Essay

The Agency and Authority of International NGOs Sarah S. Stroup and Wendy H. Wong

“Lost” Causes: Agenda Vetting in Global Issue Networks and the Shaping of Human Security. By Charli Carpenter. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014. 256p. $82.50 cloth, $24.95 paper.

Rethinking Private Authority: Agents and Entrepreneurs in Global Environmental Governance. By Jessica Green. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013. 232p. $75.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.

Help or Harm: The Human Security Effects of International NGOs. By Amanda Murdie. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014. 320p. $60.00.

T he study of global politics today encompasses an enormous array of actors, relationships, and processes beyond the state. The growth in the study of one

nonstate actor, international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), is particularly noteworthy.1 We frequently hear about INGOs because they claim to challenge the existing social and political order on issues such as human rights abuses, poverty, and environmental degradation, and they appear to have had substantial victories in championing new ideas and changing state policy.

Are INGOs powerful actors that are able to transform global politics, noisy interest groups whose influence is severely constrained by increasingly complex global structures, or epiphenomenal representations of an increasingly liberal world order? To answer this question requires more research into the incredible variation among the tens of thousands of INGOs active around the world. Politics happens within and among INGOs, and those processes directly affect both the way that INGOs engage with their environment and their ability to influence international policies and social practices.

A quarter century of serious scholarship on INGOs has demonstrated the utility of a more expansive conception of power in global politics.2 Research on INGOs brings together foreign policy analysis, scholarship on interest groups, a constructivist concern for social norms, and network analysis, all in an attempt to explain politics beyond the state. In showing how INGOs change policies,

create global rules, and advance new normative frame- works, scholars have drawn upon a vast array of concepts and methodological tools from political science and beyond. The three recent books by Charli Carpenter, Jessica Green, and Amanda Murdie are exemplary in the creativity and care that they bring to the question of the ways in which INGOs set policy agendas, improve human security, and participate in global governance. All three books treat INGOs as agents that have capabilities and weaknesses that affect how they achieve their goals. We suggest that a stronger focus on INGOs as agents

can help explain which INGOs are able to exercise influence and under what conditions. Armed with greater knowledge about individual INGOs and their practices, we can then understand how these traits shape their relationships with those they seek to influence. Authority—by its nature a relational concept—exists for certain INGOs in their relationships with particular audiences. INGO authority is real, but it is also uneven and contested. We are not the first to engage the question of INGO

power and authority, but the debate too often treats INGOs as abstractions rather than as real-life, differen- tiated actors. Just as the answer to the question of “how powerful is the state” will vary depending on whether the state in question is Japan or Jamaica, an understanding of INGO power requires disaggregation of the category of INGO. Groups like Oxfam, Human Rights First, and the Environmental Defense Fund are wildly different, and these differences shape their reception by the many and varied audiences that they seek to reach. The agential study of INGOs should complement, not replace, the more structural and constructivist perspectives in international relations, while offering insight into bigger questions about power and authority.

Sarah S. Stroup ([email protected]) is Associate Professor of Political Science at Middlebury College. Wendy H. Wong ([email protected]) is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto.

138 Perspectives on Politics doi:10.1017/S153759271500328X

© American Political Science Association 2016

Review Essay

The State of the Nonstate? Private transnational groups are not new, but a new and intense focus on them emerged in the 1990s as part of the growing attention to nonstate actors. The United Nations defines an “NGO” as “a not-for-profit group, principally independent from government, which is organized on a local, national, or international level to address issues in support of the public good.”3 International NGOs (INGOs) work in more than three or more countries, according to the Union of International Associations, and over the past 20 years the number of INGOs has almost tripled, reaching more than 55,000 in 2010.4

These definitions of INGOs are widely cited but also problematic. First, they are overly inclusive. The afore- mentioned definitions include such groups as the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), private actors that may be very influential but have a different form of power than groups such as Doctors without Borders and the World Conservation Union.5

Second, the definition emphasizes formal legal status, when in fact many NGOs are not registered as nonprofits. In fact, social recognition rather than legal status may be much more important for an INGO’s authority: Amnesty International, for example, is registered in Britain as a company and a charity. The public benefit orientation that supposedly distinguishes INGOs is a third area of confusion. Many INGOs respond to a perceived need for which there is often no direct demand; these groups decide what to work on in accordance with their own agendas. Finally, the definition places INGOs in opposition to states; in fact, many INGOs work closely with or through states and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). These conceptual ambiguities are not merely academic. Scholars who make claims about what INGOs really are often have very different sorts of groups in mind. Generally, we can organize INGO scholarship into

several waves. At the end of the Cold War, a first wave of scholars focused on demonstrating that INGOs were powerful actors in global politics, worthy of serious study. Often depicted as nodes in transnational advocacy net- works, INGOs could create external pressure to change state policies, bring new issues like torture to the global agenda, or change social practices around environmental protection and sustainability.6 This early work was sympathetic to, or explicitly part of, a constructivist re- search program that sought to unpack the importance of ideational forces and processes. As such, INGOs were often portrayed as transmission belts for emergent norms, and the emphasis was on the ideational structures that INGOs create and recreate.7 The focus was on showing that INGOs influenced political outcomes, but not in a way that systematically evaluated differences in the identities, tactics, or issue areas.

