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Transnational Civil Society and Advocacy in World Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Richard Price
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Extract

This article takes stock of a plethora of recent works examining the flowering of transnational civil society activism in world politics. The author argues that this work contributes to a progressive research agenda that responds to a succession of criticisms from alternative perspectives. As the research program has advanced, new areas of inquiry have been opened up, including the need for a central place for normative international theory. The author also contends that the focus of this research on the transnationalization of civil society provides a trenchant response to an important puzzle concerning the leverage of civil society vis-à-vis the contemporary state in an era of globalization. Further, the liberal variant of transnational advocacy research constitutes a powerful theoretical counter not only to other nonliberal theories that privilege other agents or structures but also to other varieties of contemporary liberal international theory, such as those privileging preexisting domestic preference formation or state centric versions of liberal constructivism.

Type
Review Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 55 , Issue 4 , July 2003 , pp. 579 - 606
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 2003

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References

1 It does so with the important proviso that the works under consideration are but a few of numerous other recent works in this genre.

2 See the following in Higgott, Underhill, and Bieler: David Levy and Daniel Egan, “Corporate Political Action in the Global Polity: National and Transnational Strategies in the Climate Change Negotiations”; Andrew Walter, “Globalisation and Policy Convergence: The Case of Direct Investment Rules”; Elisabeth Smythe, “State Authority and Investment Security: Non-State Actors and the Negotiation of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment at the OECD”; and Jochen Lorentzen, “Foreign Capital, Host-Country-Firm Mandates and the Terms of Globalisation.”

3 Rebecca Johnson, “Advocates and Activists: Conflicting Approaches on Nonproliferation and the Test Ban Treaty,” in Florini, 66; Elizabeth Donnelly, “Proclaiming Jubilee: The Debt and Structural Adjustment Network,” in Khagram, Riker, and Sikkink, 162.

4 Checkel, Jeffrey T., “The Constructivist Turn in International Relations Theory,” World Politics 50 (January 1998), 340–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 The term “grafting” avoids the overly static connotations of “fit” or “resonance” while capturing the genealogical heritage of such normative branching that is glossed over by overly volunteeristic terms such as “framing”; see Price, Richard, “Reversing the Gun Sights: Transnational Civil Society Targets Landmines,” International Organization 52 (Summer 1998), 628CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 For similar findings on the importance of norms initially perceived as very weak, see Thomas, Daniel, The Helsinki Effect: International Norms, Human Rights and the Demise of Communism (Princeton: Princeton Unviersity Press, 2001)Google Scholar. See also Risse, Thomas, Ropp, Stephen, and Sikkink, Kathryn, The Power of Human Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 , Haas, “Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination,” International Organization 46 (Winter 1992)Google Scholar.

8 Diane Stone, “Private Authority, Scholarly Legitimacy and Political Credibility: Think Tanks and Informal Diplomacy,” in Higgott, Underhill, and Bieler, 211.

9 See, e.g., Rief, David, “The False Dawn of Civil Society,” Nation 268 (February 1999)Google Scholar.

10 As chronicled in particular by Chetan Kumar, “Transnational Networks and Campaigns for Democracy,” in Florini; and James Riker, “NGOs, Transnational Networks, International Donor Agencies, and the Prospects for Democratic Governance in Indonesia,” in Khagram, Riker, and Sikkink.

11 See, in Khagram, Riker, and Sikkink, Smitu Kothari, “Globalization, Global Alliances, and the Narmade Movement,” 238, 232; and August Nimtz, “Marx and Engels: The Prototypical Transna-tional Actors.”

12 See, in Khagram, Riker, and Sikkink, Karen Brown Thompson, “Women's Rights Are Human Rights,” 118; see also Price (fn. 5), 641–42.

13 Reus-Smit, Christian, “Imagining Society: Constructivism and the English School,” British Journal of Politics and International Relations 4 (October 2002), 504CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Less systematic attention has been devoted to variation in the success of activism directed at different kinds of intergovernmental organizations.

15 Political opportunity structure is a key concept explaining success or failure in the social move-nents literature; see, among others, Tarrow, Sidney, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Conventious Politics, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge Unviersity Press, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For applications to ransnational activism, see Keck and Sikkink, chap. 1; Khagram, Riker, and Sikkink, chap. 1.

