After the Norm Cascade: NGO Mission Expansion and the Coalition for the International Criminal Court

Abstract

The literature on transnational advocacy focuses on the battle for norm adoption, yet little is known about what happens to advocacy organizations after they succeed. Do they disband, take up another cause, or expand their mission? This article explores the organizational response of mission expansion through a case study of the Coalition for the International Criminal Court. The CICC--a prominent global coalition of local and international nongovernmental organizations--was instrumental in advocating for the formation and ratification of the Rome Statute, the treaty that created the International Criminal Court. Following the entry into of the Rome Statute, the CICC did not disband or shift issues, but instead expanded its advocacy efforts and began service provision on behalf of the ICC. KEYWORDS: International Criminal Court, international law. IN THE PAST DECADE, THE LITERATURE ON THE EFFECTS OF NONGOVERNMENTAL organizations (NGOs), advocacy networks, and transnational or global civil society has blossomed and scholars have shifted from arguing whether these organizations matter to how and when they matter. (1) Much of this literature focuses on the roles and impacts of NGOs and advocacy networks in the process of norm emergence and adoption. (2) Because of its increasing scope and influence in national and global affairs, transnational civil society has even been coined the third force in global politics. (3) While this burgeoning literature has grown in scope and sophistication, it exclusively focuses on the battle for norm adoption and overlooks what happens to the organizations after they succeed. The reason for this is that the literature assumes advocacy NGOs exercise their greatest impact on norm change during the early stages of norm emergence, where they share information, frame the issue, and place it on the agenda. (4) The impact of advocacy NGOs is greatly decreased in the later stage of norm internalization, which is mostly occupied by bureaucracy. (5) What do advocacy NGOs do after attaining their mission goals? Organizational theory predicts three possible outcomes that could occur once an organization's raison d'etre has been fulfilled. First, the organization could disband. This theory emerges from the political science organizational literature and is rooted in the ideas of functionalism. (6) In this view, organizations are instruments or tools of their creators formed for specific purposes. Once those purposes have been fulfilled, the organization is disbanded because it is no longer necessary. This functionalist approach applies to some NGOs that have definitive and attainable goals. Malaria No More, an organization that provides mosquito nets in malarial zones, and Out2Play, an organization that builds playgrounds in public elementary schools in New York City, both closed down after achieving their foundational goals. (7) Second, the organization could adapt its skill sets to a new emerging issue. This occurs because the marginal cost of maintaining the institution is less than the cost of creating a new one. Based on this economic costs model, the organization will change its mission if it can adapt the rules, procedures, and skills from one set of problems to another. For example, the March of Dimes did not disband when Jonas Salk discovered the vaccine to combat polio--it was able to transfer its fund-raising and organizational skills to a new issue, birth defects. This transfer of skills can also occur with large coalitions of NGOs. The International Campaign to Ban Landmines took up the related issue of cluster bombs after its success in banning landmines in the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and Their Destruction (Ottawa Treaty). Third, the organization _ could expand its mission. Mission expansion can either represent scaling up existing activities or expanding horizontally by adding related activities. …