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Power and Transnational Activism

This book focuses on global activism and uses a power perspective to provide an
in-depth and coherent analysis of both the possibilities and limitations of global
activism.
Bringing together scholars from IR, sociology and political science, Power and
Transnational Activism offers new and critical insights on global activism and
power. It features case studies on the following social and political issues: China
and Tibet, HIV/AIDS, climate change, child labour, the WTO, women and the
United Nations, the global public sphere, regional integration, national power,
world social forums, policing, media power and global civil society. This volume
provides a balanced and critical discussion of strengths and weaknesses, oppor-
tunities and limits, in transnational activism. Addressing power from a plurality
of theoretical perspectives within IR and political sociology, the analysis provides
vital reflections on the understanding of activism and the understanding of the
current globalization process and its challenges.
Exploring the scope and limits of transnational activist power in the era of
globalization, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of globaliza-
tion, global sociology and international politics.

Thomas Olesen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science,


University of Aarhus, Denmark.
Rethinking Globalizations
Edited by
Barry K. Gills, University of Newcastle, UK

This series is designed to break new ground in the literature on globalization and its academic and popular
understanding. Rather than perpetuating or simply reacting to the economic understanding of globalization,
this series seeks to capture the term and broaden its meaning to encompass a wide range of issues and disci-
plines and convey a sense of alternative possibilities for the future.

1. Whither Globalization? 15. Rethinking Insecurity, War and Violence


The vortex of knowledge and globalization Beyond savage globalization?
James H. Mittelman Edited by Damian Grenfell and Paul James
2. Globalization and Global History 16. Recognition and Redistribution
Edited by Barry K. Gills and William R. Thompson Beyond international development
Edited by Heloise Weber and Mark T. Berger
3. Rethinking Civilization
Communication and terror in the global village 17. The Social Economy
Majid Tehranian Working alternatives in a globalizing era
Edited by Hasmet M. Uluorta
4. Globalization and Contestation
The new Great Counter-Movement 18. The Global Governance of Food
Ronaldo Munck Edited by Sara R. Curran, April Linton, Abigail
Cooke and Andrew Schrank
5. Global Activism
Ruth Reitan 19. Global Poverty, Ethics and Human Rights
The role of multilateral organisations
6. Globalization, the City and Civil Society in Desmond McNeill and Asunción Lera St. Clair
Pacific Asia
Edited by Mike Douglass, K.C. Ho and Giok Ling Ooi 20. Globalization and Popular Sovereignty
Democracy’s transnational dilemma
7. Challenging Euro-America’s Politics of Adam Lupel
Identity
The return of the native 21. Limits to Globalization
Jorge Luis Andrade Fernandes North–South divergence
William R. Thompson and Rafael Reuveny
8. The Global Politics of Globalization
“Empire” vs “cosmopolis” 22. Globalisation, Knowledge and Labour
Edited by Barry K. Gills Education for solidarity within spaces of
resistance
9. The Globalization of Environmental Crisis Edited by Mario Novelli and Anibel Ferus-Comelo
Edited by Jan Oosthoek and Barry K. Gills
23. Dying Empire
10. Globalization as Evolutionary Process U.S. imperialism and global resistance
Modeling global change Francis Shor
Edited by Geroge Modelski, Tessaleno Devezas and
William R. Thompson 24. Alternative Globalizations
An integrative approach to studying dissident
11. The Political Economy of Global Security knowledge in the global justice movement
War, future crises and changes in global governance S. A. Hamed Hosseini
Heikki Patomäki
25. Global Restructuring, Labour and the
12. Cultures of Globalization Challenges for Transnational Solidarity
Coherence, hybridity, contestation Edited by Andreas Bieler and Ingemar Lindberg
Edited by Kevin Archer, M. Martin Bosman, M.
Mark Amen and Ella Schmidt 26. Global South to the Rescue
Emerging humanitarian superpowers and globaliz-
13. Globalization and the Global Politics of ing rescue industries
Justice Edited by Paul Amar
Edited by Barry K. Gills
27. Global Ideologies and Urban Landscapes
14. Global Economy Contested Edited by Manfred B. Steger and Anne McNevin
Power and conflict across the international division
of labor 28. Power and Transnational Activism
Edited by Marcus Taylor Edited by Thomas Olesen
Power and Transnational
Activism
Edited by
Thomas Olesen
First published 2011
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada


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© 2011 Thomas Olesen for selection and editorial matter; individual


contributors for their contribution

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and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
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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


Power and transnational activism/edited by Thomas Olesen.
   p. cm. —(Rethinking globalizations; 28)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Globalization. 2. Transnationalism. 3. Civil society. 4. Social action—
International cooperation. 5. Social movements—International cooperation.
I. Olesen, Thomas, 1969–
JZ1318.P675 2011
322.4—dc22 2010022534

ISBN 0-203-83665-0 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN13: 978–0–415–55369–8 (hbk)


ISBN13: 978–0–203–83665–1 (ebk)
Contents

List of illustrations vii


Notes on contributors ix
List of abbreviations xiii

Introduction: power and transnational activist framing 1


Thomas Olesen

PART I
Critiques and appraisals 21

1 Counter-power in the global age: strategies of civil


society movements 23
ulrich beck

2 Evading the challenge: the limits of global activism 34


David Chandler

3 Coordinated power in contemporary leftist activism 51


Ruth Reitan

PART II
The state and the national 73

4 The limits of power and protest: civil society 75


mobilization against North American integration
Jeffrey Ayres

5 State power and the control of transnational protests 91


Donatella della Porta and Herbert Reiter
vi   Contents
  6 China and the limits of transnational human rights activism: 111
from Tiananmen Square to the Beijing Olympics
Caroline Fleay

  7 State-led social boundary change: transnational environmental


activism, ‘ecoterrorism’ and September 11 130
Shannon Gibson

  8 National origin and transnational activism 151


Sarah Stroup

PART III
Representation and discourse 171

  9 The representational power of civil society organizations


in global AIDS governance: advocating for children in
global health politics 173
Anna Holzscheiter

10 Global justice movements and the mass media: conceptual


reflections and empirical findings 190
Dieter Rucht

11 Taming of the shrew? International women’s NGOs,


institutional power and the United Nations 214
Jutta Joachim

12 AID(S) politics and power: a critique of global governance 232


Håkan Thörn

Conclusion: transnational counter-publics and democracy 252


Thomas Olesen

Index 262
Illustrations

Figures
  5.1  Explanations of transnational protest policing 103
  7.1 Sequence of mechanisms causing and constituting
social boundary change in the case of environmental
activism and ecoterrorism 145
10.1 Distribution of press releases of Attac and media coverage,
2000–2008 198
10.2  Globalization and related topics in the newspaper
die tageszeitung 201
10.3  Evaluation of the protesters in German newspapers 205

Tables
  8.1  The international charitable sector in three countries 159
  8.2  Variation in INGO structure and strategy 163
10.1  Distribution of Indymedias 196
10.2  Investigated conflicts 200
10.3  Quantitative coverage of five conflicts in German newspapers 202
10.4  The foci of reports in German newspapers by conflict 203
10.5 Mentioning of aspects of globalization by conflict in
German newspapers 204
10.6 The foci of German and Czech newspaper articles on the
Prague event 206
contributors

Jeffrey Ayres (PhD from University of Wisconsin, Madison) is Professor and


Chair of the Department of Political Science at Saint Michael’s College, in
greater Burlington, Vermont. He is the author of Defying Conventional Wisdom:
Political Movements and Popular Contention Against North American Free
Trade (Toronto, 1998) and co-editor and contributor to Contentious Politics in
North America: National Protest and Transnational Collaboration Under
Continental Integration (Palgrave Macmillan).

Ulrich Beck is Professor of Sociology at the University of Munich and the


British Journal of Sociology Professor at the London School of Economics and
Sciences. His most recent research activities include a long-term empirical study
of the sociological and political implications of ‘reflexive modernization’, which
explores the complexities and uncertainties of the process of transformation from
first to second modernity. Specifically, he is working on a sociological framework
to analyse the ambivalences and dynamics of ‘cosmopolitan societies’.

David Chandler is Professor of International Relations, Centre for the Study of


Democracy, University of Westminster. He is the founding editor of the Journal
of Intervention and Statebuilding. His recent books include International
Statebuilding: The Rise of Post-Liberal Governance (Routledge, 2010), Hollow
Hegemony: Rethinking Global Politics, Power and Resistance (Pluto, 2009) and
Empire in Denial: The Politics of Statebuilding (Pluto, 2006).

Donatella della Porta is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Political and


Social Sciences at the European University Institute. Her main research interests
concern social movements, political violence, terrorism, corruption, police and
policies of public order. Among her recent publications are Democracy in Social
Movements (Palgrave, 2009); Social Movements and Europeanization (Oxford
University Press, 2009) (with M. Caiani) (ed.); Another Europe (Routledge, 2009);
Approaches and Methodologies in the Social Sciences (with Michael Keating)
(Cambridge University Press); Voices From the Valley; Voices From the Streat
(with Gianni Piazza) (Berghahn, 2008); The Global Justice Movement (Paradigm,
2007) (with Massimiliano Andretta, Lorenzo Mosca and Herbert Reiter).
x   contributors
Caroline Fleay (PhD) is a Lecturer at the Centre for Human Rights Education at
Curtin University, Western Australia. Her research interests are human rights in
Australian policy, human rights in China and refugee rights. Caroline is also
active in human rights practice, most recently in the areas of women’s rights and
refugee rights in Australia. She is the author of Australia and Human Rights:
Situating the Howard Government (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010).

Shannon Gibson is a Doctoral Candidate in International Relations at the


University of Miami, where she received her MA degree in 2006. She is also
affiliated with the university’s Leonard and Jayne Abess Center for Ecosystem
Science and Policy. Her dissertation explores recent cycles of protest and radical-
ization within the global environmental and climate justice movements. As a
scholar–activist, she is a researcher with the Global Justice Ecology Project and
has conducted participant observation at the World Social Forum in Brazil, the
G20 in Pittsburgh and the COP15 climate change negotiations in Denmark.

Anna Holzscheiter is currently working as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the


London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, conducting research on competi-
tion and collaboration in the global governance of AIDS. Before that, she worked
as an Assistant Professor at the Center for Transnational Relations, Foreign and
Security Studies at Freie Universitaet, Berlin (2006–07), where she is currently on
leave. Anna is the author of A Commentary on the United Nations Convention on
the Rights of the Child: Article 20 Children Without Parental Care (co-authored
with Nigel Cantwell) (Leiden: Brill, 2008) and ‘Discourse as Capability: Non-
State Actors’ Capital in Global Governance’, Millennium 33:3 (2005).

Jutta Joachim is an Associate Professor with the Institute of Political Science at


the Leibniz University of Hannover, Germany. She has received an MA in inter-
national studies from the University of South Carolina and her PhD in political
science from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She is the author of Agenda-
Setting, the UN and NGOS: Gender Violence and Reproductive Rights (Georgetown
University Press) and the co-author of International Organizations and
Implementation: Enforcers, Managers, Authorities? and Transnational Activism
in the UN and the EU: A Comparative Study (both Routledge).

Thomas Olesen (PhD) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political


Science, University of Aarhus, Denmark. His research interests are social move-
ments, media, solidarity and globalization. Publications include International
Zapatismo: The Construction of Solidarity in the Age of Globalization (London:
Zed Books, 2005). He is currently working on two research projects: one on
solidarity movements, distant issues and globalization in Denmark in the period
from 1945 to 2008 and another on global activism and communication.

Ruth Reitan (PhD in International Relations, American University, Washington,


DC) is an Assistant Professor in the University of Miami’s Department of
contributors   xi
International Studies, where she teaches and researches on international relations
theory, critical globalization, transnational social movements and the World Social
Forum process. She is the author of two books on transnational activism, Global
Activism (Routledge, 2007) and The Rise and Decline of an Alliance: Cuba and
African American Leaders in the 1960s (Michigan State University, 1999). She is
part of the scholar–activist Network Institute for Global Democratization (NIGD),
member of the World Social Forum’s International Council.

Herbert Reiter is a Visiting Scholar at the Department of History and Civilization


at the European University Institute. Among his recent publications are
Globalization From Below (The University of Minnesota Press, 2006) (with
Donatella della Porta, Massimiliano Andretta, Lorenzo Mosca and Herbert
Reiter) and The Policing of Transnational Protest (Ashgate, 2006) (with Donatella
della Porta and Abby Peterson).

Dieter Rucht is Professor of Sociology and Co-director of the research group


‘Civil Society, Citizenship and Political Mobilization in Europe’ at the Social
Science Research Center Berlin. His research interests include political participa-
tion, social movements and political protest. Among his recent books in English are
(together with Lee Ann Banaszak and Karen Beckwith, eds): Women’s Movements
Facing the Reconfigured State (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 2003);
(together with Wim van de Donk, Brian D. Loader and Paul Nixon, eds):
Cyberprotest: New Media, Citizens and Social Movements (London: Routledge,
2004). Rucht was and is involved in several research projects, among these the
EU-funded project on ‘Democracy in Europe and the Mobilization of Society’.

Sarah Stroup is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Middlebury College. She


received her PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley
and her BA from Dartmouth College. Her current book project, tentatively titled
Borders Among Activists, explores how national environments in the United
States, Britain and France shape the practices of human rights and humanitarian
INGOs.

Håkan Thörn is Professor of Sociology at the Department of Sociology and at


the Centre of Globalization and Development (GCGD), University of Gothenburg,
Sweden. His research mainly deals with social movements and globalization,
and he has written and co-edited several books on these topics, including Anti-
Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil Society (Palgrave Macmillan,
2006; Second Edition, 2009) and The Politics of AIDS: Globalization, the State
and Civil Society (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, co-edited with Maj-Lis Follér).
Abbreviations

AETA Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act


AIDS Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome
ALBA Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas
AOSIS Alliance of Small Island States
ART Alliance for Responsible Trade
ARVs Anti-Retroviral Drugs
CAN Climate Action Network
CARE Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere
CC Climate Collective
CCMs Country-Coordinating Mechanisms
CCP Chinese Communist Party
CEDAW Committee on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against
Women
CJA Climate Justice Action
GJMs Global Justice Movements
CJN Climate Justice Now!
CONGO Conference of NGOs
CRC UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
CSO Civil Society Organization
CSW Commission on the Status of Women
CUSFTA Canada–US Free Trade Agreement
CWGL Center for Women’s Global Leadership
DAW Division for the Advancement of Women
DAWN Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era
ECOSOC Economic and Social Council
EJM Environmental Justice Movement
EU European Union
FAO Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN
FTAA Free Trade Area of the Americas
GFATM Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria
GHG Global Health Governance
GONGO Government-Owned Non-Governmental Organization
GWOT Global War on Terror
xiv   Abbreviations

HIV Human Immunodeficiency Virus


HSA Hemispheric Social Alliance
ICAE International Council of Adult Education
ICPD International Conference on Population and Development
IGO International Governmental Organization
ILGA International Lesbian and Gay Association
ILO International Labor Organization
INSTRAW International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of
Women
IOC International Olympic Committee
IPPF International Planned Parenthood Federation
IWHC International Women’s Health Coalition
IWTC International Women’s Tribune Center
LDCs Least Developed Countries
MGJ Mobilization for Global Justice
MOFA Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan
MSF Médecins Sans Frontières
MSIs Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives
NACC North American Competitiveness Council
NAFTA North American Free Trade Agreement
NGO Non-Governmental Organization
NPO Non-Profit Organization (Japan)
OECD Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
OHCHR Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
OVC Orphans and Vulnerable Children
PCN Pro-Canada Network
PEPFAR President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief
PETA People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
PIC Public Interest Corporations (Japan)
PLWHA People Living with HIV and AIDS
PMTCT Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission
PPPs Public–Private Partnerships
RBAs Rights-Based Approaches
RMALC Red Mexicana de Acción frente al Libre Comercio
RQIC Common Frontiers and Réseau québécois sur l’intégration continentale
R/R Radical/Revolutionary
RUP Association reconnaissance d’utilité publique (France)
SPP North American Security and Prosperity Partnership
UNAIDS Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS
UNCHR United Nations Commission on Human Rights
UNFCCC United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
UNFPA UN Population Fund
UNIFEM UN Development Fund for Women
USAID United States Agency for International Development
Abbreviations   xv
WCC World Council of Churches
WEDO Women, Environment, and Development Organization
WHO World Health Organization
WIDF Women’s International Democratic Federation
WILPF Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
WTO World Trade Organization
WYWCA World Young Women’s Christian Association
Introduction
Power and transnational activist framing1
Thomas Olesen

Introduction
As the United States and its allies in the war on terror prepared for war in Iraq in
early 2003, millions of people took to the streets all over the world on 15 February
in what is probably the largest simultaneous protest event in human history
(Walgrave and Rucht 2010; Walgrave and Verhulst 2009). but to no avail. The
United States chose to ignore the chorus of protesters and proceeded to invade
Iraq. Almost 7 years later, in December 2009, thousands of activists descended
on Copenhagen to pressure the world’s political leaders to take decisive and
legally binding action on climate change. For a week, activists of all stripes
turned a winter-cold Copenhagen into a hotspot of activism (Reitan, this volume).
The climate deal that emerged from the COP15 meeting was, nevertheless, a
disappointment for activists who had hoped to make a difference there.
These events have a dual meaning that sets the scene for the volume. Both
demonstrate how transnational activism has become a force to be reckoned
with.2 The ability to coordinate events of this magnitude and mobilize thousands,
if not millions, of people is testimony to the emergence of a vibrant sector of
transnational activists and transnational counter-publics (see the concluding
chapter for an elaboration). However, the events also display the limits of activ-
ist power and the continued power of states (Ayres, this volume; della Porta and
Reiter, this volume; Fleay, this volume). Despite the enormous mobilizing effort
and success, activists failed to achieve what they wanted: no war and a strong
climate deal. The protests were, at one and the same time, major successes and
huge failures. No matter which interpretation is preferred, these events and out-
comes invite us to pause and ask a range of critical questions about transnational
activists: if they exercise power, what kind of power is it? And what are its lim-
its and (unintended) consequences? These are the questions that have motivated
this volume and its contributors (see below for presentations). The present vol-
ume is the first attempt to forge a systematic discussion on aspects of power and
transnational activism.
In this chapter, I address the problematic through an exploration of two key
concepts in social movement research: Framing and political opportunity. Framing
points to activists’ communication and persuasion strategies (Gamson 1995;
2   Thomas Olesen
Snow and Benford 1988, 1992; Snow et al. 1986; see Benford and Snow 2000;
Noakes and Johnston 2005; Polletta and Ho 2006 for reviews). When activists
succeed in these efforts, they affect public debates and, through that, play a part
in shaping and changing norms, values, opinions and agendas: They exercise
communicative power! However, to paraphrase Marx in the 18th Brumaire, they
do not do so under conditions of their own choosing. These structural conditions
for activism are at the centre of political opportunity theory. Authors in this tradi-
tion have identified a number of external factors shaping the emergence and
course of activism, for example, conflicts within the ruling elite, changes in gov-
ernment, regime change and the historical traditions of state–activist interaction
(Kriesi et al. 1995; McAdam 1982, 1996; Meyer 2004; Meyer and Minkoff 2004;
Tarrow 1998; Tilly 1978).
In the past 10–15 years, scholars have sought to transcend the national orienta-
tion in early theories on framing and political opportunity (for framing: see e.g.
Joachim 2003; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Olesen 2005; Smith 2002; Tsutsui 2006;
for political opportunities: see e.g. Maney 2002; Sikkink 2005; Smith et al.
1997a; Tarrow 2001, 2005). However, these works have insufficiently integrated
framing and political opportunity theories with relevance for the study of trans-
national activism. In this chapter, I wish to move in that direction by emphasizing
the discursive dimension of transnational activists’ opportunities and constraints
and, hence, power. In their comparative analysis of discursive opportunity struc-
tures in Germany and the United States, Ferree et al. (2002: 62) define these as
‘all of the institutional and cultural access points that actors can seize upon to
attempt to bring their frames into the public forum’.3 Despite being developed
with the national level in mind, the concept has significant yet unexplored poten-
tial for improving our understanding of transnational activism and power. The
challenge is twofold: First, how might we conceive discursive opportunity struc-
tures in a transnational context? Second, where do they come from, who creates
them and how do they change?
It is a recurring argument in the literature that transnational activists’ main
power resource is their ability to initiate and shape public debates on moral and
political issues (Beck, this volume; see also the next section for a discussion and
critique of this approach). Although I accept the basic thrust of this argument, I
wish to explore how transnational framing always unfolds within a transnational
discursive opportunity structure.4 A key argument is that states play a prominent
role in defining this structure, particularly through their securitization (see below
for elaboration) of issues and events (Buzan et al. 1998). Placing states in this
central position makes it possible to condense the chapter’s central argument:
That there is a close and complex relationship between the political and discur-
sive dimensions of the transnational opportunity structure, which in turn influ-
ences activists’ transnational framing efforts in significant ways. Tackling this
issue is admittedly ambitious. The answers given below are, thus, theoretically
explorative. The chapter consequently offers a tentative step towards integrating
key insights from International Relations theory (i.e. securitization theory) with
political sociological approaches (i.e. framing and discursive opportunities).
Introduction   3
Combining theories in the way outlined above enables an exploration of both
the light and dark side of transnational activist power – as already indicated by
the opening empirical illustrations. It is the volume’s general ambition, as well,
to provide a balanced and critical discussion of strengths and weaknesses, oppor-
tunities and limits, in transnational activism. Much of the literature on transna-
tional activism since its inception the mid-1990s has been optimistic and rather
celebratory in tone. It is my conviction, however, that if transnational activists are
to maintain and perhaps even expand their role and relevance in domestic and
transnational politics, they – as well as the scholars who study them – must
engage in continuous critical self-reflection on the character of their power.
Raising questions of this nature is not meant to denigrate transnational activism
or to provide ammunition for those who see it as an undesirable disturbance and/
or epiphenomenon. Rather, hopefully, the volume could provide a ‘provocative’
intellectual toolbox for activists and scholars striving to improve their under-
standing of transnational activist power and, through that, to expand the academic
and political space for such activism (this discussion is continued in the conclud-
ing chapter, which explores activists’ contribution to democracy in contemporary
domestic and transnational politics).

The communicative approach and its limits


There is hardly any arguing that transnational activists have become increasingly
important players in politics in recent decades. The expansive literature on the
theme in the past 15 years is a visible testament to this rise.5 This new situation
raises an important question: How is this possible, given that transnational
activists do not command anywhere near the resources – political, economic or
military – of the states, international institutions and transnational corporations
they typically target (Risse 2000a)? The dominant answer seems to be that activ-
ists exercise communicative – or framing – power. Beck (2005: 42; see also Beck,
this volume), in this vein, notes that ‘it is not the use of information as such, but
rather the creation of global public awareness of that information which consti-
tutes the particular parameters of advocatory movements’ power’. The ability to
create such awareness, according to Risse (2000a: 22), has a moral dimension
where ‘actors who can legitimately claim . . . moral authority . . . should be more
able to convince a sceptical public audience than actors who are suspected of pro-
moting “private” interests’. This represents a challenge to the power of states. For
Castells (2009: 42), thus, ‘it is only the power of global civil society acting on the
public mind via the media and communication networks that may eventually over-
come the historical inertia of nation-states’. A central element here, in the words
of Keck and Sikkink (1998: 21), is that ‘governments can no longer monopolize
information flows as they could a mere half-decade ago’. Through public naming
and shaming (e.g. Hafner-Burton 2008) transnational activists at least occasionally
trump the economic, political and military power of states.
Transnational activists are consequently involved in a struggle over public and
political agendas. Risse (2002: 265), echoing the scholars above asserts that
4   Thomas Olesen
because transnational activists ‘provide moral authority and knowledge about
causal relationships, they are particularly crucial when it comes to paradigm
shifts on the international agenda’. Carpenter (2007: 101) offers a similar argu-
ment when she states how ‘two of the most pivotal yet understudied aspects of
transnational network politics are the construction and acceptance of specific
problems as international issues in the first place’. These are important questions
and the authors cited here offer nuanced and useful discussions of how some
issues make it onto the agenda and others do not (see also Bob 2001; Busby 2007;
Holzscheiter, this volume; Ron et al. 2005). Scholars of transnational activism
within the communicative tradition have, in other words, come a long way –
although, as I shall argue shortly, not quite far enough – in studying the second
of the two faces of power identified by Bachrach and Baratz (1962). In the 1960s,
Bachrach and Baratz opened a new front in power studies by criticizing what they
called the pluralist approach – primarily represented by Dahl’s (1961) seminal
study of decision-making processes in New Haven. Their critique centred on
Dahl’s view of the political process as an open contest between visible and clearly
defined interests and issues. In their view, this created a one-dimensional concept
of power, which left out how some issues may never enter the political process:
‘To measure relative influence solely in terms of the ability to initiate and veto
proposals is to ignore the possible exercise of influence or power in limiting the
scope of initiation’ (Bachrach and Baratz 1962: 952). In formulating this critique,
Bachrach and Baratz drew considerable inspiration from Schattschneider’s
(1960/1975: 69) famous insistence that politics is a ‘mobilization of bias’ in
which some issues are ‘organized into politics while others are organized out’.
Accordingly,

power is also exercised when A devotes his energies to creating and rein-
forcing social and political values and institutional practices that limit the
scope of the political process to public consideration of only those issues
which are comparatively innocuous to A.
(Bachrach and Baratz 1962: 948)

Scholars in the communicative tradition demonstrate how transnational activ-


ists have been quite successful in overcoming this form of power, pushing issues
to the transnational public agenda, despite often vigorous opposition from states,
international institutions and transnational corporations. These observations are
manifested in the considerable optimism over transnational activist power.
Writing about Pinochet’s arrest in 1998 and Suharto’s resignation in the same
year, Risse (2000b: 178), for example, was convinced that these outcomes ‘would
not have been possible without the decade-long struggles and the transnational
mobilization of human rights activists around the globe and in the countries con-
cerned’. Also referring to the changing world political norms in the 1990s
towards humanitarianism, Kaldor (2001: 140) concluded that ‘global civil society
has been crucial in underpinning this global humanitarian regime’. However,
many of the empirical case studies that have given rise to this optimism focus on
Introduction   5
relatively weak and impoverished third world states pressured by, inter alia, trans-
national human rights activists from the North (see, especially, the volumes
edited by Risse et al. 1999 and Khagram et al. 2002), weak because of their lead-
ers’ lack of democratic legitimacy and their dependent status vis-à-vis Western
states and international financial institutions (especially the International Monetary
Fund [IMF]). These traits make them relatively more susceptible to the combined
pressure of domestic and transnational activists than stronger third world states
(e.g. China; see Fleay, this volume). This optimistic perspective is consequently
biased by a focus on the ‘success stories’ of transnational activism and a blindness
to the way stronger states may effectively counter the communicative and agenda
setting power of transnational activists (for an ‘insider’ acknowledgement of this
limitation, see Risse 2002: 268).
The point is not that scholarship within the communicative tradition avoids
attention to context and structure and merrily places transnational activists in a
social and political vacuum. For example, Tsutsui (2006: 335) argues that when
‘movement goals click with the global norms of the time, the movement is more
likely to succeed in the global arena’, whereas Busby (2007) refers to a ‘permis-
sive international context’ and ‘focusing events’ as important factors in deter-
mining transnational activist framing. Also in a related vein, Sikkink (2005) has
demonstrated how different international institutions provide varying degrees
of access for transnational activists. What is lacking, in my view, is rather a
systematic and theoretically based conception of three interrelated elements:
Sensitivity to (1) the way the conditions for transnational framing change over
time, (2) how these changes are related to and defined by powerful states and
world political events and (3) how they affect the discursive opportunities
available to transnational activists in their framing efforts. Referring back to
Bachrach and Baratz, I am interested in how powerful actors in the transna-
tional political system (the ‘A’ in their last quote) may limit the scope of the
political process by creating and reinforcing certain values, practices and, I
would add, frames.6

Metapackages and events


Gamson and Modigliani (1989) and Gamson and Lasch (1983) argue that around
every policy issue there is a cluster of interpretive packages that provide different
meanings to the issue. These packages are a key dimension of the discursive
opportunity structure. Harking back to the definition of discursive opportunity
structures in the introduction, it may be said that an interpretive package consti-
tutes a ‘cultural access point’ by providing actors with already existing discursive
resources. Interpretive packages are rooted in ideational and discursive reservoirs
that exist at even ‘deeper’ societal and historical levels. Gamson and Lasch
(1983: 408) refer to them as metapackages: ‘general idea elements with potential
applicability to a range of issues’.7 Metapackages typically reflect a dialectical
relationship between themes and counter-themes: ‘There is no theme without a
counter-theme. The theme is conventional and normative; the counter-theme is
6   Thomas Olesen
adversarial and contentious’ (Gamson and Modigliani 1989: 6). When interpre-
tive packages draw on and reflect these themes and counter-themes, they generate
‘cultural resonance’. Such resonances ‘increase the appeal of a package; they
make it appear natural and familiar’ (Gamson and Modigliani 1989: 5). Of particu-
lar interest in the power perspective of this volume is how the balance between
metapackages may evolve over time. Gamson and Meyer (1996) gesture in this
direction when they argue how changes in the political climate affect frame reso-
nance, yet do not specify how and why such shifts occur. One way for change to
occur is as a result of historical events (Sewell 1996) or political shocks
(Rohlinger 2009). For Sewell, events can affect the structures that shape social
and political life. He defines structures as consisting of, inter alia, interpretive
schemas and modes of power. Interpretive schemas ‘provide actors with mean-
ings, motivations, and recipes for social action’ (p. 842) and, thus, resemble the
interpretive packages and metapackages described by Gamson and his col-
leagues. However, structures, for Sewell (1996), also involve modes of power that
regulate action by, for example, ‘specifying what schemas are legitimate’.
In sum, then, various schemas or metapackages co-exist at any given time, but
rarely in equal fashion, and with the balance between them constantly changing.
Turning to the transnational context, major world historical events may contrib-
ute to these changes by affecting the political interests of states. States continue
to have a privileged, if increasingly challenged, position in today’s world (e.g.
Held et al. 1999; Nye 2004; Sørensen 2004) that gives them considerable power
to define the terms of transnational framing contests. It is here that theories of
political and discursive opportunities intersect. States, in other words, do wield
power not only by opening or closing institutional and political access points for
activists, as traditional approaches to political opportunities argue (e.g. McAdam
1996; Tarrow 1998) but also by affecting the power balance of transnationally
available metapackages. These metapackages constitute the core of the transna-
tional discursive opportunity structure for transnational activists. Although the
transnational discursive opportunity structure is composed of several metapack-
ages, below I illustrate the basic theoretical dynamic by outlining one adversarial
dyad of theme–counter-theme: national security and universalism.

Securitization and state power


When a state securitizes an issue, it attempts to take politics ‘beyond the estab-
lished rules of the game and frames the issue either as a special kind of politics
or as above politics’ (Buzan et al. 1998: 23). It designates ‘an existential threat
requiring emergency action or special measures and the acceptance of that desig-
nation by a significant audience’ (p. 27). Securitization frames have become
widespread in the post-9/11 political climate (Gibson, this volume).8 In the wake
of 9/11, many countries adopted anti-terror legislation that challenged liberal and
democratic values by granting intelligence services, new powers to monitor citi-
zens and collect information (e.g. Barber 2003; Ivie 2005). These measures were
generally legitimated by conjuring an imminent threat to the security of the
Introduction   7
nation. Securitization frames are also employed in other cases: In Israel, for
example, they have been central since its founding and are currently manifested
in the debate over the Israeli West Bank barrier. The barrier – or Apartheid Wall
as critics call it – is designed to counter the threat of suicide and other types of
attacks emerging from the West Bank.
Because a primary task of the state has historically been to defend its territory
and population against rival states, securitization framing is largely the preserve
of states. No other social and political actor can legitimately claim the same kind
of responsibility and, consequently, right to undertake ‘emergency action’.
Securitization frames, however, seem especially likely to gain resonance and
acceptance when certain events and situations – such as 9/11 or comparable ter-
rorist attacks – heighten the sense of threat among the population. States, in other
words, need to base and legitimize securitization frames in ‘real’ threats. Looking
back over the past decades, there is no doubt that the end of the Cold War created
a more hospitable climate for transnational activism by removing some of the
rationale and legitimacy behind securitization frames. During the Cold War,
politics were largely straight jacketed by the bipolar power struggle and the
dichotomous ‘which side are you on’ logic of the period (Sikkink 2002: 303). Its
demise gave rise to the belief in many quarters that world politics might now be
guided by a set of universalistic ideals and frames (see the next section for an
elaboration) in which the protection of the individual’s (human) rights would take
precedence over narrow national and power strategic concerns.
This development was halted and largely reversed by the 9/11 attacks
(Anderson and Rieff 2004). The ensuing war on terror has evidenced how states,
especially the United States, are both able and willing to flex their military and
political muscles in pursuit of national strategic interests, despite criticism from
activists, other states and international institutions. These policies have been
largely legitimated through securitization frames. For obvious reasons, securitiza-
tion primarily impacts activists engaged in peace protests and other types of
activities linked to states’ security policies (e.g. Maney et al. 2009; Meyer 2009).
However, post-9/11 securitization arguments have also spread to other areas, for
example, aid and development assistance (e.g. Shannon 2009), immigration (e.g.
Huysmans and Buonfino 2008), protest policing (della Porta and Reiter, this
volume) and radical environmental activism (Gibson, this volume).
When securitization frames enter a policy area, the discursive space of activists
is affected. The potency of securitization springs from two factors: First, the
state’s virtual monopoly over security, and second, the fact that frames regarding
threat protection have a privileged position in public debate because of a per-
ceived common interest that cuts across social, economic and cultural divides in
a populace. Under these conditions, activists become vulnerable to criticism that
portrays them as unpatriotic and/or naïve (e.g. Entman and Rojecki 1993; Gibson,
this volume; Ryan 1991). Because of the asserted ‘urgency’ and the invocation of
a politics ‘above politics’, securitization can affect public and political agendas in
significant ways. As long as national security remains a major concern in most
Western countries, it may be difficult for transnational activists to push issues of
8   Thomas Olesen
social and political justice onto the agenda, especially when they concern distant
countries and populations, as is often the case for transnational activism.
Until this point, I have discussed securitization frames without explicitly linking
them to the transnational level. On the one hand, securitization has an obvious
national dimension in that it is related to the protection of populations and national
borders. On the other hand, the presence of securitization frames in a number of
countries around the world post-9/11 suggests considerable transnational diffu-
sion. Although military conflict and threat among states has waned in the past
decades and international co-operation has expanded, the new wave of terrorism
after 9/11 has made evident that non-state actors can pose substantial security
threats. In the theoretical language of Gamson and his colleagues, securitization
frames tap an ancient national security theme or metapackage rooted in the history
of the state. This metapackage is fundamentally a transnational one that reflects
the dominance and globalization of state-based political organization in the mod-
ern world (e.g. Meyer et al. 1997). Even though the 9/11 attacks were an attack on
the United States, its scale, coupled with the subsequent string of attacks (e.g. Bali,
2002; Madrid, 2004 and London, 2005) – all planned or inspired by Al Qaeda –
heightened the sense of terrorism as a transnational issue. Under such conditions,
securitization frames can diffuse rapidly and affect the discursive opportunities for
activism in transnational policy arenas that may be linked with security concerns –
for example, immigration, development aid and civil liberties.

Counter-securitization and activist power


In the quotes above, Buzan et al. (1998) argue that securitization frames must be
accepted by an audience. Thus, even strong states must defend their actions pub-
licly. Although states have a monopoly over securitization frames, these are never
uncontested: ‘No one is guaranteed the ability to make people accept a claim for
necessary security action . . . , nor is anyone excluded from attempts to articulate
alternative interpretations of security’ (p. 31). Challenges to securitization can
come from many actors – including other states. However, it is a characteristic of
contemporary transnational politics – although Buzan and his colleagues do not
directly highlight this point – that they are often made by activists.
However, how can and do activists challenge states’ securitization frames? As
indicated above, the state – or rather the nation state as a cultural/political unit –
asserts a collective identity whose right to exist and survive is beyond dispute.
The same strong claim for survival cannot be sustained either at the individual or
the transnational level – or so Buzan and his colleagues argue (1998: 36).
However, this is precisely what activists aim to do. Their counter-securitizing
frames typically have a universalistic character. This universalism has its roots in
what Alexander (2006) calls the civil sphere. The civil sphere constitutes a reser-
voir of ideas about democracy and solidarity that cannot be reduced to self-inter-
est or the pursuit of power. These ideas entail a dynamic relationship between the
individual and collective (p. 44). On the one hand, the civil sphere rests on a
belief in the individual as free and capable of making political judgements. This,
Introduction   9
of course, is the basis of all democratic thinking. However, democracy also has a
collective and universalistic dimension because it is based – at least in theory – on
the extension of democratic rights to all individuals.9
In a related vein, Honneth (2006) sees modernity as a process characterized by
the expansion of social and political rights to more and more groups. In modern
democracies, such rights are institutionalized in the law and the well-known dic-
tum ‘equality before the law’ (p. 149). At the transnational level, the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights – even if it is not legally enforceable in the same
way as national law – also rests on a belief that all individuals share the same
rights despite their differences. Honneth speaks about the expansion of not only
political rights but also social rights. The demand for social rights arises because
the granting of political rights is not in itself enough to ensure equal participation
in the democratic process (p. 158). The welfare state has institutionalized this
struggle. It rests – although in varying degrees from country to country (Esping-
Andersen 1990) and perhaps most pronounced in the Nordic model (Rothstein
1998) – on universalistic values where every individual has a right to certain
provisions (e.g. education, access to a health system and a minimum income).
The welfare state, furthermore, has a solidaristic underpinning in that part of the
individual income is taxed and channelled back into society for common pur-
poses. In the post-Second World War era, these universalistic and solidaristic
norms have been expanded to the transnational level (e.g. Lumsdaine 1993; Noel
and Therien 1995). This is visible, for example, in the emergence of the foreign
aid regime, which posits a moral obligation on part of rich and developed coun-
tries to provide poor countries with aid and development assistance.
It is in this universalistic and solidaristic metapackage that activist counter-
securitization frames are rooted. This is especially evident in human rights-related
activism (e.g. Keck and Sikkink 1998; Khagram et al. 2002; Risse et al. 1999;
Tsutsui 2006). Counter-securitizing frames attempt to shift the object of securitizing
both downward and upward: to the individual and the transnational level. The
human rights idea, thus, entails a mediation between the individual and universal.
The basic unit is the individual and his or her rights. However, at the same time, the
idea that all individuals share the same rights across their many differences endows
it with a universal – or transnational – dimension. In relation to the state, it means
that all states must respect the same set of rights. This clearly poses a challenge for
the institution of sovereignty. If a state violates the human rights of its citizens, it
becomes a legitimate object of criticism by other states and rights activists.
The universalistic metapackage has a long history of usage in transnational
activism, dating back at least to the anti-slavery movements of the nineteenth
century (Keck and Sikkink 1998) and the formation of the Red Cross in the last
part of that century (Baglioni 2001). However, as already noted, the end of the
Cold War in the late 1980s and early 1990s allowed universalism to become
increasingly prominent. Two mutually enforcing dynamics can explain this
rise: First, transnational activists inspired by the universalistic metapackage had
become both more numerous and vociferous in the decades following the Second
World War (Sikkink and Smith 2002); second, the end of the bipolar conflict
10   Thomas Olesen
changed the strategic calculations of states in the direction of increased interna-
tional cooperation and a greater focus on moral–political issues, as evidenced by
the emergence of norms and practices of humanitarian intervention during the
1990s (e.g. Barnett and Weiss 2008; Ignatieff 1998; Kaldor 2001). Such actions
and criticisms typically refer to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and
other elements of the UN human rights complex, which provide the main institu-
tional anchor of the universalistic metapackage.

The transnational discursive opportunity structure


At its most basic level, the transnational discursive opportunity structure is consti-
tuted by transnationally available interpretive packages, metapackages and symbols.
Interpretive packages and metapackages have a structural character as they direct
transnational frames in certain directions and provide them with ideational
resources. Structures, in this perspective, consequently have both constraining
and enabling properties. The metapackages are not stable forms but rather ‘living’
constructs. When political actors invoke and draw on them in their framing
efforts they also change them (see e.g. Giddens 1985 and Sewell 1992 for related
arguments). For example, advocates of humanitarian intervention in the 1990s
clearly based their frames in the universalistic metapackage. However, given the
limited experiences with humanitarian intervention in the past, the universalistic
metapackage at the time only contained few discursive resources for this line of
framing, but activists – and other actors – ‘expanded’ the metapackage by claim-
ing that the respect for human rights involves an obligation and moral right to
overrule the sovereignty institution. This way of thinking has crystallized into the
responsibility to protect (R2P) norm, which is now an integral part of the univer-
salistic metapackage, thus making it less ‘costly’ for subsequent activists to pro-
mote intervention-oriented frames.
As outlined in the preceding sections, metapackages are dynamic in an addi-
tional sense. What is particularly interesting from a power perspective is that the
balance between them may change over time and in ways that often reflects world
political developments and events. This balance is not determined in an open and
power-free contest: states continue to play a central role in the structuring pro-
cess. For example, although the relative prominence of the universalistic meta-
package in the 1990s was strongly related to the emergence of a vibrant
transnational activist sector, this activism also flourished in a new political cli-
mate created by states attempting to redefine the character of world politics in the
post-Cold War setting. In the current situation, 9/11 and the war on terror have
provided states with new framing opportunities and incentives by shifting legiti-
macy and prominence to the national security metapackage.
However, as the discussions above also demonstrate, states do not enjoy a
framing monopoly even under such conditions. Securitization frames are con-
stantly challenged by actors drawing their framing resources from the universalistic
metapackage, which – despite being less prominent than in the 1990s – continues
to have considerable institutional anchoring in (some) activist organizations,
Introduction   11
(some) political parties, (some) media and (some) international institutions
(in particular the United Nations and its various bodies). Because the universal-
istic metapackage only really ‘exists’ through its usage, activists have a vital
role to play in today’s world as defenders and expanders of it. This responsibil-
ity is perhaps even more pronounced at the current historical juncture where the
balance of power seems to have shifted towards the national security metapack-
age. 9/11 and the war on terror have contributed to this situation, but the general
rise of anti-immigration sentiments in Europe in recent decades is another
expression of the struggle between the national security and universalistic
metapackages.

The volume’s contributions


The contributors were asked to reflect on the character of transnational activist
power, its scope and limits and its consequences, intended or unintended. They
were selected to provide as much plurality in terms of theoretical frameworks and
empirical cases as possible. Specifically, the selection was made to cover three
thematic areas. Contributors to the first area primarily deal with critiques and
appraisals of transnational activist power from normative, political and philo-
sophical perspectives. In the second area, focus is on the continued role and
power of the state and on the relationship between national and transnational
levels of activism. The third area addresses the issue of power through discus-
sions of representation, participation and discourse.

Critiques and appraisals


Ulrich Beck argues that neither states nor corporations are capable of mobilizing
global public opinion. According to him, strategies of global public awareness
raising is the monopoly and primary power resource of networks of actors in the
environmental, women’s human rights and consumer movements. These activists
address the democratic and legitimatory vaccuum that faces states and corpora-
tions when actions and decisions become increasingly deterritorialized. Through
dramatization and public awareness raising, activists seek to hold states and cor-
porations morally accountable for their actions in a global public sphere.
David Chandler offers a critique of contemporary transnational activists and
their political projects. Transnational activists seem to be united around a rejec-
tion of state-based politics and of the party system that has historically character-
ized politics at this level. For Chandler, this is problematic because a focus on the
transnational can lead to a corrosion of social engagement in a way that privileges
economic and educational elites – of which transnational activists are considered
a part. In taking this approach, Chandler delivers a strong critique of the demo-
cratic and representative credentials of transnational activists and, through that,
of the way they conceive power and political change.
Ruth Reitan surveys recent theorizing on competing notions of power and glo-
bal governance by situating it within the three main historical strands of leftist
12   Thomas Olesen
activism – social democracy, Marxism–Leninism and autonomism/anarchism.
What is novel today, according to Reitan, is the considerable coordination across
the leftist spectrum to achieve a more just world. This is evidenced by the three
largest networks mobilizing for the UN COP15 in 2009, in which she was a par-
ticipant observer. This pragmatic ‘hanging together’, it is argued, reflects activ-
ists’ recognition of the complexity of globalization and power and of the
multiple-pronged strategy needed to engage and transform both. The Chander and
Reitan chapters have been juxtaposed here because they offer two very different
readings of contemporary transnational activism and its democratic and political
merits and potentials.

The state and the national


Jeffrey Ayres presents a less than optimistic account of activists’ ability to affect
political change and developments. Using the case of transnational protests
against NAFTA and other regional economic-political arrangements, he observes
a good deal of success in terms of mobilization and transnational cooperation and
coordination among activists in the United States, Canada and Mexico. However,
when it comes to actually impacting or reversing the institutionalization of neo-
liberalism in North America, transnational activists have few results to draw
motivation from. States and corporations, in other words, seem to have been able
to move ahead with their political projects despite activist resistance.
Donatella della Porta and Herbert Reiter provide an analysis of state and
police power and strategies in countering large scale demonstrations. They
observe a tendency in which police and authorities have become increasingly
restrictive vis-à-vis demonstrators. This includes strategies aimed at defining the
public space of demonstrations in a way that marginalizes activists and keeps
them away from their main targets. Given the fact that the right to demonstrate
has for long been considered a core democratic right, the situation described by
della Porta and Reiter gives some cause for worry about activists’ power and abil-
ity to participate in the democratic process.
Caroline Fleay offers an analysis of China’s engagement with human rights
activists. She shows how China has entered into dialogue with its critics but in a
way very much defined and controlled by China itself. The apparent ‘immunity’
of China to activist pressure stems from its economic and political importance on
the transnational scene, which makes Western states reluctant to support activist
agendas. Fleay consequently demonstrates how activist power may have certain
limits when it comes to the world’s most powerful states. At the same time, how-
ever, she notes that an increasingly vibrant domestic civil society may pave the
way for future human rights changes in China.
Sarah Stroup argues that transnational activist organizations strongly reflect
their national origins. This is evident in, among other things, the economic
resources available to organizations. As such, organizations mirror the strength of
their ‘home states’ on the transnational political and economic scene, creating
highly uneven opportunities for organizations to make an impact. This condition,
Introduction   13
Stroup points out, questions the ‘global’ in global civil society in important ways.
The different preconditions for participation at this level consequently make it
problematic to think of global civil society in a unitary sense and as a sphere
existing more or less independent from the national level.

Representation and discourse


Shannon Gibson directs our attention to the effects of the post-9/11 political cli-
mate for activists in the radical environmental movement in the United States.
The US government and authorities under George W. Bush broadened the terror-
ist label to cover activists, such as radical environmentalists, who use strategies
of property damage and civil disobedience. The events of 9/11 and the subsequent
war on terror have consequently contracted the public space available to at least
some activists.
Anna Holzscheiter analyses the representational power exercised by predomi-
nantly Northern organizations working with HIV/AIDS-affected children in the
South. Her concern is that the ‘recipients’ of help – children – are spoken for but
not actively involved in discussions about the character of assistance. The issue
has important transnational democratic implications as it highlights dynamics of
inclusion and exclusion in transnational activism. The chapter consequently cuts
to the core of how inequalities between the North and the South is sometimes
reflected in the way well-meaning organizations represent rather than empower
the groups on whose behalf they act.
Jutta Joachim discusses the effects of international institutions – in this case
primarily the United Nations – on activists. She accepts that getting inside institu-
tions is often a prerequisite for change. At the same time, however, institutional
involvement can imply adaptation and taming. Institutions consequently exercise
power over activists when the latter adjust their demands to fit into the require-
ments and norms of institutions. These dynamics raise questions about activist
power and their democratic role. In particular, Joachim points to the danger of
activists losing ‘touch’ with their constituencies and their original demands.
Dieter Rucht analyses the media strategies of transnational activists and the
way they are covered and represented by the mainstream media. He argues that
media coverage is a crucial power resource for activists attempting to influence
politicians. However, although transnational activists have had some success in
this regard, the media has a tendency to focus on the dramatic and violent aspects
of activism, downplaying or distorting the ‘real’ message of activists. The depen-
dence on the mainstream media for generating public attention has only been
partly overcome by the advent of the Internet, which, according to Rucht, primar-
ily strengthens the development of ‘subpublics’.
Håkan Thörn reverses the perspective of most of the volume’s contributions by
looking at the way global governance structures shape domestic civil society
organizations in the area of HIV/AIDS. He demonstrates how HIV/AIDS pro-
grammes funded by Northern states and donors exercise power and control at a
distance by setting up frameworks for what Southern organizations can and
14   Thomas Olesen
cannot do if they are to continue receiving funding. These frameworks involve a
certain degree of freedom through partnerships between not only donors and civil
society but also, Thörn argues, elements of self-regulation and marketization,
resulting from constant audits of organizations’ programmes and economy.

Notes
1 I wish to thank colleagues in the Sociology Section at the Department of Political
Science, Aarhus University for their useful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.
I am also indebted to Caroline Fleay and Ruth Reitan for their insights and editorial
suggestions.
2 I define transnational activism broadly as encompassing at least three types: First, activists
located at the domestic level and engaged in activities aimed at national targets and topics
but who draw on transnationally available symbols and frames and interact with like-
minded organizations in other countries via communicative networks; second, domesti-
cally located activists whose main activities are directed to places and situations outside
their national context: for example, a Swedish organization protesting repression in Burma
or a British organization protesting the war in Iraq and third, organizations with branches
in several countries, for example Greenpeace and Amnesty International.
3 See Koopmans (2004) for a related discussion of discursive opportunity structures.
4 An activist frame is transnational when it concerns (a) transnational topics (e.g. global
warming), (b) world political issues (e.g. the war in Iraq), (c) conditions and events in
countries other than that of the activist organization promoting the frame (e.g. a German
organization advocating for indigenous rights in Ecuador) and (d) calls for attention from
activists in other countries (e.g. the Zapatistas’ communiques directed to non-Mexican
activists).
5 See, for example, Bandy and Smith (2005); della Porta (2009); della Porta et al.
(1999/2009); della Porta and Tarrow (2005); Gills (2000); Guidry et al. (2000); Hamel
et al. (2001); Laxer and Halperin (2003); Richter et al. (2006); Risse et al. (1999); Smith
et al. (1997b); Teune (forthcoming). To this list, we should also add the Global Civil
Society Yearbook published since 2001 and edited by scholars associated with the
London School of Economics, especially Helmut Anheier, Marlies Glasius, and Mary
Kaldor.
6 In the concluding chapter, I take a step beyond Bachrach and Baratz’ conception of power
to address what is often referred to as the third face of power: dominance over identities
and interests (Lukes 1974/2005).
7 The concept of metapackages bears some resemblance to the concept of master frames
developed by Snow and Benford (1992).
8 The 9/11 focus does not imply that securitization frames are only a product of the current
era. According to Campbell (1998), for example, they are constitutive of the modern state
itself.
9 Of course, democracies with exclusionary practices are not uncommon. Historically,
we can think of American democracy which – until the 1950s and the emergence of
the civil rights movement – socially and politically excluded the black community.
However, as Alexander shows (Chapters 11–14), the very democratic foundation of
American society provided the civil rights movement with arguments that could not
in the long run be denied by White America without seriously contradicting its own
values.
Introduction   15
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Part I

Critiques and appraisals


1 Counter-power in the global age
Strategies of civil society movements1
Ulrich Beck

Introduction
To understand the power of civil society movements and groups, we have to
understand the Great Transformation of the state-centred order per se. The exclu-
sive scenario according to which nation-states and the system of international
relations between states determined the space of collective political action is
broken down from both the inside and the outside at the same time and is succes-
sively replaced by a more complex, border transcending subpolitical and global
political ‘meta-power game’, one that changes the rules of power, is full of para-
doxes, unpredictable and open ended. Exactly what does this mean, though?

The old nation-state power game can no longer be


played on its own
Now that a new game has begun, the rules and basic concepts of the old game –
even if it continues to be played – no longer have much connection with reality. At
any rate, the old game, which goes by many names, such as ‘nation-state’, ‘national
industrial society’, ‘national capitalism’ or even ‘national welfare state’, can no
longer be played on its own. This simple game was rather like a game of draughts,
in which each player has a homogeneous set of pieces and is allowed to make cer-
tain moves with them. Globalization, however, has introduced a new space and
framework for acting: politics is no longer subject to the same boundaries as before
and is no longer tied solely to state actors and institutions, the result being that
additional players, new roles, new resources, unfamiliar rules and new contradic-
tions and conflicts appear on the scene. In the old game, each playing piece made
only one move. This is no longer true of the new, nameless game played for power
and domination. The ‘capital’ pieces, for example, have created a new kind of
mobility for themselves, similar to the knight or the rook in chess – in other words,
there are striking differences and strange polyvalencies in the strategic quality of
both pieces and moves. What is more, though, the old and the new actors have first
to find or invent – that is, to define and construct – their own roles and resources
on the global playing board. It is not only the new moves in the game that are
unclear but also its new objectives. With draughts, the aim was to get rid of all the
24   Ulrich Beck
opponents’ pieces. If the new game were chess, the aim would be to place the king
in checkmate, but not even that much is certain.
How much cultural difference and how much social inequality should or must
be permitted? In the old national–international game, it was the rules of interna-
tional law that prevailed, which meant that, within state boundaries, you could do
what you liked with your own citizens. Do these rules still apply? Or is it rather
the case that the vague rule of ‘conditional sovereignty’ has long since come into
effect? Any state involved in ‘ethnic cleansing’ or serious human rights violations
against its own citizens can reckon with becoming the target of ‘humanitarian
intervention’ by the international community based on the notion of global citi-
zens’ rights and human rights. Can heads of government, ministers or ambassa-
dors who have blatantly violated the global civil rights of their own state citizens
still rely on diplomatic immunity or must they face the prospect of being arrested
and brought before a court in the country they are visiting?
Then there was the rule that once one player has made the move, it is the other
player’s turn, so that play alternates. Does this still apply? Or does it apply only
in specific circumstances – within certain power relations – and not for other
players under different conditions? Who decides which rules apply and which do
not? In the transition from one era to the next, politics is entering a peculiar twi-
light zone, the twilight zone of double contingency. Nothing remains fixed, nei-
ther the old basic institutions and systems of rules nor the specific organizational
forms and roles of the actors; instead, they are disrupted, reformulated and rene-
gotiated during the course of the game itself.
The thing about the meta-game argument is that the players’ scope for action
essentially depends on their self-definition and on their redefinition of the
political. They themselves are the precondition for success. New opportunities
for power can only be generated through critique of the nation-state orthodoxy
and through new categories that point the way towards a cosmopolitan outlook.
Anyone caught clinging to the old draughts dogma (e.g. the fetish of ‘sover-
eignty’) will be jumped over – or steamrollered – without even being allowed
to complain about it. It is the costs that states incur by clinging to the old rules
of draughts that provide the conditions for a cosmopolitan shift in perspective.
In other words, methodological nationalism – the insistence that the meta-game
of global politics is and always will be a national game – turns out to be
extremely costly. It distorts our view and simultaneously prevents us from rec-
ognizing new moves and new resources of power. Indeed, the possibility of
transforming the win–lose or lose–lose rules of the meta-game into win–win
rules, from which the state, global civil society and capital can all benefit in
equal measure, remains untapped theoretically, empirically and politically. In
effect, it is a reversal of the Marxist principle that determines consciousness:
consciousness, or awareness, of a new situation – the cosmopolitan vision
(Beck 2006) – maximizes players’ options in the meta-game of global politics.
The best way of transforming one’s own position of power (and perhaps even
the world of politics) is to change one’s outlook on the world – a skeptical,
realistic view of the world but equally a cosmopolitan one!
Counter-power in the global age   25
The neo-liberal agenda is an attempt to capture the momentary historical gains
of globally and politically mobile capital and fix them institutionally. Thought
through to its radical conclusion, the capital perspective posits itself as absolute
and autonomous and, thus, uses the strategic power and strategic options pre-
sented by classical economics as a way of developing subpolitical and global
political power. According to this scheme, what is good for capital is good for all:
everyone will get richer, and ultimately even the poor will benefit, or so the prom-
ise goes. The seductiveness of this neo-liberal ideology, then, lies not in giving
selfishness a free rein or in maximizing competition but in the promise of global
justice. The implication is maximizing the power of capital is ultimately the better
way towards socialism. That is why the (welfare) state is superfluous.
What the neo-liberal agenda also insists upon, however, is that in the new
meta-game capital gets two playing pieces and two moves. Everybody else still
gets only one playing piece and one move, as they got earlier. The power of neo-
liberalism is, therefore, based on a radical inequality in terms of who may break
the rules and who may not. Changing the rules remains the revolutionary privi-
lege of capital. Everybody else is condemned to conform to them. The nation-
based view of politics (and the methodological nationalism of political theory)
cements capital’s superiority in the game and confirms the power advantage it
holds by virtue of having broken away from the national game of draughts.
However, the superiority of capital is essentially based on the fact that states do
not follow its lead and that politics holds itself captive within the cast-iron frame-
work of the nation-based draughts rules. Hence, who constitutes the counter-
power, the opponent of globalized capital?

The counter-power of global civil society


As far as public awareness and a range of studies are concerned, the role of
counter-power to a capital that defies the rules falls not only to states but also to
global civil society and its plural actors. In the old game of capital against
‘labour’ relationships between power and counter-power were conceived in terms
of the master–slave dialectic. The counter-power of the slave – the worker – lies
in the fact that he can withhold his labour. The core of this counter-power is the
organized strike: workers down tools and stop working. One of the limitations of
this counter-power is the fact that the workers have work and, therefore, employ-
ment contracts – in other words, they have to be members of an organization to
be able to go on strike. They also face the threat of being fired (locked out) in
return. This is the basis of capital’s counter-power. This form of master–slave
dialectic continues to exist but is undermined by capital’s new ‘country-hopping’
mobility.
In contrast to this, the counter-power of global civil society is based on the figure
of the political consumer. The consumer stands beyond the master–slave dialectic.
His counter-power results from being able to refuse to make a purchase, at any time
and in any place. The ‘weapon of non-purchase’ cannot be restricted in terms of
location, time or commodity. It is dependent on certain conditions, such as a person
26   Ulrich Beck
having money in the first place or there being a surplus of products and services
available for consumers to choose from, and it is these conditions – that is, the
plurality of opportunities to buy and consume – that bring down the subjective costs
of penalizing this product from this corporation through organized non-purchase.
What is fatal for the interests of capital is that there is no counter-strategy to
confront the counter-power of consumers. Not even all-powerful global corpora-
tions can make their consumers redundant. Unlike workers, consumers are not
members or do they wish to become such, and the blackmail threat of shifting
production to other countries, where the consumers still behave themselves and
accept whatever is put before them, is an utterly inadequate instrument. In the
first place, the consumer is globalized and as such is highly desirable to corpora-
tions, and in the second place, it is not possible to respond to consumer protests
in one country by moving to other countries without going through considerable
contortions. Moreover, it is not even possible to play consumers’ national solidar-
ity off against one another. The nature of consumer protests is that they are trans-
national. The consumer society is the actually existing world society. Consumption
knows no limits, in terms either of manufacture or of use. Consumers are every-
thing that workers are not. This is what makes their counter-power such a threat
to the power of capital – and so far they have hardly begun to exploit it.
Although the counter-power of workers – in line with the master–slave dialectic – is
tied to direct spatio-temporal interactions and contractual relations, the consumer has
none of these territorial, local or contractual ties. With good networking and care-
fully planned mobilization, the free, unbound consumer, once organized transnation-
ally, can be modeled into an effective weapon. Going on strike is a risky thing for an
individual; on the other hand, not buying certain products and thereby casting a vote
against the politics of corporations is completely free of risk. Nonetheless, this
counter-power of the political consumer has to be organized: without advocatory
actors from civil society, the counter-power of consumers remains a blunt weapon.
Thus, the limits of consumer counter-power lie in the limits of organizational capac-
ity. A buyers’ boycott is directed at non-members; as such, it is hard to organize and
requires a carefully planned dramaturgy in the public media, a staging of symbolic
politics. With insufficient publicity, it will fall apart. Money is and always will be the
prerequisite. No purchasing power, no consumer power. All these place immanent
constraints on the counter-power of consumers.

Strategies of civil society movements


The strategies of capital and state are an expression of translegal domination. We
have defined this extension of Max Weber’s typology as a form of domination
that is neither illegal nor legitimate – a double negation that by no means adds
up to an unambiguous affirmation. In other words – and this element is crucial in
what follows – it is an intermediate form between illegal and legal domination, in
which one feature in particular stands out, namely, the asymmetry between legiti-
mation and domination: a great deal of power together with legitimation under
threat is lined up opposite power under threat and a high level of legitimation.
Counter-power in the global age   27
To put it another way, building and consolidating domination in the transna-
tional arena – and this applies to global business as much as to states – is accom-
panied by a reduction in democratic legitimation. This decline in legitimation is
of a radical nature. On the one hand, breaking away from the nation-state shell
means breaking away from institutionalized forms of legitimate domination. This
applies above all to global business actors, but it also applies to the strategies of
states and governments. At the same time, there is a parallel increase in the
demands and claims made on the legitimation of domination. One might almost
say that, just as the transformation from the first to the second modernity takes
place within the shadow of old categories and hollowed-out institutions, this
transformation of modernity is accompanied by spaces of power formation in
which legitimation is absent and where the effectiveness of economic and politi-
cal action is bought with forms of non-legitimated (which is not the same as
illegal) power concentration. The result of this is the delegitimization of domina-
tion, the key trend in the transition from the first to the second modernity. This
delegitimization occurs in relation to the translegal domination of global busi-
ness, and it includes the privatization of state tasks and the transfer of state func-
tions to global business. Meanwhile, the transnationalization of states gives rise
to strategies and forms of cooperation between states and international regimes:
governance without government.
This is the context in which the public awareness-raising strategies of advoca-
tory movements come into their own in terms of both opportunities and power.
The denationalization, delocalization and transnationalization of business and the
state generate and intensify both the legitimatory decline of domination and the
dilemma of democracy in the global age. Although democratic legitimation is tied
to the nation-state in its parliamentary constitution on the one hand, the new meta-
power game of global politics necessarily creates a new definition of domination
and politics in the transnational arena on the other, in business and in politics alike.
As the central actors of the emerging global society migrate out of the national
arena of democratic legitimation, domination becomes de-democratized, which in
turn means that collectively binding decisions are ultimately made and executed
in the transnational arena without the consent of the sovereign. In contrast to this,
the self-determination and participation of thinking and acting people worldwide
assume an increasingly important role. The dismantling of democracy and the
claims made on democracy grow and contradict one another more openly, thereby
mutually reinforcing and accelerating the legitimatory decline of domination.
Neither solitary individual states nor global business ‘egotists’ are capable of
mobilizing global public opinion. Strategies of global public awareness raising
constitute the polyvalent monopoly of networks of actors in the environmental,
women’s human rights and consumer movements – albeit this monopoly is
limited in terms of its power resources.
What constitutes the basis of the counter-power of global civil society advo-
cates in contrast to capital, which is self-empowering and self-legitimating?
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) – as varied, uncoordinated and inter-
nally contradictory as they may be – certainly have a very smart, global, civil
28   Ulrich Beck
‘weapon’ at their disposal, to the extent that they are able to strike at the corpora-
tions using their own weapons. The cold logic of abstract markets has many
actors. They include not only owners (i.e. shareholders) but also managers, banks
and supranational financial organizations. They include not least the global cus-
tomer, and this customer has an increasing amount of power at his or her disposal.
As I argued before, the ‘consumer strike’ is a means of counter-power that cannot
be countered by power. Capital is largely at the mercy of the politicized global
consumer. In a certain sense, the political consumer avenges the state: just as
transnational capital breaks the power of territorialized states through a politics
of refusal, so the political consumer breaks the power of transnational capital by
buying this product instead of that product.
NGOs, too, are certainly in a position to challenge the corporate emperors’ new
clothes, their new sources of legitimation. Economic activity generates global
side effects that threaten humanity’s basic resources for survival and, by the same
token, the legitimatory foundations of ‘autonomous’ investment decisions.
In this sense, the advocatory movements of global civil society are the origina-
tors, advocates and judges of global values and norms. The way they create and
hone this everyday, local and global awareness of values is by sparking public
outrage and generating global public indignation over spectacular norm violations.
This they do by focusing on individual cases, whether it be environmental scan-
dals, where corporations are ‘caught in the act’ and found guilty of wrongdoing,
or the pain-filled biographies of victims of torture that arouse the world’s con-
science. They establish the perpetrators’ guilt by (ideally) disseminating truthful
information and thereby effectively staging a global public trial where they are the
prosecutor, global public – consumers – and judge rolled into one. As judge, they
can and should execute their judgement directly with the boundless ease of non-
purchase. However, there are two other problems (besides those already men-
tioned) faced by these counter-movements of resistance. For one thing, there is no
clear enemy around whom conflicts can be organized, and for another, there is no
single unambiguous language of conflict available but rather a Babel-like confu-
sion of many different languages of conflict – of ecology, human rights, feminism,
religion, nationalism, trade unionism and xenophobia. In other words, there is no
cosmopolitan language of conflict. Is this internal plurality of advocatory counter-
power a strategic disadvantage or an advantage? It is probably an advantage, as it
makes any form of external, centralist instrumentalization harder to achieve.
The ‘power of public awareness’ that advocatory movements have is specific
because it publicly mobilizes and highlights legitimatory resources: it generates
the production, distribution and strategic use of information. Note that it is not
the use of information as such but rather the creation of global public awareness
of that information that constitutes the particular parameters of advocatory move-
ments’ power, their particular power resource. In other words, it is the way advo-
catory movements deliberately and strategically link information and legitimation
as a strategy of global public awareness that determines their position in the
power triad alongside the strategies of capital and those of the state. To put it
another way: the ‘power’ of information as a legitimatory resource is measured
Counter-power in the global age   29
not in relation to information itself but rather in relation to the decline in legitima-
tion of translegal domination – not only that of global business in particular but
also that of states. Thus, the strategies of public awareness deployed by advoca-
tory movements make use of a politics of informational pinpricks to dramatize
and display for public effect the startling contradiction between the maximization
and delegitimization of translegal domination.
These features of transnational movements’ power, which is based solely on
information and legitimation, may appear insignificant in the face of the eco-
nomic, political, legal, and military power resources commanded by other global
actors, and indeed, advocatory movements do not exercise translegal domination;
they ‘merely’ instrumentalize its contradictions. Thus, advocatory movements
cannot practice a politics of faits accomplis, and they cannot make any collec-
tively binding decisions, either in the national or in the global arena. They have
neither economic nor state power. In fact, their own legitimation itself always
remains fragile. They are not elected or appointed as such; rather, they are self-
appointed advocates who have to legitimate their activities through these very
activities themselves, sometimes under public cross-examination.
It is precisely this tension between the self-authorization of their own advoca-
tory practice and delegitimation of state and global business actors that defines
the inner contradictions and consequent limits of advocatory strategies of public
awareness. This in turn illustrates the fact that the power of global public actors
and of strategies of global public awareness emerges not out of these strategies
themselves – or at least only partially so – but rather from the legitimatory vac-
uum in which global and indeed ‘collectively’ binding decisions are made at the
beginning of the twenty-first century.

Legitimatory capital and its non-convertibility


One crucial source of power for advocatory strategies of public awareness raising
lies in the fact that they are organized in the form of transnational networks of
actors. As such, advocatory movements are participants and, in certain respects,
virtuosi of the new, transnational power game. On the one hand, they are in a
position to play their opponents in the global political meta-power game – states
and corporations – off against one another, by forging issue-based coalitions and
orchestrating provocative confrontations. On the other hand, they have a power
resource at their disposal, which, from the point of view of classical international
politics, is not one at all: rather than having state power or market power, they
possess legitimatory power. Global consumer movements and boycott cam-
paigns, for example, have greater opportunities for power under the following
conditions:

• When the legitimation of markets is fragile, markets presuppose trust – the


trust of the public and consumers (two categories that cannot easily be kept
separate); in this respect, they are dependent on perceptions and therefore
also on legitimation.
30   Ulrich Beck
• Because company profit margins are based not only on the globalization of
production but also on the globalization of consumption – that is, on the
safeguarding and monitoring of global markets – the fragility of legitimation
is the Achilles heel of global corporate power in global markets.
•• This is even more the case insofar as legitimation cannot be bought.

