Mechanisms of persuasion: when and how are advocacy campaigns effective?

This chapter establishes a framework for understanding how transnational activist networks interact with China’s government. It consists of two main parts. The first explores what each of three IR paradigms—one realist, one liberal, one constructivist—have to say about when and why activists are effective in changing state policy. The second half derives from each paradigm a cluster of variables. These variable cluster structure, and are tested in, the book’s empirical chapters.

Strategic considerations, tough choices: how state preferences influence campaign forms

This chapter serves two functions. First, it synthesizes from the earlier empirical chapters some lessons of practical value regarding how activists might optimally engage with China. As expected, fit with state priorities is the most consistently important ingredient for effective advocacy. But from where do state priorities emanate? The chapter argues that state preferences are largely driven domestic legitimacy considerations, and that each of the issues embodied in TAN campaigns therefore fall within a risk probability distribution. The risk posed to Party legitimacy by state action or inaction largely determines the opportunities available to activist networks. In turn, state preferences create strategic incentives for individual TANs, leading to a wide variance in their functional forms, the observance of advocacy drift in some campaigns, and its absence in others.

State-directed advocacy: the ‘drift’ phenomenon in the ‘free Tibet’ and global warming campaigns

The cases explored here, namely the campaign to establish a sovereign Tibetan homeland and to reduce China’s greenhouse gas emissions, represented a third type of causal process—‘advocacy drift.’ In the former case, Beijing’s refusal to countenance the prospect of a ‘free Tibet’ and drive to protect its own territorial integrity created conditions under which the TAN splintered into a variety of factions. Some of these espoused the use of ‘any means necessary’ to effect the goal of an independent Tibetan state, while others, including the Dalai Lama himself, retreated from the original mission of the TAN and have instead sought greater cultural protection for Tibetans within a more multinational China. In the case of the global arming campaign, advocates of emissions trading abandoned that means of reducing China’s carbon outputs, and chose instead to work with an assortment of state agencies and NGOs to combat global warming on China’s terms. While the mechanisms at play in the intra-campaign changes described in this chapter differ, both call attention to the way in which states shape advocacy campaigns just as campaigns may influence state behaviour.

Reading the ‘lay of the land’: intercessory advocacy and causal process in the HIV/AIDS treatment and death penalty abolitionist campaigns

The cases presented in this chapter—those to improve care for the HIV positive and to abolish capital punishment—jointly call attention to the need to pay close attention to sequence and causal force in TAN campaigns. The HIV/AIDS campaign is an example of ‘intercessory advocacy,’ in which a campaign seized upon an opportunity to play a role in a state-led effort to improve treatment programs. By packaging its message in a manner palatable to the state, it was able to play a role in crafting China’s emergent anti-HV strategy. The campaign to abolish capital punishment, on the other hand, exercised very little effect on China’s much publicized effort to reduce reliance of on the death penalty. Rather, the scaling back of the death penalty is driven mostly by domestic political considerations, namely a desire to retain the practice of capital punishment for purposes of crime control while simultaneously strengthening the rule of law by introducing greater accountability into the death penalty process through the highly publicized policy of ‘kill fewer, kill carefully.’

State power as reality

This concluding chapter explores the implications of the varied patterns and pathways taken by TANs engaging with China. A key lesson is that foreign activists rarely succeed in persuading China to follow a course of action it does not favour for its own reasons. China’s leaders are not insensitive to external pressures for change, but base their policy actions on the domestic legitimacy implications of a given issue. This means that much rides on the quality of information the state receives—the results of a miscalculations could have grave consequences for the survival of the CCP. However, it also means that activists targeting China need to maintain a healthy perspective on what they can reasonably achieve. Given the power of China to alter the core mission and message of TANs, those wishing to deepen engagement with China need to make a clear-eyed assessment of the risks, and consider how far they are willing to go to accommodate the preference of a new world power.

The power of state preferences: the ‘natural cases’ of the campaigns for Falun Gong and IPR protection

This chapter is constituted by a systematic exploration of two transnational advocacy campaigns targeting the Chinese state: the search for justice on behalf of the Falun Gong religious movement, banned in China since 1999, and the transnational push to strengthen intellectual property rights in the PRC. In terms of results, these campaigns turned out completely differently. While the IPR protection campaign was welcomed by China’s leaders and witnessed the creation of an extensive if somewhat ineffectual set of institutions geared towards more rigorous enforcement, the campaign for Falun Gong received no such reception, and has not been countenanced in any form by the national government, save for its ongoing effort to exterminate the group from the Chinese mainland. Despite these disparate results, however, both of these cases reflect a pattern of ‘natural’ causality, as neither was incentivized to alter its original mission or message.

The superpower’s dilemma: to appease, repress, or transform transnational advocacy networks?

This introductory chapter spells out a crucial problem in the study of transnational networks from the perspective of international relations scholarship—if TANs are fundamentally ideational constructs, defined and driven by commitment to a core principle or cause, what are we to make of periodic changes to their mission and message? What is the role of China’s strong authoritarian state in shaping the trajectories and results of transnational advocacy campaigns? The chapter posits that the soft power of the state (backed by coercive capability) imposes incentives on TANs that can effect the various processes and pathways taken by advocacy campaigns. The chapter suggests that advocates and activists need to take the state and its structures seriously when crafting advocacy, given the causal influence these have over campaign trajectories and campaign results.