Transnational Advocacy Networks

Margaret E. Keck is Associate Professorof Political Science, Johns Hopkins Uni-versity, 338 Mergenthaler Hall, Balti-more, MD 21218, USA, email:mkeckKjhu.edu She is author ofTheWorkers’ Party and Democratisation inBrazil (1992) andPT: A Logica da Difer-enca (in Portuguese) (1991). KathrynSikkink is Professor of Political Science,University of Minnesota, 1414 SocialScience, 267 19th Avenue South, Minne-apolis, MN 55455, USA, email:KsikkinkKpolisci.umn.edu She is authorof Ideas and Institutions: Development-alism in Brazil and Argentina(1991).

Transnational advocacy networks ininternational and regional politics*

Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink

World politics at the end of the twentieth cen-tury involves, alongside states, many non-stateactors who interact with each other, with states,and with international organizations. This articleconsiders how these interactions are structuredin networks, which are increasingly visible ininternational politics. Some involve economicactors and firms. Some are networks of scien-tists and experts whose professional ties andideas underpin their efforts to influence policy(Haas, 1992). Others arenetworks of activists, dis-tinguishable largely by thecentrality of principledideas or values in motivat-ing their formation. We callthese transnational advo-cacy networks.

Advocacy networksare significant transnation-ally, regionally and dom-estically. They may be keycontributors to a conver-gence of social and culturalnorms able to support pro-cesses of regional and inter-national integration. By building new linksamong actors in civil societies, states and inter-national organizations, they multiply the oppor-tunities for dialogue and exchange. In issueareas such as the environment and human rights,they also make international resources availableto new actors in domestic political and socialstruggles. By thus blurring the boundariesbetween a state’s relations with its own nation-als and the recourse both citizens and stateshave to the international system, advocacy net-

ISSJ 159/1999 UNESCO 1999. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

works are helping to transform the practice ofnational sovereignty.

Scholars have been slow to recognizeeither the rationality or the significance of acti-vist networks. Motivated by values rather thanby material concerns or professional norms,they fall outside our accustomed categories. Yetmore than other kinds of transnational networks,advocacy networks often reach beyond policychange to advocate and instigate changes in the

institutional and principledbases of international inter-actions. When they succeed,they are an important part ofan explanation for changesin world politics. A trans-national advocacy networkincludes those actors work-ing internationally on anissue, who are boundtogether by shared values, acommon discourse, anddense exchanges of infor-mation and services.1 Suchnetworks are most prevalentin issue areas characterized

by high value content and informational uncer-tainty, although the value-content of an issue isboth a prerequisite and a result of networkactivity. At the core of the relationship is infor-mation exchange. What is novel in these net-works is the ability of non-traditional inter-national actors to mobilize informationstrategically to help create new issues and categ-ories, and to persuade, pressurize, and gainleverage over much more powerful organiza-tions and governments. Activists in networks

90 Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink

try not only to influence policy outcomes, butto transform the terms and nature of the debate.They are not always successful in their efforts,but they are increasingly important players inpolicy debates at the regional and inter-national level.

Simultaneously principled and strategicactors, transnational advocacy networks ‘frame’issues to make them comprehensible to targetaudiences, to attract attention and encourageaction, and to ‘fit’ with favourable institutionalvenues. By framing, we mean ‘conscious strat-egic efforts by groups of people to fashionshared understandings of the world and of them-selves that legitimate and motivate collectiveaction’ (McAdam et al., 1996, p. 6). Networkactors bring new ideas, norms and discoursesinto policy debates, and serve as sources ofinformation and testimony. Norms ‘describe col-lective expectations for the proper behaviour ofactors with a given identity’ (Katzenstein, 1996,p. 5; see also Klotz, 1995; Finnemore, 1996).

Shared norms often provide the foundationfor more formal institutional processes ofregional integration. In so far as networks pro-mote norm convergence or harmonization at theregional and international levels, they are essen-tial to the social and cultural aspects of inte-gration. They also promote norm implemen-tation, by pressuring target actors to adopt newpolicies, and by monitoring compliance withregional and international standards. As far asis possible, they seek to maximize their influ-ence or leverage over the target of their actions.In doing this they contribute to changing theperceptions that both state and societal actorsmay have of their identities, interests and prefer-ences, to transforming their discursive positions,and ultimately to changing procedures, policiesand behaviour. We thus believe, with Finne-more, that ‘States are embedded in dense net-works of transnational and international socialrelations that shape their perceptions of theworld and their role in that world. States aresocialized to want certain things by the inter-national society in which they and the peoplein them live’ (Finnemore, 1996, p. 2).