Pierre Bourdieu distinguishes between economic capital, capital of qualification


and social capital. His central thesis is that economic capital can be translated into
capital of qualification and social capital (and vice versa). As far as I am aware,
Bourdieu does not refer to the concept of ‘legitimatory capital’, which I introduce
here in relation to the meta-power game between the state, capital and civil society
movements. In the case of legitimatory capital, the principle opposite to that of
Bourdieu’s theory applies, namely the non-convertibility of economic capital into
legitimatory capital. At first sight, the size of global corporate media advertising
budgets would seem to contradict this, but the widespread assumption that public
trust and consumer confidence are won with whole-page glossy advertisements in
daily newspapers, or with TV ads, and then lost when risks are highlighted in the
news is one of the more naïve approaches within the industry and one long since
identified as such by the initiated. Advertising campaigns can sometimes even
trigger the very opposite reaction to the one intended, the general sentiment being:
in the case of risk conflict anyone who advertises must have something to hide!
It is this legitimatory capital that enables advocatory networks to make the
most strategically of factual information and even to establish new concerns and
categories in opposition to much more powerful organizations and governments.
In this sense, advocatory strategies and networks not only influence the outcomes
of decisions but also transform the concepts and perceptual frameworks of public
controversies. Thus, networks can be described not only as ‘moral entrepreneurs’
but also as ‘categorical entrepreneurs’: something that had once been inconceiv-
able comes to be taken for granted (as illustrated, e.g., by the ‘rags-to-riches’
trajectory of environmental critique). Nonetheless, it is often the case that, once
certain principles have gained acceptance, a standard is automatically set by
which they may fail. To give an example of this, one of the outstanding successes
of the Rio de Janeiro conference in 1992 was the ‘precautionary principle’.
Principle 15 of the Rio Declaration of June 1992 states: ‘Where there are threats
of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used
as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental deg-
radation.’ However, when this statement is set as a standard alongside the policies
that have since ensued, as, say, in the area of genetically modified foods, one has
to acknowledge that advocatory movements have failed almost completely. To
put the matter another way, transnational advocatory networks and strategies need
to be understood as a self-created political space in which differently positioned
actors acquire and apply their (ever threatened) ‘legitimatory capital’ in opposi-
tion to state and global market actors.
Furthermore, the power of networks, being based solely on legitimation, arises
from the opposing principle to that of (inter)national sovereignty. The actions of
Counter-power in the global age   31
advocatory movements are based on the principle of the non-sovereignty of states
(or corporations) in the key issues facing humanity: environmental degradation,
large-scale technological and global financial risks, human rights, civil rights,
global poverty and so on. The assumption is that it is legitimate and necessary for
state and non-state actors to become involved in so-called domestic affairs of
other states. In other words, there is no legitimatory capital without a vision of
cosmopolitan responsibility. Thus the word ‘cosmopolitan’ becomes indispens-
able for describing and understanding a situation in which ‘humanity’ and ‘world’
are not merely thinkable but unavoidable social, political and moral categories for
the human condition (Beck 2006; Beck and Grande 2010).
It sometimes seems as though states refuse cooperation with advocatory net-
works to put other states under pressure in issues of human rights and environ-
mental destruction, but this is by no means – or at least not exclusively – the case.
Interestingly enough, advocatory movements often manage to forge strategies of
cooperation with and between states to put other states under pressure (just as
they are able to use coalitions with global corporations to put legitimatory pres-
sure on the activities of other states).

Outlook: a coalition between civil society and states?


There is no getting away from the task of redefining state politics. The advocates
and actors of global civil society are no doubt indispensable in the global game
between different powers and counter-powers, especially in terms of establishing
global values and standards. However, the abstract notion of the state and politics
undergoing fundamental change tempts us into accepting the grand illusion that,
in a world no longer bound by economic and cultural constraints, a new extra-
political desire for peace will prevail. The new humanism of civil society sug-
gests the soft conclusion that the contradictions, crises and side effects of the
current Second Great Transformation might be civilized by this new symbol of
hope, namely, civil society acting at a global level. However, this conceptual
figure belongs among the museum pieces of the unpolitical.
Given that this is so, the key realization is that the meta-game can only be
transformed from a lose–lose game into a win–win game through a transforma-
tion of state politics (and of political and state theory). Hence, the key question is
how can and must the concept and organizational form of the state be opened out
and refashioned to meet the challenges of economic and cultural globalization?
How does the cosmopolitan self-transformation of the state become possible? Or,
to put the question differently, who are the ‘democratic princes’, in the sense of a
cosmopolitan Machiavellianism, of the second modernity? The answer is the
cosmopolitan prince is a collective actor, but which one? Are the new princes the
heads of corporations who will make Schumpeter’s ‘creative destruction’ a global
affair? Or will perhaps the new Davids – the actors of Greenpeace and Amnesty
International – be the ones to defy the Goliaths? Or can the heroes of the demoli-
tion of the welfare state be thought of as the princes – those who call themselves
‘modernizers’ as they implement the neo-liberal agenda? I think not. However
32   Ulrich Beck
unpolitical the notion is that global civil society might be capable of providing a
substitute for the renewal of state politics, the notion that civil society seizes
power is equally new and untested. It is this kind of symbiosis between civil
society and state that I call a ‘cosmopolitan state’. The sought-after democratic
princes of the global age would thus be the cosmopolitan renewers of the state.
The key question for the stabilization of global civil society, for global, mobile
capital and for the renewal of democracy – in other words, the question as to the
win–win rules of global politics – is how the ideas, theories and institutions of
the state might be liberated from national narrow mindedness and opened out to
the cosmopolitan era (Beck and Grande 2010).
To avoid a discussion about the false alternative between a politics of state and
a politics of civil society in the global age, it is necessary to distinguish clearly
between state-centredness and nation-state-centredness. No matter how right it is
to get rid of the nation-state fixation – the state no longer being the actor in the
international system, but rather one actor among others – it would nonetheless be
wrong to throw the baby out with the bathwater and, while aiming critique at the
nation-state-fixated outlook, to lose sight of the state’s potential capacity to act
and to transform itself in the global age. Thus, the meta-power game means that
states, too, must be conceived of as entities that are contingent and politically
changeable. The question that then arises is how does the transnationalization of
states become possible?
It is by no means the case – as is usually implied – that the politics of globaliza-
tion is dictated by the globalization of the economy. In its response to the chal-
lenges of globalization, politics certainly does have strategic options, which can
be identified – and this is crucial – according to the extent to which they either
remain within the framework of the old nation-based game of draughts or else
break with it. What is at work here is the rule that governs the decline in nation-
state power: those who play only the national card in the global meta-game will
lose. What is needed is a complete change in perspective; in other words, the fol-
lowing principle also holds: the counter-power of states develops as they become
transnationalized and cosmopolitanized. Only if states succeed in catching up
with mobile capital and redefining and reorganizing their positions of power and
game moves, can the decline in state power and authority be halted internation-
ally, indeed turned into its very opposite.
It is necessary to distinguish between two types of transnational self-transformation
of states – false and genuine transnationalization strategies. Transnationalization can
be a move within the old nation-state game; if so, it remains attached to the latter and
is aimed at bringing about a ‘new state reason’ (Wolf 2000). Thus, for example, alli-
ances between the World Trade Organization (WTO) and individual states may
enable the latter to gain sovereignty in terms of domestic politics, for example, in
relation to the demands of civil society for greater political involvement. Domestic
political opposition, for example, can be trumped using Europe, North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) or the WTO and so on. However, transnationalization can also
break with nation-based premises and assumptions to represent a first step in the
Counter-power in the global age   33
emergence of a cosmopolitan state or confederation of states. It is in the latter case
that I speak of genuine transnationalization.
The meta-game enables everybody to play a double game with reversed roles –
the buck of failure is passed to one’s opponent along with the politics of bitter
pills. What arises from this is a politics of the ‘cunning state’ (Randeria 2003):
state politicians deny their own power to better exercise it. In the meantime, they
hand over responsibility for the consequences of their decisions – or the lack
thereof – to the other side or else offload it onto the new carte blanche for inertia,
namely globalization. As versatile converts to whatever is new, heads of govern-
ment can emphasize their weakness vis-à-vis the new world powers – the WTO,
NGOs and so on – to justify themselves to their own electorates, while simultane-
ously evading responsibility for their inactivity. Power holders throughout the
world denounce the new ‘imperialism of human rights’, insisting on ‘cultural dif-
ference’ – in other words, the right to cultural difference – but use this as a
weapon in their domestic battles to eliminate political opposition and freedom of
opinion. NGOs proclaim and defend (the self-legitimacy of) human rights, but
this global mission is also a tool they use in competition against one another over
the begging bowls of ‘global problems’, from which they themselves are fed.

Note
1  Parts of this chapter are taken from Ulrich Beck (2005).

References
Beck, U. (2005) Power in the Global Age, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Beck, U. (2006) The Cosmopolitan Vision, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Beck, U. and Grande, E. (2010) ‘Varieties of Second modernity: The “Cosmopolitan
Turn” in Social and Political Theory’, British Journal of Sociology, 61, 409–43.
Randeria, S. (2003) ‘Cunning States and Unaccoutable International Institutions: Social
Movments and the Rights of Local Communities to Common Property Resources,’
European Journal of Sociology, 16(1), 27–60.
Wolf, K.-D. (2000) Die neue Staatsräson: zwischenstaatliche Kooperation als
Demokratieproblem in der Weltrisikogesellschaft, Baden-Baden: Nomos.
2 Evading the challenge
The limits of global activism
David Chandler

Introduction
Although state-based political action is held to reinforce frameworks and hierarchies
of power and exclusion, new social movements based on global activism are seen to
herald new forms of emancipatory political action that recognize and include diver-
sity and build new forms of global ‘counter-hegemonic’ politics. This chapter seeks
to briefly examine and challenge some of these claims. It suggests that, rather than
challenging power, global activism tends to undermine community connections.
This is because the political ethos it advocates is deeply corrosive of social engage-
ment and prone to elitist rather than inclusive consequences. The radical ethos of
global activism is one that seeks to create new methods of protest, awareness raising
and engagement derived from a refusal to play by the rules laid down by state-based
party politics. Advocates of this approach suggest that these radical movements
bring politics and ethics together by expanding the sphere of moral concern and by
developing political strategies that avoid and bypass state-based constraints on what
constitutes the political (see Hardt and Negri 2006; Graeber 2004; Falk and Strauss
2003; Pianta 2003). Global activism is defined by the demand not merely to ‘seek to
replace one form of power with another’ but instead claims the ‘objective of “whit-
tling down” the capacity of concentrated centres of power’ (Stammers 1999: 1006).
The emphasis is on ‘the struggle to reclaim space’ or to create ‘zones of autonomy’
and thereby to ‘create counter-powers to the state’ (Kingsnorth 2004; Notes from
Nowhere 2003; Klein 2002: 20).
From this perspective, political activity at the level of the state is inherently
problematic. States, far from being the focus for political organization and politi-
cal demands, are the central barrier to emancipatory political practice. Operating
on the terms of the state can only legitimize and perpetuate discourses and prac-
tices of political regulation that are built on and maintained by exclusion and war
(Foucault 2003: 98–9; Connolly 1991: 465–6; Pogge 1994: 198; Campbell 1998;
Linklater 1998: 6; Kaldor 2003: 36). It is the rejection of state-based approaches
that marks out this project as distinct from those of the past, and its development
can be traced from the post-1968 ‘new left’ through the 1980s civic ‘opposition-
ists’ in Eastern Europe to the Seattle protests and the anti-globalization and envi-
ronmental activist movements of today. There has been little critical analysis of
Evading the challenge   35
the emergence of global activism and markedly little examination either of their
claims for extending the ideas and concerns of political community beyond the
state or of the limitations of the ethos, which asserts that power can be challenged
globally rather than at the level of constituted government.
The following sections draw out the historical development of the core ideas at
the heart of radical global activist approaches, focusing on the grounds for the
rejection of the formal political framework of state-based politics, the centrality
of individual autonomy and the importance of the global or transnational dimen-
sion. The concluding sections dwell on the limitations of this political approach,
highlighting the problems involved in privileging individual ethics over societal
accountability and the consequences of this approach in legitimising highly indi-
vidualized political responses, which tend to fragment and atomize political
practices rather than constitute a new and more inclusive form of politics.

The roots of global activism


The post-1989 genesis of global activism is often rooted in the revival of the
concept of civil society by East European and Latin American opposition move-
ments and groupings, which operated in the context of authoritarian state regula-
tion (Kaldor 2003; Baker 2002). In the 1990s, however, it was not just under the
circumstances of the struggle against an authoritarian state that the opening up of
‘independent spaces’ was held to be necessary. As Kaldor (2003: 21) notes: ‘This
concept was taken up by Western radicals who saw civil society as a check both
on the power and arbitrariness of the contemporary state and on the power of
unbridled capitalism’. She sees the recent rise of interest in and support for global
activism as intimately connected to current Western concerns ‘about personal
autonomy, self-organization [and] private space’, which were initially given
political and ethical importance by oppositionists in Eastern Europe as ‘a way of
getting round the totalitarian militaristic state’ (Kaldor 2003: 4).
This argument, that it was the strength of the contemporary Western state and the
‘power of unbridled capitalism’ that led to a focus on empowerment through the
search for ‘personal autonomy’ and ‘private space’, is open to challenge. There were
other factors at work drawing early theorists of global activism to the experience of
East European dissidents: one factor was their similar experience of social isolation
(Kaldor 2003: 53). For Adam Michnik in Poland, the task of the opposition was ‘not
to seize power but to change the relationship between state and society’. This was to
be achieved through ‘self-organization’, with the aim of creating ‘autonomous spaces
in society’ (Kaldor 2003: 55). Although the term ‘civil society’ was often used,
extended to make reference to an immanent ‘global civil society’, more explanatory
is the similar concept of ‘anti-politics’, the title of a book by Hungarian dissident
Konrad (1984). For Kaldor (2003: 57), ‘anti-politics is the ethos of civil society’:

The realm of ‘anti-politics’ or the parallel polis was one where the indi-
vidual would refuse such [political] collaboration. . . . In all these discus-
sions, the role of the individual and the importance of personal links,
36   David Chandler
something that was central to individual dissidence, were considered pri-
mary, overriding claims to political authority . . . [A]nti-politics . . . was a
new type of politics because it was not about the capture of state power; it
was the politics of those who don’t want to be politicians and don’t want
to share power.
(Kaldor 2003: 56)

The individual ethical rejection of the ‘political’ – engagement in state-based


political parties – was held to be potentially more inclusive than political engage-
ment through formal representative parties, leading advocates to argue the virtues
of the ‘non-party political process’ (Kaldor 2003: 85). This rejection of formal
frameworks of representative political engagement has enabled global activists to
assert that they represent the disengaged and marginalized in ways that formal
political parties could never do. Global activism became increasingly popular as
an alternative approach to political protest at the same time as there was a grow-
ing disillusionment in the West with the limitations of democracy (see e.g. Hay
2007).
Beneath the sometimes radical ethos of global activism, which on the surface
seems to condemn the state as the site of power and control, stands a more tradi-
tional conservative thesis on the limits of popular democracy. It becomes clear
that it is the disillusionment with mass politics, rather than the critique of the
strong state, that has been the key to the appeal of global activism for radical
Western activists. According to Falk (1995: 253):

The modern media-shaped political life threatens individuals with a new


type of postmodern serfdom, in which elections, political campaigns, and
political parties provide rituals without substance, a politics of sound
bytes and manipulative images, reducing the citizen to a mechanical
object to be controlled, rather than being the legitimating source of legiti-
mate authority.

Lipschutz similarly argues that mass politics cannot lead to emancipatory prog-
ress because ‘in a sense, even societies in the West have been “colonized” by their
states’ (Lipschutz 1992: 392).
Advocates of global activism assert that the state-level focus of old movements
limited their progressive potential: ‘[I]t was through the state that “old” move-
ments were “tamed”. This was true both of workers’ movements, which became
left political parties and trade unions, and anti-colonial struggles, which were
transformed into new ruling parties’ (Connolly 1991: 476). Hardt and Negri
(2001: 133), for example, write that sovereignty is a ‘poisoned gift’, where osten-
sible revolutionaries ‘get bogged down in “realism”’, resulting in ‘the opposite of
the nationalist dream of an autonomous, self-centred development’ as new struc-
tures of domestic and international domination become established. Their critique
of national sovereignty puts a question mark over the political and ethical legiti-
macy of the modern democratic process:
Evading the challenge   37
The entire logical chain of representation might be summarized like this:
the people representing the multitude, the nation representing the people,
and the state representing the nation. Each link is an attempt to hold in
suspension the crisis of modernity. Representation in each case means a
further step of abstraction and control.
(Hardt and Negri 2001: 134)

The critique of the constraints of electoral competition for representation is a core


theme of the global activist approach.

The struggle against representation


The basis for the rise of global activism is political disconnection between state
elites and societies and a popular disengagement from mass politics. Politics
becomes globalized when political actors experience a loss of social connection,
and political aspirations are expressed in increasingly abstract and unmediated
forms. In this sense, discussion of a shift from ‘territorialized’, state-based, poli-
tics to ‘deterritorialized’, global, politics reflects the decline of strategic, instru-
mental engagement, concerned with transforming the external world, and the rise
of a more atomized politics of self-expression – of awareness, of identity, and of
values.
A discussion framed in the terminology of the different natures of political
‘spaces’ – the territorially bounded state level and the unbounded level of global
activism – in fact, has less to do with essentialized spatial conceptions than with
our contingent social and political bonds of connection. The less socially or col-
lectively mediated our engagement with the external world the more we appear
to inhabit a ‘globalized’ world. The less our political engagement is socially
grounded and constrained – for example, by the need for electoral or representa-
tional legitimacy or the strategic constraints of armed struggle or war against a
clear enemy – the more abstract and globalized this engagement becomes (see
e.g. Chandler 2009; Devji 2005; Schmitt 2004).
The disillusionment with mass politics, highlighted in the 1980s in Central
Europe and in the 1990s and beyond in the West, can be understood better in rela-
tion to the first movements to put the ‘bottom-up’ ethics of autonomy before
power: the ‘new social movements’, generally considered to be the offspring of
the 1968 student protests (Kaldor 2003: 84). The new social movements were
defined in opposition to the ‘old’ social movements of trade unions and
Communist Party politics. Rather than engaging in formal politics, monopolized
by the ‘old’ left, these groups stressed their radical opposition to traditional
political engagement. As Heartfield (2002: 142) notes:

The new generation of radicals did not, as a rule, challenge the official
leadership of the trade unions, but side-stepped the organized working
class altogether, to find new constituencies and fields of activism. Taking
the path of least resistance, these radicals took their struggle elsewhere.
38   David Chandler
The critique of, and political distancing from, organized labour on the grounds
of the rejection of any collective political subject went hand-in-hand with a critique
of mass politics and liberal democracy, which similarly implied a collective politi-
cal subject, that is, the electorate. Leading theorists of the ‘new left’, Laclau and
Mouffe (2001), argued that democratic struggles were not necessarily popular
struggles to be legitimated through the formal equality of the ballot box. They
denied the central importance of state-based politics of democratic representation,
arguing that there was no one ontologically privileged political space (Laclau and
Mouffe 2001; also Jessop 1990). For these theorists of ‘radical democracy’, demo-
cratic struggles (e.g., the feminist or anti-racist struggles) took place in a ‘plurality
of political spaces’ shaped by their own, relatively autonomous, ‘ensemble of prac-
tices and discourses’ (Jessop 1990: 132). There was no longer one ‘political space’;
the key demands were therefore not for equal political rights of participation but for
the recognition of difference and ‘autonomy’ (Jessop 1990: 184).
The centrality of autonomy to the definition and nature of new social move-
ments make them implicitly anti-state, not only because of their subjective
political views but also because of their organizational practices. The radical
approach sees the bearers of a new globalized democracy as social organizations,
which reject formal political processes and work at the sub-political level. For
Melucci (1988: 247), new social movements exist outside the traditional civil
society/state nexus; submerged in everyday life, they ‘have created meanings and
definitions of identity’, which contrast with traditional political boundaries. They
become ‘visible’ but are not institutionalized; that is, they do not have to make
claims to legitimacy based on public electoral or financial support (see Martin
2003). This, in Melucci’s (1988: 259) words, is the ‘democracy of everyday life’,
where legitimacy and recognition stem from ‘mere existence’ rather than the
power of argument or representation.
In effect, the claim for recognition on the basis of existence rather than the
ideas forwarded or numbers of people involved inverses the traditional ‘bench-
marks’ for judging political legitimacy. The focus on the everyday and the mar-
ginal has led to a growing appreciation of global activist networks that tend to be
least connected to formal political institutions and to a celebration of the ‘every-
day’ survival strategies of the Southern poor, which are held to ‘reposition the
locus of power’ and ‘transform the nature of power’. From this perspective, isola-
tion and the reliance on contacts within disparate ‘local communities result in a
decentralized strength, rooted in the autonomy of the national and local process’
(Patel et al. 2001: 244). Unlike the formal political struggle for representation, the
‘struggles’ of global activism are based on the claim of autonomy, held to be a
self-constituting goal or end-point.

Global politics or global activism?


The politics of global activism is not an extension of political struggle and
engagement beyond the domestic sphere but a reflection of the attenuation of
political contestation at both domestic and international levels. Politics has never
Evading the challenge   39
been restricted to the national level: the conceptions of Left and Right, which
framed understandings of politics from the French Revolution until the end of the
Cold War, were universal in nature. Politics has always been deterritorialized – or
global – in terms of its conceptualization, in terms of the aspirational content of
political demands: for women’s rights, for democracy, for national independence,
and so on. However, it is necessarily territorialized – or based on formal institu-
tions of political power – in terms of the specific strategies and articulations of
those demands, with a view to influencing or gaining political power to put those
demands into practice.
The globalization of political activism maintains the appearance of deterritori-
alized political claims and counter-claims for progress and rights but lacks the
territorialized organizational aspects, which sharpened and clarified political
positions and enabled strategic instrumental socio-political engagement. This
shift in political levels evades the transformational tasks that were central to tra-
ditional views of meaningful activity in political modernity. The lack of strategic
engagement, which is inherent in globalized conceptions of politics, is fundamen-
tal to the appeal of global activism. Time and space really do contract and appear
to be meaningless once politics becomes globalized. Space is no longer relevant
once global activists can travel from the United States or the United Kingdom to
protest for the freedom of Tibet at the opening of the Beijing Olympic Games or
can demonstrate their solidarity – with Palestinian women, Indian farmers pro-
testing against dam constructions, or the Zapatistas in the Chiapas – in their local
college or shopping centre. Time is no longer relevant once the goal of political
protest becomes increasingly an end in itself, in the form of awareness raising.
The wearing of a pin or ribbon as an expression of solidarity or ‘making one’s
voice heard’ at a demonstration often reflects how ethical gestures have replaced
political movements or struggles. In this context, the action in itself is seen to be
valuable, regardless of its consequences. With the decline of representational forms
of politics – which involved winning people to ideas or political platforms rather
than just expressing one’s own awareness – political practice becomes globalized:
much more immediate and unmediated. This point is highlighted in Devji’s (2005,
2008) work on the globalized ‘ethical’ nature of Islamic militancy, which he equates
with other movements, such as Greenpeace or the anti-globalization protesters,
whose practices are necessarily ethical rather than political when transposed to the
global level.
The globalization of political activism is, therefore, not the same as global
politics: It is not the extension of political struggles and contestation on some
higher or greater level. To analyse the dynamic behind global political activism,
it is necessary to grasp this process as a reflection of a general disengagement
from political struggle and a historically low level of political contestation. Hardt
and Negri (2001: 53) pose the problem sharply: ‘The proletariat is not what it
used to be’. The task, therefore, is to discover new forms of global agency.
Fortunately, it appears that the solution is at hand: radical proponents of global
activism claim to have discovered new sources of political agency capable of
transforming global politics. According to the radical guide books advertised in
40   David Chandler
the Guardian and the New Statesman every week, a new worldwide revolution is
in progress, a global movement against globalization and capitalism and for jus-
tice, autonomy and civil society, a movement so large and so diverse that it is
often simply termed a new ‘movement of movements’.
The world is allegedly in revolt. Everywhere from the Zapatistas in Chiapas,
often claimed to have founded the new global politics when they started their
‘post-modern’ 12-day rebellion on 1 January 1994; to the radical farmers protest-
ing against GM (genetically modified) crops in Latin America, India, Malaysia,
the Philippines and South Africa; to the anti-privatization struggles in South
African shanty towns; to the Narmada Dam protests in India; to the struggles of
the landless peasantry in Latin America, a new global revolutionary movement
has been widely heralded. For many commentators, this global revolution is dif-
ferent: its membership is found largely outside the West (Monbiot 2004: 10) and
much of its politics and its techniques were first developed in the global South
(Graeber 2004: 207). Kingsnorth (2004: 329) in his best selling One No, Many
Yeses promoted as a ‘journey to the heart of the global resistance movement’ asks:
‘Has a movement this big ever existed before? Has such a diversity of forces,
uncontrolled, decentralized, egalitarian, ever existed on a global scale? Has a
movement led by the poor, the disenfranchized, the South, ever existed at all?’
This sense of radical global agency is reflected in leading academic treatments.
Sussex professor Shaw (2000: 18) argues that the progressive movement of global
politics is one of ‘conscious human agency’; that while ‘there is no single guiding
force, such as a revolutionary party . . . there are many actors whose conscious
interactions shape the new era’. This is a ‘global revolution’ with a difference;
there is no collective conscious agency but rather a new pluralist ‘agency’ that
‘involves a radical redefinition of the idea of revolution’ (Shaw 2000).
For Hardt and Negri, the plural source of global agency is to be found in dis-
parate forms of resistance ‘from below’, from the 1992 Los Angeles riots, to the
Palestinian Intifada and the uprising in Chiapas. These are local struggles with
little in common and little that could be generalizable. This local character and
isolation from any broader political movement is described by Hardt and Negri
(2001: 54) as ‘incommunicability’, and they maintain that ‘[t]his paradox of
incommunicability makes it extremely difficult to grasp and express the new
power posed by the struggles that have emerged’. Because these struggles are
isolated and marginal and express no broader political aspirations, they do not at
first sight appear to be particularly powerful. However, for Hardt and Negri, a
focus on their purely local and immediate character, for this reason, would be a
mistake. They are also seen to have a universal character, in that they challenge
facets of global capitalist domination. For example, the Los Angeles rioters are
held to challenge racial and hierarchical forms of ‘post-Fordist’ social control, the
Chiapas rebels to challenge the regional construction of world markets and so on.
The key point is that ‘[p]erhaps precisely because all these struggles are incom-
municable and thus blocked from travelling horizontally in the form of a cycle,
they are forced instead to leap vertically and touch immediately on the global
level’ (Hardt and Negri 2001: 56).
Evading the challenge   41
It would appear that the decline of traditional international social movements
capable of generating mass support has led radical theorists to see a new impor-
tance in increasingly disparate and isolated struggles. As Hardt and Negri (2001:
56) illustrate:

We ought to be able to recognize that this is not the appearance of a new


cycle of internationalist struggles, but rather the emergence of a new qual-
ity of social movements. We ought to be able to recognize, in other words,
the fundamentally new characteristics these struggles all present, despite
their radical diversity. First, each struggle, though firmly rooted in local
conditions, leaps immediately to the global level and attacks the imperial
constitution in its generality. Second, all the struggles destroy the tradi-
tional distinction between economic and political struggles. The struggles
are at once economic, political and cultural and hence they are biopolitical
struggles, struggles over the form of life. They are constituent struggles,
creating new public spaces and new forms of community.

The limits of global activism


The ‘new left’ emphasizes the moral distinctiveness of new global activist move-
ments assumed to be capable of challenging power at the global level. However,
Keane (2003: 65) argues that this view of new social movements as the ‘world
proletariat in civvies’, while comforting for the left, is highly misleading. In
contrast, Falk (1995: 212) describes this process in glowing terms as:

[T]ransnational solidarities, whether between women, lawyers, environ-


mentalists, human rights activists, or other varieties of “citizen pilgrim”
associated with globalisation from below . . . [who have] already trans-
ferred their loyalties to the invisible political community of their hopes and
dreams, one which could exist in future time but is nowhere currently
embodied in the life-world of the planet.

The global interconnectedness that is celebrated is, in fact, the flip side of a
lack of connection domestically: ‘Air travel and the Internet create new horizon-
tal communities of people, who perhaps have more in common, than with those
who live close by’ (Kaldor 2003: 111–12). What these ‘citizen pilgrims’ have in
common is their isolation from and rejection of their own political communities.
The transfer of loyalties to an ‘invisible political community’ is merely a radical
re-representation of their rejection of a real and all too visible political commu-
nity: the electorate.
In fact, the global movement for emancipation ‘from below’ could be read as
a product of the end of any genuine transnational struggle. When radical theorists
celebrate ‘the early 1990s’ as ‘the time when civic transnationalism really came
of age’ (Falk and Strauss 2003: 211), they betray a certain lack of historical
imagination. Colás (2002) in International Civil Society makes the point that the
42   David Chandler
idea that transnational politics has only recently emerged demonstrates a lack of
historical awareness on the part of the advocates of ‘globalization from below’.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the main political currents, whether
they were conservatives, communists, anarchists, socialists, pacifists, feminists or
even nationalists, were, in fact, internationally as much as nationally orientated.
For example, the People’s International League, a cross-European association of
nationalists, was established by Mazzini in 1847, the International Working
Men’s Association or First International was formed in 1864, and the International
Congress of Women was established in 1888 (Colás 2002: 55–7). Rather than
being new or on the rise, transnational political activism is in a parlous state
today. The transnational social movements of modernity had the independence of
aim and capacity to effect meaningful political change at both domestic and inter-
national levels without either relying on states to act on their behalf or, at the
other extreme, avoiding any engagement with formal politics for fear of losing
their autonomy.
It would seem that the dynamic towards global activism is one driven by
domestic marginalization and the attempt to avoid the pressures and accountabil-
ity of domestic politics rather than the attraction of the international sphere per se.
As Kaldor (2003: 82) states: ‘almost all social movements and NGOs . . . have
some kind of transnational relations. Precisely because these groups inhabit a
political space outside formal national politics (parties and elections)’. Claire
Fox, writing about the burgeoning international activities of British local author-
ities, ranging from multiple twinning, to capacity-building partnerships as far a
field as Indonesia, Vietnam and Kosovo, notes that it seems that easy-sounding
solutions to problems elsewhere are more attractive than engaging with a domes-
tic audience. For her, it appears that ‘New Internationalism is in danger of becom-
ing a con-trick, a worthy sounding escape-route from the angst and insecurity of
running and representing local areas’ (Fox 2003).
Rather than be exposed through a formal struggle to win the argument with
people in a genuine debate, isolated activists are instead drawn to the forums of
international financial and inter-state institutions where there is no democratic
discussion, and they have no formal rights or responsibilities. Protesting outside
meetings of the World Trade Organization (WTO) or the G8 does not involve
winning any arguments. At best, it is a matter of courtier politics and elite lobby-
ing, shortcutting any attempt to win popular representative support. At worst, it is
a radical justification for the refusal to engage politically and for a retreat into
personal solipsism.

Lobbying power
The attempt to give elite lobbying a moral legitimacy can easily lead to the
exploitation of marginal struggles in the non-Western world, where people are
least likely to complain about Western advocates claiming to represent them and
guide their struggle. Of course, this does not mean that there is no local opposi-
tion, or resentment, over some ‘social movements’ that ‘consist of nothing more
Evading the challenge   43
than an office and a big grant from somewhere or other’ and ‘call a workshop,
pay people to attend, give them a nice meal and then write up a good report’ but
‘build nothing on the ground’ (Ngwane 2004; see also Sali-Terzic 2001).
However, for the advocates of global activism, these inequalities are not denied
but re-presented as giving voice to the ‘voiceless’ rather than to formal political
majorities, enabling marginal groups or the alleged ‘voices’ of the environment
or of future generations to be heard. Kaldor (2003: 5), for example, echoes net-
work theorists Keck and Sikkink (1998) in their use of the ‘boomerang effect’ to
describe the way civil society groups could ‘bypass the state’ through appealing
to transnational networks, international institutions and foreign governments.
Kaldor (2003: 95) describes the relationship:

[A] kind of two-way street [links Southern] groups and individuals who
directly represent victims, whether it be the victims of human rights viola-
tions, poverty or environmental degradation, with the so-called Northern
solidarity ‘outsiders’. The former provide testimony, stories and informa-
tion about their situation and they confer legitimacy on those who cam-
paign on their behalf. The latter provide access to global institutions,
funders or global media as well as ‘interpretations’ more suited to the
global context.

The popularity of global activist struggles for radicals in the West would seem
to be a reflection of similar problems to those faced by East European opposition-
ist figures in the 1980s: the weakness of their own domestic position. In the
search for new political avenues that do not rely on representational legitimacy,
Western radicals have talked-up the importance of international institutional gath-
erings that previously attracted little interest. Pianta (2003: 238) argues, for
example, that ‘the new power of summits of states and inter-governmental
organisations’ needs to be confronted through the invention of parallel summits.
In the face of an inability to make an impact at home, the transnational activists
have sought to latch on to the ready-made agenda of international institutions. It
is increasingly apparent that these radical movements are shaped and cohered
more by external agendas, for example, the timetable of meetings of the G8,
WTO or the United Nations (UN) than by any collective drive of their own.
Significantly, rather than global activism bringing pressure to bear on institu-
tions, it is these institutions, particularly the UN, that have been largely respon-
sible for creating a global activist network providing an agenda of forums that
could act as a cohering focus for the establishment of a ‘loose coalition of groups
and individuals worldwide’ (Bunch 2001). Rather than being seen as a threat to
the powers that be, the ‘new’ social movements are more often than not seen by
the international establishment as making a positive contribution. For example,
after the G8 summit in Genoa in 2001, global institutions responded by welcom-
ing the dialogue. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank
invited lobby groups including Global Exchange, Jobs with Justice, 50 Years is
Enough and Essential Action to engage in public debate. Guy Verhofstadt, Prime
44   David Chandler
Minister of Belgium and President of the European Union at the time, wrote an
open letter to the anti-globalization movement, published in major national news-
papers around the world, and collected the responses. The French Prime Minister,
Lionel Jospin, welcomed ‘the emergence of a citizen’s movement at the planetary
level’ (Kaldor 2003: 103).
As highlighted by George W. Bush’s relationship with U2 rock star Bono,
governments and international institutions can only gain from their association
with radical advocates (Vidal 2002; Carroll 2003). The reason for this positive
reception from the establishment lies in the fact that the relationship of advocacy
implies a mutual interest rather than any radical opposition (Heartfield 2004). The
power of the advocate rests on an entirely different basis to that of an elected
representative: lacking the representative’s independent basis of legitimacy, the
advocate’s position necessarily depends on the good favour of governing elites.
This lack of representational accountability leaves control in the hands of the
powerful, while offering the appearance of ‘openness’, ‘transparency’ and
‘accountability’. As Charnovitz (1997: 283) notes, the power to appoint non-state
actors and lobby groups to advisory committees ensures that states control the
policy process through determining which groups should be ‘recognized’. Under
these circumstances, the more ‘radical’ global civic activists become the more the
doors of inter-state forums have been opened to them (Heins 2004).
Despite the claims of many critical theorists, there are few indications that
operating outside the formal political sphere of electoral representation facilitates
a radical challenge to political power and existing hierarchies of control.
Compared to political social movements of the past, global activist movements
based on advocacy pose much less of a threat to the status quo, and there is a
growing number of critical studies considering the limits of non-governmental
organization (NGO) and non-state actor engagement in evolving mechanisms of
global governance (see e.g. Hudock 1999; Hearn 2000; Wilkinson and Hughes
2002; Laxer and Halperin 2003). However, for Kaldor, the advocacy movement
‘represents, in some respects, a revival of the great anti-capitalist movements of
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries’. She points out that ‘[a]t the
World Social Forum in Porto Alegre in 2002, the activists defined themselves as
a “global movement for social justice and solidarity”’ (2003: 101).
The activists may have declared themselves to constitute a ‘global movement’,
but it could be argued that what is distinctive about global activism is precisely
the individual character of global activism rather than the collective mass charac-
ter of the ‘great anti-capitalist movements’ of the last two centuries. According to
Grugel (2003: 276):

Recent anti-globalisation movements include: 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
globalising capitalism, such as that encapsulated within the Chiapas rebel-
lion in Mexico. . . . These organisations privilege lobbying at the global
Evading the challenge   45
level over national strategies of mobilisation. As a result, even the voices
of communities geographically isolated from, and economically unimport-
ant to, the core of the global economy and decision-making can now be
heard in the decision-making centres of the global political economy.

The anti-globalization movement brings together disparate groups and orga-


nizations that choose to prioritize global lobbying and advocacy politics over
the struggle for democratic legitimacy at the national level. The rejection of the
mass politics of liberal democracy is radically re-represented as the claim to be
operating on a higher ethical level, that of making common cause with the most
marginalized social groups least influential to the workings of the global econ-
omy. Ethical advocates who take up the (selective) demands of (selective)
marginal groups, and provide ‘“interpretations” more suited to the global con-
text’, can then lobby for their political ends without the trouble of democratic
legitimacy.
The advantage of the politics of ethical advocacy is that individuals can engage
in politics without having to struggle to win electoral accountability. As Zizek
(2003) notes, this limited interactivity is based on ‘interpassivity’, the virtuous
activity of a minority being presupposed by the passivity of others, who are spo-
ken for. Rather than expand the horizon of democratic politics, this is a form of
politics that is neither ‘democratic’ nor ‘inclusive’ (Lipschutz 2004). It is focused
around the ‘freedoms’ of the individual advocate who engages in courtly politics
and elite lobbying.
This highly individualized approach is reflected in the work of Kaldor (2003:
12), who argues: ‘I develop my own definition of civil society as the medium
through which social contracts or bargains between the individual and centres of
political and economic power are negotiated, discussed and mediated’. Although
in the past, the ‘social contract’ was made through collective and egalitarian
political engagement, for Kaldor, civil society takes the place of collective poli-
tics and facilitates an individual ‘negotiation’ with centres of power. The radical
‘bottom-up’ project of global civil society ends up rejecting democratic account-
ability for the courtier politics of elite advocacy (see further, Chandler 2001).

The global ethic


In a similar way to that in which the courtier politics of elite advocacy makes the
personal act a political one through bypassing the mediation of a collective
political process, there has also been a startling emergence of a new type of indi-
viduated global activism, one which engages in politics through personal ethical
acts. Ann Mische (1993: 245) highlights that this is a ‘type of civic participation
in which human subjectivity is not sacrificed to politics’. This is a form of politics
that privileges the individual subject above the collective one. The ‘anti-politics’
or ‘living in truth’ of East European intellectual oppositionists, such as Havel, is
the model of today’s political activism that seeks to blur the distinction between
the private and the public life of an individual:
46   David Chandler
[T]he aim is not to maintain two mutually opposed realms, but rather to
understand the one as a ‘holding area’ of the self, from which the self must
necessarily emerge to act publicly within the other. In Havel’s view, it is
the recovery of the ‘hidden sphere’ of subjectivity that provides the basis
for the ‘independent life of society’.
(Mische 1993)

Baker (2002: 149) has also suggested that personal ethics should be the basis of
the public resistance to power. This blurring of the private and the public is cen-
tral to the libratory promise of post-political activism, because it ‘holds out the
hope of both personal and political autonomy, in short, of self-rule’.
Twenty-three-year-old Caoimhe Butterly is a leading example of the new breed
of transnational political activists. Brought up in a culture of liberation theology
and with her father working around the world as an economic advisor to the
United Nations, she worked in soup kitchens in New York, in Guatemala and with
the Zapatista communities in Mexico before working in pre-war Iraq with an
activist group opposing sanctions and then moving to Palestine working in Jenin
camp. Interviewed in the Guardian, after being shot by Israeli troops, she was
asked whether she planned to leave. Her reply was ‘I’m going nowhere. I am
staying until this occupation ends. I have the right to be here, a responsibility to
be here. So does anyone who knows what is going on here’ (Barlow 2002).
This is a very different form of political activism from the solidarity work of
trade unionists and political activists in the past. Rather than engaging in political
debate and discussion with colleagues and workmates or raising concerns in elec-
tion campaigns, the new breed of post-modern activist is more concerned to act as
a moral individual than to engage in collective political action. The rights that are
claimed are those of individual engagement with other people’s struggles rather
than any specific political claims of the Palestinians or of others. Caiomhe argues
that she has a duty to be in Palestine, to bear witness and to negotiate with Israeli
forces on behalf of Palestinian victims, and, implicitly, that any morally aware
person has a similar duty. The self-centredness of this type of ethical politics is
reflected in the title of leftist British comedian Jeremy Hardy’s film of his experi-
ence in the region: Jeremy Hardy versus the Israeli Army (see also Hardy 2003).
Ken Nichols O’Keefe, leading the volunteer mission of peace activists acting as
human shields during the 2003 Iraq war, spells out the transnational ethos. According
to O’Keefe (2002) ‘we the “citizens” are responsible for the actions of “our” govern-
ments. . . . [W]e are collectively guilty for what we allow to be done in our name’.
For this reason, O’Keefe (2002) has renounced his US citizenship and would ‘invite
everybody to join me in declaring themselves not citizens of nations but world citi-
zens prepared to act in solidarity with the most wretched on our planet and to join
us’. Along with Caiomhe, O’Keefe is implicitly critical of those who do not take up
the invitation to put morality first. O’Keefe (2002) would ‘rather die in defense of
justice and peace than “prosper” in complicity with mass murder and war’.
It can appear that the motivation of the global civic activists acting as human
shields and witnesses in Iraq and the West Bank has less to do with the politics of
Evading the challenge   47
the conflicts than with their own personal need to make a moral statement.
Ronald Forthofer, from the Episcopal Church in Longmont, Colorado, a human
shield in Beit Jalla on the West Bank, stated: ‘We believe that we who are pro-
tected in America should experience and live in the same way that Palestinians
are living in the suffering’ (Hazboun 2001). Kate Edwards, a community worker
from Manchester, explained why she joined the International Solidarity Movement
in the occupied territories: ‘I wanted to challenge myself to see if I could cope
working in a place like this. I have good friends and a comfortable life. I wanted
to do something for those who were not as fortunate as me’ (Beaumont and
Wainwright 2002). But rather than donate to the International Red Cross or
another professionally trained organization, Kate felt the need to put her own life
at risk, suffering severe internal injuries from bullet wounds in Bethlehem, after
refusing to follow Israeli troop orders to halt. A similar individualized sense of
political mission has been argued to drive young British Muslims to volunteer as
suicide bombers in conflicts abroad. As Appleton (2003) notes:

This is less a case of militants finding common cause in Palestinians’ fight


for their land and livelihood, than of finding themselves, of finding their
own individual identity and mission. . . . In this context, the nihilistic tactic
of suicide bombing seems to allow these young Western militants to fight
their own war. Unlike fighting in an army over a sustained period of time,
suicide bombing is an individual act that requires no engagement with the
conflict itself. It is my act, the sacrifice of my life it allows suicide bombers
to construct in their heads the mission that they are making the sacrifice
for.

In the not so recent past, it was religious leaders and moral authority figures
who ‘intervened’ in other people’s struggles in the hope of bringing a peaceful
resolution by bearing witness to the suffering and attempting to help. Today, the
collapse of a broader political or moral framework has led to individuals claiming
their own moral right of global activist ‘intervention’ without any legitimacy
derived from a collective authority.

Conclusion
The celebration of global activism would appear to be based less on any emer-
gence of new political forces at the global level than the desire of Western activ-
ists and commentators to justify their avoidance of accountability to any collective
source of political community or elected authority. The focus on the shared inter-
ests with those ‘excluded’, or the ‘imagined’ global community of radical activ-
ists, is a way of legitimizing the avoidance of any accountability to those still
‘trapped inside’ the electorate (see e.g. Connolly 1991: 479). The struggle for
individual ethical and political autonomy, the claim for the recognition of sepa-
rate ‘political spaces’ and for the ‘incommunicability’ of political causes, demon-
strates the limits of the radical claims for global activism. The rejection of the
48   David Chandler
formal political sphere, as a way of mediating between the individual and the
social, leaves political struggles isolated from any shared framework of meaning
or from any formal processes of democratic accountability.
This chapter neither provides a defence of some nostalgic vision of the past nor
does it assert that the key problem with radical global activist approaches is their
rejection of formal engagement in existing political institutions and practices. The
point being made here is that the rejection of state-based processes, which force the
individual to engage with and account for the views of other members of society, is
a reflection of a broader problem: an unwillingness to engage in political contesta-
tion. It would appear that many advocates of global activism would rather hide
behind the views of someone else, legitimizing their views as the prior moral claims
of others through lobbying power or putting themselves in harm’s way and leading
by inarticulate example, rather than engaging in a public debate. The unwillingness
of many global activists to engage with their own society reflects the attenuation of
political community rather than a radical challenge to power. Regardless of the
effectiveness of radical lobbying and calls for recognition, this rejection of social
engagement can only enhance the hold of power, further legitimizing the narrowing
of the political sphere to a small circle of unaccountable elites.

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50   David Chandler
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interpass.htm.
3 Coordinated power in
contemporary leftist activism
Ruth Reitan1

Introduction
This chapter juxtaposes the three main historical and contemporary strands of
Western leftist activism – reformist social democracy, revolutionary Marxism–
Leninism and radical autonomism and anarchism – in terms of their competing
notions of power and global governance and yet, conversely, their coordinated
struggle for a more just, egalitarian, democratic, peaceful and ecologically sus-
tainable world. A number of points will be developed herein. First, the core
themes of this book, namely globalization, power and activism, are complex.
Facile or one-dimensional definitions are unhelpful in terms of both theory and
practice. As sociologist Tomlinson (1999: 14) observed of globalization, ‘lose the
complexity and you have lost the phenomenon’. The same goes for power and
activism. Furthermore, it is important to note that although globalization pro-
cesses have fragmentary or disintegrative effects, they are also driven by and
reinforce unprecedented concentrations of economic, political, social and cultural
power. This power is concentrated in global governance bodies ranging from
informal, unelected and unaccountable to inter-governmental, partially demo-
cratic and thus considered somewhat legitimate. Most visible and contentious of
these are transnational banks and corporations, the World Trade Organization
(WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and the post-2007
economic crisis nodes of the Group of 20 (G20) leading industrial states and the
‘G2’ of the United States and China – the latter emerging as a key dyadic stum-
bling block to a strong climate treaty at the 15th United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of Parties (COP15)
negotiations in Copenhagen in December 2009.
In response to this concentration of power at the global level, concerned indi-
viduals and groups around the world have also ‘gone global’ in myriad ways
while remaining engaged in local and national politics broadly defined (see
Reitan 2007). However ironically, in terms of power, global activists are often
more realistic and pragmatic than many idealistic scholars who write about them.
They are keenly aware of their relative and often acute powerlessness in the face
of stronger corporate actors, complex bureaucracies and prevailing policies, ide-
ologies and practices. In recognizing their relative marginality, along with the
complexities of globalization and ways of engaging with, pooling and wielding
52   Ruth Reitan
power, activists have grown increasingly reticent to advance their group’s plat-
form as ‘the sole answer’ or to critique the tactics and strategies of others. Instead,
they recognize the need for multiple and flexible approaches to deal with the
Janus-headed complex that is neo-liberal globalization. They increasingly share
information, build trust, develop consensus declarations and act together in coali-
tions when possible or in parallel blocs when not. They also lobby, advise, or
challenge governance actors at all levels. Furthermore, they experiment with
alternative and autonomous modes of political, economic and social relations.
Thus, they have developed a multi-pronged strategy entailing dynamic, loose and
limited coordination across the spectrum from reform to radicalism.
This spectrum suggests another point of this chapter, that is, that globalization
and the activists responding to it are not new. They can be traced back across
centuries of contestation that Polanyi (1944/2001) called ‘the double movement’
or, more recently, Boswell and Chase-Dunn (2000) termed the ‘spiral of capital-
ism and socialism’. Just as a prime driver of the recent wave of globalization is
the intensification and ‘extensification’ of the capitalist model of incessant priva-
tization, growth and accumulation to all parts of the globe, so too are critiques of
neo-liberal globalization and its negative social, political and ecological effects
framed in broadly socialist terms. These range from reformist platforms for
strengthening social democracy at the national and transnational levels to diverse
calls for a radical and plural democracy and a socialist economy.
Finally, what is arguably unique about the present moment is the degree to
which the global left has not fractured into its historical constituent parts of lib-
eralism, Marxism and anarchism–autonomism. Although these tendencies and
tensions are present, activists make concerted efforts to mitigate, manage and
bridge them towards joint action – or at the very least not working at cross-
purposes. Thus, activists are increasingly coordinating their diverse sources and
forms of power to wield power collectively. To illustrate how this is done, exam-
ples will be drawn from the diverse activist networks organizing around the
COP15 negotiations, where I was a participant observer. This pragmatic hanging
together of the left reflects the growing recognition of the complexity of globali-
zation and power, as well as the multiple activist strategies needed to engage with
and ultimately transform both.

The three faces of the left in historic and contemporary


transnational activism
Although it is fair to question the applicability of the left–right distinction in
contemporary politics, and more specifically whether we can speak of a ‘global
left’ in an increasingly multi-polar and multi-civilizational world, I believe these
distinctions are still useful as both a spatial metaphor and a rough approximation
of progressive tendencies, or affinities, across much of the (post-)modern world.
We can imagine them as groups encamped on either side of a river. On la rive
droite is a broad and squabbling cluster of the Western Enlightenment’s children.
Here we find liberal, social democratic non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
Coordinated power in contemporary leftist activism   53
and the transnational advocacy networks they (try to) lead aimed at influencing
national and inter-governmental policy. Here too are traditional Marxist–Leninist
parties and trade unions and the various mobilization groups they organize who
deem capturing the national state – and, in recent decades, inter-state bureaucra-
cies – as a necessary step towards socializing the increasingly global means of
production. These modernists conceptualize power as hegemonic, hierarchical
and commandist, yet ultimately consensual – once the liberals construct their
perfect institutions or the Marxists destroy capitalism. They see the state either as
a prototype for or as a necessary evil through which to pass to a cosmopolitan
world order characterized by justice, equality, rationality and peace.
Across the river on la rive gauche are an even more diffuse encampment of
late-, post- and pre-moderns: Here reside the autonomists, direct-action folks,
post-anarchists and post-Marxists as well as many indigenous and anarcha-
feminist tendencies.2 This loose camp would likely consense (after a long, ardu-
ous process) to a conception of power as networked, biopolitical, pre-figurative
and, in the current global order, parasitic – yet ideally horizontal. From this per-
spective, the state is viewed as one of many hierarchical and inter-related struc-
tures or relations of domination – along with capitalism, patriarchy, European
(neo-)colonialism and the pro-growth and anti-environment development model
– that must be abandoned, challenged and destroyed or deconstructed if ‘a world
in which many worlds can fit’, to quote Zapatista subcomandante Marcos, is to
be realized.
In imagining power in these diverse ways and acting accordingly, each broad
activist tendency assists in constructing a new world order: in the former case, a
pluralistic global polity modelled on the liberal state; in the latter, a counter-
imperial rhizome consisting of autonomous but networked nodes across an ever-
expanding horizontal plane. Both will be elaborated below. Whether, how or the
extent to which these distinct forms of power and alternative worldviews can be
reconciled is an open question and one that is being debated and tested via activ-
ist praxis in the most recent cycle of global contention. It is a fundamental debate,
for as Lukes (1974/2005: 63) noted in his seminal proposition on power:

how we think of power may serve to reproduce and reinforce power struc-
tures and relations, or alternatively it may challenge and subvert them. It
may contribute to their continued functioning, or it may unmask their prin-
ciples of operation, whose effectiveness is increased by their being hidden
from view.

This perennial divide among activist camps has deep historical roots and robust
contemporary manifestations. Indeed, it has been a ubiquitous feature of ‘left’ or
progressive political philosophy and action for well over a century and cannot be
easily sutured. Socialist folklore reminds us that it was present at the birth of
modern transnational activism when Karl Marx himself, representing revolution-
ary communism, successfully manoeuvred to expel Mikhail Bakunin and his
anarchist ilk after the first Communist International for opposing Marx’s call to
54   Ruth Reitan
participate in parliamentary elections with an eye towards seizing state power.
Instead, the proverbial father of collectivist anarchism Bakunin (1873/1996)
advocated direct action on the part of workers to abolish the state and capitalism
simultaneously and, thus, presciently rejected the intermediate stage of the ‘dic-
tatorship of the proletariat’ on the grounds that it threatened to permanently
enslave the very workers it purported to free.
The second main fissure and ultimate schism to emerge early on was between
anti-capitalist revolution and social democratic reformism. It broke out in the
wake of the First World War and was exacerbated by the competing solidarities
between national citizen and international proletarian. The terms of this polemical
debate, as the story goes, were laid down by German Social Democratic Party
members Bernstein (1889/1993) arguing for the reformist path to socialism as
opposed to Luxemburg (1900/1973) advocating the workers’ revolution.
And so it continues today: These three tendencies have re-emerged everywhere
in the most recent cycle of contention. We find them in the variegated responses
to the US’s ‘war on terror’ (Reitan 2009). They are even more apparent in the
global backlash against the core state-allied corporate and financial interests in
their drive to construct a single integrated economy and international legal order
via neo-liberal globalization. These diverse activist tendencies are manifested in
the colour-coded blocs and diverse tactics of black (anarchists), red (socialists
and labour), green (ecologists) and pink (pacifists) ubiquitous at mass protests
around the world. They are embodied in the sometimes fractious encounters
between Venezuelan grassroots barrio activists and representatives of Chavez’s
state-led Bolivarian revolution – and in a different way in the muted response by
many social movements to Chavez’s call for a Fifth International. They are there
when urban autonomists and indigenous groups protest the ‘NGOization’ of the
World Social Forum (WSF) and its regional spin-offs, when they occupy spaces
within the Forums to protest their and others’ exclusion and when they self-
organize direct actions and meeting spaces simultaneously but ‘beyond the WSF’.
They are constantly competing in the WSF International Council over whether
the council’s proper role is that of a deliberative and representative body or
merely a facilitative one that cannot take decisions on the Forum’s behalf, as well
as how the Forum relates to political parties, government officials and armed
groups.
As will be seen later, these tensions are endemic in the emergent Climate
Justice Movement. The main divide here is between professionalized NGOs and
Green party members who lobby official negotiators and engage in the ‘Green
New Deal’ debate with state and corporate actors, versus direct action autono-
mists and a number of Global South-based movement actors, along with their
state and NGO allies, who demand radical change to the capitalist economic and
state-political systems.
Survey evidence gathered at the WSF by Reese and her colleagues (2006)
bolsters the above observations: When asked whether a single democratic world
government would be a favourable or feasible goal towards which to strive, par-
ticipants were roughly divided among those thinking it both feasible and worthy
Coordinated power in contemporary leftist activism   55
(about 30 per cent), desirable but not feasible (about 40 per cent) and those
opposed (roughly 30 per cent). The last group – the campers on la rive gauche in
our spatial metaphor – favours anarchist and autonomist solutions of local gov-
ernance, deep and radical democracy and community self-reliance. Furthermore,
although a large majority (nearly 85 per cent) wish to abolish international finan-
cial institutions, nearly 60 per cent seek their replacement with more democratic
ones. Just over half (54 per cent) want to abolish capitalism completely, while a
quarter of those surveyed oppose its replacement with any formal financial struc-
tures (see also Smith et al. 2008: 89–90). These results favouring both a world
democratic state and a renovated global financial architecture by nearly 70 per
cent and 60 per cent, respectively, reflect the prominence of modernist and
reformist ‘right-bankers’ within the spaces of the main social forum sites.
However it is likely that had surveys been administered in the autonomous spaces
running concurrently with the social forums as well as among youth camp par-
ticipants, the results would have been more evenly split.
What can be discerned from the above evidence are two dynamics, one cen-
trifugal and the other centripetal: Regarding the former dispersive dynamic, the
three historical leftist tendencies – social democratic reform, Marxist revolution
and autonomist–anarchist radicalism – have clearly re-emerged in the most recent
cycle of contention, which many mark as beginning with the Zapatista uprising
in Chiapas, Mexico, in 1994; but as to the latter inclusive dynamic, it is important
to notice that the three tendencies are still all there – debating, critiquing and
conflicting but also coordinating together – 15 years and counting into this cycle:
in the shared or parallel physical spaces at social forums, in the virtual spaces of
email list-serves where they debate and plan inside–outside strategies and future
mobilizations and in the inter-governmental conferences and street demonstra-
tions coordinating among various blocs and affinity groups. This combined fre-
quency, complexity, diversity, and longevity of transnational activist coordination
is arguably unprecedented.

A modernist view of power and global order: transposing


the domestic polity to the global level
However, before heralding the emergence of an unproblematically united global
left (the post-modern prince has appeared!), it is prudent to examine each of the
three tendency’s distinct – potentially divisive but also complementary – concep-
tions of power and global order. This is necessary so as to identify the ways that
each contributes to their common struggle towards a more just, egalitarian,
democratic, peaceful and ecologically sustainable world.
We begin with the most prosaic, or one could say hegemonic, tendency – if
only because neo-liberal discourse recognizes its right to exist as a separate but
ur-political sphere. This is social-democratic reformism, or what liberal scholars
and activists call an emergent ‘transnational civil society’. The modern notion of
civil society has a long and circuitous history (see e.g. Keane 2003). The liberal–
democratic tradition defines it as the civic associational realm above the family
56   Ruth Reitan
and below the state and is commonly seen as distinct from the economic sphere.
Viewed also as separate from the political sphere, civil society is considered by
reformers to be a necessary complement to the liberal, republican democratic
state in the Kantian and Lockean traditions. In this civic realm, autonomous indi-
vidual citizens – whose rights and freedoms are recognized by a state with cir-
cumscribed powers and both are codified in its constitution and laws – freely
associate, and ideally, this relationship is mutually reinforcing.
In recent decades, we have seen an unprecedented scaling up on the part of
‘civil society’ activists (della Porta and Tarrow 2005; Keck and Sikkink 1998;3
Reitan 2007; Smith and Johnston 2002). Wallgren (2009: n.p.) attributes the path
taken by Northern activists, in particular, as embedded within a liberal discursive
regime wherein ‘the combination of universal ethical commitment and a concern
for global challenges and problems turns rather mechanically into a reason for a
grand scale of intervention and a positive prejudice towards high-level institution-
building’. The reasons for doing so are numerous and reflect the general demands
of many Northern NGO-led transnational advocacy networks in recent years:
economic globalization forces have overburdened the governance capacity of any
single state; thus, civil society is needed to pressure these institutions into becom-
ing more democratic and as participants themselves in constructing democratic
instruments; and global problems such as poverty, climate change, weapons pro-
liferation and financial crises demand global solutions and governance regimes
that transcend the realpolitik logic of state-to-state relations (Habermas 2006;
Held 1995; Patomäki and Teivainen 2004; Reitan 2007; Sehm-Patomäki and
Ulvila 2007; Wallgren 2009).
Many activists, policy makers and scholars (Bull 1977; Falk 1987; Hardt and
Negri 2000; Suganami 1989; Rosenau 1990) have noted conceptual and practical
difficulties in projecting the domestic analogy onto the international level.
However, most NGOs have pursued such a transfer in their ‘going global’ by
demanding recognition, rights, resources and reforms from this transnational
tangle of informal, quasi-formal or inter-governmental actors – the legitimacy,
authority and power of which many NGOs contest. However, by their very act of
petitioning, they arguably empower these actors at the transnational level.
What is the precise nature and distribution of power in this emergent global
polity that reformist, state-oriented civil society activists are helping to construct?
With regard to nature, Dahl’s (1957; in Lukes 1974/2005: 16) classic pluralist
view of power, defined as ‘a successful attempt by A to get a to do something he
would not otherwise do’, seems to be the point of departure for contemporary
thinking on transnational or global civil society (Florini and Simmons 2000;
Keck and Sikkink 1998). In Dahl’s view, power is measured in terms of behaviour
that impacts decisions over issues in which a contest among clearly defined inter-
ests are expressed in divergent policy preferences. Furthermore, the term ‘power’
for Dahl is interchangeable with ‘influence’ (Lukes 1974/2005: 17–19). So how
do transnational advocacy networks exert power – or influence – over govern-
ments and corporate actors to get them to do what they otherwise would not? Via
the strategic mobilization of information, issue and category formation, pressure
Coordinated power in contemporary leftist activism   57
and attempts to gain leverage through moral persuasion, towards not only influ-
encing policy outcomes but also transforming the terms of debate among the
powerful (Keck and Sikkink 1998: 2; Risse 2000: 186).
Moving from the nature of power to its distribution in the emergent (neo-)lib-
eral global polity: Although liberal discourse opens a space for (depoliticized)
civil society, this inclusion is tacitly stratified, and in practice, non-state, non-
corporate actors are relegated to the lowest rung of the power matrix. However,
many liberal civil society theorists attempt to put pearls on this pig by embracing
this stratification so as to champion the ‘third force’ of soft power that morally
authoritative NGOs can wield for the ostensible common good.
Florini and Simmons (2000: 10–11), for example, accept ‘standard interna-
tional relations thinking’ on power and the place of civil society actors within that
global rank order. They describe two three-tiered hierarchies descending from
most important to least: in terms of power, we find coercive, economic and then
‘soft’ power of moral authority, influence or persuasion,4 and in terms of actors,
there are governments, firms and civil society. Following these standard realist
and liberal assumptions, Florini and Simmons see states as the most powerful
actors precisely because they access or wield all three forms of power. Firms are
next, possessing the latter two forms.
Finally, civil society is confined mainly to the use of soft power in its attempts
to shape international norms – preferably codifying them in international treaties
but, when not, at least evolving better standards of behaviour. This soft power is
said to be wielded both directly via persuasion of policy makers and business
leaders to ‘change their minds about what is the right thing to do’, as well as
indirectly via ‘altering the public’s perception of what governments and busi-
nesses are doing, [in that w]hen public pressure is generated, politicians act to
please their constituents and businesses must respond to keep investors and con-
sumers happy’ (Florini and Simmons 2000: 31).
Well, maybe. However, many activists and a few scholars have recognized that
this triadic relationship among the modern state, market actors and civil society
has produced practices and distributions of power that are widely and even
increasingly unequal, hierarchical, hegemonic, coercive and commandist as we
move to the transnational level. Thus, there is a growing recognition among
reformist NGOs within ‘global civil society’ that their facile transposition of lib-
eral state-oriented assumptions, practices and aspirations of demanding recogni-
tion, rights, resources and behavioural change from emerging global governing
agents run the very real risk of replicating and even reinforcing their own mar-
ginal status on the transnational level.
However, before feeling too sorry for the lowly Northern NGO in the global
pecking order, let us have a closer look at power relations within the networks they
have spearheaded. NGOs have largely replicated the stratified state-corporate-civil
society relationship within their own so-called first-generation transnational advo-
cacy networks in a kind of slave-becomes-the-master inversion. These networks,
which prevailed before the most recent cycle of contention and continue in a less
hegemonic form today (Bennett 2005; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Reitan 2007),
58   Ruth Reitan
entail limited, policy-oriented campaigning aimed at governments and some cor-
porations led by Northern-based NGOs. The latter broker strategic coalitions with
other like-minded organizations as well as with beneficiary groups on whose
behalf they advocate but who have little say over the agenda. This network struc-
ture of well resourced and connected NGOs standing up and in for oppressed and
voiceless Third World constituencies, thus, mirrors the unequal, hierarchical and
commandist power logic of the nascent neo-liberal global polity in which they are
embedded – but now the NGO gets to play government, their donors the corporate
polity members, whereas beneficiaries are cast in the weakest role of challenger or
even simply subject.
This paternalistic model has been increasingly challenged in the current cycle
of contention, as the once-perceived passive beneficiaries became activists them-
selves (Keck and Sikkink 1998: 78; Reitan 2007). Their insistence on a greater
voice in issues that impact their lives and in the networks that purport to advance
their interests has caused a marked shift in how networks are structured – that is,
in how power flows within and also beyond their issue network to interact with
others – as well as in the nature of their demands. Thus, there has been a discern-
ible trend away from the first-generation NGO advocacy model towards hybrid
network structures.
These hybrids combine some features from the first generation with those of a
second model or what Bennett (2005) termed direct activism social justice char-
acterized by diffuse forms of power. These are inclusive collectivities that favour
diversity, linking multiple issues through horizontal networks and adopting social
technologies that facilitate greater autonomy and leaderless networks that provide
political capacities for communication. What have emerged are polycentric net-
works combining direct mass activism in diversely targeted campaigns proliferat-
ing via the internet. These networks are antagonistic to state and corporate actors
in a way that first generation campaigns were not. However, they maintain the
earlier model’s attempts to influence and pressure powerful actors and some form
of organizational apparatus but which privileges internal democracy and transpar-
ency (Reitan 2007).
This hybridity is apparent in the diverse network and organizational designs of
Our World Is Not for Sale, Via Campesina, Jubilee South, Friends of the Earth
International, the World March of Women, the global anti-war and anti-bases net-
works and the recent Climate Justice Now! (CJN). What they have in common is
popular participation and greater Global South leadership; multi-sector strategies
that include networking across issues and actors towards structural transformation
that would replace neo-liberal globalization with comprehensive alternatives; a
more critical and openly antagonistic position towards governance bodies and
especially transnational economic and financial actors and, thus, employing direct,
non-violent action and mass mobilization in their repertoire of contention, in addi-
tion to popular education and lobbying of key government actors.
This shift towards a hybrid network structure has heralded major changes for
the once dominant NGO. Although they continue to play important roles in a
number of networks resisting neo-liberal globalization and other social ills, in the
Coordinated power in contemporary leftist activism   59
most recent cycle of contention they are no longer their sole initiators or directors.
NGOs have become lodged, partly by force and partly by choice, within larger
webs of activism growing up around them. They have responded to this reversal
of fortunes along a continuum between two poles.
At one extreme is a flat-out refusal to relinquish the command position within
their networks or their persuasive-accommodationist-co-optable role vis-à-vis the
state and corporate powers that be. These NGOs struggle to hold onto their
privileged position atop the civil society heap, and, thus, simply replace their
rebellious Southern beneficiaries – now called ‘partners’ but in name only –
rather than ceding real power to them. They carry on with business as usual,
which entails elite lobbying on the one hand supported by professionally branded,
media-friendly, popular, but rather toothless sign-on campaigns, both of which
result in raising large sums of money from government, corporate, faith-based
and individual donors in the North.
However, they have also found themselves criticized by many Southern-based
movements and progressive NGOs, abandoned by former alliance partners and at
turns co-opted, marginalized or frustrated by their government and corporate
interlocutors. They have also been shut out of some networks altogether: This is
done directly through ‘identity-group only’ rules barring their participation, as
with the Via Campesina and the Indigenous Environmental Network (see Reitan
2007: Chapter 5). It is also commonly achieved indirectly via the more confron-
tational and transformational stances adopted by new networks comprised of
former ‘beneficiaries’ such as Jubilee South and CJN, as well as by radical
autonomist networks such as the Peoples’ Global Action and the direct action
network at the COP15, Climate Justice Action (CJA), whose tactics and strategies
the old-style NGO eschew and at times openly denounce.
However, the above is only one end of the spectrum of NGO reactions to this
shifting terrain. A more pragmatic and progressive stance has been to accept and
adapt to their new, decentred and more explicitly partisan role of embedded NGO.
These organizations have emerged as key facilitators, brokers, and supporters of
popular, grassroots-based, Southern-led movements and networks and have done
so via listening and learning, hard-won trust, mutual respect, reciprocal solidarity,
joint action and promoting bottom-up power. I would argue that most NGOs who
attempt to work across borders have experienced these tensions and been con-
fronted with this choice between commandist advocate and embedded partisan. In
choosing one or the other role as their ideal, the hybridized networks in which they
are involved display a corresponding tendency towards either the first-generation
advocacy model or second-generation direct-action social justice.

NGO networks in action at the COP15


This is true of the two main networks in which NGOs played key coordinating roles
in the lead up to the 2009 UNFCCC negotiations, Climate Action Network (CAN)
and CJN. However, although these NGOs tend to conceive of their internal role – as
well as their network’s relationship with governance and corporate actors – differently
60   Ruth Reitan
and, thus, often compete and conflict, the two networks have nonetheless remained
linked through shared history, meeting spaces, members in common, informal infor-
mation exchange, support of Southern governments and coordinated action.
CAN is the oldest and largest civil society network participating in the UN
climate talks, emerging out of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. Thus, any influence
that NGOs have had on this treaty process can largely be credited to CAN mem-
bers. The network’s leaders have been mainstream environmental groups such as
World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace, although they have recently been joined by
influential social justice NGOs such as Oxfam and Christian Aid. Its secretariat
in Washington, DC coordinates activities, information exchanges and strategies
among 12 regional offices worldwide, publicizes its campaigns, raises funds and
collects membership dues. Its stance, although increasingly critical, has largely
focused on ‘sustainable development, – that is, human and economic develop-
ment that neither compromise the continued growth of either nor unduly harm the
planet. In this regard, it is very much steeped within the liberal socio-economic
and political discourse of universal, yet differentially assigned, rights and obliga-
tions based on each country’s level of development. CAN’s lobbying and cam-
paigning efforts promote democratic government regulation at both the national
and international levels through ‘fair, ambitious and binding’ targets and treaties,
sustainable economic growth supported by technology and aid transfers to the
South and individual behavioural change.
Thus, CAN’s network structure and aims tend towards the first-generation
advocacy model, with all its attendant tensions. These came to a head at the UN
climate talks in Bali in 2007 (COP13). CAN members, including Friends of the
Earth International and some national affiliates, voiced concerns about lead
Northern NGOs promoting their own governments’ interests over those of the
developing and poor countries. They also accused them of blocking the network
from adopting more critical and activist stances against powerful governmental
and economic actors and in defence of the planet and its majority of people.
These critiques resonated with some Southern-based networks and embedded
partisan NGOs who were coming to the climate talks for the first time. They
began meeting and holding actions separately from CAN and, by the COP13’s
end, 20 groups issued a press release regarding a launch of a new network, CJN
(2007).5 This new network’s reference to ‘justice’ highlights its commitment to
fight for social, ecological and gender justice simultaneously, as well as demand-
ing reparations for ‘climate debt’ to be paid to the South. Furthermore, it is telling
that CJN’s critical and activist stance against the UNFCCC process – charging it
as undemocratic, marginalizing voices from the South and the most affected by
climate change, and as proposing false, weak and profit-oriented solutions that
fail to address the scale of the crisis – are the very same criticisms its participants
levelled against CAN on their exodus.
Going into the COP15, CAN members had to compete with the upstart CJN for
UN accreditation badges and were rather put off to find that 40 per cent went to
the new alliance. The two networks were made to share the NGO room in the
official Bella Center as well as to coordinate times for press conferences – both
Coordinated power in contemporary leftist activism   61
of which were conflictual. When NGO access to the Center was severely cut back
in the final days of negotiations, CAN members migrated to the Klimaforum
space, where CJN had been hosting well-attended and open informational and
mobilization meetings all week. However, CAN proceeded to string tape and
check badges in their cordoned off section of the hall, excluding non-network
activists and the public from their ‘sensitive’ discussions.
These conflicts notwithstanding, the two networks did cooperate by sharing infor-
mation informally via their overlapping members such as Christian Aid, and more
formally, by CAN continuing to publish and distribute their free daily conference
newspaper, ECO. Furthermore, both networks supported the joint demand of the
African group, Least Developed Countries (LDCs), Alliance of Small Island States
(AOSIS), the Group of 77 Developing Countries (G77) and China to hold the devel-
oped world to legally binding reduction targets and to a second commitment period
under the Kyoto Protocol.6 Finally, CJN, joined by CJA (discussed later), marched
under the banner ‘System Change not Climate Change’ in the 12 December permit-
ted march organized by CAN members’ Global Campaign for Climate Action
(GCCA; see Björk 2010; Hadden 2010), where up to 100,000 people turned out.
and some CJN members have credited CAN for their ability to orchestrate media-
savvy and popular sign-on campaigns such as TckTckTck, which the younger, less
well-resourced and more confrontational CJN has not yet been able to do.

