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Sarah S. Stroup.  Borders among Activists: International NGOs in the
United States, Britain, and France.  Ithaca  Cornell University
Press, 2012.  x + 246 pp.  $39.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8014-5073-0.

Reviewed by Hans Schmitz (Syracuse University)
Published on H-Diplo (September, 2012)
Commissioned by Seth Offenbach

Sarah S. Stroup explores how national differences divide activists in
the United States, Great Britain, and France. Based on six main and
twenty "mini-case" studies, Stroup offers an accessible argument
explaining how national context produces very different forms of
"charity," a term she defines as "organizations that are both
nonprofit and aim to serve some public benefit" (p. 11). Her
assertion is framed as a challenge to arguments claiming the rise of
a "global civil society" and a transformation of world politics by
transnational advocacy networks.[1] But the core contribution of the
book is not to challenge this earlier wishful thinking, but to
carefully explain how and why different nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs) have developed "varieties of activism," which has caused
substantial divergence of approaches among NGOs and has undercut
effective collaboration at the global level. These varieties of
activism are expressed in unique patterns of fundraising, management,
and advocacy, including issue selection and relationships with
governments. The book appeals to academics and scholars alike and
shows that the field of NGO studies in international relations (IR)
has rapidly evolved over the past fifteen years.

One can expect from a book based on dissertation work a carefully
developed research design as well as a strong and transparent
evidence base. On both counts, the study delivers. The introduction
begins by reviewing the case for the convergence of transnational
activism. Stroup cites scholars who argue that international NGOs
share values of human rights and environmental protection and
typically address similar problems, such as poverty or gender
inequality. Here, one important factor that Stroup could have added
is the role of individuals and the diffusion of ideas driven by the
movement of personnel especially at top levels. One of her
interviewees, Peter Bell, pushed CARE USA toward more advocacy during
his tenure as president from 1995 to 2005. Tracking such individuals
may offer a stronger case for the convergence idea than broader
claims focused on globalization or shared principles.

Following her account of the convergence thesis, Stroup carefully
builds her challenge based on existing scholarship, and argues for
the importance of national origins in sustaining divergence and
undermining transnational collaboration for common causes. She states
that the "relative infrequency of successful transnational campaigns"
is a result of "disconnected," not "dysfunctional" NGOs (p. 16). The
rest of the introduction and chapter 1 define the national context
shaping NGO behavior and explain the organizations she chose to
study. The six main case studies are CARE USA and Human Rights Watch
(HRW) for the United States, Oxfam and Amnesty International (AI) for
Great Britain, and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and La
Fédération internationale des ligues des droits de l'Homme (FIDH)
for France. Additional evidence is drawn from chapters of each of
these organizations based in the other nations (e.g., AI USA and CARE
France) as well as twelve other national organizations.

Drawing on social movement studies and sociological institutionalism,
her work focuses on four factors: the regulatory framework (e.g.,
nonprofit laws); variation in political opportunities (e.g., access
to government officials); the availability of resources; and the
nature of domestic social networks. Chapter 1 elaborates on each and
provides a brief overview of the three different national
environments. While the regulatory environment is well defined by its
focus on how laws encourage or restrict political activities and
donations (table 2, p. 70), the others are less clear and the logic
of their effects on activism remains more ambiguous. For example, the
"social networks" factor focuses mostly on organizational ties and
does not identify clear-cut differences that lend themselves to
establishing diverging predictions across contexts. The comparative
strength of this approach lies in avoiding a reduction of these
domestic factors to mere "variables" that lose meaning in efforts to
establish suitable indicators and measurements. Instead, Stroup uses
her interview evidence in the subsequent chapters to effectively
elaborate on how the four factors drive and sustain different world
views.

The main empirical evidence is presented in the two middle chapters,
first discussing the case of humanitarian NGOs (chapter 2) and next
moving to human rights NGOs (chapter 3). Each chapter draws on
general information available about each organization (e.g., budget,
program activities, etc.) and semi-structured interviews conducted
mainly with NGO staff, the majority of whom remain anonymous. What is
most compelling is that the book describes how cultural context
shapes organizational identities. In the United States, pragmatism
and professionalism dominate and contentious advocacy is of limited
appeal. U.S.-based NGOs are shaped by a culture of individualism that
mistrusts government. In contrast, French NGOs project a more
communitarian view that links them as "principled protesters" in a
love-hate relationship to the state (p. 191). While French NGOs are
outspoken, their advocacy practices reflect a peculiar national
understanding of state-society relations.