Networks arecommunicative structures. Toinfluence discourse, procedures and policy,transnational advocacy networks may becomepart of larger policy communities that groupactors from a variety of institutional and value

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positions. Transnational advocacy networks mayalso be understood as political spaces, in whichdifferently situated actors negotiate – formallyor informally – the social, cultural and politicalmeanings of their joint enterprises. In both ofthese ways, transnational networks can be keyvehicles for the cultural and social negotiationsunderpinning processes of regional integration.

We refer to transnational networks (ratherthan coalitions, movements, or civil society) toevoke the structured and structuring dimensionin the actions of these complex agents. Byimporting the network concept from sociologyand applying it transnationally, we bridge theincreasingly artificial divide between inter-national relations and comparative politics.Moreover, the term ‘network’ is already used bythe actors themselves; over the last two decades,individuals and organizations have consciouslyformed and named networks, developed andshared networking strategies and techniques,and assessed the advantages and limits of thiskind of activity. Scholars have come late tothe party.

Our theoretical apparatus draws uponsociological traditions that focus on complexinteractions among actors, on the intersubjectiveconstruction of frames of meaning, and on thenegotiation and malleability of identities andinterests. These have been concerns of con-structivists in international relations theory andof social movement theorists in comparativepolitics, and we draw from both traditions. Thenetworks we study participate simultaneously indomestic and international politics, drawingupon a variety of resources,as if they werepart of an international society. However, theyuse these resources strategically to affect aworld of states and international organizationsconstructed by states. Both these dimensions areessential. Rationalists will recognize the langu-age of incentives and constraints, strategies,institutions and rules, while constructivists andsocial constructionists will be more comfortablewith our emphasis on norms, social relationsand intersubjective understandings. We are con-vinced that both matter; whilst recognizing thatgoals and interests are not exogenously given,we can think about the strategic activity ofactors in an intersubjectively structured politicaluniverse. The key to doing so is rememberingthat the social and political contexts within

91Transnational advocacy networks

which networks operate contain contestedunderstandings as well as stable and sharedones. Network activists can operate strategicallywithin the more stable universe of shared under-standings at the same time as they try to reshapecertain contested meanings.

Part of what is so elusive about networksis how they seem to embody elements of agentand structure simultaneously. Our approachmust therefore be both structural and actor-centred. We address five main questions:

(1) What is a transnational advocacy network?(2) Why and how do they emerge?(3) How do they work?(4) Under what conditions can they be effec-

tive – that is, when are they most likely toachieve their goals?

(5) What are the implications of network activi-ties for the social and cultural processes ofregional integration?

Although we had initially expected thattransnational networks would function in quitedifferent ways from domestic social movements,we found that many of the characteristic stra-tegies, tactics and patterns of influenceresembled those outlined in the literature onsocial movements. Organizations and individ-uals within advocacy networks are politicalentrepreneurs, mobilize resources like infor-mation and membership, and show a sophisti-cated awareness of the political opportunitystructures within which they operate (Tarrow,1994). Our emphasis on the role of values innetworks is consistent with some argumentscontained in the literature on ‘new social move-ments’ (Dalton et al., 1990). Most importantly,however, over the last decade social movementtheory has increasingly focused on the inter-action between social–structural conditions andaction, on the social context of mobilization,and on the transformation of meanings amongactivists and among mass publics that makepeople believe they can have an impact on anissue.

What is a transnationaladvocacy network?

Networks are forms of organization charac-terized by voluntary, reciprocal and horizontal

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patterns of communication and exchange.Organizational theorist Walter Powell calls thema third mode of economic organization, dis-tinctly different from markets and hierarchy (thefirm). ‘Networks are “lighter on their feet” thanhierarchy’ and are ‘particularly apt for circum-stances in which there is a need for efficient,reliable information. . .’, and ‘for the exchangeof commodities whose value is not easily meas-ured’ (Powell, 1990, pp. 295–6, 303–4). Hisinsights into economic networks are extraordi-narily suggestive for an understanding of polit-ical networks. Policy networks also form aroundissues where information plays a key role, andaround issues where the value of the ‘com-modity’ is not easily measured.

In spite of differences between the dom-estic and international realms, the network con-cept travels well because it stresses the fluidand open relations among committed andknowledgeable actors working in specializedissue areas. We call them advocacy networksbecause advocates plead the causes of others ordefend a cause or proposition; they are stand-ins for persons or ideas. Advocacy captureswhat is unique about these transnational net-works – they are organized to promote causes,principled ideas and norms, and often involveindividuals advocating policy changes that can-not be easily linked to their ‘interests’.

