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This chapter examines the cause of temperance as one of the first truly global transnational advocacy networks (TANs), which acted as a multidirectional transmission belt of policy-relevant ideas and information from one country to another, to be filtered and reframed by domestic-level actors. By examining the life cycle of the transnational temperance network in terms of four stages — incipient, ascendant, mature, and declining — the chapter provides a template for addressing the evolution of transnational advocacy networks, while also preparing the stage for analyzing alcohol-control policymaking at the national level, which follows in Chapters 3 through 5.

This chapter provides a more explicit comparison of the institutional differences in feedback mechanisms, highlighting the features inherent in each institutional arrangement that predisposed decision makers in each country toward or away from a particular policy, while also enhancing the understanding of how different institutional arrangements respond to crises by accelerating the policy debate, and thereby altering the political discourse to impact the course of policy development. In drawing together such diverse insights, the chapter also poses an explanation for the international alcohol control/prohibition policy “wave” of the early 20th century. In brief, the wave can be explained only with reference to a combination of transnationally diffused temperance ideas, varyingly translated into policy through institutionalized channels of decision making, with a common external stimulus of a world war. War explains the timing of the policy wave, transnational temperance information networks explain the direction of the policy change, and domestic institutional constraints explain the ultimate form of that change.

The interests, passions, and ideas undergirding and the resources inherent in social and symbolic ties can traverse nation-state borders for decades. As seen, migrant and migration networks help sustain international migration, even superseding initiating factors. They explain the quantitative leap from ‘why so few out of so many places?’ to ‘why so many out of so few places?’. These processes of critical mass also induce a qualitative leap: transnational networks precipitate full-fledged transnationalisation, predisposing locally bound social spaces to further border-crossing transitions. Several examples point towards circular, regular, and sustained flows of persons, goods, information, and symbols that has been triggered and reinforced by international labour migration and refugee movements. These spaces of flows include not only the bodily circulation of people but also multiple transactions of ideas, monetary resources, goods, symbols, and cultural practices.

This chapter defines the monograph's scope of inquiry – to elucidate the origins of Judiciary branch institutions in the newly democratizing countries of Central and Eastern Europe – and sets out its research puzzles: how came the institutional design of the Judiciary to be patterned on always the same transnational template which happens to maximize judicial empowerment to the exclusion of alternatives? And why was it accepted so uniformly across the whole region, despite its obvious drawbacks for the self-interest of the national parliaments called on to ratify it? The thesis of the book is then outlined. Judicial empowerment is explained as the empowerment, in fact, of a new social class, a transnational community networked around elite legal professionals. A literature review critiques some of the most pertinent works in the fields of law, political science, international law, and socio-legal studies, showing the connections between their findings and the instant thesis. The complex methodological approach used herein is finally outlined, consisting of multi-modal research strategies, sources of data, and forms of reasoning: case study and process tracing, Grounded Theory, comparative historical analysis, and logic triangulation.

This chapter explores the Network Community’s historical antecedents and presents an inventory of its membership and other key resources arisen from networking and constituting the basis of their ambitious expansion. The Community is shown to encompass agents both individual and collective, as well as formal and informal institutions. The core of the Community is made up of elite legal professionals. Associated actors include functionaries in international and supranational organs such as the Council of Europe and the European Commission; an elite minority of national officials and dignitaries; legal academics; officers of philanthropic organizations; even elite media. All these actors network with each other, creating a power resources pool on which they all draw in their pursuit of self-empowering interests, both individual and collective.

This chapter identifies the Network’s definite boundaries in the sharing of collective identities amongst legal professionals and transnational elites, together with its culture of consensus; all of which serve to keep out interlopers, dampen internal conflict and the impact of veto players, and consolidate power to move the outside world. These identities consist in the solidarity of like-minded, thus transnationally networked, legal professional elites who coalesce in order to build world peace, first through international law and latterly through the supranational organs of European integration. Shared identity and solidarity are necessary for elite collective agency, without which the Network Community can cause nothing to happen in public affairs.

