Transnational Activism in Asia: Problems of Power and Democracy (Transnationalism, 13)

Transnational Activism in Asia

In an era of intensified globalization, social and political activists operate increasingly beyond and across state borders. This book provides new perspectives on transnational activism with a specific regional focus on Asia. This book connects the literature on social movements and NGOs operating in a transnational context. It contributes to the establishment of transnational activism as a multidisciplinary field of research and suggests new ways of analysing problems of power and democracy. Chapters include thoroughly grounded empirical case studies from countries like China, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, covering a wide variety of issue areas such as the environment, AIDS and human rights. The innovative theoretical chapters explore concepts like state power, discursive power, governance regimes and world citizenship. Transnational Activism in Asia should be of interest to not only scholars and activists specializing in transnational activisms, but also general students of globalization and transnational relations, civil society, social movements, NGOs, democratization and Asian politics. Nicola Piper is Research Fellow at the Australian National University in Canberra. Anders Uhlin is Associate Professor of Political Science at Södertörn University College, Stockholm.

Routledge Studies in Transnationalism Series editor: Steven Vertovec University of Oxford

‘Transnationalism’ broadly refers to multiple ties and interactions linking people or institutions across the borders of nation-states. Today myriad systems of relationship, exchange and mobility function intensively and in real time while being spread across the world. New technologies, especially involving telecommunications, serve to connect such networks. Despite great distances and notwithstanding the presence of international borders (and all the laws, regulations and national narratives they represent), many forms of association have been globally intensified and now take place paradoxically in a planet-spanning yet common arena of activity. In some instances transnational forms and processes serve to speed up or exacerbate historical patterns of activity, in others they represent arguably new forms of human interaction. Transnational practices and their consequent configurations of power are shaping the world of the twenty-first century. This book forms part of a series of volumes concerned with describing and analysing a range of phenomena surrounding this field. Serving to ground theory and research on ‘globalization’, the Routledge book series on ‘Transnationalism’ offers the latest empirical studies and ground-breaking theoretical works on contemporary socio-economic, political and cultural processes which span international boundaries. Contributions to the series are drawn from Sociology, Economics, Anthropology, Politics, Geography, International Relations, Business Studies and Cultural Studies. The series is associated with the Transnational Communities Research Programme of the Economic and Social Research Council (see http://www.transcomm. ox.ac.uk). The series consists of two strands: Transnationalism aims to address the needs of students and teachers and these titles will be published in hardback and paperback. Titles include: Culture and Politics in the Information Age A new politics? Edited by Frank Webster

Transnational Democracy Political spaces and border crossings Edited by James Anderson Routledge Research in Transnationalism is a forum for innovative new research intended for a high-level specialist readership, and the titles will be available in hardback only. Titles include: 1 New Transnational Social Spaces International migration and transnational companies in the early 21st century Edited by Ludger Pries 2 Transnational Muslim Politics* Reimagining the Umma Peter G. Mandaville 3 New Approaches to Migration? Transnational communities and the transformation of home Edited by Nadje Al-Ali and Khalid Koser 4 Work and Migration Life and livelihoods in a globalizing world Edited by Ninna Nyberg Sorensen and Karen Fog Olwig 5 Communities Across Borders New immigrants and transnational cultures Edited by Paul Kennedy and Victor Roudometof 6 Transnational Spaces Edited by Peter Jackson, Phil Crang and Claire Dwyer 7 The Media of Diaspora Edited by Karim H. Karim 8 Transnational Politics Turks and Kurds in Germany Eva Østergaard-Nielsen 9 Culture and Economy in the Indian Diaspora Edited by Bhikhu Parekh, Gurharpal Singh and Steven Vertovec 10 International Migration and Globalization Edited by Rey Koslowski *Also available in paperback

11 Gender in Transnationalism Home, longing and belonging among Moroccan migrant women Ruba Salih 12 Transnational Communities in the Asia-Pacific Edited by Brenda Yeoh, Katie Willis and S. M. A. K. Fakhri 13 Transnational Activism in Asia Problems of power and democracy Edited by Nicola Piper and Anders Uhlin 14 Diaspora, Identity and Religion Edited by Waltraud Kokot, Khachig Toloyan and Carolin Alfonso 15 Cross-Border Governance in the European Union Edited by Olivier Kramsch and Barbara Hooper

Transnational Activism in Asia Problems of power and democracy

Edited by Nicola Piper and Anders Uhlin

First published 2004 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. © 2004 Nicola Piper and Anders Uhlin for selection and editorial matter; individual contributors their contributions 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. 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 Transnational activism in Asia: problems of power and democracy / edited by Nicola Piper and Anders Uhlin. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Social movements–International cooperation. 2. Protest movements–International cooperation. 3. Social movements–Asia. 4. Anti-globalization movement–Asia. 5. Non-governmental organizations–Asia. 6. Asia–Politics and government. 7. Asia–Foreign relations. I. Piper, Nicola. II. Uhlin, Anders. HM881.T73 2003 303.48⬘4⬘095–dc21 ISBN 0-203-56324-7 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-34494-4 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-31513-1 (Print Edition)

2003005207

Contents

List of contributors Acknowledgements List of abbreviations 1

New perspectives on transnational activism

ix xiii xv 1

NICOLA PIPER AND ANDERS UHLIN

2

State power and transnational activism

26

JEAN GRUGEL

3

Governance regimes and the politics of discursive representation

43

MARGARET E. KECK

4

Transnational activism, institutions and global democratization

61

JACKIE SMITH

5

World citizenship and transnational activism

78

BAOGANG HE

6

Transnational activism and electronic communication: cyber-rainbow warriors in action

94

ON-KWOK LAI

7

Putting transnational activism in its place: HIV/AIDS in the Indonesia–Malaysia–Singapore growth triangle and beyond

109

JOHAN LINDQUIST

8

Transnational activism by Malaysians: foci, tradeoffs and implications MEREDITH WEISS

129

viii

Contents

9 Transnational activism and the pursuit of democratization in Indonesia: national, regional and global networks

149

ALEKSIUS JEMADU

10 ‘Democratization’ in Taiwan and its discontents: transnational activism as a critique

168

SHU-FEN LIN

Index

189

Contributors

Jean Grugel is Professor in the Department of Politics, University of Sheffield. She has published widely on democratization as well as on Latin American politics and international relations. Her books include Democratization: A Critical Introduction (2002), Democracy without Borders: Transnationalization and Conditionality in New Democracies (1999) and Regionalism Across the North–South Divide: State Strategies and Globalization (1999, edited with W. Hout). She is presently working on two projects, namely citizenship and new regionalism and children in global politics. Baogang He (BA, Hangzhou University, 1981; MA, People’s University of China, Beijing, 1986; Ph.D., ANU, Australia, 1993) is currently Senior Research Fellow, East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore; and Reader at the School of Government, the University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia. Dr He is the author of The Democratization of China (1996, 1998, 2000), The Democratic Implication of Civil Society in China (1997), Nationalism, National Identity and Democratization in China (2000, with Yingjie Guo), Between Democracy and Authority: An Empirical Study of Village Elections in Zhejiang (2002, with Lang Youxing). He has also published 15 book chapters and more than 26 refereed journal articles. Aleksius Jemadu is a Lecturer of International Relations at the Department of International Relations of Parahyangan Catholic University, Bandung, Indonesia. He got his Ph.D. in social sciences from Faculteit Sociale Wetenschappen, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, in 1996. His field of interests include international political economy, democratization in developing countries and international politics in the Asia-Pacific region. Currently he is Director of the Parahyangan Centre for International Studies (PACIS), Bandung, Indonesia. Margaret E. Keck is Professor of Political Science at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. She previously taught at Yale University (1986–95). She has a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University. She is the author of The Workers’ Party and Democratization in Brazil (1992), winner of the Best Book award from the New England Council on Latin American Studies, and author of articles on environment, labour, and politics in Brazil. Since 1990 her research has focused on environmental politics, also mainly in Brazil. She and Kathryn Sikkink of the University of Minnesota co-authored Activists Beyond Borders:

x Contributors Advocacy Networks in International Politics, published by Cornell University Press in 1998, which won the 1999 Chadwick Alger Award for the best book on International Organizations from the International Studies Association, and the 2000 Grawemeyer Prize for ideas contributing to world order. Currently she is completing a book, tentatively called Politicizing the Environment, co-authored with Kathryn Hochstetler, and articles on human rights, on state–society networks, and on governance regimes. In 2000 she initiated the Watermark Project, a multiyear, interdisciplinary study of the creation of decentralized river-basin management institutions in Brazil, which currently involves a network of around 35 Brazilian and foreign scholars and practitioners. On-Kwok Lai is Professor in the School of Policy Studies, Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan. He is Honorary Professor in Social Work and Social Administration and Honorary Research Fellow of the Centre of Urban Planning and Environmental Management, both at the University of Hong Kong. He gained his Dr.rer.pol. from the University of Bremen, with DAAD Fellowship. He has taught and/or researched at the University of Bielefeld, the University of Hong Kong, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the University of Waikato, New Zealand. His research interests are on socio-political comparative studies of environmental, social and urban issues. More specifically, his recent research has focused on ecological modernization, the socio-political impact of ICT, and the transformation of health and welfare systems. Shu-fen Lin received her Ph.D. at the University of Essex, where she wrote her dissertation on the political transformation in Taiwan since the mid-1980s. She is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science, Soochow University, Taiwan. Her current research includes democratic theory, poststructuralist discourse theory and feminism. Johan Lindquist defended his Ph.D. dissertation, The Anxieties of Mobility: Development, Migration, and Tourism in the Indonesian Borderlands, at the Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University, in January 2002. The dissertation dealt with the Indonesian island of Batam, which, together with Singapore and the Malaysian province of Johor, forms part of a quasi-official transnational growth triangle. Johan is currently a post-doctoral fellow under the auspices of the newly formed Swedish School of Advanced Asia Pacific Studies (SSAAPS). Recent publications include, ‘Batam: Recreating the Kampung that Never Was’ (Latitudes, 2001, vol. 2) and ‘Modern Spaces, Wild Places, and International Hinterlands: The Cultural Economy of Decoupling and Misrecognition’ (Anthropology Today, 2000, vol. 16, no. 3). Nicola Piper is Research Fellow at the Australian National University in Canberra. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Sheffield in the UK. Her research has revolved around various aspects of international labour migration. She is the author of the book Racism, Nationalism and Citizenship (1998), the co-editor of the volumes Women and Work in Globalising Asia (2002), and Wife or Worker? Asian Marriage and Migration (2003) as well as various journal articles. Her current

Contributors xi project focuses on the intersection of international law (human rights and labour rights) and activism from the perspective of foreign migrant workers. Jackie Smith is Associate Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. She is co-editor of Globalization and Resistance: Transnational Dimensions of Social Movements (2002) and of Transnational Social Movements and Global Politics: Solidarity Beyond the State (1997) as well as the author of numerous articles on social movements and globalization. Her current research focuses on transnational social movements against global trade liberalization. Anders Uhlin is Associate Professor of Political Science at Södertörn University College, Stockholm. His current research focuses on transnational activism, civil society and problems of democratization. He is the author of a number of recent articles and chapters on transnational civil society in Southeast Asia and the book Indonesia and the ‘Third Wave’ of Democratization (1997). Meredith Weiss is Assistant Professor of International Studies at DePaul University. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University. She is the co-editor (with Saliha Hassan) of the volume, Social Movements in Malaysia: From Moral Communities to NGOs (RoutledgeCurzon, 2003) and has also written on NGOs and social protest in Malaysia and Singapore, Malaysian electoral politics, and the changing nature of ethnicity and communalism in Malaysia.

Acknowledgements

We owe a huge debt of gratitude to a number of institutions or organizations and individuals who have all contributed to this volume. This project was conceived during a visit to Södertörns högskola – Anders Uhlin’s ‘home’ institution – by Nicola Piper in 2001 when she was still at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) in Copenhagen. We would like to thank the Department of Political Science at Södertörn for having made this visit possible. The starting point of this project was the organization of a workshop in Stockholm which took place between 13 and 15 September 2001. We are extremely grateful for having received generous funding from three Swedish funding agencies without which the workshop would have never happened: the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation, the Swedish Research Council, and the Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education. The workshop was overshadowed by the 11 September events in 2001. As a result, the three participants from the US could not attend, but they have nonetheless maintained a keen interest in this book project and kept in touch with us throughout the publication process, for which we would like to thank them. Routledge’s three anonymous reviewers of our book proposal provided us with very constructive and encouraging comments and suggestions. We also acknowledge the input of our colleagues who took the time to read some chapters and make constructive comments. In particular we are indebted to Professor Clifford Shearing (RegNet, ANU) and Dr Joerg Wischermann (Free University, Berlin). Routledge’s Politics and International Studies Editor, Heidi Bagtazo, and Editorial Assistant, Grace McInnes, have been very professional and efficient in guiding us through the publication process. Patrick Booz did a great job in improving the language of the chapters written by non-native English speakers. Last, but not least, an anthology cannot be produced without willing contributors and we thank all of the individual authors for submitting their chapters on time, responding to the editors’ comments so promptly, and for their good nature during the editing process. We are very grateful for the original and high-quality research they have contributed to this volume. Finally, we thank all those activists interviewed for many of the chapters in this book; thank you all for your time and your kindness in sharing your experience with us.

xiv Acknowledgements The successful completion of a co-edited book also depends on a good working relationship between the editors. The experience with this book has been particularly rewarding, where both editors learnt a lot from each other’s previous expertise, and an equally high level of enthusiasm and commitment ensured a swift progress at all times. At the very final stage of completion of this manuscript Anders had more important things to care about. He has become the father of Alva. Anders would like to express his sincere gratitude to Ameli for her love and support and for putting up with her husband’s busy schedule despite having a packed life herself. From now on Alva will decide their schedule and that will be wonderful. Nicola Piper and Anders Uhlin Canberra and Stockholm

Abbreviations

ABIM ADB AFA AHRC AI AIDS AJI Aliran ALTSEAN AMN ANDI ANFREL ANGOC APCASO APCET II APEC APN+ APPEN ASEAN AsiaDHRRA AusAID BIDA BN BULOG CAP CENPEACE CHRA CNB DPP DPR

Angkatan Belia Islam Malaysia (Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia) Asian Development Bank Action for AIDS Asian Human Rights Commission Amnesty International Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome Alliance of Independent Journalists Aliran Kesedaran Negara (National Consciousness Movement) Alternative Southeast Asian Network for Burma Asian Monitoring Network Asian Network for Democracy in Indonesia Asian Network for Free Elections Asian NGO Coalition for Agrarian Reform and Rural Development Asia-Pacific Council of AIDS Service Organizations Second Asia-Pacific Conference on East Timor Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Asia-Pacific Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS Asia-Pacific People’s Environment Network Association of Southeast Asian Nations Asian Partnership for the Development of Human Resources in Rural Areas Australian Agency for International Development Batam Industrial Development Authority Barisan Nasional (National Front) State Logistics Body Consumers’ Association of Penang Centre for Peace Initiatives Chinese Human Rights Association Central Narcotics Bureau Democratic Progressive Party People’s House of Representatives

xvi

Abbreviations

ELSAM EU EZLN FHI GAM HIV ICAAP ICG ICJ ICT ICW IFES IGO IIRR IMF InDHRRA INFID INGO IPE IR IRI ISAI IT JUST K3S KKN KMT KPU LSM MAF MERCY Malaysia MKS MPR NDI NGO OECD ORNOP PACIS PACT PATH

Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy European Union Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional (Zapatista National Liberation Army) Family Health International Free Aceh Movement Human Immunodeficiency Virus International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific International Crisis Group International Commission of Jurists information and communication technology Indonesian Corruption Watch International Foundation for Election Systems intergovernmental organization International Institute for Rural Reconstruction International Monetary Fund Indonesian Secretariat for the Development of Human Resources in Rural Areas International NGO Forum on Indonesia international non-governmental organization international political economy international relations International Republican Institute Institute for Studies on Free Flow of Information information technology International Movement for a Just World Ketua Koordinasi Kesejahteran Sosial (Coordinator for Social Welfare) corruption, collusion and nepotism Kuomintang National Election Committee Lembaga Swadaya Masyarakat (Self-Supporting People’s Organization (NGO)) Malaysian Action Front Malaysian Medical Relief Society Misi Keamanan Sejagat (Global Peace Mission) People’s Consultative Assembly National Democratic Institute non-governmental organization Organization for Economic Development Organisasi Non-Pemerintah (non-governmental organization) Parahyangan Centre for International Studies People Acting Together Programme for Appropriate Technology in Health

Abbreviations PBHI POS SAM SEAPA Sijori SMO Suaram TAN THRA TNC TRC TSM TSMO TWN UN UNAIDS UNCTAD UNHCR UNRISD USAID WALHI WHO WHO/GPA WTO YAPPIKA YLBHI YMK

xvii

Indonesian Association of Legal Aid political opportunity structure Sahabat Alam Malaysia (Friends of the Earth Malaysia) Southeast Asian Press Alliance Singapore, Johor, Riau Social Movement Organization Suara Rakyat Malaysia (Voice of the Malaysian People) transnational advocacy network Taiwan Human Rights Association transnational corporation Truth and Reconciliation Commission transnational social movement transnational social movement organization Third World Network United Nations Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS United Nations Conference on Trade and Development Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights United Nations Research Institute for Social Development United States Agency for International Development Indonesian Environmental Forum World Health Organization WHO Global Programme on AIDS World Trade Organization Indonesian Foundation to Strengthen Civil Society’s Participation, Partnerships and Initiatives Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation Yayasan Mitra Kesehatan

1

New perspectives on transnational activism Nicola Piper and Anders Uhlin

Introduction This book attempts to contribute to the growing literature on social movements and other civil society groups operating across state borders. Building on recent research in this field, our aim is to fill a significant gap by contextualizing transnational activism within broader power structures between state and civil society organizations as well as between non-state organizations, and by providing an analysis of how this is related to problems of democracy. By including a balanced selection of theoretical chapters as well as theoretically informed empirical case studies based on recent data, this book provides new insights into the problematic of political activism in a transnational context. The specific regional focus in the case studies is East and Southeast Asia, which constitutes an understudied geographical area in the transnational social movement/civil society literature (as opposed to Europe, North America and Latin America). The chapters in this volume address various questions: What kind of actors are involved in transnational activism? What types of activism do they employ? Whom do the networks/activists target? What kinds of obstacles and/or opportunities do state power and other power structures constitute for transnational activism? How can we understand the power of transnational activist networks in terms of discursive or communicative power? To what extent is democratization an enabling condition and/or a consequence of transnational activism? How can we differentiate between different levels and aspects of democracy in this respect? To what extent can transnational activism promote transnational democracy? What about internal democracy and problems of inequality within transnational activist networks? We start this introductory chapter by providing a brief overview of the existing literature and then move on to elaborate the concept of ‘activism’ in a transnational context. We define our understanding of the ‘transnational’ in its multiple forms and argue in favour of using the concept of ‘transnational’ instead of ‘global’. We also clarify the different types of actors involved in transnational activism. Drawing on the chapters in the present book and previous research, we offer an elaboration of what a power perspective and a focus on problems of democracy can contribute to our understanding of transnational activism. Finally, we contextualize the conceptual discussion with the situation in East and Southeast Asia.

2 Nicola Piper and Anders Uhlin

Recent approaches to the study of transnational activism The emerging research area of transnational activism has generated important studies within several different scholarly disciplines. First, International Relations (IR) scholars, opposing the state-centred paradigm of an anarchical international political system, have analysed non-state actors in international politics. RisseKappen (1995), drawing on Keohane and Nye’s writings in the 1970s, has helped to reintroduce this perspective. Other scholars following this tradition have made use of social movement theory and focused explicitly on transnational activism. Keck and Sikkink (1998) provided a path-breaking study in this respect, which was followed by others (e.g. Risse, Ropp and Sikkink 1999; Scholte 1999; O’Brien et al. 2000; Khagram, Riker and Sikkink 2002b). Second, studies of transnational activism from an International Political Economy (IPE) perspective have stressed issues of power and authority in the international system (Higgott et al. 2000) and tend to treat transnational activism mainly as resistance to neo-liberal globalization (Mittelman 1999; Gills 2000). Third, writing from a different perspective, sociologists and political scientists interested in social movements have analysed the extension of social movements to a transnational or global level (Markoff 1996; Smith et al. 1997; Smith and Johnston 2002: Rucht 1999; Rucht 2001; Forschungsjournal Neue Soziale Bewegungen 2002; Tarrow 1998; 2001; 2002; della Porta et al. 1999; Cohen and Rai 2000; Guidry, Kennedy and Zald 2000b; Hamel et al. 2001). Fourth, within the fields of politics and development studies there are also a number of studies on transnational nongovernmental organization (NGO) activities, which seldom draw explicitly on the social movement literature (e.g. Princen and Finger 1994; Hulme and Edwards 1997; Boli and Thomas 1999; Jordan and van Tuijl 2000; Uvin 2000).1 This category of research is based mainly on empirical case studies of NGOs operating within different issue areas. This is also the character of recent publications on transnational or global civil society (Florini 2000b; Warkentin 2001) and ‘global citizen action’ (Edwards and Gaventa 2001). Parts of the ‘Global Civil Society Yearbook’ (Anheier et al. 2001) also have this empirical aim to map ‘global civil society’ activities. Fifth, several anthropological micro-studies of transnational activism offer interesting and viable insights from the grass-roots level (Braman and Sreberny-Mohammadi 1996; Smith and Guranizo 1998; Riles 2000; Fortun 2001; Burawoy et al. 2000). Sixth, within the field of political theory, there have been a number of attempts to theorize the empirical patterns uncovered in other studies in a more elaborate way. Theories of transnational/global/international civil society have been put forward in both liberal (Kaldor 1999) and neo-Marxist (Colás 2002) versions. This area of inquiry is also related to the notion of ‘cosmopolitan democracy’ (Held 1995) and transnational/global citizenship (Delanty 2000). Seventh, there is research on transnational activism from the perspective of international law (Cullen and Morrow 2001). Finally, there are texts written from an explicit activist perspective and meant as a contribution to the self-understanding of the emerging global social movement against ‘globalization from above’ (Brecher, Costello and Smith 2002). While there is certainly some overlapping between these categories of research on transnational activism, and fruitful cross-fertilization has taken place (particularly

New perspectives on transnational activism 3 between IR studies of non-state actors and social movement theory), we argue that transnational activism has yet to emerge as a coherent multidisciplinary field of research. An overall aim of this volume is to make a modest contribution to the integration of these diverse perspectives. Furthermore, while breaking new ground in this emerging field of research, none of these existing studies offer a clear and coherent contextualization of transnational activism within broader structures of power or the micro-politics of communicative power. By underestimating the continued significance of state power and other national and international power structures, much research has been too optimistic about what transnational activists can achieve. In addition, many studies tend to depict the ‘state-versus-civil society’ dynamics in a dichotomous, oppositional manner, whereas our view is complementary. We would argue for a ‘synergy’ between state and civil society (along with Grugel and Keck, this volume). Also lacking in previous research is an elaborate analysis of problems of democracy, both in relation to political opportunities for transnational activism and activists being part of a broader struggle for democracy, as well as problems of democracy and inequality within transnational networks and prospects for some form of transnational democracy. The best way to further the research field of transnational activism, we argue, is therefore to offer a more comprehensive analysis of transnational activism in the context of power and in relation to problems of democracy. First of all, however, we have to define the concept of ‘transnational activism’ – we feel this offers the best point of departure for research on social movements, NGOs and other civil society actors operating across state borders.