Post-, pre- and anti-modern visions of power and global


order: within and against empire
Although social-democratic currents continue to denounce finance capital and
corporate encroachment of the state’s responsibilities and authority and, thus, to
call for re-embedding economies within reinvigorated welfare states while democ-
ratizing and strengthening global governance structures, a markedly different
vision of governance and power emerges from the revolutionary and radical wings
of contemporary scholarship and activism. In the current context of multiple and
inter-related crises wracking the global economy, finance, energy and environ-
ment, which have in turn exacerbated global inequalities, deprivation, violence
and war, leftist discourse and practice have shifted. No longer isolated voices
crying in the wilderness against the once hegemonic, but now largely discredited
(though still functioning) neo-liberalism, the crux of the debate has rapidly moved
beyond Keynesian and Polanyian style reforms towards rethinking and practicing
anew radical and utopian projects. These strive to learn from both the failures of
past communist experiments and the successes of non-capitalist and non-Western
socio-economic arrangements that have persisted over centuries.
Thus, a major rethink of twenty-first century communism is underway, centred
especially on experiments in ‘post-anarchism’ conjoined with pre-, post- and anti-
modern autonomism and de-coloniality (see Adamovksy 2007; Balakrishnan
2003; Conway 2007; Day 2005; Graeber 2004; Graeber and Grubacic 2004;
Hardt and Negri 2000, 2004; Harvey 2010; Holloway 2005; IIRE 2005; Juris
2008; Mignolo 2009; Notes from Nowhere 2003; Sullivan 2005; Turbulence
62   Ruth Reitan
Collective 2007a, 2007b, 2008, 2009). Critical theorist Zizek (2009: 7–8)
captures this rising red ‘phoenix from the ashes’ mood when he writes:

the time for liberal-democratic moralistic blackmail is over. Our side no


longer has to go on apologizing; while the other side had better start soon.
. . . Today . . . it is permitted to know and to fully engage in communism.

Similarly, Marxist geographer Harvey (2009: n.p.; see also Harvey 2010)
argues the following:

While traditional institutionalized communism is as good as dead and bur-


ied, there are . . . millions of de facto communists active among us . . .
ready to creatively pursue anti-capitalist imperatives. If, as the alternative
globalization movement of the late 1990s declared, ‘another world is pos-
sible’ then why not also say ‘another communism is possible’?

This ‘other possible communism’ owes much of its dynamism to the resurgence
of anti-state and anti-capitalist anarchism and autonomism. Although reanimating
the classical debates and dichotomies between revolutionary Marxists and anar-
chists,7 the resurgence has also precipitated a truce of sorts between the two cur-
rents. Harvey (2009: n.p.) notes that this revival has tended to eschew commandist
strategies of seizing the state in favour of experimenting with networked social
organizational forms aimed at circumventing the market and capital, bringing
about ‘a convergence of some sort between the Marxist and anarchist traditions
that harks back to the broadly collaborative situation between them in the 1860s
in Europe’.
Returning to our earlier left and right bank analogy, it seems that the Marxists
have decamped to join the livelier party among the Bakunin clan on the other side
of the river, leaving their state-oriented, social-democratic Kantian brethren high
and dry in the process. this move has generated a creative ferment around
re-imagining power, the state, sovereignty and global governance, as witnessed in
the jazz-like fusions of neo- and post-Marxist, autonomist, operaist and anarchist
praxis. Among the first, most paradigmatic and widely resonant of these hybridiza-
tions are Hardt and Negri’s (2000, 2004) conceptions of the rhizomatic empire and
the counter-imperial multitude. Empire in their definition has co-evolved with the
global market and production circuits and is the new global order, form of sover-
eignty and collective ruling subject, heralding a new logic and structure of rule.
Empire is said to regulate global exchanges and transverse boundaries without
establishing a territorial centre of power. To the contrary, it is

a decentered and deterritorializing apparatus of rule that progressively


incorporates the entire global realm within its open, expanding frontiers.
Empire manages hybrid identities, flexible hierarchies, and plural exchanges
through modulating networks of command.
(Hardt and Negri 2000: xi–xii)
Coordinated power in contemporary leftist activism   63
This elaborate conception of global governance and power flows infuses the
classical tripartite governance structure of imperial Rome with post-structuralist
Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) rhizomatic network, wherein nodal points prolifer-
ate on an open plane and connect with all others. The top three tiers, or plateaus,
of the rhizome constitute Polybius’s imperial monarchy, which exercises control
through the destructive power of the bomb. The US holds the pinnacle nodal posi-
tion, wielding a monopoly of force. Its most powerful allied states reside just
below, using inter-governmental organizations to regulate international monetary
exchanges and exercising power over culture and biopolitics, or the power to
regulate social life from the inside. The two centre plateaus comprise Polybius’s
aristocracy, which exercises financial control via judgment. Networks of trans-
national corporations bring the command structure of the higher monarchical tier
to life. Below the corporate nodes are the semi-peripheral states, which filter the
powers above and discipline their subject populations.
Finally, the nodes and relations at the base of the imperial rhizome constitute the
democracy matrix. Here reside peripheral governments of the Global South, oper-
ating alone and through forums such as the UN General Assembly. Also, at the
base are a range of groups seeking to capture, tame, mediate, and ‘represent’ the
popular interests of the multitude, such as NGOs, religious organizations and
the media. The multitude is regulated by and made subject to this ethereal web of
control primarily through superstition and fear, aver Hardt and Negri. There is no
possibility of escaping the imperial rhizome or any ground for constructing collec-
tive actors or political programs beyond empire.
In this seemingly totalizing new order of global imperial sovereignty, Hardt and
Negri posit that a counter-hegemonic global class – the multitude – nonetheless
has the potential to act within and also against empire. Imperial control is con-
ceived as parasitic, feeding off the productive energies of its multitudinous host.
This constitutive power of the multitude makes empire possible; however, it can
also potentially destroy it and construct a post-imperial, global society with radi-
cally different flows and forms of power (Hardt and Negri 2000: xv, 359–61).
This they argue is because imperial ‘biopower’ emanates from command nodes
and casts itself as a transcendent sovereign authority that imposes order – a
would-be global Leviathan. In contrast, the multitude is involved in bottom-up
‘biopolitical production’, which Hardt and Negri conceive as immanent to society
and creates relationships through collaborative forms of labour, which give con-
tent to democracy. Although the modern, vertical form of biopower creates a
people, the nation and indeed a civil society, the post-(or late-)modern, horizon-
tal, biopolitical production constitutes the multitude as a multiplicity of identities
or subjectivities that cannot be reduced or subsumed under a single unity (Hardt
and Negri 2004: xiv, 93–5).
A major reason why Hardt and Negri’s rather obtuse paradigm has resonated
among contemporary radical activists is because it largely valourized their preju-
dices and actions. Because states and civil society organizations are seen as
ensnared within the parasitic imperial rhizome, attempts to influence them only
feed the monster and contribute to one’s own enslavement. Hardt and Negri
64   Ruth Reitan
(2000: 58) champion the spontaneous, localized, uncoordinated and largely
incommunicable rebellions already going on, assuring that these acts leap up
directly to strike at empire’s heart. Furthermore, ‘resistance, exodus, and the
emptying out of the enemy’s power’ (Hardt and Negri 2000: 69) are advised,
along with ‘new political weapons’ such as queer kiss-ins, carnival, mimicry,
street demonstrations and illegal immigration (Hardt and Negri 2000: 347). Thus
refusing and resisting all forms of hierarchy and organization while engaging the
state on solely antagonistic grounds were seen as necessary steps towards build-
ing a desirable world. Very much in this vein, Zapatista scholar-activist John
Holloway (in IIRE 2005: 47–8) encouraged anarchists and autonomists to

refuse to let the state identify leaders or permanent representatives of the


movement . . . [for] our forms of organisation are very different from those
of the state . . . there is no symmetry between them . . . . This multiplicity,
this cacophony of struggles and experiences should be respected, not chan-
neled into a party . . . [or] winning of state power. The problem is not to take
power, but to construct our own power . . . to do things differently . . . to
create a different world.

This ‘cacophony of struggles and experiences’ included the ‘non-branded’


strategies and tactics (Day 2005) of Indymedia, affinity groups, Reclaim the
Streets and the direct action black, pink and yellow blocs seen at street protests –
many of which coalesced for a time into the Zapatista-inspired Peoples’ Global
Action (see Reitan 2007: Chapter 6). Non-branded practices were also observed
among indigenous movements beyond the Zapatistas, including the North
American Mohawk Nation, aboriginal governments and community structures in
Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand, Bolivia and Ecuador, as well as among some
radical feminists and gay activists (Conway 2007; Day 2005; Holloway 2005;
Mignolo 2009; Notes from Nowhere 2003).
What these struggles had in common was said to be a progressive form of
‘micropolitics’ (Day 2005) or the politics of minority rather than majority.
Micropolitics pursues non-universalizing, non-hierarchical and non-coercive
relationships and forms of power based on a solidarity of mutual aid and shared
ethical commitments. Contemporary radical activism, or what Canadian post-
anarchist scholar Day (2005: 4) termed the ‘newest social movements’, entails

conscious attempts to alter, impede, destroy or construct alternatives to


dominant structures, processes, practices and identities [and] . . . seek to
expose, challenge, diminish and/or destroy existing logics, forms and con-
centrations of power, and at the same time to construct new forms via
diverse experiments and small-scale practices.

Thus, antagonistic and anti-institutional micropolitics were arguably the zeitgeist


for the better part of this cycle of contention. However, this form of politics has
come to be seen by many as insufficient if the cycle is to continue and intensify – a
Coordinated power in contemporary leftist activism   65
limitation that Hardt and Negri foresaw and hedged in their ambiguous descriptions
of the ‘multitude’ as a new form of collective actor. The question of whether mic-
ropolitics and autonomous experiments can survive, let alone multiply and link up,
in the face of an increasingly hostile imperial terrain in the wake of 11 September
2001 can no longer be avoided. In this context, ‘verticalist’ Marxist–Leninist cri-
tiques have begun to ring a bit truer, even in the ears of ‘horizontalists’. UK
Trotskyist political philosopher Alex Callinicos (IIRE 2005: 65), for example, in his
debate at the European Social Forum with John Holloway, countered: ‘If we simply
have fragmented and decentralised and localised activity, all cultivating our auton-
omous gardens, capital can isolate us and destroy or incorporate us piece by piece’.
Similarly, the French Trotskyist philosopher Daniel Bensaïd (in IIRE 2005: 11)
warned: ‘Those who thought they could ignore state power and its conquest have
often been its victims: they didn’t want to take power, so power took them’.
From these ongoing dialogues and experiments between Marxist and anarchist/
autonomist tendencies, many in the latter camp have come to provisionally accept
the former’s call for some degree of internal organization and engagement with
state power. For example, when asked to reflect on mistakes over the last decade
of struggle, People’s Global Action (PGA) founder De Marcellus (2009: 30), who
helped organize the Geneva to Copenhagen caravan to the COP15, stated the
following:

ten years ago most of us thought that our real ideological victories could
produce concrete gains and change – radicalise unions, parties, etc. . . .
Meanwhile, the (Northern) masses remain passive. Perhaps they, or we, are
awaiting credible visions, and forms of organisation . . .?

Another activist involved in Reclaim the Streets and now the Climate Camp
movement in the United Kingdom similarly revealed the following:

Then my question was: how to network local activisms and facilitate global
exchange? Now my question is: how to forge a militant universalism and
construct a generic will? Organising perhaps not on the horizontal plane,
but on the diagonal?
(McLeish 2009: 7)

Argentine autonomist Adamovksy (2007: n.p.) put it plainly: ‘Horizontality


needs institutions (badly)’ – although novel ones that mimic their cooperative,
egalitarian and biopolitically networked forms. The Turbulence Collective (2007a,
2007b, 2008, 2009), whose members have been active in mobilizations during
this cycle of contention as well as in critical reflection in the pages of their
scholar-activist journal, summarized this collective learning process:

The counter-globalisation movement was suspicious of – often even opposed


to – institutions per se, constituted forms of power. This suspicion was . . .
well-founded . . . [in] that neo-liberal ideology had successfully colonised
66   Ruth Reitan
most social democratic parties and trade unions. But when the crisis of
neo-liberalism irrupted, it became apparent that . . . antagonism against
institutions as an end in itself is a dead end . . . . Moments of antagonism are
either part of ongoing processes of building autonomy and constituting new
forms of power, or they risk dissipation, or even worse, backlashes.
(Turbulence Collective 2009: 6–7)

Hence, although Northern-based radicals have slowly come to recognize the need
for organization and engaging the state, it is not solely the revolutionary Marxist
left’s arguments that have led them to do so. It is also, and perhaps ever more so, due
to the growing knowledge of and networking with successful indigenous movements
in places such as Bolivia and Ecuador and more generally the rising tide of native
militancy across the Americas, which is itself articulating in novel and contentious
ways with the ‘pink tide’ of leftist parties coming to power in Central and South
America. Indigenous communities and rural social movements have played decisive
roles, for example, in pushing through radically new constitutions in Ecuador and
Bolivia, which recognize a ‘pluri-national’ state that is home to many autonomous
nations with distinct economic, political, legal and cultural forms.
In addition to disaggregating the legal fiction of the unitary and sovereign state,
these constitutions radicalize the notion of rights by guaranteeing the right to each
groups’ self-determination and, in the case of Bolivia, the rights of mother earth,
or pachamama (see Mignolo 2009). These developments, which are the culmina-
tion of centuries of struggle against Westernization and capitalism, at once
expand, collapse, and transcend the European leftist categories. By moving from
resistance to antagonistic engagement with the state, they have managed to fun-
damentally transform the very nature of the Western unitary state, its indivisible
sovereignty and its limited guarantees of liberal rights.
These communities have sustained unique social, political, cultural and economic
systems that pre-date colonialism, capitalism and the European state form. but rather
than promoting their autonomous models as universals to be exported pace
Christianity, Liberalism or Marxism–Leninism, these indigenous experiments –
along with the hybrid state forms and new categories of rights they are articulating
– are rather ‘an invitation to organise and re-inscribe communal systems all over the
world . . . erased and dismantled by the increasing expansion of the capitalist econ-
omy’ (Mignolo 2009). This is how the Northern, urban autonomist ‘blue indians’
may once again be converging with the ‘real indians [sic]’ in practicing Zapatismo
at home, which was at the heart of the now nearly defunct Peoples’ Global Action
(Reitan 2007: Chapter 6). As Mignolo (2009: 31) avers ‘the Zapatista dictum of the
need for “a world in which many worlds fit” springs to mind as we try to imagine a
planet of communal systems in a pluri-versal, not uni-versal, world order’.

Direct action networks at the COP15


The ongoing vibrancy, increased pragmatism and growing valourization of indige-
nous struggles were all exemplified in the largest campaigning network spearheaded
Coordinated power in contemporary leftist activism   67
by direct action autonomists at the COP15, CJA.8 Its most active members included
Danish and German direct action, anti-capitalist and social experiment groups, No
Borders and Climate Camp networks. They were joined by a number of CJN’s mass-
based organizations and embedded partisan NGOs including Via Campesina,
Friends of the Earth, Indigenous Environmental Network and Focus on the Global
South.
This diffuse collectivity strove towards the second generation, direct action
ideal – with all its attendant difficulties: CJA was launched in 2008 as a horizon-
tal network based on consensus decision-making and the principles of autonomy
and trust. Of the three main networks, it has been the most critical of capitalism
and firmly committed to civil disobedience and direct action to safeguard the
environment. Given its anarchistic roots, CJA statements and actions bordered on
antagonism towards the United Nations and interstate system and instead cham-
pioned solutions to the climate crisis emanating from grassroots, workers and
popular social movements linked into a global movement of movements.
Consensus decision-making in a new and diverse network whose most active
members were also the most radical meant that CJA’s planning meetings and
online discussions were volatile from the start. As the COP15 actions grew
nearer, the consensus process came to a standstill and eventually broke down.
During the summit itself, decisions were mostly made by a core group of activist-
spokespersons, whose phones were being tapped and who, one-by-one, were
arrested by the police.
Despite this internal contention, decision-process breakdown and state decapita-
tion strategy, due to the efforts of CJA activists (and especially the Copenhagen
logistical group Climate Collective), hundreds of mostly young Europeans were
housed, fed, organized, entertained – and searched and harassed by the police at
night – in their Ragnhildesgade and Teglholmen convergence centres. In addition,
CJA mobilized thousands to take part in mass, direct and antagonistic action over
several days, the largest action being the 16 December Reclaim Power march on the
Bella Center of approximately 3,000 activists, which was co-organized with CJN.
CJA was an experiment in increased openness and pragmatism on the part of all
activist tendencies involved, coupled with a valourization of autonomous indige-
nous movements. For although CJA promoted direct activism, localized solutions
and horizontality, they also pledged to coordinate closely with other international
climate and social justice activists coming to Copenhagen across the political
spectrum and to facilitate their taking action while there. To build broadly for their
Reclaim Power march, they organized a rally and party in the free community of
Christiania where Naomi Klein and Michael Hardt shared the platform with one
of CJA’s main spokespeople, Tadzio Mueller (detained by undercover police the
next day on leaving a Bella Center press conference and held until the negotiations
were over). Danish CJA activists hosted several planning meetings in the months
leading up to the COP15 and then met daily with CJN network members via
Skype. They coordinated an NGO walkout to meet the marchers to then hold the
People’s Assembly for Climate Justice, which were the three-pronged tactics of
Reclaim Power. For the march, CJA organized a speakers’ truck, arranged permits
68   Ruth Reitan
and separated into affinity groups clustered into a direct action green bloc, a bike
bloc and a permitted blue bloc to march on the Bella Center and breach the police
line and fence to hold the Peoples’ Assembly inside the perimeter.
CJN members joined the CJA blue bloc and formed an additional yellow
(badge) bloc of NGO delegates who were no longer allowed into the Bella Center
under the banner ‘No Decisions about us without us – Climate Justice Now!’.
CJA and CJN also coordinated inside disruptions and a walk-out of some 300 UN
observers and participants led by the Indigenous Peoples Caucus, among them the
Indigenous Environmental Network. This was to protest the lack of inclusion in
the final agreement of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
and Bolivia’s demand that the rights of Mother Earth be recognized. Those leav-
ing were beaten back by riot police on an icy bridge. Meanwhile, other CJN
members, among them the Social and Climate Justice Caravan from the WTO
meeting in Geneva to Copenhagen, were invited by CJA to be the main speakers
for the Peoples’ Assembly that did take place, outside – not inside – the fence,
because attempts to breach it were repelled with police teargas and billy clubs.
As the breadth of scholarship and practices surveyed above attest, contempo-
rary global activism is as complex as the global processes, actors, and power
flows it contests. Again, if we fail to appreciate and examine it in all its diversity,
we will likely fail to understand its significance and latent tendencies or to
explain its origins, behaviour and impact. To bring some order to this diversity,
this chapter employed the three main historic categories of the European left –
social democracy, Marxism and anarchism – and then argued that indigenous
autonomy and de-coloniality is at once expanding, collapsing and transcending
these categories. By using these lenses provisionally and flexibly, we were not
only able to explain the conflicts but also to discern the linkages among network
activists mobilizing along the reformist-revolutionary-radical continuum in the
most recent cycle of contention. For although each tendency holds distinct con-
ceptions of power and organization as well as relationships to bureaucratic state
and corporate actors, they nonetheless have recognized the complexity of global-
ization and the powers they are up against and, thus, the need for multiple activist
strategies to engage with and ultimately transform both. Contemporary activists
have managed to mitigate and often bridge their differences to form a loose chain
of communication and action, which has hung together and arguably even gained
strength over the past 15 years. This networked chain has allowed global activists
to coordinate their diverse sources and forms of power, so as to wield that power
collectively.

Notes
1 I wish to thank the following for sharing their insights and critiques: Tord Björk, Nicola
Bullard, Shannon Gibson, Jennifer Hadden, Tadzio Müller, Thomas Olesen, Alexis
Passadakis, Janet Redman, Sidney Tarrow and Peter Waterman. All errors, omissions or
conjectures are solely the author’s.
2 I accept that it is colonialist, discursive violence to subsume indigenous movements in
this Western-derived tripartite system – see Mignolo (2009) for this thoughtful critique.
Coordinated power in contemporary leftist activism   69
However, they do share some affinities with the latter tendency, and so I have chosen to
include them provisionally herein. But ultimately, as will be argued later, they explode,
implode and transcend these categories.
3 It should be noted, however, that these same scholars argue that scaling up to the transna-
tional level remains secondary to, and embedded within, engagement in the domestic
political sphere (see Tarrow 1998: Chapter 11, 2005: Chapter 3; Sikkink 2005).
4 In Gramscian terms, this would be described as the terrain of ideological or hegemonic
power.
5 This CAN–CJN split somewhat mirrors – in issues and actors – that which occurred
within the Jubilee 2000 campaign and out of which Jubilee South was born (see Reitan
2007: Chapter 3).
6 CJN also strongly supported the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) countries’
spokesman Evo Morales in his call for 49 per cent emission reductions. In addition, CJN
member the Third World Network provided expertise to a number of Southern govern-
ments, working with their under-staffed delegations long into the night to come up with
negotiating positions.
7 These are between cosmopolitanism versus localism, unity vs. diversity, the collective
subject vs. a multiplicity of struggles, strategy vs. practice/process, party formation and
organizing unions vs. autonomous direct action, counter-hegemony vs. anti-hegemony,
politics vs. anti-politics, resisting/smashing/seizing the state vs. refusal/withdrawal/crea-
tion of new social practices, political parties vs. loose associations, revolutionary vio-
lence vs. pacifism, delegate organizations vs. federations, strategic rationality vs.
spontaneous improvisation, command vs. affinity and discipline vs. love and rage.
8 A smaller, more radical anarchist group, Never Trust a Cop (NTAC), also staged direct
actions during COP15. Although not part of the other networks (having broken with CJA
in the lead up to Copenhagen and having no contacts with CJN or CAN), NTAC activists
were still indirectly linked to CJA via the Climate Collective, who coordinated housing
and information sharing for both.

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Part II

The state and the national


4 The limits of power and protest
Civil society mobilization against
North American integration
Jeffrey Ayres

Introduction
In January 2008, coalitions of North American civil society groups issued a state-
ment demanding that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) be
renegotiated.1 The coalitions represented a wide range of church, labour, women’s,
environmental, social justice, human rights, senior and student groups critical of
NAFTA as well as the efforts to deepen continental integration through the North
American Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). The four North American
coalitions – the US-based Alliance for Responsible Trade (ART), Common
Frontiers and Réseau québécois sur l’intégration continentale (RQIC), both of
Canada, and the Mexican Red Mexicana de Acción frente al Libre Comercio
(RMALC) – were renewing their struggle against continental integration that had
begun 20 years earlier during the negotiation of the Canada-US Free Trade
Agreement (CUSFTA). As an alternative to the neo-liberal framework that had
shaped North American integration, these coalitions sought to establish continen-
tal economic relations based on social justice and sustainable development and
called for greater transparency and enhanced civil society input into schemes for
deepening integration.
Targeting the heart of the US presidential campaign primary season and building
off of large and ongoing street mobilizations in Mexico and strong protests at the
August 2007 SPP North American Leader’s Summit at Montebello, Quebec, the
coalitions listed ten priorities for review and revision by the executive branch and
parliaments of the Canada, the United States and Mexico. In fact, with candidates
for the US Democratic Party presidential nomination also criticizing NAFTA, and
members of the US House of Representatives, the Permanent Commission of the
Mexican Congress and a Canadian Parliamentary Sub-Committee on International
Trade recommending a review of NAFTA, the political-economic environment
seemed susceptible to significant changes in continental trade policy. After two
decades of mobilizing, educating and disseminating information critical of conti-
nental integration, many of the groups at this moment of global economic crisis
hoped to influence the political debates and political processes in the three NAFTA
states to reform the neo-liberal economic model of free trade, deregulation and
privatization that had become so entrenched across North America.
76   Jeffrey Ayres
Power and transnational politics in North America
The coalitions involved in the campaign to renegotiate NAFTA and who opposed
the SPP certainly were not spontaneously reacting to acute and deteriorating eco-
nomic conditions across the continent during what would become the most
destructive recession since the Great Depression. Rather, these national coalitions
and cross-border networks were part of what had been a long term and still evolv-
ing pattern of North American contentious politics against continental economic
integration (Ayres and Macdonald 2009). Regional integration across North
America had been an attractive target of activists and had shaped forms and strat-
egies of collective action for over two decades. Anti-integration protests erupted
first as part of the movement against the CUSFTA in Canada in the late 1980s and
then expanded dramatically to draw together Canadian, US and Mexican opposi-
tion to NAFTA and then the SPP. This contentious activity reflected variations of
national-level or domestic-based coalition building and protest as well as the
cross-border types of organizing (e.g. diffusion of ideas, protest forms and tactics,
the cross-border exchange of strategies through People’s Summits, conferences
and collaborative protests and the development of cross-border coalitions and
networking). However, despite the impressive and expanding record of North
American contentious politics, the question remained as to whether power rela-
tions had changed across the continent? After all, the CUSFTA and NAFTA
remained fully entrenched as the models of continental trade policy, whereas the
living standards of a majority of lower- and middle-income citizens in the three
NAFTA states had declined.
This chapter suggests that North American civil society networks have
achieved much over the past 20 years in terms of creative mobilization cam-
paigns, but they have not gained much power to challenge the deeper neo-liberal
policy underpinnings of continental integration. On the one hand, there have been
notable achievements in terms of developing cross-border solidarities and the
creation of novel transnational networks around human rights, labour and envi-
ronmental issues. Opportunities for cross-border civil society collaboration have
abounded, furthering mutual understanding of the deteriorating economic condi-
tions for lower and middle-income citizens in Canada, the United States and
Mexico. New organizational forms have diffused across the borders, with US and
Mexican civil society groups modelling their coalitions after the groups engaged
in the earlier cross-country mobilization against the CUSFTA in Canada.
In addition, the national-level grassroots campaigns of many of these groups
have affected public discourse and raised doubts in the minds of North American
publics about the wisdom or desirability of deeper economic integration espe-
cially during this period of heightened economic anxiety. Although the claim by
many civil society groups that their campaigns were the decisive influence in
derailing the SPP is debatable, it is clear that civil society forces mounted a well-
publicized challenge to highlight the secretive and undemocratic character of the
SPP (Macdonald 2009; Trew 2009). Finally, political and business elites were
also put on the defensive and were forced to publically respond to criticisms of
both the NAFTA model and the plans for deepening North American integration
The limits of power and protest   77
that lacked transparency and legitimacy in the face of public scepticism. However,
the gap between creativity in cross-border organizational forms and tactical inno-
vations and the still clearly limited power these groups had to alter the neo-liberal
social contract raises serious questions about the efficacy of cross-border activ-
ism in North America.
Civil society groups normally lack the military or economic capacity to exert
hard ‘command’ or ‘control’ power to ‘get others to change their positions’ (Nye
2004: 5). In fact, some leading activists eschew this type of power, preferring
instead an understanding of power as ‘ability . . . the power that comes from within;
our ability to dare, to do and to dream; our creativity’ (Starhawk 2002: 6). What
activist groups do frequently attain in fact is soft power or ‘getting others to want
the outcomes that you want’ (Nye 2004: 5). The end of the Cold War, the onset of
globalization and the information technology revolution induced a ‘power shift’ and
a ‘novel redistribution of power’ coinciding with the rise of global civil society
(Mathews 1997) where power began to diffuse from states to an array of non-state
actors across the international environment. Organizations such as Keck and
Sikkink’s (1998) transnational advocacy networks and related non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) have gained soft power through cross-border activity, dis-
seminating information, framing issues, holding states or multinational corpora-
tions accountable for their behaviour and gaining leverage through aligning with
more powerful actors (Khagram et al. 2002; Smith et al. 1997).
However, a number of contradictions and challenges mark the mobilization
campaigns of groups that have exploited the global economic and technological
changes of the past two decades. Part of the challenge lies in the tendency to
idealize civil society and retain high expectations for the outcomes of transna-
tional organizing against neo-liberal globalization. Clearly, in the wake of the rise
and ongoing and varied campaigns of the alter-globalization movement and espe-
cially in the early years following the Seattle World Trade Organization (WTO)
protests and protests against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), expec-
tations were high that transnational mobilization represented a major new coun-
tervailing force to challenge and successfully reshape institutions of global
governance (Florini 2000; O’Brien et al. 2000; Smith 2001; Starhawk 2002).
However, as Scholte (2002: 299) has pointed out, ‘we do well to balance enthu-
siasm for civil society engagement of global governance with due caution’ and
appreciate as Soderbaum (2007) notes the complex and frequently contradictory
character of civil society mobilizations today. As Macdonald (2009: 14) has
argued, reflecting on Soderbaum, ‘the terrain of civil society is extremely com-
plex and is not necessarily linked to progressive or counter-hegemonic move-
ments’, with the diversity of actors around particularly integration processes
reflecting a variety of democratic and progressive or reactionary and regressive
perspectives (Ahrne 1998; Kopecky and Mudde 2003). This diversity and unpre-
dictability became apparent in some of the most recent protests against North
American integration, as right-wing populist groups played a highly public role
in raising fears in the United States about a loss of sovereignty to a supposed
North American Union (Bow and Santa Cruz 2009; Corsi 2009).
78   Jeffrey Ayres
Moreover, beyond the diversity in actors in North America, it is difficult to
argue that continental civil society groups across North America have been suc-
cessful in achieving their major aims: the CUSFTA, NAFTA and generally the
neo-liberal underpinnings of the continental economy remain in place even under
the worst economic conditions witnessed for over half a century. Despite the
heated rhetoric of the US Democratic Party 2008 primary season, where NAFTA’s
benefits were debated by leading candidates for the presidency, the accord has
emerged unscathed in the new Obama administration. Again, it is true that the SPP
process has ground to a halt, a victim of changing administration priorities in the
United States, economic uncertainty, lost interest as well as public opposition
stoked by grassroots anger over the secretive and non-transparent character of the
SPP. However, at present, across Canada, the United States and Mexico, the
political opportunities and leverage do not exist for civil society networks to effect
sustained change in the economic policy directions of the three NAFTA states.
This chapter both provides an overview of the recent contentious political
activity in North America and seeks to illustrate how during this 20-year record
of mobilizations against continental integration, civil society groups have lacked
sufficient power to achieve their aims of changing the overarching neo-liberal
paradigm that has undergirded economic integration in North America. From a
political economy perspective, the balance of power across the North American
continent has continued to restructure in favour of capital, investors and allied
political elites, with asymmetries in economic well-being, political influence and
access to political power having only widened. From a political realist perspec-
tive, North American integration has failed to dilute the power or pool the sover-
eignty of the three-member states, with regional governance in North America
doing little to constrain the power of the United States while at the same time
creating limited access points for NGOs and civil society groups to effectively
participate in negotiations over the direction of integration. From the vantage
point of political opportunities, the past 20 years have witnessed a decline in
openings available either regionally or domestically for groups to successfully
influence the political processes and institutions of Canada, the United States and
Mexico. Relatedly, it has proved especially difficult, in the absence of any
regional institutions or widely shared sense of community, to establish a regional
collective action frame to mobilize and educate large numbers of the populations
of the NAFTA states to embrace a shared sense of purpose in altering the neo-
liberal trajectory of governance and trade policy across the continent.

Contentious politics against continental integration


Contentious politics as an organizing framework directs our attention generally
towards the broad environment of longer term political struggle outside formal
political institutions, where regular people who lack access to political institu-
tions engage in collective action (Tarrow 1998). These acts of protest can be
undertaken on behalf of new or unaccepted claims and in ways that target funda-
mentally institutions and authorities. The evolution of contentious politics across
The limits of power and protest   79
North America against continental integration can be best understood as unfold-
ing in three time periods: the negotiation and implementation of the CUSFTA, the
negotiation and implementation of the NAFTA and the more recent discussions
surrounding the so-called North American SPP. Although the earlier campaign
against the CUSFTA was characterized largely by national coalition-building
efforts in Canada, the mobilizations and protests against NAFTA and the SPP
involved varying degrees of transnational collaboration between Canadian, US
and Mexican groups.

Battling free trade: the anti-CUSFTA and NAFTA mobilizations


For the latter half of the 1980s, civil society groups from a wide spectrum of the
Canadian population mobilized against the CUSFTA through an unprecedented
cross-country anti-free trade movement (Ayres 1998). The CUSFTA threatened
many constituencies, but the opposition largely crystallized around three con-
cerns: the impact of the agreement on jobs and the fear of hundreds of thousands
of manufacturing jobs exiting to the United States; the danger posed to Canada’s
more generous social programs if pressures to harmonize Canada’s tax system
with that of United States’ emerged through the agreement and threats to
Canada’s cultural identity and the continued ability for the Canadian federal gov-
ernment to subsidize the arts in the face of pressures towards deregulation and
economic liberalization. Although the CUSFTA barely registered in either the
news media or the political debates in the United States, much less in Mexico, the
opposition to the agreement became so intense in Canada that the Prime Minister
Brian Mulroney was forced to call a federal election to try and settle the issue. In
the resulting federal election, the opposition Liberal and New Democratic Parties,
both of whose leaders campaigned against the CUSFTA, split the opposition
popular vote, allowing Mulroney’s Conservative Party to form a second consecu-
tive majority government, which in turn quickly sped the implementing legisla-
tion for the CUSFTA through Canada’s Parliament.
The coalition-building model that survived the CUSFTA debate was arguably
the most important outcome from the failed attempt to stop the negotiation and
implementation of the CUSFTA. During the mobilization against the accord,
Canadian nationalists, working through the Council of Canadians, collaborated
with a diverse array of women’s, environmental, labour, First Nations, student,
senior, artistic and social activist groups to form the Pro-Canada Network (PCN).
The PCN was a cross-sectoral civil society network that managed to develop a
coherent collective action frame, which drew together national groups that had
rarely collaborated in previous protest campaigns across Canada. By drawing on
and in turn pooling the research and communication skills of different groups
across Canada, the PCN played a pivotal role in shaping the opposition debate
over the CUSFTA. More importantly, the national cross-sectoral coalition-building
model would be diffused across the border to the United States and Mexico, with
groups coalescing in this fashion ultimately spearheading critical debates and
protests over NAFTA (Sinclair 1992).
80   Jeffrey Ayres
The negotiations over NAFTA stimulated collaboration between Canadian, US
and Mexican civil society groups and structured a new pattern of cross-border
collective action against continental integration. Two main patterns in North
American contentious politics could be discerned: national protest that originated
within one of the NAFTA states and targeted domestic institutions and actors and
transnational collaboration, where the cross-border diffusion of claims, political
exchange or civil society coalition building or networking take place. Although
the pattern of transnational collaboration evolved in a more episodic fashion and
the national protest remained more durable and rooted in long-standing claims by
such aggrieved groups as Mexican farmers and US labour activists, both patterns
have been features of North American contention against integration proposals
since at least the mid-1990s.
At the level of domestic-oriented protest, the Council of Canadians largely over-
took the PCN as the most visible opposition to continental integration in Canada, and
similar national coalitions intervened in the NAFTA debates in the United States
and Mexico, such as the ART and the Citizen’s Trade Campaign in the United States
and the Mexican Action Network on Free Trade in Mexico (Dreiling 2001; Wise
et al. 2003). However, novel forms of transnational networking also emerged during
the NAFTA negotiations and following its implementation (Carr 1996; Gabriel and
Macdonald 1993; Kidder and McGinn 1995; Macdonald 2003; Stillerman 2003).
Although stopping short of creating a durable tri-national North American social
movement against NAFTA, numerous incidences of cross-border exchange of strat-
egies, transnational networking through conferences and meetings, and the diffusion
of protest forms across borders encouraged observers to conclude that to a certain
degree unprecedented levels of transnational cooperation were developing between
Canadian, US and Mexican civil society groups. The NAFTA side-agreements on
labour and the environment further structured cross-border collaboration and protest,
as citizen groups in all three states exploited the mechanisms for citizen petitioning
built into the accords to publicize grievances over perceived labour or environmental
abuses as well as to develop workplace solidarities and enhance understandings of
the trilateral threat NAFTA posed (Graubart 2008; Torres 2009).
Interestingly, by the late 1990s, despite the expanding research and interest on
the subject of continental civil society collaboration, North American integration
as a shaper of contentious politics actually diminished in its attractiveness to
citizens groups and mobilization campaigns. The rapid dissemination of Internet
technologies was expanding the reach of activism as causes and crusades as far
as the Zapatistas in the southern state of Chiapas, Mexico or the campaign to
promote debt relief via the Jubilee 2000 movement siphoned energy and activism.
The expanding neo-liberal architecture in the global economy, epitomized by the
1997–8 climax of the ultimately failed negotiations over the proposed Multilateral
Agreement on Investment, the 1999 WTO Ministerial in Seattle and the 2001
Summit of the Americas meeting and negotiations in Quebec City, became more
attractive targets to many North American activists who had expanded their col-
lective action frames beyond the confines of the continent (Diebert 2000; Saguier
2007; Smith 2004).
The limits of power and protest   81
The negotiations over the proposed FTAA especially served to broaden the
collective action frame of civil society networking and mobilization across the
wider Western hemisphere. Collective action frames develop when people par-
ticipating in protests develop a shared sense of a condition or injustice that they
then define as in need of change (Tarrow 1998). Thus, when people ‘frame’ a
certain event or trend, they develop a shared and negotiated sense of meaning
and begin to mobilize constituencies around these mobilized shared ideas
(Johnston and Noakes 2005). The 1998 Summit of the Americas in Santiago,
Chile, which brought together hemispheric heads of state and government to
launch the negotiation phase of the FTAA process, also sparked a parallel
People’s Summit organized by the Hemispheric Social Alliance (HSA). Civil
society groups, trade union organizations and NGOs from North and South
America had formed the HSA in 1997 to try to redirect the energies of the FTAA
towards a project centred around more equitable, democratic and sustainable
development across the region instead of strictly trade liberalization. This hemi-
spheric coalition both drew inspiration from the cross-sectoral coalition-building
models employed in the fight against NAFTA and energies and resources and
from hundreds of activists who had been veterans of the NAFTA fight.
Organizations of the HSA crafted the document Alternatives for the Americas:
Building a People’s Hemispheric Agreement2 in the four languages of the hemi-
sphere and carried the opposition to the FTAA into the 2001 Quebec City
Summit of the Americas where more than 60,000 people variously celebrated,
protested and clashed in the streets with police.
In fact, several other trends or events served to dampen enthusiasm for North
American contention by the end of the 1990s. Again, the rise of the alter-global-
ization movement and major global summit protests throughout the stretch of
1999–2003 further sharpened a collective action frame wider and more multifac-
eted in its target than North America. The stretch of building global protest
summitry – from the WTO in Seattle in 1999, to the IMF and World Bank in
Washington, DC in 2000, to the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City in 2001
followed by the G8 meeting in Genoa, Italy – drew people, resources and enthu-
siasm away from North American contentious protest. Thus, the difficulty of
maintaining a collective action frame that would consistently mobilize key con-
stituencies across North America to frame their grievances and claims against
neo-liberal policy initiatives at the continental level became apparent. In addition,
civil society groups across North America reduced the number of petitions they
would file with the NAFTA labour and environmental side agreements once the
realization set in that these accords were largely toothless with no binding mech-
anisms in place to force state or multinational corporate compliance much less
responses to complaints about environmental or labour rights infractions. Finally,
the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States further dampened
the supportive climate and political opportunities that had seemed to exist and
support domestic and cross-national protest against neo-liberal initiatives.
Thus, for most of the first term of the Bush administration in the United States,
the aura of ‘continentalism from below’ across North America that had been
82   Jeffrey Ayres
developing throughout the 1990s seemed on the wane. Few civil society actors
targeted their claims during mobilization campaigns against NAFTA institutions,
and instances of transnational solidarity between NGOs, unions and other social
actors seemed increasingly more ephemeral and episodic. Certainly lower level
instances of the ‘new transnationalism’ continued (Tarrow 2005): cross-border
political exchange and diffusion of ideas and strategies critical of NAFTA and its
unimpressive socio-economic legacy continued with the ease of the Internet.
However, it seemed increasingly doubtful that a transnational North American
civil society – composed of durable cross-border coalitions and sustained col-
laboration – was emerging, which could effectively turn the tide of neo-liberal
economic restructuring.

The surge in contention against the SPP


North American civil society contention dramatically reawakened with the cre-
ation of the SPP. The SPP emerged out of the March 2005 Waco, Texas summit
between US President Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Martin and Mexican
President Vicente Fox. The SPP was designed not only to replicate the investment
and trade agreement in the NAFTA but also to ‘deepen’ North American integra-
tion by promoting negotiations between the executive bodies of Canada, the
United States and Mexico. Moreover, the SPP lacked the legislative approval of
NAFTA and sought to ease the post-September 11 security concerns of the United
States over the continent’s borders while seeking wide-ranging multi-sectoral
regulatory harmonization. Canadian and Mexican officials pursued the SPP as a
means of preventing US security concerns from restricting their access to the US
market earned through the CUSFTA and NAFTA. However, for opponents of neo-
liberal continentalism, the SPP smacked of a covert and undemocratic attempt to
harmonize US regulatory policies across the continent without adequate avenues
for non-business civil society participation and representation (Ackleson and
Kastner 2006; Anderson and Sands 2007; Council of Canadians 2008).
The SPP evolved in an informal, ad hoc process, reflecting the priorities of
participating governments under security and prosperity agendas. Nine working
groups were established under the prosperity agenda and ten under the security
agenda. These working groups were created to connect to a variety of groups in
each country, although business interests appeared privileged. In particular, the
special position of business was highlighted with the creation of the North
American Competitiveness Council (NACC), a tri-national grouping of 30 repre-
sentatives of industry, 10 from each country, to advise governments on the sub-
stance of negotiations (Ayres and Macdonald 2006). At the same time, it was clear
that proponents of the SPP had no interest in developing a more substantive set of
regional political institutions beyond the NAFTA side agreements, as clearly the
SPP would not lead North America in the direction of the European Union.
North American contention surged in both national and transnational patterns
parallel to the evolving SPP negotiations. In fact, the revival of attention and
efforts towards North American integration through the SPP process at the level of
The limits of power and protest   83
political-economic elites served to encourage a renewed criticism of NAFTA and
its effects across the continent. From the perspective of civil society groups, the
question raised was how could politicians and business leaders in Canada, the
United States and Mexico pursue deepening the North American relationship
through regulatory harmonization, if the foundation of the trilateral relationship –
NAFTA – was so deeply flawed? also, how could the United States under the Bush
Administration in a post-September 11 politically chilled climate of the Patriot
Act, the war on terror, the Invasion of Iraq and widening income inequalities not
seen since the 1920s serve as a model for development across the continent?
Coalitions of civil society groups responded with a renewed push to both criti-
cize and demand the renegotiation of NAFTA and condemn the non-transparent
and exclusionary character of the SPP negotiations. In the years following the
Waco, Texas summit, a number of collaborative conferences and workshops
involving Canadian, US and Mexican activists and progressive politicians were
held to formulate an alternative to what was dubbed the NAFTA-plus agenda of
neo-liberal deep integration.3 Tri-National North American Forums in March
2005 and June 2006 in Washington, DC and Ottawa, Canada brought together
North American legislators, from Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies, the US
Congress and Canada’s Parliament and civil society actors from national coali-
tions in each country, to develop a ‘People-Centered Trade Model for North
America’.4 A conference hosted by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
in Minneapolis, Minnesota in October 2007 similarly brought together represen-
tatives of North American civil society networks to explore, ‘Lessons from
NAFTA: Building a Fair Trade Agenda’,5 whereas national networks collaborated
in January 2008 at the Mexico City World Social Forum to present workshops
critical of NAFTA and the SPP (Arnold 2008). In addition to the work at the WSF,
civil society groups mobilized around deeper integration in anticipation of the US
presidential primaries, including releasing the tri-national ten-point proposal for
NAFTA’s renegotiation; organizing a late 2008 winter tri-national speaking tour
across the United States linking NAFTA and immigration; a March NAFTA tri-
national conference linking agriculture, development and migration and an April
People’s Summit in New Orleans against the SPP.
In addition to the above transnational networking, national level protests
erupted dramatically in all three North American states against both the SPP and
what might arguably be called ‘blowback’ against the residual negative effects of
NAFTA. Major protests unfolded in 2007 and 2008 across Mexico as farmers,
indigenous peoples and students engaged in protests against the Mexican regime,
neo-liberalism and the damaging impact of NAFTA on Mexico’s agricultural sec-
tor (Cadena-Roa 2009; Malkin 2007; Otero-Briz 2008). In the United States,
anti-immigrant protests from both the political left and right grew significantly,
as groups with political allegiances as different as the so-called ‘Minutemen’
patrolling the US Mexican border and organized labour and social justice groups
mobilizing around ‘fair trade’ targeted both the 2006 congressional midterm and
2008 US presidential elections (Public Citizen 2008; Washburn 2007). Thousands
of Canadians also protested at the North American Leaders Summit at Montebello,
84   Jeffrey Ayres
Quebec in August 2007 (CBC News 2007), with civil society groups including
the Council of Canadians continuing a cross-country education campaign
‘Integrate This!’ against the SPP (Redlin 2008).6
The 2008 US presidential primary and election season soon overwhelmed
debates over NAFTA and the SPP, and subsequently, the new Obama Administration
became preoccupied with the deepening economic recession and financial crisis.
A larger democratic majority in both houses of the US Congress was in no mood
for further trade liberalization or continental regulatory harmonization in the
wake of the worst economic crisis to hit the United States since the Great
Depression. By 2010, with official unemployment figures in the United States
over 10 per cent, which significantly understated the crisis with millions of
Americans having given up looking for gainful full employment, the movement
towards deepening North American integration seemed to have hit a plateau.
Even the SPP website had been turned into an archive, with the initiative largely
abandoned by the leadership of the North American states in favour of more
benign North American Leaders’ Summits such as the one in Guadalajara,
Mexico in August 2009 (Carlsen 2009; Davis 2009). At an October 2009 film
screening in Toronto of the new documentary, ‘The SPP and Me’, leaders of civil
society organizations congratulated themselves for having defeated the SPP,
whereas a tri-national workshop in November in Toronto ‘Afta NAFTA:
Competing Visions for North America’, reflected on possible strategies for
reforming more broadly trade policy in the wake of the failed SPP.7

Conclusion: the limits to transnational protest


Despite the apparent demise of the SPP, there are a number of reasons to be cau-
tious when evaluating the activities of North American civil society mobilizations
against continental integration. On the one hand, the character of the SPP process
itself highlighted the continued limits to civil society efficacy: business interests
were clearly privileged during negotiations, and there was a clear lack of access,
and opportunities for representation were missing for a wider array of civil society
groups during the SPP discussions. The pace of SPP negotiations had resisted the
trend towards complex multilateralism observed unfolding in other instances of
global governance negotiations, where non-state actors had begun to play a more
prominent role (O’Brien et al. 2000). That the SPP lacked opportunities for greater
multi-stakeholder consultation and inclusion and shifted the centre of decision-
making towards bureaucratic structures resistant to democratic accountability
reflected the limited, shallow animating logic behind North American integration
that clearly distinguished it from the deeper integration in the European Union.
Between the three NAFTA states, there had always been a lack of political will
to embrace a more substantive level of institutionalization across the continent.
After all, North America in the most recent sense of the NAFTA relationship
involved singularly an effort by political and business elites to create a deregu-
lated continental space to promote the liberalization of trade and investment
between Canada, the United States and Mexico. The peculiarities of North
The limits of power and protest   85
American integration in comparison with the integration ongoing in the European
Union furthermore were numerous and continued to have huge consequences for
civil society groups that sought to promote a more equitable, social-democratic
and environmentally sustainable relationship across the continent. There were
few institutional political opportunities for activists in the three societies to
exploit at the continental level, because there was virtually no regional gover-
nance created with NAFTA. More directly, there is no comparable Brussels in
North America, the de facto capital of the European Union, which has housed the
extensive set of European institutions often targeted there by activists.
Instead, Washington remains the power centre in North America, and the asym-
metries of power between Canada, the United States and Mexico remain obvious
in any discussions on North American issues. Security trumped trade after the
terrorist attacks of September 11, and Washington’s security priorities have
largely dominated trilateral agendas from that moment onwards. Activists from
the three states could at times lobby sympathetic representatives in the US
Congress, but these openings were few and far between in a continental space
otherwise institutionally unfriendly above the state to civil society mobilization
and leverage. In short, although a shared North American economic space had
become visible in the years since the NAFTA negotiations, NAFTA had not
evolved into any more substantive cooperative arrangement in other policy
domains, despite the dramatic growth of transnational challenges facing the con-
tinent. Instead, North America particularly in an era of global economic turbu-
lence during the Great Recession reflects a spare tri-national structure, exposing
a return to emphases on national policy initiatives and lacking a network of insti-
tutions on which a more substantive regional policy approach might be con-
structed (Capling and Nossal 2009; Clarkson 2008).
Again, with the North American integration process remaining overshadowed
by the dominant power and preoccupations of the United States, the North
American agenda has consistently unfolded asymmetrically. Any discussion of
shared North American problems, such as illegal immigration, drug trafficking or
environmental degradation is held hostage to the political battles and electoral
timetable of the US Congress and presidency rather than shaped by a larger col-
lective vision of an emergent North American community. As such, national
political opportunities and collective action frames have tended to structure a
considerable amount of domestic contentious civil society activity in the three
NAFTA states. In the United States, the rising tide of protectionism and anti-
immigration sentiment embodied in right-wing so-called ‘tea party’ protests,
Minutemen civilian ‘border guard’ campaigns and Fox News commentaries has
arguably done more to derail North American integration than civil society col-
laboration for a new trade agenda and sustainable environmental development.8
The lack of a narrative beyond its neo-liberal underpinnings has created an open-
ing for a variety of conspiracy theories and right-wing populist attacks on conti-
nental integration, much less collaboration, originating in the United States,
which are determined to stop any efforts towards collectively responding to any
number of problems facing the continent.
86   Jeffrey Ayres
Finally, the question remains whether the tactical innovations embraced by
civil society groups across the continent have enhanced their efforts to exercise
economic and political power. Earlier research argued that despite a notable
record of North American contentious politics including cross-border strategic
innovations, NAFTA had aided in the restructuring of the balance of power in
the interests of investors, capital and allied political elites (Ayres 2004). The
NAFTA model had enhanced investor rights, including the capacity to outsource
or relocate, produced limited net gains in employment, contributed to the decou-
pling of productivity from wage increases and contributed to increased income
disparities across the continent (CCPA 2003; Polaski 2003; Ranney 2003; Scott
2003). More recent studies have only supported these criticisms and raised
further questions about the appropriateness of the NAFTA paradigm in an era of
near unprecedented economic crisis for the majority of lower and middle income
people in Canada, the United States and Mexico (Faux et al. 2006; Gallagher
et al. 2009; Zepeda et al. 2009).
In short, there can be no doubt that civil society activists have been resourceful
and tenacious in contesting North American integration for over 20 years.
However, even after a period in which global capitalism experienced a wrenching
legitimacy crisis, activists have had few political opportunities available to reshape
trade and investment policy in the three NAFTA states away from its underlying
neo-liberal foundation. It has proven increasingly difficult to frame a coherent
critique of NAFTA and related deep integration proposals and develop a shared
alternative proposal in the face of deepening social and political divisions across
Canada, the United States and Mexico. Social polarization characterizes the three
societies today, with again few points of commonality existing between civil soci-
ety groups on the political right who fear the loss of sovereignty or identity and
those on the political left who continue to promote progressive causes across the
region. Finally, there is considerable concern in fact that the North American eco-
nomic community rooted in trilateral collaboration ‘from above’ through NAFTA
is at risk, as the global economic crisis has helped to encourage considerable soul
searching in Canada and the United States about the desirability of relying on an
increasingly destabilized Mexico as a partner in negotiations over the future of the
trade and security across the continent (Golob 2009).
In fact, there is still no North American civil society beyond the tenuous cross-
border connections developed and sketched out herein between social activist
groups, most of which have remained largely unknown to the mass publics of the
continent. Of course, it remains important to reiterate the distinction between
power measured in terms of identities, values and cooperation and power mea-
sured in terms of concrete policy results. That NAFTA still remains intact does
not negate or take for granted the work undertaken by these groups and the impor-
tant cross-border solidarities that have developed. However, the economic crisis
has injected a nationalist element to civil society concerns, as groups in all three
states struggle to mitigate the widespread human suffering caused by economic
dislocation in the three states. Although some energy will undoubtedly be devoted
to maintaining cross-border ties between activist communities, the asymmetries
The limits of power and protest   87
of power in North America remain formidable barriers to those engaged in cam-
paigns of social and environmental justice across the region.

Notes
1 See the websites of Common Frontiers Canada (www.commonfrontiers.ca), the Quebec
Network on Continental Integration (http://www.rqic.alternatives.ca/RQIC-eng.htm), the
ART (http://www.art-us.org/) and the Mexican Action Network on Free Trade (http://
www.rmalc.org.mx/index.shtml) for a review of the broad and diverse representation of
civil society organizations under the umbrella structure of these national coalitions.
2 See www.asc-hsa.org and review the Alternatives for the Americas.
3 ‘Statement by North American Networks on the Future of NAFTA’, 22 March 2005,
Common Frontiers, Canada, http://www.commonfrontiers.ca
4 ‘Legislators and Civil Society Groups of the North American Region Call for Halt to
Security and Prosperity Partnership and Replacement of NAFTA’, 6 June 2006, Common
Frontiers, Canada, www.commonfrontiers.ca
5 See http://www.iatp.org/tradeobservatory/library.cfm?refID=101027
6 http://canadians.org/integratethis/index.html
7 http://www.canadians.org/media/trade/2009/30-Oct-09.html
8 See http://teapartypatriots.ning.com and http://www.minutemanhq.com

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5 State power and the control of
transnational protests
Donatella della Porta and
Herbert Reiter

Introduction
Genova, July 2001, G8 counter-summit. In addition to installing high barriers to
protect the so-called ‘red zone’ around the summit meetings, the airport, railway
stations and motorway exits were closed, and suspected activists were taken back
to the city limits. The entire first day of the summit, events followed a similar
pattern: after the black bloc’s attacks, the police force responded by setting on
those in or near peaceful protests, including doctors, nurses, paramedics, photog-
raphers and journalists. Above all, the fight with the so-called ‘disobedients’,
encircled and repeatedly charged, started in this fashion. After the police charge,
some groups of demonstrators reacted by throwing stones, provoking the police
to use armoured cars. During one incursion, a carabinieri jeep got stuck, and its
occupants were attacked by demonstrators. One of the carabinieri inside opened
fire, killing a 23-year-old Genovese activist, Carlo Giuliani. Within the red zone,
the police used water cannon laced with chemicals against demonstrators from
Attac, left-wing and trade union groups, who were banging on the fences and
throwing cloves of garlic. On the evening of 21 July, the police burst into the Diaz
School, where the Genoa Social Forum (GSF, the coordination of social move-
ment groups that organized the protest), its legal advice team, the Indymedia
press group and a dormitory for protestors, were based, searching for weapons
and black bloc activists. The press described the behaviour of the police as par-
ticularly brutal – a description that certain members of Parliament who were
present concurred with. Of the 93 persons detained and arrested in the building,
62 were referred with varying medical prognoses. In the days that followed,
various testimonies were published recounting civilians’ mistreatment in the
Bolzaneto barracks, where a centre for identifying detainees had been set up.
Many witness statements, a large number of them from foreigners, described
physical and psychological assaults. Using teargas and truncheons, and forcing
detainees to stay on their feet for hours, police compelled those being held to
repeat fascist and racist slogans.
This is one example of the policing of transnational protests, defined as pro-
tests that mainly address international targets and involve a substantive number
of protesters from different countries. This type of protest has been characterized
92   Donatella della Porta and Herbert Reiter
by several instances of severe repression even in democratic countries. The sym-
bolically strongest form of power is the state’s control of legitimate force.
Globalization has challenged this myth in several ways: from the growing power
of the market (and even private forms of policing) over the state to the growing
competences and enforcing capacity of International governmental organizations
over national levels of governance. One specific aspect discussed in this chapter
is the challenge that transnational protests bring about to the state as a force
monopolist. Looking at the ways in which the state (in particular the police)
responds to transnational protest, the chapter discusses central issues related to
changing forms of power and democracy. If the police are in fact considered as a
main expression of the power of the state, protest is an essential aspect of democ-
racy, embodying the power of ‘surveillance’ by the citizens over the power hold-
ers that is widely considered part and parcel of liberal democracy (Manin 1995;
Rosanvallon 2006).
In several cases of intervention during transnational protests, the police prac-
tised ‘hard power’, through a meticulous regimentation of time, space and the
human body (Fernandez 2008). In these (and other) examples of transnational
policing, power was expressed through physical control, at some specific
moments, of some spaces, as ‘police departments carefully select and map out the
material environment before and during a protest’ (Fernandez 2008: 93). In addi-
tion, hard power was exercised through the categorization of demonstrators as a
dangerous group. As a police officer, teaching a course in the psychology of mass
behaviour, stated, ‘[w]e try very much to prevent the feeling of anonymity’, for
example, through checkpoints: ‘It is all about letting them know we are watching
them’ (Fernandez 2008: 120). The power is exercised on the human bodies, as the
aim is ‘[t]o contain, isolate and separate activists so that the disturbance does not
spread like a disease’ (Fernandez 2008: 130) by ‘confining people into relatively
small, fenced off areas that police have established for control purposes’
(Fernandez 2008: 132). In what follows, we look at the way in which power is
used in the control of transnational protests, singling out and explaining some
general trends.

Protest policing
Social movements do challenge the power of the state, establishing a (temporary)
counter-power. They, in fact, do not limit themselves to ask for specific policy
changes: relying mainly on protest as a means to put pressure on decision-makers,
they challenge the power of the state to impose the monopoly on the use of
legitimate force. Taking into the streets, often forcing their presence beyond the
legal limits to get their voices heard, they directly interact with the police that are
supposed to defend law and order. In their interventions, police forces, therefore,
have to realize an uneasy balance between the defence of state power through the
implementation of law and regulation and the recognition of demonstration
rights. The intervention of the police in case of violations is not, however, auto-
matic; in public order, indeed, many minor violations are tolerated to avoid major
State power and the control of transnational protests   93
disorders. Although sometimes the government sends specific orders (or at least
signals) about the type of intervention required (or desired) at political demon-
strations, the police enjoy broad margins of discretionality at different hierarchi-
cal levels, as most decisions are taken on the spot and determined by the
assessment of the specific situation as well as by interactive dynamics. In fact,
quantitative research, often based on broad cross-national comparisons, has sin-
gled out the causal determinants of police styles (e.g. in terms of violation of
human rights or misconducts) (Davenport 1995; Poe and Tate 1994; Poe et al.
1999). Ethnographic research and case studies have, on their side, allowed us to
understand the motivations for the different styles the police use towards different
social and political groups (e.g. Waddington 1992, 1994; Critcher and Waddington
1996; Waddington and Critcher 2000; Waddington et al. 1989).
The way in which the government and the police use the power to repress
protest has relevant effects on the protest (Lichbach 1987; Opp and Roehl 1990;
Gupta et al. 1993; Francisco 1996; Moore 1998). Increasing the costs of protest-
ing, it might reduce individual motivation to participate. However, the sense of
injustice as well as the creation of intense feelings of identification and solidarity
can increase the motivation to participate (Davenport 2005; della Porta and
Piazza 2008; Francisco 2005). Police control tends to impact on the repertoires of
protest through a reciprocal adaptation (or sometimes escalation) of police and
demonstrators’ tactics (della Porta 1995), and it might also influence the organi-
zational forms used, for instance, by spreading a sense of mutual mistrust through
the use of infiltration (e.g. Fernandez 2008; Starr et al. 2008).
The forms that state power take have a clear impact on the policing of protest.
If repression is much more brutal in authoritarian than in democratic regimes (e.g.
Sheptycki 2005 on Latin America; Uysal 2005 on Turkey), even authoritarian
regimes vary in the amount of protest they are ready to tolerate, as well as in the
forms in which they police the opposition. Moreover, variations also exist in
democratic regimes, with some countries traditionally considered more consen-
sual, others more exclusive. In both types of regime, the police strategies in
addressing demonstrations reflect some more general characteristics of state
power. In this sense, it is to be expected that the transformation in the balance of
state powers related with the various phenomena usually understood under the
fuzzy label of globalization has an impact on the styles of protest policing. In
particular, the wave of transnational protests that marked the turn of the millen-
nium seems indeed to have challenged some well-established police strategies
and structures (e.g. della Porta et al. 2006a).
Even if in a selective way, and with frequent inversions, the policing of protest
in democratic regimes has been characterized by trends towards growing alloca-
tion of the function of public order control to public (vs. private) forces, nation-
alization and demilitarization. First of all, the task of policing is at the core of the
definition of a Weberian state power that claims the monopoly of force. Second,
the process of state building brought about the transfer at the central state of the
control of public order. Even if the degree of centralization in police structures
clearly varies, and local police bodies often keep specific profiles and styles (see
94   Donatella della Porta and Herbert Reiter
e.g. Wisler and Kriesi 1998 on Switzerland and Winter 1998 on Germany), there
has been a progressive orientation of protest and its policing towards the national
level. Third, there has been a development towards a transfer of public order
control from the military to the police, albeit with certain cross-country differ-
ences. Especially since the 1980s, research on the policing of protest in European
democracies and the United States has identified a reduction of strategies of con-
trol based on an escalation of force (i.e. hard form of power), with low priority
given to the right to demonstrate, low tolerance for emerging forms of protest,
limited negotiation between police and protestors and frequent use of (even ille-
gal) means of coercion. A shift was instead noticed towards soft forms of power,
based on a negotiated control, with recognition of the right to demonstrate, toler-
ance for (even disruptive) forms of protest, frequent communication between
protestors and the police to insure a peaceful evolution of events and a limited use
of coercion (della Porta and Fillieule 2004; McPhail et al. 1998: 51–4).
If we look at the evolution of protest policing today, with particular attention
to the control of transnational protests, these trends seem to have encountered
some inversions. If public order policing had never been exclusively under public
control (e.g. not only private policing on university campuses or in factories but
also the use of organized crime to intimidate unionists and protestors), the priva-
tization and semi-privatization of spaces such as shopping malls as well as the
outsourcing of police functions to private companies (e.g. in the airports) has
recently increased and made more visible the role of private police bodies in the
control of protest. In addition, the control of an increasing number of transna-
tional protests in recent years has brought about a growing coordination of police
units from different countries. Furthermore, in the last few decades, processes of
militarization of public order have been noted even in countries such as Great
Britain, once considered as an example of ‘citizens’ policing’. This militarization,
including equipment, training, organization and strategies, has been tested in the
fight against organized crime, also street crime and football hooliganism, now
migrating to the control of protest. Finally, negotiated strategies have not been
consistently implemented in the control of transnational protests, with priority
often given to security concerns (della Porta et al. 2006a). Escalations in the
interactions between demonstrators and protestors have developed from the use
of coercion against demonstrators, with the use of fences and no-go areas to iso-
late diplomats and heads of government from protests.