Since the late 1990s, two questions have dominated a second wave of INGO research. First, what do INGOs do and why? Challenging the idea that INGOs are distinctive because of their principled orientation, a num- ber of scholars have suggested that the demands of organizational maintenance, rather than commitment to lofty goals, best explains how INGOs choose to engage in advocacy and service delivery. Second, what is the nature of the relationship between INGOs and the states that have been traditionally the focus of IR scholarship? In fact, states and INGOs can collaborate, compete, or complement one another; INGOs can be instruments of state power at one point while later directly challenging state authority. Outside of a narrow cohort of state- centric realists, IR scholars seem open to the potential power of INGOs in governance while demanding greater specificity around the scope conditions enabling INGO influence and how those opportunities have changed over time.

Within this second wave, a strong structuralist critique offers a challenge to the idea of examining individual INGOs by locating the source of their power in global social processes. In this perspective, the ability of INGOs to make specific principled claims rests on a broader liberal normative framework that legitimates the right of individuals to speak for themselves. Only those INGOs that conform to certain standards— liberal, rationalist, acceptant of the basic legitimacy of markets and states—are recognized as legitimate gover- nors.8 In this Foucaultian view, INGOs lack agency within a liberal governmental rationality. Real resistance is very difficult.9 While we accept the point that liberal norms facilitate the participation of civil society groups in global political processes, this determinism ignores the fragmenta- tion of the global social structure and the diversity of INGOs within it. INGOs actively advance or resist this liberal rationality: Some INGOs like Amnesty have been at the forefront of the expansion of universal human rights and the responsibility to protect, but others like Focus on the Global South resist this liberalism as imperialistic. Proponents of global civil society, in particular, see much more possibility for change, as the issues promoted by INGOs directly address problems of injustice that are created by sovereign states and liberal free markets.10 At the more micro level, there is also substantial variation in the way that INGOs respond to the structural conditions that they face, as the works under review here demonstrate.

Across these several strands of INGO research, one unifying thread is the privileged attention that the INGO—state relationship receives. This relationship is doubtless a critical one, as states enable, constrain, and respond to them.11 But INGOs engage all kinds of political actors—IGOs, local communities, multinational corporations, and other INGOs. As Green explains, “governance is expanding: there are multiple loci of

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authority rather than a single locus that rests with the state” (Rethinking Private Authority, p. 164). Theoretically, therefore, we need greater attention to the diversity of INGOs and the choices that they make. How INGOs define their missions, how they choose different audiences to target, and which strategies they choose to employ help define INGO agency. In turn, these agential qualities shape the INGOs that are able to exercise influence.

INGOs as Agents INGOs are often portrayed as an increasingly important type of global actor: What type of actions, then, do INGOs take? Both scholars and practitioners separate the work of INGOs into advocacy and service delivery. In actual practice, the divide between advocacy and service delivery is blurred, and many organizations do both or have changed the balance of their activities over time.12

Whether pushing for policy changes from states and IGOs, providing ideas and goods to target populations, or some mix of the two, INGOs see advocacy and service delivery as tactics for advancing social change.

One central debate among INGO analysts is over whether and how these practices are shaped by the moral commitments of INGOs. While usually presented as mutually exclusive, NGOs may be motivated by both principles and self -interest.13 As Murdie argues, the fact that some INGOs are not principled does not mean that all INGOs are not principled (Help or Harm, p. 239). We ultimately agree with Thomas Risse that INGOs that neglect their principled orientation risk the attribute that makes them distinctive and potentially powerful.14

INGOs must maintain their organizational capacity, but their claims to serve others underpin their legitimacy in the eyes of global audiences.

The three books under review offer valuable insight into the various audiences affected by INGO work. Carpenter’s “Lost” Causes concentrates on relationships among INGOs and other members of issue advocacy networks. Murdie’s Help or Harm focuses on the impact of INGOs on populations in developing countries. Finally, in Rethinking Private Authority, Green explores how private actors create or enforce rules that shape the environmental practices of firms and states.

