Gender Innovation in Political Science by Marian Sawer & Kerryn Baker

Author:Marian Sawer & Kerryn Baker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Innovative Approaches to Studying Networks

In addition to offering more dynamic theories of norms and norm diffusion, gender researchers have forged new approaches to conceptualising and studying transnational networks. They have contributed to methodological innovation in this field in two ways. First, they have argued that transnational networks rather than individual norm entrepreneurs are agents of norms as dynamic, discursive processes beyond the agenda-setting stage through the evolution, localisation and impact of a norm. In focusing on the ‘norm’ rather than the dynamic process, conventional scholarship misses an important part of diffusion—the transformation of the content both of norms and of the transnational networks that disseminate them. Second, they have broken new ground in the empirical study of transnational networks, developing methods to trace and map networks within and across state and non-state actors.

The growing literature on the role of transnational feminist networks in the diffusion of gender-related norms such as suffrage, gender quotas, gender mainstreaming institutions and VAW law and policy shows how networks are mechanisms of norm diffusion. 36 These networks work across jurisdictions negotiating and localising international norms to bring about social change as well as normative change. Much of this work is premised on generations of advocacy at local and national levels to frame ideas, build coalitions and open windows of opportunity. 37 Going global may be intended to generate further support and shatter national and international roadblocks to change but the act of linking causes across spaces also transforms the activism and the norms struggled for. That is to say, transnational networks are mechanisms of norm emergence, contestation, transformation and impact rather than diffusion understood as a linear, one-way process.

Networks are viewed as agents of norms ‘in progress’ in gender scholarship, not as norm entrepreneurs as theorised in the international relations constructivist literature on international norms. If norms are unfinished, dynamic processes, then networks may over time alter or even radically transform their content as well as their meanings. Networks work in highly dynamic ways, shaping and contesting the content and meaning of international norms. They frequently play an important and increasing role beyond the emergence of a new norm as the norm in process attains a level of international recognition and as the networks themselves become more professionalised and expert, and closely connected with governments and international organisations. By contrast, the norm entrepreneur is typically understood as an individual leader or group—rather than a loosely connected network that actively shapes a work in progress norm in unintended ways as a product of its own changing form. 38

Some international relations scholars have argued that norms research is overly ‘agent-focused’ or that norms have virtually attained the status of structures in constructivism. Feminist research is both structure and agent focused: in recognising the ongoing constitution of norms, this research confers an active role to agents in identifying and interpreting policy problems. 39 Theorising advocacy networks as dynamic, with changing membership and political agendas, mediates the tension between analysing agency versus structure. As Susanne Zwingel argues, transnational networks ‘have their own political agendas and are not automatically supporters of international norms’.

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