Militarization, fortification and intelligence-led control


Are we witnessing the re-emergence of the escalated force model or the develop-
ment of a new repressive protest policing style? Can we observe a definite break
with the de-escalating, negotiated model of protest policing that dominated in the
1980s and well into the 1990s? Is the control of transnational counter-summits an
exception in a policing of protest that remains mainly negotiated? Or is the esca-
lation in Seattle and afterwards proof that the de-escalating strategies were only
applied in some spaces (for instance, in Washington, DC) and to some political
State power and the control of transnational protests   95
groups (e.g. the more ‘civilized’ new social movements), whereas more repres-
sive strategies dominated elsewhere (see McPhail and McCarthy 2005)?
Negotiated management signified a considerable departure from the protest
policing style dominant in western democracies before the 1960s and 1970s. The
traditional escalated force strategy was, in fact, based on a presumption of irra-
tional crowd behaviour (Le Bon 1895; Schweingruber 2000) and rooted in intol-
erance of direct forms of political participation. Highly suspicious of any
gathering, its adherents gave low priority to demonstration rights and foresaw the
massive use of force to suppress even small violations of laws and ordinances.
During the ‘1968’ protest cycle, attempts to stop unauthorized demonstrations
and a law-and-order attitude towards the ‘limited-rule-breaking’ tactics that
spread from the US civil rights movement to the European student movement
(McAdam and Rucht 1993) and then to new social movements in general, repeat-
edly manoeuvred the police into ‘no-win’ situations. The prevailing police strat-
egy after the 1980s was instead designed to avoid coercive interventions as much
as possible. Lawbreaking, implicit in non-violent, civil disobedient forms of pro-
test, tended to be more or less tolerated by the police, with peacekeeping consid-
ered more important than law enforcement.
We can first observe that at recent transnational protest events coercive strate-
gies returned as a prominent aspect of protest policing, apparently recalling the
‘escalated force’ style, although with adaptations to new protest repertoires,
police frames and technologies. Clear signs of militarization were, in particular,
observed. A massive police presence, usually with high visibility, has been noted
at numerous transnational protest events in North America and Europe. In most
of the cases we considered in our comparative research (della Porta et al. 2006a),
police officers donned heavy anti-riot gear and, above all, special units were
deployed for coercive intervention against ‘trouble makers’. The army as well as
paramilitary bodies often intervened (such as the SWAT in the United States;
Fernandez 2008). Various types of ‘less-lethal’ arms were also used against dem-
onstrators, from those traditionally deployed by police public order units, such as
teargas and/or water cannons, to newer developments such as hand-held irritating
sprays and rubber and plastic bullets. The responsibility for their use was largely
on individual police officers.1 Live ammunition was used in Gothenburg (three
demonstrators wounded) and Genoa (one demonstrator killed). In Seattle,
Windsor and Gothenburg, groups of demonstrators were encircled by police and
kept penned in for long periods.2 Mass arrests, sometimes far from the demonstra-
tion venue, were observed in Seattle, Washington, DC (April 2000), Prague
(November 2000), Quebec City (April 2001), Gothenburg (June 2001) and Genoa
(July 2001). Most of the arrests were not confirmed by judicial authorities.
These developments emerge as significant departures from the protest policing
styles dominant in the 1980s and 1990s. However, it should be recalled that
the advent of negotiated management did not signify the disappearance of coer-
cive intervention. Research has frequently stressed the selectivity of police inter-
vention and the survival of harsh modes of protest policing in the 1980s
and 1990s (della Porta 1998; Fillieule and Jobard 1998). However, antagonistic
96   Donatella della Porta and Herbert Reiter
interventions with a ‘show of force’ attitude and a massive, highly visible police
presence were generally reserved for small extremist groups – in this period of
demobilization not connected with a broader movement – or for a universally
stigmatized phenomenon such as football hooliganism. In the case of transna-
tional protest events organized by the global justice movement, these features
have been observed in conjunction with mass demonstrations of tens of thou-
sands, if not hundreds of thousands of participants. Massive use of force as a
strategy for maintaining public order, however, was effective only with a favour-
able police/demonstrator ratio (as in Canada or Copenhagen; for New York City
see Vitale 2005). In cases of massive demonstrations, with large number of peace-
ful demonstrators and small (but highly mobile) groups of the black bloc, shows
of force and undiscriminating intervention produced escalation: police brutality
against non-violent participants has been denounced in numerous transnational
protest events, and, as in Gothenburg and Genoa, police charges have triggered
violent reactions even by previously peaceful groups of protesters.
Deterrence of demonstrators – both in general and in specific areas – has
been a main strategic element in the policing of transnational protest events.
As Fernandez (2008: 86) recently observed, ‘[t]he closing of public spaces to
activists is a growing tactic in policing dissent’. During the prelude to the sum-
mit meetings, the police forces in various countries also employed coercive
measures not aimed at protecting the official summit but offensively directed
against activists and movement strategies. In Genoa, in Copenhagen, and else-
where, the police was accused of harassing young people who looked like
activists, employing continuous identity checks and body searches during the
days and nights before the protest events. Heavy patrolling was used as an
instrument of intimidation (in Genoa as in Washington, DC, Cancun, Miami;
see also Fernandez 2008). Preventive arrests targeted against specific protest
actions and accompanied by the confiscation of propaganda material such as
puppets or banners were denounced in Seattle and afterwards. Police were
reported to have entered and searched demonstrators’ headquarters, independ-
ent media centres, and legal assistance offices (including those located in
premises offered by local authorities) in Washington, DC, Prague, Gothenburg
and (with the most dramatic consequences) in Genoa. An array of legal provi-
sions (from city regulations and national codes) against vandalism, trespass-
ing, failure to disperse, disobey a lawful order, also traffic laws, and laws on
the use of fire in public (e.g. to prohibit burning flags) has been used to repress
protest. In fact, ‘[t]emporary ordinances, creative use of old laws, and legal
permits are now common ways to control the protest’ (Fernandez 2008: 166).
In the United States, before the summit of the World Economic Forum, the
NYC police department called for zero tolerance against violent protesters,
implementing arrests against any interfering with the traffic (following an
edict of 1845 prohibiting three or more people to assemble in a public space
wearing masks). In the same vein, fire regulations and public health ordi-
nances have been used to prevent the preparation of protest. Regulations
against meeting in public parks have been implemented to prohibit protests.
State power and the control of transnational protests   97
Protest permits have been used to reduce the movements of protesters and
restrict them in inconvenient areas. The housing of demonstrators has been
actively boycotted (as e.g. in June 2002, in Calgary, where the authorities
refused to host protesters and out-bid an offer by the protesters to lease land
from the Stoney First Nation) (Fernandez 2008: 87).
In the policing of transnational counter-summits, there has been a much
stronger emphasis on isolating political leaders and dignitaries from the risks of
contact with demonstrators than on negotiating with organizers to define spaces
and limits of protest. In some cases (Gothenburg, Genoa), serious negotiations
started late and were more or less haphazard. Although negotiations did precede
several protest events, with the exception of Copenhagen in December 2002 and
at the First European Social Forum in Florence in November 2002, no particular
care seems to have been taken to assure open communication lines during dem-
onstrations, one of the cardinal points of negotiated management; in fact, contacts
between authorities and organizers were often interrupted, at Seattle, Prague,
Quebec City, Gothenburg, and Genoa, among others. Before 9/11, authorities (for
instance, in Genoa) were already devoting considerable time and energy in dis-
couraging protests during official summits, but after the terrorist attack on the
Twin Towers, summits were more often moved to inaccessible areas (e.g. the G8
at Kananaskis) or ‘no-go’ areas for protestors extended even further (up to 10
miles for the G8 in the United States in June 2004).
Above all, preparations for the ‘fortification’ of summit sites and, in general,
police measures aimed at its protection constituted public messages difficult to
reconcile with a negotiating strategy. In fact, deterrence of demonstrators – both
in general and in specific areas – was a main strategic element in the policing of
transnational protest events. Fences were built in Seattle and (increasingly
sophisticated and impenetrable) in Windsor (April 2000), Washington, DC,
Prague, Quebec City, Gothenburg and Genoa. Special trains transporting activists
to Prague were blocked at the borders. As far as the European Union is concerned,
border controls were routinely reintroduced during demonstrations within the
Schengen area, and numerous potential participants (including EU citizens) were
refused entry, often on a questionable legal basis. In Quebec City as well as in
Genoa, checkpoints were set up at the city borders, and railway stations were
closed and/or heavily patrolled.
Coercion and deterrence strategies were linked to information strategies. The
literature on transnational policing has underlined the significance of technical
innovation, and the influence of advanced surveillance, information processing
and communication technologies on the way policing is organized (Sheptycki
2002: 138ff.). New terms such as ‘strategic’, ‘proactive’, and ‘intelligence-led’
policing imply approaches for targeting suspect populations and individuals in a
highly systematic way. The trend towards intelligence-led policing, first estab-
lished in the United States with the ‘war on drugs’, is highly evident in transna-
tional protest policing, both in North America and in Europe. Comparative
research (della Porta et al. 2006a; Fernandez 2008) indicates an attempt to extend
control over a population of transnational activists through a broad collection of
98   Donatella della Porta and Herbert Reiter
information, shared transnationally among the different police bodies, with
enforcement agencies (as the US Department of Homeland Security, Office and
Center for Domestic Preparedness) instructing and training in updated techniques
of civil disobedience management (Fernandez 2008: 98). Untrue information is
often spread to portray the activists as violent (della Porta et al. 2006a; Fernandez
2008). Long-lasting planning included the collection of information on the pro-
testers (who they are, how many and which groups) as well as an elaboration of
the lessons learned from the policing of previous transnational events. In Genoa,
widespread alarmist use has been made of information later declared unreliable
by the same authorities, recalling (among others) the case of the Chicago
Congress of the Democratic Party in 1968 (Donner 1990: 116–17). Although this
alarmism did not discourage participation at the counter-summits, it favoured the
spreading, especially among rank-and-file police officers, of an image of demon-
strators as dangerously violent or even as terrorists (or infiltrated by terrorists).
The deployment of plainclothes police, for instance, in Copenhagen, was
denounced by movement activists for infiltration attempts and what was seen as
agent provocateur behaviour.
The various police forces’ capacity for monitoring the ‘suspect population’ of
the protesters was, however, not sufficient to allow them to efficiently intervene
in a strategic and proactive way. The massive amount of information collected on
single activists and groups and the political (and not criminal) character of the
phenomenon of transnational protest seem to have overstretched their analytical
capacities.3
The phenomenon of transnational policing, with the massive use of data banks
and exchange of information among national police forces to prevent individuals
deemed dangerous from participating in transnational demonstrations, surfaced
especially in the European cases, within the institutional framework of the
European Union. These practices, which often followed the informal rules devel-
oped for the control of football hooligans, emerged as opaque in terms of the
protection of citizens’ rights. Apart from these new problems of democratic
accountability, additional shortcomings (re)emerged that had already marred the
information strategies employed during previous protest cycles.
There was indeed a return to the massive use of force, especially oriented
towards temporary incapacitation, with protestors forced to the margins.
Negotiations took place, but trust between negotiators remained low, also because
of the uncompromising messages sent by the police with other interventions aimed
at protection and prevention during the period leading up to the demonstrations.

The transnationalization of police control


Coercion, intimidation and information gatherings took place at a transnational
level. In many of the transnational protests discussed, more than one police force
intervened. In particular, as far as the European cases are concerned, a closer
cooperation between police forces of different countries developed. In Genoa,
functionaries of the German federal criminal police, directly connected with their
State power and the control of transnational protests   99
data banks, were present as liaison officers. At the Evian G8 in May 2003, police
units from different countries intervened together in the streets. Among EU mem-
ber states, the transnational control of protest involved the networks of police
cooperation that had developed as a form of intergovernmental collaboration
outside the EU institutions, such as TREVI (since 1976 directed above all against
terrorism) or Schengen (the 1985 agreement between a group of member states
to gradually abolish internal border controls that became effective in 1995). With
the Maastricht treaty (1993), the cooperation between the police forces of the EU
member states became part of the ‘third pillar’ of the European Union, conserv-
ing, however, even after the treaty of Amsterdam (1997), its intergovernmental
character. This intergovernmental character of European police collaboration
brought about deficient public debate, opaque decision-making and a lack of
democratic accountability. The maintenance of public order is the responsibility
of the individual member states. Integration in justice and home affairs is pre-
dominantly driven by the formalizing of informal arrangements and the structu-
ration at the level of the European Union of intergovernmental agreements. At the
EU level, police matters are treated prevalently by the European Council for
Justice and Internal Affairs, with a merely consultative role of the European
Parliament and limited intervention of the European Court of Justice (della Porta
and Reiter 2004; Reiter and Fillieule 2006).
Developing through groups of experts and intelligence activities, European
cooperation in the field of public order first concentrated on football hooliganism,
subsequently extending to other public order problems. Expanding on a 1996
Recommendation on football hooliganism (Official Journal 1997 C 193/1), on 26
May 1997, the European Council adopted (without debate) a Joint Action with
regard to cooperation on law and order and security. In Article 1, it stipulated the
following:

Member States shall provide Member States concerned with information,


upon request or unsolicited, via central bodies, if sizeable groups which
may pose a threat to law and order and security are travelling to another
Member State in order to participate in events.

In the preamble, the ‘events’ were specified as ‘sporting events, rock concerts,
demonstrations and road-blocking protest campaigns’ (Official Journal 1997
L 147/1). The Schengen Information System (SIS), introduced as a compensatory
measure for abolishing internal border checks, significantly widened the possi-
bilities for the exchange of information between police forces and intelligence
services (Mathiesen 2000; Peers 2000: 209ff.). Its purpose as stated in Article 93
of the Schengen convention (‘to maintain public order and security, including
State security’) appears, in fact, very broad and comprehensive.
Within this framework, a European level of protest policing developed,
which already before the Genoa G8 became visible above all in the efforts to
prevent violent activists (or those presumed to be so) from reaching the city
hosting the summit (Reiter and Fillieule 2006). The challenge posed by the
100   Donatella della Porta and Herbert Reiter
violent incidents surrounding the EU summit in Gothenburg led to swift
action by the European Council. At a meeting of the Council for Justice and
Home Affairs on 13 July 2001, conclusions on security at meetings of the
European Council and other comparable events were adopted, largely centred
on greater collaboration among the various national police forces to ensure
the peaceful holding of the summits.4 The conclusions foresee extensive
information exchange, calling for ‘the use of all the legal and technical pos-
sibilities for stepping up and promoting rapid, more structured exchanges of
data on violent trouble makers on the basis of national files’. The exchange
of information is closely connected with the application (‘if it proves essen-
tial’) of Article 2(2) of the Schengen Convention, that is, its temporary sus-
pension. In the same context, implementation of expulsion measures and
cooperation in the repatriation of expelled demonstrators were discussed.
Finally, according to the same conclusions, direct cooperation between judi-
cial authorities was to be facilitated, with the aim of prosecuting and trying
‘violent trouble makers . . . without undue delay and in conditions guarantee-
ing a fair trial’. The Council conclusions recall the importance of a construc-
tive dialogue between the organisers of public demonstrations and the
authorities, elaborating, however, exclusively on measures designed to keep
activists presumed to be a danger to public order and security away from the
country hosting the summit. In its efforts, it demonstrated little respect for the
protection of personal data and the individual quality of the right to free
movement within the European Union.
Above all, the purely intergovernmental character of EU police cooperation
greatly complicated the citizen’s ability to single out those politically and juridi-
cally responsible for restrictive measures and to find redress. In the case of two
Welsh football fans detained and deported by the Belgian police on the basis of
erroneous information supplied by British authorities (who in turn had received
their names from Luxembourg), it took a 6-year campaign (with the help of
Liberty, a British NGO) lobbying a dozen national and international bureaucra-
cies to get their names removed from Belgian, British and Schengen records
(Peers 2000: 188). This 1992 experience was not an isolated event, limited to
football hooligans. Stephanie Mills, a Greenpeace activist from New Zealand,
was denied access to the entire Schengen area on 25 June 1998 because the
French government had entered her name into the SIS system – as indeed it had
previously entered those of a number of other Greenpeace staff (Peers 2000: 224).
After the Gothenburg incidents, about four hundred names are said to have been
added to the SIS (Hayes and Bunyan 2004: 260). These and similar measures of
police cooperation have to be seen against the background of the general develop-
ments in the field of justice and home affairs within the European Union, charac-
terized by deficiencies in democratic accountability and limited involvement of
national parliaments and the European parliament, largely restricted to a merely
consultative role (Denza 2002; Peers 2000; Walker 2003).5
On the basis of the Watson report of the European Parliament committee on civil
rights and freedoms, justice and home affairs, the parliament’s recommendation to the
State power and the control of transnational protests   101
Council voted by the plenum on 12 December 2001 stressed ‘not a few short-
comings’ in Member States’ responses to the Nice, Gothenburg and Genoa dem-
onstrations.6 It recommended inter alia against blocking frontiers or denying
entrance to individuals or groups seeking to take part peacefully in legitimate
demonstrations, against any new type of ‘blacklist’, against the use of firearms
and against the disproportionate use of force, with national police forces instead
instructed to keep violence under control and safeguard individual rights even in
cases of mass confusion where violent criminals mingle with peaceful, law-
abiding citizens. Other recommendations – to adopt a joint definition of a ‘dan-
gerous individual’ and dangerous conduct that might justify preventive measures;
to avoid any sort of discrimination between nationals and European citizens in
the event of arrest or legal proceedings, guaranteeing defence by an advocate of
one’s choice even in the event of summary proceedings – bring out the fact that
the existence of comparable internal standards is not regarded as sufficient to
guarantee the new quality of exercise of the citizens’ right to demonstrate and
protest Europe-wide.
However, in this context, the limited ability of European institutions to assure
democratic accountability in the field of transnational protest policing must be
underlined. As already stressed, the maintenance of public order falls under the
exclusive competence of the member states. At the EU level, the European
Parliament’s recommendations seem not to have been given any great consideration
by the Council. The ‘Security handbook for the use of police authorities and services
at international events such as meetings of the European Council’ of 12 November
2002 – called for by the Council conclusions of 13 July 2001 – was produced by the
Police Co-operation Working Party without reference to the European Parliament
recommendations, which had also suggested such a document.7 The Handbook,
approved by the Council at its meeting on 28 and 29 November 2002, suggests that
future revisions be discussed only by the Police Chiefs Task Force and the commit-
tee of experts foreseen in Article 3 of the Joint Action of 1997 and approved by the
Article 36 Committee (a coordinating committee of senior officials in the field of
police cooperation and judicial cooperation in criminal matters). If, on the one hand,
the Handbook underlines the importance of actively pursuing dialogue and coopera-
tion with demonstrators and activists, on the other hand, it indicates Article 2(2) of
the Schengen Convention (which allows for the temporary reintroduction of border
controls ‘where public policy or national security so require’) as a ‘useful instru-
ment’ of prevention, without considering the observations of the European Parliament
on this point.8 The Schengen Borders Code agreed on between the Council and the
EU Parliament in June 2005 – since 1 May 2004 the parliament enjoys co-decision
powers for measures concerning the crossing of EU external and internal borders –
seems to constitute only limited advances in assuring accountability, transparency,
proportionality and information of the public.9
As far as the European Council is concerned, an Italian initiative led to a reso-
lution on the security of Council meetings and similar events passed on 29 April
2004, aimed at ‘limiting inconveniences’ in the application of Article 2(2) and at
assuring more effective, better coordinated cooperation at European level.10 It
102   Donatella della Porta and Herbert Reiter
called, among other things, for targeted information exchange, making possible
intelligence-led checks on

individuals or groups in respect of whom there are substantial grounds for


believing that they intend to enter the Member State with the aim of dis-
rupting public order and security at the event or committing offences relat-
ing to the event.

If this resolution, recommending a more selective use of border checks, seems


to indicate a growing attention to the individual right to free movement within the
European Union, doubts remain as to whether this is sufficient to eliminate the
type of violations pointed to in connection with police controls at the Genoa G8,
when demonstrators were refused entry at the Italian border not only on the basis
of faulty information about their person but also because they were travelling on
the same bus with individuals considered to be ‘dangerous’.
The resolution does not eliminate data protection concerns or the basic prob-
lem inherent in similar measures, that is, the lack of a definition accepted by all
EU member states of ‘public order and security’ or ‘substantial grounds’. In addi-
tion, considering the institutional structure of the European Union in the field of
justice and home affairs and the weakness of a European public sphere, the risk
seems high that the shaping of such definitions and of the concrete form of tran-
snational protest rights will be both state and executive driven.

The policing of transnational protest: some explanations


How to explain this evolution? When and why is protest perceived as particularly
challenging by the authorities? Our explanatory model is summarized in Figure 5.1.
Social science research has linked the style of police intervention to some
characteristics of the external environment. First, police have been said to be
sensitive to their environment, to the characteristics of the perceived threat and to
the expected demands from authorities and public opinion. Research on the police
has stressed that the organizational imperative is keeping control over situations,
rather than enforcing the law (Bittner 1967; Rubinstein 1980; Skolnick 1966).
Police officers indeed enjoy a high degree of discretion in their encounters with
citizens. However, they must also maintain the support of authorities and the
public. Research on the policing of social movements has identified a tendency
to use harsher styles of protest policing against social and political groups that are
perceived as larger threats to political elites by being more ideologically driven
or more radical in their aims (see Davenport 1995, 2000; della Porta and Fillieule
2004; Earl 2003). In addition, police repression is more likely to be directed
against groups that are poorer in material resources as well as in political connec-
tions (della Porta 1998; Earl et al. 2003). In general, there is a reciprocal adapta-
tion as ‘[i]t is a dance between those who challenge authority, speak truth to
power, and hope for a more just world and those who wish to extend their privi-
leges and power’ (Fernandez 2008: 171).
State power and the control of transnational protests   103

Organization of police forces Political opportunities


• Militarization of training, command. • Neoliberal closure to movements’
equipment demands
• De-nationalization through multilevel • Low accountability of IGOs
policing • Mistrust by (left-wing) potential allies
• Privatization of spaces,
organizational structures, regulations

Police knowledge
• Mistrust of demonstrators and forms
of protest
• Sensitivity to political input

Protest control strategies Movement characteristics


• Fortification of summit sites • Novelty of the movement
• Escalation of coercive strategies • Heterogeneous organizational
• Incoherent negotiation structure
• Generalized and indiscriminate • Peaceful but heterogeneous action
information gathering repertoires
• ‘Intelligence-led’ and ‘pro-active’ • Presence of small violent groups
policing • Low trust in the police

Figure 5.1  Explanations of transnational protest policing.

Certainly, counter-summits present a specific challenge to police forces,


obliged to balance respect for demonstration rights with the maintenance of pub-
lic order and the protection of domestic and especially foreign dignitaries
(Ericson and Doyle 1999). Some characteristics of the emerging global
movement – not only its novelty but also its heterogeneity, loose organizational
structures and use of direct action strategies, as well as widespread distrust of
police (see della Porta and Reiter 2004; Noakes and Gillham 2006; Peterson
2006) – have facilitated police framing of transnational protestors as ‘bad dem-
onstrators’ (or trouble makers). The police reacted to changes they perceived in
the social movements. As Fernandez (2008: 137) noted, ‘[a]fter the 1999 WTO
protests in Seattle, police developed techniques designed to deal with a decentral-
ized, non-hierarchical, network-based movement. Such policing required thought-
ful planning and careful attention to the geographical space in order to control
mass movements’.
104   Donatella della Porta and Herbert Reiter
Social movement scholars have stressed the role of political opportunities, as
both stable institutions and contingent developments. As for the first, the more
centralized the political power, the less accessible ‘from below’ political institu-
tions have been considered to be. In addition, historically rooted cultural
elements about the proper ways to deal with opponents tend to reproduce them-
selves determining different degrees of inclusiveness versus exclusiveness
towards social movements. Less durable political contingencies that influence
the availability and influence of political allies (electoral instability, divisions
among the elites, etc.) have also been mentioned as relevant in opening windows
of opportunities for protestors (see della Porta and Diani 2006: Chapter 8 for a
review). In the policing of transnational protest, the low formal accountability of
International Governmental Organizations has been considered to be closing
down channels of access for political movements (della Porta et al. 2006a). At
the national level, the global justice movement challenges neo-liberal policies
that have been popular not only on the right but also on the left of the parliamen-
tary political spectrum. The movement emerged as particularly strong in the case
of centre-right governments, but it also proved very critical of the parliamentary
left, perceived not only as domesticated on substantial issues (the labour market,
social justice, global distributive justice, etc.) but also as more and more elitist
in its conception of politics as an activity for professionals. The institutionaliza-
tion and moderation of social movements in the 1980s and 1990s and their
integration into increasingly institutionalized forms of politics contributed to an
image of the emerging global justice movement as particularly violent in its
action repertoires and particularly poor in its political capacity. The isolation of
protestors in the institutional sphere of politics seems to have pushed the police
towards harsher strategies, adapted from those applied in preceding decades
against weak (politically unprotected) groups and generally stigmatized phe-
nomena such as football hooliganism (della Porta and Reiter 2004; Wahlström
and Oskarsson 2006).
Beyond the characteristics of the protest, the organizational resources of the
police and its professional culture are also important in explaining police behav-
iour. The degree of militarization of the structure and the equipment, the legal
competences and the degree of professionalization influence the strategic choices
of the police. The militarization of public order control reflects the augmentation
of paramilitary units, used, for instance, in the intervention against drug dealers,
as well as the growth of a military culture exemplified by police training, arma-
ment and uniforms (on the United States, see Kraska 1996; Kraska and Kaeppler
1997). Less lethal arms have been tested in non-political public order policing
(for instance, in response to beer riots on US campuses; see McCarthy et al.
2004). In particular, the struggle against international terrorism is often cited to
justify ‘zero tolerance’ against protestors.
It has been observed that police tactics in the control of protest follow some
general conceptions of the role of the police. With an original insight with respect
to previous research, Noakes and Gillham (2006) underline the importance of shifts
in the dominant visions of the causes of crime and in the corresponding conceptual
State power and the control of transnational protests   105
principles underlying police intervention for protest policing, in particular, the
implications of the ‘new penology’ with its emphasis on protection and risk man-
agement. Zero tolerance doctrines, as well as militaristic training and equipment,
are imported into the field of protest policing from other forms of public order
control addressing micro-criminality or football hooliganism. The elaboration of a
‘penal law of the enemy’ is another case in point. The strategy of space fortification
reflects the relevance of a conception of prevention as isolation from the danger
(and the dangerous ones), through a reduction of rights (of demonstrations, move-
ment and privacy) of those citizens considered potential enemies. The assumption
here is that ‘the implementation of the rights as well as the security of the included
pass necessarily through the expulsion from those rights of the excluded, that is,
those who do not deserve them, who are marginals . . .’ (Pepino 2006: 262).
A situation defined as an emergency is faced through the strategies experimented
with in the public order control of the ‘street enemies’ (migrants and petty criminals).
This emergency right deviates from the principles of universal rights, instituting a
dichotomy between citizens and enemy. In the control of the protest, the political
rights of the citizens are subordinated to the security of certain social groups. The
intelligence-led policing is certainly facilitated by the expansion of police preventive
powers (e.g. in the control of football stadiums) or in the large use of tapping and
video cameras (originally against organized crime and terrorism). In several coun-
tries, anti-terrorism or anti-crime policies have introduced new associational crimes
(membership in or moral support of subversive or terrorist associations), or crimes
against the state and heads of state with the effect of orienting repression against
categories of people rather than against specific crimes. Militarization is, therefore,
justified by ‘states of exception’ that foresee among others the use of the army. As
observed by Pepino (2006: 250), ‘the classical penal code (be it a reality or an
illusion) is changing face, and from a right linked to the fact develops into strong
subjective undertone’.
There is one further explanation for the weak defence of demonstration rights
observed in the policing of transnational protest events. In fact, although the tar-
gets and organization of the protest become transnational, protesters’ rights remain
anchored at the national level (della Porta et al. 2006b; Reiter and Fillieule 2006).
In Genoa, also Gothenburg and Copenhagen, the right to protest has been limited
for the citizens stopped at the borders. As Reiter and Fillieule (2006) argue in
depth, although protest is becoming more and more transnational, protester rights
remain state-centred. States maintain the right to reduce freedom of movement to
non-nationals, and notwithstanding the involvement of different police bodies as
well as secret services from various countries, the controls on police interventions
remain national. Even though the rights to protest are recognized by the EU
Convention on Human Rights and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the
European Union, there is no concrete protection of a transnational right to protest
(Reiter and Fillieule 2006). In addition, the policing of transnational events tends
to involve international policing, characterized by a very low level of democratic
accountability (Sheptycki 1994, 2002; Walker 2003). The involvement of multiple
law enforcement agencies, as well as secret services, further reduces internal
106   Donatella della Porta and Herbert Reiter
coordination and external controls on police intervention. A supranational public
sphere capable of keeping a critical eye on the defence of citizens’ rights is emerg-
ing (as, for instance, the wave of international protest against police brutality at the
Genoa counter-summit indicates), but it is still weak and surfaces only occasion-
ally. Finally, the intergovernmental character of police cooperation among EU
member states has notably increased the difficulties for citizens to identify the
institutional level that is politically and juridically responsible for limitations of
their rights and where to ask for redress (Peers 2000: 188).
In this situation, the new laws on terrorism that have been passed at the national
level after the 9/11, and the enhanced international police cooperation on security
issues, have provided instruments and norms that allow for a consistent restriction of
demonstration rights. This is all the more the case as far as the right of protesting
transnationally is involved, with its particular sensitivity towards the possibilities for
citizens to cross national borders. Stricter visa regulations, as well as police coopera-
tion to produce lists of proscription of potential trouble makers, have a potentially
chilling effect on transnational protests. Moreover, old and new anti-terrorism legisla-
tion is increasingly used for the surveillance and intimidation of activists who gener-
ally risk high penalties for minor violations (see e.g. Starr et al. 2008).

Conclusion
In sum, the policing of transnational protest in recent years has been characterized
by police brutality and a show of force attitude, with massive, highly visible
police presence resembling the escalated force style, although with adaptations to
new protest repertoires, police frames and technologies. Also striking in several
cases of transnational protest policing is the ‘fortification’ of summit sites.
Technical innovations have allowed for a broad increase in surveillance. In gen-
eral, we noted a return to massive use of force, especially oriented at temporary
incapacitation, with protestors forced at the margins, far from the places of power.
Negotiations take place, but they tend to start late and trust between negotiators
of the two sides remains low, partly because of the uncompromising messages
sent by the police with other interventions aimed at protection and prevention
during the period leading up to the demonstrations. Finally, there are clear
attempts at ‘intelligence-led’ policing, with much emphasis given to massive col-
lection and frequent exchange of information.
These characteristics certainly constitute a departure from the negotiated man-
agement model, with its ‘demonstration-friendly’ protest policing philosophy,
which had been dominant in several Western democracies in the 1980s and 1990s.
The right to demonstrate seems to be recognized selectively in more than one
way: weakly protected for foreigners and with the exclusion of direct action pro-
test repertoires defined as illegal and violent. In the ultimate analysis, the protest
policing strategies applied seem to negate the right of citizens to determine or to
co-determine where, when, and how to express their political opinions, arrogating
instead to the police the right to ‘shape’ the protest arena by unilateral, if need be
preventive and coercive intervention.
State power and the control of transnational protests   107
Notes
  1 All components of the mobile divisions deployed at Genoa had been authorized to use
hand-held spray cans with irritant CS gas to immobilize possible ‘antagonists’ (Hearing
5/9/01, 75).
  2 This technique was also used during the London May Day protests in 2001, when dem-
onstrators were kept penned in for up to 7 hours (Atkinson 2001). In Germany, the
illegality of this police technique has been repeatedly affirmed by administrative courts,
on the basis of a constitutional court decision.
  3 These misjudgments seem to consist not only of faulty evaluations of the political posi-
tions of certain protest groups but also of miscalculations about the effects of intelli-
gence-led and proactive interventions against certain groups in the global justice
movement as a whole.
  4 Available at register.consilium.eu.int/pdf/en/01/st10/10916en1.pdf, accessed January
2006; see also Griebenow and Busch (2001: 64ff.).
  5 The objective of EU policy in constructing the ‘area of freedom, security and justice’ is
defined in Article 29 of the Amsterdam Treaty as ‘to provide citizens with a high level
of safety’.
  6 The Watson Report is available at http://www.europarl.eu.int/omk/sipade3?PUBREF=-//EP//
TEXT+REPORT+A5-2001-0396+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN&L=EN&LEVEL=
0&NAV=S&LSTDOC=Y (accessed January 2006).
  7 Available at www.statewatch.org/news/2003/jul/prothand12637-r3.pdf (accessed January
2006). On the uncertain legal and constitutional status of the Police Chiefs Task Force, see
Bunyan (2006).
  8 According to a Statewatch research conducted in February 2003, during the two preced-
ing years the Schengen treaty had been suspended 26 times, at least 16 times in the
occasion of political demonstrations (Hayes and Bunyan 2004: 274).
  9 The text of the borders code is available at www.statewatch.org/news/2005/jun/9630.05.
pdf. Member States retain the right to reintroduce internal border controls (see Articles
20–6) ‘when there is a serious threat to public policy or internal security’. In cases requiring
urgent action, they may do so immediately. The notification and consultation procedure
established for foreseeable events (to organize cooperation and examine proportionality)
involves only the member state reintroducing border controls, the Council and the
Commission. The European parliament shall be informed ‘as soon as possible’, but the
member state shall report to parliament, if requested, only after the third consecutive pro-
longation of the measure. Only after the lifting of controls is a report presented to the
European parliament, the Council and the Commission, outlining, in particular, the opera-
tion of the checks and the effectiveness of reintroducing border control.
10 Available at register.consilium.eu.int/pdf/en/03/st13/st13915.en03.pdf (accessed January
2006).

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6 China and the limits of transnational
human rights activism
From Tiananmen Square to the Beijing
Olympics
Caroline Fleay

Introduction
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was instrumental in bringing an end to the
brutal occupation of the Japanese in China, but CCP rule in China since 1949 has
included various government campaigns that also inflicted human rights abuses on
its citizens, including arbitrary detentions, the use of torture and executions.
However, it was not until the Tiananmen Square massacre in June 1989 that there
was any significant international criticism of such abuses in China. In the wake of
the massacre, international human rights organizations, some domestic and exiled
Chinese human rights actors and various UN human rights agencies continued to
investigate and report on human rights abuses in China. Some of the efforts of
these non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and UN human rights agencies,
particularly in the first year after the massacre, led to many liberal democratic
states being critical of China’s actions and imposing largely symbolic sanctions
and supporting resolutions on China at the UN Commission on Human Rights
(UNCHR).1 Thus, in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square massacre, this trans-
national network of human rights actors had proven powerful enough to define
what were the most important human rights abuses in China and to secure expres-
sions of condemnation of the Chinese government from many other states.
China responded to this transnational activism by refuting the criticism but
increased its engagement with international human rights discussions, made con-
cessions such as releasing high profile political prisoners and passed legislation
that it argued was consistent with international human rights norms. By 1998,
however, most of the liberal democratic states had largely abandoned the public
forms of criticism inherent in multilateral human rights approaches and instead
adopted China’s preferred mode of raising human rights concerns – the bilateral
dialogue approach, characterized by private meetings between government offi-
cials and the funding of technical cooperation programs on human rights and
legal reform. It seemed that the power the transnational human rights actors had
exercised less than a decade earlier to influence other states to pressurize China
through multilateral forums on these rights had waned. The decision of the
International Olympic Committee (IOC) to award the 2008 Olympics to Beijing
ushered in another opportunity for human rights activism as the decision was
112   Caroline Fleay
accompanied with the argument that it would lead to human rights improvements
in China. Greater international attention was once again placed on particular
rights abuses in China and international and domestic human rights actors mobi-
lized to pressurize the Chinese government to change its human rights practices.
There are numerous explorations of the impacts of transnational human rights
activism on China. A number of the most comprehensive focus on the socializa-
tion of the Chinese government according to international human rights norms.
From a constructivist perspective, socialization is understood as processes a state
may experience as a result of interacting with other agents, such that key actors
within the state change the way they ‘understand, process, interpret and act upon
lessons that are “taught”’ by other agents’ (Johnston 2001: 492). The state’s
engagement with these socialization processes can lead to changes in its identity,
interests and behaviours consistent with the norms promoted by other agents
(Risse and Sikkink 1999). Both Foot (2000: 256–72) and Kent (1999: 242) argue
that there is evidence to suggest that the Chinese government had become some-
what socialized according to international human rights norms in the decade fol-
lowing the Tiananmen Square massacre, as well as shown its ability to influence
some of the enforcement mechanisms of the international human rights norms.
Examining a similar time period, Wan (2001: 2, 13) argues that the Chinese
government’s responses to the pressures placed on it by its external human rights
critics indicate adaptive rather than cognitive learning about the importance of
human rights, primarily reflecting the Chinese government’s understanding that
Western governments had the power ‘to back [their] moral claims’. Thus, Wan
argues that realism is a better explanation of Chinese government’s responses to
its external human rights critics than constructivist and institutionalist approaches,
that is, the Chinese government’s responses to its Western critics are primarily
seen as the results of rational calculations about how China’s power and security
are best promoted in the anarchical international system.
Despite the varying theoretical bases of their conclusions, Foot, Kent and Wan
argue that the Chinese government has primarily responded to its human rights
critics in an instrumental sense, that is, the Chinese government’s responses to its
critics were motivated by instrumental or material concerns such as bringing an
end to the sanctions and public criticisms of its human rights record. Realist
explanations of these instrumental responses would consider them evidence of
the calculations of the Chinese government according to the economic and mili-
tary power of the Western governments to support their human rights criticisms.
However, realist explanations fail to adequately account for the extent to which
the Chinese government was willing to engage with its human rights critics over
human rights norms and their enforcement mechanisms, particularly given that
most of the diplomatic and economic sanctions imposed by the liberal democratic
governments in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square massacre were lifted by
the end of 1990. In contrast, constructivist explanations suggest that this engage-
ment is evidence of socialization according to international human rights norms.
Building on the above research, I have argued elsewhere that the socialization
processes outlined in the earlier phases of Risse et al.’s (1999) constructivist
China and the limits of transnational human rights activism   113
spiral model theory provide a useful explanation for the Chinese government’s
responses to its domestic and international human rights critics (Fleay 2006).
Risse et al.’s five-phase spiral model seeks to explain how a transnational net-
work of domestic and international human rights actors (including NGOs, UN
human rights agencies and states) may be able to influence a target state’s iden-
tity, interests and behaviours through particular socialization processes (Risse and
Sikkink 1999).2 The authors limit the application of the spiral model to two core
rights – the right to life, or freedom from extrajudicial execution and disappear-
ance, and the right to freedom from torture, arbitrary arrest and detention (Risse
and Sikkink 1999: 2).3
According to the spiral model, if there is enough sustained domestic and inter-
national human rights advocacy on these core rights, a target state may engage in
socialization processes that increasingly modify its identity, interests and behav-
iours according to these human rights norms. The earliest socialization process
expected by the spiral model is instrumental adaptation in which the target state
responds to its critics by making some human rights concessions to reduce or
avoid such attention (Risse and Sikkink 1999: 12). Although the target state’s
response is not considered to necessarily imply acceptance of the human rights
norms, or the validity of the accusations, it is considered to reflect the target
state’s concern about its international reputation in relation to human rights (Risse
and Sikkink 1999: 23–4). This suggests an acceptance that human rights are a
legitimate international issue.
If pressure by the transnational network of domestic and international human
rights actors can be maintained, the target state may feel compelled to make fur-
ther concessions and engage increasingly in the deeper socialization process of
argumentative discourses. In this process, the target state and its critics engage in
argumentation and persuasion, with the target state participating in repeated dis-
cussions on the validity and meaning of international human norms (Risse and
Sikkink 1999: 16). The expectation is that this increasingly affects the target
state’s identity or the way that it defines itself compared with other states. With
the continued advocacy of the transnational human rights network, the target state
may ultimately engage in the socialization process of institutionalization and
habitualization whereby international human rights norms are no longer contested
by the target state but increasingly enshrined in domestic law, policies and prac-
tices (Risse and Sikkink 1999: 31–4).
Drawing on the responses of the Chinese government to its domestic and inter-
national human rights critics from the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre to
2003, I earlier argued that the Chinese government had engaged in the socializa-
tion process of instrumental adaptation and was beginning to engage in the deeper
socialization process of argumentative discourses (Fleay 2006). In the wake of the
2008 Beijing Olympics, it is now time to further examine these conclusions. This
chapter will review the findings of the earlier explorations of transnational human
rights activism and China that focus mostly on the time period from 1989 to the
turn of the century and their conclusions that the Chinese government’s responses
to its critics were predominantly instrumental. The human rights activism in the
114   Caroline Fleay
era from the awarding of the Olympics to Beijing in 2001 until the end of the 2008
Olympics will then be examined to explore the nature of this activism and the
Chinese government’s response to it. The Chinese government argued in its bid for
the 2008 Olympics that awarding the event to Beijing would further promote
human rights in China (Clarey 2001). Has the awarding of the Olympic Games to
Beijing led to the Chinese government’s deeper engagement with international
human rights norms, or does the government continue to respond to its human
rights critics in primarily an instrumental sense? If the Chinese government has
continued to respond to its critics in an instrumental sense, does this indicate its
engagement in a socialization process according to international human rights
norms, or does it primarily reflect the calculations of the Chinese government of
its own economic and military power in comparison with its critics? In other
words, to what extent can we consider international human rights norms and their
advocates have exercised power in relation to changing the Chinese government’s
identity, interests and behaviours?

Transnational human rights activism and China, 1989–2001


It was not until the killings in Beijing in June 1989 that any significant international
criticism of the Chinese government’s human rights practices was expressed. The
popular demonstrations that had preceded the killings had been initiated by students
in Beijing, and in many other Chinese cities, in April 1989 as expressions of increas-
ing concerns of Chinese citizens about widening disparities in wealth distribution,
increasing prices and corruption by Party officials (Kent 1993: 171). The presence
of a large contingent of international media in Beijing, originally to report on the
visit of Soviet Union President Gorbachev to China, meant that graphic images of
the tanks rolling into Tiananmen Square on 4 June to stop the demonstrations and
the subsequent killings in Beijing were transmitted worldwide (Nossal 1993: 23).
In the aftermath of the killings, as repression in China continued, there devel-
oped a network of international, domestic and exiled activists who sought to
persuade UN agencies and liberal democratic states to place pressure on the
Chinese government to improve its human rights practices. This pressure centred
on the particular international human rights norms of the rights to life, to freedom
from arbitrary arrest, detention and the use of torture, to a fair trial reflecting
international standards and to freedom of religion, expression and the media.
These rights were not only those most evidently violated in Beijing in 1989 but
were also those most focused on by international human rights organizations such
as Amnesty International and Asia Watch,4 as well as the UN human rights agen-
cies, whose ability to alert the international community to rights abuses had
grown by the late 1980s (Risse and Sikkink 1999: 21). Thus, the graphic images
of the Tiananmen Square massacre and the following repression in China dove-
tailed with the rights abuses most highlighted by the large international human
rights organizations and UN human rights agencies. This provided human rights
actors with enough power to define to the international community what were the
most important rights abuses in China in the aftermath of the massacre.
China and the limits of transnational human rights activism   115
Many liberal democratic states were compelled to respond to this human rights
activism, given the expressions of outrage of many of their citizens to the brutality
of the Chinese government, and that their ‘identities are connected with a respect
for human rights’ (Foot 2000: 114). These states publicly condemned the killings
and called for the Chinese government to cease the repression. Many also imposed
largely symbolic sanctions, such as suspending high-level ministerial visits, mili-
tary equipment sales and government-guaranteed loans, and supported a resolution
critical of China at the 1990 UNCHR session. Other UN human rights bodies, such
as the Special Rapporteur on Summary and Arbitrary Executions, the Special
Rapporteur on Torture and the Committee Against Torture, also expressed con-
cerns about the repression (Kent 1993: 187, 214–5; Nossal 1993: 25–31; Tessitore
and Woolfson 1990: 158; 1991: 153).
In the aftermath of the killings in Beijing, those considered to have been the
leaders of the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, or expressed sympathy for
them, suffered continued repressive measures by the Chinese government. This
severely disrupted the mobilization of any domestic opposition, although the
demonstrations in Beijing and other Chinese cities before the killings in Beijing
on 4 June had been largely spontaneous and lacking of a political plan that might
have enabled the expression of dissent to continue after the killings (Liang et al.
2001). However, thousands of Chinese students studying abroad and those
involved in the demonstrations who managed to flee China provided an important
source of dissent outside China’s borders, with some forming groups that were
able to disseminate information on human rights in China to NGOs, UN human
rights agencies and other states (Kent 1993: 191, 200).
The Chinese government responded to the advocacy of the developing transna-
tional human rights network by denying that it had perpetrated human rights
abuses, although not denying the importance of the universal human rights con-
cept, and emphasizing the state sovereignty principle and the human rights abuses
of previous colonial powers. It also responded to the resolution critical of its
human rights practices that was sponsored at the UNCHR in 1990 with energetic
lobbying for a no-action motion. However, in concessions to its critics, the govern-
ment attempted to alleviate some of the hardships created by the economic mod-
ernization programs, one of the catalysts of the demonstrations, and allowed some
freedoms in the more personal areas of clothing and daily habits (Kent 1993:
197–215; Kinnvall 1995: 268). The Chinese government also fostered the devel-
opment of a Chinese discourse on human rights, hosting several international
conferences and encouraging the publication of Chinese articles on the subject,
with the intention of providing a counter-attack to its human rights critics (Wei
1995: 87). In 1990, these concessions extended to the release of some of those
detained for their involvement in the demonstrations and others being given
reduced sentences (Foot 2000: 124–7; Kent 1993: 204, 217–29).
Such concessions continued in 1991 with the release of more political prison-
ers and the publication of China’s first White Paper on human rights.5 The
Chinese government even invited some of its international critics to come to
China – two Australian human rights delegations as well as one delegation each
116   Caroline Fleay
from France, Austria, United Kingdom and Switzerland were received in China
in the period 1991–1992. By the end of 1991, it was clear that the Chinese gov-
ernment was concerned enough about the criticisms it was receiving from both
domestic and international critics to make the above concessions. What was also
evident, however, was the instrumental nature of these concessions. For example,
given their timing just before US decision-making on the renewal of China’s
Most Favoured Nation trade status and whether to oppose World Bank loans to
China, the Chinese government’s releasing of some of those detained and giving
reduced sentences to others in 1990 was clearly an attempt to influence the out-
come of these US decisions (Foot 2000: 124–7, 136). The Chinese government’s
efforts to publish human rights papers and participate in international human
rights debates were also largely instrumental in the sense that the government
wanted to influence how international human rights were understood. However,
this also indicated the Chinese government’s acceptance of human rights as a
legitimate international concern.
Throughout the remainder of the 1990s, international human rights NGOs such
as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch continued to disseminate
reports primarily focused on the particular human rights abuses in China outlined
earlier. They also continued to lobby the liberal democratic states and UN human
rights agencies to pressurize the Chinese government.6 The continued repression
faced by pro-democracy and human rights activists within China meant that any
links between these activists and international human rights actors continued to
be difficult to establish or maintain, although the groups established by exiled
Chinese dissidents were able to continue to provide some information to interna-
tional human rights actors (Interview with Amnesty International Secretariat
Official 2004).
Although most of the sanctions applied against China had been lifted by the
end of 1990, many liberal democratic states continued to respond to the UN and
NGO human rights activism by showing at least some willingness to publicly
criticize rights abuses in China by supporting the sponsorship of resolutions
critical of China’s human rights record at the UNCHR into the mid-1990s. This
form of criticism proved to be the most potent in terms of stinging the Chinese
government into a reaction, as evidenced by the Chinese government’s ongoing
vigorous lobbying and willingness to make certain concessions in attempts to
stop it (Human Rights in China 1998). Concessions made by the Chinese govern-
ment included releasing prominent political prisoners just before annual UNCHR
sessions. For example, one month before the 1993 session, the Chinese govern-
ment released a number of political prisoners who had been detained for their
involvement in the 1989 demonstrations or for their religious activities. The fol-
lowing year further political and religious prisoners were released two months
from the UNCHR session (Amnesty International 1994, 1995).
Other actions taken by the Chinese government in response to its human rights
critics in the 1990s were further attempts to influence how international human
rights should be understood. These included the release of more human rights
White Papers7 and participating in international human rights forums. For example,
China and the limits of transnational human rights activism   117
China hosted the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 and took
an active role in negotiations at the Asian preparatory meeting in Bangkok in early
1993 of the UN World Conference on Human Rights and at the Conference itself
in Vienna in June (Foot 2000: 156–7).
The Chinese government also made legal reforms with some consistencies with
international human rights treaties. For example, in 1996, the Criminal Procedure
Law was revised and the Administrative Punishment Law was established to
improve the rights of detainees in areas such as their access to legal assistance and
to restrict the ability of police to secure lengthy sentences of administrative deten-
tion. However, other factors minimized any improvements in rights practices these
laws may have brought about, including that other legislative revisions increased
the amount of time someone could be detained before being technically arrested
and that the Criminal Procedure Law contained no provision for specifying the
presumption of innocence (Human Rights Watch 1997; Kent 1999: 205, 215–7).
Thus, although these measures indicate an acceptance of international human
rights norms to the extent that the Chinese government was willing to alter some
of its domestic legislation accordingly, the measures were also instrumental con-
cessions designed to appease international human rights critics.
Using these concessions, the Chinese government was ultimately successful in
managing to persuade most liberal democratic states to cease their support for
UNCHR resolutions on China by 1998, with its growing economic and strategic
relations with these states providing extra leverage. Instead of supporting the
resolutions, most of these states agreed to begin engaging in bilateral human
rights dialogues with the Chinese government and fund technical cooperation
programs on human rights and legal reform in China (Human Rights in China
1998). The US government was the most significant exception, supporting reso-
lutions critical of China at the UNCHR at the 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2004 ses-
sions. However, it too was not immune to the growing economic and strategic
status of China, and the US government also showed a decreasing willingness to
publicly criticize China’s human rights record outside the resolutions process as
the 1990s progressed (Foot 2000: 133–6, 172–5, 194–204; Kent 1993: 217, 1999:
64–77; Wan 2001: 48–61, 101–23).
Thus, by the late 1990s, the Chinese government’s growing economic and
strategic leverage had enabled it to minimize public criticism of its human rights
record and persuade most other states to adopt quiet forms of human rights diplo-
macy. It was clear that the Chinese government had ultimately been able to wield
more power in relation to the liberal democratic states’ human rights policies than
the transnational human rights network actors. Despite ongoing reports of the
human rights abuses of arbitrary arrests and detention, the use of torture and the
death penalty, and restrictions on freedoms of religion, the media and expression
reported by international human rights NGOs, most of the liberal democratic
states had been persuaded to adopt the quiet diplomacy of bilateral human rights
talks and technical cooperation programs to express any human rights concerns
with the Chinese government. Economic and strategic relationships between the
liberal democratic states and the Chinese government had become too important
118   Caroline Fleay
in foreign policy decision-making, and the images of tanks rolling into Tiananmen
Square had long faded from the minds of most citizens and government members
of these states.
The Chinese government had also had some success in watering down the
efforts of other UN human rights agencies to publicly criticize its human rights
record. In response to Chinese lobbying, in 1993, the UNCHR’s Sub-Commission
ceased to discuss specific country situations that were being dealt by the UNCHR.
In 1997, a resolution introduced by a Chinese delegate calling for the ‘politiciza-
tion’ of human rights at the Sub-Commission to cease, and that constructive dia-
logue between members and state and NGO observers at the Sub-Commission
should be promoted as the means for discussing human rights, was passed (Kent
1999: 74–5). In addition, the Chinese government finally agreed in 1996 to allow
the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to visit China seemingly in return
for the Working Group agreeing in 1997 to dilute its mandate, so that rather than
making ‘“decisions” on whether a case of detention was arbitrary, it would now
express its “views” on such cases’ (Foot 2000: 205–6).
By the end of the 1990s, the Chinese government had, thus, been able to suc-
cessfully dampen international criticism of its human rights record, despite the
ongoing reporting of international human rights NGOs that the particular human
rights abuses they were consistently focusing on continued in China. For the
international human rights NGOs, it seemed that the moment had passed in which
to mobilize most of the liberal democratic states to pressurize China in any public
forum. Given the Chinese government’s ongoing repressive responses to any
domestic attempts to mobilize around these international human rights norms,
and the fragmentation of the exiled Chinese groups, it also did not appear possible
for there to be any substantial transnational links around these human rights
norms. The growth of domestic opposition and transnational links is considered
essential by Risse and Sikkink (1999: 33–4) to bring about sustained and substan-
tial improvements in the human rights practices of a state. This suggests that any
socialization of the Chinese government according to these international human
rights norms was limited to instrumental adaptation, that is, the behaviour of the
Chinese government was motivated by instrumental or material concerns such as
bringing an end to sanctions and public criticisms of its human rights record
(Risse and Sikkink1999: 12). In a constructivist sense, this means that the
Chinese government’s identity, interests and behaviours had only been influenced
by the international human rights norms promoted by transnational human rights
actors to the extent that it accepted human rights would remain a legitimate inter-
national concern.
By the end of the 1990s, the Chinese government had been able to exercise
enough power to affect the human rights policies of some of its human rights
critics, particularly the liberal democratic states. As with the Chinese govern-
ment, these states had been persuaded to make instrumental concessions in rela-
tion to their human rights diplomacy, adopting quiet forms of diplomacy instead
of public criticism of the Chinese government, in recognition of the growing
economic and strategic importance of China to these states. It was not until the
China and the limits of transnational human rights activism   119
decision of the IOC in July 2001 to award the 2008 Olympics to Beijing that
China’s human rights critics seemed to have another opportunity to grab the inter-
national community’s attention and publicly highlight China’s record in relation
to these norms.

Human rights activism and the Beijing Olympics, 2001–2008


The awarding of the 2008 Olympics to Beijing once again brought greater inter-
national scrutiny of the Chinese government’s human rights record, again primar-
ily in relation to the international human rights norms outlined above but also in
relation to China’s foreign policy. Journalists, international human rights NGOs
and high-profile individuals such as Mia Farrow and Stephen Spielberg used the
lead-up to the 2008 Olympics to publicly pressurize the Chinese government to
improve its human rights practices in these particular areas. Some domestic activ-
ists also publicly called for human rights improvements in China, although
increasing repression within China to such dissent was soon evident.
China had first attempted to host the Olympics in the early 1990s with a bid for
the 2000 Olympics but, with the killings in Beijing in 1989 still fresh in the minds
of the international community, had been unsuccessful. The Chinese government
subsequently learned that to win the 2008 Games, it would need to make a better
case, including committing to make significant human rights reforms such as
ensuring that foreign journalists were not restricted in their access throughout
China. Thus, Liu Qi, Beijing Mayor and Bidding Committee president, announced
in his final presentation to the IOC that awarding Beijing the Olympics would
‘help promote our economic and social progress and . . . also benefit the further
development of our human rights cause’ (cited in Clarey 2001). The Chinese
government’s bid received cautious support from some of the international
human rights NGOs, for example, the Asia Director of Human Rights Watch
argued that ‘it is possible that there can be a positive impact on a tightly con-
trolled society from hosting an international event’ (Jones 2001). A number of
prominent Chinese dissidents also supported the bid, including Wei Jingsheng
and Wang Dan, with the latter arguing that ‘China must develop a strong civil
society, and one way to do that would be to have the international community
come to China and engage with our people’ (Dan 2008: 102).
Some positive developments in relation to human rights protections in the legal
and judicial system were evident in the aftermath of China’s successful bid. These
included measures introduced in 2002 to improve the independence of the judi-
ciary, such as ‘new disciplinary measures for corrupt or incompetent judges [and]
new educational and competency standards for would-be judges, prosecutors, and
lawyers’ (Human Rights Watch 2003). There were also attempts by the Supreme
People’s Court to moderate some of the repressive powers of the state. For
example, in June 2007, the Court reclaimed the power to review all death penalty
decisions, which seems likely to ‘make a significant improvement in death pen-
alty review procedures and substantially reduce the number of executions
ordered’ (Cohen 2008: 165). In addition, the Tenth National People’s Congress
120   Caroline Fleay
adopted amendments to the Chinese constitution in 2004 outlining that human
rights would be respected and protected by the state (Cha 2008: 112). These legal
and judicial improvements contain the potential for improved human rights prac-
tices in China but, as with the legislative changes brought about in the 1990s,
their potential is yet to be realized, given the ongoing challenges in adopting these
measures throughout China and the continued influence of the CCP over the
judiciary.
Despite these developments, and the Chinese government’s claim that award-
ing Beijing the 2008 Olympics would help to ‘further develop’ human rights in
China, in the wake of its successful bid, it was soon clear that the Chinese govern-
ment would not be more susceptible to domestic and international pressures in
relation to the civil rights abuses of those considered a threat to the government.
International human rights NGOs continued to publish reports documenting these
abuses,8 but without the added public pressures placed on the Chinese govern-
ment by liberal democratic states, such as their support for UNCHR resolutions
critical of China, there were fewer concessions in response. In particular, from
early 2005, the Chinese government, under the leadership of President Hu Jintao
and Premier Wen Jiabao, released fewer political prisoners to appease its human
rights critics (Kamm 2008: 233).9 Indeed, reflecting its fears by 2005 that the
‘colour revolutions’ that had brought about democratization in Central Asia and
Eastern Europe would be emulated in China with the encouragement of the
United States and its allies, the Chinese government reportedly increased its
repression of dissenters (2008: 224). For example, the Chinese government
responded to the demonstrators in Tibetan-populated areas in March 2008, some
of who turned violent in their protests against the Chinese government’s contin-
ued repression of Tibetan religious and cultural activities and the ongoing reset-
tlement of Han Chinese in the province, by increasing the presence of security
forces across the province and banning all foreign media. There were also reports
that some of the protestors were killed by Chinese security forces and several
thousand were detained. Uighur separatism in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous
Region was identified as one of the three major security threats for the Olympics
by the Chinese government, and further restrictions were subsequently placed on
the religious and cultural practices of the Uighur population and any demonstra-
tions (Human Rights Watch 2009). Elsewhere in China, some Chinese NGOs
reported increasing surveillance of their work by security services leading up to
the Olympics, with some ordered to close (China Development Brief 2007). In
the lead up to the Beijing Olympics, it was clear that any domestic activists sus-
pected of using the Games to highlight abuses within China would continue to
receive a harsh response (Cha 2008: 106).
Despite this repression, in the year before the 2008 Olympics more than 40
Chinese activists and intellectuals took the opportunity of the greater interna-
tional scrutiny given to China and signed an open letter to Chinese leaders and
the international community titled ‘“One World, One Dream” and Universal
Human Rights’. The letter called for the ‘return of exiles, greater press freedom
and protection of residents evicted from their homes to make way for Olympics
China and the limits of transnational human rights activism   121
construction’ (Hom 2008: 66), and a number of those involved were subsequently
detained (Human Rights Watch 2009). At the end of 2008, a collection of 303
Chinese intellectuals, researchers and peasant activists signed Charter 08, a
19-point manifesto released through the internet to coincide with the sixtieth-year
anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Charter calls for
democratization in China, and more than 8,000 others in China added their names
soon after its release. This indicated the continued attempts by some in China to
mobilize their opposition to their government, despite government attempts to
suppress it (Béja 2009: 13).
Concessions that the Chinese government seemed more willing to make in
response to its human rights critics were in relation to human rights as they
affected visitors to China or those suffering under the rule of other regimes. In a
clear concession to its international human rights critics, and as part of its suc-
cessful bid, in December 2006, the Chinese government agreed to relax the regu-
lations of foreign journalists in China. From 1 January 2007 to 17 October 2008,
one month after the completion of the Paralympics, foreign journalists would not
require government approval before interviewing individuals or organizations in
China. Given the specified time limit on the regulation, that it did not apply to
Chinese journalists or those Chinese assisting foreign journalists, and the contin-
ued reports throughout 2007 of the ‘harassment, detention and intimidation’ of
foreign journalists (Kline 2008: 118), this concession was clearly instrumental
and not evidence of the Chinese government’s commitment to bring about greater
media freedoms.
The Chinese government also offered concessions to those international actors
publicly critical of its foreign policies in relation to human rights. In early 2007,
actor Mia Farrow spearheaded a high-profile campaign to shame the Chinese gov-
ernment into taking action against the Sudanese government to stop the genocide in
Darfur. In response to the campaign, Steven Spielberg resigned the following
February as artistic director of the Beijing Olympics, citing the same concerns. The
same month eight Nobel Peace Prize laureates wrote an open letter to Hu Jintao
asking China to cease its support for the Sudanese regime. The Chinese government
was also criticized for supporting the ruling junta in Myanmar in the wake of the
junta’s bloody crackdown on demonstrations in September. China is Myanmar’s
largest trading partner, a large supplier of its weapons, and often its defender in the
UN Security Council. In response to these criticisms, the Chinese government took
the significant steps of revoking Sudan’s preferred trade status and appointing a
special envoy in relation to the genocide in Darfur in May 2007, after having per-
suaded the Sudanese government to accept a joint UN-African Union peacekeeping
force and subsequently sending members of the Chinese military to join it. The
Chinese government also criticized the repression in Myanmar in the aftermath of
the crackdown, did not oppose a UN Security Council resolution condemning the
ruling junta, decreased its arms sales to the junta and persuaded it to receive the UN
Myanmar envoy (Cha 2008: 108, 116–8; Kamm 2008: 231–32).
These concessions reflected the Chinese government’s deep desire to host an
Olympics that would promote a positive image of China to the world. Given their
122   Caroline Fleay
foreign policy focus, the concessions were also not intended to have any impact
on the continuing repression of dissent at home. Thus, once again, it is not hard
to conclude that the Chinese government’s actions in response to its human rights
critics were instrumental, ‘designed to gain maximum publicity but not designed
to foster fundamental change’ (Cha 2008: 111–2).
This clearly suggests that the socialization of the Chinese government to date
according to the international human rights norms focused on by its human rights
critics has not gone beyond instrumental adaptation. The actions of the Chinese
government in response to its human rights critics have been primarily motivated
by instrumental or material concerns to bring about an end to public criticisms of
its human rights record, to be awarded the Olympics and ensure its success. There
is little evidence to suggest that the Chinese government is engaging in any
deeper levels of socialization, such as argumentative discourses, the process a
target state is expected to engage in as it progresses through the middle phases of
Risse et al.’s spiral model. Although the Chinese government has clearly engaged
with its critics in relation to these norms, it has also been able to influence some
of their enforcement mechanisms, suggesting that its identity has not been
increasingly affected by repeated discussions on international human rights
norms. Thus, despite my earlier conclusion of evidence of this socialization in the
1990s (Fleay 2006), in the aftermath of the Olympics it seems that the conces-
sions made by the Chinese government and the increased repression leading up
to the Olympics are now better explained by instrumental adaptation.
The limits to this socialization can be explained by the economic and strategic
power that the Chinese government possesses. China is a major trading partner of
many other states, a growing regional military power and a permanent member of
the UN Security Council. Thus, it has the material and strategic resources to resist
to a great extent the shaming attempts of other states in relation to its human rights
record. These resources have also enabled the Chinese government to influence
some of the enforcement mechanisms of the international human rights norms
focused on here. In particular, the Chinese government was ultimately successful in
persuading most of the liberal democratic states to cease their support for resolu-
tions critical of China at the UNCHR and adopt the bilateral human rights dialogue
as a form of human rights diplomacy (Fleay 2006; Human Rights in China 1998).
However, the extent to which the Chinese government was willing to respond
to its human rights critics suggests more than a realist explanation that prioritizes
a state’s economic and military power calculations of other states in responding
to unwanted criticism. The Chinese government was able to persuade the liberal
democratic states to adopt its preferred form of human rights diplomacy using its
material and strategic resources, but it was also willing to expend much effort in
engaging in international human rights diplomacy and forums in attempts to
influence international understandings of human rights and their enforcement
mechanisms. This considerable engagement indicates an acceptance of human
rights issues as at least a legitimate topic of international relations, suggesting the
activism of transnational human rights actors had led the Chinese government to
become socialized according to international human rights norms to this extent.
China and the limits of transnational human rights activism   123
The limits to the Chinese government’s socialization can also be explained in
part by China’s domestic structure. Although the role of the state in China has
clearly declined from the beginning of the economic modernization program,
China’s domestic structure has still been dominated by a state where the top lead-
ership has overwhelmingly been the source of policy innovations. Given this
dominance, it is necessary for the top leadership to be persuaded of the impor-
tance of the international human rights norms promoted by transnational human
rights actors for the domestic structure to facilitate the adoption of such norms,
because civil society actors supportive of these norms are not yet likely to have
the necessary influence (Risse-Kappen 1994). To date, China’s top leadership has
clearly not been persuaded of this, and given observations made since Hu Jintao
and Wen Jiabao have taken office, it appears that the top leadership now places
even less importance on these international human rights norms. However, as
growing observations of China’s changing state–civil society relations suggest,
this top leadership dominance in policy-making may weaken significantly fur-
ther. Thus, to gain a more complex understanding of human rights in China, there
is a need to explore not just the actions of the Chinese government in response to
its human rights critics but also domestic civil society developments over the past
20 years.

China’s changing civil society and state–civil society


relations
A range of developments within China over the past few decades have changed
civil society and state–civil society relations. Links between these developments
and any potential for improvements in the civil rights promoted by the interna-
tional and domestic human rights actors focused on here may not always be
explicit, but they should not be dismissed.
China’s changing civil society and state–civil society relations can be observed
in the growing numbers of NGOs within China over the past few decades. By
2007, the number of registered NGOs in China had doubled those of 1996, with
more than 360,000 groups involving more than 4.2 million people recorded
including trade and professional associations, clubs and legal aid, environmental,
rural migrants, children and women’s organizations (Gilboy and Read 2008:
148). In addition, government-owned NGOs (GONGOs) continued to operate
with some exhibiting a growing autonomy from the Chinese government (Chen
2006: 35; Howell 1997).10 This growth reflects the diminishing role played by the
state as it has engineered China’s development towards a market economy. In
many respects, the Chinese government encouraged the development of NGOs to
provide services such as health care and education (Morton 2005: 522), and
growing transnational civil society links with Chinese NGOs and GONGOs since
the mid-1990s has further contributed to this growth (Chen 2006: 31). However,
despite a weakening of state control over these civil society actors, there contin-
ues to be a complex and interdependent relationship between NGOs, GONGOs
and the state. Lu (2009: 144) describes this relationship as ‘dependent autonomy’,
124   Caroline Fleay
recognizing the weakening ability of the state to control NGOs as well as the
degree to which such organizations continue to be dependent on state policies and
allocations of resources.11 In the long term, the development of the NGO sector
and its links with transnational civil society may well contribute to political
change in China (Chen 2006: 34; Morton 2005: 521).
Others highlight examples of direct social action that have brought about some
improvements in the rights of those protesting. The leadership of Hu Jintao and
Wen Jiabao may have ushered in an era of greater repression of those considered
to be political threats, but their leadership has also given greater attention to
‘social pressures resulting from great wealth disparities, social strife, corruption,
and environmental damage that had developed in the 1990s’ (Gilboy and Read
2008: 152–3). For example, farmers’ protests against illegal land use not only
attracted repressive responses from security forces but also seemed to result in
central government actions including the abolition in 2003 of local fees levied
against farmers and of all formal agricultural taxes in 2006 (2008: 152).
Other developments changing state–civil society relations include evidence of a
growing legal consciousness within China. In addition to the dramatic increase in
laws passed by the National People’s Congress since 1978, including some that
enshrine the rights of citizens to sue the government if loss or abuse has occurred
because of government action, there have also been increasing numbers of lawyers
practising in China. By 2007, there were 165,000 practising lawyers compared
with 40,000 in the early 1990s, including a small number who focus on rights
protection and some NGOs who provide legal aid to disadvantaged groups such as
rural migrants. As a result, despite the judicial system still not being independent
of the CCP and the uneven implementation of laws across provinces, and further
restrictions being placed on lawyers’ independence evident by 2006, some observe
the development of a legal consciousness within China as growing numbers are
willing to use the legal system in attempts to secure justice, often against local
officials (Béja 2009: 12; Gilboy and Read 2008: 155–6).12 There is also a growing
human rights consciousness expressed in legal debates, reflecting China’s increas-
ing engagement with international human rights law (Wan 2007: 744–5).
This is just a short overview of some of the developments within civil society
and state–civil society relations that are important to consider when exploring
human rights in China.13 To limit an exploration of human rights practices in China
to the actions of the Chinese government is to downplay the importance of civil
society in China and changing state–civil society relations in relation to human
rights. The Chinese government’s responses to its human rights critics may best be
characterized as instrumental, but the developments within China outlined above
indicate an agency of civil society within China that may continue to weaken the
top leadership dominance of policy-making in relation to human rights.

Conclusion
In the aftermath of the killings in Beijing in 1989, the transnational network of
international and domestic human rights actors exhibited enough power to define
China and the limits of transnational human rights activism   125
what were the most important human rights abuses within China. International
human rights NGOs and UN human rights agencies disseminated information and
lobbied the liberal democratic states to pressurize China to cease its rights abuses
of the killing of civilians, arbitrary arrests and detention, the use of torture, death
sentences, trials that failed to reflect international standards, suppression of dis-
senting groups and restrictions on religious, expression and media freedoms. The
lobbying of these organizations and the strength of these human rights norms
were powerful enough to persuade many of the liberal democratic states to sup-
port resolutions critical of China’s human rights practices until the late 1990s.
These actions, in turn, persuaded the Chinese government to offer concessions in
attempts to stop the public criticisms and engage in international human rights
forums.
Given China’s growing economic and strategic power in comparison with its
state critics, a realist expectation of the Chinese government’s responses to its
critics would have been much less engagement with international human rights
forums and discussions. The Chinese government’s level of engagement is, thus,
better explained by constructivist approaches that account for some level of
socialization, such that the Chinese government had been persuaded by interna-
tional human rights norms and their advocates that human rights were a legiti-
mate international concern. Limits to this socialization, however, reflect the
growing importance of China to other states, both in an economic and strategic
sense, such that by the late 1990s, it was clear the Chinese government had been
able to exercise enough power to affect the policies of some of its human rights
critics, in particular most of the liberal democratic states. The Chinese govern-
ment had also effectively interrupted the mobilization of any significant internal
opposition to CCP rule through its repression. The awarding of the 2008 Olympics
to Beijing, and the greater attention to human rights in China that it brought, did
not significantly alter this.
In the aftermath of the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese government continues to
engage in human rights discussions and forums. However, it also continues to
hold considerable power over how it will interpret human rights norms and their
priorities, as well as how and when it will choose to make human rights conces-
sions. Given its continued growth in economic importance to many states and as
a regional military power, and strategic importance as a permanent member of the
UN Security Council, this power is likely to be maintained in terms of its rela-
tions with other states (Black and Bezanson 2004). It does not appear likely at this
stage that any other states will significantly support the calls of international and
domestic human rights actors for further civil rights improvements in China, as
many did in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square massacre. This is despite the
continued calls of some within China for civil and political rights improvements,
such as those that signed Charter 08, and the ongoing attention of international
human rights NGOs such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and
Human Rights in China to human rights abuses in China. Thus, there is little
expectation at this time that the Chinese government will engage in deeper social-
ization processes as expected by the spiral model, given that continued pressures
126   Caroline Fleay
from international and domestic human rights actors, including states, are needed
for a target state to become increasingly compelled to make further concessions
and ultimately caught up in its own rhetoric (Risse and Sikkink 1999: 28).
However, perhaps the more important area of focus should be China’s chang-
ing civil society and state–civil society relations. Developments in this area may
provide the necessary changes to the dominance of the top leadership in policy-
making to ultimately improve the civil rights abuses promoted by international
human rights organizations. Further research into this area would help to illumi-
nate the implications of these developments on human rights practices in China.
A greater understanding of the different factions, organizations and actors within
the Chinese government, the complexities of socialization processes within and
between these various actors and their interplay with civil society actors would
also add further depth to the explorations of human rights in China.

Notes
  1 The liberal democratic states that were publicly critical of China’s human rights abu-
ses after the Tiananmen Square massacre included the United States, United
Kingdom, Japan, Australia, Norway, the Netherlands, Canada and the countries of the
European Community (later becoming the European Union) as a collective (Foot
2000: 115–29).
  2 For an expanded discussion of the spiral model in relation to China, see Fleay (2006).
  3 Risse and Sikkink (1999: 2) argue that this focus recognizes the general universal
acceptance of these core rights. It also reflects that these rights have primarily been
the focus of international human rights NGOs such as Amnesty International and
Human Rights Watch up until recent years, and the subject of much of the sustained
international criticism of China’s human rights record since the killings in Beijing in
June 1989.
  4 Even after Amnesty International’s mandate was altered in 2001 to include a focus on
social, economic and cultural rights as well as civil and political rights, the majority of
focus of the NGO’s annual reports on China continued to be on civil and political
rights abuses. The annual reports of Asia Watch (later Human Rights Watch) on China
have provided more of a focus on social, economic and cultural rights abuses than
Amnesty International, but since 2005 their reports have increasingly focused on civil
and political rights. See the annual reports of both Amnesty International (found at
http://www.amnesty.org) and Human Rights Watch (found at http://www.hrw.org/en/
node/79288).
  5 The White Paper outlined the Chinese government’s human rights priorities, in particu-
lar, that the right to subsistence was the most important right that needed to be realized
before other rights could be considered (Information Office of the State Council of the
People’s Republic of China 1991: 11–2).
  6 See the annual Amnesty International reports from 1992 to 1998, the annual Human
Rights Watch reports on China from 1991 to 1998 and Wan (2001: 20).
  7 The White Papers can be found at http://www.china.org.cn/e-white/index.htm
  8 See the annual reports of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch from 2001
to 2008.
  9 This was confirmed in an interview with Joshua Rosenzweig, Dui Hua Foundation, in
Hong Kong, 11 June 2009.
China and the limits of transnational human rights activism   127
10 Indeed, in an interview with an official from the All-China Women’s Federation
(ACWF), one of the mass organizations set up by the Chinese government in 1949, it
was clarified that the ACWF now sees itself as an NGO independent of government,
despite receiving some of their funds from the government. Interview with ACWF
official, Beijing, 3 June 2009.
11 This observation was confirmed in interviews I conducted with NGO workers in
Beijing in June 2009.
12 This was confirmed in an interview with a legal aid NGO in Beijing, 9 June 2009.
13 Other aspects worthy of focus include the continuing experiments with elections in
some villages and townships (see Shi 1997; Pei 1998).