Transnational activism: identifying actors and defining the topic Processes of globalization do not only involve purely economic aspects and elite politics. Cross-border interaction between civil society actors – ‘globalization from below’ (Falk 1999; Appadurai 2000) – is another feature of contemporary world politics to receive increasing attention by the media and academics. When NGOs and social movements not only focus on the domestic or local arena but also act beyond state borders, transnational activist networks emerge. Transnational political activism challenges conventional understandings of civil society and social movements as well as international relations. Transnational activism as such is historically not a new phenomenon. Civil society actors concerned with a broad range of issues have been involved in activities reaching across state borders at least since the nineteenth century (Keck and Sikkink 1998). However, the patterns and scale of today’s transnational activism have changed. The ideological tendencies of contemporary transnational activist networks include radical anti-systemic left-wing movements, xenophobic and fascist movements on the extreme right, various religious activist networks, and more or less moderate issue-specific NGOs working partly within the limits of the existing system and often in close interaction and even cooperation with states and international institutions. Instead of dealing exclusively with one kind of transnational group (like transnational advocacy networks, transnational social movements, international

4 Nicola Piper and Anders Uhlin non-governmental organizations, etc.), as much of the previous research in this field has done, we focus on transnational activism, including many different types of actors. By ‘activism’ we mean political activities that are: (1) based on a conflict of interests and thus are of a contentious nature; (2) challenging or supporting certain power structures; (3) involving non-state actors; and (4) taking place (at least partly) outside formal political arenas. These criteria require some elaboration. We see a conflict of interests as a basic defining characteristic of activism. It is hard to imagine any form of activism without an underlying conflict. There would simply be no reason for activism if there were complete agreement between all actors involved. This, however, does not imply that there is always a conflict between activists and state actors. Many cases of transnational activism may involve cooperation between certain activists and certain state actors, but there is always a conflict with another actor, for instance a transnational corporation or another state authority. Concerning the second criterion, we maintain that activism is not only about challenging the status quo, as is sometimes assumed. Much activism has been carried out in support of ruling elites and structures of power that are perceived as being under threat from other activists. It is important to note that activism is concerned with power structures, which also implies a focus on public (as opposed to private) goals. Activity that only aims at promoting one’s own private interests is not activism (cf. Colás 2002: 66). On the third criterion we have to admit that what constitutes a non-state actor is not always obvious. Few (if any) NGOs can truthfully claim to be completely autonomous in relation to the state. Autonomy is a relative concept and hence we do not see non-state actors as completely free of state interference or control. The final criterion points to the significance of extraparliamentary political activities for the phenomenon of activism. This, however, is not to claim that all activism has this character. In fact, much political activism (on national as well as transnational levels) aims at targeting formal political institutions, and activists do enter formal political arenas, though they typically complement this with protest activities outside the sphere of formal politics. An advantage of this conceptualization of activism is that it covers many different activities carried out by NGOs as well as social movement actors. Tarrow (1998: 207–8) has pointed out that the form of activism has changed over time. Social movement organizations in North America and Western Europe generally declined in both number and militancy after the early 1970s. To a large extent they were replaced by public interest groups and parties with a movement vocation. During recent decades so-called ‘new social movements’ have emerged in most parts of the world. What is new about them, according to Tarrow, is neither their less formalized organization nor their focus on ‘identity politics’, nor the use of unconventional forms of action (they mainly use conventional petitions and peaceful demonstrations), but their greater access to the media, mobility and cultural interaction, as well as the increasing use of IT. The important point for this book, however, is that the term ‘activism’ covers the activities of all these different actors. By applying the concept of activism we hope to bridge the unfortunate divide between research on social movements and studies of NGOs. We hope the studies in this volume will demonstrate the many similarities between what is usually referred

New perspectives on transnational activism 5 to as transnational social movement organizations and transnationally active NGOs. Both types of actors are involved in transnational activism and the distinction between them is often blurred. Research on social movements and NGOs in a comprehensive, holistic manner could certainly enrich existing studies, which tend to treat the two forms of ‘collective’ activism as different phenomena. At the same time, we acknowledge the vast array of NGOs, realizing that many ‘development’oriented or service-providing NGOs might not be as politically active as, for example, NGOs focusing on human rights, women’s rights or the environment. The focus on activism also draws attention to the actual activists involved in the daily business of social movement organizations or NGOs. Activists are people who care enough about an issue to take action to achieve their goals despite the sometimes significant costs involved (material resources, time, personal risks). They have been described as the ‘political entrepreneurs’ who create transnational networks (Keck and Sikkink 1998: 14). Comparatively little has been written about these individuals and their motivations. Meredith Weiss (in this volume) provides an intriguing account of Malaysian activists and their reasoning concerning tradeoffs between domestically oriented and transnational activism. This focus on people and their motivations is a useful contribution to the growing research on transnational activism. By ‘transnational’ we refer to interactions across state borders involving at least one non-state actor (Risse-Kappen 1995). In the literature, one often sees the concepts of ‘global civil society’ (e.g. Anheier, Glasius and Kaldor 2001) and ‘global social movements’ (e.g. Cohen and Rai 2000). We prefer the term ‘transnational’, as many cross-border interactions do not extend across the world but are much more geographically limited (cf. Hannerz 1996: 6; Anderson 2002: 15–16). Influenced by discourses on globalization, many scholars have neglected the regional – not global – scope of much transnational activism. There has also been a conceptual confusion between the actors’ framing of an activity as global and the actual empirical scope of the activity (Tarrow 2001: 10). The term ‘transnational’ is broader and includes truly global interactions (involving several continents) as well as cross-border networks limited to one particular region of the world. Activism can be transnational in several respects. First, it may focus on transnational issues, related, for instance, to the environment or health problems. Second, the actors themselves may be transnational, either in the strong sense of having an organizational structure that is not territorially bounded and including citizens of more than one state (like transnational advocacy networks), or in the weaker sense of being concerned with issues in a country other than where the activists are citizens (such as solidarity groups supporting an independence movement in a foreign country). Third, transnational methods and strategies may be applied (e.g. emobilization and other net-based activities). Fourth, the targets of activism may be based in one or several countries other than where the activists themselves are located, thus requiring cross-border interaction. Finally, the activists may hold transnational world views and consider themselves as ‘global citizens’ (see He, this volume). We refer to activism as transnational when it has a transnational character in at least one of these respects. Most of the activism analysed in our case studies, however, is transnational in several (if not all) of the respects outlined above.

6 Nicola Piper and Anders Uhlin The intensity and velocity of transnational links among activists vary. It is possible to distinguish between groups with (1) no formal transnational ties; (2) diffuse transnational ties; (3) routine transnational ties; and (4) formal transnational organizations (Smith 2001: 7–8). Khagram et al. (2002a: 7–9) identify three forms of transnational collective action: a transnational advocacy network (which only exchanges information between participants), a transnational coalition (which applies coordinated tactics) and a transnational social movement (which is involved in joint mobilization). A transnational social movement (TSM) can be defined as ‘socially mobilized groups with constituents in at least two states, engaged in sustained contentious interaction with powerholders in at least one state other than their own, or against an international institution, or a multinational economic actor’ (Tarrow 2001: 11). International non-governmental organizations (INGOs) should not be confused with TSMs (although they might be part of a TSM). INGOs are involved in ‘routine transactions with states, private actors, and international institutions’ (Tarrow 2001: 12). The social movement concept has been used to cover ‘activities that would be more recognizable as lobbying, communication, and educational and service activity if they were observed at home’ (Tarrow 2001: 10). Hence, we should take care to differentiate between TSMs and NGOs operating in a transnational context. Both types of actors may be involved in transnational activism, but they typically use different forms of activism. The distinction, however, is not clear-cut and, as pointed out by O’Brien et al. (2000: 16), NGOs may be seen as key organizational nodes within global social movements. Such groups might be labelled transnational social movement organizations (TSMOs) (Smith et al. 1997). Following Keck and Sikkink’s seminal work (1998), much attention has been paid to transnational advocacy networks (TANs), i.e. networks of activists motivated by principled ideas and values. Such networks are characterized by a shared belief that individuals can make a difference, make creative use of information and make sophisticated political strategies in campaigns (Keck and Sikkink 1998: 2). International and domestic NGOs are important actors in transnational advocacy networks, but they also include local social movements, foundations, media, churches, trade unions, consumer organizations, intellectuals, parts of intergovernmental organizations, or parts of the executive and/or parliamentary branches of governments (Keck and Sikkink 1998: 9). The concept of networks used here is similar to Manuel Castells’ (1996) famous analysis of the ‘network society’. The network as a new social form is based on repetitive types of exchange – most notably of information – between actors who are not located in the same physical space. This network is the organizing form for these exchanges, and the economic, political or social relevance of particular actors depends upon their involvement in a powerful network.2 TANs are characterized by their advocacy work. Advocacy is commonly understood as an act to influence policy. Jordan and van Tuijl (2000: 2052) suggest a more specific definition of NGO advocacy as ‘an act of organizing the strategic use of information to democratise unequal power relations’. Though the focus on the strategic use of information is useful, this definition seems to overstate the unity in

New perspectives on transnational activism 7 goals and values of NGO activists. We maintain that not all NGOs involved in advocacy work aim at democratization. NGO advocacy may in fact cover the whole spectrum from democratic to anti-democratic goals and strategies and we should not presume a homogeneous pro-democratic NGO agenda. Neither should we – as Jordan and van Tuijl (2000: 2053) do – assume that NGOs challenge the status quo. In addition to advocacy, transnational activists may be involved in monitoring activities (common, for instance, in relation to human rights) and in providing services (Florini 2000a: 213). The roles of NGOs are highly contested. The World Bank and many governments promote the service delivery function of NGOs as part of a neo-liberal agenda for limiting the role of the state. By contrast, many NGOs prefer to be engaged in advocacy, often targeting the same governments and international institutions (Jordan and van Tuijl 2000: 2052). Our focus on activism leads us to emphasize advocacy and monitoring activities – not service delivery – although we acknowledge that some NGOs may simultaneously be engaged in advocacy and providing services. The protest repertoire of transnational activists includes education and mobilization and framing and symbolic mobilization, as well as disruption (Smith 2001: 11). The strategic use of information, in particular, seems to be central in transnational activism. The development of new communication and information technology has reshaped the ‘repertoire of contention’, adding activities like ‘emobilization’ and ‘cyber-activism’, as analysed by Lai (in this volume). Such new communication networks may be conceived as forming a ‘transnational public sphere’ (Guidry, Kennedy and Zald 2000b), which is related to a transnational (or global) civil society, a phenomenon that has received much attention during the last few years. This book is not primarily concerned with the issue of whether or not the transnational activists make up or inhabit a transnational civil society, but it may be useful briefly to discuss this concept and its use in studies of transnational activism. Transnational civil society is sometimes conceived as a political project, not a descriptive or analytical term. According to Kaldor (1999: 195), transnational civil society constitutes a ‘demand for a radical extension of democracy across national and social boundaries’. To be part of civil society implies a commitment to common human values and a global human rights culture (Kaldor 1999: 210). However, we find it problematic and misleading to define civil society as something inherently good. Following O’Brien et al. (2000: 15), we find it more appropriate to see it as ‘an arena for conflict that interacts with both the interstate system and the global economy’. A purely descriptive definition would be ‘the sphere of ideas, values, institutions, organizations, networks, and individuals located between the family, the state, and the market and operating beyond the confines of national societies, polities and economies’ (Anheier, Glasius and Kaldor 2001: 17). To what extent civil society is autonomous in relation to the state is a persistent debate in political theory, and the same questions can be raised concerning transnational civil society. We agree with Sharp et al. (2000: 10–11) that ‘there are no completely autonomous spaces from which, and within which, collective action takes place’. Hence, there cannot be any civil society (transnational or domestic)

8 Nicola Piper and Anders Uhlin that is completely autonomous from the influence of state power (cf. Grugel, this volume). The existence of a transnational (or global) civil society also raises the question of transnational (or global) citizenship (Delanty 2000; He, this volume). If citizenship is seen as rights and entitlements in relation to a state, the lack of a global government makes the concept ‘global citizenship’ impossible. However, if citizenship is understood as participation, something that is realized through responsible action, we can conceive of global citizenship (Gaventa 2001: 277–8). All this raises intriguing questions about power and democracy – questions that have not yet been adequately dealt with in the literature on transnational activism, but on which this book focuses.

Power and transnational activism Power, obviously, is a multidimensional and highly complex concept. Following Lukes (1986), it has become common to distinguish between (1) conventional approaches to power as domination and control, (2) power as ‘non-decision-making’ (Bachrach and Baratz) and (3) ideological hegemony and the power of ideas (Lukes). The latter is further elaborated by Foucauldian understandings of power, not as belonging to a particular actor but inherent in all social activity and the complex entanglements of power (Sharp et al. 2000). Following Sharp et al. (2000), we want to emphasize the dialectical nature of power not only as dominating, but also in its more positive form of enabling power, or ‘power to resist’, which is linked to ‘communicative’ or ‘discursive’ power exercised by transnational activist networks using information strategically in a persuasive manner. Hence we need to uncover the ‘myriad entanglements that are integral to the working of power’ (Sharp et al. 2000: 1) and acknowledge the ‘ubiquity and contradictoriness of power and resistance’ (Guidry, Kennedy and Zald 2000a: 17). And yet, as rightly remarked by Massey (2000: 280), recognizing that power is everywhere and paying attention to the ‘micro-politics’ of power should not make us ignore the ‘real’ structural inequalities of power. We contend that the issue of power has not been taken seriously enough in most research of transnational activism. The best way to fill this gap is to combine (1) a thorough investigation of how the structural power of the state system and the capitalist economy shape transnational activism and (2) a nuanced analysis of discursive power and the complex entanglements of power on a micro level. We shall here first briefly outline a conventional macro-level approach to power, highlighting both the structural power of states and global capitalism and the (potential and/or real) power of resistance held by transnational activists in this context. Our second major focus will be discursive or communicative power, highlighting not only macro aspects, but also (and particularly) the complex webs of power within transnational activist networks. Power as dominance and structural inequalities There is a need for a more comprehensive power perspective analysing how state power and international institutions condition transnational activism. It is our belief

New perspectives on transnational activism 9 that the power of the state has been underestimated in much research on transnational activism. This book examines how transnational activists are linked to states and international institutions, something that has not received sufficient attention in previous research (cf. Tarrow 2001). In the light of much of the globalization literature’s claim of the state’s loss of sovereignty, Jean Grugel (this volume) points to the need to take state power seriously by discussing structural state–civil society power relations. Furthermore, Lin’s case study (this volume) shows how specific power imbalances between states on the international arena condition transnational activism. The transnational endeavours of Taiwanese activists have been severely limited by Taiwan’s problematic diplomatic status. Activists from Taiwan have, for instance, been excluded from UN-related conferences because the Taiwanese state is not accepted as a member of the UN. The non-recognition of Taiwan as a state in the international system hampers the transnational activities of activists based in Taiwan (Chen Jie 2001). Although this is a unique case, it underlines the fact that the state not only shapes the forms of transnational activism, but also indicates that a diplomatically fully recognized sovereign state might be a precondition for many forms of transnational activism. We agree with the strand of globalization literature which has argued that processes of globalization have changed – but not necessarily weakened – state power (e.g. Higgott, Underhill and Bieler 2000). This relates to Colás’s observation that ‘the structures of the international system still oblige [social] movements to pursue their socio-political goals through the different organs of the sovereign state’ (Colás 2002: 79). It can, hence, be said that international social movements reinforce as much as they undermine state sovereignty (Colás 2002: 80). On the global level, this means that states still hold dominant power positions (O’Brien et al. 2000: 224), whereby transnational activists have not been able to significantly influence the policies of multilateral economic institutions. It is also of vital importance to acknowledge that ‘both the state and civil society exist and develop in the historical context of capitalism’ (Comor 2001: 400). Görg and Hirsch (1998: 586) have pointed to the contradiction between the state’s regulation of capitalist society and its democratic formation, whereby the ‘power’ of the state (which they define as its relative autonomous decision-making and implementation competencies) typically depends on specific class relations domestically and the international structure of the capitalist power bloc. Their relevant point here is that ‘this decisive contradiction does not emanate directly from the supposed opposition between the market and the state/democracy; instead, the market and the state/democracy are not only highly compatible with each other, but they also precondition each other’ (Görg and Hirsch 1998: 592–3). In the light of the above discussion, one might think that the tremendous power of state and capital would make transnational activism fruitless or even impossible. However, elements of structural power can also provide opportunities to resist. This is related to the concept of political opportunity structures, as elaborated by McAdam (1996) and Tarrow (1998).3 This concept is of a dialectical nature in that transnational activism, on the one hand, is shaped by political opportunity structures in the formal political sphere, but, on the other hand, transnational activists may also try to create new

10 Nicola Piper and Anders Uhlin political opportunity structures. Despite remaining scepticism, there is evidence that international institutions do provide clear political opportunity structures for transnational activism. As argued by Keck (this volume), the existence of transnational governance regimes provides political opportunities for states and societal actors alike. Actors relatively powerless within their society may be transnationally empowered when they are recognized as relevant actors within a governance regime. The more open a transnational governance regime – in the sense of being open to local knowledge – the easier it is for activists to gain influence (Keck, this volume). The extent to which transnational activism is influential, if not powerful, is related to the issue of place, as highlighted by Johan Lindquist (this volume). For instance, activist groups able to operate in Washington and Geneva obviously have better opportunities to influence the World Bank, IMF and WTO (O’Brien et al. 2000: 224). The relative distance from such power centres may, as pointed out by Smith (this volume), make Asian NGOs more dependent upon transnational networks in order to have a chance to influence global policies. UN conferences also constitute an important location for transnational activism (Meyer and Pruegl 1999), although the mega-conferences of the 1990s do not seem to have been repeated. Furthermore, many transnational activists have become increasingly sceptical towards the UN, following what is perceived as a neo-liberal shift within the organization (see Smith, this volume). Understanding the context of power relations external to transnational activist networks and the power of activists themselves, however, is not enough. We also need to analyse structures of power within the networks. Transnational activism, like all forms of human interaction, is structured along lines of ethnic, class and gender differences. Asymmetries and power inequality within transnational activist networks are not only based on North–South differences, although this is often a major division. The structure of international funding of civil society groups tends to strengthen existing resource inequality. This rather conventional view of power outlined above provides important insights into the functioning of transnational activism. In order to understand how the power of dominance and resistance operates in relation to transnational activist networks, this kind of contextualizing analysis is necessary. Past studies, however, have tended to create a binary of opposing forces: the rulers wielding dominating power versus the ruled resisting it (Sharp et al. 2000: 9). Micro-studies of power within transnational activist networks are showing more intricate ways in which power operates in and through activist networks and it is to such aspects of power we now turn. Discursive and communicative power From a conventional power perspective it is often concluded that the overall influence of transnational actors remains relatively weak (Khagram et al. 2002a: 11). Lacking conventional power capabilities like military force and economic resources (although some INGOs and NGOs are quite well funded), transnational activists

New perspectives on transnational activism 11 have to rely upon other forms of power. It has been argued that the greatest advantage of TANs compared to TNCs is that they need not compete with each other (Appadurai 2000: 17); however, this view totally neglects the issue of competition for funding and keeping up the general public’s interest. Social movement activists and transnational advocates are usually seen as having ‘soft power’ or ‘communicative power’ (Sikkink 2002: 303–6). Important here is the strategic use of information and its persuasiveness and the framing of issues by asserting moral pressure. Florini (2000a: 214) argues that the low level of power transnational networks do have can only be maintained as long as they retain their credibility. The concept of ‘soft power’, however, may be misleading concerning the form of power in transnational activism and may underestimate the real power of activist networks. More useful are some complex theories of social movements inspired by research on resistance within cultural studies (Escobar and Alvarez 1992; Alvarez, Dagnino and Escobar 1998; Guidry, Kennedy and Zald 2000b). Here, power in and around movements is conceived in multiple and potentially contradictory formations. In this respect, it is useful to introduce discourse as an additional site of power. ‘A discourse is a shared set of assumptions and capabilities embedded in language that enables its adherents to assemble bits of sensory information that come their way into coherent wholes’ (Dryzek 1999: 34). According to Dryzek (1999: 35), it is possible to reflect and even reconstruct discourses, rather than simply reject them. If we see formal rules as ‘institutional hardware’, discourses can be described as ‘institutional software’. ‘Institutional hardware’ is not well developed in the international system, so ‘institutional software’ becomes more important and it might be less resistant to democratization than ‘institutional hardware’ (Dryzek 1999: 35). Hence, a discursive analysis highlights ‘the real power of transnational civil society, which is communicative power’ (Dryzek 1999: 45). This points to an ‘all-pervasive’ power perspective, as developed by Foucault, according to whom power is not only the preserve of the dominant, it is ‘insinuated throughout all social activity’ (Sharp et al. 2000: 11). The emphasis here is placed on discourse and the way in which subject matters can be created by human beings, helping them to establish ‘a framework with which to make sense of the world and their lives in it’ (Dryzek, 1999: 34). In this volume, the discourse analytical approach is primarily applied by Lin, but see also Lindquist and Keck. We argue along with Sharp et al. and Dryzek for the possibility of discourses having an empowering and resisting function. Using Beck’s notion of reflexive modernity, Dryzek conceives of certain discourses as being conducive to democracy. Furthermore, transnational activism can change the terms of discourse and the balance between competing discourses. A minimum of conventional political resources is needed (money, personnel, access to media, credibility), but most important is an awareness of the importance of the discursive realm (Dryzek 1999: 44–5). By gaining seats at institutions for global/transnational governance through ‘discursive representation’, activists are empowered and gain influence (Keck, this volume). This also is probably what Sikkink (2002: 302) has in mind when she claims that transnational activism contributes to the ‘restructuring of world politics’ by ‘altering the norm structure of global governance’.

