Advocacy Strategies in Global Governance: Inside versus Outside Lobbying
| Published date | 01 October 2017 |
| Author | Jonas Tallberg,Lisa Maria Dellmuth |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321716684356 |
| Date | 01 October 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
684356PSX0010.1177/0032321716684356Political StudiesDellmuth and Tallberg
research-article2016
Article
Political Studies
2017, Vol. 65(3) 705 –723
Advocacy Strategies in
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versus Outside Lobbying
Lisa Maria Dellmuth1 and Jonas Tallberg2
Abstract
As political authority shifts to the global level, non-governmental organisations (NGOs)
increasingly attempt to influence policy-making within international organisations (IOs). This article
examines the nature and sources of non-governmental organisations’ advocacy strategies in global
governance. We advance a twofold theoretical argument. First, non-governmental organisation
advocacy can be described in terms of inside and outside strategies, similar to interest group
lobbying in American and European politics. Second, non-governmental organisations’ chosen
combination of inside and outside strategies can be explained by their organisational goals and
membership base. Empirically, this argument is corroborated through a large-n analysis of original
data from structured interviews with 303 non-governmental organisation representatives active
in relation to the United Nations (UN), complemented by 19 semi-structured interviews with
UN and state officials. The article’s findings have implications for the theory and practice of non-
governmental organisation involvement in global governance.
Keywords
advocacy, lobbying, interest groups, global governance, non-governmental organisations (NGOs),
international organisations (IOs)
Accepted: 12 October 2016
As political authority has shifted from the national to the global level, non-governmental
organisations (NGOs) have begun to devote extensive energy and resources to the task of
influencing policy-making within international organisations (IOs). In the case of the UN,
more than 4000 NGOs have sought and gained consultative status (UN, 2015), while
7400 organisations, many of them NGOs, are now listed in the interest group register of
the European Union (EU) (2015). Similarly, hundreds of NGOs regularly attend the min-
isterial meetings and conferences of IOs such as the World Trade Organization (WTO),
1Department of Economic History and Department of Political Science, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
2Department of Political Science, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
Corresponding author:
Lisa Maria Dellmuth, Department of Economic History and Department of Political Science, Stockholm
University, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden.
Email: lisa.dellmuth@ekohist.su.se
706
Political Studies 65 (3)
the UN climate change negotiations and the World Bank (Hanegraaff et al., 2011; Uhre,
2014; World Bank, 2015).
In this article, we address NGOs’ choice of lobbying strategies vis-à-vis IO policy-
makers. While NGOs increasingly engage with IOs, they vary in the advocacy strategies
they adopt when seeking to influence policy-making. Whereas some NGOs primarily
engage in direct lobbying of policy-makers, providing information and arguments, other
NGOs mainly try to influence policy-makers indirectly, through mobilisation of public
opinion. NGOs’ strategy choice is an issue of intrinsic interest to research on advocacy
and lobbying in IR and Comparative Politics (CP). Furthermore, as lobbying strategies
are varyingly successful in influencing IO decision-making (Tallberg et al., 2015), and
IOs are known to shape global political outcomes (Martin and Simmons, 2012), questions
about the patterns and causes of NGO strategies in global governance are of great impor-
tance both for researchers and for practitioners.
NGOs’ choice of lobbying strategies vis-à-vis IOs is a topic which so far has received
limited systematic attention (Guldbrandsen and Andresen, 2004; Hadden, 2015;
Hanegraaff et al., 2016). While there is a rich body of research on NGO advocacy in IR
(e.g. Bob, 2009; Carpenter, 2011; Keck and Sikkink, 1998; O’Brien et al., 2000; Prakash
and Gugerty, 2010; for overviews, see Risse, 2012; Stroup and Murdie, 2012), this litera-
ture has yet to explore the patterns and causes of lobbying strategies in interactions with
IOs. Furthermore, strategy choice is a classic topic in interest group research in CP (e.g.
Beyers, 2004; Binderkrantz, 2005; Dür and Mateo, 2013; Kollman, 1998; Schlozman and
Tierney, 1986); however, this agenda has yet to be extended to lobbying in IOs.