The post-Cold War period offers some important examples supporting
Stroup's case for taking seriously the domestic, but also highlights
some of the challenges in showing the power of national origins.
While the case for paying greater attention to cultural context is
compelling, it is frequently overstated and some opportunities to
explore interaction with other sources of NGO behavior remain
unexplored. Outside of the field of IR, the idea that NGOs reproduce
cultural traits of their home nations is more widely shared simply
because nonprofit studies or related fields have focused for a long
time on the internal dynamics of these groups.

One of the challenges to the importance of national origins emerges
when looking at the evolution of NGO responses to consecutive
humanitarian crises since the Biafra war in the late 1960s. MSF was
founded in 1971 by doctors unsatisfied with the typical approach
taken by humanitarian NGOs. Public and internal debates about how to
most effectively protect human dignity intensified during the 1980s
and following the Rwandan genocide in 1994. The fundamental conflict
emerging was between those calling for a return to traditional
humanitarian principles of neutrality and impartiality, and those
arguing that these principles were increasingly counterproductive and
contributed to human suffering, for example, by providing aid to
groups responsible for atrocities.[2] These differences point beyond
the national level because they account both for the frequent
occurrence of splits within NGOs and supranational debates about how
to best respond to threats against human dignity.[3] The most
important recent case leading to debates beyond national differences
was the 2009 indictment of Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir by the
International Criminal Court (ICC). This has created significant
tensions between human rights groups hailing a victory for global
justice and humanitarian groups lamenting their expulsion from the
Darfur region and an end to the life-saving aid they provided. The
ICC is an example of effective global campaigning by an international
coalition, but also a good case highlighting differences within the
NGO world that focus on what is the most appropriate response to
atrocities.

Two broader questions follow from the argument that the behavior of
NGOs is more complex than Stroup's account. First, the bulk of her
empirical evidence shows national differences, while the two main
empirical chapters never get far enough to actually show how these
differences undermine transnational collaboration. Without examples
of failed or weak campaigns, the claim that domestic differences
necessarily undermine transnational activism remains unsupported. We
learn plenty about how NGOs are fundamentally different, but not much
about how these differences translate into noncooperation. The final
chapter offers a short case study focused on Iraq, spelling out some
of the policy differences among NGOs, but even here the evidence
describes different views, not diverging actions.

Second, differences between advocacy and service delivery
organizations create variation that rival the importance of Stroup's
argument. Transnational campaigning focused on "naming and shaming"
is most important in the human rights area where strength is in
numbers and the goal is to maximize media exposure. This is not the
case in the humanitarian field. Here, NGOs are much less likely to
campaign at all because they primarily focus on the fast and
efficient delivery of emergency aid in response to a disaster. For
Stroup to find very little evidence for collaboration among
humanitarians is thus less surprising and interesting than a similar
result in the human rights sector. What undercuts humanitarian
collaboration is not so much the absence of isomorphic pressures
based on competition for the same funding sources, but the need to
deliver distinct services and occupy a niche defined by what they
deliver, not where they come from.

Similarly, in the human rights sector, "slow and thorough
deliberation" on the part of AI is certainly one reason why the
organization often declines to collaborate with other groups (p.
166). However, this feature of their research is neither particularly
British nor is it a major factor in explaining noncooperation.
Instead, looking beyond the domestic realm points again at
competition at the global level: good information about human rights
abuses is a resource that AI and HRW compete for by recruiting
researchers and domestic activists. For example, HRW scored a major
victory against AI when it released the first major, 432-page report
on human rights abuses in Kenya after the end of the Cold War
(_Kenya: Taking Liberties. An Africa Watch Report_ [1991]). These
NGOs are in important ways conditioned or constrained by the
transnational encounters they create and sustain.

