'Targeting lethal weapons' : issue-adoption and campaign structure in transnational disarmament campaigns

Abstract

We theorize the membership, target-selection, and timing of transnational advocacy campaigns as a function of longstanding professional networks between NGOs and individual professional campaigners. Unlike previous scholarship that focuses on the role of powerful “gatekeeper” NGOs whose central position within transnational issue-networks allows them to promote or block specific issues at will, we draw on recent work in sociology and organizational studies to bring into focus a wider community of individuals and organizations whose competition for professional growth and “issue-control” (Henriksen and Seabrooke 2016) shape the transnational advocacy agenda. In doing so we elaborate and qualify existing notions of gatekeeping pioneered by Bob (2005, 2010) and Carpenter (2011, 2014). Highly connected and resource-rich NGOs are often less able to “set” or “vet” agendas than previous scholarship suggests. Instead, porous organizational borders and “revolving doors” imply that advocacy agendas are shaped by professional networks that develop between organizations. Efforts by individual professional staff to steer the agenda towards issues that fit their personal expertise and career ambitions—rather than wider political context or longstanding organizational commitments to specific issues—play a crucial role in transnational agenda-setting.