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Pinter.
7 State-led social boundary change
Transnational environmental activism,
‘ecoterrorism’ and September 11
Shannon Gibson

Introduction
The September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States have been widely chris-
tened as so profound that social and political life around the world would never
be the same again. Social movement theorists were quick to jump into the post-
September 11 fray assessing and criticizing how the US government’s response
and a resurgent brand of unbridled American patriotism might negatively affect
domestic and international activists, specifically those a part of global anti-war or
social justice movements. Much of these early works tended to focus on political
opportunities, sometimes in the context of static political opportunity structures,
other times as changing political environments. Utilizing global radical/revolu-
tionary environmental activism as a case study, this chapter aims to contribute to
assessments of the latter by injecting analyses of cultural and strategic elements
within the changing post-September 11 political environment. Furthermore, in
conjunction with the overarching focus of this volume on power relations, its
purpose is not to simply recognize that political opportunities did close for activ-
ists in the United States and abroad following the terrorist attacks. Rather, it aims
to deconstruct the mechanisms by which the United States (and subsequently
European states) were able to utilize fear and uncertainty to (1) construct and
impose social boundaries between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ environmental activists, (2)
broaden and impose existing definitions of ‘terrorism’ after the attacks, (3) trans-
pose the ‘terrorist’ identity and its legal consequences on sectors of the environ-
mental movement that engaged in anti-establishment rhetoric and protest and (4)
provide incentives to reformist environmental organizations for maintaining the
dichotomy between themselves and radical sectors.
In general, it seeks to trace how multiple social boundaries were newly con-
structed for the purposes of imposing and maintaining top-down order over soci-
ety. Theoretically, this work seeks to integrate post-structural accounts of foreign
policy-making with strands in social movement theory, which urge the blending
of political and cultural analyses in relation to transnational mobilization. Finally,
this work does not purport that the events of September 11, 2001, were the sole
causal factor of increased repression and persecution of global environmental
activists (indeed, as I shall review, many actions were well underway before
September 11 towards achieving that end); however, what it does establish is that
State-led social boundary change   131
since September 11 the mechanisms towards solidifying new social boundaries
that lump certain environmental activists and organizations in with terrorists have
strengthened and spread transnationally. Indeed, this work also delineates how
other countries, specifically in the European Union, began to monitor, detain and
prosecute environmental and animal activists under the auspices of domestic
terror and extremism laws in the post-September 11 era.

‘Putting political opportunity structures into motion’


Since the 1970s, a variety of social movement scholars have argued that the ebb
and flow of protest cycles are primarily affected by broader changes in the
political system. For example, institutional changes in the political system can
motivate actors by creating grievances through policy decisions or creating open-
ings for challengers (see Lipset 1963 on grievance creation and Tarrow 1995 on
open political opportunity structures). Simultaneously, political opportunity
structures may constrain the range of actions the activists choose to utilize, or
they may repress action altogether, such as under authoritarian regimes or through
police repression of protests (see della Porta 1995). In general, early studies of
political opportunity structures found a curvilinear relationship between political
openness and protest such that when authorities and governments are open, dis-
sent is channelled institutionally and protest declines. On the other end of the
spectrum, when state repression is overly harsh, activists are unable to develop
sufficient capacity to mobilize and make claims (see Eisinger 1973; Tilly 1978).
The main tenet of the political opportunity approach is that activists’ likelihood
of mobilizing supporters, advancing particular claims, employing certain tactics
and achieving influence are all context dependent.
Comparative studies of the effects of political opportunities have since ignited
the field and spawned both broader and more restrictive conceptualizations.
Within the broader or ‘synthetic’ approaches (McAdam et al. 1996: 2), scholars
focusing on the political context in which social movements function began to
import and blend contributions from works on resource mobilization, mobilizing
structures, issue framing and collective beliefs. Appropriating political opportu-
nity structure findings into the ‘political process model’, scholars such as
McAdam (1982) sought to move away from a narrow focus on institutional struc-
ture to instead look at political environments more generally (thus including
cognitive elements such as the ideological disposition of those in power or shifts
in the economic system). Another example of a synthetic approach is that of
Koopmans and Statham (1999) who suggest integrating the study of framing
processes and opportunity structures into a more comprehensive model – the
discursive opportunity structure. The amount and variation of studies conducted
on political opportunities are boundless (see Meyer 2004 for review), yet I raise
the examples above to highlight two trends that have proven useful for the study
of social movements.
The first is the transition towards the study of ‘processes’ of social movement
mobilization as opposed to the static concepts – structures, frames and repertoires –
often employed within the classic social movement agenda1 (McAdam et al.
132   Shannon Gibson
2001). In these process-focused studies, scholars have asked how the funda-
mental concepts of the classic agenda could ‘be put into motion’ to provide a
more fluid account of contentious politics (Tarrow 2006: 15). This mechanistic
approach does not abandon the primary concepts of the classic social move-
ment agenda (i.e. master frames, opportunity structures etc.); rather, it sets out
to animate them. This method considers a variety of factors, from cognitive to
environmental, at both the micro- and macro-levels of analysis. Utilizing biol-
ogy and the process of reproduction of a species as an analogy, Tilly and Tarrow
(2007) argue that as a process, reproduction depends on a sequence of interac-
tive mechanisms between individuals – courtship, impregnation, pregnancy,
birth and so on. Similar to biologists, who cannot physically observe all aspects
of species reproduction yet infer its mechanisms, social scientists can study
social processes by questioning their composite mechanisms. For example, as
social scientists, we cannot see the process of globalization, yet we can decom-
pose it into its constitutive mechanisms to explain it (i.e. increases in global
trade, transnationalization of production and financial markets). Therefore,
rather than studying static political opportunity structures, this work aims to
assess the mechanisms inherent in the process of state-imposed social boundary
change.
The second innovation I wish to highlight is the blending of cultural innova-
tions with structural perspectives or, more generally, the acceptance that many
structural variables – rules, resources, arenas of contention etc. – are indeed cul-
tural, but beyond that, they are also strategic (Jasper 2007: 60–1). Thus, in studies
of contentious mobilization, we should look not only at the cultural aspects of
politics but also at the politics behind culture and identity formation. Thus, this
work aims to analyze how states via their foreign policy and domestic anti-terror
discourse are able to generate social boundary changes to bolster their power and
create institutions of top-down control.

Culture, strategy and political opportunities


Social movement theorists have long been cognizant of the importance of idea-
tional elements to collective action. Beginning in the 1970s, the social sciences
took a broad cultural turn where scientists began to pay more attention to how
individuals understand and construct the world around them. Specifically, social
movement theorists focusing on ideational elements frequently utilize terms such
as ‘culture’, ‘identity’ and ‘strategic framing’. Culture refers to the shared beliefs
and understandings, mediated by language and history, of a particular group of
society. Frames are best described as metaphors, symbols and cognitive cues that
cast issues in a certain light and suggest possible ways for solving them, whereas
identities represent our understanding of who we are and who others are in social
contexts (Jenkins 2004). Although culture is considered less malleable, identities
and frames are continually constructed, contested and constantly in play. It is the
case of identities and frames in which strategic construction and power differen-
tials come into play. Jasper (2007: 61) articulates:
State-led social boundary change   133
Cultural meanings and feelings do not exist in a vacuum. We always need
to appreciate their strategic contexts: who hopes to have rhetorical effects
on others, in what arenas, with what goals in mind, and how are audiences
affected by the messages they receive, the beliefs and morals they hold, the
emotions they feel?

Where social movement studies have tended to focus on the stake that activists
in movements have in developing strategic frames for supporting alternative pro-
grams, they have had less to say about the active role states take in creating new
identities and counter-frames. However, the field of International Relations (IR),
with its more state-centric focus, provides a different viewpoint. Particularly,
advances from French structuralism and post-structuralism, critical security studies,
the Frankfurt School’s Critical Theory and individual contributions from social
theorists such as Habermas, Foucault, Bourdieu, and Touraine have helped to insert
agency (on behalf of the state and dissenters) into models previously dominated by
structures and functions. For example, writing while imprisoned in the 1920s,
Antonio Gramsci suggested that Fascist Italy was able to maintain its control not
solely through violence and coercion but also ideologically by constructing a ‘cul-
tural hegemony’ whereby capitalist and bourgeoisie values became the ‘common
sense’ of all. This cultural consensus helped to maintain the status quo and stave off
revolt as the working class came to identify the bourgeoisie’s interests with their
own. Similarly, Derrida (1976) focused on the ‘deconstruction’ of ideas and con-
cepts to reveal the power and hierarchy, which supported them. The point of this
‘social constructivist’ logic was twofold. First, in its benign form, it was meant to
challenge those aspects of society that social scientists had come to take for granted
as constant or unchangeable (i.e. states’ interests, causes of war etc.). Second, in its
more critical form, it was meant to deconstruct oppressive ideologies (i.e. cultural
hegemony) created by states so as to reveal the power and interests behind their
creation. From this perspective, ‘culture can be seen as an element of strategy and
power, a site of contestation as much as a source for social unity (and when it is a
source for unity, this is because elites deploy it to that end)’ (Jasper 2007: 71).
These contributions from IR, particularly those focusing on the relationship
between identity and foreign policy, provide a unique lens from which to analyze
state actions regarding social boundary creation and global activism. Critical dis-
course or post-structural accounts argue that foreign and domestic security policy-
making is a discursive practice. Rather than viewing the state as a static structure
through which protest is channelled, post-structural accounts argue that the state is
not simply moderating by virtue of its institutional structure. Instead, the state is
continually trying to identify and quell dissenters or enemies to maintain its status.
For example, in effort to re-establish a hegemonic discourse, states may seek to
identify a ‘radical other’ as a means of solidifying its own national character and
identity (Laclau 1996). Through the declarative act of ‘othering’ – the ability to
present things or people as alien, sick or perverse – or articulating others as a
source of danger to national interests, politicians are continually creating and but-
tressing state identity (Campbell 1992). In this manner, foreign policies define
134   Shannon Gibson
‘who we are’ and ‘who they are’. These policies can run the gamut from illicit drug
policy to anti-terrorism legislation and can define both internal and external
threats. For example, in analyzing the ‘War on Drugs’ under the George H. Bush
administration, Campbell (1992) examines how race was utilized as a category
within drug use reports to determine ‘dangerous’ and ‘criminal’ drugs from those
that were ‘acceptable’ and even encouraged. Further within the realm of foreign
policy construction, post-structural accounts argue that the state has the ability to
not only identify ‘threats’ but also to move particular referent objects on and off
the security agenda. Through the process of ‘securitization’, security is socially
constructed by those figures that have the authority to legitimately declare an issue
a security threat via ‘speech acts’ (Buzan et al. 1998). The act of securitizing a
particular act or threat (i.e. environmental protest or violence) to a certain referent
object (in our case, society) is in itself a political and social act and exercise of
power (see also the volume’s introductory chapter).
The commonality among these post-structural accounts in IR is that they recog-
nize the role that symbolic resources (i.e. conceptual distinctions, cultural tradi-
tions, political discourse) have in creating and maintaining institutionalized social
differences (i.e. class, race, citizen–non-citizen, friend–foe). Jasper (2007: 61)
argues that culture and strategy can serve as powerful tools for explaining political
action. Although much work has been done to integrate cultural aspects into the
study of social movements, these studies are often done with the focus being on
the agency of the activists or movement organizations. This analysis attempts to
reverse that viewpoint and look from the top-down to trace how states via a dis-
tinct set of discursive and tactical mechanisms have set out to establish new social
boundaries between environmental activists and terrorists, thus extending govern-
mental monitoring and policing powers over radical environmental activism.

Mechanisms of social boundary change


A recent rise in ‘boundary studies’ (Bail 2008; Lamont and Molnár 2002) under-
scores the significance that social classification and identity construction has
across the broader social science spectrum. Boundaries can have both symbolic
and social attributes. This chapter focuses on the latter. Symbolic boundaries are
conceptual distinctions, which establish group membership and promote notions
of similarity, whereas ‘social boundaries are objectified forms of social differ-
ences manifested in unequal access to an unequal distribution of resources . . . and
social opportunities’ (Lamont and Molnár 2002: 168). Symbolic boundaries tend
to be more flexible and benign, whereas social boundaries are often exclusionary,
constraining and buttressed by institutional procedures and laws (Bail 2008). In
the context of political opportunities and strategic framing, Tilly (2004: 214)
argues that social boundaries play an important role:

People everywhere organize a significant part of their social interaction


around the formation, transformation, activation and suppression of social
boundaries. It happens at the small scale of interpersonal dialogue, at the
State-led social boundary change   135
medium scale of rivalry within organizations, and at the large scale of
genocide. Us–them boundaries matter.

Specifically, boundary change occurs in a wide variety of phenomena, includ-


ing the activation or deactivation of political identities, discrimination and in
shifts of uncertainty that promote or inhibit the outbreak of collective violence
(McAdam et al. 2001; Tilly 2004). In his study on social boundary change, Tilly
(2004) identifies two clusters of mechanisms relating to social boundaries: (1)
those that cause boundary change and (2) those that constitute boundary change
and produce its effects. Mechanisms causing boundary change include encounter,
imposition, borrowing, conversation and incentive shift. Those constituting
boundary change include inscription, erasure, activation, deactivation, site trans-
fer and relocation. These mechanisms can occur singly or in combination, and
none are sufficient or necessary causes for boundary change or a particular effect.
In the sections that follow, I will deconstruct the mechanisms inherent in state-
imposed boundary change relating to the imposition of the ‘terrorist’ identity onto
radical environmental activists and the activation of the ‘ecoterrorist’ boundary in
the post-September 11 political environment.
Tilly (2004: 216–21) identifies several mechanisms which can cause boundary
change. Although similar mechanisms operate across a wide variety of boundary
changes, in each case, the combinations, sequences and outcomes may vary (Tilly
2001). Thus, this analysis does not include all of Tilly’s identified mechanisms as
some (e.g. conversation) do not appear, at least in this case study, in robust form.
However, I do hope it delineates how encounter, imposition, borrowing and
incentive shift concatenate to set the stage for future social boundary activation.

Encounter
Social boundaries are often formed at the point in which two previously separate
or indirectly linked networks enter into or encounter one another in the same
shared social space. In this case, the encounter mechanism is closely related to
research on movement–counter-movement or opposing movement interaction
(see Andrews 2002; Dixon 2008; Meyer and Staggenborg 1996). Theoretical
conceptualization of counter or opposing movements arose in the 1960s as schol-
ars recognized the emergence of leftist progressive movements and then the
proliferation of reactionary opposition movements (Meyer and Staggenborg
1996). In general, those entering existing distinctive relations, such as an interest
group or activist movement interacting with or confronting institutionalized poli-
tics, usually find themselves on the fringes of the insider–outsider boundary
(Elias and Scotson 1994). Thus, they begin at a marginalized position. Furthermore,
as interaction between opposing movements intensifies, boundaries between
them become more significant (Tilly 2004). Although Charles Tilly does not go
into detail on this point, theorizations of opposing movements lend a hand in
pointing out that the existence or encountering of opposing movements then sets
the stage for them to influence one another directly or indirectly by altering the
136   Shannon Gibson
environment in which each operates (i.e. altering political opportunity structures).
In the case of environmentalism, the global environmental movement has a long
and often glorified history. Indeed, it has been declared as ‘the most comprehen-
sive and influential movement of our time’ (Castells 1997: 67). However, devel-
opments in and since the 1960s highlight a significant change in the composition
and mobilization of the broader movement. Specifically, the political and coun-
ter-culture ferment spawned by global social protests of the decade spurred inter-
est in the greater critique of consumer capitalism and its effects on the
environment. This fresh political space opened up by the New Left provided the
impetus for the emergence of the environmental justice movement (EJM). Even
as a new ‘sort’ of environmental movement, the EJM is not a monolith either.2 For
all intents and purposes, this chapter deals primarily with those sectors identified
by Reitan (this volume) as ‘radical’ and ‘revolutionary’ (R/R).
These sectors are those most often singled out as ecoterrorists.3 Differing in both
discourse and tactics from conservation focused or reformist environment move-
ments, R/R environmental activists claim that questions of environmental degrada-
tion could no longer be separated from critiques of state power, corporate overreach
and neoliberal capitalism (Gottlieb 1993; Rootes 2004). Thus, these activists tended
to reject inclusion in institutionalized politics often coveted by reformist organiza-
tions. Rather than be co-opted, R/R environmental activists set out to directly chal-
lenge the underwriters of the capitalist power structure, which they felt had caused
most global environmental injustices. Dissatisfaction with the social conservatism
and timidity of established environmental organizations gave rise to new organiza-
tions, which recognizing the global character of environmental issues and the
shortcomings of reform organizations sought to be transnational in reach and revo-
lutionary in demands (Rootes 2004). For example, activist David Bower left the
Sierra Club, to found Friends of the Earth, an organization that seeks to challenge
neoliberal globalization and consumer capitalism while promoting environmentally
sustainable and just societies (Reitan 2005). Beyond adopting more radical discur-
sive frames, some groups, more autonomous and anarchist in nature, grew out of a
need for tactical radicalism. Arguing that in today’s capitalist economy, the destruc-
tion of industrial infrastructure (i.e. corporate buildings, cars equipment) is more
effective than negotiation, Earth First! originated in the 1970s to pursue direct action
and civil disobedience tactics initially pioneered by Greenpeace (Scarce 2006).
These tactics are often referred to as ‘monkey wrenching’ or ‘ecotage’ (ecological
sabotage). This introduction of a spin-off to the reformist environment movement
with distinctly different discursive and tactical aims is certainly not a state-driven
mechanism in this case. However, this manifestation sets the stage for states to
simultaneously engage in borrowing and then imposition so as to begin labelling and
separating ‘good’ environmental activists from the ‘bad, radical’ ones.

Borrowing and imposition


Social boundaries are further initiated when those in power establish social
binaries where they did not previously exist (Tilly 2004: 218) (e.g. acceptable
immigrant–non-acceptable immigrant, good activist–bad activist and freedom
State-led social boundary change   137
fighter–terrorist). New boundary establishment is not permanent, as those who
impose them can choose (or be persuaded) to annul them. Prime examples of the
nullification of long-standing social boundaries include women’s suffrage, deseg-
regation and the end of apartheid. However, Tilly (2004: 219) wagers that much
of imposition is unidirectional, and once established, a social boundary will con-
tinue to taint social relations even after its authoritative support is gone. A prime
example is the residual racism that still permeates society despite desegregation.
One reason for the permanence of social boundaries is that often, people or orga-
nizations tend to emulate or borrow current social distinctions. In the case of
radical environmentalism through the 1990s, states around the world simultane-
ously began borrowing and imposing the pre-existing term ‘terrorism’ to sectors
of the environmental movement that they felt were threatening the interests and
power of state governments and corporations (whom so many governments
depend on for financial support). The 1970s witnessed a growth in activist acts of
environmental sabotage or ecotage ranging from the destruction of mining equip-
ment on Black Mesa by the Arizona Phantom to the cutting of whalers’ drift nets
out on the high seas by former Greenpeace founding member, Paul Watson and
his new organization, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Ecotage has been
defined as, ‘the extralegal tactics of radical environmental groups seeking to
inflict targeted economic harm upon individuals and firms regarded as causing
serious ecological damage’ (Vanderheiden 2008). These offenses can range from
minor harm, such as the pulling up of survey stakes, to serious vandalism, such
as burning SUVs (sports utility vehicles) and empty buildings or destroying
crops. In general, purveyors of ecotage, such as Dave Foreman in his manual on
Ecodefense, have long stressed the desire to avoid human harm. Despite overt
efforts to avoid human harm and the tactical targeting of inanimate objects
(Foreman 1993: 113), anti-environmental activists, lawmakers and members of
the Bush administration have sought to recast ecotage and ‘radical environmen-
talism’ as legitimate domestic terror threats (Vanderheiden 2008), and surely by
the 1980s, the term ‘ecoterrorism’ had been coined by anti-environmental activist
Ron Arnold.4

Incentive shift
The process of social boundary activation often creates a system of risks and
incentives depending on how actors choose to position themselves around the
newly constructed identity boundary (Tilly 2004: 220). With relation to global
social movements, this mechanism is clearly linked to debates in social move-
ment theory relating to divisions and competition between transnational advocacy
networks and direct action networks (Bennett 2005), insider and outsider move-
ments (see Sikkink 2005; Smith and Korzeniewicz 2007; Tarrow 2005) and
reformist and R/R movements (Reitan, this volume). For example, it has been
argued that a broad ideological span within a given movement may serve to ben-
efit or provide a ‘positive radical flank effect’ for reformist movements (see
Haines 1984; McAdam et al. 1996, 2001; Tarrow 1998). McAdam (1992, quoted
in Gupta 2002) explains:
138   Shannon Gibson
the existence of radicals makes moderate groups in the movement more
attractive negotiating partners to the movement opponents. Radicalness pro-
vides strong incentives to the state to get to the bargaining table with the
moderates in order to avoid dealing with the radicals. In addition, financial
support flowing to moderate groups in the movement increases dramati-
cally in the presence of radicals.

It has been charged by some that police forces and state governments often try
to take advantage of these ideological variations for the purposes of splitting the
movement. Indeed, pundits have publicly struck out at reform movements for not
actively assisting the government in their search for ecoterrorists providing fur-
ther anti-environmentalist sentiments. Syndicated columnist Boland (2001)
writes, ‘Where is the outrage from our respectable environmental groups? Do we
get any tips from the Sierra Club or Greenpeace people concerning former dis-
gruntled members who may have struck out on their own?’ Taken together,
mechanisms of encounter, borrowing and incentive shift set the stage for bound-
ary change activation.

Mechanisms constituting boundary change


Thus far, I have attempted to trace how state-led social boundary imposition suc-
cessfully began to divide the broader environmental movement via mechanisms
of encounter, borrowing, and incentive shift in the days before September 11.
What follows is an analysis of those mechanisms that constituted and solidified
boundaries between the state and radical environmental activists and between
‘good’ environmental activists and ‘bad’ ones. Specifically, I will delineate how
mechanisms of inscription and site transfer promulgated by first the United
States and then subsequent governments combined to produce relocation and
eventually boundary activation.

Boundary relocation
As a mechanism, relocation – the alteration of major boundaries – is produced by
the combination of two or more other constitutive mechanisms and leads to the
activation of new boundaries and the deactivation of others. In our case, inscrip-
tion and site transfer combine resulting in relocation. The scenario goes some-
thing like this: Inscription heightens differences on either side of a social
boundary. Site transfer maintains an established boundary but shifts the location
of persons and social sites with respect to constructed differences. With regard to
R/R environmental activism in the post-September 11 environment, inscription
and site transfer combine to effectively transpose a broadened ‘terrorist’ concept
and the legal mechanisms attached to it onto environmental defendants.
Post-September 11 inscription – the heightening of differences between estab-
lished social boundaries – initially occurred as the United States set out to thicken
the boundary between terrorists and the rest of civilized society. Specifically, the
State-led social boundary change   139
United States constructed the notion of ‘terrorism’ in juxtaposition to its long-held
self-image of American society being the beacon of freedom and justice for the
world. Conducting critical discourse analysis on more than 600 speeches by
President Bush from September 2001 to May 2003, Nabers (2009) argues that the
Bush administration and speechwriting team deliberately constructed ‘America’ as
synonymous with ‘freedom’ and ‘good’ while portraying terrorists and those who
support them as ‘evil’ or ‘lacking in freedom’. Furthermore, the administration
promulgates a homogenous, peace-loving construction of American society (as
opposed to the heterogeneous description it commonly goes by, i.e. ‘melting pot’).
A national discourse is pursued that claims that American society is a homogenous,
moderate, peaceful society and, thus, serves to quiet domestic dissent. Because of
course following an attack of such magnitude, it would be ‘unpatriotic’ to protest
one’s own government. Furthermore, the long-term exposure of citizens to this sort
of discourse contributes to emotional dispositions among policy makers and society
to support repression (Maney et al. 2005). As this discourse becomes routinized,
taking on a hegemonic status (in the Gramscian or Laclauian sense), it opens further
opportunities for the state to codify this notion and expand anti-terror laws as well
as the definition of what constitutes a terrorist. Thus, discourse begins to take effect
on all aspects of life including political institutions, conventions, ideologies and
laws (e.g. via the enactment of the USA PATRIOT Act; see below for details).
Beyond the discursive deepening of the boundary between ‘terrorists’ and the
rest of society, there was a subsequent broadening or site transfer of who and what
constituted the ‘terrorist enemy’. Rather than drawing a distinct line, narrowly
focused on a singular terrorist threat following the recognition that 19 Al-Qaeda
terrorists were responsible for the attacks, George W. Bush set out to portray this
enemy as global, ubiquitous, beyond rationality and beyond restraint (Debrix and
Barder 2009). In 2005, Bush stated that the terrorist enemy was ‘as brutal an
enemy as we’ve ever faced. They’re unconstrained by any notion of our common
humanity or by the rules of warfare’. But who is ‘they’? Record (2003) argues that
US threat conflation essentially made the Global War on Terror (GWOT), a war
on an enemy of overwhelming variety in terms of number of entities (by focusing
on terrorist organizations and terrorist states), types (non-state entities, states and
failed states) and geographic loci (the need for a ‘global’ war). Furthermore, the
GWOT is not only a war against ‘terrorists’ but also against the phenomenon and
violent tactics of terrorism itself. The goal is the elimination of both terrorists and
the method of violence they employ. Bush states:

Indeed, we must use the full influence of the United States to delegitimize
terrorism and make clear that all acts of terrorism will be viewed in the
same light as slavery, piracy, or genocide: behavior that no responsible
government can condone or support and all must oppose.
(White House 2003: 22–3)

Certainly, the September 11 attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon
were not the first the world had heard of terrorists. In fact, the concept of terrorism
140   Shannon Gibson
as a tactic or strategy dates back to the French Revolution (Booth and Dunne 2002:
8; Halliday 2001: 72; Jarvis 2009), and as early as 1937, the League of Nations had
coined a definition for it. However, in the current GWOT, terrorism is a definition
that appears to have lost its way in a semantic quagmire. Even within the US gov-
ernment, different departments and agencies use varying definitions. For example,
the Department of Defense (DOD 2009) defines terrorism as the ‘calculated use of
unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or intimidate governments
or societies in pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological’,
whereas the White House’s National Strategy for Combating Terrorists (NSCT;
2003) states that terrorism is ‘premeditated, politically motivated violence perpe-
trated against non-combatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents’.
Furthermore, the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) defines terrorism as ‘the
unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or
coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in further-
ance of political or social objectives (Code of Federal Regulation, 2009)’. Each of
these definitions initiates important critical questions. The DOD definition does
little to preclude the very acts of the United States following September 11 (i.e.
intervening militarily in Iraq despite lack of international consensus to overthrow
its leader to spread democracy). The NSCT definition calls into question what
constitutes a non-combatant target? Could this include corporate assets? What
about Internet hactivism? Finally, the FBI definition indicates the ‘unlawful use of
force’, and it has been argued based on this definition that ‘force’ should also
include actions that restrict movement such as sit-ins, marches and roadblocks.
Terrorism expert Lacqueur (1999) has found more than 100 definitions for terror-
ism and argues that the only similarity amongst them all is ‘that terrorism involves
violence and the threat of violence’. Unfortunately, this lone definitional element
does little to separate terrorism from civil war factions or even conventionally
accepted forms of political protest. However, in these early days following
September 11, the imposition of a broadly constructed terrorist identity would later
serve as a justification for applying post-September 11 anti-terror surveillance,
detainment and prosecution measures on global environmental activists who
threatened the interests of state governments and corporate institutions.

Boundary activation
Activation of boundaries occurs when social divisions begin to actively manage
social relations on either side of the divide. Deactivation is a decline in a bound-
ary’s importance. Inscription and activation often operate simultaneously to
reinforce the maintenance and pervasiveness of a new social boundary. According
to Tilly (2004: 223), ‘Inscription heightens the social relations and representa-
tions that comprise a particular boundary, while activation makes that same
boundary more central to the organization of activity in its vicinity’. Following
September 11, the newly expanded definition of terrorism was buttressed by
political statements, media coverage and reinvigorated anti-terror laws around the
globe and eventually used to prosecute disruptive environmental activism.
State-led social boundary change   141
Globally, the most immediate reaction to terrorism was the limitation of rights in
the countries affected or threatened by terrorism (Reitan 2003). Shortly after
September 11, and without much debate, US Congress enacted the USA PATRIOT
(Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to
Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) Act, which granted unprecedented powers to home-
land security agencies to obtain telephone and Internet service records as well as
search medical, financial, rental car and library and bookstore records without having
to produce individualized evidence and with no judicial oversight. The implementa-
tion of the PATRIOT Act and its renewal was one of the most far-reaching institution-
alizations of the ‘war on terror’ discourse and the post-September 11 American
identity (Nabers 2009). The application of the USA PATRIOT Act has become a seri-
ous threat to activists engaged in disruptive protests. First, the PATRIOT Act expanded
the legal definition of ‘terrorism’ to include attacks on inanimate objects. Specifically,
the act describes terrorism as any action that

maliciously damages or destroys, or attempts to damage or destroy, by


means of fire or an explosive, any building, vehicle, or other real personal
property used in interstate or foreign commerce or in any activity affecting
interstate or foreign commerce.

Thus, this broadened definition brings activists engaged in or suspected of being


engaged in tactics that might harm property or commerce under the auspices of the
Act. This includes its expanded surveillance activities as well as the utilization of
the Act along with other legal provisions to conduct formal and informal checks on
political opposition. Similarly, a reinvigoration of anti-terror laws occurred across
the globe. In June 2002, the European Union adopted a Framework Decision on
Combating Terrorism that likewise expanded the definition of terrorism to include
those offenses that cause or threaten to cause extensive destruction to a public place
or private property that might result in economic loss. Indeed, some European
states, such as France, have taken their anti-terror legislation even further than the
United States, introducing significant communications surveillance, the power to
expel extremists and preemptive arrest mechanisms (Whitlock 2004).
Following these revamped anti-terror laws, came an increased interest in eco-
terrorism. In 2002, a congressional subcommittee on ecoterrorism was convened
in which members or people associated with ‘extremist’ groups were subpoenaed
to testify. At that time Chief Jarboe defined ecoterrorism as:

The use or threatened use of violence of a criminal nature against innocent


victims or property by an environmentally-oriented, sub national group for
environmental-political reasons, or aimed at an audience beyond the target,
often of a symbolic nature.
(FBI 2002)

This has led several in the environmental movement to argue that the renewed
focus on radical environmentalism as a form of terrorism in the post-September
142   Shannon Gibson
11 era has amounted to what they refer to as the ‘Green Scare’ (alluding to the
anti-communist Red Scares of the 1940s and 1950s). Of the new government
tactics, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) Attorney Jeffrey
Kerr said, ‘It’s the newest brand of McCarthyism, because lies and half-truths are
being spewed forth by people in the pockets of industries’. One of the most well-
known cases of the application of ‘terrorism enhancement’ penalties came in the
2005 roundup and indictment of 11 activists for a string of politically motivated
crimes (none of which harmed humans) committed in the 1990s, known as
Operation Backfire.5 Following the arrests, Attorney Alberto Gonzalez pro-
claimed this a decisive victory in the War on Terror stating, ‘Today’s indictment
proves that we will not tolerate any group that terrorizes the American people, no
matter its intentions or its objectives’ (FBI 2006). Then, in 2006, the Animal
Enterprise Protection Act of 1992 was expanded into the Animal Enterprise
Terrorism Act (AETA) that punishes, with harsher penalties than its predecessor,
any politically motivated actions that result in the damage or loss of property or
profit associated with animal enterprise, thus, specifically targeting elements of
the environmental and animal rights movement. This new law was used to effec-
tively indict seven Stop Huntington Animal Cruelty activists (commonly known
as the SHAC 7) who ran a controversial website that publicized legal and illegal
actions against their targets as ‘animal enterprise terrorists’. As of 2007, the
American Legislative Exchange Council began to push a newly expanded Animal
Rights and Ecological Terrorism Act to expand ‘terrorist enhancement’ penalties
to those harming natural resource enterprises (ALEC 2009).
Over the past several years, ecoterrorism has consistently ranked at the top of
the FBI’s domestic terror threat list. The persecution of ecoterrorists under the
auspices of anti-terror laws is not solely relegated to the US government. Similar
actions have occurred in Europe. In response to Climate Camp actions in the
United Kingdom, the United Kingdom began branding protest by animal and
environmental rights movements as ‘domestic extremism’ and began utilizing its
National Extremism Tactical Co-ordination Unit and its National Domestic
Extremism Team ‘to gather, assess, analyze and disseminate intelligence and
information relating to criminal activities . . . where there is a threat of crime or
to public order which arises from domestic extremism or protest activity’ (Evans
et al. 2009). Although ‘extremism’ is discursively different from terrorism, it
would seem the two are being blended. In 2009, border patrols utilized anti-terror
legislation to prevent climate justice activist, Chris Kitchen, from traveling to
Denmark where he was to attend an activist mobilization meeting (Lewis 2009).
All told, the implications of this selective coding of what constitutes a ‘terror
threat’ clearly amount to a global strategic campaign to link environmentalism
with terrorism.

Effects of ecoterrorist boundary imposition and activation


By shifting the social boundaries between R/R environmentalism and violent ter-
rorism, antagonists to the environmental movement have been able to steer the
State-led social boundary change   143
legal and normative forces of counter-terrorism policies against a wide range of
domestic activists. The effects of this shift and expansion in the definition of ‘ter-
rorism’ as well as the expansion of US surveillance, monitoring and prosecution
powers within this realm have had an immense impact on those considered to be
a part of or even on the fringe of the ‘radical environmental movement’. Formally,
the allegation of terrorist activity summons higher level law enforcement powers,
fewer procedural protections for those accused and heftier sentences for those
convicted on crimes in which ecological motivations can be demonstrated.
Informally, this shift can signify a presumption of guilt, result in indefinite deten-
tions without access to a lawyer and lead to an assignment of guilt before commit-
ting an act or guilt by association. The threats of these infringements on activists
have resulted in a variety of reactions, which vary both across groups (depending
on their discursive location within the movement) and over time as public support
for the Bush administration, which enacted the majority of these legal manoeu-
vres, diminished significantly following the commencement of the Iraq War.
One of the first knee-jerk reactions by activists (on the reform side of the envi-
ronmental spectrum) following the September 11 terrorist attacks was the mass
cancellation of public protest events and a reframing of claims. For example,
Gillham and Edwards (2003) chronicle how a broad coalition of actors, the
Mobilization for Global Justice (MGJ), whom had been planning a series of glo-
bal justice protest events for the last week of September 2001, responded to the
significantly altered political climate following the attacks. They report how in
just a few days following the attacks the coalition had largely dissolved as organ-
izations began to reframe their claims and shift instead to focus on the promotion
of the emerging peace movement. For example, although human rights advocacy
groups such as 50 Years is Enough and the Jubilee USA Network decided to
remain active in the coalition, many established labour and environmental organ-
izations such as the American Lands Alliance, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace,
International Rivers Network, the Rainforest Action Network and the Sierra Club
withdrew themselves from participation after the September 11 attacks. Within
the radical ranks too, activists seemed to take a step back on September 11 to
reassess their tactics. In the Earth First! Journal published immediately after the
attacks, one activist urges fellow activists to pause for a moment and to act out of
hope rather than out of fear. In addition, the activist calls on others to create not
just protests but ‘moments of public beauty’, because

direct action is a powerful tool, but like a chainsaw it’s not the tool you
want in every situation. Direct action points a spotlight on an issue, can
directly interfere with an unjust group or situation and delegitimize an
institution or policy. Used at the wrong moment or without a strong base of
support, it risks legitimizing the very institutions we seek to undermine.
(Starhawk 2001)

In the years after September 11, the manner in which this boundary has been
activated has also had serious implications for those in the environmental movement
144   Shannon Gibson
engaging in even the most basic of protest tactics. Similar to most social movements,
environmentalism has its legal and illegal aspects. Where some activists lobby gov-
ernments and conduct letter-writing campaigns, others engage in sit-ins, chain them-
selves to trees, block roadways or break into and vandalize coal plants. Since its
introduction into the public lexicon, the term ecoterrorism has been utilized strategi-
cally to blur the difference between two distinct forms of direct action, ecotage (e.g.
tree spiking to prevent logging) and ‘civil disobedience’ (e.g. tree sitting to prevent
logging) and to conflate the two as posing domestic terror threats. For example,
adversary of the US environmental movement Ron Arnold has argued that civil
disobedience that involves ‘imposing physical impediments preventing persons
from going where they ordinarily have a right to go’, far from being peaceful, con-
stitutes ‘an act of physical coercion, an act of violence against another, regardless of
how passively performed’ (Arnold cited in Long 2004: 6). Furthermore, in a 2002
Board of Supervisors meeting, County Supervisor Delgaudio (2002) had the follow-
ing to say of Greenpeace’s acts of civil disobedience:

There is a gray zone between the violent environmentalists and the nonvio-
lent ‘Greens’. Greenpeace, the self-professed non-violent protector of land
and sea, has made a name for itself by destroying crops, encouraging the
chopping down of forests grown with genetically modified seeds, and
engaging in dangerous confrontations with fishing, shipping, and nuclear
test vessels on the high seas. Greenpeace calls itself ‘nonviolent’. But in
fact all of the above-named activities, which have raked in hundreds of
millions of dollars for the organization over the years, are based on FORCE –
on stealing or destroying property, or of compelling behavior by a confron-
tation which gives the other side no choice. . . . In the old days, any
self-appointed high seas kamikaze was given a proper name – PIRATE –
and was hunted down by the Royal Navy and hung without benefit of trial,
making the high seas a safe place.

Earlier that year, following the ‘Threat of Eco-Terrorism’ Congressional hear-


ing that targeted several environmental groups including PETA (an organization
that does not condone ecotage but has given money for legal counsel to Earth
Liberation Front members in the past), PETA attorney Jeffrey Kerr said, ‘It’s
frightening from a freedom and liberty point of view when you are labelled a ter-
rorist because you’re helping to defend an individual’s fundamental constitutional
rights’. As this fear manifests, it could lead to the future curtailing of civil liber-
ties and the ability to conduct civil disobedience as is evident by the harsh polic-
ing methods utilized at the 2004 Free Trade of the Americas protests in Miami
and caged off ‘free speech areas’ far removed from events such as the Democratic
and Republican National Conventions in 2004 (see also della Porta and Reiter,
this volume). Then, in 2008, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) threat
assessments report named the Sierra Club, the Humane Society and the Audubon
Society as ‘mainstream organizations with known or possible links to eco-terrorism’
(DHS 2008).
State-led social boundary change   145

Mechanisms Causing Mechanisms Constituting


Social Boundary Shift Social Boundary Shift
Dividing the Environmental Extreme Criminalization of
Movement: 1970s to 2001 Eco-Terrorists: 9/11 and Beyond

Encounter
Boundary Inscription Boundary
Borrowing Relocation
Imposition Site Transfer Activation
Incentive Shift

Figure 7.1 Sequence of mechanisms causing and constituting social boundary change in


the case of environmental activism and ecoterrorism.

Many of the chapters in this collection could be divided on the basis in which
they conceptualize power – as hegemonic (state power from above), counter-he-
gemonic (collective action from below) or representative (relational power
between various non-state actors). This chapter approaches the notion of power
from a top-down perspective by tracing the mechanisms inherent in state-led
social boundary imposition and activation with regard to the blurring of distinc-
tions between R/R environmentalism and global terrorism – into ecoterrorism –
before and after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks (Figure 7.1). In the case
study examined previously, we see the following progression:

• Spurred by the global social protests of the 1960s, a new brand of environmen-
talism that is more radical, revolutionary in their discourse, demands and tactics,
emerges and encounters the same social space occupied by established, reform-
ist environmental organizations (encounter in this instance is not state-led).
• Social boundaries between reformist and R/R environmentalism are further
initiated as states around the world simultaneously began borrowing and
imposing the pre-existing term ‘terrorism’ to sectors of the environmental
movement to establish social binaries where they did not previously exist.
• This division is further buttressed as reformist groups receive incentives for
distancing themselves from radical environmentalism.
• Boundary activation is solidified when inscription and site transfer simulta-
neously lead to relocation – the transposition of the post-September 11
broadened ‘terrorist’ concept and the legal mechanisms attached to it onto the
R/R environmental movement and those who associate with it.

What this means for global activism is that social boundary change strongly
affects the likelihood, intensity, scale and form of mobilization (Tilly 2003).
Furthermore, boundary imposition and activation frequently occur when
authorities attempt to establish new systems of top-down control (Caplan and
Torpey 2001; Scott 1998; Tilly 1999). In the post-September 11 era, the discursive
146   Shannon Gibson
broadening of the term ‘terrorism’ has made it, as Gearty (2002: 36) explains,
‘the rhetorical servant of the established order’. Changes in social boundaries,
such as those relating to terrorist identities, produce serious consequences for a
wide range of social relations. Although many see the erosion of civil liberties
as a justified trade off in the GWOT, Jasper (2007) reminds us to always look
to ascertain the power behind cultural and discursive resources wielded by
decision-makers. Particularly, as anti-terror laws and surveillance mechanisms
continue to be implemented in such a way that it, as Representative Dennis
Kucinich of Ohio said of the AETA bill, has ‘a chilling effect on a specific type
of protest’.

Notes
1 Also referred to as the ‘transnationalist research program’ (see McAdam et al. 1997), the
classic social movement agenda is a blend of rational, cultural and structural approaches
to study social movements that lays emphasis on three sets of factors in analyzing the
emergence and trajectories of social movements – political opportunities, mobilizing
structures and framing processes (McAdam et al. 1996: 8, 2001: 17).
2 Reitan (this volume) argues that the broader Global Left, of which the EJM is a part ,
consists of three strands – reformist social democracy, revolutionary Marxism–Leninism
and radical autonomism and anarchism. Members from all three sectors (and now even
corporations and government officials) often self-identify themselves as being for or a
part of the environmental justice movement, a fact that has become highly contested
within the movement itself (Bjork 2009).
3 The 2008 DHS ‘Universal Adversary Dynamic Threat Assessment’ specifically identifies
‘biocentrism’, ‘deep ecology’ and ‘anarcho-primativism’ as the key ideologies buttress-
ing the ecoterrorist movement and identifies the movement’s tactical goals as being
‘anarchist and antisystemic in nature’.
4 Later Arnold would be called to testify at the 1998 ‘Hearing on Acts of Ecoterrorism
Committed by Radical Environmental Organizations’ before the US House Judiciary
Subcommittee on Crimes, an event devised by US Representative Frank Riggs after
Earth First! Members organized a non-violent protest against his support for logging by
dragging a huge tree stump into his office.
5 Operation Backfire was a multi-agency criminal investigation of several animal and
environmental rights activists believed to be a part of the Earth Liberation Front and
Animal Liberation Front led by the FBI during 2004–2006. The 65-count indictment
handed down in 2006 alleged the defendants committed acts of domestic terrorism
between 1996 and 2001 in Oregon, Wyoming, Washington, California and Colorado.
Charges included arson, conspiracy, use of destructive devices and destruction of an
energy facility. No individuals were injured in the perpetration of the accused crimes.
Several defendants choose to accept plea bargains, whereas others such as Daniel
McGowan and Briana Waters pled innocent and refused to cooperate with grand juries.
Each were convicted and are currently serving 7 and 6 year sentences, respectively.

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8 National origin and transnational
activism
Sarah Stroup

Introduction
Existing scholarship on transnational activism has persuasively demonstrated that
global campaigns and programmes run by non-state actors can substantially alter
global politics. The next step is to better understand when and how these actors –
particularly international non-governmental organizations (INGOs), the organiza-
tional building blocks of transnational civil society – have this power. In this
chapter, I argue that substantial diversity among INGOs – created, in part, by fac-
tors in each INGO’s home country – fragments global activists and can make some
more effective than others.
Much work on transnational activism is based on an underlying assumption
that these individuals and groups share fundamental norms and practices. For
example, in their seminal work on transnational advocacy networks, Keck and
Sikkink (1998) identify cosmopolitan norms of basic human rights that unite
local and global actors (for examples from outside the human rights realm, see
Florini 2000). A large group of scholars draw on sociological institutionalist and
political economy approaches to argue that INGO interaction at international
institutions, uncertainty among INGOs and donors over how to measure perform-
ance and outcomes, and competition among INGOs for international funds create
convergence on a narrow set of practices (Boli and Thomas 1999; Cooley and
Ron 2002).1 However, it remains to be proven whether cosmopolitan norms,
international fora or international donors are the primary point of reference for
INGOs. INGOs are governed by the laws of their home state and of those host
states in which they operate. In addition, most of the large INGOs today began as
national NGOs with an interest in foreign affairs; thus, for example, they started
as French or American charities before they aspired to become global NGOs
(Lindenberg and Bryant 2001). Although sociological institutionalism usefully
describes how the surrounding environment creates isomorphic pressures on
INGOs, the primary environment is the national, not the global, one. If transna-
tional actors such as INGOs are ‘rooted cosmopolitans’ (Tarrow 2005), we need
a better understanding of those roots.2
Among the many factors shaping INGO strategies and structures, legal regula-
tions at home and financial support from the home state are two of the most impor-
tant. This chapter offers a brief look at the relationship between the state and the
152   Sarah Stroup
INGO sector (specifically international relief and development organizations) in
three countries – the United States, France and Japan. The United States and France
are home to numerous INGOs but have long employed very different approaches to
these organizations.3 In Japan, the INGO sector has historically been almost non-
existent but has seen substantial growth since the early 1990s. Each state has created
different regulatory structures (including registration requirements, tax privileges
and limitations on political activity), political opportunities and types of financial
support for charities in general and INGOs in particular. These factors shape two
fundamental features of each nation’s INGOs – size and advocacy strategies.
Although the picture offered here is fairly general,4 the evidence is quite suggestive
of the importance of national origin in shaping INGO practices. The differences
among INGOs are not mere parochial baggage to be shed by ever-more-global
actors; instead, these various strategies and structures have proven to be enormously
successful in each INGO’s home environment and are thus likely to endure.
There are at least four implications to this argument. First, the diversity of prac-
tices among INGOs worldwide challenges the idea of a global civil society – that
is, a ‘social sphere . . . above and beyond national, regional, or local entities’
(Anheier et al. 2001: 3). Popular usage of the term ‘global civil society’ suggests
a cooperative and coherent group sharing norms and practices, but this group is,
in fact, fragmented and often competitive, with different groups bringing diverse
assets and worldviews to the international table. Second, building on a growing
literature that questions the prevalence and durability of transnational campaigns
in this global associative realm, the evidence here offers an explanation for why
it might be so difficult to build successful transnational advocacy networks.
INGOs in each country have distinct relationships with their home governments,
and these patterns of relating to authorities are carried over into the international
work of these groups. Third, national origin is not only a constraint but also a
source of power. Private and public actors in each INGO’s home country generate
material resources and political support to be wielded in the international realm.
Thus, the evidence presented here offers insight into when certain INGOs are
likely to be more successful in changing the behaviour of other global actors.
Finally, the continued salience of the home country environment in shaping
INGO practices challenges the notion (evident in the concept of a global civil
society and elsewhere in the international relations literature) of the transformative
power of globalization. NGOs whose reach may be increasingly global have been
influenced but not transformed by the global environment, and states retain sub-
stantial power vis-à-vis global civil society actors. Still, the evidence presented
here does not support the conclusion that INGOs are merely tools of their home
government. The influence of state policy on INGOs can be incoherent, indirect
and inadvertent, and officials looking to use INGOs as an ‘arm of the government’
are often frustrated.5 Although INGOs may remain independent of particular for-
eign policies of their home states, they are nevertheless deeply marked by the ways
in which their home state interacts with domestic civil society.
In the following pages, I first describe the incentives and constraints facing
charities in the United States, France and Japan. The second section describes
National origin and transnational activism   153
variation among American, French and Japanese INGOs in terms of size and
advocacy and offers an account of how national origin shapes these outcomes.
Finally, I offer a few thoughts on the interaction of national origin and transna-
tional activism.

Understanding INGOs in their domestic contexts


In the United States, France and Japan, the home state affects charities in at least
three ways – direct regulation, creation of a set of political opportunities and
provision of material support. In the following sections on each country, I con-
sider how these factors affect both charities in general and INGOs in particular.

The United States


The charitable sector in the United States is the world’s largest, and the sector has
informed a particular conception of civil society as an autonomous, self-organized
sphere in which actors both solve social problems and check the power of the state.
However, most scholars of American charities today recognize that organizations in
this ‘autonomous’ sector, including INGOs, actually rely heavily on the govern-
ment for direct financial support and a friendly regulatory environment (Ott 2001;
Salamon 2002).
In comparative terms, it is very simple for groups in the United States to legally
register as non-profits and receive favourable tax treatment. The processes for
acquiring federal legal status and tax benefits are one and the same: registration
with the Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)3 organization. The organizational
requirements for registration are limited, application fees are low and oversight
of charities by the Internal Revenue Service has long been weak (Everson 2004).
Registration as a public charity brings two tax advantages that have been in place
in the United States since the late nineteenth century: an exemption from income
taxes (a benefit that accrues to most charities worldwide) and the ability to offer
donors tax exemption on their charitable contributions. Donors can get tax relief
on charitable contributions worth up to 50 per cent of their annual income.6
Only in one arena, that of political action, is restriction on American charities
severe. According to US law, ‘no substantial part’ of a charity’s activities can
involve ‘carrying on propaganda, or otherwise attempting, to influence legisla-
tion’, though charities can engage in limited lobbying activities (Joint Committee
on Taxation 2005). The regulation of political activity has increased since the
mid-1990s, and although some of the most restrictive legislation has failed to
pass, the battle has ‘put a chill on at least some nonprofit engagement in policy
deliberations’ (Grønbjerg and Salamon 2002: 465). The test of whether political
activity is a ‘substantial part’ of a charity’s work is quite vague, so some charities
register under a special status (501(h)) that measures political activity as a share
of total expenditures. Still, no 501(h) organization can spend more than US$1
million on lobbying expenditures (and, given the size of many American chari-
ties, including INGOs, this can be a minute amount).
154   Sarah Stroup
The structure of political opportunities available to internationally oriented
NGOs in the United States is complex. Authority over foreign policy issues is
diffuse, with innumerable congressional committees and federal agencies
involved. Although the foreign aid system has recently come under review,
almost every Cabinet-level department has a foreign assistance programme,
whereas only about half of American aid is managed by the US Agency for
International Development (USAID) (Lancaster 2007). Even within single agen-
cies such as the State Department, there are multiple points of contact (often with
competing agendas). For INGOs, this can make it fairly easy to get in the door
but difficult to affect substantial change. Less formally, American government
agencies frequently engage and partner with private groups in the projection of
American interests and power abroad (Kerlin 2006). There is a general accept-
ance among policy makers that private actors, including INGOs, can be very
valuable in the policy-making process and the distribution of foreign aid.
Finally, American INGOs enjoy a wealth of financial resources at home. The
state supplies resources indirectly by allowing for charitable contributions to be
tax deductible and directly by financing INGO activities. The United States is the
largest provider of foreign aid in absolute terms (US$26 billion in 2008, accord-
ing to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD]),
and a sizeable share of this aid is channelled through INGOs. The US government
does not collect statistics on aid channelled through NGOs as practices vary
across and within federal agencies. The OECD (1998: 34) has estimated that as
much as 30 per cent of the USAID funds are channelled through civil society
groups.7 Specific government funding schemes for INGOs have existed since at
least the 1960s, and a wide variety of initiatives support programmes in areas like
food aid, development education and emergency assistance (Agg 2006; Kerlin
2006). Many INGOs are heavily reliant on government grants, and on average,
American INGOs received 20 per cent of their income from the government in
2003 (an enormous figure, given the size of the US INGO sector as a whole)
(Reid and Kerlin 2006). This partnership has continued despite the heavy require-
ments for monitoring and evaluation placed on recipient organizations by US
government agencies.
In sum, there are considerable opportunities available to American charities.
Government regulations have long encouraged independent associations, and a
favourable tax code enables enormous private fundraising. Many government
agencies offer vast sums of material support to INGOs. Still, the fragmentation of
political authority not only complicates the basic task of counting funds chan-
nelled to INGOs but also impedes the ability of INGOs to achieve substantial
policy change. Of course, regulations limiting charities’ political activities make
many organizations wary of engaging in political action.

France
Although the French reality does not uniformly or consistently conform to the
étatist ideal, the associational realm in France has long been stymied by the
National origin and transnational activism   155
power of the state. Today, despite an explosion of membership in civic associa-
tions (and growing scholarship on French associational life), French non-profits
struggle to enter policy-making circles and attract assistance from private and
institutional donors. The INGO sector is unusually prominent in France, but it
remains small, internally divided and dominated by a small handful of organiza-
tions (Fagnou 2004).
The strict regulation of charities in France reflects a much greater suspicion
(relative to the United States) of private associations. Independent associations
were outlawed until 1901 and continued restriction limited the size of the asso-
ciative sector (Archambault 2001). New social activism beginning in the 1960s,
combined with decentralization of state authority beginning in the 1980s, has
created meaningful interest in and space for charitable groups, yet the civil soci-
ety sector remains weak (Levy 1999). All associations must register with the
state, and several powerful regulatory bodies (including the Cour des comptes
and the Inspection générale des affaires sociales) regularly inspect very promi-
nent charitable groups.
Although tax benefits for charities have become more generous over the past
20 years, the law surrounding tax exemption remains complicated. Associations
receive a reduced value-added tax (VAT) rate on certain goods and generally are
exempt from commercial taxes. To be eligible for tax exemption for charitable
donations, organizations need to either register as ‘general interest’ associations
or apply to the Conseil d’Etat for designation as a public utility association (asso-
ciation reconnaissance d’utilité publique [RUP]), a status that is difficult to
achieve but that affords important additional tax privileges. Changes in the tax
code in 2003 were meant to further encourage private donations, but the formula
is still complex, with individual donors receiving tax relief on 60 per cent of the
value of the donation up to a maximum 10 per cent of the donor’s earnings
(Dehne et al. 2008).
In stark contrast to the United States, the French government is quite permis-
sive of political activities by charities. Regulations place essentially no limit on
the ability of associations to engage in political activities (excluding only those
lobbying actions that would result in private benefit for the individual director of
an association). The only explicit limitation is that specially recognized RUP may
not primarily engage in political action (Council on Foundations 2008a).
Although the law may allow for political action in theory, the political oppor-
tunities available to INGOs are very limited in practice. The foreign policy-
making process in France is relatively centralized (though complex) and largely
closed to private social actors (Lancaster 2007). The primary points of contact for
INGOs can be found at the foreign affairs ministry and the main aid agency, the
Agence Française de Développement (AFD). In addition, several interministerial
consultative structures have been created over the past two decades, and the gov-
ernment has made several recent pledges to increase cooperation with and finan-
cial backing of INGOs.8 in the end, although French NGOs today receive greater
consideration than in the past, meaningful cooperation remains limited and
NGO–government dialogue does not translate into substantive policy change
156   Sarah Stroup
(OECD 2000: 1–25, 2008). Tellingly, a 2001 French foreign affairs ministry
publication claimed that

France has considerable public mechanisms to pilot its cooperation activi-


ties. This is far from being the case in most European countries. If they did
not rely heavily on NGOs, some countries would perhaps encounter diffi-
culties implementing cooperation programmes for the amounts decided for
international cooperation.
(Potevin 2001: 7)

In other words, NGOs are only used by those governments whose bureaucratic
agencies are too weak to handle the task of foreign aid distribution.
The disregard of French authorities for the NGO sector is visible also in the
low levels of government financing of INGOs. France has long ranked last among
European nations in its support for NGOs as a share of all foreign aid – around 1
per cent compared with an OECD average of 6 per cent (OECD 2008: 46).
Although the number of INGOs receiving funds from French authorities has
increased from 133 in 1998 to 266 in 2006, the size of government grants remains
low (Commission Coopération-Développment [CCD] 2005: 6; Potevin 2001).
Two thirds of government financing for French INGOs is provided by a special
office within the foreign affairs ministry, whereas the leading foreign aid minis-
try, the Agence Française de Developpement, channels very little aid through
INGOs (€6.5 million, or about US$8.2 million, in 2006) (Ministère des Affaires
Étrangères et Européennes [MAEE] 2006). From 2001 to 2005, support from all
French governmental sources accounted for less than 9 per cent of the total
income of all French INGOs (CCD 2008: 13–6; Fagnou 2004).
Compared with the United States, France is a more challenging environment
for charities, even for the domestically popular INGOs. The strict regulation of
private associations reflects a suspicion of action outside the state that might
contravene the ‘general will’, and whereas recent reforms have sought to encour-
age charitable donations, raising funds from private and institutional donors
remains difficult. French charities are given almost free reign to engage in politi-
cal action, but they tend to be excluded from decision-making circles.

Japan
The charitable sector in Japan has seen a flurry of activity over the past decade. In
the mid-1990s, the size of the Japanese non-profit sector was well below the
developed-country average, accounting for 3.5 per cent of total employment (com-
pared with 7.8 per cent in the United States and 4.9 per cent in France) (Yamauchi
et al. 1999: 247). For over a century, charitable organizations in Japan had been
largely governed by the Civil Code of 1896, but major reforms in the 1990s aimed
to create a more hospitable environment for charities (although the seemingly con-
stant process of reform since then has created significant uncertainty). Importantly,
the growth of Japanese civil society, including INGOs, has come about through the
National origin and transnational activism   157
state’s re-evaluation of the role of private actors and an intentional move by the
state to reduce regulatory barriers and increase financial assistance.
According to Pekkanen (2006: 16), Japanese NGOs historically faced ‘perhaps
the most severe regulatory environments in the developed world’, and this system
remained virtually unchanged through the twentieth century. Registration as a
legal entity was very difficult and subject to the discretion of the relevant govern-
ment ministry; the many groups that chose not to acquire this legal standing could
not open bank accounts or hire staff (Auger 2003: 172). Today, there are two basic
types of legal status relevant to a discussion of INGOs. First, the 1998 non-profit
organization (NPO) law created a much lower threshold for legal recognition, and
by March 2008, more than 34,000 groups had been newly registered as NPOs
(‘Giving Nonprofits Their Due’ 2008). In addition, organizations have also long
been able to apply to the relevant ministry to be recognized as ‘public interest
corporations’ (PICs), a status that comes with greater benefits but is difficult to
attain. Today, a few prominent Japanese INGOs have achieved PIC status, includ-
ing Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE) Japan, Japanese
Organization for International Cooperation in Family Planning (JOICFP), and
Plan Japan (Hirata 2002: 41). As of December 2008, all PICs are required to
re-register within the next 5 years under a new legal system (Japan Center for
International Exchange [JCIE] 2007a: 4). Many civil society organizations,
including INGOs, remain unincorporated, lacking legal status but free from
administrative discretion.
Favourable tax treatment is also difficult to acquire and requires a separate set
of applications to the tax authorities. For PICs, non-profit activities are exempt
from corporate income taxes. Charitable donations to PICs are only tax-deductible
if the group has obtained special designation; as of August 2007, fewer than 1,000
of Japan’s 25,000 PICs had successfully obtained this status (compared with over
1 million groups in the United States eligible to receive tax-deductible contribu-
tions) (JCIE 2007: 4; Pekkanen 2006: 68). The 1998 law allowed more civil
society groups to attain legal status, but it did not grant NPOs exemption from
corporate income taxes. Tax reform in 2001 and 2003 allowed certain NPOs to
apply to receive tax-deductible contributions from individuals and corporations.
Of 16,000 NPOs existing in July 2004, only 24 had been granted this status
(Pekkanen 2006: 71). For individual donors, deductions can only be claimed on
half the value of the donation, in an amount not to exceed 2.5 per cent of the
donor’s annual income (Dehne et al. 2008).
Administrative oversight complicates the regulation of charities’ advocacy, with
wide variation in the treatment of different kinds of groups (Pekkanen 2006: 72–4).
Legally, political activity (excluding explicit support of a candidate or political
party) by registered non-profit groups is allowed (Council on Foundations 2008b).
However, in practice, bureaucratic discretion over non-profit groups affects the
initial decision to register and later decisions on political activities. Many advocacy
groups expect to be denied legal status and thus do not register (including 90 per
cent of internationally oriented groups), whereas the state ‘often seeks to co-opt, or
supervise, the groups that do get legal status’ (Pekkanen 2006: 74–5).
158   Sarah Stroup
Political opportunities for Japanese INGOs are changing. Historically, the foreign
policy-making process had been closed to the INGOs that officials viewed with con-
descension and disdain, but, as Reimann (2003) persuasively argues, the Japanese
state began to deliberately engage Japanese INGOs in the late 1980s in response to
international trends supporting state–NGO partnerships. In the 1990s, the government
created a series of consultative fora that were institutionalized within the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs (MOFA), the Ministry of Finance, and elsewhere (Lancaster 2007:
122). Regular meetings between NGO representatives and MOFA officials began in
1996, and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), Japan’s lead aid
agency, began meeting with NGOs in 1998 (JICA 2008: 6). Although private sector
groups are given greater consideration today, the most recent OECD review of
Japan’s foreign aid found that NGO relations with the relevant government bodies
were ‘cordial, but yet too complicated and slow’ (OECD 2003: 49).
The major area in which the state–INGO relationship has changed is in the area
of financial support. Beginning in the late 1980s, several different government
agencies created funding opportunities for Japanese INGOs, including a subsidy
programme at MOFA (1989) and a postal savings scheme (1991). The collabora-
tive ‘Japan Platform’ brings together MOFA, corporate donors and NGOs to
provide several million dollars in emergency humanitarian assistance (JCIE
2005). In the late 1990s, MOFA moved beyond funding particular projects at
Japanese NGOs and offered greater provision for developing the core administra-
tive capacity of these groups (JICA 2008: 6). Still, data from 1992 to 2003 sug-
gest that, despite a shift in official policy in favour of sustaining the NGO sector,
the share of Japanese official development assistance (ODA) channelled through
NGOs has remained fairly constant and low (around 2–3 per cent) (Agg 2006).
From 2000 to 2006, grants to Japanese NGOs increased but still averaged only
US$7.03 million (MOFA 2007). Some NGOs complain that the MOFA subsidy
programme requires lengthy application for single-year projects (MOFA 2005). A
recent survey of 277 Japanese INGOs found that an average of 3.36 per cent of
Japanese INGO income comes from Japanese government agencies, and only
about 10 per cent of Japanese INGOs receive support from MOFA (JICA 2008:
32–9). Although the government’s position towards INGOs may be changing
relative to the 1960s and 1970s, in a comparative sense, the Japanese state still
offers only limited resources to its young INGO sector.
The profiles above suggest three very different approaches to INGOs in the
United States, France and Japan. Table 8.1 offers a summary of these variations
in each state’s regulations, political opportunities and direct financial support of
INGOs. The importance of these differences in state practices can be seen in how
they shape the size and advocacy efforts of INGOs in their home country.

Global activities, national identities


The national environments profiled above shape the structures and strategies of
INGOs. Of course, many of the largest INGOs such as CARE and Médecins Sans
Frontières (MSF) are global confederations of groups in many different developed
National origin and transnational activism   159
Table 8.1  The international charitable sector in three countries

United States France Japan


Regulation Ease of High Moderate Low
registration
Tax exemption
   Income High High High
   Donations High Moderate/ low
low
Political activity Discouraged by Allowed Discouraged
strict limits and with just a by bureaucratic
vague language few oversight
restrictions
Political Centralization of Low High High/moderate
opportunity foreign policy
authority
State approach to Cooperative Antagonistic Limited but
civil society growing
cooperation
Financial Share of aid ∼30% ∼1% ∼2%
support through NGOs
Share of NGO 20% 9% 3%
income from
government
Examples of CARE USA, MSF France, JOICEF, Plan
INGOs World Vision US Handicap Japan
Int’l

countries. Although these groups may claim to be global citizens, decisions are
made not by global headquarters but instead by the national offices – particularly
by the national office where the organization was originally created.9 Those
national offices, and the broader subsectors of INGOs, have been fundamentally
shaped by their domestic environments.

Size
If data on individual INGOs are difficult to come by, gathering comparable data
on the subsector of internationally oriented charities in each country is a nearly
impossible task. A recent report from the Urban Institute offers excellent detail on
the American subsector based on tax forms filed by all non-profits, but the best
data from France and Japan are gathered by umbrella groups (the CCD in France
and the Japan NGO Center for International Cooperation (JANIC) in Japan) that
survey member organizations, which can exclude many smaller INGOs. With that
caveat, even imperfect data from each country suggests wide variation among the
three countries in the size of the INGO sector.
The American INGO sector includes more than 4,000 organizations with a
combined income of US$15.7 billion in 2003.10 This figure includes many large
160   Sarah Stroup
organizations, including 449 groups that reported revenue of more than US$2
million. Two of the largest American INGOs, CARE and World Vision US,
reported incomes of US$600 million and US$962 million in 2006, respectively.
In France, INGOs are somewhat less numerous and much smaller. The most
recent CCD (2008: 7) survey estimated the total INGO population at several
thousand; the 400 survey respondents reported a combined income of US$1.24
billion in 2005. The sector is dominated by a few large organizations: the com-
bined income of the four largest French INGOs accounts for a third of the sec-
tor’s total income (Fagnou 2004: 60). Finally, the Japanese INGO sector is quite
small but growing. JANIC reported only 59 members in 1980, but there were
more than 400 INGOs by 2007 (Hirata 2002: 34; MOFA 2007: 3). An official
survey of almost 300 of these groups reported a combined income of ¥28.6 bil-
lion (or US$265 million) in 2004. However, many Japanese INGOs are barely
international: although half have overseas offices, 70 per cent of those have
offices in only one country, and only six have offices in ten or more countries
(JICA 2008: 25). As in France, the Japanese INGO sector is dominated by just a
few groups: the combined budgets of the top ten organizations account for 57
per cent of the total sector’s income (JICA 2008: 32). Finally, many of the larg-
est INGOs in Japan (including the three largest – Plan Japan, World Vision Japan
and MSF Japan) are the local offices of INGOs established elsewhere (JICA
2008: 31).
Patterns of state–INGO relations help us understand these differences. In the
United States, the ease of legal registration both enables the growth of organiza-
tions and reflects a deeper social acceptance of the legitimacy and importance of
private charitable organizations. With the most generous regulations of tax
exemptions on charitable contributions, the United States helps its charities,
including INGOs, and offers attractive incentives to potential donors. Finally, the
substantial volume (in both absolute and relative terms) of foreign aid channelled
through American INGOs helps account for the substantial size of these groups.
In the end, many American INGOs have been able to attract enormous amounts
of both public and private dollars, and ‘private sources of support appear compat-
ible with or even attract public support rather than crowding out public dollars’
(Reid and Kerlin 2006: 23).
In France, both private and public fundraising is much more difficult. Although
basic registration is not terribly onerous, complex legal regulation of charitable
donations makes private fundraising difficult. Although private donations account
for the majority of income for most French INGOs, these donations are hard-won.
In France, charitable donations account for only 0.32 per cent of GDP, compared
with 1.85 per cent in the United States (Salamon et al. 2004), despite regulatory
changes meant to encourage more charitable giving. The dearth of government
funds in France has pushed many French INGOs to look to supranational institu-
tions such as the European Union for funding, but EU funds still accounted for
an average of only 17 per cent of income in 2003 (CCD 2005). Fortunately, for
the INGO sector, international assistance is one of the most popular charitable
causes in France, allowing groups such as MSF and Handicap International to
National origin and transnational activism   161
grow at impressive rates. Still, MSF, the largest French INGO, is still only about
a third of the size of its American counterparts CARE and World Vision.
The Japanese state’s policies have limited the size of the Japanese INGO sector,
though changes in these policies may result in significant expansion in the future.
The greater ease of registration after the 1998 NPO law has resulted in a drastic
increase in the number of Japanese INGOs. Still, these groups remain small. The
inability of most Japanese INGOs to offer private donors tax breaks on charitable
contributions has limited the ability of INGOs to ‘carve out a strong, independent
position vis-à-vis the state and made them increasingly reliant on state funds for
growth’ (Reimann 2003: 315). However, these state funds, although increasing and
more abundant than in France, are still scarcer than in the United States.

