Transnational Advocacy Networks and Norms

Los derechos humanos son un área temática muy importante en las relaciones internacionales contemporáneas. La doctrina de derechos humanos, que tras un proceso de desarrollo de más de tres siglos se concretó tras el fin de la segunda guerra mundial, ha modificado el panorama institucional y las relaciones entre actores a nivel internacional. Por otro lado, independientemente de su "falta de dientes", el régimen internacional en la materia ha transformado la manera en que los estados se relacionan con órganos internacionales, organizaciones de la sociedad civil transnacional y otros gobiernos. DOCUMENTOS Puente Democrático POR ALEJANDRO ANAYA MUÑOZ

From the earliest campaign against Augusto Pinochet’s repressive practices to the recent massive demonstrations against the World Trade Organization, transnational collective action involving nongovernmental organizations has been restructuring politics and changing the world. Ranging from Santiago to Seattle and covering more than twenty-five years of transnational advocacy, the essays in Restructuring World Politics offer a clear, richly nuanced picture of this process and its far-reaching implications in an increasingly globalized political economy. The book brings together scholars, activists, and policy makers to show how such advocacy addresses—and reshapes—key issues in the areas of labor, human rights, gender justice, democratization, and sustainable development throughout the world.

A primary goal of transnational advocacy is to create, strengthen, implement, and monitor international norms. How transnational networks go about doing this, why and when they succeed, and what problems and complications they face are the main themes of this book. Looking at a wide range of cases where nongovernmental actors attempt to change norms and the practices of states, international organizations, and firms in the private sector—from debt restructuring to protecting human rights, from anti-dam projects in India to the prodemocracy movement in Indonesia—the authors compellingly depict international nongovernmental organizations and transnational social movements as considerable, emerging powers in international politics, initiating, facilitating, and directing the transformation of global norms and practices.

From the earliest campaign against Augusto Pinochet’s repressive practices to the recent massive demonstrations against the World Trade Organization, transnational collective action involving nongovernmental organizations has been restructuring politics and changing the world. Ranging from Santiago to Seattle and covering more than twenty-five years of transnational advocacy, the essays in Restructuring World Politics offer a clear, richly nuanced picture of this process and its far-reaching implications in an increasingly globalized political economy. The book brings together scholars, activists, and policy makers to show how such advocacy addresses—and reshapes—key issues in the areas of labor, human rights, gender justice, democratization, and sustainable development throughout the world.

A primary goal of transnational advocacy is to create, strengthen, implement, and monitor international norms. How transnational networks go about doing this, why and when they succeed, and what problems and complications they face are the main themes of this book. Looking at a wide range of cases where nongovernmental actors attempt to change norms and the practices of states, international organizations, and firms in the private sector—from debt restructuring to protecting human rights, from anti-dam projects in India to the prodemocracy movement in Indonesia—the authors compellingly depict international nongovernmental organizations and transnational social movements as considerable, emerging powers in international politics, initiating, facilitating, and directing the transformation of global norms and practices.

Engendering State Institutions: State Response to Violence Against Women in Latin America, provides a much-needed explanation for two questions central to general inquiries about the quality of democracy, state-building, and institutional performance: What are the conditions under which states will construct institutions that address the needs of historically marginalized groups? What explains variation in the performance of these institutions that are charged with protecting vulnerable groups and ensuring their access to justice? I examine the creation and performance of specialized policing institutions for women as examples of these broader state-building efforts. I conduct a rich in-depth comparative analysis of Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, with additional attention to Honduras and El Salvador.

Surprisingly, countries with the fewest resources such as Nicaragua have developed a wide network of policing institutions, while countries with more capacity such as Costa Rica have not. I explain that the history and strength of transnational advocacy networking determines the creation and performance of these new state institutions, as opposed to efforts located and initiated primarily within the state or within local civil society. Transnational advocacy networks help to solve the twin problems of lack of will within the state and lack of resources within civil society by providing external pressure and funding. To support this argument, I draw heavily on 18 months of fieldwork with over 200 in-depth interviews conducted in Latin America with actors in the state, civil society, and international organizations between 2007 and 2014. Engendering State Institutions makes a unique contribution to existing scholarship both in terms of its empirical contribution (it is the first on the topic of responsiveness to violence against women that focuses comparatively on Central American countries) as well as its theoretical contribution (it is the first to advance a theoretical framework explaining how states build institutions to protect women victims of violence).

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Following the Battle of Seattle, how do we understand the rise of increased transnational advocacy by both civil and uncivil societal actors targeting key global institutions? Is this trajectory toward greater levels of contestation through mobilization of transnational social movements and increased violence going to define and to characterize future global summits? Or can we put the genie – of heightened contestation and violence – back in the bottle? Given the increasing concerns about potential outbreak of violence, how can governments avoid militarizing future global summits? As more public officials now face the prospect of losing their posts if they mishandle the policing of global summits, we are likely to see more proactive and heavy-handed policing of these events. As recent history has shown, aggressive efforts at policing will likely lead activist groups to undertake more provocative and radical actions at future protests. Ultimately, transnational advocates are asking each of us to examine who gains and loses from stifling dialogue about the fundamental questions of who shares the fruits of development and who shapes the rules and architecture of global institutions and systems.

In the period from 1990 leading up to the G8 in 2005, both popular and elite attitudes to the cancellation of third world debt underwent a transformation. By the time the G8 met at Gleneagles in the summer of 2005, third world debt cancellation had become a moral imperative and few dared speak out against it. This paper explores how this transformation came about by exploring the involvement of transnational advocacy networks in the ongoing contest to mobilize public opinion, reframe the issues and thereby define the rules and practices governing finance. These events provide a way into addressing the question of the power of normative ideas in underpinning the rules and practices governing financial relations. Finally, this paper discusses what lessons the successes and failures of this transnational campaign might provide for those who are at present active in the contestation and ongoing efforts to reform the rules and practices governing international finance.

Various multi-dimensional governance models have been suggested by scholars and policy makers alike as suitable conceptual lenses through which to view the complexity of water governance, particularly in international river basins. While these models, most notably, the Government–Society–Science and the Hegemonic Politicians models, do provide more holistic pictures of the multiple actors at play and their interactions, the nature of these actor interactions is overly linear, and make them incapable of explaining the numerous processes within complex governance systems. They assume the dominance of a limited number of actors while ignoring various feedback loops. This paper therefore provides a critical review of the Government–Society–Science and the Hegemonic Politicians models. Our alternative perspective is derived from complexity theory as it pertains to water governance. Explaining water governance through the complexity lens highlights the myriad of actors that act within international river basins and the consequences of their actions; something that is lacking within the traditional models. This holds implications not only for decision-making in river basins and water resources management in particular, but also for theoretical developments that feed back into the policy arena. Complexity theory paints a more nuanced picture for the decision maker. We put forward this view using the proposed Epupa Dam on the Kunene River as a case study where various actors interact in the debate around the suggested dam.