12 Nicola Piper and Anders Uhlin What emerges, therefore, is a perspective on power as an entangled bundle of exchanges dispersed everywhere and which is not exclusively in the service of any particular people, institution or movement (Sharp et al. 2000: 20). Power can thus be positive and negative, repressive and progressive, constraining and facilitative (Sharp et al. 2000: 2). This, however, should not lead to an overly optimistic view of the progressive and transforming potential in transnational activism. Transnational civil society might be a realm of relatively unconstrained communication, but it is also hierarchical (Dryzek 1999: 46). There is nothing inherently emancipatory about communication and information. Studies of ‘global civil society’ have tended to simplify the process through which information becomes knowledge (Comor 2001). This focus on discursive or communicative power, according to our view, does not on its own provide a comprehensive understanding of the power context of transnational activism. It has to be combined with an analysis of more conventional material power structures, as outlined above. We should not forget that state power is highly significant in shaping discourses, as in the case of the global human rights discourse, in which, due to the power of Western states, ‘human rights are understood principally as liberal freedoms, not collective rights’ (Grugel, this volume, p. 31). Furthermore, market liberalism imposes both material and discursive constraints. An understanding of how material as well as discursive aspects of power constitute both constraints and opportunities for transnational activism is a necessary base for the analysis of another gap in previous research – how transnational activism is related to democracy.

Transnational activism and democracy The relationship between transnational activism and democracy has received surprisingly little attention. Transnational activism is often assumed to have a positive impact on democracy – in specific countries targeted by transnational activists, as well as on a global scale – related to the assumed emergence of a global civil society. There are, however, few systematic accounts of how this prodemocratic impact of transnational activism operates. In addition, there has been recent interest in democratic problems within transnational activist networks, but here too there is a relative lack of detailed studies. In order to contextualize transnational activism in relation to issues of democracy we first need to discuss what is actually meant by the term democracy. As most research on democratization uses a narrow definition of democracy, the main focus has been on the democratization of formal political institutions. If a broader definition of democracy is applied, informal political activism by civil society actors becomes important to study. Democratization can, for example, be seen as ‘the creation, extension and practice of social citizenship throughout a particular national territory’ (Grugel 1999: 11). The concept of citizenship implies a power struggle concerning who is entitled to take part in decision-making. The main advantage of this definition is that it introduces a power perspective and a focus on social relationships. According to this view, the existence of formally democratic institutions, while necessary, is not enough for democracy to exist. Democracy also

New perspectives on transnational activism 13 requires ‘popular consent, popular participation, accountability and a practice of rights, tolerance and pluralism’ (Grugel 1999: 11–12). Like narrower institutional conceptualizations of democracy, however, such a broader societal understanding of democracy has to be rethought in an era of increased global and transnational interaction. If we agree that developments within civil society are closely related to processes of democratization, a transnational understanding of civil society has important implications for theories of democratization too. This book investigates how processes of democratization are related to the increase in transnational civil society activism. Processes of democratization may provide new political opportunities for civil society in general, and transnational activism seems to be an increasingly significant aspect of national struggles for democracy. Furthermore, we analyse the implications of transnational activism for problems of democracy on local, national and transnational levels. A transnationalization of politics questions the assumed close connection between democracy and a sovereign nation-state and raises issues of citizenship and democracy on a transnational level – perhaps a model of ‘cosmopolitan democracy’ (Held 1995). Finally, we pay attention to problems of democracy within transnational networks and discuss the issues of representativeness, accountability and political responsibility. The degree of democracy in a country influences the capacity of activists in that country to engage in transnational activism Within democratization studies it is typically acknowledged that the growth of a civil society is closely related to the process of democratization. Civil society groups are important actors in the struggle for democracy and when a transition to a formal democratic regime has taken place, there is generally more space for civil society activities. A more open institutionalized political system, less state repression and the possibility to form alliances with elite actors (cf. McAdam 1996) associated with a democratic system constitute political opportunities for civil society activism. We should expect such domestic political opportunities to enhance not only local or national, but also transnational activism. A process of democratization may also lead to an increased involvement in transnational activism because activists see domestic problems as less pressing than external problems. Following the transition to a formal democratic regime, the pro-democracy movement is typically demobilized and activists turn to other issues, often including foreign and/or transnational problems. Hence, it is not surprising that most transnational activists come from formally democratic countries (see Smith, this volume). Nevertheless, a more authoritarian political system may also stimulate transnational activism. When there is a relative lack of domestic political opportunities, activists try to take advantage of transnational political opportunities (Uhlin 2001), thus initiating what Keck and Sikkink (1998) called a ‘boomerang pattern’. A very closed and repressive authoritarian regime (like North Korea or Burma), however, gives little space for any form of civil society activism, be it local, national or transnational. A semi-authoritarian regime like Malaysia (as analysed by Weiss in this volume) seems to be linked to a relatively high degree of transnational activism.

14 Nicola Piper and Anders Uhlin The political system in Malaysia is sufficiently open to allow civil society groups to function (although more radical groups are subject to many forms of harassment and sometimes outright repression), but the Malaysian government is hardly responsive to demands from civil society and this has led many Malaysian activists to seek allies abroad. The specific combination of authoritarian and democratic structures and practices in Malaysia seems to go a long way in explaining the relatively high number of transnational endeavours among Malaysian activists. A comparatively high level of economic development and education and access to modern information technology, of course, also help Malaysians getting involved in transnational activism. Semi-democratic Malaysia notwithstanding, it is the capital cities of the formally more democratic countries of Southeast Asia that Lindquist (this volume) identifies as ‘nodes of transnational activism’. Bangkok, Manila and Jakarta provide not only the practical infrastructure required by transnational NGO networks, but also a political climate that is not too hostile towards civil society activism. In Singapore, by contrast, a strong state controls a weak civil society and provides few opportunities for transnational activism, not even linked to the neighbouring Indonesian island of Batam, as shown by Lindquist. Also, in the case of Taiwan, it is clear that the transnationalization of civil society groups there is related to the process of democratization. Under the authoritarian regime there were few transnational linkages (see Lin, this volume). In sum, the case studies in this book show that the degree of democracy in a state shapes the extent and form of transnational activism that its citizens are involved in. Hence, students of transnational activism are well advised to pay more attention to democratization studies. Likewise, integrating insights from studies of transnational activism could enrich the field of democratization studies. Transnational activism may contribute to the democratization process in a particular country Although the ‘international dimension’ of democratization processes is perhaps no longer as neglected as it used to be, few conventional democratization studies pay much attention to the role of transnational actors. This is unfortunate, as processes of globalization blur the rigid division between internal and external factors, making transnational processes increasingly significant. Research on transnational activism, to some extent, has analysed how transnational activists (in cooperation with local democracy activists) have tried to promote the process of democratization in several countries, especially in Latin America (Escobar and Alvarez 1992; Alvarez, Dagnino and Escobar 1998). Much of this research, however, has focused more on the related issue of human rights than democratization per se (e.g. Risse, Ropp and Sikkink 1999). Democracy not only involves the issue of human rights, but also that of citizenship, which historically is a concept non-existent in much of Asia (see He, this volume). However, through activism ‘from below’, a new type of citizenship is evolving, particularly in the specific context of countries that have experienced colonialism, independence movements and authoritarian regimes.

New perspectives on transnational activism 15 Jemadu (this volume) offers a detailed analysis of the efforts by transnational activists to promote democratization in Indonesia. By focusing specifically on aspects of democracy like general elections, ‘good governance’ and human rights, he explicitly situates the study of transnational activism within conventional democratization research. Jemadu shows that transnational activists have had an impact on the recent regime transition in Indonesia, but he also concludes that they have ‘failed to prevent the politicians and the military from transforming the process of democratization into an endless game of bureaucratic bargaining’ (p. 163). Generally, it has been suggested that factors favouring transnational civil society’s influence on national democratization include the existence of regional norms on democracy, diasporas that can help mobilize transnational activists and access to information technology (Kumar 2000: 139–40). We would like to add a fourth basic factor, namely, the existence of a reasonably strong democracy movement within the country. Without local activists to link up with, transnational activist networks cannot be influential. If the development of a civil society should help sustain democratization, it has to be rooted at the local and national levels. A mainly foreignpromoted (and funded) civil society sector makes an insufficient contribution to democracy in the long run. Foreign NGOs might even undermine democratization because they can weaken or even replace local groups and the state, leading to weaker local civil society and a delegitimized state (Freres 1999). Kumar (2000: 137) claims that transnational activism promoting national democratization can only be efficient in Europe and Latin America, where there are regional norms concerning democracy. This is a claim that we find questionable for at least two reasons. First, it seems to overestimate the importance of international norms. While such norms, without any doubt, constitute important political opportunities for transnational activism, transnational activism can clearly be effective even where these norms do not exist or are weak, as the case of Indonesia in this volume shows. Second, the existence or non-existence of regional norms is not that clear-cut. Whereas no established norm on democracy and human rights exists in Southeast Asia, civil society groups in this region have agreed to common principles of democracy and human rights, often in opposition to their governments. Hence, students of democratization (in Asia as well as in other parts of the world) should pay more attention to the way transnational activists influence democratization processes on the national (and local) level. Transnational activism may contribute to democratization concerning transnational issues and transnational decision-making It is often noted that a major democratic problem is that structures of power and major social and political issues are firmly rooted in a global context, whereas participation, representation and legitimacy are fixed at the state level (O’Brien et al. 2000: 21–2). How to extend democracy beyond the level of the territorially based state has become a pressing issue. Theories of ‘global civil society’ and ‘cosmopolitan democracy’ often assume that transnational activism supports democratization on a transnational or global level (e.g. Falk 1995, Ch. 4). The dispersed nature of political

16 Nicola Piper and Anders Uhlin decision-making in a time of globalization, it is argued, creates a democratic deficit. By organizing campaigns simultaneously targeting several arenas on different levels, transnational activists try to address this democracy deficit, either implicitly or explicitly ( Jordan and van Tuijl 2000: 2053). Transnational activists ‘enhance deliberation and representation in international institutions by providing voices and ideas that were previously absent’ (Sikkink 2002: 301). They are particularly good at getting neglected issues onto the political agenda (Florini 2000a: 211). Furthermore, they add checks and balances to the international system (Edwards 2001: 7). According to Scholte (1999), transnational civil society can strengthen democracy: for instance, by civic education, by giving voice to politically weak and marginalized actors, by fuelling debate, by increasing transparency and accountability and by providing legitimacy for supra-state governance. In other words, the emergence of a transnational civil society is redefining the boundaries of democratic political space (cf. McGrew 1997: 13). This is related to the development of ‘cosmopolitan democracy’, as outlined by Held (1995). Held’s vision of a ‘cosmopolitan democracy’ is mainly an extension of liberal democracy to the global level, although he does draw on themes in republican and participatory democratic theory too (Dryzek 1999: 32). Although his main focus is on more formalized institutions for world government, Held (1995: 237, 281) acknowledges that transnational grass-roots movements are creating political space for the development of ‘cosmopolitan democracy’. While this is still the most elaborate account of problems and prospects for global democracy, Held’s theory of ‘cosmopolitan democracy’ can be criticized for being utopian, as it does not pay sufficient attention to questions of economic and social power and inequality. It underestimates the resilience of state power (Grugel, this volume). Using an approach to transnational democracy that is of even greater interest to the study of transnational activism than Held’s ‘cosmopolitan democracy’, Dryzek (1999) focuses on possibilities for democratization of the system of global governance that already exists, instead of a non-existent future global government. He argues that the sources of governance are discursive (Dryzek 1999: 33). As argued in the previous section, discourses (or the ‘institutional software’) become more important on a transnational level, and such ‘software’ might be less resistant to democratization than is the ‘institutional hardware’ of formal rules (Dryzek 1999: 35). A focus on discourses might, therefore, give a less pessimistic account of prospects for transnational democracy through transnational activism. Furthermore, extending democracy to a transnational or global level might be easier if we see democracy as deliberation rather than related to voting and representation. An outcome might be considered to have democratic legitimacy if it has involved ‘authentic deliberation on the part of the people subject to it’ (Dryzek 1999: 44). Such a ‘discursive or communicative model of democracy’, unlike older models of democracy, can easily operate across territorial boundaries (Dryzek 1999: 44). The network is the most promising institutional form for deliberative democracy (Dryzek 1999: 46). Taking a more critical position, Colás (2002: 158) argues that theories linking agents of transnational civil society to democracy are flawed because (1) they

New perspectives on transnational activism 17 underestimate the need for democracy to be based in ‘communities of fate’, and (2) by separating the state from its broader socio-economic context they risk reifying civil society as the exclusive sphere of democratic deliberation. This is very much in line with Grugel’s argument (in this volume). She points out (citing Kymlicka) that there is little evidence that people would actually prefer transnational to national forms of governance. ‘For activists . . . bypassing the state is simply not feasible’ (Grugel p. 39). However, the problem does not have to be posed as a choice between national and transnational democracy. On the contrary, democratization processes on different levels are likely to be mutually reinforcing and pro-democracy activists are well advised to be concerned with all levels, from the local to the global. Democracy within transnational activist networks is often problematic Analysing the relationship between transnational activism and democracy is not only a matter of examining how this kind of activism influences democracy on a national or transnational level. Recently, several scholars and practitioners have also raised concerns about the lack of internal democracy within transnational activist networks and their use of alleged undemocratic methods. As argued by Colás (2002: 163), the celebration of a transnational civil society raises questions about the constituents, mandate, representative status and accountability of transnational civil society actors. It is generally acknowledged that ‘global civil society’ is heavily concentrated in north-western Europe (Anheier, Glasius and Kaldor 2001: 7). Northern dominance within transnational activist networks, however, is not complete. Florini (2000a: 234) claims that there is an increasing participation from the ‘Global South’ in transnational civil society, but this is contradicted by data presented by Smith (in this volume). The dominance of Northern-based activists in many transnational networks highlights the problem of representativeness. This is certainly not only a matter of geographic distribution. A large number of the transnational activists tend to be well-educated, middle-class people. Therefore, rather than being a form of ‘globalization from below’, contemporary transnational activism can perhaps be better described as ‘globalization from the middle’ (Waterman 2001: 136). Inadequate representation can reproduce or even enlarge structural inequalities based on class, gender, nationality, race, religion, etc. (Scholte 1999: 30) and may cause conflicts within networks (cf. Nelson 2002). The network structure, as such, also contains its inherent inequalities. Instead of the hierarchical power structures of formal organizations, networks may be characterized by an inequality in the distribution of power on a centre–periphery dimension (Thörn 2002: 175). These democratic problems might be less severe in social movement organizations and social change oriented transnational networks, which, compared to other transnational NGOs, typically have smaller budgets and whose goals are likely to make them strive for better global representation (Smith 2000: 73). Despite these democratic problems, transnational activists claim a moral authority based on impartiality or independence, reliability, representativeness, accountability and transparency (Sikkink 2002: 313–15). According to Nelson (2002: 141), transnational

18 Nicola Piper and Anders Uhlin NGOs claim legitimacy based on representation (of Southern views or otherwise excluded groups), expertise, a domestic political constituency and designation or government approval (cf. Florini 2000a: 233). Edwards (2001: 7) limits the bases of legitimacy for civil society groups (in general) to two: representation (which gives a right to participate in decision-making) and effectiveness (which gives a right to be heard). It is hard for most transnational activists to claim that they have a genuine right to speak for anyone but themselves. The problem of representation can only be solved by the creation of genuinely representative institutions in global society, but until this goal has been achieved, transnational activists must try to represent the needs and interests of their constituencies and thus get public support for their activities even though they have not been formally authorized to act in a certain way (Brecher, Costello and Smith 2002: 88). This is similar to the argument about ‘discursive representation’ put forward by Keck (this volume). Activists represented in global governance institutions represent ‘positions rather than populations, ideas rather than constituencies’. This kind of ‘discursive representation’ does not constitute a mandate in the normal sense of the concept representation. Accountability is an inappropriate term to use when dealing with transnational activist networks, as there are no formal mechanisms to enforce obligations. Neither is the concept of representation fully applicable, although activists do represent interests. Hence, Jordan and van Tuijl (2000) introduce the concept of ‘political responsibility’ to clarify problems of representation and accountability within transnational NGO networks. They suggest that political responsibility in NGO advocacy has seven dimensions: (1) dividing political arenas according to expertise and respecting boundaries; (2) agenda-setting and formulation of strategy that takes account of the risks involved for all participants; (3) a fair allocation of available financial resources (separating financial accountability from political responsibility); (4) equal access to information; (5) sensitivity to the format and frequency of information; (6) articulating information into useful forms; and (7) the formalization of relationships. Based on these dimensions of political responsibility, Jordan and van Tuijl go on to present four types of transnational advocacy campaigns: (1) cooperative campaigns with high political responsibility; (2) concurrent campaigns characterized by a medium level of political responsibility; (3) disassociated campaigns having low political responsibility; and (4) competitive campaigns with no political responsibility at all. Jordan and van Tuijl’s analysis is particularly useful as it highlights that those who participate in a transnational activist campaign have a political responsibility towards others who are engaged in the campaign but operate in a different political arena. Activists operating in international or transnational arenas must be aware of the possible consequences of their activities for activists working in local and national arenas. In this respect it is worth stressing that an exclusive focus on global advocacy is problematic. Transnational activists generally need to focus more on the local level and build networks from below (Edwards 2001: 8). Some specific methods used by transnational activists have also been criticized for being undemocratic. One example is the use of civil disobedience, which is often criticized for being anti-democratic (unless it is conducted against an authoritarian regime). But it can also be defended as a practice of direct democracy as an alter-

New perspectives on transnational activism 19 native to representative democracy. Furthermore, historically, civil disobedience was essential in the struggle for representative democracy, and today it can be seen as an effort to vitalize and expand democracy. This argument is valid unless we consider the specific contemporary form of democracy as complete and in no further need for improvement (cf. Thörn 2002: 166). Civil disobedience can thus be seen primarily as a form for the expansion of societal democracy and a politicization of civil society (Thörn 2002: 169). Hence, while remaining critically engaged with problems of democracy within transnational activism, we should not dismiss these forms of collective action as inherently undemocratic. Democracy of and/or within transnational activism should be measured against the existing degree of democracy in international governance (Sikkink 2002: 315). In comparison with global governance institutions, the international state system and global capitalism, transnational activist networks score very well when it comes to democracy. It is worth repeating, however, that a democratic civil society requires the legitimate regulation of the state (Colás 2002: 165), a point also stressed by Grugel (in this volume). So far, we have argued for a new conceptual contextualization combining two analytical approaches (power and democracy) to further our understanding of transnational activism. In the final section, we shall turn to our geographical context of East and Southeast Asia.

