The Concept of Transnational
Advocacy Network:
The case of the Save Darfur Coalition
Nikolaos Tzifakis, Lecturer, Department
of Political Science and International
Relations, University of Peloponnese
Definition/Features: Transnational Advocacy Network
• Forms of transnational collective action:
• International NGO – Transnational Advocacy Network – Transnational
Coalition – Transnational Social Movement
• forms of organization characterized by voluntary, reciprocal, and
horizontal patterns of communication and exchange
• communicative structures
• political spaces
• Major actors in advocacy networks may include the following:
(1) international and domestic nongovernmental research and advocacy
organizations;
(2) local social movements;
(3) foundations;
(4) the media;
(5) churches, trade unions, consumer organizations, and intellectuals;
(6) parts of regional and international intergovernmental organizations;
(7) parts of the executive and/or parliamentary branches of governments.
International Aids vaccine initiative
US Social Forum
When do transnational advocacy networks emerge?
Boomerang or spiral model
How do transnational advocacy networks emerge?
• Problems
Issue definition
Political entrepreneurs
• Issues
Issue adoption
Gatekeepers
• Campaign
The work of transnational advocacy networks
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Typologies of tactics
(1) information politics
Information creation vs. information distribution
(2) symbolic politics
Frames, both what they say and what they do
(3) leverage politics
Material leverage and moral leverage
(4) accountability politics
Monitoring and litigation
Stages of Transnational Advocacy Network Influence
(1) issue creation and agenda setting;
(2) influence on discursive positions of states
and international organizations;
(3) influence on institutional procedures;
(4) influence on policy change in “target actors”;
(5) influence on state behavior.
Enabling conditions for the exercise of influence by
transnational advocacy networks
Issue Characteristics
ideas about right and wrong, causes that can be
assigned to the intentional actions of identifiable
individuals, issues involving bodily harm to vulnerable
individuals, issues involving legal equality of
opportunity
Actor Characteristics
Target actors: vulnerability of sensitivity
Activists: moral authority
Political opportunity structure
Domestic vs. international
Internal dynamics of transnational advocacy networks
North vs. South asymmetries
South vs. South asymmetries
Senders vs. receiving-end activists
Seed or Kernel
Gatekeepers
The Save Darfur Coalition
19 March 2004: Mukesh Kapila, the UN
Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan told the BBC:
I was present in Rwanda at the time of the genocide, and
I’ve seen many other situations around the world and I am
totally shocked at what is going on in Darfur […] This is
ethnic cleansing, this is the world’s greatest humanitarian
crisis, and I don’t know why the world isn’t doing more
about it.
The Save Darfur Coalition
24 March 2004:
Nicholas Kristof, New York
Times columnist:
‘The most vicious ethnic
cleansing you’ve never heard of’
The Save Darfur Coalition
7 April 2004: Kofi Annan, UN Secretary-General, used the
occasion of the Rwandan genocide anniversary to make an
appeal to the international community for action in Darfur:
But let us not wait until the worst has happened, or is already
happening.
Let us not wait until the only alternatives to military action are futile
hand-wringing or callous indifference.
Let us, Mr. Chairman, be serious about preventing genocide.
Only so can we honour the victims whom we remember today. Only so
can we save those who might be victims tomorrow.
The Save Darfur Coalition
14 July 2004: Darfur Emergency Summit
The Save Darfur Coalition
Members: over 180 humanitarian, human rights and
religious organizations (e.g. American Evangelical Christian
churches, NGOs, Jewish and African-American organizations
and student unions), celebrities
2010: Facebook 1,282,339 members
Fundraising:
2004, more than $15 million
2006, $50 million
adds and mobilization
The Save Darfur Coalition
The Save Darfur Coalition
Protests
The Save Darfur Coalition
Frames: genocide & holocaust
Nesse Godin, Holocaust survivor and member of the US
Holocaust Memorial Museum, op-ed:
As a survivor of the Holocaust, I have a special responsibility
[…] to the people of Darfur. […] Every time I speak about my
experiences during the Holocaust, I also speak about Darfur.
[…] Six decades ago, the world was horrified. The world
claimed that it had not known about the Holocaust. It was not
true then, nor is it true now about Darfur. When are we going
to learn the lessons of the Holocaust? When are we going to
recognize our individual and national responsibility to put an
end to genocide? When will we stop merely saying “never
again” and start acting on “not this time?”
The Save Darfur Coalition
Frames: genocide & holocaust
14 September 2006, George Clooney, speaking in
front of the UN Security Council:
I'm here to represent the voices of the people who cannot speak
for themselves […] So, after September 30th, you won’t need the
U.N. You will simply need men with shovels and bleached white
linen and headstones. In many ways, it’s unfair, but it is,
nevertheless, true that this genocide will be on your watch. How
you deal with it will be your legacy, your Rwanda, your
Cambodia, your Auschwitz
The Save Darfur Coalition
Frames: genocide & holocaust
The Save Darfur Coalition
Slogans: “Not on our watch”
and “never again”
The Save Darfur Coalition
International inaction
UN inaction
Chinese Policy
Coalition’s accomplishment
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September 2004
US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, “genocide has been committed”
US Congress Resolution 467, “Declaring genocide in Darfur”
European Parliament Resolution P6_TA(2004)0012 “tantamount to
genocide”
• 31 March 2005, UNSC Resolution 1593, referred the case of Darfur
to the International Criminal Court
• 31 July 2007, UNSC Resolution 1769 (UNAMID)
• 18 December 2007, US Congress Act 2271, Sudan Accountability
and Divestment Act
• 14 July 2008, International Criminal Court, charges of genocide
• 2008, change of Chinese policy (appointment of Special Envoy)
Criticism to Save Darfur
• Neo-colonization (humanitarian face of War
on Terror)
• Simplistic representation (Arabs vs. Africans),
• Fixed labels (Arabs perpetrators vs. African
victims)
• Insistence on military intervention
• Raised attention at wrong timing and not for
the most pressing cause
• Inhibited peace negotiations and diplomacy