Some issue areas reproduce transnationallythe webs of personal relationships that are cru-cial in the formation of domestic networks.Advocacy networks have been particularlyimportant in value-laden debates over humanrights, the environment, women, infant health,and indigenous peoples. These are all areaswhere through personal, professional andorganizational contexts, large numbers of differ-ently situated individuals became acquaintedwith each other over a considerable period, anddeveloped similar world views. When the morevisionary among them proposed strategies forpolitical action around apparently intractableproblems, the potential was transformed into anaction network.

Major actors in advocacy networks mayinclude the following:

(1) international and domestic NGOs, researchand advocacy organizations;

(2) local social movements;(3) foundations;


(4) the media;(5) churches, trade unions, consumer organiza-

tions, intellectuals;(6) parts of regional and international

intergovernmental organizations;(7) parts of the executive and/or parliamentary

branches of governments.

Not all these will be present in each advo-cacy network. Initial research suggests, how-ever, that international and domestic non-governmental organizations (NGOs) play a cen-tral role in most advocacy networks, usuallyinitiating actions and pressuring more powerfulactors to take positions. NGOs introduce newideas, provide information, and lobby for pol-icy changes.

Social scientists have barely addressed thepolitical role of activist NGOs assimultaneouslydomestic and international actors. There is aliterature on NGOs and networks in specificcountries (Fru¨hling, 1991; Scherer-Warren,1993). Much of the existing literature on NGOscomes from development studies, and eitherignores interactions with states or spends littletime on political analysis (see, for example,Korten, 1990). Examining their role in advocacynetworks helps both to distinguish NGOs from,and to see their connections with, social move-ments, state agencies and international organiza-tions.

Groups in a network share values and fre-quently exchange information and services. Theflow of information among actors in the net-work reveals a dense web of connections amongthese groups, both formal and informal. Themovement of funds and services is especiallynotable between foundations and NGOs, butsome NGOs provide services such as trainingfor other NGOs in the same, and sometimesother, advocacy networks. Personnel also circu-late within and among networks.

Relationshipsamong networks within andbetween issue areas are similar to those thatscholars of social movements have found inthe case of domestic activism. Individuals andfoundation funding have moved back and forthamong them. Environmentalists and women’sgroups have looked at the history of humanrights campaigns for models of effective inter-national institution-building. Because of theseinteractions, refugee resettlement and indigen-ous peoples’ rights are increasingly central

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components of international environmentalactivity, and vice versa; mainstream humanrights organizations have joined the campaignfor women’s rights. Some activists considerthemselves part of an ‘NGO community’. Thisconvergence highlights important dimensionsthat these networks share: the centrality ofvalues or principled ideas, the belief that indi-viduals can make a difference, creative use ofinformation, and the employment by non-governmental actors of sophisticated politicalstrategies in targeting their campaigns. Besidessharing information, groups in networks createcategories or frames within which to organizeandgenerateinformation on which to base theircampaigns. The ability to generate informationquickly and accurately, and deploy it effec-tively, is their most valuable currency; it isalso central to their identity. Core campaignorganizers must ensure that individuals andorganizations with access to necessary infor-mation are incorporated into the network; differ-ent ways of framing an issue may require quitedifferent kinds of information. Thus, frame dis-putes can be a significant source of changewithin networks.

Why and how transnationaladvocacy networks haveemerged?

The kinds of groups characteristic of advocacynetworks are not new; some have existed sincethe nineteenth century campaign for the abol-ition of slavery. Nevertheless, their number,size, professionalism, and the density and com-plexity of their international linkages havegrown dramatically in the last three decades, sothat only recently can we speak oftransnationaladvocacy networks (Keck and Sikkink, 1998).

International networking is costly. Geo-graphical distance, nationalism, the multiplicityof languages and cultures, and the costs of fax,telephone, mail, or air travel make the prolifer-ation of international networks a puzzle thatneeds explanation. Under what conditions arenetworks possible and likely, and what triggerstheir emergence?

Transnational advocacy networks appearmost likely to emerge around those issueswhere:


(1) channels between domestic groups and theirgovernments are hampered or severedwhere such channels are ineffective forresolving a conflict, setting into motion the‘boomerang’ pattern of influence character-istic of these networks;

(2) activists or ‘political entrepreneurs’ believethat networking will further their missionsand campaigns, and actively promote them;

(3) international conferences and other formsof international contacts create arenas forforming and strengthening networks.

The boomerang pattern

It is no accident that ‘rights’ claims may bethe prototypical language of advocacy networks.Governments are the primary ‘guarantors’ ofrights, but also among their primary violators.When a government violates or refuses to recog-nize rights, individuals and domestic groupsoften have no recourse within domestic politicalor judicial arenas. They may seek internationalconnections to express their concerns and evento protect their lives.