Contextualizing transnational activism in East and Southeast Asia In addition to filling a theoretical gap, this volume also intends to fill an empirical gap by providing case studies from East and Southeast Asia, a region that has rarely been covered in literature on transnational activism. A few important exceptions deal with some aspects of transnational activism in this geographical area, including articles by Aviel (2000), Gurowitz (2000), He (1999), Lizee (2000), Mittelman (1999), Piper (2001), Piper and Uhlin (2002), Price (1998) and Uhlin (2001, 2002, 2003). But, on the whole, more attention has been paid to Europe and North and South America. Considering fairly recent and ongoing changes towards democratization in this region, it is not surprising also to find rising civil society activism in general and increasing numbers of NGOs in particular. Transnational linkages within the region are part and parcel of these developments – although numerically maybe not yet as developed as in other parts of the world (see Smith, this volume). Particularly noteworthy in this respect are efforts to set up regional human rights mechanisms (Timmermann 2001), election monitoring and ‘watchdog’ initiatives ( Jemadu, this volume), and regional networking on environmental issues (Lai, this volume). The fairly new activities, including the creation of a working group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism in 1996, were triggered by the UN conference on human rights in Vienna in 1993, which produced a final declaration demanding the establishment of such mechanisms. The increasing involvement of civil society organizations in the debate around human rights has qualitatively changed, and challenged, the ‘first round’ of the ‘Asian values debate’ in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Timmermann 2001).

20 Nicola Piper and Anders Uhlin These regional initiatives on human rights are not the only ones rooted in global initiatives that came out of UN conferences and the signing of declarations by at least some Asian countries. There are also initiatives on environmental issues, such as the London Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes, as mentioned by Lai (this volume). Other cross-border network activities have their roots in clearly regionally confined issues, such as sex tourism (Japanese businessmen in East and Southeast Asia, and more recently other East and Northeast Asians as well) and Japan’s colonial past, which have mainly triggered women’s groups to organize transnationally within the region (Piper 2001). As shown in the case of Malaysia (Weiss, this volume), activists coming from countries whose human rights records are far from good are nonetheless actively engaged in regional networking activities or in support of issues occurring in other Asian countries (such as Burma). This is underpinned by Uhlin (2001, 2002, 2003), who has shown that there are increasing transnational links between civil society groups in the Southeast Asian region. His case studies indicate the relative weakness of transnational activist networks compared to the power of states and capitalist interests. The dependence on international funding agencies is also restricting the autonomy of transnational civil society groups in Southeast Asia – and this is an area where East and Southeast Asia differ somewhat, with East Asia depending less on foreign donor agencies. Another region-specific issue is that of labour migration, or at least certain forms of labour migration (such as domestic work, sex and entertainment, and the high incidences of illegality), which have triggered cross-border collaboration between NGOs that support migrant workers. Also taken up by INGOs in their links with local NGOs is the issue of trafficking (Piper and Uhlin 2002). Following the more general and theoretical chapters by Grugel and Keck, the chapters of this book offer new perspectives on transnational activism in the East and Southeast Asian context. Smith provides a useful overview of transnational social movement organizations worldwide, but with interesting data on Asian dimensions. He’s theoretical analysis of world citizenship is particularly rooted in the East and Southeast Asian context. The rest of the chapters have a specific focus on the East and Southeast Asian regions. Lai’s ‘cyber-activism’ focuses on China and Japan. Lindquist explores (the lack of) transnational activism in the border zone between Indonesia and Singapore. Weiss inquires into the transnational endeavours of Malaysian activists. Jemadu takes the opposite perspective and analyses transnational activists dealing with Indonesia. Lin, finally, focuses on transnational activism related to Taiwan. Each of these original research efforts provides essential new insights into the emergent research field of transnational activism. Together they also contribute to a contextualization of transnational activism in East and Southeast Asia.

Notes 1 One notable exception is provided by Franz and Zimmer (2002) who attempt to bridge research on ‘social movements’ and NGOs under the umbrella of ‘international civil society’.

New perspectives on transnational activism 21 2 An interesting and empirically rich contribution to the issue of NGOs’ integration and their transnational networks in the issue area of ‘environmental politics’ is provided by Walk and Brunnengraeber (2000). 3 See Lin’s chapter for a more elaborate discussion of political opportunities.

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24 Nicola Piper and Anders Uhlin Princen, T. and Finger, M. (eds) (1994) Environmental NGOs in World Politics. Linking the Local and the Global, London and New York: Routledge. Riles, A. (2000) The Network Inside Out, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Risse, T., Ropp, S.C. and Sikkink, K. (eds) (1999) The Power of Human Rights. International Norms and Domestic Change, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Risse-Kappen, T. (ed.) (1995) Bringing Transnational Relations Back In. Non-State Actors, Domestic Structures and International Institutions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rucht, D. (1999) ‘The Transnationalization of Social Movements: Trends, Causes, Problems’, in D. della Porta, H. Kriesi and D. Rucht (eds), Social Movements in a Globalizing World, London: Macmillan, pp. 206–22. ——(2001) ‘Transnationaler politischer Protest im historischen Laengsschnitt’, in A. Klein, R. Koopmans and H. Geiling (eds), Globalisierung, Partizipation, Protest. Opladen: Leske & Bude, pp. 77–96. Scholte, J.A. (1999) ‘Global Civil Society: Changing the World?’, University of Warwick, Coventry: Centre for the Study of Globalization and Regionalisation, Working Paper No. 31/99. Sharp, J.P., Routledge, P., Philo, C. and Paddison, R. (2000) ‘Entanglements of Power. Geographies of Domination/Resistance’, in J. P. Sharp, P. Routledge, C. Philo and R. Paddison (eds) Entanglements of Power. Geographies of Domination/Resistance, London and New York: Routledge. Sikkink, K. (2002) ‘Restructuring World Politics: The Limits and Asymmetries of Soft Power’, in S. Khagram, J. V. Riker and K. Sikkink (eds) Restructuring World Politics. Transnational Social Movements, Networks, and Norms, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Smith, J. (2000) ‘Social Movements, International Institutions and Local Empowerment’, in K. Stiles (ed.) Global Institutions and Local Empowerment. Competing Theoretical Perspectives, Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan and New York: St Martin’s Press. ——(2001) ‘Globalizing Resistance: The Battle of Seattle and the Future of Social Movements’, Mobilization 6(1): 1–19. Smith, J. and Johnston, H. (eds) (2002) Globalization and Resistance: Transnational Dimensions of Social Movements, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Smith, J., Chatfield, C. and Pagnucco, R. (eds) (1997) Transnational Social Movements and Global Politics. Solidarity Beyond the State, New York: Syracuse University Press. Smith, M.P. and Guarnizo, L.E. (eds) (1998) Transnationalism from Below, New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers. Tarrow, S. (1998) Power in Movement. Social Movements and Contentious Politics, 2nd edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ——(2001) ‘Transnational Politics: Contention and Institutions in International Politics’, Annual Review of Political Science 4: 1–20. ——(2002) ‘The New Transnational Contention: Organizations, Coalitions, Mechanisms’, paper presented at the APSA Annual Meeting, Boston, 31 August–1 September 2002. Thörn, Håkan (2002) Globaliseringens Dimensioner. Nationalstat, Världssamhälle, Demokrati och Sociala Rörelser (Dimensions of Globalization. Nation State, World Society, Democracy and Social Movements), Stockholm: Atlas. Timmermann, M. (2001). ‘Regionale Identitaetsbilding in Suedostasien? Auf dem Weg zu einem ASEAN-Menschenrechtsmechanismus’, Suedostasien aktuell 20(4): 388–95. Uhlin, A. (2001) ‘The Transnational Dimension of Civil Society. Migration and Independence Movements in Southeast Asia’, in B. Beckman, E. Hansson and A. Sjögren (eds) Civil Society and Authoritarianism in the Third World, Stockholm: PODSU/Stockholm University.

New perspectives on transnational activism 25 ——(2002) ‘Globalization, Democratization and Civil Society in Southeast Asia. Observations from Malaysia and Thailand’, in C. Kinnvall and K. Jönsson (eds) Globalization and Democratization in Asia, London: Routledge. ——(2003) ‘Regionalism from Below. Transnational Civil Society Links in Southeast Asia’, in E. Palmujoki (ed.) Southeast Asian Regionalism from Above and from Below (forthcoming). Uvin, P. (2000) ‘From Local Organizations to Global Governance: The Role of NGOs in International Relations’, in K. Stiles (ed.) Global Institutions and Local Empowerment. Competing Theoretical Perspectives, Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan and New York: St Martin’s Press. Walk, H. and Brunnengraeber, A. (2000) Die Globalisierungswaechter. NGOs und ihre transnationale Netze im Konfliktfeld Klima, Muenster: Verlag Westfaelisches Dampfboot. Warkentin, C. (2001) Reshaping World Politics. NGOs, the Internet, and Global Civil Society, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Waterman, P. (2001) Globalisation, Social Movements and the New Internationalism, London: Continuum.

2

State power and transnational activism Jean Grugel

Contemporary transnational activism draws on a critique of the state and an assertion of the values of mobilization and participation, inspired to an important degree by the ideological ferment set in train in the 1960s. More recently, theories of globalization have led to the notion that the state is in terminal decline. Considerable political ramifications flow from this, if it is true. One is that statist models of governance have had their day. Another is that the transnational sphere has become the most salient level for political action. However, if, as I will argue, the end of statecentrism has been exaggerated, then the state, especially the Western state, retains considerable powers and resources.1 This means that transnational activists must take into account the question of state power when designing strategies and responding to opportunities. Understanding the state, then, is a central issue, both for transnational activism, and for academic studies of activism. This chapter reviews the debate about the place of the contemporary state in the global order and analyses the assumptions made about it by the dominant theoretical approaches to transnational activism, namely, theories of global civil society, the field of transnational studies and the body of scholarship that analyses the institutional relationships developed by transnational activists. The chapter is underpinned by the view that it does not make sense to conceptualize civil society, and transnational civil society activism, as alternatives to the state. I argue that taking the state seriously is important for activists and for those who analyse activism alike.

The state: democracy, power and globalization States and democracy The meaning of democracy can be simply summarized as: a mode of decision-making about collectively binding rules and policies over which the people exercise control, and the most democratic arrangement [is] that where all members of the collectivity enjoy effective equal rights to take part in such decision-making directly – one, that is to say, which realizes to the

State power and transnational activism 27 greatest conceivable degree the principles of popular control and equality in its exercise. (Beetham 1992: 40) Debates within democratic theory have centred largely on how to bring these ideals into existence. There have been, grosso modo, two principal strands of democratic theory: direct and representative democracy. These two positions crystallized in a debate between liberal approaches to democracy, which developed around concepts of representation, social regulation and the market, and participatory theories, drawing instead on communal and direct experiences. In contrast to the liberal tradition of representation and the emphasis on individual rights, participatory democracy has principally been concerned with ensuring democratic rights for the community as a whole. Liberalism viewed the state as important but is ultimately distrustful of the state, identifying inherent overweening tendencies within it. This means that liberalism assumes democracy to be a way of limiting state power and rendering it accountable to society. In contrast, direct or participatory strands of democratic thought have embraced notions of both the strong state (communism) and of an idealized society existing without state control (anarchism). After 1945, and particularly following the onset of the Cold War, the meanings contained within the term ‘democracy’ changed. Democracy became part of the vocabulary of real politics as a way of distinguishing between ‘the free world’ and Soviet-inspired or controlled communism. As a result, democracy was more and more equated simply with liberalism and, by implication, with the political arrangements extant in the West. Despite the survival of ideas of socialist democracy, in practice democracy came to be read as a shorthand for liberalism and the political arrangements for government in the West. According to Lijphart (1984), democracy existed in ‘the real world’ – in the US and Western Europe. Democracy, in other words, ceased to be an explicitly normative concept and was presented, instead, as a descriptive one. The result was empirical democratic theory, which found its most important inspiration in the work of the economist Joseph Schumpeter. Schumpeter saw democracy as analogous to the market. It was a mechanism for the election of leaders through competition. Democracy was thereby reduced simply to a way of institutionalizing competition between elites for office (Shapiro and Hacker-Cordon 1999: 4). Empirical democratic theory has proved especially useful to Western policymakers. Its concerns centre on the visible manifestations of state power and authority; it is behavioural in its approach. The state is composed straightforwardly of the bodies that formally rule the polity – governments, bureaucracies, judiciaries, etc. In a democratic state, it is assumed that the people, through elections, control these governing bodies and that power is diffused to socially constituted interest groups. Empirical democratic theory places the state at the core of democracy; it assumes the democratic state to be liberal; and its notion of the state is limited to what can be observed. It does not probe the social construction of power behind the formal institutions of government (see Lukes 1974). Neither is it able to draw out any

28 Jean Grugel tensions that exist between the state, as the formal embodiment of the people, and the demands of the market. The very evident intellectual flaws and simplifications contained within empirical democratic theory meant that it was subject to a range of searching intellectual critiques. At the same time, the fact that liberal democratic theory in the 1960s and 1970s was so normatively bound up with the West, the defence of capitalism and the Cold War provoked an interest in exploring (and resurrecting) alternative approaches to democracy. The result was the re-emergence of the idea of democracy as a vehicle for human emancipation and as an instrument to further the rights and interests of vulnerable and disadvantaged members of the community. New theories of democracy began to emerge in the 1960s, including feminism, associationalism and a return to participatory ideas. All consciously evoke the notion of democracy as a utopian project embodying ideas of equality and rights and draw in different ways on the idea of collective citizenship. As a result, the meaning of democracy became, once again, a terrain for rich ideological debate. This created an important space, which has expanded over the years, within which to theorize the centrality of participation for democracy. Initially, the critique of empirical democratic theory focused on the ways in which the hidden or structural power of capital and of privilege has consistently prevented outwardly democratic states from behaving democratically (Lindblom 1977; Jessop 1990). It also became obvious that empirical democratic theory draws its understanding of the state from an idealized version of how the Western state operates. As a result, it is unable to grasp or analyse the ways in which undemocratic power is embedded within the states (democratic or otherwise) of the developing world. At the same time, it promotes an electoralist or a procedural understanding of democracy. This can lead to an assumption that democracy exists because elections are relatively free and liberal principles enshrined in the constitution, even in social orders where violence, exclusion, repression and poverty constitute the daily reality for many, even the majority, of the population. These revelations of how apparently democratic states contain mechanisms for the reproduction of inequality and privilege within them were influential in shaping the ambiguity towards the state that has characterized the participatory approach to democracy. If apparently democratic states can serve as cover for the undemocratic reproduction of elite power, then, participationists argue, it makes no sense to see the state as central for democracy. Instead, as Pateman (1970) points out, participationists start from assumptions about the importance of freedom, activism and citizenship. A participatory approach implies rejecting the idea that democracy can be a form of government independent of the quality of citizenship, equity and social inclusion. For democracy without citizenship is merely a continuation of elite rule. Not surprisingly, then, theories of participatory democracy are often highly ambiguous about the state. Participationists sometimes reject the statism and welfarism of the West, which they see as stifling individual and community initiatives. For Keane (1988), the state must go beyond paternalism towards embracing social organizations in active decision-making, in order to become fully democratic. This ambiguity has fed, sometimes unconsciously, into forms of civil society activism.

State power and transnational activism 29 State power Underlying these very different ways of understanding the state in democracy lie alternative conceptualizations of state power and state capabilities. Behavioural approaches see state power in democracies as relatively benign; the state is under the control of governments that, in turn, are responsible to the people. Participationists, on the other hand, see the state as the embodiment of authority and social control. Its powers are not subject to control by citizens. Both these positions simplify the state and hide key aspects of the ways in which state power is deployed. The state is, of course, ultimately an instrument of social domination. All states have at their core developed capacities for coercion and violence. State power is, at least in part, the capacity to persuade the people who live within its frontiers to acquiesce with the goals and policies that are laid down from within the state (Goverde, Cerny, Haugaard and Lentner 2000). Logically enough, it has frequently been conceptualized as enforcement or power over citizens. For realists, for example, state power can be understood straightforwardly as the sum of material capabilities; it is the power to act, the power to do. The sociological tradition of state analysis, however, offers a more nuanced understanding of the powers of the state. Here, the state is conceptualized in the Weberian tradition of a ‘human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory’ (Skocpol 1985: 7). States are the expression of class interests; but their composition, policies and interests are subject to change through social or class conflict. So democratic states are possible, but only if subordinated classes and groups are strong enough to impose themselves on the pattern of policy-making and interests contained within the state (see Rueschmeyer, Stephens and Stephens 1992). Mann (1993) draws attention to the relational element of contemporary state power: states must work with social actors in order to get things done. In particular, he distinguishes between ‘despotic power’, where states act without negotiations with civil society, and ‘infrastructural power’, which is ‘collective power, “power through” society, coordinating social life through state infrastructures’ (Mann 1993: 59). ‘Infrastructural power’, Mann notes, ‘is a two-way street: it also enables civil society to control the state’. Infrastructural power should make it possible for states to meet the basic goals that guarantee their reproduction, stability and security. According to Huber (1995: 167), these goals are to ● ● ●

●

enforce the rule of law; promote economic growth; elicit the compliance of members of the community that inhabits the territory over any given state claims control; and shape the allocation of societal resources.

If states are to be democratic, that is to deliver goods and services and support citizenship within society as a whole, then they must have at their disposal considerable infrastructural power. Infrastructural capacity can be summarized as technical capacity, policy efficiency and durable institutional structures, combined with legitimation and cooperation from civil society. Without it, the distribution of

30 Jean Grugel public goods and the creation of welfare are impossible. At the same time, infrastructural power provides civil society with the legitimate authority to monitor and challenge state action. This is the case notwithstanding the tension between some civil society actors and the state that is typical of capitalist democracies. So, while states with infrastructural powers are not necessarily democratic, infrastructural powers are necessary for democracy. The ‘third wave’ transitions have been shaped significantly by the variable infrastructural capacities of states (Grugel 2001). All of this suggests, in sum, that the view that state power is necessarily undemocratic, cannot be sustained. The state and globalization In the aftermath of the Second World War, there was an assumption of ever expanding infrastructural state capacity. The Western economies boomed and, for the developing countries, the expansion of the global economy, their incorporation into world markets and state-building policies were thought to be means through which democracy and development could be engineered. These modernist beliefs were gradually chipped away in the 1970s and 1980s, as economic difficulties in the West and crisis and economic collapse in the developing world became commonplace. At the same time, the savage dictatorships that characterized much of the developing world at this time dented the assumptions that linked state capacity with democracy. The dark side of state power once again predominated. To this has been added a more recent view that the state itself is in imminent danger of collapse or irrelevance. Globalization – the rapidly expanding processes through which societies are connected to each other through markets and new technologies – has been taken to mean that the state is increasingly defunct as a source of economic and social control and fragile as an instrument of redistribution. Crucially, globalization has been seen as undermining the infrastructural capacities of the state and therefore threatening democracy (for a review of the globalization debate, see Held et al. 1999). Initially, then, globalization was framed in ‘hard’ terms. The constraints imposed by the globalizing world economy were held responsible for the difficulties of development on the periphery of the world market, the contractions of the welfare state in the West and the limitations of processes of democratization in the 1980s and 1990s (Strange 1992). The promises inherent within modernity could no longer be fulfilled because of the imperatives of globalizing capitalism, in which market discipline is imposed without mediation due to the weakening of the state vis-à-vis transnational capital (Held 1995). According to Cox (1987; 1997), globalization stripped all states of meaningful choices and they become instead ‘conveyor belts’ for decisions taken elsewhere – by the covert structures that regulate global capitalism. This has led to the idea that the contemporary world structure requires cosmopolitan governance (Held 1995). Meanwhile insofar as the developing world is concerned, scholars have come to view globalization as the maturation of transnational capitalism, and the creation of a world integrated into a single capitalist mode of production has gained ascendancy

State power and transnational activism 31 (Robinson 1998). They are influenced in this view by the many difficulties facing state-led development and the rise of a new international political economy of development. For the periphery, globalization is the intensification of the control exerted by the West over states and societies. As a result, economic development has come to be centrally concerned with ‘global positioning’ rather than national management (McMichael 2000), while, politically, the authority of transnational capitalism over national states is taken to signify the closure of national projects of democracy and the end of the Keynesian welfare state. Framed in ‘soft’ terms, however, globalization has a more ambiguous effect on states, even developing states. Globalization processes are taking place in an already unequal global order and therefore have a differential impact on states in the North and the South, affecting the policy-making and extractive capacities of developing states far more than those of the developed core (Holm and Sorenson 1995; Hurrell and Woods 1995). Nevertheless, even most developing states remain much stronger than the hyper-globalizationists suppose (Evans 1997; Weiss 1998). Of course, the competition state (Cerny 1990), as the globalizing state has been termed, in the developing world is a less effective instrument for management – and for democracy (Grugel forthcoming). But inequalities between states, in terms of resources, effectiveness and infrastructural capacity, are hardly new. Moreover, while developing states may have reduced capacities to manage global economic integration successfully, most still retain considerable extractive and, especially, repressive capacities. While developing states have found their margin for manoeuvre reduced by debt and the demands of global integration, states in the West generally retain considerable resources to shape global outcomes and global ideas. Democratization, for example, became a global discourse in the 1990s principally because it has been incorporated into US and EU foreign policies in the post-Cold War era (Carothers 1991). The human rights approach to global governance also owes much to the strength of Western states, and to their continuing capacity to frame debates. Frequently thought to be driven by non-governmental groups, the rights debate has been managed by Western states that have successfully adopted it for their own interests. In particular, they have been able to shape the parameters of the debate, with the result that human rights are understood principally as liberal freedoms, not collective rights. At the same time, they have insisted on the subordination of rights to the requirements of state sovereignty, nationalism and economic interests. Moreover, Western states are strategic when they listen to non-governmental rights groups. The ways in which the British state has incorporated a rights discourse into its ‘ethical’ foreign policy under New Labour provides an interesting illustration of how states strategically take up rights-based issues. The British state is, for example, relatively receptive to pressure for greater liberal freedoms in Zimbabwe or Burma: cases where economic interests are not especially significant and where the United Kingdom is anxious to display global and Commonwealth leadership. The state is therefore relatively open to non-governmental groups with knowledge in these areas. But it is far more difficult for groups concerned with abuses in China to win

