Contention and Institutions in International Politics (lecture 10)

Question 1

this paper argues that

Answer 1

mass-based transnational social movements are hard to construct, are difficult to maintain, and have very different relations to states and international institutions than more routinized international NGOs or activist networks

Question 2

questions around declining Westphalian state

Answer 2

• is this cyclical (meaning that states will be renewed, get higher capacity)
• is this gap filled by forms of nonterritorial institutional governance?
• is it providing space for social movements and other nongovernmental forms of collective action
• is it a combination of all three?

Question 3

three cautions / lessons from history

Answer 3

1. states remain dominant in most areas of policy (e.g. domestic security + borders)
2. transnational organizations and contention appeared well before globalization, thus their increase must rely on mechanisms other than today’s version of economic interdependence
3. social movements, transnational networks, and NGOs are not the only agents operating transnationally (states play a key international role)

Question 4

realist paradigm IR

Answer 4

IOs are merely instruments of governments, and therefore unimportant in their own right

Question 5

world politics paradigm (alternative to the realist paradigm)

Answer 5

• introduced by Nye and Keohane

transnational activity: contacts, coalitions, and interaction across state
boundaries that are not controlled by the central foreign policy organs of governments

later definition of them = transnationalism: international activities of nongovernmental actors

Question 6

transgovernmental actors (Nye and Keohane)

Answer 6

sub-units of governments on those occasions when they act relatively autonomously from higher authority in international politics

Question 7

international organizations (Keohane and Nye)

Answer 7

multilevel linkages, norms, and
institutions between governments prescribing behavior in particular situations

Question 8

unfortunately narrowing effects Keohane and Nye

Answer 8

1. most scholars focused mainly on transnational economic relations and on multinational corporation -> little attention to political and humanitarian transnational organizing
2. they only recognized transnational contention under narrow heading of the diffusion of ideas and attitudes (disjuncting it from international pluralism)
3. emphasis on free-wheeling transnational interaction -> impression that transnational activity occurs at the cost of states

Question 9

international pluralism (Keohane and Nye)

Answer 9

the linking of national interest groups in transnational structures, usually involving transnational organizations for purposes of coordination

Question 10

from the old transnationalism to the new transnationalism

Answer 10

• sociological institutionalism
• domestic structures and transnational relations
• the normative turn

they helped provide a bridge between international relations and the field of contentious politics

Question 11

sociological institutionalism - Meyer and the Stanford School

Answer 11

Transnational isomorphism: Institutions and norms are observed in widely dispersed parts of the world

Meyer detached this phenomenon from capitalism, he saw it as part of a global process of rationalization

Meyer + Stanford school mostly focused on mapping isomorphism rather than understanding the mechanism of diffusion

mostly focus on commonalities of norms and institutions across states
- less contribution to understanding of social mechanisms and political processes that connect actors transnationally

Question 12

domestic structures and transnational relations - Risse-Kappen

Answer 12

main focus on domestic structures

Risse-Kappen revived attention to transgovernmental politics (beyond economics: institutions)

brought two changes:
1. attempted to deal with the intersection between transnational relations and domestic structure
2. advanced a more normatively charged concept of transnational relations

“Under similar
international conditions, differences in domestic structures determine the variation
in the policy impact of transnational actors”
-> to gain impact, transnational actors must gain access to the political system of their target state and then contribute to winning policy coalitions

Question 13

3 main weaknesses ‘‘domestic structure’’ argument of Risse-Kappen

Answer 13

1. extremely generic: including elements as general as political culture, openness and pluralism
2. couldn’t predict why some transnational actors succeed while others fail in the same context
3. made no clear distinctions between different types of transnational actors

Question 14

the normative turn + possible drawbacks

Answer 14

norm = standard of appropriate behavior for actors with a given identity

idea that norms have an autonomous role in structuring international debate + interests are formed by learning, norm diffusion and identity shift

potential drawbacks:
- considerable amount of transnational activity is driven by material interests
- it isn’t always clear where norms are lodged
- assumption of normative consensus is challenged by the often-contested nature of international norms
- if norms are more than the result of contingent coalitions of interest, it will have to be shown that they are actually translated into state policies

it is good at mapping changes in world culture, but not in understanding them

Question 15

creative work that has grown out of normative turn

Answer 15

1. Transnational normative consensus can result in international agreements capable of constraining state behavior
2. International normative agreements could create political opportunities for domestic actors living under governments which would otherwise be reluctant to tolerate dissidence
3. Even where international normative consensus was lacking, strong states could endow international institutions with the authority to enforce behavior consistent with these norms
4. Norms could contribute to the construction of new identities, which in some cases could bridge national identities, providing a normative basis for transnational coalitions or principled issue networks

Question 16

contentious transnational politics
main sources in real-world politics

Answer 16

1. grassroot insurgencies that framed their claims globally and sought international support
2. international protest events that brought coalitions of transnational and national groups together against highly visible targets (e.g. WTO, IMF)
3. successes of some transnational activist coalitions against some national states
4. activism of INGOs within and around international institutions

Question 17

contentious transnational politics
- development transnational relations scholars and social movement scholars (interested in contention)

5 groups

Answer 17

• focus on development of wide spectrum of nonstate actors who organized transnationally
• focus on particular movement families (e.g. peace movement, human rights and democratization, the environment, conflicts over dam construction, immigrant rights, indigenous peoples’ movements)
• focus on organizations (particular, in aggregate or transnational networks of them)
• focus on international treaties where nonstate actors were legitimized and supported or played an important role
• focus on particular binational or regional contention in the context of international agreements or institutions

! these different groups have some overlaps

Question 18

transnational politics and contentious politics
marriage -> problems

Answer 18

focus on ‘‘good’’ movements + often saw states as the hostile to transnational actors + definition of globalization + social movement as lobbying, communication and educational and service activity if they were observed at home

definition globalization: fusion of the various meanings

adoption of the concept had two unfortunate effects:

1. fostering insensitivity to the regional (and not global) scope of much transnational activity
2. producing a conceptual confusion between the global framing of an activity and the empirical scope of the activity

Question 19

categories of transnational actors

Answer 19

• transnational social movements
• International Nongovernmental Organizations
• Transnational Activist Networks

Question 20

transnational social movements`

Answer 20

socially mobilized groups engaged in sustained contentious interaction with powerholders in which at least one actor is either a target or a participant

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.

