NGO Campaigns Research Articles

Corporations

The common sense view of a company is that it is not a person in the sense in which individual humans are people. Yet many are quite ready to blame companies for their acts, to sometimes praise them, and even to prosecute them for manslaughter: as if they are people. Thus there has been an on-going philosophical debate as to whether it is proper to confer 'person hood' on companies, to the extent they can be said to be moral agents, who are responsible in a moral sense for their actions and omissions. There are still some companies which claim that they are just economic agents having no responsibility beyond economic efficiency. Strangely, they may, purely voluntarily, also make substantial charitable donations. Other companies realize that they are powerful actors in today's global society and as such they are indeed moral agents. Some of the latter embrace corporate social responsibility (CSR). The CSR perspective appears to take for granted that companies are persons and indeed as 'corporate citizenship' goes further, considering them also citizens, enjoying rights and duties and certainly capable of moral standing. Behind the challenge and coun ter-challenge of NGO campaigns against companies lies the assumption that

Using Ideas Strategically: The Contest Between Business and NGO Networks in Intellectual Property Rights

Whose ideas matter? And how do actors make them matter? Focusing on the strategic deployment of competing normative frameworks, that is, framing issues and grafting private agendas on policy debates, we examine the contentious politics of the contemporary international intellectual property rights regime. We compare the business victory in the establishment of the 1994 Agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property (TRIPS) in the World Trade Organization with the subsequent NGO campaign against enforcing TRIPS to ensure access to essential HIV/AIDS medicines. Our analysis challenges constructivist scholarship that emphasizes the distinction between various types of transnational networks based on instrumental versus normative orientations. We question the portrayal of business firms as strictly instrumental actors preoccupied with material concerns, and NGOs as motivated solely by principled, or non-material beliefs. Yet we also offer a friendly amendment to constructivism by demonstrating its applicability to the analysis of business. Treating the business and NGO networks as competing interest groups driven by their normative ideals and material concerns, we demonstrate that these networks' strategies and activities are remarkably similar.

Sweating it out: NGO campaigns and trade union empowerment

In the context of globalisation, transnational social regulation is increasingly the product of NGOs intervening in the sphere of global trade. Drawing on empirical research in SE Asia, the author contends that what matters as much as codes of conduct are spillover effects whose force extends beyond building walls into the broader society of the host country. The basis for effective labour law lies within states, and activism must focus on improving legal, political, and social conditions for workers in the host countries, rather than on trying to affect corporate behaviour through consumer pressure.

Technological revolution meets policy and the market: Explaining cross‐national differences in agricultural biotechnology regulation

Abstract. The development and marketing of agricultural biotechnology applications has led to controversies over whether and how to regulate this new technology. The European Union (EU) has imposed severe restrictions on agricultural biotechnology, particularly in terms of approval and labeling of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in food. The United States has adopted a far more permissive approval policy and has not required labeling. This article explains these differences in terms of the collective action capacity of consumer and producer interests, and the institutional environment in which regulation has taken place. We find that the regulatory outcome in the EU can be traced back to nongovernmental organizations’ (NGOs) increased collective action capacity due to public outrage, an institutional environment favorable to anti‐biotechnology NGO interests (multilevel regulatory policy making) and a disintegration of the producer coalition due to NGO campaigns and differences in industrial structure. Biotechnology politics in the United States has been dominated by a strong and cohesive coalition of pro‐biotechnology upstream and downstream producers and farmers. Because of lower public outrage and a less favorable institutional environment (centralized regulatory policy making), anti‐biotechnology NGOs in the United States have been largely excluded from agricultural biotechnology policy making.

Not forever: Botswana, conflict diamonds and the Bushmen

It has been said that diamonds are Botswana's best friend, but with the rise of the ‘conflict diamonds’ issue in international politics, spurred on in the main by non‐governmental organizations, Botswana has felt compelled to go on the offensive to persuade the diamond‐buying public that its diamonds are ‘clean’ and legitimate. This ‘Diamonds for Development’ project has in recent months been one of the main planks of Botswana's foreign policy. However, a parallel NGO campaign around the issue of the San Bushmen has emerged that, based on perceptions linking diamonds to the removal of the San from their homes, threatens Gaborone's image as a producer of ‘clean’ diamonds. This article attempts to explain the dynamics behind these two issues currently bedevilling Botswana's relations with the outside world.

NGOs' role in limiting national sovereignty over environmental resources of global significance: the 1990 campaign against the Southern Okavango Integrated Water Development Project

AbstractThis paper analyses the NGO campaign against the proposed development of the Okavango Delta in 1990, and the subsequent policy change by the Botswana government. Four explanatory factors are explored: the democratic attributes of the domestic political context; the internationalisation of the issue; the complementary role of different NGOs; and the relative lack of impact on major economic stakeholders. The limitations of the campaign are noted in relation to more recent developments.We conclude that confrontation and collaboration can complement each other. Framing environmental issues as international, mobilising communities and facilitating participation, and providing independent technical expertise, are all important NGO activities. However, whereas in 1990 these were carried out in opposition to government, nowadays they are likely to be undertaken in a co‐operative framework of international agreements. NGOs may thereby gain more political space, but be in danger of co‐option. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Campaigning: A fashion or the best way to change the global agenda?

NGO campaigns have become increasingly high profile in recent years. Three contemporary examples are critically examined (Brent Spar, landmines, and international debt), both in terms of the various ingredients behind their success, and in relation to their real significance and long-term impact. The author looks at the trade-offs, challenges, and opportunities for NGO-sponsored campaigns within a changing political order and in the light of the potential offered by New Media.

Heroism and ambiguity: Ngo advocacy in international policy

NGO advocacy is sometimes portrayed in a heroic light, but efforts to influence World Bank-supported economic policies confront considerable ambiguity. Influence is difficult to demonstrate, but advocacy should be more rigorously assessed in the interest of transparency and effectiveness. Two (partial) solutions to this ambiguity are to focus on the process of NGO campaigns themselves; and to monitor impact on component parts of a model of institutional change at the Bank. This article assesses a recent advocacy campaign by testing it against five criticisms of NGO campaigning, then proposes that NGO advocates develop a practical model of policy change and monitor and evaluate their efforts with reference to the model's component parts.

Variation in EC environmental policy integration: agency push within complex institutional structures

The principle of environmental policy integration (EPI) has been adopted by the European Community and gained priority status in its fifth Environmental Action Programme. This article investigates the reasons for considerable variation in applying this principle by comparing the experience of environmental policy integration in two 'most similar' although differently evolving cases: the European Regional Development Fund and the Cohesion Fund. I argue that in order to explain substantial environmental improvement in the former case and poor compliance with the EPI principle in the latter, it is necessary to place the complex actor constellations and networks in the Community in their (micro)institutional framework. The policy network framework helps to recognize the role of actor interdependencies and chains that allowed environmental NGOs to play an influential role in the context of the Regional Fund reforms. (Micro)institutional analysis, in turn, points to the constraints experienced by a similar NGO campaign in the case of the Cohesion Fund and the opportunities opened up by recent institutional changes.