This chapter starts by examining the labour standards and rights which exist in low-wage supplier countries and the role played by national institutions — particularly the state and unions, but also firms — in either strengthening or, more often, undermining them. The analysis focuses on the shortcomings of existing regulatory regimes in three sourcing countries: China, Mexico, and Turkey. The chapter additionally reviews the regulatory regimes adopted under initiatives by inter-governmental organizations, firms, industry associations, unions, and NGOs, singly or in transnational advocacy networks, to improve labour rights and standards in supplier countries and firms. It shows that because western firms' sourcing practices are complicit in causing the poor labour standards suppliers adopt, implementation and monitoring of the observance of labour standards and rights are highly problematic. Finally, the chapter indicates what kind of international regulatory regime might be effective in the future.

This chapter investigates the Network Community in action effecting its common agenda, the empowerment of the Judiciary and correlative disempowerment of the elected branches of democratic governments. A mainstay of the Network’s modus operandi is the precept ‘personnel is policy’. Its members are discovered to coordinate each other through a deliberate cultivation of mutual interdependence which renders the Community as a whole politically more successful than if its members acted separately. This phalanx-like solidarity in action in turn empowers the Network to advance a common agenda on the internally divided nation-states of Europe, both East and West. Nations that have submitted to it have found it more difficult than anticipated to escape, once the agenda proved detrimental to their interests.

As a consequence of EU enlargement, Central and Eastern European countries have become part of a regional integration regime characterized by a substantial supranational regulatory structure and significant density of transnational networks involving problem-solving, monitoring, coordination, and capacity building across public and private domains. This chapter focuses on transnational networks as an important dimension of the strategy of European regulative integration, and inquires to what extent and through what mechanisms such networks may impact the effectiveness of environmental regulatory integration in the new EU member states. It specifies the sources of network influence and the mechanisms through which they impact domestic institution building in support of environmental regulatory integration. The impact of transnational environmental networks is assessed empirically in two recent member states of the EU, Romania and Bulgaria, with respect to their adaptation to two domains of EU environmental regulation: biodiversity conservation and chemicals safety.

From the beginning of the Troubles, groups in Northern Ireland deliberately sought and made use of transnational allies to further their political goals and gain strategic advantages vis-à-vis their opponents. Organizations on both sides of the conflict turned to external allies, including diaspora groups, like-minded movements, and groups with ideological affinities for accessing resources, expanding and practicing their tactical repertoires, and strengthening their claims to legitimacy. While the existence of this transnational dimension of the Troubles is well documented, the differences among cross-border networks—how they were structured, how they functioned, and their impact on the dynamics of the conflict—are less well understood. Drawing on social movement theory, particularly work on transnational advocacy networks, coalition formation, and diffusion, this chapter compares the structure and function of two types of cross-border networks that resulted: licit ties that publicly connected two or more groups, and illicit ties that allowed groups to forge secretive connections with potential allies.

This chapter addresses capacity-building strategies undertaken by the EU, in particular the European Commission’s Daphne Program. Through qualitative and social network analysis, this chapter demonstrates how the EU has helped build local capacity through the distribution of important resources and the facilitation of transnational networking. This chapter also addresses the shortcomings of capacity-building strategies. It discusses the highly competitive and bureaucratic nature of EU programs and questions to what extent these programs aid domestic advocacy. Are resources distributed to the organizations best equipped to combat gender violence or only those that are equipped to write grants? Does funding contribute to NGO-ization and the weakening of the movement against gender violence?

This chapter draws on insights from social network theory to sharpen our understanding of advocacy networks and why it matters to the question of how activists select issues for attention. It discusses ways in which the concept of a “transnational advocacy network” might be sharpened and operationalized. The chapter argues that these networks are global, not transnational; are issue networks, not advocacy networks; and especially that they are structures, not organizational types. In particular, the chapter distinguishes four types of relevant structural relations that deserve closer scrutiny by international relations scholars: relations among actors, relations among issues, relations among individuals, and relations among networks. It then shows how these intranetwork relationships matter causally in determining which issues become salient within advocacy networks and which get overlooked.