Advocacy
A second major area of substantial variation among INGOs is in the prioritization
of and approach to advocacy. Although some major relief and development
INGOs have recently created advocacy offices, political activity by American
INGOs is quite low and is generally limited to insider strategies of negotiation
and lobbying, whereas high-profile and confrontational campaigns remain the
exception rather than the rule. In 2003, only 2 per cent of American INGOs
reported any lobbying expenditures, a rate consistent with the American non-
profit sector as a whole (Reid and Kerlin 2006: 16). Although this figure may not
capture other forms of advocacy to influence public opinion and public policy, it
remains incredibly low. Although many leading American INGOs have Washington
offices, their efforts focus on maintaining contact with donors and following
congressional activity on narrow aspects of international affairs (Lancaster 2007:
240; Stoddard 2006: 60–3). According to CARE (personal interview, CARE
staffer, April 26, 2006), a leading American INGO, it has a ‘fairly open door’ with
the US government, but it avoids overt confrontation:

Some organizations don’t share our agenda, or they don’t manage their rela-
tions with the Administration or Congress; they act in an uncomfortable man-
ner, and we’re not interested in joining with them. . . . Sometimes those
organizations can say things and do things that we can’t do – they push the
envelope. This doesn’t mean that we don’t want them to say or do those
things, but they are pushing instead of keeping the door open or not being
constructive. We don’t work that way . . . we wouldn’t be accusatory, we
wouldn’t be rude, we wouldn’t be pointing fingers. For example, in Iraq, other
CAREs wanted to use CARE International to ‘get to’ the US government, but
CARE USA didn’t want that to happen.

CARE argues that confrontational advocacy would threaten its partnership


with governments and endanger staff in the field.
In France, by contrast, INGOs adopt highly confrontational advocacy strate-
gies. The former president of MSF France, Brauman (2002: 80), has argued that
162   Sarah Stroup
the job of NGOs is to act as an ‘alarm bell’ for states and international institutions,
‘pulling them towards crisis areas and getting them to react’. From 2002 to 2005,
an average of 4 per cent of expenditures of French INGOs was devoted to public
opinion campaigns and public education (CCD 2005, 2008). Cross-national com-
parisons must be made with caution here: no figures are available for ‘lobbying’
in the American sense, and there are many French INGOs that have no public
education or advocacy programme. Still, the largest organizations spend mean-
ingful sums on campaigns and temoignage (witnessing), including, for example,
Handicap International’s campaigns against landmines and cluster bombs.
However, although French INGOs may devote more energy to advocacy, the style
of advocacy focuses more on raising awareness than on changing specific poli-
cies. According to one government-sponsored study, French INGOs are less
practiced at internationally lobbying and negotiating specific regulatory changes
than other European INGOs (Potevin 2001: 12). In general, French INGOs are
less interested in working with states to develop specific policy solutions but
rather seek to force states to take responsibility for humanitarian crises (Bryant
and Rubio 2006: 79). This confrontational approach to advocacy can create divi-
sions within an INGO’s international confederation (e.g. between the French and
American sections of MSF) (Simeant 2006).
Japanese INGOs are less confrontational than their French counterparts but
may have less influence over public policy than their American peers. Of course,
given the relative youth of many Japanese INGOs and the importance of foreign
offices of INGOs such as Plan Japan and MSF Japan, it is difficult to describe an
enduring pattern of state–INGO interaction. In addition, some of the largest
Japanese INGOs (including the Organization for Industrial, Spiritual and Cultural
Advancement [OISCA] and the Japanese Organization for International
Cooperation in Family Planning [JOICFP]) were incorporated under the authority
of various government ministries, making it difficult to speak of real independent
political action by these groups. Ultimately, Japanese INGOs seem to engage in
limited advocacy relying on insider strategies of dialogue with policy officials.
The executive director of the NGO JOICFP described the INGO’s initial advo-
cacy efforts in the early 1990s:

It was hard to involve the Japanese government in this meeting. We tried


to involve NGO people who were sensitive and not too confrontational so
the discussions would be positive. This encouraged government officials to
take a step forward for the first time.
(JCIE 2008: 1)

The small budgets of Japanese INGOs keep most organizations from hiring
professional policy staff or developing political expertise (Hirata 2002: 42). Still,
NGOs have had some success in pressuring MOFA to change particular aid proj-
ects, and some Japanese INGOs have begun to lobby Diet members on foreign
affairs issues (Hirata 2002; Lancaster 2007: 140). The above-mentioned survey
found that advocacy is receiving new attention among Japanese INGOs, with 26
National origin and transnational activism   163
Table 8.2  Variation in INGO structure and strategy

United States France Japan


Size of the Number of 4,125 ∼2,000 400
INGO sector organizations
Estimated combined 15,700 1,400 265
income (US$ million)
Approach to Approach to Cooperative Antagonistic Limited but
advocacy government growing
authorities cooperation
Prioritization of Low Medium Low
advocacy

per cent reporting some advocacy work (although advocacy is defined here as
only ‘making constructive proposals’ and excludes ‘criticism of the government’)
(JICA 2008: 12). Over its short history, cooperation in formal consultative forums
(which can involve both criticism and co-optation) has marked the INGO sector’s
approach to its government (Hirata 2002: 141).
Again, national origin sheds light on the origin of these differences (summa-
rized in Table 8.2). Legal regulations and the political opportunity structure have
discouraged advocacy work by American INGOs. The law on lobbying is strict,
and regulation of more general political activity (education and campaigning) is
vague. In addition, many groups rely on government funding, and in the United
States, ‘it is common for nonprofit executives and board members to believe that
accepting government funding legally restricts their political activity more than it
actually does’ (Chaves et al. 2004: 297). At the same time, the fragmented nature
of political authority makes it difficult to achieve broad policy change, which
lowers the payoff of very public campaigns. Equally important, the state’s open-
ness to collaboration with INGOs encourages INGOs to focus their political work
on achieving narrow policy changes in a cooperative rather than confrontational
manner (Stoddard 2006).
Legal regulations in France allow for the very public and vocal criticism of
state policy. Because state officials remain distrustful of the capacity and
importance of INGO activities, however, there is little incentive or opportunity
for cooperative work on developing specific policy changes. Although several
prominent INGO leaders, including Bernard Kouchner, have risen to powerful
positions in the state, this does not appear to have translated into significantly
greater openness to the INGO community. Laws and opportunities, as well as a
basic belief in the appropriateness of state leadership, drive French INGOs to
use their public statements to call states (both in France and elsewhere) to fulfil
their responsibilities. Importantly, however, the French case demonstrates that
it is not only state policies that determine INGO strategies. a greater number of
state–INGO consultative structures in France do not seem to have diminished
the desire among French INGOs themselves to remain independent of public
authorities.
164   Sarah Stroup
Although Japanese INGOs are young, their existence is made possible by
bureaucratic authorities with significant oversight of their affairs. As in France,
foreign policy authority is more centralized and less accessible to social groups
than in the United States, and private charitable associations lack the public
legitimacy accorded to the state. In fact, one INGO director ran a recent campaign
with funding from Oxfam, because there ‘were no possible sources of funds in
Japan for advocacy in Japan’ (JCIE 2007b). Still, the Japanese state has signalled
a greater willingness to collaborate with Japanese INGOs than its French coun-
terpart. Given this development, it is likely that as the Japanese INGO sector
grows and expands its global activities, it will attempt insider collaboration with
political authorities rather than employ public and confrontational campaigns.

Conclusion
This chapter suggests that two of the most important aspects of relief and develop-
ment INGOs – the size of their resources and their approach to advocacy – are
deeply shaped by the policies and practices of their home state. The above profiles
of American, French and Japanese INGOs speak directly to the theme of transna-
tional activism in this volume. The ability of these groups to engage in transna-
tional activism is dependent on the resources at their disposal – and some INGOs
are more numerous and larger than others. Most basically, the number and size of
American INGOs are unmatched, allowing them an extensive transnational reach,
whereas on the other end, Japanese INGOs focus on relief and development in
Asia. In addition, the ways in which INGOs engage in transnational activism are
highly determined by how these groups initially began to interact with authorities
in their domestic environments. Legal limitations on advocacy work and a porous
policy environment reward insider, cooperative strategies in the United States,
while almost the reverse holds in France. Although any participant at the World
Social Forum would recognize that there are many ways to engage in transnational
activism, an explanation is needed for why those varied practices exist. National
origin may be a powerful explanation.
The varied practices of these INGOs affect their power as transnational activ-
ists in two ways. First, at least in the relief and development sector analyzed here,
transnational activists are highly fragmented because of divergent understandings
of what advocacy does and should involve. In their analysis of leading relief and
development INGOs, Lindenberg and Bryant (2001) report that INGOs involved
in advocacy find the process of building consensus both within and among
INGOs daunting, because other groups have different approaches to advocacy,
and the final position might be bland or watered down (202–4). These divisions
impede the ability of INGOs to speak with a single voice (a fact well recognized
by practitioners themselves), perhaps reducing the power of the INGO sector as
a whole vis-à-vis state actors.
In addition, the varied practices of INGOs become sources of power for indi-
vidual organizations. In service delivery, the substantial resources of American
National origin and transnational activism   165
INGOs may make them more appealing partners for development in the field than
their French counterparts. In advocacy, INGOs are more likely to succeed when
their approach is well received by their target. One international example comes
from the World Bank: staffers express more willingness to cooperate with NGOs
that provide information and expertise; an INGO whose political repertoire con-
sists of protest strategies is, thus, unlikely to gain access to key World Bank
decision-makers (Nelson 2000). At the national level, anecdotal evidence sug-
gests that American INGOs used to quiet cooperation with governments may
have a difficult time in France, where most French INGOs engage in vocal protest
(CARE 2004). In sum, the power of any INGO in a particular context is deter-
mined, in part, by factors related to its national origin.
The focus of this analysis has been the relationship between INGOs and their
environments. This approach echoes sociological investigations of social move-
ments, in which it has been widely recognized that external resources and
political opportunities shape the strategies and ultimate success of social move-
ment actors (McAdam et al. 2001). Although the global civil society literature
posits that globalization has opened up an entirely new set of international
opportunities, it has yet to be proven that such a global environment is now the
primary point of reference for internationally active groups. the international
environment may expand the range of strategic choices for INGOs but national
governments remain the targets of transnational activists (Tarrow 2005). The
ability of INGOs to change these state policies depends on being well received
in these domestic political arenas. Outside the home country – including both in
the ‘field’ where services are being delivered and in other developed countries
– an INGO’s strategies may not fit the expectations and practices of local actors.
Of course, there are a few limitations to the above analysis. First, the available
data on INGOs may not capture many of the smaller and more radical organiza-
tions, particularly in Japan and France where the data are gathered by umbrella
groups conducting surveys of member organizations. Because many of these
more radical groups also tend to be less formal in their organizational structure,
it is hard to know what is being left out of the above analysis. Ultimately, we need
much more information about both individual organizations and entire sectors
within the INGO community.
In addition, the organizational practices of any single INGO are shaped by a
variety of factors, including individual leaders, international opportunities and
the issue area in which the INGO works. National origin needs to be added to
this list as an important and enduring influence on organizational practice, but
the short profiles here are perhaps overly static. States change their policies
towards the charitable sector, sometimes mimicking other states (as the case of
Japan often illustrates), and INGOs occasionally adopt the practices of other
organizations (as can be seen in the current enthusiasm for advocacy throughout
Western INGOs). Further research is needed to understand how national origin
interacts with these other variables to produce such substantial diversity within
the INGO community.
166   Sarah Stroup
Notes
  1 The approach of Cooley and Ron (2002) emphasizes materialist factors; sociological
institutionalism not only incorporates these factors (as coercive mechanisms) but also
examines the role of social norms. This chapter focuses on materialist factors, but
domestic normative pressures are also important in shaping INGO practices.
  2 The popular boomerang model (Keck and Sikkink 1998), for example, has generated
many studies that examine how local political structures affect transnational coalitions,
but the focus of this work is on local politics in the developing world rather than in the
developed countries where the world’s leading INGOs were initially formed and from
where they continue to operate.
  3 In a ranking of countries based on the number of INGO headquarters, the United States
is first and France is fourth. See UIA, ‘Figure 2.1.8 (c) Geographic distribution’,
Yearbook of International Organizations 2003: column I.
  4 For INGO case studies across different issue areas, see Stroup 2008.
  5 For example, Andrew Natsios’ 2003 comment to the INGO community set of a firestorm
of indignation. Andrew Natsios, Closing Remarks, InterAction Forum Closing Plenary
Session, May 21, 2003 (available at www.usaid.gov, accessed January 14, 2010).
  6 Although these exemptions can only be claimed by those who itemize their tax returns
(approximately 30 per cent of the population), non-itemizers give at levels often excee-
ding those of the very wealthy (Congressional Budget Office [CBO] 2002).
  7 These figures include spending through for-profit contractors, which are included in the
category of ‘private voluntary organizations’ used by USAID. The term ‘aid’ here is
shorthand for ODA.
  8 The major consultative structures include the Commission Coopération Développement
(created in 1983), and the Haut Counseil de la Coopération Internationale (1999). In July
2001, a non-binding Charter was signed between the state and representatives of civil
society in which the state pledged to increase its financial support, promote charitable
giving and allow for greater participation by NGOs in the policy-making process. A 2008
OECD review of French aid reports that French officials aim to double the share of ODA
channeled through NGOs (from 1 per cent to 2 per cent) (OECD 2008: 46).
  9 Within the CARE International (CI) confederation, for example, only three national
offices actually run field programmes, and CARE USA accounted for more than 80 per
cent of all CI revenue in 2004. MSF International is a less cohesive confederation –
Johanna Simeant suggests treating MSF France and MSF Belgium as different
INGOs – but MSF France still retains the international leadership role within MSF
International.
10 This number is only for international development and assistance organizations (not
cultural or academic groups). This category does include some types of organizations
(such as human rights groups) that may not be counted in the French or Japanese sur-
veys, although this is difficult to assess because JANIC and CCD do not list respon-
dents. The two narrow categories of ‘international relief’ and ‘general assistance’
organizations from the Urban Institute report include 2,066 organizations with a com-
bined income of US$9.2 billion (Reid and Kerlin 2006: 8).

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Development in Practice, 10: 478–90.
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print of the Development Assistance Committee Journal, 1.
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Development Assistance Committee Peer Review.
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Ott, J.S. (2001) The Nature of the Nonprofit Sector, Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Pekkanen, R. (2006) Japan’s Dual Civil Society: Members without Advocates, Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press.
Potevin, N. (2001) International Solidarity Organisations and Public Authorities in
Europe, Paris: Ministère des Affaires Étrangères.
Reid, E. and Kerlin, J. (2006) The International Charitable Nonprofit Sector in the United
States, Washington DC: The Urban Institute.
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International Development NGOs, the State, and International Norms’, in F.J. Schwartz
National origin and transnational activism   169
and S.J. Pharr (eds), The State of Civil Society in Japan, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press: 298–315.
Salamon, L. (2002) (ed.) The State of Nonprofit America, Washington, DC: Brookings
Institution.
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Bloomfield, KY: Kumarian.
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without Borders’, Review of International Political Economy, 12: 851–83.
Stoddard, A. (2006) Humanitarian Alert: NGO Information and Its Impact on US Foreign
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H. Anheier, R. List and S.W. Sokolowski (eds) Global Civil Society: Dimensions of the
Nonprofit Sector, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies.
Part III

Representation and
discourse
9 The representational power of
civil society organizations in
global AIDS governance
Advocating for children in global
health politics
Anna Holzscheiter
Introduction
The ever-increasing influence of civil society organizations (CSOs) in the very
formulation of global standards and public policies, rather than only their role as
contesters, promoters or implementers of global norms, stands out as one of the
most remarkable features of the changing nature of global politics in the early
twenty-first century.1 In this chapter, I will discuss one particular facet of the pri-
vate authority embodied by CSOs in international politics (Cutler et al. 1999; Hall
and Biersteker 2002; Knill and Lehmkuhl 2002; Ruggie 2004): representational
power. Although new structures of global governance involving private actors (not
for profit and for profit) have come under particular scrutiny in terms of their
legitimacy and accountability, the critical exploration of representational power is
often neglected. Therefore, I focus on the politics of representation and the critical
role that CSOs occupy in the representation of the interests and fates of vulnerable
and weak population groups. As I will argue, it is particularly population groups
whose status as fully fledged citizens is questioned – such as children – that see
their interests, needs and rights in many cases being misrepresented in advocacy
practices of globally operating CSOs (Hahn and Holzscheiter 2005).
CSOs – particularly those whose activities can be subsumed under the broad
umbrella term ‘advocacy’ – must be considered the class of private actors in
global governance that is most directly involved in representational practices of
disenfranchised population groups. By discussing the consequences of CSOs’
representational practices in a particularly intense terrain of global governance –
HIV/AIDS control – and a particularly critical group of subjects being commonly
targeted in advocacy efforts – children – this chapter will illustrate the benefits as
well as the dangers of representation through CSOs. In a first step, I will argue
that CSOs are taken to be the main source for closing representational gaps in
global governance. Rather than showing how and when they close this gap, I will
discuss the problematic nature of representation and, as a consequence, argue that
representational functions entail a power that is easily abused with detrimental
effects on the constituency on whose behalf CSOs are acting.2 It is claimed here
that the relationship between CSOs and other institutions in global health
governance (GHG) can both enhance and undermine public accountability and
174   Anna Holzscheiter
representative democracy in global public policy-making. Studies on the delib-
erative potential of global governance have sought to demonstrate that more civil
society means fairer representation of interest and a greater level of democracy
(see e.g. Ellis 2002; Payne and Samhat 2004). Broadly speaking, these studies
depart from a state-centric perspective and, as such, value any kind of civil soci-
ety involvement in intergovernmental affairs as a significant step towards greater
inclusivity and accountability. In contrast, this chapter shares the critical focus on
the public legitimacy of CSOs evident in many contemporary debates on the
democratic nature of global civil society (see e.g. Cullen and Morrow 2001; Piper
and Uhlin 2004). It will be shown that in global public policy-making, it is often
a few powerful CSOs that participate in a multiplicity of different governance
frameworks. As such, on closer inspection, the diversification of interests and
perspectives through CSOs turns out as largely illusory.
In a second step, this chapter will consider the particular case of children
affected by HIV/AIDS and advance the claim that they are an especially interest-
ing and, at the same time, problematic case in terms of representation of interests
and fates through third parties in global governance. Out of the estimated 2.5
million persons newly infected with HIV in 2007, 420,000 were children below
the age of 15 years (i.e. 16 per cent).3 If one applies the global definition of child-
hood as the age span up to 18 years, thereby including the high-risk group of
adolescents between the age of 15 and 18 years, these numbers multiply. Thus,
children and adolescents constitute a large group of those affected most strongly
by the epidemic.
In this chapter, children will be defined as all persons up to the age of 18 years,
the common definition that has been enshrined in the 1989 UN Convention on the
Rights of the Child (CRC). The traditional perception of children in international
politics and law has been determined by their immaturity, dependence and vulner-
ability, placing the responsibility for the well-being of children predominantly in
the hands of adults (Holzscheiter 2010). However, with the CRC, the status of the
child in international law was profoundly transformed. The CRC stipulates that
every child has the right to participate in any decisions that affect his or her life
(Article 12). Children, thus, are no longer solely portrayed as the beneficiaries of
adult charity and care but seen as social agents who are (according to their evolv-
ing capacities) able to voice their interests and opinions in matters that are of
direct relevance to their lives. Despite the ‘participatory turn’ that has inspired
governmental and non-governmental policies towards children since 1989, for
many children and especially those living on the margins of their societies (street
children, orphans, internally displaced children, unaccompanied refugees or, in
fact, children living with or affected by HIV/AIDS), the right to be seen as an
active social agent rather than a passive victim remains an illusion. As I will argue
below, the current ambiguity in representational practices of global CSOs – oscil-
lating between promoting empowerment and rights-based approaches (RBAs) on
the one hand and perpetuating global discourses on victimization and suffering on
the other hand – adds to the neglect of children’s agency through meaningful
participation in policy-making processes that affect them directly.
The representational power of civil society organizations   175
This chapter makes a case for the need to link the participatory principles of
the CRC (a human rights treaty that enjoys near universal ratification4) with
greater visibility and input of children into CSOs’ programmes and policies.
However, it does neither claim that children of any age should automatically be
considered fully capable to voice their interests nor that any decision-making
process on behalf of children’s well-being must necessarily be accompanied by
children’s input. However, in cases in which CSOs portray themselves as legiti-
mate representatives of children’s interests and see this representational function
as their primary raison d’être, I argue that the mechanisms and philosophies
through which they remain accountable towards this group of persons should be
carefully scrutinized.
Providing evidence on how CSOs participate in the global governance of HIV/
AIDS, I will present two findings that are at odds with a full realization of the
participatory principle of the CRC. First, even in child-related programme and
policy areas, those who are endowed with representational authority are fre-
quently neither child-specific agencies nor agencies actively promoting participa-
tion of children or direct accountability towards children. Second, within those
child-specific global CSOs operating in the field of HIV/AIDS, the popularity of
traditional discourses on vulnerability, victimhood and ‘salvation’ sits uncomfort-
ably with more progressive perspectives on children as social agents. These
CSOs’ need to portray themselves as legitimate representatives of marginalized,
mute and suffering groups, thus, stands in stark contrast to the accountability
mechanisms and emancipatory norms they promote. Evidently, the dynamics of
representational power described in this chapter do not automatically apply to any
CSO that contributes in one form or another to GHG. The organizations discussed
in this chapter are mainly very large, established advocacy non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) with very dispersed and heterogeneous constituencies. As
such, challenges towards a balanced representation of interests are much greater,
and the potential to abuse representational power much higher than for smaller,
more grassroots-oriented actors.
This chapter will develop its argument in three steps: first, I will discuss the
relevance of CSOs’ representational power from a general point of view, high-
lighting the main facets of such an understanding of power. Second, I will briefly
locate CSOs’ advocacy activities within the vast landscape of global AIDS gov-
ernance, looking specifically at their efforts to advocate for children affected by
the epidemic. In a final step, this chapter will apply the concept of representa-
tional power to the activities of five influential CSOs that claim to represent
children’s interests in global AIDS governance, discussing both who represents
children and how their views are being represented.

Representational power in global governance


Many CSOs represent interests, ideas and people that would otherwise be
excluded from policy-making processes. This has bolstered CSOs’ legitimacy and
authority in global governance (Florini 2000; Payne and Samhat 2004; Price
176   Anna Holzscheiter
1998; Scholte 2004). According to Anderson and Rieff (2004: 28), the standard
portrayal of global civil society is one in which CSOs ‘come together to advocate
for the peoples of the world, those who would otherwise have no voice’. However,
it is also here in the anarchical terrain of civil society that the link between those
recognized as representatives and those whose interests and fates are being rep-
resented is least regulated, that is, does not, in many cases, depend on a public
mandate or on peoples’ consent to be spoken for by others. It is in this regard that,
more recently, the sources of authority and legitimacy of CSOs have come to be
scrutinized more closely, as have the mechanisms with which they aim to ensure
the most direct accountability to their constituencies or ‘policy takers’ (Doyle and
Patel 2008; Scholte 2004). Accountability, in this regard, relates to the process of
‘giving an account to’ (Bartsch 2007) those directly affected by an organization’s
activities.
More often than not, CSOs are in a competitive relationship with their peers.
In many cases, competition results from a battle to secure funding in overcrowded
areas of advocacy and assistance. However, these competitive pressures to dem-
onstrate excellence and exceptionality also drive a contest for legitimacy among
CSOs. Because legitimacy is often derived from the claim to rightfully represent
specific interests and fates of others (Ottaway 2001; van Driel and van Haren
2003), it is possible to speak of a ‘power politics of representation’ characterizing
the CSO world. Representational power must be considered to be among the
primary sources of influence and authority of CSOs in global governance.
Representation is inherent in three of the most important sources of authority that
have bolstered CSOs’ influence in world politics: knowledge, moral reputation
and public outreach. CSOs acquire, disseminate and represent specific knowledge
through research, often firsthand knowledge of the particular situation of specific
population groups. Consequently, they act as epistemic entrepreneurs (Adler and
Bernstein 2005), picturing the realities, needs and interests of those who are
(taken to be) unable to participate directly in global governance structures.
However, the more CSOs become globalized and part of global governance struc-
tures, the greater the challenge to ‘remain accountable to a disperse membership’
(Anheier and Themudo 2002) and to reconcile global discourses and policies with
heterogeneous life experiences and realities. Although the epistemic legitimacy
of CSOs within global governance institutions is accredited precisely on the
grounds that the knowledge they provide seems impartial and integer vis-à-vis
other global actors, those assessing legitimacy and credibility (i.e. international
institutions, other global actors and global publics) are often detached from local
contexts and the policy takers of programmes. The representation of evidence,
thus, might be eschewed by the fact that the credibility of ‘facts’ is measured
on the basis of globally promoted norms rather than accurate portrayals of the
constituencies’ realities.
CSOs’ outreach to publics around the globe and their possibilities to make
policy-making processes more transparent and policy makers more accountable
to their electorate also lends authority and legitimacy to CSOs as entrepreneurs
of a ‘public morale’ and as defenders of the public interest. They ‘reinforce the
The representational power of civil society organizations   177
public interest roles of states and balance the growing influence of markets’
(Loewenson 2003: 5). However, the important mediating role that CSOs occupy
in feeding global policy-making processes into public discourse and vice versa
also implies that they face critical choices on whose opinion/ideas to represent,
thereby making the world of CSOs much more contentious and heterogeneous as
many authors suggest (Doyle and Patel 2008: 1932). Thus, the desire to create a
global civil society as a diversified and contentious public space goes hand in
hand with the virtual impossibility of representing universal values. More impor-
tantly, although most advocacy CSOs participating in global governance see their
primary role in portraying and defending the rights and fates of poor, marginal-
ized or prosecuted people within international institutions, the mechanisms of
accountability through which they ensure that important decisions are communi-
cated back to the people affected by them are very weakly developed (Anderson
and Rieff 2004).
The organizational design of globally operating CSOs adds, in many cases, to
the problem of inadequate representation of the interests and fates of dispersed
and culturally heterogeneous constituencies. Although many CSOs have bene-
fited from a growing specialization, bureaucratization and professionalism vis-à-
vis those with whom they cooperate transnationally, this ‘NGOization’ of civil
society renders them, at the same time, less democratic, participatory and delib-
erative internally (Alvarez 2000; Schmitz 2004). It is particularly in the field of
global health (and, therefore, also in HIV/AIDS) that the most direct representa-
tion of children’s interests and fates takes place through the incorporation of
highly technical, biomedical CSOs such as the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS
Foundation or medical professional organizations such as the International
Pediatric Association. The scientific excellence of such organizations certainly
lends them strong authority. However, these predominantly medical organizations
rarely reflect broader global norms regarding enhanced possibilities for participa-
tion of children and adolescents (i.e. in the design of research and projects), the
right to informed consent (i.e. in testing and counselling) or the right to informa-
tion. Again, I do not argue that children must necessarily be involved in these
CSOs’ activities. However, the fact that (a) the philosophies of most organiza-
tions involved in global governance of paediatric HIV/AIDS do not reflect impor-
tant international legal principles regarding the status of the child as progressively
capable to be involved in decisions affecting his or her life and that, as a conse-
quence, (b) they do not provide for particular mechanisms to ensure downward
accountability towards children, must be seen as a troubling diagnosis when con-
sidering these CSOs’ representational authority.
Following from this increasing detachment of CSOs from their policy takers at
the receiving end of global public policy-making, they have to face the criticism
of forming a new ‘transnational elite’ or even a new type of ‘global corporatism’
(Ottaway 2001) in which the ‘chain of accountability and chain of delegation
between transnational elites and the public is much weaker’ than in national con-
texts (Benz and Papadopoulos 2003: 7). With regard to the issue of representation,
thus, we must not only ask how CSOs, in fact, contribute to a better, more balanced
178   Anna Holzscheiter
and more visible representation of population groups, individuals and issues that
are weakly reflected in public policy-making but also need to critically observe
their power to represent those in whose favour CSOs speak and act.5 As such, the
transmission belt between a supposed, distant constituency and the legitimate
defence of the public interests of these ‘would-be-principals’ moves to the centre
of investigation of CSOs’ authority in global governance (Keohane 2005: 126).
It seems that such issues become even more salient, and potentially more com-
plicated, in light of the current proliferation of multi-stakeholder initiatives
(MSIs) and public–private partnerships (PPPs). Where CSOs are incorporated
into larger transnational governance structures, that is, PPPs or MSIs, the balanc-
ing act between CSO accountability towards their governance partners (i.e. fund-
ing agencies, governmental actors and responsibilities defined by the institutional
structures) and their accountability towards policy takers becomes more difficult.
It is here that different responsibilities or accountabilities of CSOs – towards their
institutional principal (donor, government), towards their peers operating in the
same field and towards their would-be-principal (those policy takers whose inter-
ests are represented but who are not directly involved in policy-making) – may
eventually conflict with each other (Lloyd 2005: 3). It is particularly the down-
ward dimension of accountability that seems, in many cases, neglected, and as
will be argued below, this issue is even more pressing in cases in which the con-
stituency is in a weak position regarding possibilities to voice consent or dissent
with CSOs’ actions and agendas.

The global governance of AIDS


Ever since the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) was discovered and started
to spread rapidly, CSOs have been at the forefront of human rights advocacy and
public awareness-raising activities with regard to the situation of those directly or
indirectly affected (Loewenson 2003). Today, CSOs are commonly considered to
be the primary driving force behind a shift in public discourses on HIV/AIDS,
from strictly medical solutions and interventions to broader approaches that seek
to include the social, political and economic dimensions of HIV/AIDS in public
policy-making and the rights to health of the millions of people affected by the
virus (Gordenker 1995; Jönsson and Söderholm 1995).
In the contemporary landscape of GHG, HIV/AIDS figures as a key issue, with
massive funds being invested in global frameworks, institutions and programmes
to combat the spread of HIV, assist those affected by it and provide access to anti-
retroviral drugs (ARVs). Foreign policy agendas and the priorities of donor fund-
ing and global health institutions confirm this trend, with funding for HIV/AIDS
far outweighing donor priorities for other communicable diseases with a similar
burden of disease such as acute respiratory infections (Congressional Research
Service 2004; Ollila 2005; Shiffman 2006). These massive flows of money have
also greatly boosted the number and scope of CSOs in HIV/AIDS – with power-
ful agencies such as the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief
(PEPFAR) or the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM)
The representational power of civil society organizations   179
re-directing financial flows to CSOs and emphasising their critical role in the
implementation of national AIDS programmes.6 In 2006 CSOs constituted the
largest percentage of PEPFAR implementation partners (33 per cent in 2006)
(PEPFAR 2006). Thirty per cent of the GFATM funding is budgeted for CSO
expenditure (GFATM 2007). Considering the exponential growth of civil society
activities in the field of HIV/AIDS, it is difficult to give a comprehensive account
of the forms and functions that CSOs have assumed with regard to advocacy,
awareness raising, research, capacity building or public education. Therefore, the
following discussion will limit itself to a core set of prominent CSOs targeting
children affected by HIV/AIDS – particularly those who are involved in multiple
interactions with governmental and intergovernmental actors at the global level.

CSOs’ role in safeguarding the well-being of children affected by


HIV/AIDS
The inclusion of CSOs – particularly those composed of people living with HIV
and AIDS (PLWHA) – in global and local policy-making with regard to HIV/
AIDS has come to be seen as a central dimension in enhancing both the demo-
cratic quality of policy design and implementation and reducing the accountabil-
ity gap between global policy makers and local policy takers (Benz and
Papadopoulos 2003; Kaul 2001; Keohane 2005). Efforts to ensure equal represen-
tation of and assistance to affected persons and groups in the public health sector
were strengthened for the first time with the 1978 Alma Ata declaration whose
central principles continue to be an influential driving force behind the realization
of the right to health for everyone to the present day.7 One of the core Alma Ata
principles, the principle of ‘equity’, stipulates that health care systems should aim
to pay particular attention to socially and economically marginalized groups such
as, among many others, children. However, after years of sustained global and
local efforts to combat HIV/AIDS and assist those living with or affected by HIV/
AIDS, the situation of children still stands out as particularly dramatic. Globally,
only one out of ten children needing ARV treatment receives it, and merely 4 per
cent of children born to HIV-infected mothers are given prophylactic treatment to
prevent opportunistic infections that can be fatal (Who et al. 2007: 3). Only 9
per cent of HIV-positive pregnant women in developing countries received ARV-
prophylaxis for prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) in 2005
(WHO et al. 2007: 6–7). The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS
(UNAIDS) estimates that less than 10 per cent of children who have lost one or
both parents because of HIV/AIDS receive public support or services (UNAIDS
2005: 2).
CSOs have been a major driving force behind an increasing tendency to
acknowledge the particular needs of children and adolescents affected by HIV/
AIDS. CSOs’ engagement has been particularly strong in terms of the delivery of
drugs to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV, better access to ARV treat-
ment and care for orphaned children, child and youth friendly sexual and repro-
ductive health services and HIV education, research and development for
180   Anna Holzscheiter
paediatric drug formulations and better human resources catering to the special
needs of children. At present, CSOs are involved in all intergovernmental struc-
tures of GHG with regard to HIV/AIDS. They are an active and large group
within the structures of UNAIDS that hosts a wide variety of civil society actors,
from groups of PLWHA to HIV/AIDS service organizations, youth organizations
and scientific and academic organizations.8 Five regional CSOs form part of the
Programme Coordination Board of UNAIDS, representing civil society and
people affected by HIV/AIDS from different parts of the world. Apart from their
formal inclusion in the UNAIDS governance framework, numerous CSOs are
involved in programme development and implementation guided by UNAIDS.
CSOs advocating for children’s well-being and their right to the highest standard
of health collaborate in newer horizontal transnational frameworks for coopera-
tion. They are, in some form or another, part of MSIs or PPPs.9 Among the largest
global PPPs that also reach out to children affected by HIV/AIDS is the GFATM
– here, CSOs representing PLWHA are involved in the executive board (transna-
tional level)10 and many child-specific CSOs act as collaborators or even princi-
pal recipients of national country-coordinating mechanisms (CCMs).11
The indispensable contribution of CSOs to global HIV/AIDS governance
described above has, in recent years, also provoked a heightened sense of aware-
ness for the specific needs and rights of children affected by HIV/AIDS among
policy makers. One of the most visible outcomes of sustained multi-actor efforts
to advocate for enhanced attention to the situation of children affected by HIV/
AIDS is the 2004 Framework for the Protection, Care and Support of Orphans
and Vulnerable Children Living in a World with HIV/AIDS, outlining standards
that have been developed with the input of various child-focused CSOs.12 The
rights and principles enshrined in this framework have also been integrated into
the broader 2006 International Guidelines on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights
(UNAIDS and OHCHR 2006), in which the particular human rights of children
affected by HIV/AIDS are laid out in detail. On the basis of the comprehensive
human rights catalogue for children in the UN CRC, global standards such as the
2004 Framework and the 2006 International Guidelines are critical in safeguard-
ing the rights of children affected by HIV/AIDS to access essential services such
as education, healthcare, birth registration or juridical protection. Such standards
aim at ensuring that all public and private responses to the HIV epidemic take into
account the particular needs and circumstances of vulnerable children. Although
such standards call particularly on third parties to move the situation of children
higher up on their agendas, they also consistently advocate for greater visibility,
participatory rights and empowerment of children and young people.

Who represents children affected by HIV/AIDS?


The present section will discuss representational practices as one particular
dimension of CSOs authority and legitimacy by giving concrete examples of who
is representing children in GHG and how children are represented. The findings
presented below are based on an analysis of policy documents issued by a sample
The representational power of civil society organizations   181
of globally operating CSOs working with and for children affected by HIV/AIDS.
The sample comprises CSOs involved in two different types of global governance
arrangements: first, it looks at those CSOs involved in two of the most prominent
PPPs that (among other things) target children affected by HIV/AIDS – the
GFATM and the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health. Second,
the sample includes a number of partnering CSOs that are involved in the Unite
for Children, Unite against AIDS campaign, considering that this is the most
comprehensive global multi-stakeholder initiative in this field so far.13 The cam-
paign was launched in 2005 and includes a whole range of CSOs – it is envisaged
as a platform for child-focused advocacy on global AIDS issues.
The examples for representational practices given below are primarily drawn
from information provided by four of the largest child-focused CSOs who operate
across all three of the governance frameworks analyzed – Cooperative for
Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE), PLAN, World Vision and Save the
Children – plus the International HIV/AIDS Alliance that is an important CSO
within the Global Fund and has special programmes for children. Analysis of the
advocacy principles of these five CSOs has focused on the extent to which they
have (a) incorporated the participatory principles of the CRC, those contained in
the 2004 Framework for the protection of orphans and vulnerable children (OVC)
or in the 2006 International Guidelines in their organizational philosophies, pro-
gramme design or advocacy activities related to HIV/AIDS; (b) the strategies with
which these CSOs aim to ensure downward accountability towards children and
(c) the ways in which they portray children affected by HIV/AIDS globally. The
analysis will conclude that, in many cases, the representational discourses chosen
for portraying children affected by HIV/AIDS stand in an awkward contrast to the
strategies for providing more direct, participatory accountability mechanisms to
children promoted by these organizations. The discursive dimension of representa-
tion, thus, negatively interferes with the more technical dimensions of ensuring
that representation is coupled with downward accountability.
Concerning the paramount role of CSOs in the representation of the interests of
third parties, the case of children seems to be of particular relevance, because the
articulation of their best interests and rights depends in many cases on third (adult)
parties – ideally not only the child’s natural parents but also other family members,
caretakers, social workers, legal representatives or the ‘state’.14 Many CSOs work-
ing in the field of HIV/AIDS claim to take responsibility for upholding the vital
interests of children in their struggle to combat HIV/AIDS, particularly of those
children who live outside their family environment (Cantwell and Holzscheiter
2008) and, thus, run even greater danger of rights infringements and reduction of
life opportunities.15 As Médecins sans Frontières, for example, states: ‘With no
voice to represent them, children are the silent victims of the HIV/AIDS pan-
demic’.16 However, looking more closely at who typically represents children’s
voices in global HIV/AIDS governance and how individual CSOs understand their
representational role, it becomes obvious that in many cases in which children’s
vital interests are at stake, those representing the lifeworld of children are not
accustomed with global norms related to child protection and children’s rights.
182   Anna Holzscheiter
When looking at the larger MSIs in the field of HIV/AIDS in which CSOs are
involved and which cover child-specific programmes and policies, it becomes
obvious that those CSOs involved in standard-setting or policy-making activities
are in most cases not specialized in advocacy for children. In the Partnership for
Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, only a fraction of the numerous CSOs
involved are child-related organizations with an outspoken commitment towards
children’s human rights and participation. Among its 189 members, there are only
18 CSOs that do advocacy for children’s rights and even less that work in the field
of HIV/AIDS.17 Even though the Global Fund lists several CSOs working spe-
cifically for children (CARE, World Vision, Population Council and International
HIV/AIDS Alliance) as principal recipients for its funds, a review of the involve-
ment of PLWHA in the fund’s country-coordination mechanisms reveals that the
specificity of children’s interests and how they are represented within the larger
group of PLWHA is completely ignored (Global Network of People Living with
HIV/AIDS 2003). Considering the large number of children who are living
or otherwise affected by HIV/AIDS, the fact that they are not recognized as a
distinct sub-group of PLWHA is a disquieting finding (2003).
Although children are generally perceived to be particularly helpless in the face
of HIV/AIDS, the lack of consistent rights-informed approaches adopted by all
CSOs working for children in this field implies that their active human rights as
‘almost citizens’ are in many cases ignored. Certain advocacy CSOs – most promi-
nently the Save the Children Alliance – continue to promote RBAs in all policies and
programmes targeting children affected by HIV/AIDS, admonishing that discourses
of rights are largely missing from the picture. However, the policy frameworks pro-
moted by CSOs in the field of paediatric HIV/AIDS evidence that the dominating
discourses in the field still eschew relationships of accountability and foster no more
than symbolic forms of representation between CSOs and the children they advocate
for. It is particularly the dominance of technical–biomedical organizations and dis-
courses in the field of paediatric HIV/AIDS as well as the pervasive terminology of
rescue and victimhood, which facilitate CSOs’ representational authority in global
governance. At the same time, these discourses on children’s vulnerability stand in
stark contrast to advocacy CSOs’ efforts at ensuring more direct representation and
meaningful involvement of these ‘silently suffering’ policy takers. In most cases,
where there is reference to children’s rights with regard to HIV/AIDS, the rights
mentioned mainly relate to the right to the best possible standard of health and well-
being or the right to care, love and affection (particularly by families and parents).
The Unite for Children, Unite against AIDS campaign, for example, defines the
human rights of children as, basically, the right to care, love and affection of their
parents, of their teachers and other role models, to education and options for the
future and to protection against exploitation and abuse’ (Who et al. 2007: 4).
The campaign is also a good example of the neglect of a participatory frame-
work in global HIV/AIDS policies targeting children. It promotes the incorpora-
tion of four urgent imperatives in all efforts to alleviate the situation of children
affected by HIV/AIDS: PMTCT, provide paediatric treatment, prevent infection
among adolescents and young people and protect and support children affected
The representational power of civil society organizations   183
by HIV/AIDS (Who et al. 2007: 5). Given the international legal background of
Article 12 of the CRC, it is striking that the fourth principle does not include a
more emancipatory dimension such as ‘protect, support and empower children’.
Although CARE is implementing RBAs in general, it has specific guidelines
neither on RBAs for children nor on RBAs in HIV/AIDS, one of its primary fields
of advocacy and assistance. PLAN, however, has adopted a new rights-based
policy towards children affected by HIV/AIDS in 2006 (‘Circle of Hope’). The
policy strongly advocates for participatory approaches towards children affected
by HIV/AIDS, even though it contains no reference to the principles of the CRC.
It stipulates that children must have the ‘right to be heard when priorities and tar-
gets for AIDS programmes are defined’ (PLAN 2006: 20). PLAN’s efforts to
provide better channels of accountability to children have been laid down in their
2006 framework ‘Creating a Climate for Innovation’ in which the organization
strongly promotes children’s participation in its monitoring and evaluation efforts.
This is a rare example of an advocacy CSO’s reflection on its own accountability,
that is, through measures that should ensure children’s rights to be informed about
the organization’s activities or to be involved in situation assessment activities.
However, despite the existence of such innovative frameworks, the influence
of both the principles of the CRC and those contained in the 2004 Framework for
the Protection, Care and Support of OVC and the 2006 International Guidelines
remains limited, as is evidenced by the absence of any reference to these three
core policy documents in the philosophies and policies of the organizations
reviewed for this chapter. It is certainly no coincidence that most policy frame-
works for how to target children affected by HIV/AIDS focus, before all, on the
protective imperatives for projects – although emancipatory principles are com-
monly mentioned at the end of a long list of standards. Although the principles of
the CRC are consolidated guiding norms in other programming areas (such as
child labour or education), the scarcity of specific rights-based frameworks for
advocacy in the field of HIV/AIDS implies that the child affected by HIV/AIDS
continues to be treated as a suffering victim of injustice and as a needy recipient
of beneficial medical interventions and social services rather than as a potential
stakeholder vis-à-vis whom CSOs operating in this field should be accountable.

How are children affected by HIV/AIDS represented?


Concerning the question of how children are represented through CSOs in GHG,
it seems that HIV/AIDS is an issue area where portrayals of children as innocent
suffering victims are particularly widespread and where discourses on vulnerabil-
ity and risk are the prominent framework in which the cause of children affected
by HIV/AIDS is put. Although it is impossible to deny the devastating impact of
HIV/AIDS on the life opportunities of millions of children around the world, it is
still remarkable that most CSOs’ activities on behalf of children focus on the fate
of those children orphaned by the epidemic. This also applies to the five major
CSOs chosen as an illustrative sample here (CARE, World Vision, PLAN, Save
the Children and the International HIV/AIDS Alliance).18 By its very nature,
184   Anna Holzscheiter
advocacy has always centred on the most weak and vulnerable members of
society – however, it is frequently claimed that the focus on orphans neglects the
all-pervasive effects of the epidemic on the vast number of children living in
poverty in general (Meintjes and Giese 2006). Representational practices targeted
towards those discursive frames most conducive to attract the attention of global
policy makers and publics – such as the powerful image of the AIDS orphan –
thus come at the expense of excluding the large group of children equally threat-
ened or affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Meintjes and Giese (2006: 408)
uphold that the realities of children orphaned by the epidemic are, in many cases,
misrepresented and distorted by global CSOs, precisely because the rhetoric of
vulnerability, isolation and bleak futures are promising in terms of funding and
positive resonance with other stakeholders and the public at large. Advocacy for
child protection has always been accompanied by forceful media campaigns tar-
geting public sentiment with pictures of crying, dirty and abandoned children.
This imaginary seems to be particularly compelling with regard to the AIDS
orphan, and CSOs all too easily adopt these frames for discursive representation
to evoke public interest in their activities. By focusing on the particularly exposed
situation of the ‘AIDS orphan’, CSOs, therefore, strongly contribute to these
dominant discourses on vulnerability and isolation. Such discourses are then used
to support and legitimize the indispensable role of advocacy CSOs in acting on
behalf of these children.
What is most striking in this regard is the way in which most organizations,
mentioned earlier (except for Save the Children), define their practical approach
towards greater involvement of children. The organizational philosophies of the
child-focused CSOs that constitute the sample for this analysis make explicit refer-
ence to the need for giving children opportunities to voice their concerns or to be
involved in decisions that affect them directly – however, the child’s right to par-
ticipate is often confounded with the child’s right ‘to be listened to’, that is, for
adults to note down individual children’s perceptions and ideas without, however,
seeing their informants as an active constituency that should be involved in pro-
gramme design and informed about critical (policy) decisions.19 Strategies and
mechanisms to ensure that the results of CSOs’ representational advocacy on the
global level – that is specific policies, programmes and actions developed by global
governance institutions in this field – are fed back to the children targeted by the
CSOs’ programmes are non-existent (downward accountability) (International
HIV/AIDS Alliance 2002). A recent document by CARE on how to ensure mutual
accountability in aid relationships is utterly silent on how to integrate children as a
particularly difficult group into relationships of accountability between donors (i.e.
the organization itself) and partner country citizens (CARE 2008). The 151-page
Operations Manual on Children’s Participation in Consultations issued by the
Inter-Agency Working Group on Children’s Participation (2007) of which PLAN,
CARE and Save the Children are members contains an excessive number of forms,
safety and child protection measures and meticulous instructions on how to select
appropriate candidates. Where it informs child participants on ‘what you can
expect’ from their participation, child participants learn that their opinions, ideas
The representational power of civil society organizations   185
and experiences will be listened to and respected – however, the document does not
stipulate that children should be informed about the outcome of the consultation and
its wider implications (Inter-Agency Working Group on Children’s Participation
2007: 42). The International HIV/AIDS Alliance’s Strategic Framework 2008–10
frames participation primarily as the need to ‘hear and respect the voices of children
and young people, particularly those most vulnerable to HIV’ (International HIV/
AIDS Alliance 2007). Whenever broader advocacy principles such as RBAs or more
direct forms of participation such as involvement of PLWHA or citizens in policy-
making processes are mentioned, however, children are not singled out as a particu-
larly critical group.
Incorporating participatory principles into HIV/AIDS programming is an
important step towards a more accurate representation of children’s knowledge,
perceptions and interests vis-à-vis global policy-making institutions. However,
despite current efforts to ensure downward accountability to difficult groups of
policy takers such as children, the imperative to listen to children’s voices pro-
moted by advocacy CSOs is not matched by a reverse mechanism through which
these organizations’ representative practices within global forums and institutions
are communicated back to the children concerned.

Conclusion
Claims for justified and legitimate representation of interests and fates of indi-
viduals are easier to uphold in cases in which these individuals do not have the
intellectual capacity to act in their own interests (infants and young children) or
are supposed to be mute and defenceless human beings without the capacity or
opportunity to speak up for themselves.22 Although foreign representation of
interests and fates of children affected by HIV/AIDS through CSOs is a vital
ingredient in securing their rights and access to health interventions and services
as well as social and economic benefits, it is important to emphasize a certain
dilemma with regard to advocating for such ‘silenced groups’: If advocacy for the
vulnerable and voiceless is their main source of authority and legitimacy, CSOs
might tend to sustain discourses on vulnerability and protection rather than eman-
cipation to justify their own role in the policymaking process. As such, they
potentially run the danger of contributing to the perpetuation of discourses of
victimization and vulnerability and fortify the identities of children as a particu-
larly weak, defenceless population group.
The struggle for legitimacy among CSOs often leads them to buy into powerful
imaginaries – such as the emblematic AIDS orphan – which promise strong reso-
nance with the media and, as such, access to the public sphere. It is barely surpris-
ing that advocacy CSOs themselves do not reflect publicly on the representational
power dynamics described in this chapter – if they did, they would be undermin-
ing their own legitimacy and self-destructively challenge perhaps the strongest
rationale for their access to global governance institutions.
Although the literature on (global) governance emphasizes the importance of
CSOs in terms of enhanced opportunities for citizens to participate and voice
186   Anna Holzscheiter
their concerns, one should also ask how the voice of those persons that are seen
and treated as ‘half-citizens’ or ‘not-yet-citizens’ is included and represented
through CSOs in GHG. It seems warranted to further investigate the representa-
tional practices of CSOs in GHG and to inquire into their ethics of representation
by critically investigating how more direct and meaningful involvement of those
persons, such as children, who are commonly taken to be dependent, immature
and voiceless is ensured in processes of standard setting, policy-making and
policy implementation. Ultimately, thus, looking at the authority that CSOs wield
over how to represent such groups in powerful global governance institutions and
networks is an important aspect in critical studies on the contemporary character
and future prospects of an ever-expanding global civil society.

Notes
  1 An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the 2007 Peter Wall Summer Institute
for Research ‘Civil Society Organizations and Global Health Governance’, London,
6–7 October 2007. I am grateful to the participants of the workshop as well as to Kelley
Lee and Klaus Dingwerth for their valuable comments on the paper. Research on the
subject of this paper would not have been possible without the support of the German
Research Council (DFG).
  2 For other critical studies on advocacy and representation see Hesford and Kozol (2005)
and, specifically on children’s rights, Hertel (2006).
  3 Unite for Children, Unite Against AIDS campaign, ‘Global Overview’, at http://www.
uniteforchildren.org/about_globaloverview.html (accessed 20 August 2010).
  4 Only the United States and Somalia have not ratified the treaty so far.
  5 For similar arguments with regard to political representation of the Southern poor
through CSOs see Nyamugasira (1998).
  6 During its six rounds of funding, the Global Fund has disbursed 68 per cent of its
finances to governments, 19 per cent to NGOs/Private Sector and 13 per cent to multi-
lateral institutions, see Global Fund, ‘Distribution of funding after 7 rounds’, http://
www.theglobalfund.org/en/distributionfunding/?lang=en (accessed 10 July 2009).
  7 Declaration of Alma-Ata, International Conference on Primary Health Care, Alma-Ata,
USSR, 6–12 September 1978, available at http://www.who.int/hpr/NPH/docs/declara-
tion_almaata.pdf (accessed 10 July 2009).
  8 See UNAIDS on partnerships with civil society, available at http://www.unaids.org/en/
GetStarted/CivilSociety.asp (accessed 10 July 2009).
  9 Among the most well known of these partnerships targeting children as a specific group
are the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations (GAVI Alliance), in which
the International Paediatric Association is the leading civil society partnering body, the
Global Alliance on Improved Nutrition (GAIN), the Roll Back Malaria Initiative, the Stop
TB Partnership, and the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health.
10 See Global Fund, Board Members, available at http://www.theglobalfund.org/en/about/
board/members/ (accessed 10 July 2009).
11 In Somalia, for example, World Vision is one of the two principal recipients of the GFATM
grant; see http://www.theglobalfund.org/en/savinglives/somalia/tb2/?part=part3 (accessed
20 August 2010).
12 These organizations are Bernard van Leer Foundation, CARE, Hope for African
Children Initiative, Save the Children and World Vision. See http://www.unicef.org/
aids/files/Framework_English.pdf (accessed 10 July 2009).
The representational power of civil society organizations   187
13 Unite for Children, Unite against Aids Campaign, http://www.uniteforchildren.org/
about.html (accessed 20 August 2010).
14 The ‘best interests’ principle is a generally recognized principle in international law,
enshrined in Article 3(1) of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: ‘In all
actions concerning children, whether undertaken by public or private social welfare
institutions, courts of law, administrative authorities or legislative bodies, the best inter-
ests of the child shall be a primary consideration’; U.N. Doc. A/Res/44/25, 20
November 1989.
15 The Child’s Rights Information Centre (CRIN) database lists 481 organizations that
specifically focus on children living with HIV/AIDS; see http://www.crin.org/organizations/
index.asp (accessed 10 July 2009). Among the most influential advocacy organizations in
terms of children’ rights and HIV/AIDS are Save the Children, Human Rights Watch,
Amnesty International, the Bernard van Leer Foundation, Healthlink Worldwide or Terre
des Hommes.
16 Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), Fact Sheet: Paediatric HIV/AIDS, June 2005,
available at: http://www.who.int/hiv/paediatric/MSF_fs_paediatric.pdf (accessed 10
July 2009).
17 See members list at http://www.who.int/pmnch/about/members/en/index.html (accessed
10 July 2009).
18 International HIV/AIDS Alliance on ‘Orphans and vulnerable children’, see http://
www.aidsalliance.org/sw10212.asp (accessed 10 July 2009).
19 See for example, a World Vision publication on the ‘voices of Zambian children and
their families’ (World Vision 2005).
20 Previous research into discursive clashes between advocacy CSOs on the one hand and
organizations of child workers and sex workers on the other has attempted to demon-
strate what happens in case those that are being represented in transnational forums
begin to organize themselves and, potentially, to advance discourses and interests that
diverge drastically from those embraced by Northern advocacy organizations; see Hahn
and Holzscheiter (2005).

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10 Global justice movements and
the mass media
Conceptual reflections and empirical
findings1
Dieter Rucht

Introduction
This chapter focuses on media strategies and media coverage with regard to
Global Justice Movements (GJMs).2 Which media-related strategies do these
movements apply to make their voices heard? Which aspects of their protest
campaigns are covered by the mass media, which are ignored – and if so, why?
The first section discusses the linkages and interactions between social move-
ments and mass media in a conceptual perspective. The second section aims at
providing an empirically grounded picture of two aspects. First, I want to typify
and illustrate the basic strategies employed by GJMs to get media coverage and
support. Next, the effects of these attempts will be documented by looking at how
German newspapers covered five campaigns taking place in different countries
between 1999 and 2007. In addition, I will compare the coverage of one of these
campaigns in German and Czech newspapers. The final section summarizes the
main findings and stresses the difficulties of GJMs in improving GJMs’ media
coverage.

Conceptual reflections on movements, media and power


Although the relationship between social movements and media has been dis-
cussed in the literature on a general level3 as well in the framework of specific
case studies,4 these efforts have not resulted in an elaborated theory on the
topic. Nevertheless, a few general and condensed conceptual reflections can be
offered.

1 In contemporary democracies, the mass media are a system in its own right
that can be influenced, yet only partially controlled, from an external posi-
tion. This is why the mass media are sometimes dubbed the fourth power
beside the legislative, executive and juridical branches. Considering the mass
media as a power is justified insofar as they are operating as ‘moulders’
rather than being only passive ‘mirrors’ of reality (Rosengren and Windhal
1972). In following their own logic and needs, the mass media serve as filters
for what comes on the agenda, who has standing and which positions and
claims are supported or criticized in which way (Bennett and Entman 2001).
Global justice movements and the mass media   191
Thereby, they have an impact on people’s minds and opinions. They legiti-
mize or delegitimize certain actors, viewpoints and interests and affect peo-
ple’s behaviours, last but not least electoral behaviour. In rare occasions, the
mass media are even conducive in toppling political leaders. Accordingly,
those who win the media’s attention and support have tapped a resource that
ultimately may result not only in policy change but also in a new power
constellation. Gaining influence on the media is equal to potentially gaining
political power, although not the tangible power of the holders of political
offices.
2 Getting the attention and support of the mass media is especially difficult for
political outsiders such as social movements who typically challenge the
status quo. Many other actors, including critics of or opponents to the move-
ments, also seek to influence the mass media. Accordingly, movements are
entering a field of fierce competition for scarce public attention (Hilgartner
and Bosk 1988). GJMs are aware of this fact. They also know that the mass
media are indispensable to them. After all, these movements have extremely
ambitious aims and try to reach large audiences not only within but also
beyond the confines of a nation-state. To be sure, enlarging the scope of
conflict is not the movements’ ultimate goal. Rather, it helps them to reach
masses of people who, based on the aggregate effect of many individual
changes or via the impact of mass publics on political decision-makers, even-
tually contribute to changes in society and politics. This makes it interesting
to study the relationship between social movements and mass media in
detail. Moreover, media coverage is also relevant in terms of representational
power. After all, citizens in a viable democracy are expected to make
informed choices. To this aim, the media should give voice to the whole
spectrum of political actors and arguments, including GJMs who fiercely
oppose the political mainstream.
3 Contrary to most other big collective actors, social movements lack a central
apparatus that organizes internal communication. Instead, social movements
are decentralized networks of groups in and between which communication
flows ‘from many to many’ are prevalent. This is especially true for the GJMs
that for the most part embrace the principles of grassroots democracy, ‘hori-
zontality’ and self-induced activity (Nunes 2005). This organizational logic
contrasts with that of established mass media characterized by communica-
tion flows from ‘few to many’ and mostly passive recipients. No wonder that
relationships between social movements and mass media are often marked by
tensions and mutual misunderstandings.
On the one hand, social movement actors, especially when being novices
in dealing with the mass media, expect the journalists to convey their mes-
sages in a non-reductionist and authentic form. When this does not happen,
movement actors tend to be frustrated, blaming individual journalists or the
established media as a whole for purposively neglecting, distorting or betray-
ing them. However, they may also revise their media strategies, trying to do
a better job when informing the media. On the other hand, those journalists
192   Dieter Rucht
who have scarce knowledge on social movements tend to treat these like
formal organizations such as political parties, public administrations or cor-
porations, expecting the movements to have bosses, spokespeople, offices
and programmes. Confronted with the relative absence of such features,
journalists are tempted to rely on their own vague impressions or on informa-
tion from outsiders and even opponents of the movements, characterizing
social movements as opaque if not chaotic.
4 Although journalists, when having difficulties in accessing social move-
ments, can simply resign and turn to easier and more tangible topics, social
movements, because they depend on the resonance and support from the
broader public, cannot simply give up their efforts to reach this audience. In
other words: ‘Movements are generally much more dependent on media than
the reverse . . .’ (Gamson and Wolfsfeld 1993: 116). Thus, save for some
exceptional situations, it would be wrong to characterize the relationship
between media and movements as symbiotic, as some researchers have done
(e.g. Imhof 1996; Wolfsfeld 1984). In addition, a symbiotic relationship
would not be compatible with the ethos of ‘professional’ journalists who are
expected to avoid a one-sided and bluntly partisan view. Even when sympa-
thizing with a movement, these journalists try to keep some distance in their
reports (although not in their formally designated commentaries). Also, to
the extent that they are ideologically distant or even opposite to the move-
ments, but feel in line with the population at large and the political elites,
they may portray movements in a derogative way. Therefore, the mass media
are generally far from being a ‘natural’ ally of social movements.
5 Confronted with this structural constellation, social movements may arrive at dif-
ferent strategic or behavioural conclusions that, in another article (Rucht 2004),
I have termed the ‘quadruple A’: apathy, attack, adaptation and alternative.
As long as social movements, based on negative experiences with the
mass media, do not resign and fall into apathy, they have three basic options.
First, they can start to criticize the media for not adequately portraying them
and their activities, hence shift towards attack. A soft version would be a
critical letter to the editor or a press conference in which the media are
blamed for misrepresenting a movement actor or activity. A hard version
would imply confrontational actions by occupying an editorial office, threat-
ening a journalist or blocking the delivery of newspapers. Movement activ-
ists may even resort to burning trucks of press houses as it happened in the
context of the German and Italian student revolt in 1968 (Hilwig 1998).
Second, social movements can opt for a strategy of adaptation by taking
into account the mass media’s needs and mechanisms to get their message
across. This, for instance, might consist of learning to write a professional
press release, organize a press conference, designate a speaker or a press offi-
cer, establish sustained contacts with selected journalists or stage a media-
savvy protest spectacle.
Third, social movements, particularly when the strategies of attack and
adaptation bear little fruit, may create an alternative to the established press
by establishing and maintaining media that are produced and controlled by
Global justice movements and the mass media   193
actors from or very close to the movements. It is important to stress that, in
this context, the term ‘alternative’ does not necessarily imply the use of
means of communication that technically differ from those of the mass
media. The point is to create media that operate independently from the con-
ventional and for the most part commercially oriented mass media. Such
activities range from the distribution of leaflets and posters, internal newslet-
ters, brochures, books and videos to the production of newspapers and the
operation of radio stations. More recently, the Internet has been used to serve
the needs of various kinds of movements and make their views widely and
quickly accessible.5 It allows movements to circumvent the conventional
mass media and their selectivity. In a few cases, the Internet was crucial in
making a movement known and politically influential, as exemplified by the
Zapatista movement.6 The Internet can also become an important tool for
individual and collective dissenters in authoritarian regimes, as recent devel-
opments in China and Iran have shown.
Obviously, the three last mentioned strategies are not mutually exclusive.
Moreover, some activities inherently combine two strategies. For example,
US movement activists set up the journal Lies of Our Times in the 1990s,
which aimed at identifying and correcting wrong information provided by
the established press, thereby representing both the strategies of attack and
alternative. By the same token, the Internet can be used to combine these two
strategies.
Apart from the fact that, in principle, each of the three basic strategies has
its own strengths and weaknesses, their potential power also depends on the
specific context in which a social movement is embedded. Also, one should
bear in mind that these strategies designate broad orientations but are not
identical with the range of specific tactics that can be subsumed under each
strategy. For example, the strategy of adaptation may imply different means
such as linking the movement’s cause to the broader culturally recognized
values or a symbolically loaded historic event, appealing to journalists’ pro-
fessional ethics and, thus, reducing the risk to be portrayed in a distorting
way or hiring a professional journalist for a movement organization’s public
relation activities.
6 When looking at social movements over the past few decades, it is obvious
that they tend to professionalize in the way they mobilize resources (for the
United States, see McCarthy and Zald 1973) as well as in their media-related
strategies (Rucht forthcoming). Although in the 1950s and 1960s, most
social movements hardly cared about how to design and present their activi-
ties to attract media attention, today such a disengaged attitude is the excep-
tion rather than the rule. Handbooks for social movement actors and
non-governmental organizations advise how to deal with mass media.7 Also,
there are groups, most prominently Greenpeace, whose strategic rationale is
to maximize media attention.
Other groups, including those with few resources, try to copy such a model
or to develop their own media strategies. This trend is not only restricted to
middle-class movements dominated by well-educated and well-articulated
194   Dieter Rucht
activists but also includes workers movements and movements of marginal-
ized groups such as the French sans-papiers migrants. By the same token,
religious fundamentalists and right-wing extremists sometimes use provoca-
tive symbols, images and slogans to attract media attention, yet in other times
seek to appeal to the mainstream audience by presenting themselves as ‘ordi-
nary’ and ‘responsible’ citizens.8 Also, these groups have learned their lesson
in using modern, computer-based technology (see, e.g. Chroust 2000).
7 Even when social movements raise problems that transcend national borders,
target international institutions and/or mobilize cross-nationally, they con-
tinue to address basically national audiences in their respective languages,
although possibly in a more concerted way than in the past. Therefore, public
discourses, media strategies and media coverage still have to be mainly
studied and understood in their national contexts. These contexts provide
different cultural resonance boards, offer different discursive opportunities
(Koopmans 2004) and different mobilization structures even when the same
issue, for example, whaling or the war on Iraq, is on the agenda. Accordingly,
in an empirical perspective, it makes sense to look at media strategies and,
even more so, media coverage with regard to one or several specific coun-
tries instead of aiming for sweeping generalizations.