Many transnational advocacy networks linkactivists in developed countries with others inor from less developed countries. These kindsof linkages are most commonly intended toaffect the behaviour ofstates. When the linksbetween state and domestic actors are severed,domestic NGOs may directly seek internationalallies to try to bring pressure on their statesfrom outside. This is the ‘boomerang’ patternof influence characteristic of transnational net-works where the target of their activity is tochange a state’s behaviour. This is most com-mon in human rights campaigns. Similarly,indigenous rights campaigns, and environmentalcampaigns supporting the demands of localpeoples for participation in development pro-jects that would affect them, frequently involvethis kind of triangulation. Where governmentsare unresponsive to groups whose claims maynone the less resonate elsewhere, internationalcontacts can ‘amplify’ the demands of domesticgroups, pry open space for new issues, andthen echo these demands back into the domesticarena. Needless to say, in such cases the useof a boomerang strategy is politically sensitive,and is subject to charges of foreign interferencein domestic affairs.

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Linkages are important for both sides. Forthe less powerful Third World actors, networksprovide access, leverage and information (andoften money) they could not expect to have ontheir own. For northern groups, they make cred-ible the assertion that they are struggling with,and not only ‘for’, their southern partners. Notsurprisingly, such relationships can produceconsiderable tensions. It is not uncommon tosee reproduced internally the power relationsthat the networks are trying to overcome.Increasingly, network members are forced toaddress this problem.

Just as injustice and oppression may notproduce movements or revolutions by them-selves, claims around issues amenable to inter-national action need not produce transnationalnetworks. Activists are ‘people who careenough about some issue that they are preparedto incur significant costs and act to achievetheir goals’ (Oliver and Marwell, 1992, p. 252).They form networks when they believe it willfurther their organizational missions – by shar-ing information, attaining greater visibility,gaining access to different publics, multiplyingchannels of institutional access, and so forth.

Networks are normally formed aroundparticular campaigns or claims. Networks breednetworks; as networking becomes a repertoireof action that is diffused transnationally, eacheffort to network internationally is less difficultthan the one before. Over time, in these issueareas, participation in transnational networks hasbecome an essential component of the collectiveidentities of the activists involved. The politicalentrepreneurs who become the core networkersfor a new campaign have often gained experi-ence in earlier ones.

Opportunities for network activities haveincreased over the last two decades, in partthrough the efforts of the pioneers among them.Network activists have been creative in findingnew venues in which to pursue claims – aprocess we discuss in the next section. Theproliferation of international organizations andconferences has provided foci for the contacts.Cheaper air travel and new electronic and com-munication technologies speed informationflows and simplify personal contact amongthem.

Underlying the trends discussed here, how-ever, is a broader cultural shift. The new net-


Greenpeace in action.Guelbiz/Action Press

works depended on creating a new kind of glo-bal public (or civil society), which grew as acultural legacy of the 1960s. The activism thatswept western Europe, the United States, andmany parts of the Third World during that dec-ade contributed to this shift, alongside the vastlyincreased opportunities for international contact.

Obviously, internationalism was notinvented in the 1960s. Several long-standingethical traditions have justified actions by indi-viduals or groups outside the borders of theirown state. Broadly speaking, we could designatethese as religious beliefs, the solidarity tra-ditions of labour and the left, and liberal inter-nationalism. While many activists working inadvocacy networks are from one of these tra-ditions, they no longer tend to define themselvesin terms of these traditions or the organizationsthat carried them. This is most true for activistson the left, for whom the decline of socialistorganizations capped a growing disillusionmentwith much of the left’s refusal to address seri-ously the concerns of women, the environment,

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and human rights violations in eastern bloccountries.

Advocacy networks in the north often func-tion in a cultural milieu of internationalism thatis generally optimistic about the promise andpossibilities of international networking. Fornetwork members in developing countries, how-ever, justifying external intervention or pressurein domestic affairs is a much trickier business,except when lives are at stake. Linkages withnorthern networks require high levels of trust,because arguments justifying intervention onethical grounds often sound too much like the‘civilizing’ discourse of colonial powers, andcan work against the goals they espouse byproducing a nationalist backlash.

How do transnationaladvocacy networks work?