One key indicator of divergence for Stroup is the contrast between
contentious and collaborative approaches taken by different NGOs.
Chapter 4 explains how CARE USA opted for working with the U.S.
government on humanitarian issues in Iraq, while European NGOs
remained antagonistic to the U.S. government. For HRW, Stroup
concludes first that the organization came out against the war in
early 2004 and later states that it "did not go so far as to condemn
the war" (p. 200). Are fundraising patterns or regulatory environment
really all that relevant to explain much of the difficulties NGOs had
in defining their responses? Some may argue that a more compelling
account would address the atrocities committed by the Iraqi regime
and diverging perceptions about prior experiences with humanitarian
interventions.

Stroup is careful to acknowledge throughout the book possible
objections and limitations to her study. She rejects any
deterministic view on the power of the domestic context and explains
why she did not choose younger organizations or why she did not look
at organizational change over time (appendix A). The last point is
certainly the more compelling one since all major NGOs included here
have undergone significant growth and change over the decades. The
better argument may be not to claim continuity, but to point out that
the jury is still out on the effects of many of those changes. Some
may actually strengthen the role of the national context, including
the recent widespread efforts by many federated organizations to turn
their country offices in the Global South into full-fledged members
(examples include Plan International, Save the Children, and
Amnesty's current regionalization strategy).

A final thought moves beyond the relative importance of domestic
versus international factors and asks: is divergence really such a
bad thing? First, social movement scholars have for some time pointed
to the efficacy of "insider-outsider" coalitions. Following this
logic, a "single set of universal best practices" and "convergence
upon a single model of relief and development" may be ineffective
(pp. 15, 131). Instead, contentious and noncontentious strategies
complement each other and make NGOs as a global actor more effective,
even in the absence of significant coordination among them. Second,
many of the problems NGOs take on are complex and have no obvious
solutions. If we knew how to deal with climate change or persistent
poverty, then the solutions would already be widely implemented. But
without an obvious answer to these challenges, there are no "best
practices" and a strategy of convergence is suboptimal.

Take, for example, the recent proliferation of rights-based
approaches (RBA) among development NGOs. RBA represents a case of
rhetorical convergence across two formerly separate sectors of
international activism (human rights and development). Within the
development sector, the adoption of RBA has led to clear patterns of
divergence, some of which are driven by national context. In the
United States, CARE embraced RBA early on, while Worldvision, which
is the U.S. section of Save the Children, refuses or is very
reluctant to adopt the rights language. Stroup's argument can account
for this divergence. But what may matter most is how divergence in
the implementation of RBA creates new opportunities for complementary
strategies, including some NGOs focusing more attention on national
advocacy (Oxfam) while others working more systematically with civil
society groups below the national level (ActionAid). And this does
not even take into account that younger and less well-established
groups are likely to experiment with very different models of
activism. By studying examples of the largest groups, Stroup not only
may have ironically put too much faith into sameness, but may also
have missed out on the diversity emerging among smaller and newer
groups that will shape the sector in the future.

_Borders among Activists_ makes a compelling case for taking
seriously national differences among NGOs. While it does not show
that transnational organizing is systematically undercut by domestic
factors, the book does set a new standard in a field still dominated
by single case studies of NGOs or campaigns. Stroup's comparative
study of two dozen cases establishes a new level of research quality
for anyone interested in explaining the behavior of major NGOs.
Factors other than domestic structural conditions certainly matter,
but any future research will have to take off from this study and
wrestle with its conclusions.

Notes

[1]. Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, _Activists beyond Borders:
Advocacy Networks in International Politics_ (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1998); and Ann M. Florini, _The Third Force: The
Rise of Transnational Civil Society_ (Tokyo: Japan Center for
International Change and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
1999).

[2]. Paul O'Brien, "Politicized Humanitarianism: A Response to
Nicolas de Torrente,"_ Harvard Human Rights Journal_ 17, no. 1
(2004): 31-40.

[3]. For example, Bernard Kouchner, co-founder of MSF, left the
organization in 1979 in protest against efforts to expand its
mission. Rakyia Omaar left Human Rights Watch in 1992 and founded
African Rights (together with Alex de Wall) to protest HRW's support
for humanitarian intervention in Somalia.

Citation: Hans Schmitz. Review of Stroup, Sarah S., _Borders among
Activists: International NGOs in the United States, Britain, and
France_. H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews. September, 2012.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=36592

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