Media-related activities of global justice movements


GJMs emerged in an era when political communication had already become
largely professionalized (Kamps 2001; Norris 2000). Today, almost all movement
organizers are aware of the crucial role of the mass media to advance their cause.
Therefore, large and enduring social movements, although not all their specific
components, rely on all three major strategies presented above. This will be illus-
trated in the following paragraphs with regard to GJMs.
Alternatives: Although the movements’ impact on the mass media remains
limited for structural reasons, the hurdles to create their own media have been
lowered. This is why the relatively young GJMs have placed much emphasis on
the strategy of building alternatives to the established mass media. To some
extent, this strategy relies on conventional means that have already been used by
previous movements, for example, the production of off-line flyers, posters,
newsletters and brochures, which, thanks to copy machines, computers and
affordable printers, nowadays have become much easier and cheaper than decades
ago. Movements may even operate their own newspapers and radio stations.
The protest campaign against the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and
World Bank meeting in Berlin in 1988 offers a good illustration of an extensive
use of the strategy of alternatives (see Gerhards 1993; Gerhards and Rucht 1992).
This campaign can be attributed to the early activities of the GJMs, although GJM
as a label did not yet exist. Preparation of the campaign started two years before
the official event, including hundreds of internal and public meetings (Gerhards
1993: 120). In the months before the actual conference, the organizers intensified
their efforts to inform the movement constituency and the wider public via
Global justice movements and the mass media   195
movement-related media. For example, from May 1 to September 1, 1988, a
special monthly called Milliardenfieber (billion fever) was published with a cir-
culation of 20,000–50,000 copies. During the action week that paralleled the
official event, the organizers produced the newspaper Zahltag (pay day) with a
daily circulation of 50,000, from September 24 to 30 (Gerhards 1993: 14).
Similar but much more modest efforts were made at the first European Social
Forum (ESF), which took place in Florence in November 2002. A mix was com-
posed of members of the local social forums in Milan and Florence, and the ESF
press office issued a bilingual newspaper. Four issues, each eight paged, were
published. Although the team expected to sell at least 1,000 copies per issue, in
the end a total of 18,000–19,000 copies were sold (Mosca et al. 2009: 53).
Also, the mobilization against the G8 meeting in Heiligendamm (Northern
Germany) in June 2007 (see Rucht and Teune 2008b) was partly based on the use
of self-produced media, both in the preparatory phase and during the protest
activities at the site. Most importantly, an Independent Media Center (IMC) was
set up in the area with two main sites in the city of Rostock and two affiliations
in the camps Reddelich and Wichmannsdorf. Hundreds of volunteers worked
there to produce three radio programmes, a daily video magazine, numerous
video reports, the Indymedia Internet platform and, during the week of protest,
the daily Indymedia newspaper (Zimmer 2008).
Although self-produced off-line media are still relevant even in the age of
‘cyberpolitics’ (Hill and Hughes 1998), the Internet has become a crucial, if not
the single most important, tool of communication especially for GJMs that often
mobilize across borders. GJMs use the Internet in various ways. The distribution
of information via e-mail lists and on websites is probably most important. Today,
almost all relevant groups, organizations and networks maintain their own lists and
websites. Larger groups usually have their own webmaster. In addition, special-
ized communication groups within the broader framework of GJMs have been set
up. The best-known example is Indymedia that originated from the Seattle cam-
paign in 1999 (Atton 2003; Halleck 2004). According to its self-description, it is

a network of collectively run media outlets for the creation of radical, accu-
rate, and passionate tellings of the truth. We work out of a love and inspira-
tion for people who continue to work for a better world, despite corporate
media’s distortions and unwillingness to cover the efforts to free humanity.9

Indymedia spreads quickly across the globe but, as it can be seen from Table 10.1,
recently ceased to grow.
Apart from its primary role as a tool of critique addressed to the public (see
below), Indymedia also serves as a platform for internal communication, for
example, to document internal debates and to announce forthcoming meetings to
activists.
Attack: Social movements, once dissatisfied with the mass media, do not nec-
essarily withdraw to create their own media. Instead or in addition, they may
employ a strategy of attack. To the extent that self-produced media aim at offering
196   Dieter Rucht
Table 10.1  Distribution of Indymedias
Region 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2008 2009
(June) (June) (June) (June) (June) (June) (June)

USA 39 46 53 56 61 60 54
Canada 11 11 12 13 12 13 9
Latin 9 14 15 17 17 18 18
America
Europe 20 31 40 41 47 66 67
Asia 3 5 8 8 12 10 10
Africa 2 3 5 5 5 6 6
Oceania 5 7 8 12 8 8 11
Total 89 117  141 153 162 181 175
Source: Web searches by various research assistants.

information that is neglected and/or distorted by mass media, the very creation of
alternative media can be interpreted as part of such a strategy, as exemplified by
Indymedia, MoveOn, GetUp, Avaaz, Campact and so on. These groups’ reports
on specific issues or events may explicitly address omissions or misperceptions
by the established media. Because this counter-information is open to everybody,
also journalists of the established media can inform themselves about the alleged
shortcomings in their coverage.
The strategy of attack was also applied in other settings. In Heiligendamm, for
example, several press conferences as well as radio reports were devoted to criti-
cize the mass media for spreading wrong information or relying on one-sided
information provided by the press officers of the police and public administrators.
A noteworthy action was undertaken by the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown
Army that, in colourful disguise, entered an official press conference to disrupt a
live broadcast by shouting ‘we want an objective press’.
Adaptation: Although alternatives and attack can be seen as variants of a
counter-strategy vis-à-vis established mass media, adaption is an attempt to
instrumentalize these media by playing, at least to some extent, to the rules of
their game. In this regard, some of the GJMs act quite professionally and sophis-
ticated. They have learned that established media want to have quick reactions,
easy access to interviewees, designated speakers or press officers, reliable infor-
mation, handy sound bites, noteworthy citations and colourful if not spectacular
images. Also, they know what a press release should look like and where to dis-
tribute it, how to organize a press conference and in which way to establish and
maintain contacts with selected journalists. Professional public relations work,
however, sometimes conflicts with the principles of ‘horizontal’ movement structure
and the attempts to avoid roles of leadership and spokespeople, as the example of
the ESFs has shown (Lévêque 2005; Mosca et al. 2009), More generally, it is
difficult to raise public attention for such meetings that essentially serve the inter-
nal communication of GJMs. By contrast, protest activities that are spatially and/
or temporally related to large official summits tend to receive ample coverage. On
these occasions, hundreds or even thousands of journalists are present anyway.
Global justice movements and the mass media   197
Bored by the official routine or in search of a balanced view on the official event,
these journalists tend to pay some attention at least to the protest activities.
Surprisingly, in the case of the G8 meeting in 2007, significantly more space was
devoted to the protests than to the official event (Rucht and Teune 2008a).
Although the radical branches of the GJMs are likely to prefer the strategies of
attack and alternatives, they also pursue an implicit strategy of adaptation. while
the established media generally condemn radical groups, these can still count on
the news value of conflict and violence (see Murdock 1981), as the media’s fas-
cination with the so-called black block shows. Threatening outfit and postures as
well as violent actions are not simply an expression of anger but also elements of
a deliberate strategy to attract media attention and to remind about the groups’
existence.
Apart from large or confrontational protests, creative forms also help to attract
public attention. The local Attac group in Hamburg, for example, installed a small
inflatable toy island with a palm tree in the middle of a large water basin close to
the city centre in May 2002. Under the eyes of invited journalists, rowing boats
brought loads of fake money to the rubber island to scandalize the widespread
practice of money laundering in tax havens. This relatively small activity got
considerable coverage in the established media and beyond.
Some groups do not rely entirely on the spectacle of protest but proactively
seek to build contacts with journalists from established media. A striking case is
Attac Germany, which, on the eve of the Genoa protest in July 2001, practised a
kind of ‘embedded journalism’. The then largely unknown group invited press
people to travel, together with Attac activists, by bus to Genoa. In addition, they
offered these journalists information on the spot via mobile phones and direct
contacts (Kolb 2005). This initiative, together with the massive protests in Genoa,
triggered a series of articles and helped to make Attac known to a broader public
in Germany.
Unlike many pre-existing GJM groups, Attac Germany spent considerable
energies in continuously influencing the established media. Already in their early
period of existence, Attac designated an unpaid press speaker and, from a later
period onwards, an employed press officer. In addition, in their so-called Summer
Academy, they offered workshops to instruct activists on how to deal with the
mass media. Attac Switzerland even devoted its whole Summer Academy in 2007
to the ‘Power of the Media’. The emphasis on conventional public relations can
be also seen by the frequencies of Attac Germany’s press releases since 2000 (see
Figure 10.1, continuous line). The second and dotted line in this figure indicates
the number of articles mentioning Attac in the left-alternative tageszeitung. As it
can be seen, only in the first years, the increase of press releases was paralleled
by an increase of articles. Later on, the number of articles declined, even though
the number of press releases continued to grow.
Although Attac Germany is an example of an intense adaptation strategy, it would
be wrong to assume that the group uncritically adapts to the expectations and rules
of established media in an attempt to maximize coverage. Over time, the group had
mixed experiences in dealing with the media, as a report of their current press officer
198   Dieter Rucht

Frequency of mentions in “die Tageszeitung” (dotted line)


200 600

Press release of Attac Germany (continuous line)


180
500
160

140
400
120

100 300

80
200
60

40
100
20

0 0
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

Figure 10.1  Distribution of press releases of Attac and media coverage, 2000–2008.

on the G8 campaign in Heiligendamm shows (Distelrath 2008). Negative coverage


is one reason for not relying too much on conventional mass media, especially in
light of the fact that the newness factor of Attac has faded away in the last few years,
so that it has become more difficult to attract media attention.
Although Attac is probably more engaged in various public relation strategies
than most other GJM groups, I would still contend that, on the whole, GJMs
spend more energy on media-related activities than most other social and political
movements in the past and present. As it has been shown, all three basic strategies
are applied, although to different degrees over time. Overall, it seems that the
attack strategy has less weight than that of alternatives and adaptation. Also, it
appears that the alternative media run by contemporary GJMs are more accessible
to the general public in both physical and cognitive terms. First, mainly thanks to
the Internet, alternative messages are more easily available than, for example,
during the times of the underground press in the 1960s. Second, GJMs are less
driven by abstract theories and orthodox ideologies than the progressive move-
ments of the 1960s, so that they are more appealing to the general public. This is
also reflected in the way the established media cover GJMs.

The coverage of GJMs’ activities in newspapers


What was the GJMs’ imprint in the mass media? To get a comprehensive picture,
one would certainly need to look not only at the full range of traditional media,
including television, but also at the Internet. For pragmatic reasons, especially
when considering available material and data, the following analysis will focus
Global justice movements and the mass media   199
on newspapers only by drawing on three kinds of sources. First, Gerhards (1993),
in his detailed monograph on the protest campaign against the IMF and World
Bank meeting in Berlin in 1988, has presented an analysis of newspaper cover-
age. Second, during the past few years, I have initiated the creation of a data set
on how several nationwide German newspapers reported on various major GJMs
campaigns. Currently, this data set includes coverage of five significant events,
starting with the protest against the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in
Seattle 1999 and ending with the protest against the G8 summit in Heiligendamm
in 2007. Finally, an additional content analysis has been conducted for a range of
Czech newspapers reporting on the World Bank and IMF meeting, and related
protests, in Prague in September 2000. This allows us to compare the reports on
the same event in Czech and German papers.

The coverage of GJM campaigns in German newspapers


The birth of the GJMs is often but wrongly attributed to the protests that took
place in Seattle in 1999. A closer look reveals that these movements came into
existence earlier, although not necessarily referring explicitly to the term global-
ization. Whereas it is debatable whether the anti-slavery movement and the
labour movement of the nineteenth century can be seen as forerunners or early
manifestations of GJMs, it is safe to say that some protest campaigns in the 1980s
very much resembled the later protests ascribed to the GJMs.
One significant event already mentioned above is the 1988 IMF/World Bank
meeting and related protest activities in Berlin. On the basis of a full search in
four Berlin-based newspapers, Gerhards (1993: 165) and his assistants identified
688 articles during the period from the first announcement of the meeting on
March 6, 1985, until the last day of the conference on September 30, 1988.
Among the 825 actors who were mentioned, governmental bodies (36 per cent,
including the IMF and World Bank) were most frequent, followed by ‘alternative
groups’ opposing the official event (26 per cent). Concerning the topics of the
article, not the official summit but the ‘action mobilization’ directed against it
was the single most important category (24.6 per cent), next came the problem of
poor countries’ debts (21.2 per cent), security measures (12.6 per cent) and nega-
tive consequences of the IMF policies for the global economy (8.6 per cent). With
the exception of the coverage by the left-alternative paper die tageszeitung, the
three other papers hardly mentioned the claims and arguments of the protesters.
Simple fact-oriented reports dominated by far. Surprisingly, positive conse-
quences of the IMF policies were very rarely mentioned (0.9 per cent). Gerhards
(1993: 179) concludes that (a) the filter applied by the newspapers is highly selec-
tive by privileging actors with many resources and those with a radical tendency,
(b) mass media do not provide space for an exchange of arguments but rather for
isolated statements and (c) elaborated frames that can be found in flyers and other
documents of the protest groups are rare in the conventional mass media. Leaving
aside all details, it becomes clear that the protesters were quite successful in
getting extensive media coverage. However, with the exception of one newspaper
200   Dieter Rucht
Table 10.2  Investigated conflicts

Case Type of Approximate Time frame for Number


official number of newspaper of days
meeting protesters analysis covered

Seattle December WTO 50,000 18 November, 22


1999 meeting 1999 to 9
December, 1999
Prague September IMF/WB 12,000 16 September, 21
2000 meeting 2000 to 6
October, 2000
Gothenburg June 2001 EU summit 35,000 11 June, 2001 20
to 30 June, 2001
Genoa July 2001 G8 summit 200,000 12 July, 2001 to 22
2 August, 2001
Heiligendamm June 2007 G8 summit 60,000 27 May, 21
2007 to 16
June, 2007

ideologically close to them, they hardly received the kind of coverage they would
have wished for. Nevertheless, the official event was not celebrated by the media
as expected by its organizers and hosts.
Despite some resistance as exemplified by the protests in Berlin in 1988, neo-
liberal policies remained the dominant paradigm in Western countries until the
late 1990s. Only then did it come under increasingly widespread attack as exem-
plified by major protest campaigns of which five have been studied in detail with
regard to their media coverage (see Table 10.2). In the following, some results of
the content analysis will be presented.
For each event, the coverage in the same nine German newspapers with a nation-
wide distribution (six dailies and three weeklies) was coded.10 The investigated
period for each case spanned from 10 days before the beginning to 8 days after the
end of the official event. Because the duration of the events varied between 3 and
5 days, the periods of coded newspaper coverage varied accordingly.
The investigated events spread unevenly over the time period from late 1999 to
Summer 2007, which, generally speaking, was the period of the rapid rise and sub-
sequent consolidation of the GJMs across the globe. The five protest campaigns
have to be seen against the backdrop of the general discussion about the pros and
cons of globalization. This latter term became a buzzword in the second half of the
1990s and has remained on the public agenda ever since.11 Figure 10.2 displays the
frequencies of this term and other derivations of ‘global’ in the left-alternative
German newspaper die tageszeitung. As it can be seen, the occurrence of these
terms is relatively stable throughout the period from January 1999 to the end of
2007, although at a somewhat lower level until mid-2001 and after mid-2007. The
vertical lines in Figure 10.2 indicate the position of the five events in time.
Interestingly, the protests in Seattle did not result in an increase of the theme of the
200

180 Seattle Prague Genoa Heiligen-


damm
160 Gothenburg

140

120

100

80

60

40

20

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1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Number of articles

Figure 10.2  Globalization and related topics in the newspaper die tageszeitung.
202   Dieter Rucht
globalization. To the contrary, mentions of global even declined during and imme-
diately after the event before rising again in Spring 2000. On the other hand, the
events in Prague, Gothenburg (to a lesser extent), Genoa and Heiligendamm (most
significantly) were all accompanied by an increase of the globalization theme in die
tageszeitung. Generally speaking, the thematization of globalization issues remained
at a high level in the period from Fall 2001 (after the Genoa campaign) to the advent
of the G8 summit in Heiligendamm in 2007. The high peak related to Heiligendamm
definitely mirrors the paper’s support of the protests. Beyond its regular coverage,
die tageszeitung issued a daily special section during the hot phase of the protest.
Some of the short peaks in the observed period are obviously caused by particular
events such as the G8 meeting in Gleneagles (Scotland) in July 2005.
The five events attracted different levels of attention in the German newspapers
(Table 10.3). The meeting in Gothenburg, although having mobilized almost three
times as many protesters as the meeting in Prague, received least coverage, whereas
Heiligendamm leads the ranking by far. In addition to the much larger number of
articles, also the average length per article is much higher. The outlier position of
Heiligendamm reflects to a large extent that German newspapers have more interest
in an event that takes place in Germany than in a similar event abroad.
Journalists have the discretionary power to give or not to give voice to certain
actors, to highlight or omit certain thematic aspects of an issue and to present both
thematic aspects and actors in a positive, negative or more neutral fashion. Table
10.4 displays the relative weight of thematic foci in reports on each of the five
conflicts.12 As it can be seen, there is considerable variation. The official summit
was the main focus of more than half of the articles on the Seattle event but only
13 per cent of the articles on Heiligendamm. Aspects of police/security were
marginal in reports on Seattle (1.4 per cent) but quite significant in Heiligendamm
(18.8 per cent). Not surprisingly, police violence was relatively prominent in
reports on the Genoa conflict (13.7 per cent) where action culminated in a nightly
police ambush on demonstrators sleeping in a school house (see della Porta and
Reiter, this volume). Violence enacted by protesters was covered by the highest
proportion of reports on Gothenburg, which, by the way, hardly reflected the
actual level of violence when compared with the other conflicts. For the coverage
of all five conflicts, arguments of the protesters played only a marginal role,
whereas variation is greater in the case of arguments of officials, which stand out
in the coverage of the Prague event with a share of almost 15 per cent.

Table 10.3  Quantitative coverage of five conflicts in German newspapers


Absolute Average lines per article
Articles Lines

Seattle 130 4,837 37.2


Prague 108 4,820 44.6
Genoa 350 15,822 45.2
Gothenburg 53 2,262 42.7
Heiligendamm 678 58,562 86.4
Global justice movements and the mass media   203
Table 10.4  The foci of reports in German newspapers by conflict (in per cent)

Seattle Prague Genoa Gothenburg Heiligendamm Total


(weighted)

Summit/event 51.6 39.7 17.4 34.0 13.3 31.5


in general
Arguments of 7.7 14.9 2.0 2.0 2.5 5.9
the officials
Police/security 1.4 14.9 15.1 18.8 9.9
in general
Police non- 0.6 0.3 0.2
violent action
Police violent 0.9 13.7 3.7 0.9 3.9
action
Protest in 26.9 26.9 21.7 22.6 31.5 25.8
general
Demonstrators’ 0.3 1.5 0.3
non-violent
action
Demonstrators’ 6.9 7.4 10.9 22.6 11.4 11.8
violent action
Arguments of the 1.4 0.9 4.0 0.9 1.5
demonstrators
Globalization 3.2 2.9 5.4 1.5 2.6
in general
Other foci 0.9 6.6 9.1 17.3 6.6
Total 100 100 100 100 100 100

Table 10.5 gives a detailed view of the frequency of various aspects of the five
events in the newspaper articles. Here, unlike for the focus of each article, coding
was not restricted to one topic per article, so that the column percentages can add
to more than hundred. Interestingly, the relative weight of general opposition to
liberalization or globalization was highest in the first two events but later
decreased. This could indicate that the critique of globalization became more dif-
ferentiated and specific over time. Environmental protection is relatively mar-
ginal in the Prague conflict but significant in the four remaining cases. Labour
protection is most prominent in the Seattle conflict that was marked by a strong
presence of trade unions that mobilized about two thirds of the demonstrators
(Lichbach and Almeida 2001). In Heiligendamm and even more so in Gothenburg,
aspects of labour protection were marginal, thus reflecting the low engagement of
trade unions in the protest mobilization.
Activists from various social movements, both on the political right and left,
often blame the mass media for marginalizing them. One specific complaint is
that the media, when reporting about the protesters, concentrate more on side
204   Dieter Rucht
Table 10.5 Mentioning of aspects of globalizationa by conflict in German newspapersb (in
per cent)

Mentioned Seattle Prague Genoa Gothenburg Heiligendamm Total


aspect (weighted)

Opposition to trade 51.4 46.3 22.6 15.1 20.7 31.5


liberalization or
globalization
Greater transparency/ 6.9 12.0 10.3 2.0 4.9 7.3
democracy in
global financial
institutions
Environmental 39.1 5.4 15.7 22.6 21.0 20.8
protection
Labour 41.4 12.0 8.9 2.0 3.6 13.8
protections
Local economic 3.7 2.9 1.7 2.0 5.5 3.1
autonomy
Human rights 26.3 36.0 19.4 3.7 16.8 20.5
protection
Emphasizing social 43.7 44.6 27.7 13.1 22.7 30.5
aims over
economic ones
Protesters’ 2.3 3.7 2.0 7.4 3.0
misunderstanding/
ignorance of global
economics or trade
agreements
Notes: aMultiple answers possible. bBased on a dummy variable (yes/no); percentage of yes answers.

aspects (such as their outfit) than on their motives and arguments. Various case
studies confirm this impression (e.g. Halloran et al. 1970; Rucht 2005a). Also,
looking at the conflicts investigated here, the newspapers focus on the arguments
of officials rather than of the protesters (5.9 vs. 1.5 per cent, see Table 10.4). This
difference, however, is not surprising, given the fact that officials have the power
to make binding decisions that affect people’s lives. When comparing the space
devoted to the demonstrators’ motives and reasons across conflicts, Seattle
clearly ranges on top whereas the four remaining conflicts exhibit little varia-
tion.13 This may have to do with the standing and credibility of the protesters in
Seattle where the trade unions were prominent and even President Bill Clinton
signaled his partial understanding for the protesters’ reasons.
Figure 10.3 shows both the mean and the variance for the evaluation of the pro-
testers with regard to each of the five conflicts. In line with relative weight of the
protesters motives (see above), evaluation was most favourable in Seattle and least
so in Gothenburg. On the whole, however, the differences between the cases are
small. All five mean values are within the range from −1 to +1. In other words: When
considering all papers, the aggregated evaluation is relatively neutral. When looking
Global justice movements and the mass media   205

Heiligendamm

Gothenburg

Genoa

Prague

Seattle

−3 −2 −1 0 1 2 3

Figure 10.3  Evaluation of the protesters in German newspapers.


Note: Means given with a 95% confidence interval. Values based on a scale from −3 (very negative)
to 3 (very positive) in the article.

at the individual newspapers, however, the differences are significant, thus reflecting
different ideological lines of the papers. For example, in the Heiligendamm conflict
for which a detailed analysis (including two local papers) is available, the tabloid
Bild evaluated the protesters most negatively (around −1.7) and the police by far
most positively, whereas the left and liberal papers, and even more so the two local
newspapers, evaluated the protesters more positively (Rucht and Teune 2008a: 67).
On the whole, the newspaper coverage of the five conflicts is far from being
uniform. This applies to the space devoted to each conflict, the foci of the articles,
the relative weight of various thematic aspects of the conflict, and the standing
and evaluation of different kinds of actors. Also, differences between the various
German newspapers are significant. However, when comparing the aggregate
patterns of reporting across the five conflicts, it remains unclear whether differ-
ences can be primarily attributed to the journalists’ perceptions and judgements,
to differences in the public relation activities of various actors or rather to the
‘objective’ differences of the cases, for example, the different levels of violence
enacted by the protesters. A partial answer to this question can be given by look-
ing at the same event but comparing newspapers from different countries. This,
for example, could reveal whether geographical proximity to the event is an
important news value.
On the basis of the coding of the Prague conflict in both German and Czech
newspapers14 for the same time period, we can look for nation-specific patterns.15
As one would expect with regard to the proximity factor, many more articles were
206   Dieter Rucht
Table 10.6 The foci of German and Czech newspaper articles on the Prague event
(in per cent)

Focus Germany Czech


Republic

Summit in general 39.6 12.2


Arguments of the officials 14.9 1.3
Police/security in general 14.7
Police non-violent action 2.1
Police violent action 0.9 10.0
Protest in general 26.9 11.1
Demonstrators’ non-violent action 8.1
Demonstrators’ violent action 7.4 27.3
Arguments of the demonstrators 0.9 6.2
Globalization in general 2.9 6.8
Other foci 6.6 0.2
Total 100 100

published in the Czech (N = 469) than in the German papers (N = 113), even
though less newspapers have been examined in the Czech case. More interesting,
however, are the different patterns of coverage in the two countries. On the one
hand, aspects of the event such as the summit in general, the protest in general,
globalization in general and the arguments of the officials are to a much greater
proportion the foci of articles in Germany than in the Czech Republic. On the
other hand, the Czech papers put more emphasis on matters of police/security in
general, violent actions by the police, violent and non-violent actions by demon-
strators as well as demonstrators’ arguments. Although general information on the
summit is the single most important category in the German papers, it is demon-
strators’ violent actions in the Czech papers. Again, it is presumably the factor of
physical closeness to the event that results in a greater concern with aspects of
security and violence in the host country when compared with Germany. This
assumption is supported by a more refined analysis of the space devoted to dif-
ferent thematic aspects in the newspapers (no table is displayed here). Although,
for example, the aggregate space for the protesters’ claims is slightly larger in
German than in Czech papers, space devoted to police activities is much larger in
the Czech papers than in the German papers (Table 10.6).
Also, when investigating more closely the coverage of the actions of the police
and the demonstrators, some cross-national differences can be observed (quanti-
tative data are not displayed here). For example, formal restrictions of the protest
and the use of specific forms of police violence are mentioned to a greater propor-
tion in German newspapers, whereas the opposite holds true for border restric-
tions, physical blockade/removal as well as arrests of demonstrators. With regard
to demonstrators’ actions, vandalism of local shops and public property as well as
violence against the police was proportionally more prevalent in the Czech
papers. After all, before the protests, the Czech authorities had prepared the
Global justice movements and the mass media   207
population as if civil war was to be expected. For example, they recommended
storing food and medicine, closed the schools in the city, advised the locals not
to talk to the protesters and speculated that protesters might ‘kill if possible’
(Prague Post, August 2, 2000, cited in Scholl 2009).
In a nutshell, significant differences in media coverage can be found not only
when comparing different conflictual events in the same set of newspapers but
also when comparing how newspapers from different countries cover the same
event. The amount of coverage seems to be strongly influenced by the spatial
proximity to the event, the number of protesters and the forms of protest, espe-
cially the expectation and actual occurrence of violence. Moreover, the way of
reporting is influenced by the political line of the respective newspaper. Not sur-
prisingly, left and liberal papers are more sympathetic or neutral to the GJMs’
activities, whereas conservative papers are highly critical. There is, however, a
general tendency to devote more space to the activities of both protesters and
police than to the protesters’ motives and arguments.

Conclusion
Getting public attention and support is a source of power because it helps to
legitimize or de-legitimize certain claims and to exert pressure on political deci-
sion-makers. Public attention and support is especially crucial for social move-
ments, which generally lack other resources. GJMs are no exception from this
rule, as it has been shown in this chapter. They engage in various kinds of media-
related strategies – alternatives, adaptation and, probably to a lesser extent, attack
– to advance their cause. Over time, GJMs have become more professional and
sophisticated in pursuing similar strategies. This, however, does not necessarily
mean that they are more effective when compared with their forerunners because
their opponents, too, have learned their lesson in public relations. Unfortunately,
no systematic empirical data are available to investigate the impact of media-
related efforts on media coverage, let alone action mobilization, across different
generations or types of social movements.
Regarding five significant protest campaigns in German newspapers from
1999 to 2007, it becomes clear that they attracted considerable media attention.
In the campaign against the G8 meeting in Heiligendamm in 2007, the protesters
even got much more coverage than the official meeting. In the aggregate of all
newspapers investigated, the evaluation of the protesters was relatively neutral in
all five cases but varied between individual papers, which, by and large, followed
their general political line when portraying the protesters. Not surprisingly, left
and liberal papers were more sympathetic to the movements and more critical to
the officials and the police, whereas the opposite holds for conservative papers.
On the whole, however, evaluation of the protesters was supposedly less ideo-
logically driven than, say, of the New Left in the 1960s that was met with much
more suspicion if not flat rejection by the majority of the press.
Generally speaking, the patterns of reporting across the five conflicts differ
considerably. This may well reflect the actual differences between these cases,
208   Dieter Rucht
for example, the varying extent of violence by the protestors and/or police.
However, even when comparing newspaper coverage of the same conflict (the
IMF/World Bank meeting in Prague in 2000) in German and Czech papers, strik-
ing differences could be observed, for example, regarding the attention paid to
aspects of police/security and destruction of property. It seems that these varia-
tions can be attributed to a large extent to differences in journalists’ perceptions,
which in turn depend on political leaning, on news values such as proximity to
the event and on cultural backgrounds such as more or less experience with
radical protesters.
Extensive coverage and even more so positive evaluation of GJMs’ activities
are by no means guaranteed even when these groups intensify their externally
oriented media-related strategies and stay within the boundaries of legal and
peaceful protest. A first important reason for this is the inflation effect. Repetition
eventually results in disinterest by established media. This may be the main rea-
son why, for instance, mass media coverage of ESFs has declined from 2002 to
2007 (Teune 2009), and Attac Germany, despite its growing investment in public
relations, did not receive increased media coverage (see Figure 10.1). Moreover,
a positive evaluation trend may provoke maverick journalists to move into the
opposite direction by emphasizing problematic aspects of a group. This hap-
pened, for example, to Greenpeace in Germany and the Netherlands after mass
media had applauded the group for its courageous actions for many years.16
Finally, the GJMs are raising so many issues and launching so many calls for
action that it is difficult for an outsider to keep track.
Second, there is the competition effect. Also, rivals and opponents of the
movements intensify their media-related strategies and sharpen their framing.
Therefore, one can expect that the struggle for attention and support continues
in an upward spiral of investing more and more resources to get a competitive
advantage. In light of this, all other things being equal, also the use of the
Internet to which both GJM activists and sympathetic observers attach so many
hopes17 is unlikely to change the existing constellation of power. The potential
of the Internet, including its impressive carrying capacity and huge number of
potential addressees, should not be confused with its actual uses and effects in
the realm of politics. After all, despite the increasing use of the Internet, neither
there is evidence that social movement activity in general and GJMs protest in
particular are on the rise in the past few years nor is it clear that increasing
online protest, usually based on a mouseclick, is impressive for the general
audience. This is why some Internet-based groups such as MoveOn in the
United States and Campact in Germany have begun to combine online activity
with street protest.
Conventional mass media, although increasingly related to and co-present in
the Internet, are losing some of their market share, especially among the younger
generation. Still, they continue to be the key source of information for the general
public and the political decision-makers. From a normative viewpoint, the gen-
eral tendency of newspapers to focus on the GJMs actions (and especially the
possibility and actual occurrence of violence) at the expense of their motives and
Global justice movements and the mass media   209
arguments is problematic because, on the whole, the audience hardly gets a full
picture to make an informed judgement. GJMs try to compensate for this by
strengthening their own media, creating their own public spaces and increasingly
using the Internet. However, even with these means the movements hardly reach
out beyond their immediate constituency.
To overcome this limitation, they have two options. First, they could rely on a
strategy of attacking the mainstream media. This, however, is not very promising
because, with the exception of violence, it is largely ignored by these media.
Second, the GJMs could move, and actually are driven, towards an adaptation
strategy. Not accidentally, such a strategy is only acceptable to the more moderate
parts of the movement. This not only leads to an underrepresentation of the radi-
cal movement segments in mass media but is also likely to increase tensions
and conflicts between the moderate and radical branches of the movements. To
conclude, there is no ideal single strategy.

Notes
  1 I am grateful to Wolfgang Stuppert who has done most of the calculations, tables and
figures for this article. He, other members of our research group as well as Lance
Bennett and Thomas Olesen provided useful comments on earlier versions of this
chapter.
  2 These are understood as a network of loosely coupled groups and movements with a
predominantly left-wing orientation that tend to mobilize across borders and connect
issues such as human, political and social rights, peace and environmental protection.
On a more general level, they promote a master frame which, negatively defined, is
resistance against neo-liberalism and, positively defined, the struggle for global justice
and solidarity.
  3 See, for example, Altheide and Gilmore 1972, Gamson 1988; 2004; Gamson and
Wolfsfeld 1993; Gitlin 1980; Kielbowicz and Scherer 1986; Molotch 1979; Neidhardt
2004; Neveu 1999; Rucht 2004; Turner 1969.
  4 For example, Cardoso and Neto 2004; Paterson 2000; Rucht 2005a; Rucht and Teune
2008b; Van Zoonen 1996.
  5 See Almeida and Lichbach 2003; Ayres 1999; Baringhorst et al. 2009; Downey and
Fenton 2003; Geser 2000; Myers 1998; Rucht 2005b; van den Donk et al. 2004.
  6 See Olesen 2005; Schulz 2007.
  7 See Bray 2002; Pertschuk 1997; Ryan 1991; Salzman 1998; Wallack et al. 1999.
  8 The German neo-Nazi party Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD) forbids
its followers to consume alcohol during demonstrations organized by the party.
  9 http://www.indymedia.org/en/static/about.shtml (accessed 8 October, 2009).
10 The dailies are die tageszeitung (circulation about 60,000, left-libertarian orientation),
Frankfurter Rundschau (circulation about 175,000, left-liberal), Süddeutsche Zeitung
(circulation about 420,000, liberal), Die Welt (circulation about 265,000, conservative),
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (circulation around 420,000, conservative) and Bild
(circulation about 4,375,000, conservative tabloid). The weeklies are Die Zeit (circula-
tion about 440,000, liberal), Der Spiegel (circulation about 1,000,000, political maga-
zine, center) and Focus (circulation about 780,000, magazine, conservative). Numbers
on circulation date from around 2004 as a proxy for the observed time span from 1999
to 2007.
210   Dieter Rucht
11 This can be clearly shown by an electronic search of terms including the core term
‘global’ in the German newspaper die tageszeitung. The core term was almost absent
until the early 1990s and began to rise sharply in the second half of the 1990s to become
present in almost one thousand articles in the early 2000s.
12 The coders were required to identify the main focus of the overall article.
13 On the basis of the values on a scale from 0 (no space) to 6 (total space) in the article
to be coded, the average value is 1.56 for Seattle, 0.81 for Prague, 0.76 for Genoa, 0.74
for Gothenburg and 0.72 for Heiligendamm.
14 The coded Czech papers are Lidové Noviny (daily, center-right, circulation 82,000 in
1999), Právo (daily, center, circulation 249,000 in 1999), Mladá Fronta (daily, center-
right, circulation 354,000 in 1999), Blesk (daily, circulation 360,000 in mid-2002),
Týden (weekly political magazine, liberal, circulation 21,000 in 2001) and Respekt
(weekly, circulation around 30,000 in 2001).
15 See also the newspaper analysis of Beyeler and Kriesi (2005) who compared how news-
papers in seven countries covered various GJM events. Bennett et al. (2004) have
analyzed the coverage of protests against the World Economic Forum (WEF) meetings
in the United States.
16 In Germany, criticism of Greenpeace mounted in 1991 with a cover story of Der Spiegel
(September 16) and subsequent reports in various major newspapers and public television.
17 For a more skeptical view see, for example, Kavada 2005 and Rucht 2005b.

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11 Taming of the shrew?
International women’s NGOs,
institutional power and the United
Nations
Jutta Joachim

Introduction
How do the rules and practices of international organizations affect non-govern-
mental organizations (NGOs)? Thus far, we know rather little about the impact
the transnational organizing has on the involved actors because the majority of
studies have primarily been interested in demonstrating the agency and influence
of NGOs. To this end, scholars have examined the role of civil society organiza-
tions in agenda-setting processes (e.g. Corell and Betsill 2001; Friedman et al.
2005; Gordenker et al. 1995; Joachim 2007; Locher 2007) or the emergence and
enforcement of norms (e.g. Burgerman 2001; Clark 2001; Hawkins 2003; Keck
and Sikkink 1998; Klotz 1995; Price 1998; Risse et al. 1999). Referring to them
as ‘magic bullets’ (Edwards and Hulme 1996) or ‘entrepreneurs’ (e.g. Keck and
Sikkink 1998; Price 1998), a great number of studies have sought to demonstrate
how NGOs contribute to changes in the global politics by drawing on their moral
authority, expertise and by engaging in strategic framing processes.
In comparison, the ‘structuring’ effects of the institutional environment, in
general, and that of international governmental organizations, which NGOs use
as platforms to mobilize support for their concerns, in particular, have been of
much less concern. This is not to say that scholars have not addressed the influ-
ence of structures and institutions. However, they have accounted for them in a
rather limited fashion, acknowledging the opportunities they create for or the
constraints they impose on civil society actors and the impact they have on the
outcome of their campaigns or their numerical growth. The power that interna-
tional organizations exert and the ways in which they affect the inner organiza-
tional life of NGOs have, for the most part, been ignored.1
More recent work departs from this trend and suggests that multilateral institu-
tions affect not only the behaviour of NGOs but also the very understanding they
have of themselves, as well as the interests they pursue. In their study on the issue
of climate change, Gough and Shackley (2001: 329), for example, assert that the
NGOs working inside the United Nations moved from being ‘outside critical
agents demanding issue recognition and action, to [being] partners in developing
workable frameworks and principles for implementing action’. Adopting a ‘top-
down’ view, Reimann (2006) suggests that two aspects of globalization help to
explain the rapid growth of NGOs: increased funding and political access, on the
Taming of the shrew?   215
one hand, and the rise of a pro-NGO norm, on the other hand (see also Joachim
and Locher 2008: 172). Furthermore, students of European integration have
examined whether and to what extent social movements and civil society organi-
zations at the domestic level adjust their campaigns and organizational structures
because of the opportunities for political engagement at the European level (e.g.
Cram 2001; Marks and McAdam 1996; Tarrow 1994/1995).
Building on this type of research, this chapter aims at a better understanding of
the influence that formal and informal rules of intergovernmental organizations
have on civil society organizations. Employing the concept of institutional power
developed by Barnett and Duvall (2005) as part of their power taxonomy and
focusing on international women’s NGOs across time, I illustrate how the institu-
tional arrangements in the United Nations influenced questions of representation,
contributed to the professionalization of involved women’s NGOs, affected the
framing of issues and precipitated conflicts between them. I show that contrary to
coercive power, institutional power is less direct and deliberate. Instead, it flows
from the logic of how institutions work, that is, the formal and informal rules on
which they rest.
The chapter is structured as follows: In the first section, I distinguish institutional
power from other forms of power, namely compulsory, structural and productive
power. In the second section, I discuss the arrangements within the United Nations
that have been defined to regulate the interactions with civil society organizations.
The third section specifies the effects that these institutional arrangements have on
NGOs. It is informed by both my own research of two international campaigns –
violence against women and reproductive rights and health – and secondary sources
regarding the history of the international women’s movement. In the concluding
section, I draw out some of the implications for future research when shifting the
focus from the NGOs to the institutions and the power they exert.

Global governance, institutional power and NGOs


The concept of power is central to the study of international relations.2 Although
realist notions of power have been particularly prevalent, the end of the Cold War
and the growing importance of international organizations have given rise to
alternative definitions. Barnett and Duvall (2005), for example, developed a
power taxonomy in which they conceive of power as multidimensional and which
I consider particularly useful to examine the effects of multilateral institutions on
NGOs. According to the authors, power can be distinguished depending on ‘the
kinds of social relations through which power works; and the specificity of social
relations through which effects on actors’ capacities are produced’ (Barnett and
Duvall 2005: 42). Regarding the former, power can either be exercised and be
attributed to particular actors and the resources they possess or work through
social relations ‘constituting what actors are as social beings, that is, their social
identities and capacities’ (Barnett and Duvall 2005). With respect to specificity,
one can distinguish between power that works directly and is therefore ‘socially
specific’, on the one hand, and that which has more indirect effects and is rather
socially diffuse, on the other hand (Barnett and Duvall 2005: 43).
216   Jutta Joachim
On the basis of these two dimensions, Barnett and Duvall identify four types
of power: (1) Compulsory power relates to the more traditional notion of power
capturing ‘the direct control of one actor over the conditions of existence and/
or the actions of another’ (Barnett and Duvall 2005: 48). Contrary to classic
definitions, compulsory power derived from the kinds of relations and their
specificity, however, may have not only intended but also unintended effects.
Furthermore, it may be derived from material and immaterial resources, such as
expertise or reputation. (2) Institutional power, by comparison, refers to power
that actors exercise in indirect ways over others through formal and informal
institutions. The focus is, therefore, on ‘the rules and procedures that define
those institutions, guides, steers, and constraints the actions (or non-actions)
and conditions of others’ (Barnett and Duvall 2005: 51). (3) Structural power
works through social relations and has direct effects. It not only ‘produces the
very social capacities of structural, or subject positions in direct relation to one
another’ but also ‘the associated interests that underlie and dispose action’
(Barnett and Duvall 2005: 53). (4) Productive power is similar to structural
power in that it too is characteristic of social processes but differs because it is
more diffuse. Rather than (re-)producing positions of super- and subordination
or domination, productive power ‘is the constitution of all social subjects with
various social powers through systems of knowledge and discursive practices
of broad and general social scope’ (Barnett and Duvall 2005: 55). It is con-
cerned with both the ‘discourses, the social processes, and the systems of
knowledge through which meaning is produced, fixed, lived, and experienced,
and transformed’, and the ‘discursive processes and practices [which] produce
social identities and capacities as they give meaning to them’ (Barnett and
Duvall 2005: 55–6).
With its interest in the impact of UN rules, norms and practices on NGOs, the
focus in this chapter will be on institutional power. This is not to say that other
forms of power are irrelevant. Quite to the contrary, we can observe instances of,
for example, compulsory power with the United Nations granting, withholding or
withdrawing consultative status from NGOs or excluding NGOs from projects.
Furthermore, productive power can be observed in the way NGOs are labelled
more recently as ‘partners’ in UN documents, and finally, structural power also
plays a role. The UN Charter and subsequent documents make quite clear that the
relationship between NGOs and UN member states is a hierarchical one. States
have legal standing whereas NGOs do not.
Institutional power can work in various ways, as for example, through decision-
making rules or divisions of labour between different institutional entities or what
Barnett and Duvall (2005: 16) refer to as ‘spatial effects’. It can also produce tem-
poral effects through path dependencies with institutions established at some point
in the past having effects on actors in the future. Furthermore, institutional power
also draws attention to what Schattschneider (1960: 8) has referred to as the ‘orga-
nizational bias’, that is, the ways in which institutional arrangements are biased in
a certain direction, creating opportunities for some and limiting those of others
(Barnett and Duvall 2005: 16).
Taming of the shrew?   217
Institutional power and the United Nations: rules of NGO
engagement
In the United Nations, the rules for engaging with civil society organizations have
been defined across time through various resolutions. They stipulate both the
criteria that NGOs must meet to be accredited and the privileges they may enjoy.
Moreover, informal rules and practices have developed through the interactions
of NGOs, UN staff and governmental delegates. Although the tendency has been
towards easing restrictions regarding the participation of NGOs, there have been
setbacks to this more general trend on occasion.
Contrary to its predecessor, the League of Nations, which had worked and
cooperated only informally with international NGOs (Karns and Mingst 2004;
Mingst 2009: 22; Seary 1996: 22),3 the United Nations formally acknowledged
their existence and the input they had provided when the organization was estab-
lished (see Willetts 1996). Article 71 of the UN Charter calls on ‘[t]he Economic
and Social Council [to] make suitable arrangements for consultation with non-
governmental organizations which are concerned with matters within its compe-
tence’. At the time of the creation, Member States envisioned formalized relations
for the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) but neither for the General
Assembly nor the Security Council. Willetts (1996: 31) attributes this situation,
on the one hand, to the fact that NGOs ‘were seen as being “non-political,”’ and,
on the other hand, to the Cold War in the late 1940s and 1950s. Moreover, the
arrangement concerned first and foremost international NGOs. National organi-
zations could only be included ‘[w]here appropriate’ if they were not members of
international NGOs, had special experience to offer and only after consulting
with the relevant government (Willetts 1996: 32; see also Seary 1996: 27).
Responding to Article 71, ECOSOC decided on a system to regulate NGO
participation. Organizations seeking access to the United Nations had to apply for
consultative status and meet the following general criteria: They had to be

. . . concerned with matters falling within the competence of ECOSOC, . . . be


in conformity with the UN Charter, . . . represent a substantial portion of the
people in its field and . . . speak for its members through authorized
representatives.
(Willetts 1996: 32)

Moreover, to help governments navigate through the vastly growing field of


NGOs, ECOSOC created three specific categories, differentiating civil society
organizations according to the breadth of their objectives and the privileges they
may enjoy once they have been accredited. Although these categories were
labelled A, B and C at first, they were changed to Categories I, II and Roster in
1968, following the first major review of the consultative arrangements and the
adoption of resolution of 1296 by the General Assembly (Willetts 1996).
Category I organizations are those engaged in many areas of ECOSOC respon-
sibilities and enjoying the broadest range of entitlements. These NGOs may
observe and speak at public meetings of ECOSOC and its subsidiary bodies,
218   Jutta Joachim
propose items for the agenda through the Council Committee on NGOs or submit
written statements of maximally 2,000 words. NGOs accredited in Category II
have so-called special status because they have only expertise in a particular issue
area. Although they enjoy many of the same prerogatives as those in Category I,
they are limited insofar as they are asked to submit shorter written statements
(maximally 500 words) and are granted to speak at ECOSOC and functional com-
mission meetings on topics that are not dealt with by subsidiary bodies. Finally,
Category III or rather the Roster comprises smaller NGOs with occasional inter-
est in ECOSOC activities. Not surprisingly, their privileges are also more limited.
Although Roster NGOs can submit written statements similar to those in
Category II, they may only observe public ECOSOC meetings that pertain to
their field of competence and speak exclusively at those of functional commissions
and subsidiary bodies (Karns and Mingst 2004: 232).
With the adoption of resolution 1996/31 by the General Assembly in 1996, the
arrangements concerning consultative status were once more amended. National,
local, regional and grassroots organizations could now apply officially to be
accredited. The resolution formalized what had become a common practice at the
UN specialized conferences conducted in the early 1990s starting with UN
Conference on Climate and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992,
continuing with the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in 1993 and
the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo in
1994 and concluding with the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing and
the World Social Summit in Copenhagen in 1995 (see, e.g. Corell and Betsill
2001; Friedman 2003; Friedman et al. 2005; Willetts 1996). Since then, the
number of NGOs in consultative status has doubled from 1,126 in 1996 to 2,151
in 2001 (Frantz and Martens 2006: 98–9).
In addition to ECOSOC and the general rules provided by it, most of the UN
specialized agencies and functional committees maintain relations with NGOs by
now and have developed rules, albeit informal ones, to regulate participation.4
With respect to matters related to women and gender, there are several UN bodies
that constitute important focal and access points for civil society organizations.
They include the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), the Committee on
the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the
Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW), the UN Development Fund for
Women (UNIFEM) and the International Research and Training Institute for the
Advancement of Women (INSTRAW).
CSW was established in 1946 as a functional commission to ECOSOC.
Comprised of 45 member states, it is tasked with the promotion of women’s
equality and rights through the development of global policies. DAW serves as a
secretariat for CSW. It prepares its sessions as well as all relevant documentation
(see Coliver 1987; Reanda 1992). On the basis of state reports, CEDAW was cre-
ated to monitor the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination,
the so-called Women’s Convention, adopted in 1979. Contrary to the CSW, it is
made up of 23 independent experts from around the world (Tinker 1981).5
UNIFEM was founded in 1984 by the General Assembly as a separate entity in
Taming of the shrew?   219
autonomous association with the UN Development Program (UNDP) and pro-
vides ‘financial and technical assistance to innovative programs and strategies
that foster women’s empowerment’.6 Finally, in 1976, ECOSOC created
INSTRAW with the mandate to develop research and training programmes that
contribute to the empowerment of women and the achievement of gender equality
worldwide.7 Of the various bodies mentioned, it is the only one located in a devel-
oping country (Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic) (see Stienstra 1994:
118–22, 134–44).8
Although all of the institutions maintain strong relationships with the civil
society sector, their modes of interaction differ. DAW, for example, has a
Coordination and Outreach Unit ‘[which] ensures outreach and interaction on
gender issues with civil society’ including NGOs.9 In preparation for CSW meet-
ings, the Division frequently conducts so-called expert group meetings to which
NGOs are invited or involves their representatives in the drafting of reports and
documents. DAW works closely with the NGO Committee on the Status of
Women, a network of accredited NGOs, which organizes advocacy training for
NGOs, and coordinates NGO events and consultation sessions with NGO repre-
sentatives in preparation for the CSW meetings.10 Before CSW meetings, NGOs
may submit communications in the form of complaints, appeals or petitions ‘con-
taining information relating to alleged violations of human rights that affect the
status of women in any country in the world’.11 These communications are then
considered during the annual CSW sessions to help ‘identify emerging trends and
patterns of injustice and discriminatory practices against women for purposes of
policy formulation and development of strategies for the promotion of gender
equality’. In the case of CEDAW, NGOs may submit shadow reports to those
supplied by states, make oral presentations during the first 2 weeks when the
committee is in session,12 and since the adoption of the Optional Protocol in 1999,
submit claims of violations of rights protected under the Convention, granted that
domestic remedies have been exhausted. UNIFEM has emerged as one of the
most important links for women’s NGOs to the United Nations. Involved in
implementation, it enlists and solicits the support of local NGOs. Both UNIFEM
and INSTRAW maintain so-called ‘partnership programmes’ intended to support
projects and initiatives of individual or groups of NGOs. In addition, both institu-
tions frequently conduct training sessions for or provide financial support to
NGOs to facilitate their engagement with the UN system.
Since the 1980s, quite a number of specialized agencies and functional com-
mittees with a broader focus have established gender-related programmes or focal
points and maintain regularized relationships with women’s NGOs, such as the
World Health Organization (WHO), the Food and Agricultural Organization of
the UN (FAO), the International Labor Organization (ILO), the UN Population
Fund (UNFPA) or the World Bank, to name only a few (Stienstra 1994: 137).
Even the UN Security Council, which had until recently been off limits to NGOs,
has started to open its doors. However, it engages only with a select few civil
society organizations in what by now have become regularized exchanges (Alger
2002; Mingst 2009: 25).13 The Women’s International League for Peace and
220   Jutta Joachim
Freedom (WILPF) is one of them. Following its tireless lobbying efforts, Security
Council members adopted resolutions 1325 and 1820 – on the subject of ‘women,
peace, and security’ in 2001 and 2008, respectively, that establish the basis for
future interactions (Stiehm 2001).
Finally, informal rules and practices of NGO participation have evolved
through UN special conferences, particularly those conducted in the early 1990s.
Governmental delegations, for example, have started to include representatives of
NGOs on their delegations, thus giving them the opportunity for more direct input
and to observe not only official but also informal meetings. At the UNCED in Rio
de Janeiro in 1992, the Women, Environment, and Development Organization
(WEDO) under the leadership of former US congresswoman Bella Abzug
invented the so-called caucus system (Finke 2005; Joachim 2007: 34) that since
then has evolved into a widely used instrument at the so-called NGO fora that
take place parallel to the official UN conferences (Willetts 1996: 51–2). Primarily
intended as a means for different NGO groups to formulate strategies, the caucus
system also facilitates communication and the exchange of information with rep-
resentatives of friendly delegations. Finally, contrary to UN conferences in the
past during which representatives of NGOs were confined to the visitor balconies
or the corridors, they are now allowed onto the negotiation floors.

Institutional power, UN rules and women’s NGOs


The formal and informal rules as well as practices of UN institutions have
affected women’s NGOs in different ways. As I will illustrate in this section, they
have influenced questions of representation, contributed to their professionaliza-
tion, shaped their framing activities and have, in part, been responsible for the
conflicts that erupted and continue to prevail between them.

Representation
Many NGO scholars have noted the catalytic function of UN conferences for
transnational organizing (e.g. Friedman et al. 2005; Reimann 2006; Willetts
1996). In the case of women’s NGOs, the UN Decade for Women (1976–85) and
the three UN World Conferences for Women held during it in Mexico City
(1975), Copenhagen (1980) and Nairobi (1985) were particularly critical and
contributed to greater representation of women at the international level. The
conferences as well as the preparatory governmental meetings provided opportu-
nities to network, exchange information and inspired women to found new orga-
nizations (see Chen 1995; Fraser 1987; Stienstra 1994; Zinsser 2002). They were
accompanied by NGO forums, which took place in the same location and around
the same time as the official conferences, and were attended by an increasing
number of individuals and NGO women. Although close to 6,000 women took
part in the first NGO meeting in Mexico City, their number had already risen to
8,000 in Copenhagen (Ashworth 1982: 141) and once again to nearly 15,000 in
Nairobi (Stienstra 1994: 130). The conference series of the 1990s had similar
Taming of the shrew?   221
effects. Close to 30,000 women participated in the parallel NGO forum of the
Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 (Timothy 2004: 34).
In addition to affecting the numerical representation of women’s NGOs, the
conference rules also influenced who could speak to governments. At the first UN
women’s conference, for example, NGOs had no direct access at all. Instead,
NGOs presented their petitions to the Secretary General of the Conference, Helvi
Sipila, who in turn conveyed them to the delegates (Stienstra 1994: 113). At the
mid-decade conference in Copenhagen, still only a few NGOs were given permis-
sion to be present at the governmental conference, yet, close to 250 enjoyed
access to the official meeting in Nairobi. However, because these organizations
were larger ones that had held consultative status with ECOSOC already before
the UN conferences, other organizations attending the NGO forum questioned
their representativity (Timothy 2004: 34).14
By the time of the Beijing women’s conference, access had significantly broad-
ened. A total of 2,100 accredited NGOs with more than 5,000 individual repre-
sentatives were admitted to the official conference (Finke 2005: 86). Moreover,
these NGOs faced far fewer restrictions. They were able to move around freely
in designated UN buildings, observe and present oral or written statements in all
of the official meetings and sometimes even had access to informal meetings as
a result of being included on governmental delegations. Also, these organizations
made ample use of email and internet to inform NGOs from around the world
about developments over the course of the proceedings and to solicit their input.
Nevertheless, similar to the decade conference, questions arose regarding repre-
sentation because a few select organizations emerged as the primary link between
governments and NGOs: WEDO at the UNCED in Rio de Janeiro, the Center for
Women’s Global Leadership (CWGL) and the International Women’s Tribune
Center (IWTC) at the Human Rights Conference in Vienna and the International
Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC) at the ICPD in Cairo.
Finally, UN conferences also illustrate how the choice of location affects NGO
representation. Although women from the South constituted still a small group at
the Mexico City and Copenhagen conferences,15 their representation increased
dramatically when the meeting took place in Nairobi (Allan et al. 1995: 39). Of
the 13,504 registrants, 60 per cent were from the developing world and more than
1,000 from Kenya alone (Stephenson 1995: 148). The decision to hold the Fourth
World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, too, influenced NGO participa-
tion. Many women’s organizations failed to acquire consultative status for the
conference or a visa to enter the country. The Chinese government, for example,
rejected groups favouring self-rule for Tibet or separate status for Taiwan or ones
opposed to its human rights policies (Timothy 2004: 35).
Although accreditation was particularly controversial before the Beijing con-
ference, the politics associated with consultative status are, however, nothing
new. At the height of the Cold War, for example, Western countries used their
voting majority in ECOSOC to prevent the Women’s International Democratic
Federation (WIDF) from re-obtaining Category B status as had been proposed by
the Soviet Union (Willetts 1996: 34). The International Planned Parenthood
222   Jutta Joachim
Federation (IPPF) was denied consultative status when it had first applied for it
in the early 1950s because of the opposition of Catholic and Muslim countries but
been able to obtain it in the 1960s.16 More recent cases of politicization include
the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA), which in the early 1990s
lost its Roster status shortly after it had been granted, given the strong opposition
from Catholic, Orthodox and Islamic countries (Willetts 1996: 36–7).

Professionalization
Studying social movements and NGOs at the domestic level, many scholars have
noted changes in organizational structures and performance or what they refer to
as professionalization among organizations engaged in state institutions (e.g.
Diani and Donati 1999; Rucht and Roose 1999; Staggenborg 1988; Young 1991).
Similar tendencies can also be observed among international women’s NGOs that
have changed from ‘little old ladies in tennis shoes’ (Archer 1983: 303) to becom-
ing professional women in business suits.
Until the 1970s and 1980s, many of the women’s organizations in consultative
status with the United Nations were run by volunteers, comprised almost exclu-
sively of white middle upper-class women who were not only devoted to women’s
equality with men but also educated and wealthy enough to travel (see Rupp 1994;
Rupp and Taylor 1999). Little did change in this respect until the UN Decade for
Women, when women’s activists became aware of the fact that effective lobbying
and influence in international institutions, such as the United Nations, required not
only expertise and knowledge of issues but also of the rules that prevail within
them.
Women’s NGOs began to organize so-called teach-ins at the parallel NGO
forums, where the more seasoned activists shared their knowledge about how the
United Nations works, how documents had to be prepared, what language had to
be used and where information could be obtained with the newcomers among the
organizations (see Stienstra 1994). The growing importance of expertise was also
evident in who was appointed for important positions in representing NGOs at the
United Nations, such as the convenors of the NGO forums. Two experienced
women – Rosalind Harris and Mildred Persinger – for example, had been selected
for the Mexico City conference. Although Harris had been the president of the
Conference of NGOs (CONGO) in consultative status with ECOSOC and already
successfully organized the NGO forum at the 1974 World Population Conference
in Bucharest, Persinger had been the UN representative of the World Young
Women’s Christian Association (WYWCA). Similarly, Elizabeth Palmer who had
been the convenor of the NGO forum of the women’s conference in Copenhagen
had been the former director of the YWCA based in Geneva and Nita Barrow
responsible for organizing the meeting in Nairobi had been president of the World
Council of Churches (WCC), the WYWCA and the International Council of
Adult Education (ICAE) (Fraser 1987).
Evidence for professionalization can be found in the organizations themselves.
Many international women’s NGOs maintain offices in New York or Geneva close
Taming of the shrew?   223
to UN buildings, have different programme areas and maintain an Internet pres-
ence. Rather than being made up of part-time activists, the majority of organiza-
tions represented at the United Nations are composed of what Meyer and Tarrow
(1998) refer to as ‘full-time movement professionals’. These organizations are run
by a paid and well-trained staff. They have an executive director, programme offi-
cers, accountants, sales and marketing persons. A look at the profile of NGO staff
reveals that the majority of officers have graduate degrees and NGO experience.
Furthermore, starting in the late 1970s and 1980s, NGOs began to bundle their
energies and magnify their presence within the UN framework by creating inter-
national networks. Of these, not only WEDO, the CWGL, the IWTC and the
IWHC but also the Southern network Development Alternatives with Women for
a New Era (DAWN) has emerged as linking pins between governments and civil
society. With the exception of the CWGL and DAWN, which are located in
Rutgers (United States) and Manila (Philippines), respectively, these networks
have their offices in close proximity to UN headquarters in New York, are
directed by experienced activists and are intended to facilitate the cooperation
between Northern and Southern women.17
Finally, professionalization also started to show in the 1980s and early 1990s
in other respects. UN secretariats and agencies as well as governmental delegates
increasingly solicited the input of NGOs on individual issues, consulted with
them in the preparation of position papers or asked them to write entire reports.18
Moreover, given their knowledge and expertise, NGO officers were also in
demand for UN jobs. UNIFEM is a particularly good example of this ‘revolving
door’ policy. Its former director Noeleen Heyzer had been co-founder of the
Southern women’s network DAWN and Roxanna Carrillo, head of the women’s
human rights programme, was a staff member of the CWGL before joining the
Fund (Joachim 2007; see also Finke 2005: 142).

Framing and issue linkage


International organizations can influence NGOs through their agenda-setting
activities (Barnett and Duvall 2005: 52). Through time, women’s NGOs tailored
and framed their issues according to dominant UN themes and topics. They
engaged in what some refer to as ‘issue-linkage politics’ (e.g. Jaquette 1995).
Although organizations taking part in the conferences of the 1970s and 1980s
defined women’s issues in relation to equality, peace and development, that is,
themes that reflected the priorities of the Northern, Eastern bloc and developing
countries, they began to ‘mainstream’ their issues in the 1990s, linking them to
the topics of the special conferences, such as environment, population or human
rights (see Friedman 2003). The impetus for doing so originated not only from
the UN agendas directly but also from path dependencies. Women’s NGOs were
frustrated both with how women’s issues within the United Nations had been
treated as separate and marginal and how UN institutions devoted to them had
less resources and prerogatives than, for example, those concerned with human
rights (Joachim 2007: 123).19
224   Jutta Joachim
Traces of institutional power can also be found if one compares how issues are
defined outside the United Nations and how they change when NGOs move
inside. The issue of violence against women is quite illustrative in this respect.
When women’s organizations and activists conducted the first international meet-
ing regarding the topic – the International Tribunal on Crimes against Women in
Brussels in March of 1976 – they defined the problem quite broadly as ‘all man-
made forms of women’s oppression as crimes against women’ including among
other things the inaccessibility to abortion, medical crimes, rape, battering, eco-
nomic discrimination, verbal abuse or pornography (quoted in Russell and Van de
Ven 1984: 219). In comparison, when the UN Division for the Advancement on
Women together with the Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Branch of the
Center for Social Development and Humanitarian Affairs conducted the first
expert group meeting on the subject in Vienna in 1986, to which representatives
of women’s NGOs had been invited, the problem was defined in a quite narrow
fashion confined to violence in the family. It was only in the context of the UN
World Conference on Human Rights in 1993, the mass raping of women in the
ethnic conflicts of former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and intensive lobbying of
women’s NGOs that the issue frame became again broadened, and UN member
states recognized violence against women in both the private and the public
sphere (see Joachim 2007).
Finally, official agendas and those who define them not only determine which
issues become included and which ones are ignored but also they quite frequently
require NGOs to speak with one voice and develop a ‘take home message’ to get
heard (Hoffmann 2008). Several scholars have pointed out that division and con-
flict weakens NGOs vis-à-vis governments, because the organizations themselves
get bogged down in discussions or governments use these disagreements to dis-
credit NGOs. The caucus system serves precisely the purpose of coordinating the
strategies of the quite heterogeneous community of NGOs and to develop a com-
mon lobbying document. However, a closer look at the recent UN conferences
also lends support to the argument. Before Beijing +5 in 2000, the follow-up
conference to the fourth world conference on women, for example, WEDO, the
CWGL and the IWHC entered into the Coalition in Support of the Beijing
Platform for Action, which produced a lobbying document by soliciting the input
from 95 women’s groups from around the world via email and organized a link-
age caucus to work on it further (Finke 2005: 138). Also, faced with major oppo-
sition from Catholic and Islamic countries at the ICPD in Cairo in 1994, women’s
organizations decided to work together as a ‘united front’ and in ‘solidarity’
despite major differences between them, developing a 21-point statement for
governments and policy makers (see Joachim 2007).

Conflicts among NGOs


In addition to affecting issues of representation, professionalization and framing,
accreditation rules have also structured and contributed to the fault lines running
through the women’s NGO community. For example, following the accreditation
Taming of the shrew?   225
of more professionalized NGOs and networks in the 1980s and 1990s, conflicts
ensued between these and the older volunteer-based organizations. Because the
newer organizations engaged in what Keck and Sikkink (1998) referred to as
symbolic politics, organizing sit-ins or demonstrations, they were perceived by
the latter as being too aggressive in their style and acting anything but ‘lady-like’.
Furthermore, the heightened engagement of women’s NGOs in the United
Nations, in general, pitted so-called insiders and outsiders against each other.
Although the former considered institutional politics a necessary strategy to
advance women’s status, the latter feared that this would result in co-optation and
problems of accountability. In the case of reproductive rights and health, the pro-
cess leading up to the ICPD in Cairo in 1994 once again helps illustrate this point.
Pragmatic organizations and those associated with the Women’s Alliance consid-
ered the population policy framework as an adequate channel to gain acceptance
for women’s reproductive rights and health (see Joachim 2007: 151). More radical
organizations, by comparison, viewed it as unacceptable because the framework
left untouched what these organizations considered to be the more fundamen-
tal causes of population growth, including the uneven distribution of wealth,
environmental degradation, overconsumption or military expenditure (Joachim
2007: 152).
Finally, women’s NGOs have been affected by and reproduced the conflicts
between Northern and Southern bloc countries inside the United Nations. At the
NGO forum in Mexico City in 1975, women from developing countries reacted
quite strongly to the Northern predominance. Attempts by well-known feminists,
such as Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug, Gloria Steinem or Angela Davis, for exam-
ple, to fashion feminism as a strategy to bring about equality between women and
men were viewed by Southern women as a form of ‘US imperialism’ and ‘North
American domination [of] the proceedings’ (Whitaker 1975: 175). At the confer-
ence in Copenhagen, the issue of female genital mutilation became a lightening
rod. Although Northern women condemned it as ‘a barbaric practice imposed on
women by male-dominated primitive societies’ (Toubia 1995: 232), women from
the South defended it as a cultural practice and took the criticism as yet another
form of Western imperialism (see Stienstra 1994: 128).
Although Northern and Southern women have learned over time to work
together and established common networks, divisions nevertheless prevail
between them. Many smaller and Southern NGOs still believe that the United
Nations is favouring the bigger and well-resourced Northern NGOs, such as
WEDO, the CWGL, the IWTC or the IWHC, and that these network organiza-
tions do not speak as they claim, for all women.

Conclusion
Employing the concept of institutional power and focusing on international women’s
NGOs, this chapter has illustrated how formal and informal rules as well as practices
of international organizations affect civil society organizations. In addition to pre-
senting opportunities for transnational organizing or imposing constraints, the
226   Jutta Joachim
institutional arrangements have more far-reaching effects. They contribute to both
changes in the organizational structure and the ways in which NGOs relate to each
other and to governments. In the case of international women’s NGOs, UN rules,
procedures and practices have influenced, shaped and tamed the involved organiza-
tions. They have affected their representation at the international level, provided the
impetus for professionalization, prompted the involved organizations to adjust their
frames and precipitated conflicts between them.
In terms of their implications, the findings can be interpreted in different ways.
On the one hand, the ability of NGOs to adjust and respond to institutional
requirements has been considered a major ingredient of their success. Many
authors emphasize the ways in which these civil society organizations are able to
place marginalized issues on international agendas, contribute to new norms or
are better implementers because, contrary to states, they are more flexible, less
constrained by bureaucratic red tape or national sentiments. On the other hand,
the taming appears highly problematic when we turn to questions of democracy
and transparency. Rather than being a sign of hope, NGOs can be argued to have
fallen victim to co-optation and obstruction. If their choices are that tightly cir-
cumscribed and if they behave more like states, then, one might ask, how can
NGOs still represent or speak for civil society, hold governments accountable or
be critical of them? Both views appear extreme, and the answer of what NGOs
can do or what potential they have lies probably somewhere in between.
Therefore, it seems essential that we pay more attention to how NGOs are
affected by the power of others.
This requires a closer examination of the different actors and institutions with
whom NGOs interact, be they states, international governmental organizations, their
bureaucracies and individuals working within, or other NGOs, and the types of
power they use. It calls for a detailed analysis of the inner life of these civil society
organizations and how their organizational structure and their self-understanding
changes in turn. Although this does not mean ignoring the agency of NGOs entirely,
it does involve a shift in focus. By examining more closely the institutions in which
NGOs engage and are embedded, we are not only likely to obtain a more nuanced
picture of the possibilities and limits for NGO agency but also to learn more about
whether and to what extend NGOs are akin to the shrew and international govern-
mental organizations a taming force.

Notes
  1 For exceptions, see, for example, Martens (2006) and Young (1991).
  2 A number of scholars have grabbled with the concept of power, for example, Baldwin
(1989, 2002), Berenskoetter and Williams (2005), Enloe (1996), Guzzini (1993, 2000)
and Nye (2004).
  3 The only organization that enjoyed official recognition was the Red Cross (Seary 1996:
22). Article 25 of the Covenant of the League called on its members ‘. . . to encourage
and promote the establishment and cooperation of duly authorized voluntary national
Red Cross organizations having as purposes the improvement of health, the prevention
of disease and the mitigation of suffering throughout the world’.
Taming of the shrew?   227
  4 According to Mingst, access varies according to the aims of the respective institution:
‘The broader its functions in the social areas, the broader and deeper NGO participa-
tion; the narrower and more technical its tasks, the fewer NGOs are involved’ (Mingst
2009: 26).
  5 Similar to the CSW, CEDAW was also serviced by the DAW before responsibility for
the treaty body was transferred to the Office of the High Commissioner on Human
Rights in Geneva at the end of 2008.
  6 See, http://www.unifem.org/about/ (accessed August 10, 2009).
  7 See, http://www.un-instraw.org/ (accessed August 10, 2009).
  8 For a detailed discussion of these UN bodies, see Joachim (2010).
  9 See, http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/daw/cou.htm (accessed August 10, 2009).
10 See, http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/ngo/index.html (accessed August 10, 2009).
11 See, http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw/communications_procedure.html (accessed
August 10, 2009).
12 See, http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/NGO_Information_note_CEDAW.pdf
(accessed August 10, 2009).
13 Five categories of New York-based NGOs feature most prominently: (1) human rights
NGOs (e.g. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International or the International Campaign
for the International Criminal Court), (2) humanitarian NGOs (e.g. OXFAM, CARE,
Médicines sans Frontieres, Save the Children, World Vision or International Rescue
Committee), peace and security NGOs (e.g. International Crisis Group, Quakers,
WILPF or Global Witness) or NGOs concerned with questions of global governance
(e.g. Global Policy Forum, World Federalist Movement and Parliamentarians for
Global Action).
14 For example, these organizations included the International Federation of Business and
Professional Women, the International Federation of University Women, Zonta
International or WILPF (Timothy 2004: 34).
15 In Mexico City, women from North America constituted the largest group of participants
followed by Latin America. Women from Europe, Africa and Asia comprised the smallest
group. In Copenhagen by comparison, the majority of women taking part in the forum
came from Europe (5,400), followed by approximately 1,000 women from North America
and the Carribean, 863 from Asia and the Pacific, 357 from Latin America, 245 from
Africa and 147 from the Middle East (Jaquette 1995: 56).
16 In the 1960s, Catholic and Muslim countries also prevented the accreditation of Human
Life International, an anti-abortion organization (Willetts 1996: 37).
17 Former US congresswoman and long-term activist Bella Abzug was co-founder and
until recently executive director of WEDO that was established before UNCED in
1990, Charlotte Bunch was a founding member and has been the executive director of
the CWGL that was established in 1989, Ann S. Walker was co-founder of the IWTC
that was established in 1976 following the Mexico City UN women’s conference and
served as executive director until 2002 before Vicki Semler assumed that responsibil-
ity, Adrienne Germain has been co-founder and president of the IWHC that was estab-
lished in 1980 and Gigi Franscisco is the general coordinator of DAWN that was
founded in 1984.
18 For example, WEDO, the CWGL, the IWHC and the IWTC are meanwhile recognized
by many UN agencies and committees as partners (Dorsey 1997: 346–7).
19 Compared with the former Commission on Human Rights, for example, CSW had been
given less prerogatives, was understaffed and short of financial resources (Reanda
1992).
228   Jutta Joachim

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12 AID(S) politics and power
A critique of global governance
Håkan Thörn

Introduction: the politicization an de-politicization of AIDS


During the past decade, a number of analyses of politics in a global context have
used the concept of ‘governance’ to grasp new developments (Held and Koenig-
Archibugi 2005). Governance is an increasingly popular concept not only in the
social sciences but also in the context of policy-making – and particularly so in
global policy networks focusing on aid to countries in the Global South. Although
policy discourses often define these networks, composed of state agencies, non-
governmental organizations (NGOs), private foundations and corporations, in
terms of ‘good governance’ and ‘partnership’, this chapter will focus on the
impact of power relations in these networks through the case of global AIDS aid
governance.
Governance research often has a somewhat celebratory tone, arguing that the
inclusion of civil society actors enhances democratic legitimacy and represents
relatively democratic structures of co-operation between the ‘partners’ involved.
For example, Sörensen and Torfing (2007: 9–10) argue that:

since participation is voluntary and the actors are free to leave the network,
and since the actors are mutually dependant on each other, nobody can use
their power to exert hierarchical control over anybody without risking to
ruin the network.