32 Jean Grugel the ear of the state, because of the dominance of established economic concerns and the drive to win greater market access. Meanwhile, civil society groups concerned with the rights of refugees within the United Kingdom find themselves ignored and bypassed in policy-making. On this issue, then, the state shapes policy and popular perceptions independently of, and more effectively than, civil society organizations. Migration is successfully packaged by the state as an issue area the foundations of which are the protection of national borders, the importance of domestic social peace (which immigrants are thought to threaten), respect for international law and a minimization of financial burdens. No link is allowed between migration and human rights; migrants are increasingly presented as law-breakers rather than asylumseekers. The United Kingdom, like other Western states, is able to select how it understands human rights and the issues it takes up. Abuses are presented as occurring elsewhere – mainly in developing or post-communist countries. In sum, Western states remain strong vis-à-vis civil society even in terms of important ethical issues where activism is strong, such as human rights. States retain the authority to shape attitudes and beliefs, within their societies and globally. This is considerable evidence of the continuing salience of the state, especially of the Western state. States and governance The remaking of the world in the wake of the Cold War has led to the emergence of new forms of global management through networks and global institutions – the rise of global governance (Payne forthcoming). Governance theorizes a shift away from hierarchical and territorially bounded bureaucracies as mechanisms for delivering public goods to networks of global, state and non-state actors (Rosenau and Czempiel 1992), leading to the emergence of national and transnational modes of governance not dependent on, or controlled by, states. The rise of global governance should not be taken, however, to mean that states have abandoned the quest for global regulation. An examination of the ways in which international financial institutions work makes this clear. Organizations such as the IMF and the World Bank do not operate independently of the Western states that are their main funders. The World Bank’s shift in the 1980s towards supporting structural adjustment was a reflection of pressure from the United States for the Bank to move towards a focus on growth rather than on poverty alleviation. The Washington consensus on the fit between markets and democracy in the 1990s emerged from the tight nexus that has developed between the multilateral institutions and the US government. Moreover, despite increased openness on the part of the World Bank, the United States has continually succeeded in shaping its policies, raising doubts about whether the Bank can deliver in any substantive way on its much-trumpeted new poverty focus. Using the example of the controversial World Bank Report of 2000 (Attacking Poverty), Wade (2001) shows how the autonomy of the World Bank was cut back by the US Treasury after the Seattle demonstrations. Nevertheless, governance does imply a very different system of global rule and a

State power and transnational activism 33 diffusion of some powers away from states. At the domestic level, a reformulation of the relationship between state and civil society actors is taking place. NGOs are increasingly present within governance structures, nationally as well as globally. Governance involves mobilizing non-state actors to take on tasks that were previously the responsibility of central or local government. Even developing states are adopting governance strategies in order to deliver services or as part of a neo-liberal repackaging of the state. In the case of Latin America, Taylor (1999) argues that NGOs constitute the perfect vehicle for neo-liberal social policy because they are apparently efficient organizations divorced from the public sphere. More generally they make possible some minimal social provision at a time of state retrenchment, as their widespread utilization in countries such as Bolivia and the Dominican Republic indicates. Meanwhile, at the global level, states share governance with global institutions, making the contemporary structures of global governance both complex and fluid because they depend upon negotiations between states, governance organizations and internationally active NGOs, according to issue area. The question is whether these interactions between states, governance bodies and NGOs imply an opportunity for a more democratic form of global governance (see Murphy 2000) or simply a cynical engagement with civil society on the part of governance institutions in order to get their message across (Wade 2001).

Understanding state transformation It is not surprising that confusion reigns about the state, given the pace of change and the uneven impact of global transformations. It is no longer clear whether states are good or bad for democracy and welfare, weak or strong. If this were just an academic issue, of course, it would matter less. But for civil society activism, transnational or otherwise, reading the state correctly is crucial to strategy and organization. For democrats, meanwhile, understanding the place of the state in the contemporary world order is central to the democratic possibilities they imagine. Recent theories of global civil society reflect the view that new forms of governance are replacing the inter-state world and that the state is losing its capacity to regulate the market and social action. Non-governmental organizations and civil society groups claim the right to fill the space left by the state. A body of sociological literature, which can loosely be grouped together as ‘transnational studies’, makes similar assumptions. I examine these below, and contrast them, at least so far as the state is concerned, with studies of transnational advocacy movements that emphasize the interface between movements and either state or global governance bodies. In contrast, these studies point to important, if sometimes ambiguous, relationships between movements and states, and indicate a much stronger role in world politics for the state. The significance of these findings is drawn out in the conclusion. Theories of global civil society The global civil society approach assumes that globalization means an intensification of capitalism and a weakening of the state. It assumes as a result that the capacities for

34 Jean Grugel resistance from below are now greater than before. This janus-headed view of globalization has been grafted onto theories of participatory democracy to produce three foundational ideas: ●

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that democracy is a system of governing the global community that rests on the extension and reproduction of social citizenship; that globalization is leading to the diminishing of the authority and effectiveness of the state; and that there is now an opportunity to effect global political change and build a system of global democracy through transnational activism.

Global civil society, for its advocates, is a project of ‘civilizing globalization’ (Kaldor 2000a). Kaldor’s notion of global civil society rests on a benign view of both the power of technology and transnational mobilization from below. For her, it is able to challenge the assumption that globalization can be understood simply as the imposition of liberalism and the market (see also Falk 1998; Ackerley and Moller Okin 1999). She draws attention to the fact that globalization has engendered strategies of resistance from an impressive number of subordinated social movements and groups marginalized by global capitalism. Recent anti-globalization movements range from the Jubilee 2000 campaign against third-world debt, mass protest against the policies and strictures imposed by the IMF, the symbol of global regulation, street protests at European Union summits and local protests against the onward march of globalizing capitalism, such as that encapsulated within the Chiapas rebellion in Mexico, led by the Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional (EZLN). At the same time, transnational networks, many with roots as far back as the 1960s and 1970s, based around issues of justice, human rights and ecology, composed of globally active NGOs, continue to present alternative visions of globalization from below. These movements, then, are understood as part of a counter-hegemonic project of change in an era of globalization (Kenny 2001). Global civil society movements self-consciously emphasize the importance of social activism on a transnational scale through the use of mass lobbying, new technologies and the global media. In many cases, they are seen as actually privileging lobbying at the global level over national strategies of mobilization. For example, the work of Radcliffe, Laurie and Andolina (2001) shows how the voices of communities extremely isolated from, and economically unimportant to, the core of the global economy and decision-making can be made to count in the decisionmaking centres of the global political economy through networking and ‘transnational exchanges of information and personnel mediated by new communication technologies’ in the 1990s. Global civil society approaches tend to adopt a strong, and open, normative tone. Civil society is talked up as an arena for the creation of regimes of tolerance, civility and pluralism and there is an assumption that activism within civil society straightforwardly promotes these values globally (Kaldor 2000b). According to Kaldor (2000b: 195) the emergence of transnational civil society ‘represents a demand for a radical extension of democracy across national and social frontiers’.

State power and transnational activism 35 Furthermore, it is the ‘political project’ of ‘those who are trying to exert a constructive influence over local life in a globalized world’. It therefore aims to effect both international action and global regulation (Kaldor 2000a: 209). The dark side of civil society is effectively ignored (see Kopecky and Mudde 2003). Instead, civil society movements are seen as offering an ideological and substantive alternative to processes of elite-led development and democracy by promoting a vision of global society regulated along principles of citizenship and rights. Global civil society, then, is understood as a tool for the creation of bottom-up democratization, suggesting that democratization itself is a counter-hegemonic project fuelled through sustained activism from below (Haynes 1997). Transnational studies Global civil society notions merge relatively easily with perspectives on the state and the role of activism developed from within transnational studies, a field which is broadly structured around the study of cross-border and global connections and which challenges state-centric views of the world (Vertovec 2001). While global civil society approaches are ‘strong’ in their endorsement of activism as a fount of democracy, however, transnational studies tend to take a more agnostic approach. Less directly interested in questions of democracy or the state, transnational studies have developed sociological and spatial analyses of transnational networks, including crime and terrorism (Hoffman 1999), sex workers (Kempadoo and Doezema 1998) and domestic workers (Anderson 2000). Few studies have addressed directly the ‘political’, narrowly understood, within transnational networks, with the exception of Sklair (1995; 2001), whose work has centred on the emergence of a transnational capitalist class. Of course, the central problem with positing transnational studies as a defined ‘field’ at all is that it implies that there can be one overarching explanation of transnational activities. In fact, as Vertovec (2001: 5) points out, ‘transnational social formations are [not] of a common type or function’. Nevertheless, there is a methodological integrity within transnational studies, which culminates in a common emphasis on networks and relationships between individuals and groups within the network. This can easily elide into a disregard for the ways in which power is displayed and exercised, especially forms of institutional or state power (Massey 1999). As Albrow (1998) comments, the field draws mainly on anthropology, history, geography, international relations and sociology; as a result, the centrality of the state and of governing institutions for the reproduction of power can easily be overlooked. So, for Sklair (1995), the dominant forces of the global system are, on the one hand, transnational capitalism and its corollary, a still-evolving transnational political class, and, on the other, transnational civil society. The state, it would appear, is unimportant. Transnational civil society is pitted not against the state, with the object of transforming it, but simply against the forces of transnational capitalism in a world of anarchy. Not surprisingly, as a result, transnational studies can easily fall into the trap of exaggerating the transformative capacities of global activism. Transnational social movements are studied within their cultural and

36 Jean Grugel social context, with considerably less emphasis on their political environment. The result is a tendency to overemphasize the imaginative capacity of the subject to shape and change her/his reality through empowerment, while the power-laden structures embedded within national institutions and states go largely unexplored. This emphasis on the movement, separated out of its structural context, is evident in the work of Cohen (1998). For Cohen (1998: 5) transnational social movements are free-floating organizations, currently in a process of moving away from ‘a primary concern with issues relating to inequalities in power, ownership and income between classes, towards a growing focus on the construction of cultural and personal identities’. Transnational social movements have thus been uncoupled from states and the domestic sphere of classes and other social and political conflicts that gave birth to them. Cohen argues that they are no longer ‘interested in gaining direct control over state power’, mainly because the state is no longer especially important. At the same time, he offers a romantic vision of transnational activism, that by its very nature, engenders ‘more democratic and participatory forms than those characteristic of earlier [state-centred protest] movements’ (Cohen 1998: 5). By talking up the ‘transnational’ in this way, Cohen ignores the site where most social activism still takes place: within the boundaries of the nation-state. Despite their increased visibility and reach – especially in developed countries – global social movements remain limited in scope, themes and geographical reach and have cyclical moments of intensity. Empirical studies of transnational activism, such as that of Fox (2000) in Mexico, suggest stronger patterns of national activism. Fox (2000) found that Mexican civil society organizations remain primarily confined to the national arena. This is despite the intense period of integration into the global political economy that Mexico has experienced since the 1990s, including integration with the United States and Canada through NAFTA, and global public support for the Chiapas uprising. This challenges the assumptions that global integration is leading rapidly to the emergence of a genuinely trans-border civil society. For Fox (2000: 1), ‘compared to the pace of binational integration among other actors – including manufacturers, investment bankers, toxic waste producers, drug dealers, TV magnates, immigrant families and national policy-makers – both the degree and impact of binational civil society collaboration has been quite limited’. If transnational activism remains limited in Mexico, where important opportunities for transnationalizing activism have been created, caution must be exercised before assumptions are made about the strength of transnational networks in other developing countries where lines of global communications and opportunities are thinner. Institutional approaches to transnational activism Both the global civil society approach and transnational studies offer considerable insights into the ways in which transnational networks operate and, in some cases, into their normative underpinnings. Transnational studies offer a way to map the operations of trans-border networks, to measure the scale of transnational activities

State power and transnational activism 37 and to analyse the kind of ‘social capital’ that networks can generate. Global civil society approaches draw attention to the utopian and counter-hegemonic nature of many contemporary transnational movements and position them within the traditions of popular struggles for democracy. Nevertheless, both fail to take either the state or global institutions seriously enough. Social movement theory, developed by Tilly (1984) and Tarrow (1998), offers an alternative approach. For Tarrow (1998) the success of social movements depends fundamentally upon the dynamic and framing of protest and the cycles of contention that develop between social movements and states. More recently, this approach has been adapted to fit transnational activism (Tarrow 1995; Keck and Sikkink 1998). Transnational social movements, such as human rights networks, environmental movements and women’s organizations, create networks and develop mobilizing structures as before; but now they engage in cross-border collaboration in order to pressurize states and global institutions. Moreover, the dynamic of action can be transnational, as well as national. Research proceeds by separating activism into its different policy areas, identifying the particular actors from transnational, state and civil society organizations that are involved in policy-making networks and analysing the contingent and structural relationships that develop between them. (For a discussion of this methodology, see Keck and Sikkink 1998). The transnational is not understood as an alternative sphere to national politics, but rather as a complement to embeddedness in national politics. Tarrow (1995) has argued that what are taken to be transnational movements are frequently merely ‘political exchanges between fundamentally domestic communities’. Effective transnational networking, in fact, requires groups to be nationally legitimate, although issues may be framed differently within transnational exchanges. Keck (1995), for example, shows how the movement of rubber-tappers in Brazil framed their activities nationally in the context of land rights, whereas they were presented as an environmental issue outside the country in order to map onto the concerns of the transnational environmental lobby. Using a similar approach, O’Brien et al. (2000) have analysed the extent to which globalization is creating new opportunities for transnational activism and civil society networks in relation to global governance institutions. They argue that, in particular policy arenas, increased interaction between states, international institutions and civil society organizations leads to the development of ‘complex multilateralism’. These greater opportunities have not led to a power shift towards civil society groups, however. O’Brien et al. (2000) note that complex multilateralism has a ‘differential impact upon the role of the state depending upon the state’s preexisting position in the international system. It tends to reinforce the role of powerful states and weaken the role of developing states’ (O’Brien et al. 2000: 6). It offers incorporation to some civil society-based actors who become part of the governance machinery, while counter-hegemonic movements have had only ‘limited successes’. Similar conclusions were reached in a recent comparative study of the relationships between civil society and the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. Casaburi, Riggirozzi, Tuozzo and Tussie (2000: 507) conclude that the impact of civil society groups is actually quite limited:

38 Jean Grugel Participation is almost exclusively limited to social assistance projects . . . [and] there remains a hard core of loans related to adjustment and specific sector reforms with little or no involvement of civil society. Participation mechanisms are applied selectively. This means that, at best, it is possible to identify only pockets of participation. They conclude that states have the capacity to block civil society participation, even in issue areas where the global governance institutions are broadly open to it. They also suggest that governments have been far more reluctant than governance institutions to encourage access to information and participation in programmes centred on structural adjustment and institutional reform – and that they are powerful enough to stop it (Casaburi, Riggirozzi, Tuozzo and Tussie 2000: 509). There is an important insight in this literature, which needs to be underlined, namely that states are able to act to obstruct and to limit civil society access. Yet elsewhere states have acted as allies to global social movements, for example in human rights networks. The role states play, then, is contingent on issue area and structural context; it also depends upon the particular mix of interests with issue area in particular states and their permeability to pressure. Moreover, while global governance is undoubtedly increasingly important (especially rhetorically), there is no evidence to support the view that global institutions are more powerful than Western states. Frequently, indeed, in many policy-making areas, governance institutions are only as effective as states allow them to be. States can frustrate initiatives, if they go against the grain of their interests. These observations are consonant with Risse-Kappen’s (1995) paradigm of transnational activity. He observed that the impact of transnational actors depends particularly on institutional factors within the domestic polity and the extent to which transnational actors operate in an environment which is densely regulated by international institutions, thereby providing arenas for transnational activities (see also Risse 2001).

Conclusion: the centrality of the state for transnational activism My point in this chapter has been to argue that states matter a great deal. National institutions are mainly vigorous, with the rare exception of failed or very underdeveloped states. States control considerable material and ideological resources despite the rising trends of transnational activism, the transformation of state powers and the movement towards global governance. Western states, in particular, have adapted to the challenges of the new global economy and show no signs of abandoning the quest for global regulation and the reproduction of a world order forged in their own interests. What does all this mean for transnational activism? First, the space for civil society activism is not neutral terrain but is shaped by, amongst other actors, states themselves. Opportunities for civil society-based organizations, furthermore, are contingent on issue area. Second, it is wrong to assume a fixed boundary between ‘national’ and ‘transnational’ forms of activism. The ‘transnational’ is not a totally separate space from the ‘national’. Transnational civil society is made up more of exchanges and actions between and by groups of

State power and transnational activism 39 domestic organizations than exchanges between fully transnationalized entities. Transnational civil society networks are composed of a range of nationally situated actors engaged in cooperation. Fox and Brown (1998: 30) capture this well when they make the analytical distinction between an ideal-type transnational social movement and real-world ‘politically contingent, tactical coalitions . . . limited to fragile fax and cyberspace communications’. Global civil society, especially as a grand project of democratization, remains a normative aspiration. Ignoring the centrality of the state, then, leads to poor analysis and possibly to lesseffective form of activism. But there are other, equally cogent, reasons to take the state into account. Despite the critique of the state contained within participatory theories of democracy and the ambiguities towards the state that many activists feel, states have an important place in citizenship struggles. States have the power to make policies that change people’s lives in immediate and meaningful ways and to enhance and protect their rights. It is difficult to imagine the establishment of democratic systems, human rights regimes, policies of economic redistribution and the organized protection of citizens without states. The task of activism must be, therefore, to make states effective and efficient instruments for their community, not to eliminate them. The state remains the central actor in the enactment and implementation of progressive policies of transformation – as well as the principal barrier to participation and equity. Activism, whether transnational or national, requires engagements with states to bring about change, especially when activism aims to promote eminently political tasks such as deepening democracy or furthering human rights. Moreover, as Kymlicka (1999) argues, there is little evidence to suggest that people actually want transnational rather than national forms of governance. For activists, in sum, bypassing the state is simply not feasible.

Note 1 This is important in light of Smith’s discussion (this volume) of most INGOs being located in the West or North.

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40 Jean Grugel Development Banks, Governments and Civil Society: Chiaroscuros in a Triangular Relationship’, Global Governance 6:25–47. Cerny, P.G. (1990) The Changing Architecture of Politics: Structure, Agency, and the Future of the State, London: Sage. Cohen, R. (1998) ‘Transnational Social Movements: An Assessment’, paper presented to the Transnational Communities Programme, Seminar Series, Faculty of Anthropology and Geography, University of Oxford, 19 June. Cox, R.W. (1987) Production, Power, and World Order: Social Forces in the Making of History, New York: Columbia University Press. ——(1997) ‘Democracy in Hard Times: Economic Globalization and the Limits to Liberal Democracy’, in A. McGrew (ed.) The Transformation of Democracy? Globalization and Territorial Democracy, Cambridge: Polity Press. Evans, P. (1997) ‘The Eclipse of the State? Reflections on Stateness in an Era of Globalization’, World Politics 50(1): 62–80. Falk, R. (1998) ‘Global Civil Society: Perspectives, Initiatives, Movements’, Oxford Development Studies 26(1): 99–110. Fox, J. (2000) ‘Assessing Binational Civil Society Coalitions: Lessons from the Mexico–US Experience’, paper presented to Latin American Studies Association (LASA), 16–18 March 2000, Miami, FL. Fox, J. and Brown, L.D. (eds) (1988) The Struggle for Accountability: The World Bank, NGOs and Grassroots Movements, London: MIT Press. Goverde, H., Cerny, P., Haugaard, M. and Lentner, H. (2000) Power in Contemporary Politics, London: Sage. Grugel J. (2001) Democratization: A Critical Introduction, London: Palgrave. ——(forthcoming) ‘Democratization and IPE: Towards Taking the Political Seriously’, in N Phillips (ed.) Globalising IPE, London: Palgrave. Haynes, J. (1997) Democracy and Civil Society in the Third World, Cambridge: Polity Press. Held, D. (1995) Democracy and Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance, Cambridge: Polity Press. Held, D., McGrew, A., Goldblatt, A.D. and Perraton, J. (1999) Global Transformation: Politics, Economics and Culture, Cambridge: Polity Press. Hoffman, B. (1999) Inside Terrorism, London: Indigo Press. Holm, H. and Sorensen, G. (1995) Whose World Order? Uneven Globalization and the End of the Cold War, Boulder, CO: Reinner. Huber, E. (1995) ‘Assessment of State Strength’, in P. Smith (ed.) Latin America in Comparative Analysis: New Approaches to Methods and Analysis, Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Hurrell, A. and Woods, N. (1995) ‘Globalization and Inequality’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 42(3): 466–72. Jessop, R. (1990) State Theory: Putting the Capitalist State in its Place, Cambridge: Polity Press. Kaldor, M. (2000a) ‘Civilising Globalization? The Implications of the “Battle in Seattle”’, Millennium: Journal of International Relations 29(1): 105–21. ——(2000b) ‘Transnational Civil Society’, in T. Dunn and N. Wheeler (eds), Human Rights in Global Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Keane, J. (ed.) (1988) Civil Society and the State, London: Verso. Keck, M. (1995) ‘Social Equity and Environmental Politics in Brazil: Lessons from the Rubber Tappers of Acre’, Comparative Politics 27(4): 409–24. Keck, M. and Sikkink, K. (1998) Activists Beyond Borders, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Kempadoo, K. and Doezma, J. (eds) (1998) Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance and Redefinition, London: Routledge.

