Agenda Setting, the UN, and NGOs: Gender Violence and Reproductive Rights

1. NGOs and UN Agenda Setting: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Framing Strategies

1 NGOS AND UN AGENDA SETTING Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Framing Strategies Over the course of the past decade, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have played an increasingly important role in defining the agendas of UN organizations.1 A glance at UN specialized conferences illustrates how NGOs have played a crucial role in winning international recognition among governments for issues that once were considered low politics and exclusively domestic concerns, including the environment, human rights, women’s rights, development, and refugees.2 Despite the growing importance of NGOs in UN agenda setting, however, their role and influence have been insufficiently theorized, and many questions remain unanswered. How do NGOs influence the agendas of UN organizations? Why do some of their issues become included and not others? Why are they influential at certain times but not others? And what are the important factors determining whether NGOs are more or less successful in introducing new issues? This chapter attempts to help fill this gap in the literature by developing a conceptual framework that can explain how, why, and under what conditions NGOs are able to shape and define the agendas of UN organizations. The framework draws on various elements of the agenda-setting and social movement literatures, applying them to the international level. Assuming that agenda setting proceeds in several stages, it 15 suggests that NGOs attempt to exert influence by engaging in framing processes, defined here as the strategic packaging of new ideas and interpretations . In this process, NGOs encounter a significant degree of conflict as the values and beliefs of their frameworks frequently challenge those already in existence. Whether or not the frameworks of NGOs will finally be accepted and recognized as legitimate is contingent on the dynamic interaction of primarily two different factors: the political opportunity structure in which NGOs are embedded, and the mobilizing structures that NGOs have at their disposal. Though changes in the former provide a window of opportunity for NGOs to introduce new frames, the latter enable them to seize it. The chapter is divided into three sections. The first section is devoted to the dependent variable: the agenda. I establish the political salience of agenda setting; identify the agenda’s locus; and, drawing on the “garbage can” model, delineate the agenda-setting process. In the second section, I turn to NGOs and conceptualize both the framing processes in which they engage as well as the political opportunities and their organizational resources that might facilitate their efforts. In the concluding section, I discuss the relationship between the various variables that I identify as pivotal. UN Agenda Setting Of the various phases in the policy cycle, the influence of NGOs is argued to be greatest in the agenda formation. According to Risse (2002, 265), this is not surprising. Because NGOs provide “moral authority and knowledge about causal relationships, they are particularly crucial when it comes to paradigm shifts on the international agenda.” Although agenda-setting has less of an impact especially when compared to decision-making, it is nevertheless politically salient. First, through it “some issues are organized into politics, while others are organized out” (Schattschneider 1960, 8). Second, the process determines how an issue will be defined and in turn determines which institutions or actors might take it up later (Mazey and Richardson 1996). Finally, agenda setting is “a primary tool for securing and extending power” (Light 1982, 2). Failure to influence it “dooms the prospects of action on one’s perceived major problems, it compels attention to issues one may find inappropriate, undesirable, or injurious” (Livingston 1992, 311). Agenda setting in international organizations is complex and 16 Chapter 1 multifaceted. Therefore it is important to determine which of the many agendas NGOs target. Studying agenda setting in the domestic context, Cobb and Elder (1972, 85–86) distinguish between two different types of agendas: (1) a “systemic agenda” and (2) a “formal or institutional agenda.” The former contains “all issues that are commonly perceived by members of the political community as meriting public attention and as involving matters within the legitimate jurisdiction of existing governmental authority .” In contrast, the latter has a much narrower focus, consisting of “that set of items explicitly up for the active and serious consideration of authoritative decision-makers.” This distinction is also useful for this study. The “formal or institutional agenda” within the UN, containing all those...