The case presented in this chapter does not confirm this. Although aid recipient
NGOs in theory are ‘free’ to leave networks if donors attach too many strings to
their aid, they are not inclined to do so because they may be deeply dependent on
the aid for their existence. Furthermore, I will argue that the emergence of a major
strategy of global AIDS governance since the turn of the Millennium has involved
a de-politicization and de-democratization of an important sector of global civil
society.
Nearly three decades after the first case of HIV/AIDS was reported, the dis-
ease is today an issue high on the global political agenda. A clear indication of
this is that the total resources made available for HIV/AIDS globally increased
from US$1.6 billion in 2001 to US$10 billion in 2007 (UNAIDS 2008) and is
AID(S) politics and power   233
expected to continue to grow. The reasons for this may seem obvious. According
to UNAIDS (2008), approximately 33 million people are living with HIV.
However, it is important to emphasize that HIV/AIDS, initially being narrowly
defined in medical terms as a ‘health issue’ and socially being stigmatized as a ‘gay
disease’, became politicized largely through the actions of social movements in
countries such as Brazil and the United States in the 1980s and in the context of
global civil society in the 1990s (Follér and Thörn 2008). As HIV/AIDS spread
quickly in poor countries of the South, it became an issue closely related to poverty
and social inequalities with global implications (Barnett and Whiteside 2006).1 The
fact that the poorest countries in the Global South, particularly in the region of sub-
Saharan Africa, carries a disproportionate burden of the epidemic made the issue of
medical corporation’s patent rights and their pricing of medicines a hotly contested
issue. An important moment in the politicization of the AIDS issue in a global con-
text occurred in 1998 when 38 pharmaceutical companies brought charges against
the South African state for suspected breaches of the WTO agreement, motivated
by a planned import of medicines from Brazil. In response to this, the South African
social movement organization (SMO) Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), in co-
operation with Médecins Sans Frontiers (MSF) and Oxfam, launched an extensive
global campaign, which subsequently pressured the pharmaceutical industry to drop
its charges because of negative publicity (Olesen 2006).
In this chapter, I will argue that in the 2000s, this wave of global AIDS activism
was largely succeeded by a process of ‘NGOization’ or ‘quangoization’ of activ-
ism (Kaldor 2003; Miller and Rose 2008), as NGOs have come to play a central
role in global AIDS governance. Locally and nationally, NGOs have served as
recipients and distributors of aid. Transnationally, international NGOs (INGOs)
have functioned as links between donors – funds, international institutions and
Western states – and NGOs and authorities at the local and national level.2 Davis
(2006: 76) has argued that this emphasis on NGOs and civil society in global
development politics started in the mid-1990s under the leadership of the World
Bank, and that it could be understood as representing a ‘“soft imperialism”, with
the major NGOs captive of the agenda of the international donors, and grassroots
groups similarly dependent on the international NGOs’. I will argue that AIDS aid
governance is a relevant case to shed light on the contested issue of ‘imperialism’
in contemporary global politics.
According to de Waal (2006: 113), contemporary AIDS aid means that ‘we are
on the brink of an unparalleled life-controlling intrusion into African societies,
and we just don’t know what it will look like’. This chapter discusses how this
situation is played out in the context of South Africa. The case study3 is used as a
springboard to address some more general questions with relevance for theories
of global politics, power and activism: What are the strategies of the global donor
community in relation to local AIDS activism in the context of civil society in the
Global South? What are the functions of these strategies and what are their effects
on local AIDS work? And how are power relations articulated, reproduced and
resisted in governance networks?
234   Håkan Thörn
Critique of governance
As an analytical approach, governance often emphasize the transformation of
boundaries between the state, the market and civil society (Sörensen and Torfing
2007). In the context of globalization theory, governance represents practices that
‘can extend beyond the state and substate institutions to include supra-state
(macro-regional and global) regimes’ (Scholte 2005: 140–1). I argue that govern-
ance theory often underestimate power imbalances between actors in political
networks. Although governance theory argues that the political power of the
nation state is weakened as governance networks move in, our case shows that
particular states continue to constitute ‘power centres’ – largely based on material
resources – within global governance networks.
Considering that governance is a term frequently used by the donor organiza-
tions and political networks studied here, I will not use governance as a theoreti-
cal tool. In this chapter, governance instead refers to an empirical practice/
discourse, which is the object of critical analysis. As aid discourses often define
the operations of global policy networks in terms of partnership, there is a need
to analyse these discourses critically – with a focus on the power relations they
may (mis)represent.
To analyse how power is exercised in ‘governance networks’, I depart from
the framework of governmentality theory developed to analyse and understand
‘governing at a distance’ in the context of ‘advanced liberalism’. As emphasized
by Miller and Rose (2008), it is mistaken to understand advanced liberalism
simply in terms of a reduction of state power. Rather, advanced liberalism means
a transformation of the role of the state and its mode of regulation towards
mechanisms of self-regulation. According to Miller and Rose (2008: 215), then,
this transformation:

is not merely the vicissitudes of a single political ideology – that of neo-


liberal conservatism – but something with a more general salience, which
underpins mentalities of government from all parts of the political spec-
trum, and which justifies all of these new attempts to ‘reinvent govern-
ment’ as ‘advanced liberal’.

The strength of governmentality theory is that it offers tools for a sophisticated


analysis of the dynamics of global power not just on a macro level but also on a
micro level. Departing from the late work of Foucault (1991), Miller and Rose
(2008: 16) distinguish between two dimensions of exercising power through govern-
ment: (1) rationalities or programmes, ‘ways of rendering reality thinkable in such a
way that it was amenable to calculation and programming’ and (2) technologies or
techniques, meaning ‘instruments for the conducting of conduct’. Furthermore, pro-
grammes and techniques are linked to problematizations, a process through which
something is constituted as a ‘problem’ to address and act upon.
An important concept emerging from governmentality analyses of advanced
liberalism is responsibilization as a mode of governing. This strategy involves a
contradiction as it constitutes organizations, communities and individuals (and, in
AID(S) politics and power   235
the case of aid, the recipient state) as independent, self-regulating actors while at
the same time leading and controlling them – because there are always rules of
regulation for the ‘self-regulating’ actors – without being responsible for them.
The key features of responsibilization of AIDS governance aid can be under-
stood as a globalization of the process through which the Northern welfare state
has been increasingly displaced by the regulatory state through the ‘reinvention
of governance around audit processes’ (Power 1997: 68). These changes have
taken place in the context of so-called New Public Management, as depicted in
Michael Power’s influential book The Audit Explosion: Rituals of Verification.
This mode of regulation is not an external form of control in a direct sense, as it
is presented as a demand on organizations to ‘acquire responsibility to internal
control systems’ (Power 1997: xviii). In later writings, Power (2003) makes a
strong argument that the boundaries in contemporary public management between
auditing, consulting, assessment and evaluation, activities that have increased
dramatically during the past decade, are not clear, and that all of these practices
serve the basic function to legitimate organizational behaviour, while appearing
to support rational decision-making. A fundamental aspect of this process is that
organizations should be reformed to make them ‘auditable subjects’. As we will
see in connection with the South African case, this essentially means demanding
that auditee organizations make their activities quantifiable.
I will use the case study to engage in a critical dialogue with governmentality
theory. Governmentality studies have, with a few exceptions (Larner and Walter
2004; Lipschutz 2005), tended to focus on practices within nation states in the
Global North and have also been criticized for taking the nation state as their pre-
given ‘analytical mode’ (Larner and Walters 2004: 5). Furthermore, I will address
the criticism made by Dale (2004: 184), who argues that governmentality ‘often
seems to come over as a process without agency, contexts, conditions, or contradic-
tions’. In connection with the issue of agency, I would like to add that although
governmentality theory does not as such preclude resistance, governmentality stud-
ies most often leave resistance aside. I will show that the process of development-
cooperation is not a case of the ‘simple’ re-production of power. Receivers of aid
are not only passive objects of Northern charity but also agents who can be expected
to resist conditions offered by donors and to create a space for independent inter-
pretation and action. The issue of agency is also related to the broader theoretical
issue of context. In general, network theories oppose the idea of power as a resource
or possession and instead argue that agency and power are constructed as a relation
within the network (Sörensen and Torfing 2007). I argue that although power must
always be seen as relational, this view, nevertheless, risks neglecting the structural
context of a network and the fact that actors enter into networks with different mate-
rial power resources acquired outside the network (such as money, technology and
other material resources). This does not mean that an actor’s identity and power
within a network is pre-given or completely determined by these material resources.
Rather, the position and power within a network is the result of the articulation of
the relations within the network and the material resources that an actor brings into
the network (see also Introduction and Conclusion, this volume).
236   Håkan Thörn
For example, the position, role, functions and power resources of USAID’s
involvement in global AIDS governance networks are not completely determined
by its status as a US government agency. However, its actual position and power
resources in the context of global governance networks are clearly dependent on,
and draw on, its position as a government agency based in a state with a dominant
position in world politics.
Context and agency point us towards the issue of how the role of the state in
governance networks should be conceptualized. Governmentality theory does not
assume that an increasing importance of governance networks necessarily means
a decreasing importance of the state but rather implies that although the state, on
the one hand, should not be regarded as the power centre, it is, on the other hand,
not just ‘one level among others’ (Fraser 2003: 167). However, it is also necessary
to point out that the generalized discussion of the role and power of the state has
a fundamental flaw, as it obscures the unequal power resources among nation
states. This does inevitably invoke the debate on whether global power structures
represent a US-led imperialism (Harvey 2003) or whether the current era rather
represents a ‘post-imperial liberalism’ in which ‘the old imperial instruments . . .
have been replaced by a greatly expanded use of markets, empowerment and self-
government as regulatory devices’ (Hindess 2004: 36) (this question is dealt with
in detail below).

Critique of ‘civil society’


As a ‘hurrah-word’ in contemporary global politics, it could be argued that civil
society is as problematic as an analytical tool as governance is. However, I
would argue that civil society has a critical potential if interpreted in the context
of the Gramscian tradition. According to the standard narrative, the dividing line
in classical social theory concerned whether civil society included the market or
not (Lipschutz 2005). Today, there is a relatively broad consensus that civil soci-
ety is a distinct sphere in relation to market and state. Nevertheless, it is still a
hotly contested concept. I argue that the most significant dividing line concerns
whether civil society is conceptualized as functional or conflictual. The domi-
nant view of civil society, both in the social sciences and in policy discourses, is
clearly a functionalist one, emphasizing the role and importance of ‘social capi-
tal’ (Putnam 2001) as vital for social and political cohesion. According to the
functionalist conception, civil society first and foremost has a complementary
role in relation to the state and market: civil society is the sphere of social inte-
gration (producing and maintaining ethical codes, norms and values) that
‘embeds’ market mechanisms, and NGOs function as ‘watchdogs’ and ‘schools
of democracy’ in relation to the state. In contrast to functionalist theories, the
Gramscian tradition emphasizes that civil society is a space of conflict that
involves a struggle for hegemony (Cox 1999). It points to the role of discursive
struggles in politics over the legitimacy of political and economic power. I use
civil society as an analytical concept that denotes a space of struggle and conflict –
over the values, norms, rules and strategies of legitimacy that govern social
AID(S) politics and power   237
space(s) – and ultimately over the control of material resources and institutions
(Thörn 2007a, b).
It is necessary to distinguish between national and global civil society; the two
levels not only differ in terms of territoriality but also with respect to prevailing
rules, norms, institutions and regulations (Lipschutz 2005). The globally
hegemonic ideal of parliamentary democracy does in a large number of states
correspond with a set of existing institutions and arrangements for representation
and participation. Whatever the substance of their democratic claims, these insti-
tutions represent well-established and widely accepted structures of legitimacy
and accountability. The endless repetition of concepts such as ‘democracy’,
‘accountability’ and ‘ownership’ in the context of global governance discourse is
ultimately a sign of the lack of legitimacy of global power structures. Lipschutz
(2005: 3) has argued that it is precisely ‘this lack of legitimacy, and the absence
of the political, that are being protested by the global justice movement and
addressed by campaigns for global social policy and regulation’. My argument is
that the relevance of the notion of a global civil society is that it may serve as a
tool to conceptualize a new political space that has emerged from the play of
conflicting transnational forces in the absence of a global state. Governance net-
works are actually the sites in which a global political space today is constructed
by conflicting actors. One of the key issues in this regard is the legitimacy of
global power structures and dominant actors.

The emergence of governance networks


After the turn of the Millennium, we have seen a steadily increasing activity on a
number of political levels as various actors, including states, NGOs, supra-
national bodies, private foundations and corporations are engaging in a variety of
networks. Two events have been particularly important: First, as a response to
calls made at two African conferences in 2000 (de Waal 2006) and an appeal from
UN General Secretary Kofi Annan, a decision was taken at the G8 Meeting in
Genoa in 2001 to set up the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria
(GF) to increase global funding for interventions against the three diseases. The
GF was set up in 2002 with a formal status as a Foundation under Swiss law and
is, in line with governance discourse, defined as a public–private partnership.
Seven years later, it has committed US$15.6 billion to AIDS activities in 140
countries (The Global Fund 2009).
Second, in 2003, the US President George W. Bush launched the President’s
Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a five-year US$15 billion initiative
to fight HIV/AIDS. PEPFAR has been called the largest initiative ever undertaken
by one country to address a disease – and because of the amount of resources
provided, USAID strengthened its position as a major funder of AIDS activities in
the Global South. By the end of 2008, the programme had provided treatment to 2
million people in 15 ‘focus countries’ (out of which 14 were African) (PEPFAR
2009). However, PEPFAR has also been severely criticized for the strings attached
to its aid, particularly in relation to NGOs. Although condom use programmes
238   Håkan Thörn
have been a crucial and successful part of AIDS prevention policies all over the
world, PEPFAR has put heavy restrictions regarding condom policies on NGOs
receiving funding, emphasizing the so-called AB-activities (‘Abstinence’ and ‘Be
Faithful’).
In the context of AIDS aid, both these two major donors, PEPFAR and the GF,
take part in, and promote, governance networks. This means that activities funded
by the organizations should preferably involve not just government agencies but
also NGOs and private actors.

AIDS aid: neo-imperialism and/or advanced liberalism?


Although the widespread use of the concepts of ‘partnership/ownership’ in aid
governance networks claims to represent an equal relationship between donor and
receiver, it has been argued that beneath the surface of such declarations, old
imperialist perceptions about development still prevail among donors (de Waal
2006; Eriksson-Baaz 2005; Escobar 1995). For example, Jones (2004) has shown
that AIDS aid to South Africa in some cases has been based on a discourse includ-
ing racist notions about ‘African sexuality’. Furthermore, in her brief history of
development aid, Rojas (2004: 111) argues that the turn of the Millennium
marked the beginning of a US-led ‘neo-imperialist phase’, defined by ‘a govern-
mentality that calls for a return to bilateral aid’.
USAID/PEPFAR’s AIDS prevention policy under President George W. Bush,
intended to educate populations in the Global South about sexual behaviour and
morals grounded in an Evangelist Christian worldview, is clearly a case of classic
US/European cultural imperialism, supported by missionary presence. In its 2009
Annual Report, PEPFAR claims to have reached more than 30 million people or,
to be precise, 31,512,600 individuals (p. 39) with its Abstinence-Be Faithful edu-
cation programme. This is in many cases carried out by channelling government
funding to faith-based NGOs. For example, the faith-based World Vision, one of
PEPFAR’s partners, reported that they had ‘provided 267,000 youth with HIV-
prevention education based on biblical values’ in Africa in 2006 (World Vision
2006: 16).
It should further be noted that PEPFAR was launched the same year as the US
embarked on war in Iraq; at this particular moment of global tension, the pro-
gramme, thus, sent a message to the international community that the United
States was sending not just soldiers and arms to the Global South but also medi-
cines and health care.
The case under study here confirms that Northern states, and particularly the
United States, through their development agencies, still deploy strategies resem-
bling those of classic cultural imperialism. This has been an issue of great concern
in South African civil society. For example, the social movement organization
Sonke Gender Justice Network has published a research report on the conse-
quences of PEPFAR aid,4 which concluded that it increases ‘the role of faith-based
organizations, stress abstinence until marriage strategies and limit the govern-
ment’s promotion of condoms’ (Alexander et al. 2007: 3). These experiences of
AID(S) politics and power   239
the consequences of PEPFAR’s conditions are also confirmed by reports from
Uganda (Kirumira 2008).
However, in what follows, I will emphasize that in our case study, we also found
a strong concern about donor strategies of social control and legitimacy, which are
not exclusively, or even predominantly, about cultural imperialism in new clothes:
donor’s emphasis on short-term project-based (rather than core) funding for meas-
urable activities, including heavy requirements of auditing and evaluation, which
demanded the engagement of particular external expertise. I argue that these par-
ticular techniques, and how they are linked with donor’s programmatic notions
about ‘the importance of civil society’, are key to understand the new governmen-
tality emerging in aid politics during the past decade. According to interviewees,
as well as reports that we studied, these strategies represented a deeper form of
control than PEPFAR’s ‘cultural imperialist conditionality’. For example, one of
our informants, Mandisa Mbali, an AIDS activist, who is also doing academic
research on activism, argued that ‘the (PEPFAR) conditions, in terms of “absti-
nence”, is the tip of the ice berg . . . I think that the much deeper thing is that the
agenda is ultimately to do with neoliberalism’ (interview 1).
This is supported by the above cited Sonke research report. Although it states
that South African NGOs, ‘appear to have found ways to take PEPFAR money
and continue with condom promotion’ (Alexander et al. 2007: 2), it clearly indi-
cates that the new strategies of donor control are more difficult to resist, as it
reports that ‘PEPFAR’s emphasis on quantitative reporting’, the ‘pressure to “get
the numbers right”’ and the ‘one year funding cycles’ are ‘steering NGOs away
from more intensive interventions’ (Alexander et al. 2007: 3).

Problematizations and programmes: the civil society solution


What then are the problems to which governance, civil society and ‘responsibil-
ity’ are regarded as the proper solutions in AIDS aid programmes? In the context
of development discourse, the concept of civil society rose to prominence in the
1990s (Hydén 2006). Although the focus on involving NGOs was often moti-
vated with reference to the failures of aid programmes administered by weak,
corrupt or authoritarian states in the Global South, the new emphasis on civil
society was also, nevertheless, in this context a part of the more general neo-
liberal critique of state intervention. From this perspective, an important func-
tion of NGOs was that of service providers (Birdsall and Kelly 2007), who,
through sub-contracting, should perform functions not taken care of by neither
the market nor the state.
The notion that civil society is the solution to the many problems of the state
is clearly expressed in the policy documents of major donor agencies. For exam-
ple, the Global Funds’ evaluation of ‘the performance of civil society groups . . .
confirmed the necessity of involving civil society in all levels of its processes’(The
Global Fund 2006: 24). The GF does not just regard civil society as a complement
but in certain respects also as an alternative to the state. For example, although
the GF states that important ‘obstacles to successful prevention and treatment
240   Håkan Thörn
programs include low access to education and health care’ (The Global Fund
2005: 13), that is, the failure of public health and education, its prescribed solu-
tion is not to provide resources for strengthening the public sector. Instead, this
problematization is followed by an argument about the importance of commu-
nity/civil society: ‘For this reason, community involvement is critical, and mobi-
lizing civil society to increase participation is the goal of a growing number of
non-governmental and faith-based organizations’ (The Global Fund 2005: 13).
Furthermore, where states according to the GF fail in sensitivity to the needs
of populations and in capacity to act and reach out, civil society organizations
(CSOs) provide ‘insight into the need and experiences of communities’, are
‘effective’ in working with ‘hard-to-reach communities’ and, more importantly,
are efficient as implementers of GF grants, as they ‘performed equally as well, if
not better, than all other types of implementing agencies’ and are ‘improving the
financial absorptive capacity and implementation speed of prevention and treat-
ment programs supported by the GF’ (The Global Fund 2006: 24). These state-
ments underline that the GF ‘is not an implementing entity; it is a financial
instrument. . . with funds allocated on strict performance criteria’ (The Global
Fund 2006: 33) and that its emphasis on civil society represents a strategy of
marketization in terms of language, methods and working models. Accordingly,
the GF’s mode of working is by its Executive Director termed a ‘unique business
model’ (The Global Fund 2006: 7). Contrary to this rhetoric, the model, neverthe-
less, has an explicit political dimension, as it is based on ‘the principle of country
ownership’ as a key instance of accountability (The Global Fund 2006: 33). This
means that in order that an organization or institution in any part of the world
could receive GF funding, a multisectoral Country Coordinating Mechanism
(CCM), representing public, private and civil society actors, must be set up.
According to the GF homepage, the CCMs should be regarded as ‘country-level
multi-stakeholder partnerships central to the Global Fund’s commitment to local
ownership and participatory decision-making’ (The Global Fund 2009). However,
‘A Beginner’s Guide to the Global Fund’ (Garmaise 2009), produced by the
Kenyan NGO AIDSPAN and available as a link at the GF homepage,5 makes it
clear that the CCM is not only, or perhaps even predominantly, an instance ensur-
ing democratic participation but also rather an instrument for responsibilization:
‘most proposals to the Global Fund are submitted by Country Coordinating
Mechanisms (CCMs), established specifically for this purpose and to carry out
certain other responsibilities’ (Garmaise 2009: 41).
It is also made explicitly clear that although the CCM is packaged as a self-
regulating body, it is, nevertheless, subjected to regulations imposed by the GF:

CCMs are independent entities; they are not formally part of the Global
Fund. Nevertheless, the Global Fund has developed guidance on how
CCMs should be structured and how they should function. Some of this
guidance is in the form of requirements – that is, conditions that the CCM
has to meet before the Global Fund will accept proposals from the CCM.
(Garmaise 2009: 41)
AID(S) politics and power   241
In a similar vein as the GF, PEPFAR frames the emphasis on civil society in the
context of ‘public–private partnerships’. For example, under the headline
‘Community, Business and U.S. Government Build Rural Health Clinic’, the 2006
Annual Report states that PEPFAR ‘has joined hands with South Africa’s govern-
ment and private enterprise to bring vital health service to underserved people’
(PEPFAR 2006: 24). However, just as important, PEPFARs’ emphasis on civil soci-
ety is also about being able to educate the population in the recipient country about
certain values and norms, as local NGOs such as community-based organizations
(CBOs) and faith-based organizations (FBOs) according to PEPFAR (2006: 7) ‘are
best equipped to reach local communities and influence values and norms’.
The arguments of the donor programmes presented in this section are basically
about making international aid policies legitimate. They point to the link between
the two most important concepts on the programmatic level of current AIDS aid
discourse: the obvious inequality between partners is supposed to be compensated
by the (weaker) recipient’s ownership of the issue. Furthermore, emphasizing the
role of civil society involves a claim to legitimacy for methods of marketization
(because the market itself does not have mechanisms for the construction of
legitimacy). In the case of PEPFAR, support for local NGOs also served the func-
tion to make its programmatic demands on ‘Christian values’ in connection with
AIDS work look less ‘from above’ or simply ‘neo-imperialist’. However, as we
will see in the next section, the differences between the two donor agencies
become even less clearly defined when looking at their actual practices. This is
related to the fact that AIDS aid governance networks, in most cases, use the same
techniques in connection with the implementation of their funds.

Techniques of responsibilization: legitimacy and social control


From the case material, it is evident that techniques of responsibilization aiming
to construct self-regulating actors at different levels of the receiving end of aid
flows are the crucial methods of implementing, or channelling, global AIDS aid. I
argue that responsibilization has the integrated functions of creating ‘social control
at a distance’ and to make donor policies appear legitimate and accountable.
Regarding state agencies’ aid policies, social control, legitimacy and accountabil-
ity are closely interlinked; to make aid to foreign countries legitimate, donor agen-
cies must appear to have guarantees that the money is used for the intended
purposes. It could be argued that current techniques of aid implementation and
control, which are largely based on business models for selection, self-evaluation
and audit, a mode of regulation that I will call the package of responsibilization,
are largely the result of donors’ attempt to appear legitimate, in relation to both
domestic publics (tax payers) and publics in the receiving countries.
As part of the package of responsibilization, donors ‘choose’ their partners on
the recipient end through processes of selectivity. For example, the Global Fund
has prescribed a formalized process of ‘competitive tendering’, as the Fund asks
CCMs to submit a coordinated proposal. These proposals are often based on a
number of separate proposals from various AIDS-actors in the country; it has
242   Håkan Thörn
been the case in South Africa, where the CCM, lacking capacity, hired a consult-
ant to produce a proposal that appeared professional and coherent (interview 5).
Furthermore, a crucial part of the ‘aid package’ embraced by the whole donor
community is that aid comes in the form of grants to project-based activities. In
the case of the GF, its mission statement explicitly states that ‘Proposals to the
Fund shall not have capacity building as their main focus’ (The Global Fund
2003: 8).
As a donor–receiver partnership is established, certain prescribed methods for
evaluation and audit, with a heavy emphasis on quantitative measures of perform-
ance, become a fundamental aspect of the process. The language and practices of
auditing/quantitative measuring and evaluation have a strong presence in donor
policy documents. The GF states that it has recognized ‘weaknesses in national
monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems’ and, therefore, introduced certain
tools, including ‘The Independent Data Quality Audits’ (The Global Fund 2006:
43–4). The quantitative approach to assessment, evaluation and knowledge pro-
duction includes an emphasis on evidence-based methods, which are embraced
not just by state agencies such as the GF and PEPFAR but also by foundations
such as Bill and Melissa Gates Foundation and an NGO such as MSF. Emerging
from the medical field, the discourse of ‘evidence based methods’, its core feature
being an emphasis on the need to make various practices evaluable by its ‘defini-
tion, measurement and enumeration’ (Winch et al. 2002), has quickly spread to a
number of policy areas, including international aid.
The ‘audit explosion’ has created a demand for a certain kind of expertise, and
an increasing importance and influence for a few large global firms, such as
KPMG and Ernst & Young. These accounting firms are currently creating an
image of themselves as ‘knowledge firms’ offering various services in connection
with consulting, evaluation and assessment. Although the private foundations and
INGOs (including MSF) in this case study used one of these two firms, most
NGOs in the Global South neither have the competence to produce glossy annual
reports, leaflets and power-point presentations nor have the resources to hire
professional expertise to meet the heavy requirements for formalized audit. As a
consequence, there is an emerging field of ‘intermediary NGOs’, who have the
sole function to channel funding from international donors to local NGOs (often
CBOs), taking responsibility for applications, audit, evaluation and reporting. A
representative of the South African AIDS Foundation, an NGO that in 2005 chan-
nelled funding from 19 international aid agencies, accounts for the contradictions
of this intermediary position:

The rules and regulations regarding the administration of the money can be
quite challenging so it makes it very difficult for a weaker civil society
organization to be able to comply with those rules . . . Our grantees are hav-
ing a problem in demonstrating impact . . . All they (the donors; author’s
remark) give us are indicators they would like us to use, or tools to measure.
For example, we’ve got one donor who gives us money specifically for
children’s programs. Now, they give us a questionnaire and a monitoring
AID(S) politics and power   243
tool, and you’ve got to say: ‘does the child smile a lot?’ – ‘yes’. . . So, to
gather the data that they are expecting is not really practical because the
people who are working in those communities are solid women who . . .
have been working in the community doing . . . burial societies, women’s
groups, church groups . . . home based care . . . work with orphans, but they
are not highly trained specialists being able to say that so many children
were traumatized but now they have moved from that stage and they are at
that stage of rehabilitation.
(Interview 5)

The importance of quantitative methods in the donor community was also


emphasized in an interview with PEPFARs’ Senior Advisor for HIV/AIDS in
South Africa. Asked about what she considered as major challenges and difficul-
ties in relation to AIDS work in South Africa, she stated ‘measurement . . . it is
very hard to measure outcomes’. In response to what kind of developments she
would like to see in the field of AIDS aid she continued to talk about measurability:

I wish that somebody would like to look at how you measure very nebulous
sorts of things. I mean it’s easy if we talk about things like prosecution for
rape. I mean you know what your success rate is in terms of prosecutions
. . . you have an incident that is reportable, you can provide the tests to
confirm whether the individual’s been raped . . . but things like male
involvement in discussions on social norms is really hard.
(Interview 11)

Although the PEPFAR representative confirmed the dominant discourse of


partnership/ownership, stating that ‘we don’t tell people what to do, we work with
them’, the de-politicizing consequences of the donor community’s emphasis on
measurability were made clear in an interview with a South African activist previ-
ously active in the INGO EngenderHealth. Stating how he would have liked to see
his organization do more political work in the sense of mobilizing public opinion,
both nationally and globally, to link the HIV/AIDS issue to social change, he
explains that they instead focused on workshops as their sole strategy for educating
men about gender equality rather than focusing on government responsibility to
implement existing legislation or holding government leaders to account for sexist
public statements and actions, because it is a reportable, quantifiable activity:

But instead we run workshops, you know why? Because that’s what donors
fund. Donor’s say you got to reach 800 men the next six months and you
know, here’s your impact evaluation, here are the indicators and it’s very
technocratic.
(Interview 8)

As this quote makes clear, the techniques of responsibilization tend to de-


politicize AIDS activities in civil society. Selectivity, the emphasis on short-term
244   Håkan Thörn
projects, with its package of heavy demands of evaluation and reporting of audit-
able, meaning quantifiable activities, is an approach to aid that is not only incom-
patible with but also undermine, political activities such as mobilizing public
opinion, putting pressure on governments and international institutions and work-
ing for structural change. As a response, an over-arching aim of civil society
resistance has been to re-politicize the AIDS issue.

Resistance as re-politicization
The leading SMO in South Africa in connection with AIDS politics is the TAC,
which in 2003 launched a successful campaign of civil disobedience to support a
framework agreement on a government HIV/AIDS policy (Mbali 2006). TAC is
a broad SMO, which has functioned as a node in the national network of civic
HIV/AIDS initiatives. A key aspect of its overall strategy is making strong efforts
to mobilize and link up with other NGOs/SMOs regionally (Southern Africa) and
globally (as in the campaign against the pharmaceutical industry mentioned ear-
lier). With its roots in the anti-apartheid struggle and its links to the ANC (African
National Congress), in the 2000s, the TAC has achieved a position strong enough
to refuse to take any aid that restricts its work. As we have seen in this chapter,
this is, however, not the case with weaker NGOs. Nevertheless, the power tech-
niques of AIDS aid governance also open up spaces for resistance, which can be
appropriated for counter-mobilization. In the South African case, it is possible to
discern the following political strategies, which have all emerged as resistance to
major programmes/strategies of AIDS aid governance:

1 Counter-knowledge production: Responding to the demands of reporting by


framing the issue of evaluation as critical analysis. For example, the above
cited report on the consequences of PEPFAR’s work on prevention in
Southern Africa (Alexander et al. 2007) was produced by Sonke Gender
Justice Network with support from researchers at Columbia University and
UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles).
2 Collectivizing ownership: Although the strategies of responsibilization, with
their emphasis on the self-monitoring, internal reflexivity of the individual
organization, could be seen as a form of ‘individualization’ on the organiza-
tional level, the space opened up by these practices has also been used to
mobilize collectively. For example, when donors as part of the ownership
discourse invited NGOs to round-table discussions, a movement organiza-
tion organized NGO-meetings in advance. The purpose of these meetings
was to form a common NGO strategy to be able to use the round-table to put
collective pressure on donors.
3 Selectivity: The network approach of AIDS aid governance means that a great
variety of actors exist in the field not just on the recipient side but also on the
donor side. This means that there is certain, although limited, space for NGOs
to approach donors that allow relatively high autonomy for NGOs, through,
for example, funding for capacity building. Regarding state agencies, many
AID(S) politics and power   245
NGOs working in Southern Africa NGOs have preferred to work with a fam-
ily of ‘like minded donors’ including Holland, Canada and the Nordic coun-
tries. The donor agencies of these countries have a particular history in
Southern Africa, as they funded the liberation movements in their struggle for
independence. This aid had few strings attached and was largely based on
political analysis and individual and organizational networks that involved a
certain amount of trust (Thörn 2006). It should also be emphasized that only
relatively few and strong NGOs (often social movement organizations such as
TAC) can afford to take money only from donors who let them do what they
want to do.

According to the informants in this case study, the strategy of ‘counter-selectiv-


ity’ has, however, tended to underline competition for funding among NGOs,
potentially undermining the possibilities for mobilization. Furthermore, at an AIDS
conference in Uppsala in 2009, a concern was expressed that the widely celebrated
2003 Paris Declaration,6 with its emphasis on co-ordination and streamlining of aid,
means a general call for adjustment to dominant techniques and a narrowing of the
space for collaboration with donors with ‘alternative approaches’. The pressure is
also on donors to conform to the dominant standards for evaluation. For example,
the Swedish national development agency SIDA has been the object of heavy
domestic critique for funding too many activities that are not ‘evaluable’ in accor-
dance with evidence-based methods (Fölster and Iwarsson 2009).

Conclusion
On the most general level, this chapter related the case of global AIDS aid gov-
ernance to the debate on whether the current global power structure can be
analysed in terms of a US-led neo-imperialism, or whether it rather should be
understood in terms of a post-imperialist power constellation based on regula-
tion through market mechanisms and self-regulation, with an emphasis on ‘civil
society participation’. The case to some extent supports Rojas’ (2004) argument
in the sense that aid politics of the 2000s has meant a return of bilateral aid and
a ‘new imperialism’ in which the dominant state has used aid to legitimize its
foreign policy in a manner resembling ‘the civilising mission’ of classical cul-
tural imperialism.
However, more important, there are currently many indications that the US
administration under Obama is taking a different approach to foreign policy and
aid than the Bush administration. Relating this to our case, one of Obama’s first
decisions after taking office was to lift the restrictions for condom use in the
PEPFAR programme (PEPFAR 2009). There is, however, nothing that indicates
that its policies go against the ‘deep structures’ of advanced liberalism, implying
a change regarding the emphasis on market mechanisms and ‘self-regulation’ in
the context of aid. Furthermore, when locating the most important tensions, con-
flicts and consequences of aid policies, as well as accounting for the perceptions
of those who are at the receiving end, the case clearly indicates that it is the
246   Håkan Thörn
power strategies of governance networks, emphasizing ‘regulation through self-
regulation’, rather than those of the classical imperialist civilising mission, that
seems to be most significant.
This does not, however, imply that the state is just one level among many, as
argued by Fraser (2003). The governance discourse implies a transformation of
the functions of states and their modes of regulation, re-defining the roles of the
donor state and the recipient state in different ways. The techniques of responsi-
bilization, with their emphasis on partnership/ownership, are not only applied to
actors in civil society but also in relation to the aid recipient state. Hindess (2004:
35) quotes Joseph Stiglitz who, in the capacity of Vice-President of the World
Bank, stated that the country, not just the government, should be ‘in the drivers
seat’. This approach is clearly visible in the Global Fund’s emphasis on the CCM
as the key instance for the accountability of AIDS aid, as it emphasizes the role
of the nation state in aid while at the same time prescribes participation by repre-
sentatives not just from the government but also for private business and civil
society. The weight given to the CCM by the Global Fund indicates that the state
is, thus, not just one level among many. However, the character of the CCM (with
representatives from corporations and civil society) indicates a rearticulation of
the role of the state level in aid.
Although governance discourses in most cases stick to some variant of the UN
definition of civil society, which define it as a sphere separate from the market
(and the state), a consequence of the emphasis on civil society is, nevertheless,
tendencies towards marketization and privatization of the sector of AIDS aid and
even of wider sectors of the recipient societies. There are several aspects of this.
First, the mechanisms of audit have spread the techniques of ‘calculative prac-
tices’ (Miller and Rose 2008: 11), of financial calculation, cost-reduction and
budgetary obligations to new areas, transformed the definitions of ‘accountabil-
ity’ and ‘legitimacy’ and created new markets for business consultants and
accountants. The quantitative logic of the techniques of responsibilization means
a commodification of civil society, which affects not only language and reporting
procedures but also how organizations, communities and individuals perceive
themselves, their activities and their relations with society.
Second, in connection with my argument that power struggles about legiti-
macy in the context of civil society is ultimately about the control of material
resources and institutions, AIDS aid to civil society has in some cases also been
a mode of legitimization of private health sector initiatives in the recipient coun-
tries, as in the case of the above-mentioned construction of a health clinic orga-
nized by PEPFAR. Several of our respondents argued that considering the
amount of money invested in aid projects such as this, there are reasons to
believe that they may represent a ‘tacit’ privatization of the health sector in
Southern African countries.7 As it has been argued that the health sectors in
countries of the Global South need to be strengthened for the provision of
medication to have an effect, the issue of public health sector privatization points
to the close links between aid to AIDS prevention, which has been the focus of
this chapter, and programmes providing AIDS medicines (anti-retroviral drugs
AID(S) politics and power   247
[ARVs]). Research on AIDS governance in connection with the provision of
ARVs to the Global South supports this chapter’s argument regarding the impor-
tance of public–private partnerships; in 2004, there were 18 AIDS-related global
governance networks that included multi-national drug companies, with 60 per
cent of the US$250 million funding to support these networks provided by the
Bill and Melissa Gates Foundation (compared with 16 per cent from govern-
ments, Wogart 2007).
As AIDS aid programmes exercise social control at a distance and seek to
legitimize power relations in governance networks through strategies of respon-
sibilization, the re-definition of the concept of accountability is crucial. Although
the original political meaning of accountability referred to a practice where the
sovereign (the king) held his subjects to account, modern democracy reversed the
process by making authorities accountable to their citizens. In a sense, gover-
nance discourse presents a new reversal, as accountability to a large extent means
the practice by which powerful actors in governance networks hold their subjects
(the aid recipients) to account.
This chapter has put its main emphasis on analysing the exercise of power of
influential actors in governance networks and much less on highlighting global
activism. Rather than a starting point for the research project presented here, this
is a consequence of the ‘logic of the facts’ of our empirical material. Nevertheless,
AIDS aid has been a site of collective struggles by civil society actors in South
African civil society. As accounted for in this chapter, the resistance strategies
emerging from these struggles were, however, highly conditioned by donors’
power strategies.
Looking back at nearly three decades of AIDS politics, there is hardly any doubt
that AIDS activism in many respects is a story of social movement success, at least
until the turn of the Millennium. After emerging as one of the new social movements
in the 1980s in countries such as Brazil and the United States, where governments
were pressured to a more proactive response to the disease, equally successful global
campaigns were launched in the 1990s. However, the fact that success also meant
being invited to co-operate with powerful institutions in the context of governance
networks did seem to have negative consequences for activism. In his study of the
Canadian government’s response to AIDS-activism, Kinsman (1996) showed that
Canada’s 1990 national partnership strategy steered the activities of activist groups
from advocacy to service provision. Our case indicates that this to a large extent has
also happened to global and local AIDS activism in the 2000s. During this period,
AIDS-activism has been rather re-active, in contradistinction to the proactive phases
of AIDS activism in the 1980s and 1990s. The governance of AIDS aid in the 2000s,
thus, seems mainly to be a story of de-politicization and de-democratization of an
important sector of national and global civil societies.

Notes
1 Today, 67 per cent of the infected live in this part of the world (UNAIDS 2008: 32), a region
where more than 40 per cent live on less than US$1 per day (UNAIDS 2008: 88).
248   Håkan Thörn
2 In this chapter, I use NGO as a broad term for a wide range of organizations that partake
in civil society activities, such as SMOs, CBOs and FBOs. In other contexts (e.g. in some
of the documents I quote), the term CSO is used synonymously with NGO. Although I
use such a broad definition of ‘NGO’, I regard the criticism against NGOization or quan-
goization of politics and activism (Kinsman 1996; Ottaway and Carothers 2000; Kaldor
2003; Miller and Rose 2008) as valid, as it first and foremost refers to a proliferation of
professionalized types of NGOs, who cannot be considered as activist organizations
(SMOs), but more or less function as complements, or service providers, in relation to
official or private institutions.
3 The research project was carried out between 2006 and 2009, studying state agencies (US
AID/PEPFAR, SIDA), foundations (The Global Fund, Bill and Melissa Gates Foundation),
INGOs (Medicins sans frontiéres, World Vision) and South African NGOs (TAC, AIDS
Foundation and Sonke Gender Justice Network). In addition to discourse analysis of
policy documents of donor organizations, 11 interviews with key informants (including
donor representatives working in South Africa, South African NGO representatives and
South African researchers) were carried out. The interviews and selection of donor docu-
ments that this chapter is based on was made in 2006/2007 by Agnes Dahné (See also
Dahné 2008), Christoph Haug and the author. Additional material was collected in 2009
by Bomanson (2009). In addition to our own material, we have also closely studied two
research reports by South African NGOs on the consequences of AIDS aid to civil society
in Southern Africa (Alexander et al. 2007; Birdsall and Kelly 2007). The author would
like to thank Agnes Dahné, Christoph Haug, Tim Bomanson and Ingemar Bohlin for
productive discussions in connection with the analysis of the material.
4 The report is based on 40 key informant interviews (conducted July–November 2006,
with assistance from UCLA’s programme in Global Health) with representatives of South
African NGOs, INGOs and US Government officials (Alexander et al. 2007: 1).
5 This report (and the fact that it is available through GF’s homepage and, thus, could be
considered as ‘authorized’ by the GF), produced by an NGO ‘whose mission is to rein-
force the effectiveness of the Global Fund’ (www.aidspan.org), is an example of the
symbiotic and technocratic relationship between funders and NGOs that sometimes exist
in the context of governance networks. Although AIDSPAN presents itself ‘as an inde-
pendent watchdog of the Global Fund’ (www.aidspan.org), the “Beginner’s Guide
. . . ” quoted above, which is produced to ‘provide a broad introduction to the Global
Fund for people who have little or no prior experience of the Fund’ (Garmaise 2009: 7),
is not a critical evaluation of the GF but rather a descriptive user’s guide.
6 The Paris Declaration, which came about as a response to widespread criticism about the
ineffectiveness and fragmentation of international aid, meant that the leading interna-
tional donor agencies committed to work with developing countries to better coordinate
and streamline their activities at country level.
7 TAC also criticized the state agencies for using donor money to purchase ARVs from
medical corporations based in their own countries, which are much more expensive than
those imported from Brazil (interview 4).
8 All interviews are made by the author except *made by Agnes Dahné.

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  No 1: Mandisa Mbali/Treatment Action Campaign, University of Oxford/Gothenburg/18
May
  No 2: Suzanne Leclerc-Madlala/University of Kwa-Zulu Natal/Gothenburg/19 May
2006
AID(S) politics and power   251
  No 3: Alan Whiteside/HERD, University of KwA-Zulu Natal/Durban/ 31 July 2006
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Conclusion
Transnational counter-publics and
democracy
Thomas Olesen

Introduction
The preceding chapters have all provided important glimpses of transnational
activist power. They have also given us a clear idea of its limits. Assessing the
power of transnational activism requires a nuanced navigation between these
poles, an understanding that transnational activists operate in a structured space
where states, institutions, and corporations continue to be powerful players and
opponents. However, inquiring about their power vis-à-vis these opponents often
leads to relatively instrumental and behavioural analyses with a focus on outcomes
and results: that is, transnational activists exercise power when they force new
issues on the agenda, when they pressure a corporation to withdraw an ‘unethical’
product, when they assist national civil society organizations in instigating regime
change and so on. These are all important lines of inquiry, but they may over-
shadow other less measurable forms of power that, furthermore, need to be under-
stood in a long-term perspective. In the opening of the introductory chapter, I
referred to the anti-war protests of 2003 and the COP15 demonstrations in 2009 as
failures and successes: failures because they did not achieve their immediate goals
and successes because of their ability to mobilize and generate public debate. It is
the latter reading that inspires this chapter. In the following, I offer a set of com-
ments on the concept of transnational counter-publics, which I find particularly
useful for addressing this aspect of power. The arguments are illustrated with refer-
ence to the world social forum (WSF) format that has become a central element in
transnational activism. In conclusion, I build on these insights to briefly explore
the democratic contribution of contemporary transnational activism.

A long-term perspective on power


In the introductory chapter, I presented an argument inspired by Bachrach and
Baratz’ power conception. Their approach brings attention to agenda-setting
struggles and framing contests over the definition of social and political problems.
In 1974, Lukes (1974/2005) published a much cited book that attempted to take
the Bachrach and Baratz’s view one step further. Although he acknowledged their
contribution to the debate on power, he also criticized them for staying within a
largely behavioural framework in which actors possess a set of clearly identifiable
Conclusion   253
interests that are brought out in public framing contests. Lukes wished to add
another layer to this perspective by arguing that ‘real’ interests may not always be
consciously acknowledged. With this insight, he brought to fore how power is
ingrained in what Barnett and Duvall (2005: 9) call constitutive social relations.
What is central to Lukes is how these relations are not necessarily contested but
rather expressive of latent conflict (Lukes 1974/2005: 28). Latent conflict exists
when social relations are based on hierarchies and structures of domination that
are not questioned: ‘Indeed, is it not the supreme exercise of power to get another
or others to have the desires you want them to have – that is, to secure their com-
pliance by controlling their thoughts and desires?’ (Lukes 1974/2005: 27). Power,
then, is less about open conflict and more about the ability to prevent ‘conflict
from arising in the first place’ (Lukes 1974/2005). It is exercised when groups or
classes impose their norms and worldviews on others. Analyses building on this
or related power conceptions often have a class and hegemony dimension: In
Bourdieu (1989, 1992) and Foucault’s (1978) work, for example, the political and
economic elites have a near monopoly in determining what counts as good taste
and relevant knowledge. Also, the basic insight of Gramsci (1971), as he contem-
plated the absence of revolutions in Western Europe, was that states here rested
on a firm ground of legitimacy, created and reinforced through their main norm
producing institutions – for example, the school and the church.
Challenging these forms of power is not accomplished over night. They have
deep social roots that can only be affected in the long term. Framing contests
involving activists are part of this process, especially because they draw on and,
through that, shape already existing ideational complexes or metapackages (see
the introductory chapter). However, traditional frame analyses are mainly preoc-
cupied with determining frame success in the short term and in relation to ‘direct’
opponents: did the activist frame ‘persuade’ an opponent to change strategies and
decisions, was it able to push an activist issue onto the political agenda? The point
I wish to raise here is that activist communication also has identity, norm, and
space producing effects that are relevant for a longer term and cultural approach
to social and political power (for a related argument and critique, see Goodwin
and Jasper 1999; Jasper 1997). To appreciate this aspect, it is important to look
not only at activists’ interactions with targets and opponents but also at the way
they interact among themselves to create critical and alternative public spaces –
or counter-publics.

Internal and external aspects of counter-publics


Activism and the public sphere are historically interlinked. The emergence of a public
sphere from the seventeenth century onwards in Europe reflected a radically new
conception of the individual’s role and power in politics and society as a whole
(Habermas 1962/1989; Taylor 1992; Warner 2002). The individual was gradually
invested with the right and capacity to change society. Society was no longer seen as
determined by external – primarily religious – forces but as malleable to human action
and thought. Activism and social movements are products of this development, or
254   Thomas Olesen
perhaps even, as Buechler (2000) notes, the siblings of modernity. The right to engage
in social and political critiques is a central characteristic of activism, the public sphere
and, in an even broader sense, democracy.
Framing activities, as argued in the introductory chapter, take place in the pub-
lic sphere where a wide array of social and political actors ‘meet’ to engage in
power contests over definition and interpretation. It may be reasonable to think
of a general – or dominant – public sphere whose communicative infrastructure
is made up of the mainstream media. In her critique of Habermas, Fraser (1992)
seeks to move beyond the singular conception by outlining the existence of sub-
altern counter-publics, which she defines as ‘discursive arenas where members of
subordinated social groups invent and circulate counter-discourses to formulate
oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests, and needs’ (Fraser 1992:
124; see also Polletta 1999). For Warner (2002: 86), a ‘counterpublic maintains
at some level, conscious or not, an awareness of its subordinate status. The cul-
tural horizon against which it marks itself off is not just a general or wider public,
but a dominant one’. The terms counter-public and dominant public sphere viv-
idly underline how power is at play in the juxtaposition. The apparent opposition
should not, however, lead us to view counter-publics as entirely self-referential.
As noted by Fraser (1992), they maintain an ambition to disseminate their views
beyond the counter-public. They are, in other words, internally and externally
oriented. The discussion of the WSF below illustrates this point.

The WSF transnational counter-public


The so-called WSFs – and their regional counterparts, such as the European
Social Forum – that have become a central part of transnational activism in
recent years constitute perhaps the most developed and visible transnational
counter-publics (for a history of the WSF format, see Smith et al. 2008: 14ff.;
Smith 2008: Chapter 10). The meetings may be viewed as transnational counter-
publics because they are designed to forge new activist relationships and to
foster dialogue and identity building among a broad variety of activists loosely
united by a common critique of what is usually termed the neoliberal world
order:

The World Social Forum is an open meeting place for reflective thinking,
democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of
experiences and interlinking for effective action, by groups and movements
of civil society that are opposed to neoliberalism
(World Social Forum Charter of Principles 2002)

These identity-building processes are not apolitical ‘getting-to-know-each other’


exercises. Rather, they involve intensive discussions on what should be considered
the main social and political problems of today’s world and how they might be
solved. Discussions of this nature – which are the backbone of any strategic discus-
sion among activists – have a specific identity-building element in transnational
Conclusion   255
activism. The WSFs bring together a highly diverse set of activists – diverse in
terms of their geographical origin, their social and cultural composition and their
goals and strategies. A great deal of energy, therefore, has to be invested in discus-
sions attempting to define some sort of common ground or overlaps: what, for
example, unites an Italian anarchist, an Indian feminist, a French unionist, a
Bolivian indigenous peasant and a Swedish environmentalist? Can their struggles
in any meaningful way be related to one another? It is a basic idea of the WSFs that
they can: ‘As a framework for the exchange of experiences, the World Social
Forum encourages understanding and mutual recognition among its participant
organizations and movements, and places special value on the exchange among
them’ (World Social Forum Charter of Principles 2002).
However, defining points of intersection in the context of multiple differences
is an arduous process that invariably raises the question of identity: what do we
have in common and is there a ‘we’ at all? These questions are all the more com-
plicated because activists at the meetings ‘carry’ with them global inequalities
and colonial histories: Northern and Southern activists come from diverse social
and economic backgrounds that influence their interpretations, concerns and
objectives. Differences are also notable in the fact that Northern organizations
and activists tend to be better equipped economically and organizationally (e.g.
Wood 2005). Because travelling to participate in a WSF meeting is costly, there
is a risk that the composition of the meetings will be skewed towards Northern
activists. This potential bias has been addressed, for example, by locating WSFs
in the South (Porto Alegre 2001, 2005; Mumbai 2004; Nairobi 2007). A central
concern of the forums is, therefore, to ensure conditions for equal participation.
The counter-publics discussed by Fraser are national and characterized by a cer-
tain social homogeneity. Transnational counter-publics, in contrast, are necessar-
ily more complex and diverse in these regards. This is even reflected at the
practical level of communication where language differences create significant
challenges (for an analysis of the language issue at the European Social Forum,
see Doerr 2009).
There seems to be agreement throughout the ranks that the search for identity is
not a search for a fixed common identity structured around a similar set of goals
and guided by a shared leadership (see, for example, the observations by della
Porta et al. 2006 in relation to the European Social Forum). Rather, it is defined
loosely as the adherence to democratic processes and a general opposition to neo-
liberalism (see quotes above). In recent years, this looseness has been reflected in
the emergence of so-called autonomous spaces inside or on the fringes of the WSF
(Juris 2008: 254ff.). Autonomous spaces are often initiated by radical and anar-
chist groups who believe that the WSF decision-making structure has become
centralized and unrepresentative. They may, in other words, be seen as a kind of
smaller counter-publics within the larger WSF counter-public and, thus, suggest
the constantly changing and fluid nature of transnational counter-publics. Although
it may make sense to identify a WSF counter-public at the most general level, in
reality, this is made up of and intersects with a plurality of other transnational
counter-publics.
256   Thomas Olesen
The WSFs – as well as its regional variants – are travelling counter-publics.
Traditionally, the public sphere has been understood as a geographically bounded
space. Transnational counter-publics are harder to fix in this manner, partly
because they combine physical and mediated aspects of transnational activism.
The meetings are to a wide extent coordinated and planned through online discus-
sions in already existing networks. However, the meetings also activate new
relationships between individual activists and activist organizations that are con-
tinued online after the meeting has taken place and that become part of the plan-
ning processes towards new meetings. The physical and mediated dimensions, in
other words, enforce each other. The WSFs are the physical – and geographically
movable – manifestation of a transnational counter-public whose communicative
infrastructure is made up of and greatly facilitated by computer-mediated tech-
nologies (e.g. Olesen 2005).

Transnational learning
The reason that transnational counter-publics are important for the discussion of
power in this volume is that they constitute sites of transnational activist learn-
ing. There are at least two dimensions to this observation. First, returning to
Lukes’ definition above of power as taken-for-granted norms and ideas, counter-
publics are sites for the development of oppositional identities and visions.
Through encounter, debates and exchanges with others, activists analyze existing
power structures and ‘teach’ each other to see the hidden aspects of power. The
plurality of activist backgrounds and the resulting diversity in experiences with
power in the WSF counter-public enable a highly multifaceted learning process
and ‘screening’ of power from various angles (Smith 2008: Chapter 10).
This perspective mainly focuses on processes taking place within the coun-
ter-public and among activists. However, and this is the second dimension,
counter-publics and the discussions taking place within them are also ‘observed’
by ‘outsiders’. Their public nature enables individuals who are not yet engaged
in activism, but are sympathetically inclined or at least curious about their
debates, to ‘access’ them online. During the meetings, for example, activists
produce considerable amounts of information that is distributed through various
outlets such as Indymedia centres set up at the meetings (e.g. Juris 2008: 260).
Journalists also have an interest in monitoring counter-public discussions. The
motivations may vary considerably: some journalists will be assigned to cover-
ing the events because the newspapers, magazine or television channels they
work for are sympathetically inclined to activism. Others will be assigned for
the opposite reason, to search for weaknesses and points of criticism in the
WSF. No matter the motivation, this type of coverage provides points of inter-
section between the WSF transnational counter-public and dominant public
spheres around the world. Through these processes of observation, the opposi-
tional learning that goes on within the WSF is made available to people outside
the counter-public, although in an indirect fashion. In addition, WSF activists
proactively target dominant public spheres to alert them to the counter-public
Conclusion   257
and its debates. As noted by Fraser above, counter-publics are not isolated and
self-enclosed. In fact, WSF discussions and agreements often form the basis of
interventions into the dominant public sphere. A recurring theme, for example,
concerns how and if WSF activists should target the mainstream media to gain
a wider sounding board for their ideas. Returning to the two examples from the
introduction – the February 15, 2003, anti-war protests and the 2009 COP15
protests – many of the activities related to these events were planned, discussed
and coordinated in the WSF counter-public or in counter-publics intersecting
with this. However, the events themselves took place in dominant public
spheres and were designed to – and had considerable success in – attracting the
attention of the mainstream media.
There is a long tradition in activist research stressing the importance of so-
called mobilizing structures, that is, already existing organizations and settings
that may provide potential and emerging activists with resources, knowledge and
experience (e.g. McAdam 1982; McCarthy 1996). These structures have tradi-
tionally been located in national activist cultures and institutions. Genuinely
transnational mobilizing structures are still relatively undeveloped. The WSF – in
both its mediated and physical form – is a historically unique form of transna-
tional activist memory and culture building. To be sure, as evidenced by
Charnovitz (1997) and Sikkink and Smith (2002), transnational activist organiza-
tions have a long history. Until this point in time, however, they have worked
mainly on an individual basis or occasionally through coordinated campaigns.
The WSF format is unique precisely because it attempts to create and institution-
alize a counter-public at the transnational level. This process involves a collective
and public ‘storage’ of transnational activist experience, knowledge and memo-
ries. Such learning processes are important in a power perspective because they
generate durable activist resources that can be developed and activated by future
transnational activists. Where transnational activists 10–20 years ago faced a
relatively empty landscape in terms of mobilizing structures and activist learning,
they now move in an increasingly dense terrain. The WSF counter-public is one
of its landmarks.

Transnational democracy
The presence of counter-publics indicates a highly self-reflexive and complex
society; a society engaged in constant debate on and with itself (Beck et al. 1994).
If we measure the ‘quality’ of democracy through the depth and plurality of pub-
lic debate, it follows that societies with numerous counter-publics are also demo-
cratically vibrant societies. Continuing this line of argument, it is reasonable to
suggest that the presence of transnational counter-publics, such as the one taking
form around the WSF, make a positive contribution to transnational democracy.
It is, however, an observation that immediately raises questions and challenges.
Outlining these is a useful conclusion to the volume as they force us, once again
but from a different angle, to confront the scope, character and limits of transna-
tional activist power in the contemporary world.
258   Thomas Olesen
In the deliberative democratic model, public debate is a democratic quality in
itself, even if it is not ultimately aimed at obtaining specific goals. Power, democ-
racy and publicity, in this vein, are interlinked. In deliberative democratic thinking,
democracy is more than a method for electing parliaments and governments. It is
also a process that ensures that politicians are constantly and routinely challenged,
monitored, and ‘exposed’ to new political ideas and alternatives (Habermas 1992,
1996). This oppositional and critical function of the public sphere is strengthened
by the existence of counter-publics. This is so because the dominant public sphere
is a limited space in at least two senses: First, not all potential issues and problems
can be addressed by politicians and the media, and second, there is a certain access
hierarchy where activist frames – and perhaps especially radical ones – are given
less priority by the mainstream media vis-à-vis elite and authority frames (e.g.
Bennett et al. 2004; Entman 2004). For the latter reason, counter-publics are often
structured around alternative media production (see Rucht this volume). Counter-
publics, in other words, have emerged to mitigate the exclusionary practices of the
dominant public sphere, and it is precisely here that their contribution to democracy
and, consequently, power challenge lies.
In the preceding sections, it was argued how the internal counter-public
debates contributing to transnational activist identity building and learning in the
WSF are important sources of power and, we may now add, contributions to
democracy. They expand and institutionalize the presence of activists at a trans-
national level and leave behind mobilizing structures to build on in the future.
However, to reiterate Fraser’s argument, activists and counter-publics rarely con-
fine themselves to such internal processes but rather see them as elements in a
long-term vision to affect dominant public spheres and, through that, politics. As
Habermas (1992: 452) notes, discourses do not govern but influence decision-
making processes through threats of legitimacy and – in the last instance – vote
withdrawal. This process seems to presuppose a relatively clearly defined public
and ‘receiver’ of public debate (Fraser 2008). Traditionally, these categories have
been defined nationally and geographically, that is, for example, a German people
debating in a German public sphere and with reference to the German political
system. Even if national counter-publics are less oriented to the formal political
system, they still aspire to be ‘heard’ in the dominant public sphere and make an
impact on politics. This raises a vexing question of who constitutes the wider
audience for transnational counter-publics.
In recent years, there have been numerous attempts to outline the contours of
a transnational or global public sphere (e.g. Fraser 2008; Nanz and Steffek 2004;
Smith 2008). I am sceptical about concepts such as these. Leaving the question
of the desirability of a transnational public sphere aside, I am inclined to argue
that a genuinely transnational public sphere is only identifiable in a limited set of
situations when actors around the world simultaneously debate the same issue:
Recent examples are the Danish Muhammad Cartoons crisis in early 2006, the
debate about the war in Iraq in early 2003 and the debate surrounding the COP15
meeting on global warming in Copenhagen in 2009. Returning to the questions
above this observation implies that there is no clear cut ‘corresponding’ dominant
Conclusion   259
public sphere for the transnational counter-publics discussed in the preceding
section. Mainstream debate, in other words, still primarily occurs in national
public spheres and in national media. When activists engaged in, for example, the
WSF counter-public, seek to relay their ideas and frames to the wider public, this
is generally a national public. This reveals an important insight about transna-
tional activists: That they are not necessarily transnational all the time but rather
what Tarrow (2005) has called rooted cosmopolitans who move back and forth
between transnational counter-publics and the dominant public sphere of their
country of origin (see also footnote 2 in the introductory chapter). A Spanish
environmental organization can be an active part – in both its physical and elec-
tronic manifestations – of the WSF counter-public but simultaneously involved in
environmental activities and debates at the national or even local level. It is pre-
cisely the blurring of these boundaries and the corresponding physical and mental
ease with which they are crossed that is the essence of contemporary transna-
tional activism.
It requires considerable analytical sophistication to link the local, the national,
and the transnational dimensions of social and political issues and problems. The
ability to do this is at the core of transnational activist power. Recalling Lukes’
power definition, it is through this analytical interlinking that they are able to
confront and expose contemporary injustices in novel and innovative ways. This
power builds on and is developed in the context of transnational counter-publics
such as that emerging around the WSF. If the idea of transnational democracy is
to have any meaning, it needs to include the critical contribution of transnational
counter-publics. transnational democracy does not only include the development
of new political mega-institutions modelled on the European Union or the United
Nations (e.g. Habermas 2001; Held and McGrew 2002). Transnational democracy
exists only when issues of transnational solidarity and justice are systematically
and routinely discussed in national debates and within international institutions.
Historically, transnational activists have played a unique role in placing and keep-
ing them there. At the current juncture with xenophobic, fundamentalist and
nationalist sentiments on the rise, this responsibility is only increasing. The emer-
gence of transnational counter-publics built on critical transnational dialogue and
learning have created a stable yet vibrant and dynamic power base from which to
accomplish this huge and important task.

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Index

accountability, 35, 84, 98ff, 173ff, climate change, 1, 51, 56, 60, 61, 214
225, 237 climate justice, 54, 58, 59, 67, 152
advocacy, 44–5, 53, 56ff, 77, 113, 115, Climate Justice Now, 58, 68
137, 143, 151ff, 157–8, 161ff, 173, Cold War, the, 7, 10–11, 39, 77, 215,
175ff, 183ff, 219, 247; see also 217, 221
advocacy networks colonialism, 53, 66
advocacy networks, 53, 56–7, 77, communicative power, 2, 5
137, 151–2 communism, 53, 61–2
AIDS, 173ff, 232ff contentious politics, 76, 78, 80, 86, 132
alternative media, 196, 198, 258 COP15, 1, 12, 51, 52, 59, 60, 65, 252, 269
Amnesty International, 31, 114, 116, 125 cosmopolitanism, cosmopolitan, 24ff, 53,
anarchism, 51–2, 61–2, 68 151, 259
anti-apartheid, 244 counter-power, 23ff, 34, 92
anti-war, 58, 130, 252 counter-publics, 1, 252ff
apartheid, 7, 137; see also anti-apartheid counter-summits, 94, 97, 103
Attac, 197–8
autonomous spaces, 55, 255 Darfur, 121
autonomy, 34–5, 37–8, 42, 46, 58, 66, 68, debt, 80, 199
123, 204 democracy, 9, 27, 32, 36, 39–8, 45, 51, 52,
55, 58, 63, 92, 116, 174, 191, 204, 226,
Bachrach, P. and Baratz, M. S., 4, 5, 252 236–7, 246, 252ff
Bono, 44 developing countries, 61, 179, 223, 225
boomerang model, 43 discursive opportunities, 2ff, 131, 194
borders, 8, 31, 59, 67, 76, 80, 82, 97, domination, 23, 26–7, 29, 36, 40, 53,
101, 105–6, 115, 194–5 216, 225, 353
Bourdieu, Pierre, 30
Brazil, 233, 247 empire, 61ff
Bush, George W., 44, 81ff, 134, 137, environmental activism, 130, 134, 138,
139, 143, 237–8 140, 145
EU, 44, 82, 84, 85, 97ff, 102, 105, 131,
Canada, 75ff, 243, 245 141, 160, 259
capitalism, 23, 35, 40, 52ff, 66–7, 86, 136 European Council, 99ff
Castells, Manuel, 3 European Parliament, 99ff
charities, 153ff European Social Forum, 65, 97, 195,
charity, 235 254–5
children, 173ff, 243
China, 61, 125ff, 221 fair trade, 83
civil disobedience, 67, 98, 136, 144, 244 FAO, 219
Climate Action Network, 59 50 Years is Enough, 43, 143
Index   263
fortification, 94, 97, 103, 105–6 international institutions, 3–5, 7, 11,
Foucault, Michel, 133, 234 43–4, 151, 162, 176–7, 194, 222,
framing, 1ff, 77, 103, 131–2, 134, 208, 233, 244, 259
214, 220, 223–4, 244, 252–4 internet, 41, 58, 80, 82, 121, 140–1,
France, 116, 141, 152ff, 193, 195, 198, 208–9, 223
Free Trade Area of the Americas, 77, 81 Iraq, 1, 46, 83, 140, 143, 194, 238, 259
Israel, 7, 46
G8, 42, 43, 81, 91, 97, 99, 102, 195,
197ff, 237 Japan, 152ff
gender, 60, 137, 218–19, 243 journalism, 197; see also journalists
Genoa, 44, 81, 91, 95ff, 197, 200ff journalists, 91, 119, 121, 191ff
Germany, 195ff Jubilee, 44, 58, 80, 143
global civil society, 3, 4, 24, 25, 27, 28,
31, 45, 56, 57, 77, 152, 165, 174, 176, Kaldor, Mary, 35–6, 41ff
186, 232, 237; see also transnational
civil society latent conflict, 253
global inequalities, 61, 255 Latin America, 35, 40, 193
global justice, 25, 96, 104, 143, 190ff least developed countries, 61
global public sphere, 258; see also legitimation, 26ff
transnational public sphere liberalization, 79, 81, 84, 203–4
global north, 235 Lukes, Steven, 53, 56, 252–3, 256, 259
global south, 40, 54, 58, 63, 67, 232–3,
237–8, 242, 246–7 Marxism, 51–2, 66, 68
global warming, 259 Médecins sans Frontières, 158, 181, 233
governance, 27, 44, 51–2, 55–6, 58–9, media, 3, 11, 26, 30, 36, 43, 59, 61, 63,
61ff, 77–8, 84–5, 92, 173ff, 215, 232ff 79, 96, 114, 117, 120, 125, 140, 184,
governmentality, 234ff 190ff, 254, 257–8
Gramsci, Antonio, 133, 139, 236, 253 Mexico, 46, 55, 75ff
Greenpeace, 31, 39, 60, 100, 136ff, migrants, 105, 123–4, 194
144, 193, 208 militarization, 94–5, 103ff
military power, 3, 29, 112, 114, 122, 125
Habermas, Jürgen, 56, 133, 253–4, 258–9 mobility, 23
Hardt, Michael, and Negri, Antonio, 36–7, mobilizing structures, 131, 257–8
39ff, 62ff modernity, 9, 27, 31, 39, 42, 254
health, 173 modernization, 115, 123
hegemony, 133, 236, 253 multi-stakeholder, 84, 178, 181, 240
human rights, 4–5, 7, 9–10, 24, 27, 31,
43, 75–6, 93, 111ff, 143, 151, 175, 178, NAFTA, 75ff
180, 182, 204, 218–19, 221, 223 national security, 6, 8, 10–11, 101
Human Rights Watch, 116ff nation-state, the, 23–4, 27, 32
humanitarian intervention, 10, 24 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty
Organization), 32
ILO, 219 neoliberal globalization, 52, 54, 58, 77, 136
IMF (International Monetary Fund), neoliberalism, neoliberal, 25, 78, 103, 136,
5, 43, 44, 51, 81, 194, 199, 200 200, 239, 254–5; see also
imperialism, 33, 225, 233, 236, 238–9, neoliberal globalization
245 new social movements, 37–8, 41, 43, 95
India, 39–40 9/11, 7, 8, 10, 13, 97, 106, 145; see also
indigenous people, 68, 83 September 11
information technology, 77 Nobel Peace Prize, 135
institutional power, 214ff
intelligence, 7, 94, 97, 99, 102ff, 142 Obama, Barack, 78, 84, 245
international governmental organizations, Olympics, the, 111ff
92, 104, 214, 226 Oxfam, 60, 164, 233
264   Index
Palestine, 46 spiral model, the, 113, 122, 125
parallel summits, 43 state power, 6, 23, 29, 32, 36, 54, 64–5,
peace, 7, 31, 46, 53, 139, 143, 91–3, 136, 145, 234
219–20, 223, suffering, 47, 86, 121, 174–5, 182–3
Peoples’ Global Action, 59, 64, 66 surveillance, 92, 97, 106, 120, 140ff
Polanyi, Karl, 52, 61 sustainable development, 60, 75, 81
policing, 7, 91ff, 134, 144
political consumer, 25–6, 28 terror, 1, 7–8, 11, 54, 81, 83, 85, 97–8,
political opportunities, 2, 6, 78, 81, 104ff, 130ff; see also war on terror
85–6, 103, 130ff, 152ff Third World, 5, 44, 58
political power, 25, 29, 39, 78, 86, Tianenmen Square, 111
104, 191, 234, 253 Tibet, 39, 120
Porto Alegre, 44, 255 Tilly, Charles, 131ff
poverty, 31, 56, 184, 233 torture, 28, 111, 113ff, 125
privatization, 27, 40, 52, 75, 94, 246 transnational activist cooperation, 80
public order, 92ff, 142 transnational civil society, 55, 123–4,
151
radical democracy, 38, 55 transnational democracy, 257ff
radicalism, 52, 55, 136 transnational networks, 29, 43, 76
realism, 112 transnational public sphere, 258
refugees, 10, 174
representation, 37ff, 43–4, 82, 173ff, UNAIDS, 179–80, 233
220ff, 237 UNCHR, 111, 115ff
resource mobilization, 131 United Nations, 11, 43, 51, 67, 179,
revolution, revolutionary, 25, 39–40, 51, 214ff, 222ff
53ff, 61–2, 66, 68, 120, 130, 136, 145 Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
Rio de Janeiro conference, 30, 218, 220–1 9–10, 121
Risse, Thomas, 3–5, 112ff, 118, 122 universalism, 6, 8, 10
USAID, 154, 236ff
sans-papiers migrants, 194
Seattle, 34, 77, 80–1, 94ff, 195, 199ff Via Campesina, 58–9, 67
securitization, 2ff, 134
Security Council, 121–2, 125, 217, war on terror, the, 1, 7, 10, 13, 54, 83,
219–20 139, 141–2
self-regulation, 234, 245 Weber, Max, 26, 93
September 11, 81ff, 130–1, 135, welfare state, 9, 23, 25, 31, 61, 235
138ff, 143, 145, women, 58, 179, 214ff
shaming, 3, 122 World Bank, 43, 51, 81, 116, 165, 194,
Sikkink, Kathryn, 3, 5, 9–10, 43, 56ff, 199, 219, 233, 246
77, 112ff, 118, 151, 214, 225, 257 World Economic Forum, 96
sit-ins, 140, 144, 225 World Social Forum, 54, 83, 164, 252ff
social democracy, 51–2, 68 WTO, 32–3, 42–3, 51, 68, 77, 80–1, 103,
Soft power, 57, 77 199–200, 233
solidarity, 9, 39, 46, 59, 64, 82, 93
South Africa, 40, 233ff xenophobia, 28
sovereignty, 9–10, 24, 30ff, 36, 62–3,
77–8, 86, 115 Zapatistas, 39–40, 64, 80
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