We advance a twofold argument about the nature and determinants of NGO lobbying
in global governance, inspired by theories of interest group behaviour in the study of
American and European politics. First, we argue that NGO advocacy in global govern-
ance can be conceptualised in terms of inside and outside lobbying. Inside lobbying
refers to activities which aim to influence political outcomes through direct interaction
with decision-makers, and outside lobbying to activities which aim to influence out-
comes by putting pressure on decision-makers through the mobilisation of public opin-
ion. Importantly, NGOs are not ‘insiders’ or ‘outsiders’, but can be expected to combine
direct interaction with policy-makers and mobilisation of public opinion in varying
proportions.
Second, we argue that NGOs’ chosen combination of lobbying strategies is a function
of their goals and membership base. Conceptualising NGOs as strategic actors pursuing
multiple objectives through IOs, we argue that NGOs primarily seeking political influ-
ence have more incentives to rely more extensively on inside strategies and explain how
this effect is moderated by the reliance of NGOs on membership contributions. When
NGOs are dependent on membership funding, they should seek influence through outside
strategies to a greater extent, since such strategies help to keep their supporters mobilised.
NGOs which do not rely on membership funding do not face the same constraints and can
therefore focus more intensively on inside lobbying. We contrast this argument with three
prominent alternative explanations, privileging the resources of NGOs, the issue context
in which they are active, and their access to IOs.
Empirically, we corroborate this two-step argument using a novel dataset based on
structured interviews among representatives of 303 randomly selected NGOs active in
relation to the UN, complemented by 19 semi-structured elite interviews with UN and
state officials (see list of interviews in Appendix 1). Through a series of statistical analy-
ses of the interview data, we advance on existing research on NGO advocacy, which is
Dellmuth and Tallberg
707
dominated by case studies of campaigns, individual NGOs and networks (for similar
assessments, see Mitchell and Schmitz, 2014; Risse, 2012). The UN is particularly rele-
vant to any inquiry of NGO advocacy as the foremost organisational hub in global gov-
ernance with authority in multiple issue areas and a long history of interaction with
NGOs.
The Argument: Lobbying Strategies in Global Governance
Our theoretical argument is in two parts. We first introduce the distinction between inside
and outside strategies and then present our privileged explanation of NGOs’ choice of
lobbying strategies, centred on organisational goals and membership.
The Nature of Advocacy: Inside and Outside Strategies
The influence strategies used by interest groups are of long-standing interest in American
politics (e.g. Hansen, 1991; Kollman, 1998; Schlozman and Tierney, 1986) and have
recently gained increasing attention in the European setting (e.g. Beyers, 2004; Dür and
Mateo, 2013; Kriesi et al., 2007). Existing literature conventionally distinguishes between
inside and outside strategies, where inside strategies are understood as influence tactics
which involve direct interaction with decision-makers, and outside strategies as tactics
aimed at influencing decision-makers indirectly through public-opinion mobilisation.
Prominent inside tactics include meeting with decision-makers, offering policy expertise
to decision-makers and informing decision-makers about the views and needs of the con-
stituencies which lobbyists represent. Prominent outside tactics include mobilising public
opinion through news media, social media and public events such as campaigns and pro-
tests. Both strategies have been shown to require extensive resources (Binderkrantz,
2005; Dür and Mateo, 2013).
We argue that the distinction between inside and outside lobbying is useful for under-
standing the strategies of NGOs in global governance. First, NGOs, just as interest groups
in American and European politics, are strategic actors who we can expect make informed
choices about the strategies which best serve their interests. While there has been a ten-
dency to view NGOs as constitutively different from interest groups, by emphasising
their value-based orientation, we join contributions which question this assumption (e.g.
Keck and Sikkink, 1998; Mitchell and Schmitz, 2014; Prakash and Gugerty, 2010).
Second, what is referred to as NGOs in IR has a large conceptual overlap with the
standard definition of interest groups as organisations with autonomy from both govern-
ment and parties which seek to influence public policy (see Baumgartner and Leech,
1998; Risse, 2012). In addition, there is a substantial empirical overlap, since many
groups are active at both the national and the global level, but are then typically...
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