foundation 45–47;

IHL 49; internationalisation 50, 52; post-Cold War reforms 51; Reagan administration 48; reciprocal consumers 50; shaming methodology 47, 49 ICG see International Crisis Group (ICG) ICJ see International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) ICMs see International Committee Meetings (ICMs) ICRC see International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) IGOs see intergovernmental organisations (IGOs) IHL see international humanitarian law (IHL) information politics 12 INGOs see international NGOs (INGOs) inter-ethnic violence 196 intergovernmental organisations (IGOs) 1; backgrounds of INGO staff 90, 91; mobility infrastructure 90; Organization for Security and Co-operation 90; UN advocacy 92 International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) 38, 133 International Committee Meetings (ICMs) 40, 70n1 International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) 108 International Council Meetings 96 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 42 International Covenant on Economic and Social and Cultural Rights 42 International Crisis Group (ICG) 3, 4, 7, 14, 15, 34, 36, 38, 81, 139; in Bosnia 53, 54; ‘crisis sentinel’ 53–54; cultural backgrounds 106–109, 107; educational backgrounds 209, 207, 208, 211; epistemic authority 57; global market 58; liberal interventionism 52; organisational model 54; policy-relevant knowledge 58; political interventions 54; R2P 56; Rwanda tragedies 53, 54; selfmythology 58–59; Somalia tragedies 53; transatlantic triumph 54; violent extremism 56; Western policy consumers 55; in Yugoslavia 53

216 Index international humanitarian law (IHL) 49, 125 International Human Rights Law 85, 87 international NGOs (INGOs) 2–4, 6–7, 20, 26, 135, 161 international practice theory 17 international relations 1, 6; Bourdieusian IR 15, 16; epistemic communities 13, 14; field theory 15–17; Foucauldian IR 14; global governance 14, 16; international political sociology 17; international practice theory 17; liberal peace 14; post-Cold War period 13; post-colonialism 14 international security 1, 13

legitimacy 25, 41; dilemmas 34, 59, 69; organisational legitimacy 76, 135–136; political legitimacy 27, 138–140 Lewis, David 14 liberal democracy 2; semi-functioning 131, 144 liberal humanism 1, 2, 88; moral idealism 109; altruism 12 liberal intervention 38, 52, 60; liberal peacebuilding 124 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) 123–125, 144–145, 147, 148, 165 logic of dependence 27, 28, 34 LST see Law and Society Trust (LST) Luckmann, Thomas 4

Johansson, Håkan 23 Judeo-Christian tradition 2, 102

MacEachen, Allan 53 McLagan, Meg 177 McPherson, Ella 23, 24, 65 Madsen, Mikael R. 20 Martens, Kerstin 92 mass membership model 39, 62 Medvetz, Thomas 5, 19, 26, 35 Mexico’s security crisis 14 Montgomery, Bruce P. 49, 157 Moon, Claire 177 moral authority 40, 199 Moscow Helsinki Group 47 Müller, Markus-Michael 14, 21, 26

Kaldor, Mary 11–12 Kauppi, Niilo 20 Kaweh, Ramin 110 Keck, Margaret E. 12, 164 Keenan, Alan 124, 169, 172 Klandermans, Bert 109–110 knowledge market 15, 25, 87, 97, 98; advocacy-oriented knowledge 60; AI 38–45; Bourdieu’s field theory 35; Cold War 38; complementary producers 37; consumer-producer relations 35; epistemic saturation 66–69; financial sustenance 37; HRW 38, 45–52; ICG 38, 52–59; INGOs 34, 59, 65; internationalisation 63; legitimacy dilemmas 34, 59, 69; market analogy 12, 34, 36; non-governmental advocacy 36; non-reciprocal consumers 36; policy-relevant knowledge 36; ‘problem-oriented’ framings 35; producer-consumer relations 37, 60; producer-producer relations 35, 60; publicisation 60–62, 65; reciprocal consumers 36, 62; social field 34; ‘success-oriented’ framings 35 Kooijmans, Peter 53 Kosmatopoulos, Nikolas 17, 53 Kouchner, Bernard 53 Latour, Bruno 6, 17 Law and Society Trust (LST) 174 Law, John 17

National Endowment for Democracy (NED) 133 Neier, Aryeh 45, 46, 49 Nobel Peace Prize 42, 60 Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) 146 non-governmental organisations (NGOs), defined 2 Nowicka, Magdalena 110 Obama Administration 51, 128, 131 O’Flaherty, Michael 84 Okafor, Obiora C. 179 organisational culture 15 organisational mediation: formal and informal practices 115; nongovernmental advocacy 111; quality control process 113; selfcircumscribing practices 113 organisational model 54, 63 organisational sustenance 12 Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe 90 orthodox knowledge 132, 194, 144, 147