State power and transnational activism 41 Kenny, M. (2001) ‘Interpreting “Global Civil Society”’, paper presented to the Conference Global Civil Society: Critical Engagements, University of Aberystwyth, September 2001. Kopecky, P. and Mudde, C. (eds) (2003) The Uncivil Side of Civil Society, London: Routledge. Kymlicka, W. (1999) ‘Citizenship in an Era of Globalization: Commentary on Held’, in I. Shapiro and C. Hacker-Cordon (eds) Democracy’s Edges, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lijphart, A. (1984) Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian and Consensus Government in Twenty One Countries, New Haven: Yale University Press. Lindblom, C. (1977) Politics and Markets, New York: Basic Books. Lukes, S. (1974) Power: A Radical View, London: Macmillan. McMichael, P. (2000) Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective, Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge. Mann, M. (1993) The Sources of Social Power, vol. 2: The Rise of Classes and Nation States, 1760– 1914, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Massey, D. (1999) ‘Imagining Globalization: Power-Geometries of Time-Space’, in A. Brah, M.J. Hickman and M. Mac an Ghaill (eds) Global Futures, Migration, Environment and Globalization, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Murphy, C. (2000) ‘Global Governance: Poorly Done and Poorly Understood’, International Affairs 76(4): 789–804. O’Brien, R., Goetz, A.M., Scholte J.A. and Williams, M. (2000) Contesting Global Governance: Multilateral Economic Institutions and Global Social Movements, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pateman, C. (1970) Participation and Democratic Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Payne, A. (forthcoming) ‘Governance and IPE’, in N. Phillips (ed.) Globalising IPE, London: Palgrave. Radcliffe, S., Laurie, N. and Andolina, R. (2001) ‘“We are all Indians?” Ecuadorian and Bolivian Transnational Indigenous Communities’, project funded under the ESRC Transnational Communities Programme, October 1998 – December 2000. Risse, T. (2001) ‘Transnational Actors, Networks, and Global Governance’, in W. Carlsnaes, T. Risse and B. Simmons (eds) Handbook of International Relations, London: Sage. Risse-Kappen, T. (ed.) (1995) Bringing Transnational Relations Back In: Non-State Actors, Domestic Structures and International Institutions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Robinson, W. (1998) ‘Beyond Nation State Paradigms: Globalization, Sociology and the Challenge of Transnational Studies’, Sociological Forum, 13(4): 397–408. Rosenau, J.N. and Czempiel, E.O. (eds) (1992) Governance Without Government, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rueschemeyer, D., Stephens, E. and Stephens, J. (1992) Capitalist Development and Democracy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shapiro, I. and Hacker-Cordon, C. (1999) ‘Promises and Disappointments: Reconsidering Democracy’s Value’, in I. Shapiro and C. Hacker-Cordon (eds) Democracy’s Value, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sklair, L. (1995) Sociology of the Global System, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ——(2001) The Transnational Capitalist Class, Oxford: Blackwell. Skocpol, T. (1985) ‘Bringing the State Back In: Strategies of Analysis in Current Research’, in P. Evans, D. Rueschmeyer and T. Skocpol (eds) Bringing the State Back In , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Strange, S. (1992) ‘States, Firms, and Diplomacy’, International Affairs, 68(1): 10–21. Tarrow, S. (1995) ‘Fishnets, Internets and Catnets: Globalization and Transnational

42 Jean Grugel Collective Action’, Occasional Paper, Madrid: Juan March Foundation, Centre for Advanced Study in Social Sciences, Winter. ——(1998) Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, L. (1999) ‘Globalization and Civil Society – Continuities, Ambiguities and Realities in Latin America’, Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 7(1): 189–202. Tilly, C. (1984) ‘Social Movements and National Politics’, in C. Bright and S. Harding (eds) Statemaking and Social Movements: Essays in History and Theory, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Vertovec, S. (2001) ‘Transnational Social Formations: Towards Conceptual CrossFertilization’, paper presented at Workshop on ‘Transnational Migration: Comparative Perspectives’, Princeton University, 30 June – 1 July. Wade, R. (2001) ‘Making the World Development Report 2000: Attacking Poverty’, World Development 29(8): 1435–42. Weiss, L. (1998) The Myth of the Powerless State: Governing the Economy in a Global Era, Cambridge: Polity Press.

3

Governance regimes and the politics of discursive representation1 Margaret E. Keck

Like climate change, globalization is a very broad category for a set of changes whose particular impact at any site cannot be predicted from the global average. In fact, many of the developments that over the past 20 years or so have been attributed to globalization look quite different from each other. The rhetoric of globalization seems to point towards homogenization driven by global capital flows, integration of economic policies, and constriction of policy choices (‘there is no alternative’). Global optimists see the coupling of liberal economic policies with a convergence on liberal democracy, while pessimists see the enrichment of a few and a race to the bottom for everyone else. Still others point to a parallel process of globalization in coalitions developing among civil society associations. These groups may promote sets of global norms and codes of conduct as checks on the behaviour of states and/or corporations (a positive outcome of globalization), or collaborate to resist its impact on particular groups or places. But like the notion of globalization itself, these general characterizations of its dynamics and characteristics do not help us much to evaluate shifts in the opportunities for political action in any given setting or issue area. Much of the discussion of transnational activism to date has focused on adversarial politics, centring on issue areas involving the protection of vulnerable peoples, species, or ecosystems, or the mitigation of global inequalities. Advocacy networks working on the former have incorporated social movement organizations, foundations, members of the media, and allies in governments and international organizations to strengthen the forms of international intervention taken (Keck and Sikkink 1998a). While most transnational advocacy campaigns have involved opposing abuses in less powerful countries, occasionally the lens has been reversed, as in the international campaign opposing the death penalty, in which the principal target has been the United States.2 Campaigns around global inequalities have produced a range of tactics from protest to lobbying to the creation of counterinstitutions like the World Social Forum. Significantly, these have mobilized more institutionalized civil society organizations like trade unions, as well as some thirdworld governments. Yet clearly not all instances in which activists have linked global and domestic arenas have been adversarial. Some have involved efforts to shape and participate in new institutional forms whose adoption sometimes puts an international imprimatur on the struggles of domestic actors. This is the active side of the process of diffusion

44 Margaret E. Keck that organizational sociologists refer to as isomorphism (Meyer and Rowan 1977; Powell and DiMaggio 1983, 1991). Discussions of international diffusion recognize a variety of macro-level variables that affect the spread of new ideas – such factors as geographical settings, societal culture, political conditions and global uniformity (Wejnert 2002), and the importance of certain kinds of networks of actors – advocacy networks, professional groupings, and the like – as carriers of ideas (Keck and Sikkink 1998a; Haas 1992). All of these contribute to the proliferation of new kinds of formal organizations – what Jepperson and Meyer (1991: 209) call ‘a manic outburst of rationality, created under considerable competitive urgency and, for the same reason, unlikely to work as chartered’. New organizations, in turn, may change the institutional environment and network linkages of additional groups of activists, who begin to develop transnational practices as a result. In this chapter, I suggest that new kinds of associative arrangements are becoming increasingly characteristic of a set of policy issues that have in common both a technical and sectoral logic and the existence of contention over how to ensure management in the public interest. Many of these issues and debates have important transnational dimensions. Into this category fall a number of resource management, environmental and public health issues. These are issue areas where information is both dispersed and central to decision-making, there are high levels of uncertainty, problems often have more than one cause, and their resolution usually requires collaboration among public and private actors. Neither market mechanisms nor state mandates (singly or jointly) seem capable of providing comprehensive solutions. These are areas of experimentation both in patterns of relations between public and private organizations, and in the political representation of ideas and interests. Changes in international society have increasingly involved the diversification of relations between actors and structures. A variety of functional organizations have arisen to facilitate transnational exchanges about ideas and strategies for policy reform. Some of these discussions take place within multifunctional organizations – the UN regional economic commissions, the European Union, the Organization of American States – and some are more specialized. However, the diffusion of ideas internationally among purposive actors in functional areas also gives rise to changes in the domestic institutional arrangements that pertain in those areas, the actors in which become in turn de facto participants in the transnational discussion. I call these emerging structures governance regimes. The concept of governance employed here implies more than simply a flexible approach to regulation; mapping the interactions involved requires that we relax the dichotomy between public and private, and between state and civil society. Governance may imply greater flexibility in coordination of a broader range of interests than formal government structures may normally admit, but it is hardly institution-less. Seeking flexible mechanisms for brokering negotiations between private and public actors, as well as between sub-national, national, and supra-national political arenas, many policy entrepreneurs have promoted organizations of an associational type, involving greater or lesser degrees of formalization. In the sectoral governance schemes on which this discussion is based, a kind of associative stakeholders’ council has become a characteristic organizational form. In

The politics of discursive representation 45 these, ‘representatives’ of key sectors are charged with the task of pooling information, building consensus, and solving coordination problems. Their decision-making authority varies, as do the mechanisms by which representatives are chosen, and the definition of what is to be represented. Because the members tend to represent positions rather than populations, ideas rather than constituencies, I refer to this institutional process as discursive representation.3 Whose stakes are to be represented on such councils becomes a crucial, sometimes contested, issue. People who are relatively powerless in most domains of public life may be granted a respected place, within a delimited sphere. In internationalized discussions of forest policy in developing countries, for example, a place is set at the table for indigenous peoples or other groups whose livelihoods come from extraction of forest products. While sitting at the table, those groups may even have a significant impact on the formulation of policy for that sector. However, despite their having easier access to, say, the president of the World Bank, than do highly placed politicians from their countries, their participation in those discussions may very well have no impact whatsoever on their ability to accomplish anything else locally or nationally. The international diffusion of associative forms of issue governance may facilitate transnational activism on the part of a broader range of actors than those who initially promoted the establishment of a governance regime. It creates a template, a set of homologous roles that are legible to counterparts elsewhere (however deceptive that apparent legibility may be), providing incentives for exchange of information and experiences among activists. International conferences bring people together; information brokers seek out subscribers for listservers; networks of professionals give rise to parallel networks, just as UN theme conferences spawned NGO conferences alongside the official ones. The chapter represents a preliminary effort to explore these questions, and proceeds in three parts. First, I ask why we need this kind of a concept, and what it can help us examine. Second, what is a governance regime? Finally, how might we think about transnational activism in the context of these emerging institutional forms?

Diversification, dichotomies, dimensions Political agendas have diversified both vertically (with attributions migrating to both supra- and sub-national institutions and arenas) and horizontally, with increasing numbers of sectorally defined issue areas aggregating expertise, resources and practices across boundaries. Multiple co-existing and interpenetrating structures influence both allocation (control over the material world) and authority (control over the social world) (Giddens 1984: 256–62). Spatial and temporal dimensions of politics are no longer the ‘distinct, disjoint, and mutually exclusive territorial formations’ that John Ruggie identified with the modern international polity (Ruggie 1998: 172). The territorial and functional logics of these structures are not insulated from each other. They operate concurrently, and individuals – embedded in networks – employ (and simultaneously reshape) both. The contradictions generated

46 Margaret E. Keck become an important source of creativity (though not necessarily of stability) in the system. They bring new ideas, and provide the opportunity for ‘venue shopping’, a quintessential action of political entrepreneurs (Baumgartner and Jones 1993). We have to approach these phenomena with an analytical toolkit that highlights institutions and institutional rules, but which recognizes that these may be multiple and contradictory rather than congruent (Stark 1996; Suchman and Edelman 1997). Our tools must allow us to move easily between individual and organizational/ institutional levels of analysis, and the approach must be unabashedly sociological in its theorizing. The actors in these settings are neither abstract, nor interchangeable; they are situated individuals whose networks of individual and institutional linkages categorize them in others’ eyes, and are constitutive of their self-understandings, jointly with their ideas and their interests.4 Similarly, regimes and institutions have histories, change, and evolve (Ruggie 1998; Clemens and Cook 1999). Finally, the notions of space embedded in territorially based and functionally based institutional logics differ: ‘Space in itself may be primordially given, but the organization and meaning of space is a product of social translation, transformation, and experience’ (Soja 1989: 79–80). A network perspective has distinct advantages for mapping the intersections among individuals, organizations and institutional processes that political scientists often treat as discrete phenomena. Although institutions structure the relationships among individuals, they are structured by them as well. The relationships and resources in networks – social and professional networks, for example – enable or constrain action. Any individual will simultaneously belong to multiple networks (Sewell 1992; Lin 2001). Network analysis can involve relational or positional aspects; in the latter regard, formal, quantitative studies of network structures have produced important insights regarding the impact of such factors as centrality in networks, weakness or strength of ties (Granovetter 1973), and how building bridges between previously separate networks (over ‘structural holes’) may facilitate innovation, however fragile those bridges may be (Burt 1992; 2002). Networks are artefacts of human action, as well as being its enabling element (see Diani 1995; Emirbayer and Goodwin 1994). The dynamic tension in this duality of structures provides opportunities and resources for political action and change (Sewell 1992). To mapping the intersections between domestic and international policy arenas, and recognizing territorial and functional logics, must be added a third set of bordercrossings, this time between state and civil society. Liberal and constructivist international relations theory has widened the field of actors deemed relevant to understanding international politics. Nonetheless, because their challenge to realism questions how unitary the state is in its external face, many leave unchallenged dichotomies that are increasingly problematic in the study of domestic politics, e.g. distinctions between state and society, and between private and public (Streeck and Schmitter, 1985; Evans, 1997). The blurring of the boundaries between these categories is occurring simultaneously in domestic and international societies, is mutually reinforcing, and is of fundamental importance for this analysis. Let me give a brief example drawn from the area of water resource management, research on which has generated much of the reflection contained in this chapter.

The politics of discursive representation 47 For decades, specialists have debated the best ways to allocate and protect freshwater resources, such that they serve the various needs of people for drinking water, farmers for irrigation, power plants for hydroelectricity, fishers for a place for fish to swim, sailors and other leisure users for amenities, and (more recently) a wide variety of natural processes for environmental services. Hydrologists, ecologists, public health specialists, and most recently human rights activists have all developed advocacy positions on water issues. International institutions have long been involved in promoting new ideas in this area, beginning in the 1970s with the call for policies that enabled multiple use of water resources, and moving in the 1980s and 1990s to approaches that stressed property rights and decentralization. In Latin America, the CEPAL-sponsored 1978 Mar de Plata Conference and many subsequent ones promoted first multiple use, then decentralization of management to river-basin levels. At least from that time on, Brazilian specialists in the area frequented international conferences, brought these ideas back to their home institutions, and tried to influence national water policy in similar directions. For a variety of reasons their early efforts to rationalize Brazil’s rather chaotic water management systems failed. Beginning in the mid-1980s, a group of water engineers in São Paulo’s water management agency, working with social scientists and environmental planners both inside and outside the state, developed an unusual strategy for bringing about water reform. It involved the deliberate politicization of the issue, inviting pressure from societal actors inside Brazil and from international institutions, and making use of the prestige associated with foreign models. The water engineers and their allies mobilized several quite distinct networks in support of a model of water management that would meet two valued criteria. It was to be rational, that is, congruent with professional understandings of causal relations and cost-benefit optimization, and participatory, that is, responsive to the explicit inputs of a wide range of community representatives and stakeholders to the management process. The São Paulo water reform law was passed in 1991, and began to be implemented over the next decade. Subsequently, national and international networks involving some of the same individuals and institutions were involved in bringing about similar reform processes in other Brazilian states and at the federal level. The water reforms led to the creation of a variety of new decentralized formal organizations, whose composition varies from state to state but whose mandate is essentially the same: to coordinate a process of sectoral governance, in which the public interest is defined and negotiated among a mix of purportedly representative individuals chosen (in varying ways) from ‘relevant’ public and private-sector institutions and groups. This coordination process is both decentralized and continuous. It is decentralized because decisions about priority actions and investments for a particular river basin (or in a few cases another management unit) are taken in that basin or unit. It is continuous, because the governance regime in creation draws sustenance from a whole set of international ideas, institutions and practices in whose consolidation it in turn participates. In a number of Brazilian states, especially in the north-east, its creation relies almost entirely on international funding as well.

48 Margaret E. Keck

What is a governance regime? How can we identify and map the relations between relevant actors in an issue area? Where interactions across boundaries involve exchanges of ideas, influence, expertise and money, this can be a daunting task. The creation of institutional arrangements to facilitate coordination around particular problems involves substantive judgements about the definition of roles, as well as procedural choices about their occupants. If purposive action requires the collaboration of ‘stakeholders’, then there must be at least provisional agreement on what the stakes are, who holds them, and their relative weight. This, however, is not a technical determination; it is a highly political one, as any set of deliberations is likely to affect others, and the level at which deliberations occur becomes a crucial determinant of how issues are framed and stakes identified. Ideas are crucial. Blyth’s characterization (2002: 10) of the role of economic ideas is apropos here as well: Since structures do not come with an instruction sheet, economic ideas . . . [provide] . . . the authoritative diagnosis as to what a crisis actually is and when a given situation actually constitutes a crisis. They diagnose ‘what has gone wrong’, and thus ‘what is to be done’. In short, the nature of a crisis is not simply given by its effects, dislocations, or casualties, nor are the actions of agents simply determined by their ‘given’ interests. Instead, the diagnosis of a situation as a ‘crisis’ by a particular set of ideas is a construction that makes the uncertainty that agents perceive explicable, manageable, and indeed, actionable. In water management and in other policy areas with high levels of technical content, clearly ‘epistemic communities’ (Haas) of scientists and related professions are important. However, they are only part of the story. The ‘relevant’ actors in an international transaction must include everyone from a given sector whose collaboration is required for institutions and transactions to function smoothly, and everyone whose opposition might derail them. Drawing from liberal international relations theory, I call these intersections governance regimes. The idea of regime adopts the standard notion of a set of principles, rules, norms and decision-making procedures that govern relationships and cause expectations to converge in an issue area. The literature on governance varies by field, with differing levels of rigour. Nonetheless, everyone who uses the word does so to refer to a more fluid set of relationships between a broader set of actors than would normally pertain in the sphere of government, engaged in some kind of purposive activity. Certainly this is the notion of governance that accompanied the early development of regime theory. Governance may describe how public officials interact with private businesses, with NGOs, with informed individuals, and with whomever else seems able to advance a particular programme. In their introduction to a recent collection that uses the term in the title, Governance in a Globalizing World, Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye define governance as ‘the processes and institutions, both formal and informal, that guide and restrain the collective activities of a group’ (Keohane and Nye, 2000: 12).5 In their view,

The politics of discursive representation 49 government is a sub-set of governance. They understand it as ‘networked minimalism’ – networked to avoid the rigidities of hierarchy, and minimalist ‘because governance at the global level will only be acceptable if it does not supersede national governance and if its intrusions into the autonomy of states and communities are clearly justified in terms of cooperative results’ (14). This definition functions well if we are to understand global governance as something that stands over and above governments. When it falls down, however, is when we start to recognize that global governance relations are not necessarily mediated by national governments; they permeate society, through the structures of both private and public life. If transnational governance takes place not only ‘above’ but also within national societies, then we need something else. Students of urban politics have been pondering a similar set of questions for some time.6 The concept of urban governance allowed them to move beyond a discussion of local authorities and their relationship with the state, to consider diverse forms of vertical and horizontal coordination of public action, negotiation and legitimation. At the same time, ‘using the concept of urban governance contains within it an ambiguity as to local citizenship and forms of representation. It should be clear that use of this concept is not at all intended to minimize the problem of local democracy and local public space’ (Le Galès 1995: 63, translation mine). Le Galès associates the following developments with decentralization in France: reinforcement of efforts at agglomeration; the multiplication of public–private partnerships; an invisible process of privatization of urban services; the development of medium- to long-term strategic planning; giving priority to economic development; the multiplication of contractual relationships; the growing role of sectoral specialists; the multiplication of relationships with Brussels (the European Union) and other European cities; the increasing power of private groups (66–7). Similarly, in Britain he noted the emergence of a local, non-elected semi-public sector in a large variety of public management areas (housing associations, training enterprise councils, urban development corporations) (69). In other words, local government in Great Britain has become one organ among many that organize and manage public services for consumers. In trying to pin down the concept, Le Galès argues that the term governance is normally used either too narrowly (to refer only to its effects on political choices and public actions) or too broadly. He wants to specify the concept as follows: We should use the governance concept sociologically, defining it on the one hand, in terms of a capacity to integrate and give form to local interests, organizations, and social groups, and on the other hand, in terms of a capacity to represent these groups to the outside world, to develop more or less unified strategies vis-à-vis the market, the state, other cities, and other levels of government. (90, my translation) There is a reasonably close affinity between this characterization and the kinds of relationships that European social scientists describe as policy networks or policy