The literature on transnationalism suggests that transnational regulatory spaces are becoming increasingly important at the regional level and that in these domains networks represent an important new mode of governance. This chapter examines these assumptions by way of exploring the institutionalization and architecture of the Latin American regional telecoms regulatory space. We assess how and to what extent regional transnational networks are enhancing the sector’s regulatory governance. Our findings suggest that transnational networks in telecommunications configure a regulatory community in Latin America, but have many limitations in promoting regional governance. These limitations reveal the traditional institutional weaknesses of the region, but they are also aggravated by the composition and purposes of the entities within and outside the region that support and nurture these networks. Nonetheless, transnational networks facilitate exchange of information and policy experiences within the countries in the region.

This introductory chapter begins with a description of persistent regulatory differences between the United States and the European Union with regards to the regulation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). It then sets out the purpose of the book, which is to investigate the challenges — the obstacles to reconciling regulatory differences through international cooperation, and what happens when cooperation fails — through the prism of the US-European dispute over the regulation of agricultural biotechnology or GMOs. The book addresses the dynamic and reciprocal interactions of domestic law and politics, transgovernmental and transnational networks, international regimes, and global markets, through a theoretically grounded and empirically comprehensive analysis of the governance of GM foods and crops. An overview of the subsequent chapters is presented.

This chapter emphasizes the concepts of network organization and network governance, and also states that these topics have evolved from social and political sciences. It shows that the network is a form of governance and explores the usage of networks in the analysis of international institutional change. The chapter further discusses network analysis, political networks, network institutionalization, peer-to-peer concepts, transgovernmental networks, and various other perspectives on network concepts playing a major role in understanding the governance of the global Internet. The concluding part of the chapter discusses the transnational policy networks’ concern with Internet governance and the clustering of political actors.

This chapter focuses on four types of agents of earth system governance: the state; nonstate agents, with particular emphasis on the increasing number of transnational public policy networks that bring actors together from different parts of society; transnational networks of scientists; and international organizations. It argues that agents are actors who have authority to set standards and rules that govern human interactions. To demonstrate the importance of agency in earth system governance, it first considers how actors become authoritative. It then explains how the role of the state has come under increased pressure from earth system transformation before discussing its role, along with that of public-private policy networks, science institutions, and international bureaucracies in the fundamental reform of the international architecture of earth system governance. Finally, the chapter proposes a number of reform options, including a more effective system of transnational public policy networks, improving the standing of scientific assessment bodies in the international system, and establishing a World Environment Organization.

After exploring the impact of NGOs on the post-Second World War peace settlement, including in the establishment of the United Nations and in the promotion of human rights standards, this chapter outlines the divisions in transnational civil society that developed in response to the onset of the Cold War and decolonization. The chapter proceeds to discuss the emergence from the 1960s onwards of a new generation of international NGOs that aimed to transcend the East-West and North-South divides by promoting causes including international development and nuclear disarmament. The emergence of “new social movements” and new transnational networks is evaluated, culminating in the transnational movement to bring the Cold War to an end. The chapter concludes by exploring the impact of post-Cold War developments including economic globalization and the internet on transnational civil society, and reveals how, despite the emergence of ambitious transnational coalitions by the turn of the millennium, transnational civil society became confronted by new challenges including religious fundamentalism and the global financial crisis.

Chapter 2 presents a theory and process model of grassroots global governance. The process has three phases: (1) the diffusion of global ideas to particular localities, (2) local adaptation of global ideas and experimentation with innovative institutional applications, and (3) the evolution of global ideas through evolutionary learning and the scaling up of local experiments. Grassroots global governance theory builds on nodal governance theory to explain why this process endures or breaks down at particular points. Success (endurance) depends on the ability of transnational governance networks to incorporate actors that are influential in various policy arenas relevant to each stage of the process. Their ability to do so depends on the combination of: (1) framing strategies used to motivate influential organizations to contribute their resources to the governance network; and (2) network capacity building strategies needed to combine the resources accessible to each network member and convert these into action.