Transnational networks seek influence in manyof the same ways that other political groups or


social movements do, but because they are notpowerful in the traditional sense of the word,they must use the power of their information,ideas and strategies to alter the information andvalue context within which states make policies.Although much of what networks do might beconsidered persuasion, the term is insufficientlyprecise to be of much theoretical use. We havedeveloped a more nuanced typology of thekinds of tactics that networks use. Theseinclude:

(a) information politics,or the ability to movepolitically usable information quickly andcredibly to where it will have the mostimpact;

(b) symbolic politics,or the ability to call uponsymbols, actions or stories that make senseof a situation or claim for an audience thatis frequently far away (see also Brysk,1994, 1995);

(c) leverage politics, or the ability to call uponpowerful actors to affect a situation whereweaker members of a network are unlikelyto have influence; and

(d) accountability politics, or the effort tooblige more powerful actors to act onvaguer policies or principles they formallyendorsed.

The construction of cognitive frames is anessential component of transnational networks’political strategies. David Snow has called thisstrategic activityframe alignment– ‘by render-ing events or occurrences meaningful, framesfunction to organize experience and guideaction, whether individual or collective’ (Snowet al., 1986).Frame resonanceconcerns therelationship between an organization’s inter-pretive work and its ability to influence broaderpublic understandings. The latter involves boththe frame’s internal coherence and its fit witha broader political culture (Snow and Benford,1988). In recent work, Snow and Benford(1992) and Tarrow (1992), in turn, have givenframe resonance a historical dimension by join-ing it to Tarrow’s notion of protest cycles.Struggles over meaning and the creation of newframes of meaning occur early in a protestcycle, but over time, ‘a given collective actionframe becomes part of the political culture –which is to say, part of the reservoir of symbolsfrom which future movement entrepreneurs canchoose’ (Tarrow, 1992, p. 197).

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Network members actively seek ways tobring issues to the public agenda, both by fram-ing them in innovative ways and by seekinghospitable venues. Sometimes they create issuesby framing old problems in new ways;occasionally they help to transform other actors’understandings of their identities and their inter-ests. Land-use rights in the Amazon, forexample, took on an entirely different characterand gained quite different allies when viewedin a deforestation frame than in either socialjustice or regional development frames.

Transnational networks normally involve asmall number of activists in a given campaignor advocacy role. The kinds of pressure andagenda politics in which they engage rarelyinvolve mass mobilization, except at keymoments, although the peoples whose causethey espouse may engage in mass protest (forexample, the expelled population in the Narm-ada Dam case). Boycott strategies are a partialexception. Instead, network activists engage inwhat Baumgartner and Jones (1991), borrowingfrom law, call venue shopping: ‘This strategyrelies less on mass mobilisation and more onthe dual strategy of the presentation of an imageand the search for a more receptive politicalvenue’ (p. 1050). The recent coupling ofindigenous rights and environmental strugglesis a good example of a strategic venue shift byindigenista activists, who found the environ-mental arena more receptive to their claims thanhad been human rights venues.

Information politics

Information binds network members togetherand is essential for network effectiveness. Manyinformation exchanges are informal – throughtelephone calls, e-mail and fax communications,and the circulation of small newsletters, pam-phlets and bulletins. They provide informationthat would not otherwise be available, fromsources that might not otherwise be heard, andmake it comprehensible and useful to activistsand publics who may be geographically and/orsocially distant.

Non-state actors gain influence by servingas alternative sources of information. Infor-mation flows in advocacy networks provide notonly facts, but alsotestimonies– stories toldby people whose lives have been affected.


Moreover, they interpret facts and testimony;activist groups frame issues simply, in terms ofright and wrong, because their purpose is topersuadepeople and stimulate them to takeaction.

How does this process of persuasion occur?An effective frame must show that a givenstate of affairs is neither natural nor accidental,identify the responsible party or parties, andpropose credible solutions. This requires clear,powerful messages that appeal to shared prin-ciples, and which often have more impact onstate policy than the advice of technical experts.An important part of the political struggle overinformation is whether an issue is defined prim-arily as technical, subject to consideration by‘qualified’ experts, or as something that con-cerns a much broader global constituency.

Even as we highlight the importance oftestimony, however, we have to recognize themediations involved. The process by which tes-timony is discovered and presented normallyinvolves several layers of prior translation.Transnational actors may identify what kinds oftestimony would be valuable, then ask an NGOin the area to seek out people who could tellthose stories. They may filter through expatri-ates, through travelling scholars, through themedia. There is frequently a huge gap betweenthe story’s telling and its retelling – in sociocul-tural context, in instrumental meaning, and evenin language. Local people, in other words,sometimes lose control over their stories in atransnational campaign.

Non-governmental networks have helped tolegitimize the use of testimonial informationalong with technical and statistical information.Linkage of the two is crucial: without the indi-vidual cases, activists cannot motivate peopleto seek to change policies. Increasingly, inter-national campaigns by networks take this two-level approach to information. In the 1980s evenGreenpeace, which initially had eschewed rigor-ous research in favour of splashy media events,began to pay more attention to getting the factsright. While testimony does not avoid the needto manage technical information, it helps tomake the need for action more real for ordi-nary citizens.