50 Margaret E. Keck communities, and that Heclo referred to as issue networks (and indeed Le Galès cites some of this work). Both sectoral agglomerations of policy networks and coalitions gathered together around urban governance are reconfiguring public–private and state–society relationships – indeed, are transforming the meanings attributed to these. A governance regime, then, is the set of rules, relations and practices that configure actor expectations and relevant relationships within an issue area, and that establish boundaries (not always successfully) between that issue area and others. Actors are powerful if they can make the rules and determine which relationships are relevant; the more ‘natural’ this process appears, the more powerful the rule-maker. Governance regimes facilitate links between international and domestic politics when internationally accepted rules and standards govern domestic practices within a particular issue area. Who are the relevant actors in a governance regime? Where such a regime is instantiated in an institution or set of institutions – the Human Rights Commissions of the United Nations and other international organizations, the World Trade Organization – the relevant actors are those whose roles are recognized in the causal story (Stone 1989) on which the institution’s actions are based. These would include human rights organizations and human rights violators, lawyers and forensic scientists – organizations and individuals selected because of their particular expertise and because of their positions in networks in which the institution also figures. These are purposive organizations; the relevant actors, in principle, are those who participate in carrying out – or undermining – the organization’s mission. The existence of a transnational governance regime makes transnational resources and opportunities available to both state and societal actors in any given nation-state, sometimes in the process altering their positions within their own societies. Within a governance regime, groups in a society may be ‘recognized’ as relevant by transnational or international actors despite the fact that outside of the issue area covered by such governance arrangements, they may remain as powerless as before. This is a crucial trait, and I will come back to it later on. The most common way for a governance regime to be assimilated into a polity is through international treaties and covenants – e.g. on human rights, on intellectual property, on trade, on weights and measures, through professional norms and ideas, or through the promotion by powerful international actors of cross-cutting policy formulas. Of the latter, by far the most important for the current discussion are decentralization and privatization. During a governance regime’s formative period, there may be considerable jockeying for power between a wide array of domestic and international actors; we can see this now in the area of genetic resources. Efforts to insert the new advances in genetics within existing governance regimes – trade, intellectual property and the never very institutionalized practices of the food regime provoked by the green revolution – have failed when these proved entirely inadequate to deal with new challenges. What are important to note are the concurrent debates taking place in both domestic and international arenas, and the very fuzzy boundaries between the two. Important as well is that recognizing that governance regimes are incapable of

The politics of discursive representation 51 regulating genetic resources not only calls into existence efforts to generate new arrangements, but provides an opportunity to raise new questions about the ones that have proved inadequate. Governance regimes may be more or less open, depending on the way that ‘expertise’ is defined within them. Where relevant knowledge is restricted (or is claimed to be restricted) to a small group of cognoscenti, we may say that the governance regime is relatively closed; where local knowledge is deemed important, we can say that it is quite open. In more open governance regimes, it is easier for social movements and other claimants to demand (and win) a place at the tables where issues are discussed. In fact, the contest over what kinds of knowledge are relevant to a particular issue area is probably the crucial political struggle in shaping the associated institutional forms. Shifts in relationships between actors, changing norms and practices, reinterpretation of old practices in new ways – all of these grant a great deal of weight to ideas. First, new ideas identify and explain the problem in a particular way consequently and point towards particular kinds of solutions, and, second, through these ideas and the narratives produced from them we understand where we fit amidst these changes. The centrality of ideas is such that in the kinds of advisory or stakeholder councils that are typical of this form of governance, the seats are defined according to ideas about what should be represented. These may be contested: the battle over who will sit at the table is waged first in the realm of ideas, and only afterwards, if then, in the realm of bodies. Why in state environmental councils might there be seats allocated to environmental organizations, but not to community development organizations? It certainly does not reflect the numbers of people involved in each. It does involve a set of ideas about what an environmental council is and what it should do, and for the community development organization to win a seat on the council, it would have to fight for a redefinition of the council’s role. Because these ideas do not necessarily rely on the numbers of their supporters for their persuasive power, the kinds of associations that represent them can as easily be expressive in nature as representative in a more traditional sense. This explains the increasingly large role played by the voluntary sector – or NGOs (non-governmental organizations) in this kind of activity. What are represented in such advisory or stakeholder councils, then, are not so much organizations as ideas or positions – the stakes, in fact. Where seats at the table are allocated to particular sectors, as they normally are, there may even be meetings of organizations and/or individuals within the sector to choose representatives to sit on the council. These representatives may well not have a mandate to make binding agreements on behalf of the agencies or organizations in whose name they speak. This is discursive representation – whose primary purpose is to make audible the multiplicity of voices whose presence at the table is recognized as appropriate or necessary for deliberation to take place. Yet in their sectoral format, and often their formally defined functions as well, these bodies look very much like neo-corporatist arrangements, which similarly bring together the relevant actors within a particular realm of activity either in a consultative or a deliberative capacity (Streeck and Schmitter 1985). In their most

52 Margaret E. Keck authoritative form, neo-corporatist arrangements have typically brought labour and management organizations together with one or more state agencies. However, unlike those organizations, these councils lack the power to make binding agreements on behalf of their members that ‘representation’ used to imply. Instead, they constitute a kind of thin corporatism, where representation is of ideas rather than bodies, is discursive rather than mandated, and the expected output of discussion or negotiation is normative consensus rather than binding agreement. We might call them idea-brokers or agenda-setters; this is the work of governance. Further, they may promote collaborative practices among the organizations represented (Oberg 2002). What is striking, however, is the degree to which political actors and even some analysts refer to these bodies as if they were able to fulfil the functions that fully corporatist representation of stakeholder interests could do.

Implications for transnational activism Theorists working the borderlands between comparative politics and international relations have adopted various terms to discuss, on the one hand, the participation of non-state actors in international politics and, on the other, the use by domestic actors of international resources to influence politics at home (Tarrow 1998). Following work in the 1970s on transnational relations, and in the 1980s on epistemic communities, recent work on transnational activism has focused on pressure groups, advocacy networks and global civil society. Increasingly, NGOs and multilateral institutions proclaim the importance of the representation of ‘civil society’ in a wide variety of international and internationally influenced policy settings. However, what is meant by that term is not always the same thing. In Activists beyond Borders (Keck and Sikkink 1998a), Kathryn Sikkink and I focused on a sub-set of transnational activists, who create networks in order to collect and use information strategically. Their goal is to influence international institutions, and through them domestic states, to change their policies and behaviour. We referred to these as transnational advocacy networks, and found characteristic patterns to their activity. Among these was what we called the boomerang pattern. This is used when the citizens of a particular country, because of repression or their own weakness, are unable to influence the government of their own country, and join with an advocacy network. Members of this network then work to convince an international organization or a third party state to put pressure on the target state, either to correct abuses or to give its own citizens a hearing. The boomerang occurs when activists reach outside their own countries to gather strength to influence domestic politics. Subsequent studies by other scholars have explored these patterns further (Risse and Sikkink 2000; Guidry et al. 2000; Khagram et al. 2002; Bob 2001). Although Sikkink and I conceived of advocacy networks as including individuals from within governments and international organizations, as well as non-state actors, we attributed a central role to non-governmental organizations. At the same time, other scholars wrote of transnational social movements, as in the case of Jackie Smith and her colleagues 1997), or of global civil society (Wapner 1996; Lipschutz 1996; Edwards and Gaventa 2001). Indeed, the very idea of a global civil society has

The politics of discursive representation 53 inspired the formation of transnational organizations like CIVICUS (De Oliveira and Tandon 1994). But although social movement theory has provided unexpectedly robust tools for understanding the actions of transnational activists, theories that draw too neat a separation between societies and their states are even more problematic in the transnational sphere than they are domestically. Much of the writing on global civil society seems to fall into this category. In both domestic and international politics, the role of activist is not reserved for actors within civil society; highly motivated, principled individuals and groups located inside state institutions frequently initiate, support and ensure the continuity of campaigns to change practices, policies or institutions. Often they do this in collaboration with partners in civil society, but they do not always do so. The simple fact that large numbers of state employees go home at night and participate, along with their fellow citizens, in a multiplicity of social and political associations that by any definition are part of civil society illustrates the complexity of the problem. Similarly, a portrayal of the international system that evokes images of layers seems to me fundamentally inaccurate. The picture of a growing layer or sphere of civil society, for example, in which citizens and their associations gradually gain power over their lives, fomenting new cultural and political possibilities and identities, counterposed to a layer involving the world of states, with the world of international organizations occupying a somewhat ambiguous position in between, is attractive, perhaps even serves to mobilize people. But from a purely descriptive standpoint, and even more from an analytical one, it is simply wrong. However important it remains for democratic theory, a dichotomous view of state and civil society does not give us analytical purchase over what we see in many transnational relationships – or even, in fact, in domestic ones. There are too many state functionaries strategizing together with NGOs, social movement organizations, professional organs, foundations, and other allies, and there are too many societal actors strategizing against them. What binds these people together – what identifies them as participants in the same process? Although differently located individuals may be linked through shared values, or by shared professional beliefs or commitments, they may also be linked through practice – through awareness of participation in related problem-solving activities. Because their goals are not always the same, the process frequently involves competition and conflict, and not just collaboration – but it is the same process, and they are engaged in the same conversation. In the case of Brazilian water-sector reformers, for example, differently motivated individuals formed a strategic alliance to advance both values and professional goals by promoting institutional change, in a context significantly enabled by international developments in the sector. This did not mean that they reached agreement on particular remedies, but they began to build a common context within which to argue about them. One source of theoretical ambiguity in the discussion of civil society is the conflation of two discourses: one in which civil society is primarily understood as a sphere of political freedom and deliberation (hence a potential sphere of democratization), and one in which it is primarily understood as a sphere of private activity.

54 Margaret E. Keck The two conceptions share a belief in the potential of civil society organizations to generate innovative solutions to problems, create more flexible and reliable information pathways, and – often for quite different reasons – to do the job better than state agencies would do. However, in one conception, the measure of success is inclusiveness; in the other, it is effectiveness. In the development of stakeholder councils in the context of new governance regimes, this discursive ambiguity has, ironically, been a resource that has enabled less powerful actors to press for inclusion. How did that happen? Many important theorists writing about civil society from the 1980s on took their cues from political actors – in the case of Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato, for example, from the Polish intellectuals who developed an explicit idea of civil society as a sphere of freedom, as a location for political life apart from the state, in which the seeds of a new and democratic society could be built. Similarly, the multiple contributions by Latin Americans and Latin Americanists to writing on civil society were formed out of the so-called ‘explosion of civil society’ in the near simultaneous transitions to democracy in the region. The importance of political events in these regions, and elsewhere, catapulted what had been terminology reserved for political theory into everyday political language. During the same period, the term entered the vocabulary of what is euphemistically called the ‘development community’. It entered some parts sooner than others: the Inter-American Foundation, for example, with its stress on grass-roots development, was an early champion of civil society. By the 1990s, however, the term was adopted by development actors not traditionally focused on grass-roots development, that is, the multilateral lending institutions. Organizations like the World Bank, under fire for projects that had not dealt adequately with environmental damage and/or refugee resettlement, embraced (sometimes cynically and sometimes quite genuinely) the notion of the ‘participation’ of civil society in development initiatives. At the very least, stakeholder councils could serve as a form of early warning when other such projects were going awry; at best, they could provide valuable information and input. Increasingly, projects and programmes financed by the World Bank and other multilateral agencies needed to have mechanisms that encouraged the participation and/or representation of civil society groups. Clearly, the real weight of such associative organizations is highly variable. Some are little more than window-dressing, and others have seized the opportunity to bring new levels of deliberative practice into public management. The expectation – sometimes even a mandate – that such organs will be created says very little about the practices they will develop. The establishment of governance institutions to facilitate negotiations between state agencies, private economic actors, and other interested parties (including organizations claiming to speak in the name of a diffuse public interest) does not eliminate the huge power disparities that continue to exist among these – though by changing the setting in which these are played out, it opens opportunities for reframing issues and reshaping alliances. Nonetheless, purposive actions in functional areas do not take place in a vacuum; they are influenced by – and in turn influence – other fields of power, whether functionally or territorially based.

The politics of discursive representation 55 International organizations may play a crucial role, but it may be quite contradictory. The actions of the World Bank in water management reform in Brazil’s north-east are an excellent example of this. The bank and other international financial institutions have provided significant funding in the past for irrigation works in the drought-prone region. During the 1990s, the World Bank began to require reforms in the system of water management as a condition for continued lending in this area. It thus provided crucial backup for professionals who were pushing for rationalization, and in some cases insisted on the creation of associative river-basin governance institutions when state government officials were reluctant to implement these. However, implanting the template of associative governance institutions in this region involved very high levels of intervention from the outside: in the absence of water users’ associations which could occupy seats on a stakeholder council, for example, World Bank money was sometimes used to hire consultants to organize them. The idea that both state and civil society should – and could – be reorganized in order to make a new resource management model function in ways that were technically rational, ecologically sound, and even democratic, is a startling, but not atypical, example of a sort of technocratic optimism. Interestingly enough, it is a technocratic optimism as common among NGOs as it is among World Bank officials. The establishment of representative bodies whose function is to aggregate discursive positions rather than translate the full weight of aggregated preferences lends itself to this kind of activity, in which individuals, groups and communities are asked to become organized in order to fill pre-established roles, instead of defining those roles in the process of becoming organized. When institutional forms are imported and implanted in this way, it is not very surprising when they do not work exactly as expected. However, it does not follow that they do not work at all. In different settings, new institutional arrangements are appropriated by local actors in different ways. A great deal more work needs to be done on how and why similar forms established for similar purposes lead to quite different outcomes. For transnational activism, governance regimes and their affinity for discursive representation present an opportunity and a danger. The increasing vogue for associative organs that facilitate information-sharing and problem-solving among a wide variety of actors presents an opportunity to ‘amplify the voices’ of those groups and sectors they wish to support – be they rubber-tappers or indigenous populations, or business associations and think-tanks promoting privatization. Sharing information and experiences among individuals and organizations involved in solving similar problems in different countries enriches the debate, facilitates the spread of new ideas, and helps to empower groups that might not otherwise have access to such information. The danger is that the standardization of particular templates of roles and positions that ought to be present in such representational processes fails to recognize very significant differences between actors assumed to be homologous, their insertion in local realities, and the characteristics of the settings in which they act. Transnational activists ignore the specificity of local political realities at their peril.

56 Margaret E. Keck

Conclusions Despite our growing recognition of the importance of transnational influences of all kinds in domestic politics, our political analyses still suffer from the shortcomings in perspective imposed by disciplinary and sub-disciplinary divides. We have many very good studies of transnational networks of experts – knowledge brokers of various kinds – dedicated to the diffusion of particular policy models in specific areas. However, we tend still to be satisfied with linking international with domestic networks of experts, showing at best the existence of transnational policy communities. While an important first step, this analysis should be taken much further. To remain focused on the policy-brokers themselves is to maintain an artificial separation between the dissemination of ideas and their assimilation into institutions in new settings. What do domestic policy entrepreneurs in these new settings do with the ideas, and what happens to them in contexts that may be quite different from the ones where they originated? International relations scholars frequently see this part of the analysis as out of their purview, while for comparative politics scholars it is too often the only part of the story that matters. Both of these partial perspectives are likely to miss important elements in the story. When ideas spread by transnational knowledge-brokers enter domestic settings, the linkages between domestic and international settings do not disappear; quite often they grow stronger over time. International models are political tools for domestic actors in national political contests; quite often there are multiple, interconnected games going on in which the different interests and goals of international and domestic actors are tacitly negotiated in concrete settings. Within domestic contests, there are frequently international actors involved on all sides of a dispute. International NGOs, professional associations, multilateral lending agencies and foreign governments, as well as other international actors, are significant domestic actors in the politics of a great many countries, as Douglas Chalmers has pointed out in his work on internationalized domestic politics. But this does not mean that domestic actors are passive recipients of a variety of international inputs; on the contrary, domestic actors actively court and make use of the resources and alliance possibilities brought to them from abroad to advance their own struggles. This continuity of the international–domestic politics linkage, as part of politics within the domestic institutions and processes of specific countries (and feeding back into the international system through learning) requires a great deal more study. The water case shows quite clearly that the spread of governance regimes in policy areas is not simply the imposition of a set of ideas on a recipient setting. In Brazil, a federal system where there is significant regional variation in political, as well as socio-economic characteristics, decentralization of water management essentially means the negotiation of a more or less common set of policy ideas into a very wide range of existing policy and political practices. Participation by stakeholders, as called for by the model, means something very different in different settings, depending on local political and social organization, on the strength of existing political and social networks, and on the variety of problems to be addressed. This opens up a huge range of possible outcomes. Or take the case of neighbouring

The politics of discursive representation 57 Bolivia, where privatization of the water management concession occurred without attention to the ‘participatory’ dimensions of the international model being diffused. In 2000, civic unrest in Cochabamba actually succeeded in overturning the contract between Bechtel and the Bolivian government. Although a variety of international institutions had supported the water privatization scheme, on the side of its opponents were arrayed Global Exchange and other transnational advocacy groups; the leader of the rebellion was awarded the Letelier-Moffit Human Rights Award in 2000 and the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2001. The latter example also points to the permeability of boundaries of governance regimes. As internationalized policy arenas, they are more vulnerable than other domestic policy arenas to boomerang-style campaigns (Keck and Sikkink 1998a), and to the involvement of a variety of international actors. While proponents of particular policy choices generally base their arguments on technical criteria, it is rarely the technical criteria that determine the success or failure of policy implementation (except, of course, where bad technical choices are involved). Instead, it is the extent to which policy ideas become politically embedded, through the commitment of networks of significant actors in the settings where they are to be carried out, that make the most difference. Here, the consensus-building potential of associative organs is one of the most interesting aspects to investigate of this new development pattern. This chapter proposes to investigate globalization from the bottom up. To date, in the rhetoric of globalization studies, this has tended to mean a concentration on the global linkages of those without conventional sources of political power. While that is an important piece of the story, as I have argued in previous work (Keck 1995, Keck and Sikkink 1998), it is not the only part. Instead, studying the whole range of networks at work in the political organization of internationalized policy areas – in governance regimes, in fact – can help us to understand better the micro-level deployment of global power resources. This, in turn, requires another kind of theoretical labour that we have not yet done very well. We are hard pressed to understand the interactions between conventional aspects of a policy process (which remain central) and less conventional governance arrangements (which occur concurrently, often in the same policy arenas). What is the relationship between the actions of federal, state and local elected governments, in both their legislative and executive functions, and those of sectoral consultative or decision-making bodies, for example, involved in water management or local development initiatives or AIDS policy? How do government agencies ‘represent themselves’ in governance bodies? How does the fact that the same individuals occupy multiple social locations – in the state, in professional networks, in social and family networks – influence their capacity to affect policy change and mobilize support for new ideas? Policy analysis tends to fall short in examining sectoral issues in isolation from each other, something that rarely gives us enough information about the web of political and social relations in which policymakers are embedded. One important research strategy is to trace the relationship between allocation of functions and of funding. Another is to develop a better understanding of the

58 Margaret E. Keck network positions of technical personnel and of NGO activists. In most countries, technical positions of authority result from political appointments. Policy entrepreneurs in technical areas are embedded in networks of political relationships, which affects their ability to mobilize support within the state, and of social and professional relationships, which affect their ability to win allies in civil society and other state institutions. Those who study NGOs and global knowledge networks too often abstract them from the concrete settings from which they have emerged, and which continue to shape their ideas and behaviour – to say nothing of their political capacity to act. What we need, in short, is more consistent dialogue between the writers in and readers of World Politics and World Development, of journals of sociology, public administration, comparative politics, and international organization, of the kinds of books published by Cornell and by Kumerian Press. The NGOs and think-tanks, the engineering firms, World Bank consultants, development agency personnel and university professors who espouse particular kinds of policies do indeed inhabit the same political world as city council members and trade union activists and political party committees and agency secretaries occupying their positions as patronage appointments. One would never know it, from the articles that appear in either political science or development journals. Until we place them in the same world, however, our understanding of globalization is not going to scratch the surface.

Notes 1 This work was begun during a year spent as visiting scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (2000–1). For comments on earlier versions I thank Ken Conca, Daniel Deudney, Andrew Selee and Richard Stren. For their contributions to an ongoing discussion of which this is a part, I thank Rebecca Abers and other members of the research team of the Watermark Project. Research support also came from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s grant to the Watermark Project, for collaborative research in new approaches to governance in the context of rapid globalization. 2 Although the US is not the world leader in executions (China is, by far), activists consider it the most vulnerable to pressure (Grovogui and Keck 2001). 3 I am indebted to Daniel Deudney for this term, which replaces the more awkward ‘semirepresentation’ that I used in an earlier version. 4 I have replaced the term identity, used in an earlier version, with categorization and selfunderstanding, after having been convinced by Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper (2000) that constructivists have been making the term identity do so much work that it has lost much of its analytical purchase. 5 Those ideas, in turn, are developed more in the third edition of their co-authored classic, Power and Interdependence. 6 I am grateful to Richard Stren for pointing out this work to me.