The politics among INGOs were initially neglected, but have been drawn into the spotlight through the works of Carpenter and Clifford Bob.15 INGOs often work together in advocacy coalitions to push for policy change, in more or less formal versions of the many networks that connect INGOs. These campaigns—perhaps most famously the International Coalition to Ban Landmines—can be very effective but are not always so.16 Precisely how do INGOs interact with one another in these networks? Carpenter has written the statement book on gatekeeping by advocacy INGOs and their effects in “agenda vetting” within the human security and human rights networks. Some INGOs

are able to decide the merit of certain issues for global campaigns and eliminate others. These network hubs have kept issues such as male circumcision, compensation for victims of war, and autonomous weapons on the sidelines of global INGO advocacy. The structure of networks directs the way that ideas travel to achieve international support. Perhaps most cogently, Carpenter’s focus groups and network analysis demonstrate how INGOs work with other INGOs: Smaller, less well-known actors can be stifled, and, similarly, larger actors are courted by other INGOs and policymakers. We can clearly observe how, as separate agents interacting in issue-specific networks, some INGOs exercise power over others, but Carpenter also shows how INGOs serve different purposes and therefore bring value to a coalition in distinct ways.17

Complementing Carpenter’s focus on advocacy INGOs working on human security, Murdie explores how both service delivery and advocacy INGOs can “help or harm” populations in need. In her methodologically sophisticated but accessible book, Murdie uses game theory, regression analysis, and illustrative case studies to show that INGOs can improve access to potable water and increase the protection of physical integrity rights. Her general finding is based on careful delineation among different INGOs, both in terms of their varied motivations and their practices. Murdie argues that INGO motivations condition their ability to improve human security. Service INGOs can signal their good intentions by joining voluntary accountability programs, which then increase the support they receive from donors and improve their capacity to provide services. In a chapter on advocacy INGOs, she also argues that they can be effective promoters of some human rights, but finds that INGOs are less likely to succeed when global and local norms are at odds and INGO agendas are biased toward their international donors (Help or Harm, p. 196). Her analysis of the human impact of INGOs ably incorporates structural factors and individual agency. Structural con- ditions do matter—for example, in countries with high levels of corruption, rent-seeking INGOs are more likely to flourish (ibid., p. 163)—but INGOs also make choices about whether to send costly signals about their motiva- tions, as when they choose to go through the onerous process of applying for consultative status at the United Nations. They come to difficult situations armed with their own interests, and “good” and “bad” INGOs will respond to social and political conditions quite differently. Beyond political activism and service delivery, INGOs

also attempt to create and enforce new rules for global governance. Green’s book examines when and how private actors have authority in the environmental sector. State preferences are important determinants of environmental governance, Green explains, but there can be structural openings that allow INGOs to govern using private authority. Where private actors wield delegated authority,

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Review Essay | The Agency and Authority of International NGOs

she argues, states must have collectively agreed to delegate authority and agreed upon a specific agent; by contrast, entrepreneurial authority is most likely to emerge when state preferences are heterogeneous, leaving a regulatory vacuum. Examining 152 multilateral environmental trea- ties over a 150-year period, Green finds that states rarely delegate to private actors. But entrepreneurial authority by private actors has grown substantially; of the 119 envi- ronmental civil regulations created between 1950 and 2009, almost 60% (69) were created in 2000 or later (Rethinking Private Authority, p. 92). While Green does not differentiate between firms and NGOs engaged in environmental governance, she suggests that all private actors bring particular strengths to the design of new rules. Private actors, perhaps because of their small size, can promote experimentation; they can build political support for new regulatory models; they can use their expertise to inform better rule-making; and competition among these different rules may ratchet up regulations (ibid., pp. 174–76). Whether private authority is in fact beneficial for environ- mental protection depends on coordination among “rule makers of all kinds” (ibid., p. 178)— INGOs and beyond.

