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Transnational Advocacy Networks and Moral Commitment

The tale of transnational civil society, as told by a large and growing body of scholarly literature, is typically one of nonstate actors remaking world politics by upsetting conventional notions of power in the international system. Armed with little more than the strength of their convictions, global networks of activists, NGOs, scientists, and technical experts play the fon to unrestrained national interests, acting out of conscience for those issues that either fall beyond the boundaries of state concern or that states choose to ignore. Relying on persuasion and framing rather than disruption and protest, these "transnational advocacy networks" transform national interests by developing, diffusing, and monitoring compliance with norms.1Transnational advocacy networks not only champion norms, but are the very embodiment of them. According to Peter Katzenstein, "norms operate like rules that define the identity of an actor, thus having 'constitutive effects' that specify what actions will cause relevant others to recognize a particular identity."2 Understood this way, norms provide a principled basis for advocacy network formation, aiding in the creation of identities and preferences without which transnational advocacy becomes impossible to sustain. Thus, to the extent that the networks manage to sustain themselves and even influence national priorities, the normative commitments underpinning their formation and mobilization are treated as fairly static. Indeed, as continuous, concerted collective action across international boundaries - and in the face of the overwhelming material advantages of states - demands unwavering devotion to shared principles and goals, an assumption of moral incorruptibility lies at the very heart of the conventional definition of transnational advocacy networks.While the cornerstone of the literature on transnational networks is that they socialize states to certain norms of behaviour and not the other way around, this article outlines an alternative causal process in which the moral commitments of advocacy networks are reshaped through interaction with the target government. Tracing the campaign for a "free Tibet" in its decades-long struggle against the People's Republic of China, it shows how, as a result of Chinese intransigence on the issue of Tibetan statehood, the original meaning and mission of the transnational campaign for Tibetan independence has been replaced by a greater emphasis on adequate cultural representation and inclusion for Tibetans within a quasi-federal or multinational China. In addition to suggesting that the moral fabric of which the networks are made may in fact be more pliable than previously thought, this argument highlights the importance of taking seriously the possible pitfalls or tradeoffs involved in seeking to influence strong national governments, especially insular autocracies like China.The first section below describes what transnational advocacy networks do and how they do it from the standpoint of international relations scholarship. Of particular importance to this literature is the way in which materially powerful states are socialized to advocacy network preferences and the assumption of fixed moral commitments in accomplishing that end. Arguing that existing theories are insufficiently flexible to accommodate the potential for network principles to change or evolve through interaction with states, the bulk of the article is then given over to its empirical centrepiece, a case study of the transnational campaign for Tibetan sovereignty and its engagement with China. This narrative reveals a reversal of conventional causal roles such that national interests appear as a catalyst and not a consequence of network characteristics, including changes to the fundamental principles and goals from which the network identity originally derived.TRANSNATIONAL ADVOCACY AND NATIONAL INTERESTSAs Harrison White has argued, all social networks are inherently "network[s] of meanings. …