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The politics of discursive representation 59 Bob, C. (2001) ‘Marketing Rebellion: Insurgent Groups, International Media, and NGO Support’, International Politics 38 (September): 311–34. Brubaker, R. and Cooper, F. ( 2000) ‘Beyond “Identity”’, Theory and Society 29: 1–47. Burt, R.S. (1992) Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ——(2002) ‘Bridge Decay’, Social Networks 24: 333–63. Campbell, J.L. (2002) ‘Ideas, Politics and Public Policy’, Annual Review of Sociology 28: 21–38. Clemens, E.S. and Cook, J.M. (1999) ‘Politics and Institutionalism: Explaining Durability and Change’, Annual Review of Sociology 25: 441–66. De Oliveira, M.D. and Tandon, R. (coordinators) (1994) Citizens: Strengthening Global Civil Society, World Assembly Edition, Washington, DC: CIVICUS. Dezalay, Y. and Garth, B.G. (1996) Dealing in Virtue: International Commercial Arbitration and the Construction of a Transnational Legal Order, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Diani, M. (1995) Green Networks – A Structural Analysis of the Italian Environmental Movement, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Edwards, M. and Gaventa, J. (eds) (2000) Global Citizen Action, Boulder: Lynne Rienner. Emirbayer, M. and Goodwin, J. (1994) ‘Network Analysis, Culture, and the Problem of Agency’, American Journal of Sociology, 99(6): 1411–54. Evans, P. (ed.) (1997) State–Society Synergy, Berkeley: University of California at Berkeley, International and Area Studies. Giddens, A. (1984) The Constitution of Society, Berkeley: University of California Press. Gould, R. (1991) ‘Multiple Networks and Mobilization in the Paris Commune, 1871’, American Sociological Review 56 (December): 716–29. Granovetter, M. (1973) ‘The Strength of Weak Ties’, American Journal of Sociology 78(6) (May): 1360–80. Grovogui, S.N. and Keck, M.E. (2001) ‘Terms of Endearment, Rules of Engagement’, paper presented at Columbia University Conference on Political Uses of Human Rights, 8–9 November 2001. Guidry, J.A., Kennedy, M.D. and Zald, M.N. (eds) (2000) Globalization and Social Movements: Culture, Power, and the Transnational Public Sphere, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Haas, P. (1992) ‘Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination’, Knowledge, Power and International Policy Coordination, special issue, International Organization 46 (Winter): 1–36. Hall, P. (1986) Governing the Economy, New York: Oxford University Press. Jepperson, R.L. and Meyer, J.W. (1991) ‘The Public Order and Formal Institutions’, in Walter W. Powell and P.J. DiMaggio (eds) The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 183–203. Keck, M. (1995) ‘Political Equity and Environmental Politics in Brazil: Lessons from the Rubber Tappers of Acre’, Comparative Politics 27 ( July). ——(2001) ‘Water, Water Everywhere, Nor Any Drop to Drink: Land Use and Water Policy in São Paulo, Brazil’, In P. Evans (ed.), Livable Cities, Berkeley: University of California Press. Keck, M.E. and Sikkink, K. (1998a) Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ——(1998b) ‘Transnational Advocacy Networks in a Movement Society’, in D. Meyer and S. Tarrow (eds) Towards a Movement Society? Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Keohane, R.O. and Nye, J.S. (1977) Power and Interdependence. World Politics in Transition, Boston: Little, Brown and Co. ——(2000) ‘Introduction’, in Joseph S. Nye and John D. Donahue (eds) Governance in a Globalizing World, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.

60 Margaret E. Keck Khagram, S., Riker, J.V. and Sikkink, K. (eds) (2002) Restructuring World Politics: Transnational Social Movements, Networks, and Norms, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Le Galès, P. (1995) ‘Du gouvernement des villes à la gouvernance urbaine’, Revue Française de Science Politique 45(1) (February): 57–95. Lin, N. (2001) Social Capital: A Theory of Social Structure and Action, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lipschutz, R.D. (1996) Global Civil Society and Global Environmental Governance: The Politics of Nature from Place to Planet, Albany: State University of New York Press. Meyer, J.W. and Rowan, B. (1977) ‘Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony’, American Journal of Sociology 83(2): 340–63 (reprinted in Powell and DiMaggio 1991, pp. 41–63). Oberg, P. (2002) ‘Does Administrative Corporatism Promote Trust and Deliberation?’, Governance 15(4) (October): 455–75. Ostrom, E. (1999) ‘Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development’, in Michael D. McGinnis (ed.) Polycentric Governance and Development: Readings from the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, pp. 346–76. Powell, W.W. and DiMaggio, P.J. (1983) ‘The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields’, American Sociological Review 48 (April): 147–60 (slightly modified version published in Powell and DiMaggio 1991, pp. 63–80). ——(eds) (1991) The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Risse, T. and Sikkink, K. (eds) (2000) The Power of Human Rights, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ruggie, J.G. (1998) Constructing the World Polity: Essays on International Institutionalization, London: Routledge. Sewell, W.H., Jr. (1992) ‘A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation’, American Journal of Sociology 98: 1–29. Smith, J., Chatfield, C. and Pagnucco, R. (eds) ( 1997) Transnational Social Movements and Global Politics: Solidarity Beyond the State, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Soja, E.W. (1989) Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory, London: Verso. Stark, D. (1996) ‘Recombinant Property in East European Capitalism’, American Journal of Sociology 101(4) ( January): 993–1027. Stone, D.A. (1989) ‘Causal Stories and the Formation of Policy Agendas’, Political Science Quarterly 104(2): 281–300. Streeck, W. and. Schmitter, P.C. (1985) ‘Community, Market, State – and Associations? The Prospective Contribution of Interest Governance to Social Order’, European Sociological Review 1(2) (September): 119–38. Suchman, M. and Edelman, L. (1997) ‘Legal Rational Myths: The New Institutionalism and the Law and Society Tradition’, Law and Social Inquiry 21: 903–41. Tarrow, S. (1998) ‘Fishnets, Internets, and Catnets: Globalization and Transnational Collective Action’, in M. Hanagan, L. Page Moch, and W. te Brake (eds) Challenging Authority: The Historical Study of Contentious Politics, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, Ch. 15. Tendler, J. (1997) Good Government in the Tropics, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Wapner, P. (1996) Environmental Activism and World Civic Politics, Binghamton, NY: SUNY Press. Wejnert, B. (2002) ‘Integrating Models of Diffusion of Innovations: A Conceptual Framework’, Annual Review of Sociology 28: 297–326.

4

Transnational activism, institutions and global democratization1 Jackie Smith

Introduction Social movements have been crucial historical catalysts of democratizing processes within countries. Their work has led to the political enfranchisement of women and other excluded groups, to the legal articulation and protection of democratic rights such as free speech and assembly, and to the promotion of state structures that help ensure greater public access and accountability (Markoff 1996; Tarrow 1998; Tilly 1984). Given their importance to the emergence of large-scale political democracy, we can expect that social movements and the organizations that promote them will be central to the contemporary efforts to democratize global institutions. Democratization at the global level suggests that global institutions must be more transparent, more accountable to citizens, and more open to varying forms of citizen access and participation. Indeed, a key theme in the massive protests at global trade and financial meetings has been the demand for greater transparency and accountability – that is, democracy – in these organizations. As is also true in the historic record, states have resisted social movements – often violently – and they have generally adopted only narrow reforms that serve to quell mass protests without introducing meaningful changes (Gamson 1990). This chapter takes up two important discussions in the contemporary debates about globalization and popular participation in politics. First, it examines existing evidence about the organizational foundations of transnational social movement activism and their prospects for ongoing efforts to promote democratization at a global level. Second, it asks what recent responses by authorities to global mobilizations and protests tell us about the future prospects for greater citizen involvement in global political processes.

Organizing for global action Just as national-level efforts to promote democratization required social movement challengers to expand their scales of organizing beyond their immediate locales, globalization demands that challengers organize across national boundaries (see Smith, Chatfield and Pagnucco 1997). One indicator of such organizing activity is the presence of a sub-set of international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) that focuses explicitly on social change goals. Such organizations have been referred

62 Jackie Smith to as transnational social movement organizations or TSMOs (Smith 1997; Kriesberg 1997). My earlier work has examined the changes in the organizational environment in which global activists operate (e.g. Sikkink and Smith, 2002; Smith 1998), and this work has shown dramatic increases in the numbers of transnational social change organizations since the mid-20th century. Although TSMOs are not the only actors involved in social movements that cross national borders, they are important in shaping such movements, because they bring activists together for the explicit purpose of coordinating social change efforts (Smith 2002a). They thereby create opportunities for activists to learn about each others’ experiences, to develop shared frames through which to interpret their grievances, and to cultivate shared commitments to certain sets of values, ideas and organizations (see, e.g., Bandy 2001; Sperling et al. 2001). By routinizing information flows between activists in disparate parts of the world, TSMOs help link global political processes with citizens working at more local levels. They thereby serve as necessary (but not sufficient) infrastructures for a more transparent and participatory global system. Trends in the transnational social movement sector show continued growth in the numbers of formal TSMOs during the 1990s. This growth, however, has slowed somewhat from earlier periods, even though we might expect that the end of the Cold War and expanding agendas of international institutions would have led to even stronger TSMO growth. It remains to be seen whether the slower growth will continue, and if it is the result of a ‘saturation effect’ in the population of transnational SMOs, or whether its cause lies elsewhere. Nevertheless, by 2000 we had identified more than 900 transnational SMOs, up from around 700 groups in the early 1990s. Table 4.1 summarizes the different issues on which TSMOs focused their efforts. We find here that human rights remains the major issue around which the largest numbers of TSMOs organize, and throughout the period a quarter of all groups have Table 4.1 Issue focus of transnational social movement organizations (%) 1983 N = 348

1993 N = 711

2000 N = 959

Groups with Asian participants (2000)

Human rights Environment Peace Women’s rights Development Global justice/ environmental sustainability Ethnic unity/liberation

26 12 11 7 4

28 18 11 9 7

26 17 10 9 10

22a 15 11 9 11

4 7

4 3

11 2

10b 3

Multi-issue organizations

12

12

17

15b

Source: Yearbook of International Associations. Notes a T-test comparison of means between TSMOs with and without Asian members significant at 0.10 level. b T-test comparison of means between TSMOs with and without Asian members significant at 0.05 level.

Transnational activism, institutions, democratization 63 continued to work principally on this issue. This is not surprising, as human rights provide the foundation for all forms of political association and organizing by citizens. And human rights is by its nature transnational, since it establishes a notion that human beings have identities and rights that are independent of national laws and citizenship. The environment has attracted growing attention since the early 1970s. Also, between 1983 and 2000, development issues motivated a larger percentage of transnational SMOs. Another robust trend we see in the 1990s is a shift towards more multi-issue organizing by TSMOs. The percentage of groups organizing around a broad global justice/environment frame grew from just 4 per cent in the early 1990s to 11 per cent by 2000. And when we distinguish between groups that are clearly focused on a single issue and those that address multiple issues, we see a similar expansion from 12 to 17 per cent. An apparently declining transnational social movement industry is ethnic unity/ liberation. The most recent period again saw a decline in the absolute numbers of such TSMOs from 27 to 16. This can signal two very different trends. One is that these types of movements are adopting more militant, illicit tactics and therefore are less likely to report their activities in the Yearbook. Another possibility is that ethnic struggles are being framed in ways that allow groups to take advantage of opportunities in international institutions. For instance, groups like the Federal Union of European Nationalities or the World Council of Indigenous Peoples may help focus the efforts of multiple different ethnic groups around the aim of using global institutions to protect minority groups’ rights against infringements by states and other actors. About half of the groups working to promote indigenous peoples’ rights were formed during the 1980s, suggesting that larger numbers of new activists are attracted to this way of framing their conflicts. Another organizing frame that may be displacing the ethnic unity/liberation one is the anti-racism/minority rights frame. Half of the groups listing this as a key goal were formed after 1980, and onequarter were formed during the 1990s. Peace issues continued to be the focus of organizing for a consistent percentage of groups, despite the dramatic changes in the geopolitical situation following the Cold War. And women’s issues are also the focus of a consistent percentage of TSMOs. When we compare the issue focus of groups that have members from any Asian country with those organized wholly outside Asia, we find a few important differences, and these help shed light on the underlying political dynamics that affect transnational organizing. Among Asian countries, we find significantly lower rates of participation in transnational human rights and economic justice TSMOs. The average number of human rights TSMOs claiming members in Asian countries was 24, compared with 36 for all other countries. For economic justice groups, the averages were 12 for Asian countries and 16 for all others. These differences were statistically significant at the < 0.05 level. Participation ranged from a high of 299 (India) to a low of 15 TSMOs (Maldives). In only 5 of the 19 Asian countries for which we have data do we find at least the overall average numbers of TSMOs present, and these include India, Japan, Sri Lanka, Thailand and South Korea. These patterns were replicated for IGO participation, so countries with high rates of

64 Jackie Smith TSMO activity also tended to be more integrated into intergovernmental organizations and international human rights treaties. Asian regimes, of course, differ tremendously in their levels of political openness and in their relationships to the global economy. Some might interpret the comparatively lower Asian participation in transnational human rights activity as support for the notion that Asian cultures relate less clearly to Western-oriented human rights norms.2 However, the relatively small difference here as well as the wide variation in the relative political openness of Asian governments suggests that other factors might better explain this pattern. Moreover, the recent economic disruptions in Asian countries might lead us to expect people there to be relatively more active on economic justice matters. Also, case studies of transnational mobilizations show that Asian activists and organizers, including leaders like Walden Bello, Vandana Shiva or Martin Khor and groups like People’s Global Action (with a very strong Indian base) or Focus on the Global South (based in Bangkok), are key leaders and participants in the global movement (Smith 2002a). Social movement scholarship points to the importance of national political institutions for shaping the character and vibrancy of national social movement sectors. Thus, we should consider possible associations between levels of democratic openness and the rates of national participation in transnational social movement organizations. If citizens of a country are guaranteed few rights of political association and expression, we should expect them to be under-represented within transnational SMOs. Table 4.2 displays bivariate correlations between rates of participation in Table 4.2 Correlations of national TSMO participation: culture vs. domestic and international political opportunity structures Asian country Democracy Human rights treaty No. IGO No. TSMO Economic justice Human rights

–0.100 –0.222** –0.295** –0.132 –0.138 –0.139

Democracy

0.248** 0.358** 0.536** 0.522** 0.533**

Human rights treaty

No. of IGOs

No. of TSMOs

Economic justice

0.293** 0.366** 0.335** 0.373**

0.770** 0.724** 0.772**

0.969** 0.986**

0.947**

Notes ‘Democracy’ reflects the measures of regime type/levels of political openness from data collected by Jaggers and Gurr (1995). ‘Human rights’ indicates the number of human rights treaties ratified, as reported in the United Nations Human Development Report (2001). The variable is continuous, with a low of 1 (Oman) and a high of 6 (59 per cent of all the countries). The human rights treaties counted in this variable are the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965); the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966); the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966); the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979); the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984); and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989). ‘No. of IGOs’ and ‘No. of TSMOs’ reflect the number of intergovernmental and international nongovernmental organizations, respectively, in which a country is represented. This measure comes from the Yearbook of International Associations, as do the measures of participation in transnational SMOs of various types. **Correlation coefficient is significant at the 0.01 level.

Transnational activism, institutions, democratization 65 TSMOs and measures of democratic openness3 and national integration into the global polity, including the numbers of intergovernmental organizational memberships and the numbers of human rights treaties ratified by a country. Table 4.2 provides robust support for the argument that participation in transnational social movement organizations is conditioned by both domestic political opportunities, measured in terms of government respect for citizens’ rights of political association and expression, and by the extent to which a country is integrated into the global political arena. On the whole, Asian countries were relatively less democratic than countries of other regions, and they were also significantly less integrated into intergovernmental organizations and the international human rights treaty system. At the same time, we find very strong and significant correlations between participation in TSMOs, including the more contentious economic justice and human rights TSMOs, and democratic openness and international integration. Thus the low rate of Asian participation in TSMOs is best explained by structural rather than cultural factors. Moreover, we can expect that changes in the overall levels of transnational activism are more closely related to levels of democratization and global political integration than to cultural or regional differences. The results above, in short, show that globally we see a growing and diverse transnational social movement sector that is dramatically different from that of earlier decades. Not only are there more SMOs active in the transnational arena, but these organizations are becoming more active and integrated. We have less detailed quantitative information about the activities taking place within TSMOs, but the recent explosion in research and writing about transnational advocacy campaigns suggests that transnational cooperation and exchange has expanded along with the numbers of TSMOs (see, e.g., Clark 1995; Clark, Friedman and Hochstetler 1998; Fox and Brown 1998; Keck and Sikkink 1998; O’Brien, Goetz, Scholte and Williams 2000; Price 1998; Smith, Chatfield and Pagnucco 1997). The data available in the Yearbook allow us to measure some changes in the intensity of transnational organizing, such as the geographic scope of organizations and their connections with other actors in their environments. Table 4.3 presents these data. This table reveals consistent increases in transnational organizing activity, when measured in terms of formal and informal links with international agencies, ties to other NGOs, and the numbers of countries in TSMO memberships. While the variation across groups is substantial, overall levels of connection with other actors in their environments have increased. The most dramatic increases were in the extent to which TSMOs cultivated ties with other NGOs. In the early 1980s, the average number of NGOs with which a TSMO reported contacts was just around one, but by 2000 the average TSMO reported connections with nearly seven other NGOs. And whereas the average number of contacts with intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) was just over one in the early 1980s, the average grew to more than three IGOs by 2000. TSMOs also appeared more likely to attain formal consultative status with IGOs in recent years. This trend may be the result of the numerous global conferences that the United Nations sponsored during the 1990s, which created opportunities for TSMOs and other NGOs to focus their energies around an international conference and allowed them to learn about IGO processes

66 Jackie Smith Table 4.3 Intensity of transnational organization Formal consultation status with IGOs

Mean no. of NGO links Median (s.d.)

Mean no. of IGO links Median (s.d.)

Mean no. of countries with members Median (s.d.)

1983

34%

0.98 0 (1.85)

1.26 0 (1.90)

31.02 23 (26.03)

1993

36%

4.88 2 (7.28)

2.39 1 (4.37)

33.24 23 (29.45)

2000

42%

6.85 4 (8.98)

3.15 2 (5.36)

35.58 23 (33.01)

TSMOs with Asian participants (2000)

47%a

8.25b

3.95b

N/A

Source: Yearbook of International Associations. Notes a T-test comparison of means between TSMOs with and without Asian members significant at 0.05 level. b T-test comparison of means between TSMOs with and without Asian members significant at 0.01 level. s.d. = standard deviation.

and initiate formal connections with the UN. UN conferences are also, and perhaps more importantly, sites where extensive networking among activists takes place (see, e.g., Krut 1997; Willetts 1989). Again, we compare the groups that have participation from Asian countries with those organized outside Asia to find that groups that include Asian members had significantly more ties with both non-governmental and intergovernmental organizations. They were also significantly more likely to maintain consultative status with at least one international agency. These differences were sustained (though with slightly reduced significance levels) when I removed from the analysis those groups that spanned all continents.4 Explanations for this difference may be that Asia includes the world’s largest democracy, India, which is known for its strong voluntary sector. Its distance – both cultural, linguistic and geographic – from the European centre of global institutions may also make Asian activist organizations more dependent upon transnational ties in order to enhance their potential impact. One additional measure of the intensity of TSMO activity is the frequency of general membership meetings in TSMOs. We only have these data for the most recent period, so we cannot compare this measure over time. However, one would expect the frequency of meetings to increase as transportation and communication technologies reduce the costs of both remote and face-to-face group decision-making (see Lai, this volume). Given the nature of reporting procedures in the Yearbook of International Associations, we cannot tell whether the meetings a group reports are faceto-face or by video or telephone conference, although we assume most refer to direct interpersonal meetings. Of the 441 groups that reported information about their meetings for 2000, 36 per cent reported holding annual meetings, and more than 60

Transnational activism, institutions, democratization 67 per cent reported holding at least bi-annual meetings. Twenty-four per cent reported either tri-annual or quadrennial meetings. An additional 15 per cent reported less frequent meetings or an irregular meeting schedule. Because they involve direct interaction among activists from numerous countries, transnational organization meetings typically involve extensive consultation and negotiation about group identities and strategies. Therefore, TSMO member meetings are important sites of transnational organizing work. Interviews with activists and observations of international meetings reveal that they serve as important learning experiences for activists, and much time is spent exchanging information about local experiences and sharing accounts of how global forces affect local conditions (Krut 1997; Reimann 2002; Caniglia 2002). Next, we look briefly at the regional distribution of TSMO activity. Table 4.4 displays the levels of TSMO organization in the major global regions, as well as the distribution of memberships and headquarters between the global North and South. Table 4.4 shows that Western Europeans and North Americans comprise the major components of TSMO memberships. This does not seem to have changed much during the 1990s and, if anything, the Northern and Western representation is increasing as a percentage of all TSMO memberships. Looking at the location of TSMO headquarters, we also find that Western Europe and North America are over-represented, with more than two-thirds of all TSMO headquarters located in those regions. This is an aspect which links up with Lindquist’s discussion of the centrality of place (this volume). The percentage of TSMO headquarters in the global South declined during the 1990s, but the absolute numbers has grown by 20 per cent since 1993, from 167 to 199 organizations. Asian countries are represented in just over one-half of all TSMO memberships, and they are home to less than 10 per cent of all TSMOs. While further analysis of country-level participation is needed, it appears that the TSMO sector has not been able to overcome the global North–South divide in terms of generating more equitable patterns of participation. Table 4.4 Regional differences in TSMO participation Region

% of TSMOs with members in region

% TSMO headquarters

1993 (N = 544)

2000 (N = 743)

1993 (N = 705)

2000 (N = 947)

Western Europe North America Latin America Asia Africa Pacific Eastern Europe Middle East

84.4 66.5 60.5 59.9 58.6 51.8 49.6 42.1

85.7 61.6 56.5 56.3 59.8 45.2 56.4 40.2

58.3 14.2 6.0 7.6 6.9