The Authority Trap: Strategic Choices of International NGOs
Sarah S. Stroup and Wendy H. Wong
Abstract
Despite public favorability towards international non-governmental organizations (INGOs), most of these groups toil in total obscurity. A very few INGOs, active in human rights promotion, humanitarian relief, and environmental protection, do secure widespread authority in the form of deference from multiple audiences engaged in global politics. Having achieved this status as a “leading INGO,” however, they are trapped. To maintain their status and placate their many audiences, these leading INGOs advance incrementalist proposals and achieve “vanilla victories” - palatable to a wide array of au ... More
Despite public favorability towards international non-governmental organizations (INGOs), most of these groups toil in total obscurity. A very few INGOs, active in human rights promotion, humanitarian relief, and environmental protection, do secure widespread authority in the form of deference from multiple audiences engaged in global politics. Having achieved this status as a “leading INGO,” however, they are trapped. To maintain their status and placate their many audiences, these leading INGOs advance incrementalist proposals and achieve “vanilla victories” - palatable to a wide array of audiences, but also unremarkable. Meanwhile, other INGOs’ strategies are similarly shaped by their status: they are free to issue harsh condemnations and advance radical proposals, but these generally get ignored. Stroup and Wong offer the first exploration of the vast differences among INGOs in their authority, and then explore how status shapes INGO strategies as they seek to influence states, corporations, and one another.
Keywords:
international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs),
leading INGOs,
authority,
authority trap,
organizational behavior,
human rights,
humanitarianism,
environment,
global civil society,
vanilla victories
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2017 |
Print ISBN-13: 9781501702143 |
| Published to Cornell Scholarship Online: May 2018 |
DOI:10.7591/cornell/9781501702143.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Sarah S. Stroup, author
Middlebury College
Wendy H. Wong, author
University of Toronto
More
Less