A dense web of north–south exchange,aided by computer and fax communication,means that governments can no longer mono-

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polize information flows as they could a merehalf-decade ago. These technologies have hadan enormous impact on moving information toand from Third World countries, where mailservices are often both slow and precarious. Weshould note, however, that this gives specialadvantages to organizations that have access tosuch technologies.

The central role of information in all theseissues helps to explain the drive to create net-works. Information in these issue areas is bothessential and dispersed. Non-governmentalactors depend upon their access to informationto help make them legitimate players. Contactwith like-minded groups at home and abroadprovides access to information necessary to theirwork, broadens their legitimacy, and helps tomobilize information around particular policytargets. Most NGOs cannot afford to maintainstaff in a variety of countries. In exceptionalcases, they send staff members on investigationmissions, but this is not practical for keepinginformed on routine developments. Forginglinks with local organizations allows groups toreceive and monitor information from manycountries at low cost. Local groups, in turn,depend on international contacts to get theirinformation out, and to help to protect them intheir work.

The media are essential partners in networkinformation politics. To reach a broader audi-ence, networks strive to attract press attention.Sympathetic journalists may become part of thenetwork, but more often network activists culti-vate a reputation for credibility with the press,and package their information in a timely anddramatic way to draw press attention.

Symbolic politics

Activists frame issues by identifying and pro-viding convincing explanations for powerfulsymbolic events, which in turn become catalystsfor the growth of networks. Symbolic interpret-ation is part of the process of persuasion bywhich networks create awareness and expandthe constituency. Awarding the Nobel PeacePrize to Rigoberta Menchu, during the Inter-national Year of Indigenous People, heightenedpublic awareness of the situation of indigenouspeoples in the Americas. The ability of theindigenous people’s movement to use 1992, the


500th anniversary of the voyage of Columbusto the Americas, to raise a host of indigenousissues revealed the ability of networks to usesymbolic events to reshape understandings(Brysk, 1994).

The coup in Chile played this kind of cata-lytic role for the human rights community.Often it is not one event, but the juxtapositionof disparate events that makes people changetheir minds and take action. For many peoplein the US, it was the juxtaposition of the coupin Chile, the war in Vietnam, Watergate, andcivil rights that gave birth to the human rightsmovement. Likewise, the juxtaposition of thehot summer of 1988 in the US with dramaticfootage of the Brazilian rainforest burning mayhave convinced many people that global warm-ing and tropical deforestation were serious andlinked issues. The assassination of ChicoMendes at the end of that year crystallized thebelief that something was profoundly wrong inthe Amazon.

Leverage politics

Activists in advocacy networks are concernedwith political effectiveness. Their definition ofeffectiveness often involves some policy changeby ‘target actors’ which might be governments,but might also be international financial insti-tutions like the World Bank, or private actorslike transnational corporations. In order to bringabout policy change, networks need to bothpersuade and pressurize more powerful actors.To gain influence the networks seekleverage–a word that appears often in the discourse ofadvocacy organizations – over more powerfulactors. By exerting leverage over more powerfulinstitutions, weak groups gain influence farbeyond their ability to influence state practicesdirectly. Identifying points of leverage is a cru-cial strategic step in network campaigns. Wediscuss two kinds of leverage: material leverageand moral leverage.

Material leverage usually takes the form ofsome kind of issue-linkage, normally involvingmoney or goods (but potentially also includingvotes in international organizations, prestigiousoffices, or other benefits). The human rightsissue became negotiable because other govern-ments or financial institutions connected humanrights practices to the cut-off of military and

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economic aid, or to worsening bilateral diplo-matic relations. Human rights groups obtainedleverage by providing US and European policy-makers with information that persuaded themto cut off military and economic aid. To makethe issue negotiable, NGOs first had to raiseits profile or salience, using information andsymbolic politics. Then more powerful membersof the network had to link cooperation to some-thing else of value: money, trade or prestige.Similarly, in the environmentalists’ multilateralbank campaign, linkage – of environmental pro-tection with access to loans – was very power-ful.

Moral leverage involves what some com-mentators have called the ‘mobilisation ofshame’, where the behaviour of target actors isheld up to the bright light of international scru-tiny. Where states place a high value on inter-national prestige, this can be effective. In thebaby-food campaign, network activists usedmoral leverage to convince states to vote infavour of the WHO/UNICEF Codes of Conduct.As a result, even the Netherlands and Switzer-land, both major exporters of infant formula,voted in favour of the code.

