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Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. By Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998. 228p. $45.00 cloth, $15.95 paper.
Activists beyond Borders presents a perspective on international politics that had, at least until the post-Cold War era, been neglected by international relations scholars working primarily within state-centric and realist frameworks. Theoretical blinders led many of these scholars to ignore actors other than states and the normative changes they helped advance in international affairs. Another set of boundaries led comparative political scientists to end their analyses at the water's edge, leaving out questions about how international and transnational dynamics influence political processes within particular nation-states.
Keck and Sikkink use methods from comparative and international political analysis to articulate an alternative view of international political processes. The picture they paint is much less parsimonious than traditional realists would like, but it is arguably more accurate in what it says about the politics of international change. Specifically, major changes in national and international policies and behaviors often result from concerted efforts by actors other than states to promote some shared principle, such as the prevention of bodily harm to vulnerable individuals or legal equality of opportunity. Networks of nonstate actors-including variable mixes of primarily international and national NGOs, foundations, sympathetic individuals serving in government and intergovernmental agencies, and the mass media-are seen as driving forces behind the normative changes these authors analyze. Beyond describing the role of advocacy networks, however, Keck and Sikkink offer hypotheses about factors that contribute to the emergence and effectiveness of these networks.
The perspective in this book is increasingly prevalent in the field of international relations, and certainly the authors' prior work, including Sikkink's 1986 case study...