Unexpected Power: Conflict and Change among Transnational Activists

Abstract

Unexpected Power: Conflict and Change among Transnational Activists. By Shareen Hertel. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006. 159p. 17.95 paper.Shareen Hertel's book focuses on the evolution of human rights norms and strategic choices within transnational campaigns. She wants to explain “why and how actors on the receiving end of campaigns put forward alternative understandings of human rights norms” (p. 3). Building on Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink's groundbreaking modeling of the “boomerang effect” of transnational campaigns (see Activists Beyond Borders: Transnational Advocacy Networks in International Politics, 1998), Hertel identifies two new patterns of campaign emergence, which she calls the “outside-in” pattern and the “dual-target” pattern. Outside-in patterns are at work when campaigns are framed outside of the targeted area, generally in the global North, and then introduced to change conditions in targeted countries. Dual-target patterns, by contrast, evolve around collaborations and shared interests of outside and inside actors to change human rights conditions in both the sender and receiver countries (p. 25). Both of these patterns, argues the author, reflect more accurately than previous formulations the contentious frame negotiations that go on in such campaigns.