Question 21

international nongovernmental organizations

Answer 21

trends: growing founding rate and declining rate of dissolution

organizations that operate independently of governments, are composed of members from two or more countries, and are organized to advance their members’ international goals and provide services to citizens of other states through routine transactions with states, private actors, and international institutions

Question 22

Boli and Thomas: 3 descriptions international nongovernmental organizations

Answer 22

1. transnational bodies exercising a special type of authority we call rational voluntarism
2. groups whose primary concern is enacting, codifying, modifying and propagating world-cultural structures and principles
3. the entrie population of INGOs classified as genuinely international bodies by the Union of International
   Associations (all not-for-profit, non-state organizations)

Question 23

main distintion INGOs and social movements

Answer 23

• INGOs: engage in routine transactions + provides services to citizens of other states
• social movements: sustained contentious interaction with actors

Question 24

transnational activist networks (TANs)
definition + problems

Answer 24

Keck and Sikkink:
actors working internationally on an issue, bound by shared values, a common discourse. and dense exchanges of information and services
- operate in normative areas

logic of coalition building and deployment of power of third-party states or international institutions

research problems:

1. unclear how they see TANs relating to the existing state system
2. mostly focused on normative oriented TANs (unclear if the same expectations are met with material interested TANs)
3. unclear if TANs are occasional or if they are becoming the core of transnational social movements
4. unclear how TANs relate to international institutions

Question 25

transnational advocacy networks vs social movements and INGOs

Answer 25

transnational advocacy networks can contain social movements and INGOs, it is not an alternative to them

Question 26

international institutions argument/hypotheses

Answer 26

1. economic and cultural trends create objective reasons for a growth in transnational actors, objective interests or conflicts on their own don’t (due to weakness/absense: social networks outside people’s omgeving + transnational collective identities + mechanisms to compete with the political opportunities of national polities)
2. internal incentives for transnational activism: states create international institutions to serve collective interest and monitor behavior
3. institutions create external incentives for transnational activism to legitimize their existence
4. internal and external incentives combine to create a cosmopolitan, transnational, activist elite that staffs INGOs
5. elites form alliances with states, institutions and domestic social movements to form transnational activist networks
6. influence of TANs encourages domestic groups to adapt their norms + frame their own claims around issues that are domesticated from international politics
7. transnational social movements are formed only as domestic social movements from different countries become aware of their common interests + encounter one another through institutions

Question 27

how does the argument from transnational institutions differ from the ‘‘global civil society’’ thesis?

Answer 27

1. it specifies an increase of international convention through resources, incentives and opportunities of international institutions (not directly through globalisation)
2. offers an explanation for the wide variations we see between sectors of transnational activity (the more international institutionalization, the greater impact of transnational actors)
3. it makes the growth of transnational activism problematic and nondeterministic

Question 28

an institutional approach to transnational contention

Answer 28

the role of international institutions: form horizontal connections among activists with similar claims across boundaries (as a kind of coral reef)

suggests mechanisms though which international actors can find each other + cooperate:

1. brokerage: making connections between otherwise unconnected domestic actors
2. certification: recognition of identities and legitimate public activity
3. modeling: adoption of norms, forms of collective action or organization
4. institutional appropriation: use of institutions’ resources or reputation

Question 29

remaining questions

Answer 29

• how independent of institutions and states INGO activists can be in national settings
• how INGO activists relate to domestic social movements
• what the analytical stakes are in this growing area of research: if the research is defined clearly and consistently, this branch of research may answer the question if we are moving toward nonterritorial governance

Question 30

why does the distinction between international relations and domestic politics really need to be challenged?

Answer 30

because global civil society will not result from domestic groups moving outward from their societies and replacing government with governance,
but from the activities of state-created international institutions, stimulated by transnational activists, reflecting on domestic contention, institutions, and identities

Question 31

writer

Answer 31

Sidney Tarrow

Question 32

lecture
- what made IR scholars and social movement theorists realize they were working on the same subject?

Answer 32

four empirical phenomena

1. grassroots insurgencies: frame claims globally, seek support across the globe
2. international protest events (e.g. Battle of Seattle)
3. transnational activist coalitions against some national states
4. activism of INGOs within and around international institutions and international treaty writing

Question 33

lecture
- objectives

Answer 33

westphalian state is in decline:

is it cyclical?
are states being replaced by non-territorial institutional governance?
will social movements fill in the void?
is it a combination of these three?

Question 34

against global civil society thesis for the growth of transnational activism
- lecture

Answer 34

1. international institutions create transnational reactions
2. international instittions need to legitimize themselves though transnational civil society
3. international institutions forms a cosmopolitian elite
4. TANs are formd from elites and social movements
5. TANs influence domestic politics
6. in the long term

!mobilizing effect of international organizations policies -> transnational movements

Question 35

international institutions as ‘‘coral reef’’
- lecture

Answer 35

international institutions are the ‘‘magnet’’ for transnational movements to mobilize

!!institutions are created by states