The Authority of INGOs Even though the books reviewed here show that the ability of INGOs to draw attention to and command policy space for their concerns attests to their power and authority, we still lack a unified way to conceptualize why and how they do. One promising move is to disaggregate the different bases of authority for INGOs by explicitly evaluating their audiences. Deborah Avant, Martha Finnemore, and Susan Sell offer a useful typology of forms of authority.18 Global governors, they argue, may have five types of authority, and for each, some audience has deferred to that governor. This authority allows these actors to set agendas; make, implement, and enforce rules; and then evaluate, monitor, and adjudicate outcomes.19

Using this typology, and drawing on the books under review, we argue that INGOs enjoy three types of authority—delegated, expert, and principled. First, INGOs may act as delegated authorities when states or intergovernmental organizations task them with monitor- ing the implementation of treaties or delivering foreign aid.20 Such delegation appears growing in the humanitar- ian sector but rare in the environmental sector.21

Second, INGOs’ research and experiences in the field translate into expert authority. INGOs make defensible policy prescriptions using their specialized knowledge. For example, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) claims expert knowledge on the treatment of prisoners of war, and the access they have enjoyed as a result has reinforced their authoritative status.22 Some- times, working with epistemic communities, INGOs may help define an issue and recommend solutions, as many environmental INGOs do in their work alongside the

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.23 Expert authority allows INGOs to access media outlets and policymakers, creating political salience and political opportunities.24

Finally, principled authority is critical for INGOs. Perhaps more so than others, this brand of authority is both contested and more difficult to pinpoint precisely because so many audiences might confer it on the basis of various principles.25 As the discussion of organizational motivations makes clear, INGOs may not in fact serve others, but INGOs that appear to serve only private interests lose their principled authority. The principled authority of INGOs thus depends on the perceived legitimacy of their claims, in which signaling (a la Murdie) is critical to how organizations are viewed. Organizations are legitimate in the eyes of a particular audience if that audience agrees with the social purpose and practices of the organization.26 Importantly, INGOs face many audiences. As Bob illustrates in the case of gay rights proponents, an INGO may be legitimate in the eyes of one audience but wholly rejected by another.27

Setting aside broad structural processes, the authority of INGOs rests on two important factors: their internal capacities and their relations with external audiences. We see three important tasks for future INGO research, all of which are premised on the primacy of INGO agency. First, at the risk of stating the obvious, INGOs are not all the same; they share certain attributes but are not interchangeable, and these differences shape the type and level of authority that they enjoy.28 Second, in order to better understand the effects of INGOs, we need a more rigorous way to study and measure the relationships between INGOs and multiple, distinct audiences. INGO activity affects more than just states, including the beneficiaries of INGO service-delivery activities.29 Third, an agent-centered perspective on INGO authority neces- sarily raises questions about whether INGOs are most powerful individually or collectively. The INGO literature has been an important focal point for discussions of the power of networks (see “Lost” Causes, for example). Future research on INGO networks must move more easily between the study of network structures and the organi- zational nodes. Our ability to address these questions turns on the quality of organization- and network-level data on INGOs—data that are inconsistent or nonexistent.

A focus on the differences in the level and scope of INGO authority suggests new research questions. Perhaps most importantly, the politics of interactions among INGOs requires much more attention. Beyond gatekeeping, we expect that powerful INGOs influence other practices within the INGO sector as well, including fund-raising strategies, program design, patterns of pro- fessionalization, and networking practices. Just as firms may imitate the new strategies of leaders in their fields,30

smaller or less competitive INGOs operating in highly

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uncertain environments may follow their seemingly suc- cessful peers.

A particularly pressing problem for INGO scholars is the lack of rigorous and comparable data at the organi- zation level across the global population of INGOs. Murdie uses the Union of International Associations Yearbook, which offers membership data over time at the global level. Still, as she and others have explained, the Yearbook indicators at the organizational level are self- reported and unstandardized, with inconsistent categori- zation of INGOs by subject matter and organizational type. Generally, the most extensive data on individual organizations are collected at the national level, but each country has its own reporting requirements for charities. Future INGO research depends on developing better descriptive statistics of the global population under examination.31

Conclusion INGO research has come a long way from its origins. We know a lot about how INGOs interact with states, and the zero-sum conception of the ways in which states and INGOs interact has been debunked, even if the reality of the state—INGO relationship is not easily summarized. The field remains split between those who see INGOs as creative agents and those who understand them as role players in larger dynamics. We see this tension as healthy, but our sympathies lie with the former conception of INGOs.

Future research needs to treat INGOs as diverse actors worthy of study in themselves, as the three books reviewed here do. This means taking into account their internal organizational dynamics and external relation- ships with their audiences. Without an understanding of differences among INGOs, structural perspectives miss the additional internal constraints that they face, as well as the prospect that INGOs create structural change. Without attention to the ideational and material environ- ments in which INGOs operate, researchers risk advanc- ing a triumphalist perspective that is increasingly distant from the frustrating reality faced by INGOs on a global, and increasingly crowded, stage. Indeed, we view this as a natural progression of research that has strayed too far into the stylized view of INGOs, or for that matter “civil society actors,” treating such actors as interchangeable and monolithic, rather than colorful and unique as their Websites and branding materials suggest. In essence, we are bringing the organization (the “O”) back in to the study of INGOs, a turn that allows us to reach more deeply into the real world of INGOs and offers the promise of advancing theory and practice. IR has a long history of stylization and specificity, as we see with studies of states, where neorealists and neoliberals alike theorized generalized state “interests” before bringing domestic politics into more nuanced and contemporary theories of interstate politics.

