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This introductory chapter presents a text from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which allows states not to commit to a hard and fast legal apparatus in enforcing human rights. The lack of thr consensus of states regarding human rights has led nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to make substantial contributions to human rights politics, in terms of definition, spread, and applicability across different contexts. In relation to this context, the book focuses on the political salience of NGOs and ideas in international politics. It also explains why some NGOs have developed as focal points in international human rights politics, and similarly, how ideas become politically salient.

This concluding chapter shows that NGOs can make simple advocacies politically salient; in relation to this some NGO with politically salient advocacy can remain less influential among other NGOs. For instance, politically salient NGOs, such as Amnesty International, Oxfam, and Human Rights Watch (HRW) HRW, have successfully advocated for greater oversight over small arms and light weapons. These cases are in direct contrast with the situation with the Anti-Slavery International (ASI), which remains less dominant in comparison with other human rights NGOs, even though ASI's anti-slavery agenda continues to be one of the few strong prohibitive norms that exist internationally. Hence, the cases when the political salience of organizations does not lead to a political salience of ideas, and vice versa. This shows why the organizational structure of NGOs is important.

The ‘Blair paradox’ reflects not a simple shift in orientations (i.e. from majoritarian power‐hoarding to consensual power‐sharing) but a multifaceted attempt to inject a new meta‐constitutional orientation, in terms of a set of core values, principles, and assumptions about the distribution of power and the relationship between political actors, within the existing version (i.e. bi‐constitutionalism).

This chapter analyzes European and American policies toward a range of consumer safety risks; including drugs, children's products, and cosmetics. It shows how European and American risk regulations have converged, though the dynamics through which this occurred differed substantially. Pharmaceutical regulation constitutes the most important exception to the broader pattern of increased transatlantic regulatory policy divergence. What makes this area of regulatory policy distinctive is that its political salience increased in the United States but not in Europe. Pharmaceutical regulation also represents an important exception to the dominant pattern of transatlantic regulatory policy diffusion. In this case, European regulatory policies did affect those of the United States, first by highlighting the transatlantic drug lag, and more recently by American decisions to adopt some European practices to expedite drug approvals.

This chapter summarizes discussions of the volume. There were many transformations in the meanings of the pilgrimage during the colonial period and later, right down to the contemporary period. This study highlighted some of these changes while focussing on the various dimensions associated with it, including its political salience, its appeal at a personal level, and its medical and commercial relevance. It situated Haj in an age that saw an unprecedented degree of interconnectedness between various parts of the world, as a result of which many subjects, such as the pilgrimage, began to both attract and be affected by a great deal of international curiosity, exploration, and examination. The period studied not only witnessed a growing ‘medicalization’ of the pilgrimage, but also a growing ‘politicization’.

This chapter focuses on Amnesty International, the classic case of an NGO which has a centralized system for proposal and enforcement powers and a decentralized system for implementation. Amnesty forged a structure and a technique that led to its political salience as an important agenda setter in terms of both ideas and organizational salience during the Cold War. While previous transnational organizations had largely struggled with centralized agenda setting, Amnesty was the first to have a strong central office—the International Secretariat—which controls proposal and enforcement powers of the agenda despite strong national sections throughout Europe. Since the end of the Cold War, this body has gone through some changes, which have solidified the Secretariat's agenda-setting powers.