How Transnational Advocacy Networks Emerge:  An Empirical Investigation of a Casualty Recording Network

This research contributes to gaps in the international relations literature explaining the emergence of transnational advocacy networks. Specifically, this research contributes to understanding TAN emergence due to a gap in institutional approaches to casualty recording in conflict and why actors join TANs. This TAN is particularly worthy of investigation because casualty records measure the scope of violence in a conflict and are often highly politicized and contested. Existing explanations of TAN emergence can be organized into three broad categories of analysis: sociological, political, and economic. The earliest explanations align with a sociological explanation for TANs as a mechanism for changing international norms. Social movement theorists account for TANs as a mechanism for civil society to challenge power structures. While other researchers suggest TANs should be treated like interest groups, and their emergence stems from an economic need for material incentives. This research extends the economic category of analysis and argues that actors join TANs for non-material, intangible incentives. Intangible benefits include knowledge, methodologies, data, or access to data sources. This research utilized a qualitative case study method to test all three categories of existing explanations using surveys, interviews, and archival records. Testing not only investigated hypotheses relating to the three categories of existing theories but also produced findings describing facilitators of TAN emergence, temporally-bound intangible benefits, and the types of intangible benefits available to actors. TANs are important to international politics because they influence norms, shape policies, and function as a bridge for local actors with the international community. This research produced findings with central themes about why resource-poor actors may spend their limited resources to join TANs. Further investigation into the intangible benefits available to actors joining TANs in settings other than conflict may provide greater insight into the value of intangible benefits to collective behavior.