Although we prioritize the agent-centric view of INGOs, we understand that isolating the independent effects of INGO advocacy on state policy is difficult. As a practical matter, informants can be reluctant to assign credit or blame to interest groups. In addition, we should not mistake high volume of advocacy for policy influence. As one view claims, the loudest INGOs are actually least influential since they have “gone public” without chang- ing policymakers’ attitudes.32 However, the latest research reviewed here suggests that INGOs’ voices can be heard, albeit not always by the same audiences and not always by states. Carpenter’s work shows that other INGOs and individual state officials are affected by the decisions of gatekeepers in very direct ways. Green’s idea of entrepre- neurial authority shows that vocal INGOs may be pushing for new regulations rather than quietly implementing laws as state delegates, thereby taking on new roles that affect both governments and corporations. Murdie shows how substate actors can be adversely affected by varying intentions. Her research definitively demonstrates that once we disaggregate the idea of “the state,” we can see how INGOs affect the decision matrix and, at times, the welfare of governments. These three works, and we hope future projects, will show how audiences vary for different INGOs, and furthermore, how these audiences differen- tially affect and are affected by INGOs. Several decades of scholarship have yielded an

incredibly rich depiction of INGO participation in global politics. INGOs deliver billions of dollars’ worth of social services around the world, pressure other “global gover- nors” to live up to their commitments, and attempt to reframe the basic values around which global politics might be organized. This work involves constant contact with sovereign states, a relationship that can be compet- itive, collaborative, deferential, or disjointed. For individ- ual INGOs, the capacity to govern and their ultimate influence are shaped by their choices and their environ- ment. A closer look at the relationship between INGOs’ strategic choices and the audiences that they seek to influence can be practically useful while revealing the complex nature of power and authority in global politics.

Notes 1 A fairly restrictive search on JSTOR (Journal Storage) for “nongovernmental organization” yields 1,755 articles from 1922 to 2013. Seventy-seven percent of the articles date from 1990 to the present. The exact results are as follows: 117 (before 1970), 119 (1970–79), 160 (1980–89), 332 (1990–99), 793 (2000–2009), 234 (2010–13).

2 Barnett and Duvall 2005. 3 http://www.unrol.org/article.aspx?article_id523 (accessed April 29, 2014).

4 UIA, various years. 5 Büthe and Mattli 2011.

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6 Clark 2001; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Khagram, Riker, and Sikkink 2002; Wapner 1995. For excellent reviews, see Wapner 1995 and Price 2003.

7 Finnemore and Sikkink 1998; Lynch 2008. 8 Neumann and Sending 2010, 129. 9 Lipshutz 2005. 10 Anheier, Glasius, and Kaldor 2001; Dryzek 2012. 11 Busby 2010; Neumann and Sending 2010. 12 Barnett 2011; Nelson and Dorsey 2008; Wong 2012. 13 Clark 2001; Hopgood 2006; Keck and Sikkink 1998;

Lynch 2008; Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink 1999; Wapner 1995. For self-interested conceptions, see Bob 2005; Bloodgood 2011; Cooley and Ron 2002; Prakash and Gugerty 2010; Sell and Prakash 2004.

14 Risse 2010, 288–89. 15 Bob 2005. 16 Including, and not limited to, the networks in support

of the International Criminal Court, against cluster munitions, and in favor of the Arms Trade Treaty. For a more comprehensive list, see Moyes and Nash 2011.

17 For the practitioner view, see Moyes and Nash 2011. 18 Avant, Finnemore, and Sell 2010. 19 Ibid., pp. 14–16. 20 In addition to Rethinking Private Authority, see Cooley

and Ron 2002. 21 Contrast Barnett 2011 to Rethinking Private Authority. 22 Finnemore 1996; Forsythe 2005. 23 Haas 2004. 24 Gourevitch, Lake, and Gross Stein 2012; Ron, Ramos,

and Rogers 2005; Wong 2012. 25 Hopgood 2009. 26 Thaut, Gross Stein, and Barnett 2012. 27 Bob 2012. 28 Stroup 2012; Wong 2012. 29 Barnett 2011. 30 Lieberman and Asaba 2006. 31 Bloodgood and Schmitz 2013. 32 Drezner 2008, 86.

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