Choosing the Best House in a Bad Neighborhood: Location Strategies of Human Rights INGOs in the Non-Western World

Abstract

What determines the location of those human rights international non-governmental organization (INGO) resources found outside of the highly developed Western democracies? We draw a distinction between the bottom-up mobilization processes driving the location of human rights organization (HRO) members from the top-down strategic concerns driving where HRO leaders place permanent offices. In particular, we find that, while political opportunity structures generally increase the likelihood that a state has HRO members, it has a curvilinear influence on the number of HRO secretariats, which typically locate in areas seen as having a higher need for organizational resources. Further, while there is no clear connection between human rights abuses and HRO memberships in a state, HROs' strategic concerns lead them to place offices with reference to both local and neighborhood "need"-in other words, levels of repression.Colin M. Barry is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Oklahoma. His research concerns the politics of globalization, focusing in particular on nonstate actors and the sociopolitical ramifications of their transnational activities. His work has appeared in International Studies Quarterly and the Journal of Peace Research.Sam R. Bell is an assistant professor of political science at Kansas State University. His work focuses on the role of information diffusion, transparency, and non-governmental organizations on different international security and human security outcomes.

Should I stay or should I go? Explaining variation in nonstate actor advocacy over time in global governance

“…However, there is no link between the alignment of issues on the agendas of the NSAs and the agenda of the COP or the democratic nature of the country of origin. Especially the latter is somewhat surprising, as it means that NSAs from autocratic states are as likely to remain active as organizations from democratic states (see also Rohrschneider & Dalton, , p. 528; Barry et al, ; Smith & Wiest, ; Tallberg et al, ). Finally, our results indicate that media salience (both with regard to the global sources and the more specific country sources) has no effect on sustained activity.…”

“…Third, we controlled for the level of democracy of the country where the NSA hails from (Rohrschneider & Dalton, , p. 528; Barry, Bell, Clay, Flynn, & Murdie, ). For this we relied on the Polity score one year prior to the COP; the scale ranges from −10 to 10, where a high score refers to a full democracy and a low score to an authoritarian regime (Marshall, Gurr, & Jaggers, ).…”

Assessing the Impact of the Political Environment on INGO Vulnerability to Terrorist Attack

“…Ward () suggests that INGOs may be harassed by authoritarian states which perceive the organizations as political threats. Barry, Bell, Clay, Flynn, and Murdie () focused on the influence of regime type on placement of organizational assets. The authors suggest that organizations will bypass areas with high human rights violations and establish physical assets in a neighboring country that is relatively less repressive and use that base of operations to provide assistance to the more repressive regime.…”

“…Barry et al () studied the relationship between violence and the placement of physical assets by humanitarian relief organizations (HROs). The authors expected that HROs would be reluctant to locate their assets in violent areas but found no significant relationship between levels of violence against HROs and the placement of HROs’ assets.…”

Human Rights Shaming Through INGOs and Foreign Aid Delivery

“…Through this media attention, they start the process through which other states and intergovernmental organizations begin to pressure a state to improve its human rights performance from abroad (Brysk, 1993;Keck and Sikkink, 1998). These shaming campaigns, along with other INGO resources, are often concentrated in the most difficult cases, where domestic pressure for human rights may be limited and institutional structures in support of human rights are not available (Murdie and Urpelainen, 2015;Barry et al, 2015). Additionally, shaming campaigns are more concentrated in states with more human rights abuses and in states that are likely to receive more global attention (Ron, Ramos and Rodgers, 2005).…”