16 Sanjeev Khagram, “Toward Democratic Governance for Sustainable Development: Transnational Civil Society Organizing around Big Dams,” in Florini, 86. This was crucial to the success of the land mines campaign; see Cameron, Max, Tomlin, Brian, and Lawson, Robert, eds., To Walk without Fear (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

17 See Flowers, Petrice, “International Norms and Domestic Policies in Japan: Identity, Legitimacy and Civilization” (Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 2002)Google Scholar; Keck and Sikkink, 204; Lisa Mclntosh Sundstrom, “When Strangers' Help Is Not Welcome: Foreign Assistance and Domestic Norms in Russian Civil Society” (Manuscript, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, September 2002).

18 See Flowers (fn. 17); and Sundstrom (fn. 17).

19 Compare, e.g., Checkel's prediction in a March 1999 article that Germany's culture would make that state highly resistant to meaningful changes in immigrant citizenship policy with the changes that did take place in May of that year; Checkel, Jeffrey, “Norms, Institutions, and National Identity in Contemporary Europe,” International Studies Quarterly 43 (March 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Thus, research could examine questions such as why some rebel groups have agreed to stop using land mines whereas others have not. See David Capie and Pablo Policzer, The Armed Groups Project (2003) (http://www.armedgroups.org/home.htm).

21 Indeed, the question about whether TCS activity per se is new or not can now be laid to rest, since historical antecedents are legion and more will no doubt be found; see Keck and Sikkink, chap. 2; Khagram, Riker, and Sikkink, 20–21.

22 Craig Warkentin offers a descriptive and typolitical exercise without explanatory purchase; , Warkentin, Reshaping World Politics: NGOs, the Internet, and Global Civil Society (Lanham, Md.: Row-man and Littlefield, 2001)Google Scholar.

23 Diebert, Ronald, Parchment, Printing and Hypermedia: Communication in World Order Transformation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 174Google Scholar.

24 See, e.g., Nadelmann, Ethan, “Global Prohibition Regimes: The Evolution of Norms in International Society,” International Organization 44 (Autumn 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 , Tilly, Coercion, Capital and European States, AD 990–1992 (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1992) 83Google Scholar, also 63.

26 , Tilly, “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime,” in Evans, Peter, Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, and Skocpol, Theda, eds., Bringing the State Back In (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 169–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 , Mann, States, War and Capitalism: Studies in Political Sociology (Oxford and Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1988), 158Google Scholar; , Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998), 218Google Scholar.

28 , Giddens, The Nation-State and Violence (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985), 10–11Google Scholar.

29 Ibid., 11.

30 Ibid., 325. For case studies on labor, see Nimtz and Kidder, in Khagram, Riker, and Sikkink.

31 Walter (fn. 2).

32 Smythe (fn. 2).

33 Levy and Egan (fn. 2).

34 Jan Aart Scholte, “'In the Foothills': Relations between the IMF and Civil Society,” in Higgott, Underhill, and Bieler; Nelson, Khagram, and Donnelly, in Khagram, Riker, and Sikkink.

35 Wendt's social theory of the state system leads him to neglect nonstate initiators of change and thus handicaps the ability of his social theory of international relations to account for many of the changes in contemporary world politics; see Wendt, Alexander, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

36 Moravcsik, Andrew, “Taking Preferences Seriously: A Liberal Theory of International Politics,” International Organization 51 (Autumn 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Reus-Smit (fn. 13), 504.

38 Cooley, Alexander and Ron, James, “The NGO Scramble: Organizational Insecurity and the Political Economy of Transnational Action,” International Security 27 (Summer 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Reus-Smit (fn. 13), 501.

40 Moreover, the criticism that TCS research only looks at “good” activist campaigns itself cannot ultimately be made in the absence of a normative defense.

41 Rumelili, Bahar, “Producing Collective Identity and Interacting with Difference: The Security Implications of Community-Building in Europe and Southeast Asia” (Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 2002)Google Scholar, chap. 2, 49, citing Doty, Roxane, Imperial Encounters (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 136Google Scholar.

42 Following Martha Finnemore's influential statement in National Interests in International Society (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996)Google Scholar.