Although NGO influence often depends onsecuring powerful allies, making those links stilldepends on their ability to mobilize the soli-darity of their members, or of public opinionvia the media. In democracies, the potential toinfluence votes gives large membership organi-zations an advantage in lobbying for policychange; environmental organizations, several ofwhose memberships number in the millions, aremore likely to have this added clout than arehuman rights organizations.

Accountability politics

Networks devote considerable energy to con-vincing governments and other actors to changetheir positions on issues. This is often dismissedas inconsequential change, since talk is cheap –governments change discursive positions hopingto divert network and public attention. Networkactivists, however, try to make such statementsinto opportunities for accountability politics.Once a government has publicly committeditself to a principle – for example, in favour ofhuman rights or democracy – networks can usethose positions, and their command of infor-


mation, to expose the distance between dis-course and practice. This is embarrassing tomany governments, who may try to save faceby closing the distance.

Under what conditions doadvocacy networks haveinfluence?

To assess the influence of advocacy networkswe must look at goal achievement at severaldifferent levels. We identify the following typesor stages of network influence:

(1) issue creation and attention/agenda setting;(2) influence on discursive positions of states

and regional and international organizations;(3) influence on institutional procedures;(4) influence on policy change in ‘target actors’

which may be states, international orregional organizations, or private actors likethe Nestle´ corporation;

(5) influence on state behaviour.

Networks generate attention to new issuesand help to set agendas when they provokemedia attention, debates, hearings and meetingson issues that previously had not been a matterof public debate. Because values are the essenceof advocacy networks, this stage of influencemay require a modification of the ‘value con-text’ in which policy debates take place. Thetheme years and decades of the United Nations,such as International Women’s Decade and theYear of Indigenous People, were internationalevents promoted by networks that heightenedawareness of issues.

Networks influence discursive positionswhen they help to persuade states and inter-national organizations to support internationaldeclarations or change stated domestic policypositions. The role that environmental networksplayed in shaping state positions and conferencedeclarations at the 1992 Earth Summit in Riode Janeiro is an example of this kind of impact.They may also pressurize states to make morebinding commitments by signing conventionsand codes of conduct.

At a more concrete level, the network hasinfluence if it leads to changes in policies, notonly of the target states, but also of other states

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and/or international institutions. These changesare easier to see, but their causes can be elusive.We can speak of network impact on policychange where human rights networks havepressured successfully for cut-offs of militaryaid to repressive regimes, where repressive prac-tices diminish because of pressure, or evenwhere human rights activity affects regimechange or stability. We must take care to dis-tinguish between policy change and change inbehaviour; official policies may predict nothingabout how actors behave in reality.

We speak of stages of impact, and notmerely types of impact, because we believe thatincreased attention and changes in discursivepositions make governments more vulnerable tothe claims these networks raise. This is notalways true, of course – discursive changes canalso have a powerfully divisive effect on net-works, splitting insiders from outsiders,reformers from radicals. None the less, agovernment that claims to be protecting indigen-ous areas or ecological reserves is more vulner-able to charges that such areas are endangeredthan one that makes no such claim. Then, theeffort is no longer to make governments changetheir position, but to hold them to their word.Meaningful policy and behavioural change isthus more likely when the first three types orstages of impact have occurred.

Both issue characteristics and actorcharacteristicsare important parts of our expla-nation of how networks affect political out-comes and the conditions under which networkscan be effective. Issue characteristics like sali-ence and resonance within existing national orinstitutional agendas can tell us something aboutwhere networks are likely to be able to insertnew ideas and discourse into policy debates.Success in influencing policy depends on thestrength and density of the network, and itsability to achieve leverage.

As we look at the issues around whichtransnational advocacy networks have organizedmost effectively, we find two characteristicissues that appear most frequently:

(1) those involving bodily harm to vulnerableindividuals, especially when there is a shortand clear causal chain (or story) about whobears responsibility;

(2) issues involvinglegal equality of opport-unity.