Index  217 peace process, post-war Sri Lanka 169; collapse of 124–126; conflict mediation 124 People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL) 127 Perera, Sudakshini 184 plural habitus 21 Pok, Grace 19, 78 The Politics of Expertise (Sending) 16 ‘post-humanist’ turn: Anthropocene 23; Big Data 22, 23; humanitarianism 23; ontopolitics 22; social media 23, 24; Sri Lankan Civil War 24; technological developments 23 post-war Sri Lanka 116; advocacyrelated attributes 134; Bourdieu’s field theory 134; Bourdieusian framework 123; Buch Administration’s foreign policy 125; ‘conflictive logic’ 183; domestic civil society (see domestic civil society, post-war Sri Lanka); domestic media environment 161–164, 162; epistemic boundaries (see epistemic boundaries, post-war Sri Lanka); ethnocratic structure 184–185; extractive space 186–187; foreign NGOs’ engagement (see Foreign NGOs’ engagement); geographical nodes 132–134; government-based donors 185–186; immediate post-war period 126–127; informal communication 136; INGOs 135; inter-organisational level 136; isomorphic features 185, 187; knowledge-driven advocacy 134; knowledge extraction 183; LTTE 123; marginalisation pattern 137; national political arena 158–161; OHCHR 183; peace process 124–126; political imperatives 138; political logics 158; post-conflict accountability and justice 134; Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora organisations 137; transorganisational networks 123; UNHRC 183 Prakash, Aseem 12 ‘Prisoner of Conscience’ approach 39–40 professional culture, global advocacy: academia and think-tanks 94, 94–95; academic disciplines 89, 89; Bourdieusian perspective 81; field research 89; government and diplomacy 95–96, 95–98;

high-level advocacy 89; IGOs (see intergovernmental organisations (IGOs)); law and human rights 83–88; media and journalism 92–93, 93; nonprofit sector 81–83, 83; private sector and corporate elites 98–100, 99; sharp analysis 89; social sciences 88; social scientific skills 88; soft skills 88 Rajapaksa, Mahinda 124–125, 127, 129–130, 159, 162, 165, 168, 187n1 Rall, Katharina 68, 101 Responsibility to Protect (R2P) 56 Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) 198 Ron, James 12 Rothenberg, Daniel 175, 178 Roth, Kenneth 12, 50, 100 Scaramuzzino, Gabriella 23 Schein, Edgar H. 77 Schlichte, Klaus 21, 158 secular humanism 2 Sending, Ole Jacob: The Politics of Expertise 16 Shackley, Simon 14 shaming methodology 47, 49, 68, 93 Sharp, Dustin N. 200 Sikkink, Kathryn 12, 164 Simons, Greg 57, 114 Sinhalese hegemony 143 Sinhalese nationalism 132, 145, 159 Smirl, Lisa 157 social logics, global advocacy: ANT 17, 18; Cold War 11; ‘conflictive logic’ 21; constructivism 11, 13; doxic and orthodoxic homologies 21; ethnographic methodology 17; field theory 19; Foucauldian/ Bourdieusian perspectives 11; global civil society 12; human rights 12, 22; Human Rights Quarterly (Roth) 12; information politics 12; INGOs 20; institutionalisation process 19; intergovernmental organisations 20; international political sociology 17; international practice theory 17; international relations (see international relations); interstitial fields perspective 19; knowledge production 25–28; logic of appropriateness 12; Olsonian interest group theory 12; organisational

218 Index sustenance 12; plural and multiscalar response 20; plural habitus 21; post-humanist criticism (see ‘posthumanist’ turn); terrorism, expert discourse 19; transnational advocacy networks 12 social media 23, 24, 67 social scientific skills 88 social space 16, 19–22, 35, 127, 131, 134, 136, 141, 172, 183; of advocacy 42; crystallisation of 148; epistemic practices across 22; meso-level 21; plurality of 7, 19 Soros, George 55, 99 Sri Lankan civil society 6, 133 Sri Lankan Civil War 22, 24 Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora communities 127, 140 Stampnitzky, Lisa 19, 35 Still Counting the Dead (Harrison) 182 structural genocide 143 structuralist constructivism 15 Suárez, David 84 The Sunday Leader 162 Tamils Against Genocide (TAG) 127, 142 Tamil self-determination 127 Tata, Ratan 53 Times Higher Education World University Rankings (2018) 104 transitional justice 90, 170, 174, 175, 177 transnational advocacy networks 2, 12, 146, 197

transorganisational networks 4, 8, 84 Trump administration 51, 199 Ulrich, George 84 UN General Assembly 38 UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) 126 United National Party (UNP) 168 United States’ National GeospatialIntelligence Agency 199 United States Tamil Political Action Council (USTPAC) 127 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 38 University Teachers for Human Rights Jaffna (UTHRJ) 174 UN Security Council 129 Vauchez, Antoine 19 Veit, Alex 21, 158, 182 Victims: victimhood, affective logic 181–182; victimhood, symbolic value 177–179; victim knowledge 179–181 Walton, Oliver 62, 140, 143 War Crimes in Sri Lanka report 126, 134, 177 Western ideology 1 Williams, Kate 62, 111, 112 Winston, Morton E. 99 Wong, Wendy H. 76 ‘Work on Own Country’ rule 40 Zöhrer, Michaela 14, 178