Internal Affairs: How the Structure of NGOs Transforms Human Rights
"What makes a human right relevant on the world stage? Is it its inherent moral value? Or is its relevance a product of marketing, funding, or the magnetic capabilities of a charismatic leader?Internal Affairssuggests we turn our attention to the structural design of NGOs in order to understand what distinguishes those human rights issues that are championed as international concerns from those that barely make a ripple. At the crux of this well written and easily assignable text stands the notion that the success of a rights-campaign hinges on its structure. The book will be a valuable contribution to the scholarly libraries of anthropologists, political scientists, and international relations experts, while also serving as an indispensable tool for rights-based practitioners."— Erica Bornstein,Human Rights Quarterly"In this lucid and important analysis, Wendy Wong advances us well beyond standard accounts of norms into the world of organizational realities. By using a highly informative comparative lens, she challenges us to link the structure of international NGOs of various kinds to their political salience, illustrating with rich empirical examples how organizational dynamics impact on success and failure in the pursuit of human dignity."—Stephen Hopgood, SOAS, University of London, author ofKeepers of the Flame: Understanding Amnesty International"Political scientist Wendy Wong'sInternal Affairsoffers an important empirical approach that focuses on the organizational structure of internationally oriented NGOs (all headquartered in the global North) to explain why they, and the issues that they do promote, are not equally influential in terms of their impact on human rights . . . [Wong] examines a variety of transnational campaigns as a separate unit of observation for comparative analysis, enabling her to independently assess the political salience of the ideas that these organizations sponsor." —John G. Dale, George Mason University,American Journal of Sociology(November 2013)"Scholars know not all advocacy organizations are equally influential: some are more central, more powerful, and more 'salient' within advocacy networks, affecting their power over the global agenda. But until now it's been less clear how NGO ‘superpowers’ come to occupy this status. In this path-breaking book, Wendy Wong provides an answer: transnational change agents make deliberate choices in terms of their organizational structure. She teases out how this affects their prominence as organizations within the wider advocacy networks and their subsequent influence at exporting specific ideas to the global community. This important work will enrich scholarship on NGOs, advocacy networks, and global agenda-setting and is a must-read by students and scholars of global civil society."—R. Charli Carpenter, UMass Amherst, author ofForgetting Children Born of War: Setting the Human Rights Agenda in Bosnia and Beyond