The first responds to a normative logic, and thesecond to a judicial and institutional one.Issues involving physical harm to vulnerableor innocent individuals appear more likely toresonate transnationally. Of course, this alonedoes not ensure the success of the campaign,but is particularly compelling. Nor is it straight-forward to determine what constitutes bodilyharm, and who is vulnerable or innocent. Bothissues of ‘harm’ and ‘innocence’ or vulner-ability are highly interpretive and contested.Nevertheless, we argue that issues involvingbodily harm to populations perceived as vulner-able or innocent are more likely to lead toeffective transnational campaigns than otherkinds of issues. This helps to explain why ithas been easier to work on torture or disappear-ance than some other human rights issues, andwhy it has been easier to protest against tortureof political prisoners than against torture ofcommon criminals or to abolish capital punish-ment. It is also useful for understanding thatthose environmental campaigns that have hadthe greatest transnational effect have been thosethat stress the connection between protectingenvironmentsand the (often vulnerable) peoplewho live in those environments. We also argue,following Deborah Stone (1989), that in orderto campaign on an issue it must be convertedinto a ‘causal story’ – establishing who bearsresponsibility or guilt. But in addition to theneed for a causal story, we argue that the causalchain within that story needs to be sufficientlyshort and clear to make a convincing case aboutresponsibility or guilt.The second issue around which transnationalcampaigns appear to have greater effectivenessis that of greater legal equality of opportunity.Notice that we stresslegal equality of opport-unity, not of outcome. One of the most success-ful international campaigns was the anti-apart-heid campaign. What made apartheid such aclear target was the legal denial of the mostbasic aspects of equality of opportunity.

Transnational networks andregional integration

Many scholars now recognize that the state nolonger has a monopoly over public affairs andare seeking ways to describe the sphere of inter-

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national interactions under a variety of names:transnational relations, international civilsociety, and global civil society (Lipschutz,1992; Peterson, 1992). In their views, states nolonger look unitary from the outside. Increas-ingly dense interactions among individuals,groups, actors from states and regional andinternational institutions appear to involve muchmore than re-presenting interests on a worldstage.

Recent empirical work in sociology hasgone a long way towards demonstrating theextent of changes ‘above’ and ‘below’ the state.The world polity theory associated with JohnMeyer, John Boli, George Thomas and theircolleagues, conceives of an international societyin a radically different way. For these scholars,it is the area of diffusion of world culture – aprocess that itself constitutes the characteristicsof states (Thomas et al., 1987; Boli andThomas, in press). The vehicles for its diffusionbecome global intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations, but neither thesources of norms nor the processes throughwhich global cultural norms evolve areadequately specified (Finnemore, 1996). Pro-ponents of world polity theory present inter-national organizations and NGOs as ‘enactors’of some basic cultural principles of the worldculture: universalism, individualism, rationalvoluntaristic authority, human purposes, andworld citizenship. There is thus no meaningfuldistinction between those espousing norms thatreinforce existing institutional power relation-ships, and those that challenge them.

We argue that different transnational actorshave profoundly divergent purposes and goals.To understand how change occurs in the worldpolity we have to unpack the different categor-ies of transnational actors, and understand thequite different logic and process in these differ-ent categories. The logic of transnational advo-cacy networks, which are often in conflict withstates over basic principles, is quite differentfrom the logic of other transnational actors whoprovide symbols or services or models forstates. In essence, world polity theorists elimin-ate the struggles over power and meaning thatfor us are central to normative change.

Our research suggests that many trans-national networks have been sites of culturaland political negotiation rather than mere


enactors of dominant Western norms. Westernhuman rights norms have indeed been thedefining framework for many networks, but howthese norms are articulated is transformed inthe process of network activity. For example,issues of indigenous rights and cultural survivalhave been at the forefront of modern networkactivity, and yet they run counter to the culturalmodel put forward by the world polity theorists.

In other words, as modern anthropologistsrealize, culture is not a totalizing influence, buta field that is constantly changing. Certain dis-courses – like that of human rights – providea language for negotiation. Within this languagecertain moves are privileged over others; humanrights is a very disciplining discourse. But it isalso a permissive discourse that allows differentgroups within the network to renegotiate mean-ings. The success of the campaign for women’srights as human rights reveals the possibilities

within the discourse of human rights. Webelieve that studying networks is extraordinarilyvaluable for tracking and ultimately theorizingabout the emergence of shared norms and cul-tural meanings underpinning processes ofregional and international integration.

Network theory can thus provide an expla-nation for transnational change, a model that isnot just one of ‘diffusion’ of liberal institutionsand practices, but one through which the prefer-ences and identities of actors engaged in trans-national society are sometimes mutually trans-formed through their interactions with eachother. Because networks are voluntary and hori-zontal, actors participate in them to the degreethat they perceive mutual learning, respect andbenefits. Modern networks are not conveyorbelts of liberal ideals, but vehicles for communi-cative and political exchange, with the potentialfor mutual transformation of participants.

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* This article is based on our bookActivists Beyond Borders: AdvocacyNetworks in International Politics(Ithaca: Cornell University Press,

1998). The Editor-in-Chief wishesto thank Cornell for permission topublish material drawn from thebook.

1. We developed this definitionbased on a discussion in Mitchell(1973, p. 23).

Notes

101Transnational and advocacy networks

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