To gain support, challengers must persuade overseas audiences with little at stake in a conflict to take a sustained interest and make sacrifices for the cause. They do so under unfavorable circumstances: pressed by powerful opponents; in competition with a host of other worthy movements; and in the face of limited attention and resources. Still, the promise of assistance attracts many local insurgents to the international realm. There they find an environment less receptive than many imagine. Certainly sympathy and concern about distant issues distinguish NGOs from profit-hungry multinational corporations and power-driven states. As their central missions, NGOs promote ideas, principles, or policies. Their recent proliferation has brought novel perspectives to global issues, enriching debates, widening choices, and improving outcomes. Taking action on behalf of the distressed is often one of their core values. And most NGO staff care deeply about the causes they champion. Yet NGOs at their root are organizations – with all the anxieties about maintenance, survival, and growth that beset every organization. In the formation of transnational relationships, these realities create frictions. No matter how cohesive their networks, local movements and transnational NGOs have distinct objectives, constituencies, and approaches, operate in disparate political settings, and are motivated by divergent needs.

Given this dualism, movement–NGO interactions are best seen as exchanges. The concept of exchange has long been used in social analysis, but its insights have not been plumbed by those who study transnational networks.