Boomerang or Buckshot? Blame Diffusion in International Anti-Hunger Campaigns by Michelle D. Jurkovich B.A. in English, May 2005, California State University, Fresno M.A. in Political Science, June 2008, California State University, Los Angeles A Dissertation submitted to The Faculty of The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 31, 2014 Dissertation directed by Martha Finnemore University Professor of Political Science and International Affairs The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University certifies that Michelle D. Jurkovich has passed the Final Examination for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy as of June 25, 2014 . This is the final and approved form of the dissertation. Boomerang or Buckshot? Blame Diffusion in International Anti-Hunger Campaigns Michelle D. Jurkovich Dissertation Research Committee: Martha G. Finnemore, University Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, Dissertation Director Susan K. Sell, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, Committee Member Kimberly J. Morgan, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, Committee Member ii © Copyright 2014 by Michelle D. Jurkovich All rights reserved iii Acknowledgements It truly does take a village to produce a dissertation. In my case, this project would not have been possible without the encouragement and steadfast support of many friends and mentors or without the generous time given to me by activists, archivists, and colleagues around the world. I am grateful to the Loughran Foundation, the American Consortium of European Union Studies, the Millar Family and the Institute for European and Eurasian Studies (at the George Washington University), and the Columbian College at the George Washington University for their generous financial support in funding essential research trips to Rome, Oxford, and London for interviews and archival work and time back in DC to work on writing the dissertation. While in Rome, special thanks are due to Patricia Merrikin, for helping me navigate the FAO library collections, Fabio Ciccarello for his assistance in accessing the FAO archives, Richardo Munoz, who digitized FAO annual reports for me, and Mirza who gave up half of his office for me to have a space to work when based at the FAO. The staff of the Law and Social Science libraries at Oxford gave generously of their time to help me track down dusty historical records and provided access to their refugee studies collection. Many thanks to Jane Olmstead-Rumsey for excellent research assistance. I am thankful to Dina Bishara, Kelly Bauer, Kerry Crawford, Jake Hasselswerdt, Holger Albrecht, Jessica Epstein, Davy Banks, Katie Kuhn, Joey O’Mahoney, Giovanni Mantilla, Oliver Westerwinter, Cordie Micah Qualle, James Orr, Elise Leclerc-Gagné, Dov Levin, Anjali Kaushlesh Dayal, Gabriel Michael, Mathias Poerter, Mara Pillinger, Jessie Anderson, Fabiana Perrera, and participants of the iv GW IR student workshop, for their feedback and helping me to hone the argument and core concepts over countless cups of coffee. Many thanks to Wayne Sandholtz, Lee Ann Fujii, Hans-Peter Schmitz, Thomas Risse, Margaret Keck, Charli Carpenter, Michelle Allendoerfer, Kate Weaver, Eric Voeten, and Jon Western for generously giving of their time either by reading and providing comments or meeting to talk through important concepts as the dissertation evolved. Susan Wiley made it her life’s mission to make sure I finished my dissertation in a timely manner and made a point to ask “Michelle, how much have you written today?” whenever she saw me in the department hallway. I learned quickly that I had better have a good answer when I saw her. I am grateful to members of my dissertation committee—Susan K. Sell, Kimberly Morgan, Rachel Stein, and Jennifer Clapp—for their thoughtful comments as the project developed. Lee Ann Fujii mentored me throughout my graduate program, especially in the early years, and was a source of great encouragement. Most of all, I am indebted to my dissertation advisor, Martha Finnemore. Marty was both my greatest advocate and the first to point out if my writing or thinking was unclear or sloppy. She read every draft, often in their ugliest forms, had a knack for asking deep probing questions, and was a steadfast source of encouragement. I could not have asked for a better mentor. This dissertation is dedicated to my grandmother, Helen Keith. v Abstract of Dissertation Boomerang or Buckshot? Blame Diffusion in International Anti-Hunger Campaigns The transnational advocacy literature in field of international relations focuses almost exclusively on cases of civil and political rights campaigns. And yet, many of today’s largest and most pressing campaigns center not on civil and political rights but on economic, social, and cultural rights. This dissertation focuses attention on one such right: the right to food, and asks: What explains how international anti- hunger organizations construct their campaigns and whom they decide to target in these campaigns? I argue that existing models in the literature, namely Keck and Sikkink’s (1998) “boomerang model” and Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink’s (1999, 2013) “spiral model,” are unable to explain the behavior of international anti-hunger campaigns. These models function on the basis of a common (essential) assumption---that activists can agree on a singular actor as “to blame” for a given violation and effectively partner together to focus pressure on a target actor to compel change. Yet, whom do activists blame for hunger? I interviewed and surveyed executive and senior staff at the top international anti-hunger organizations and documented the diffusion of blame by activists. I develop an alternative model to the “boomerang” and “spiral” models, called the “buckshot model,” which I argue is better able to vi explain the behavior of transnational advocacy in the hunger issue area. Instead of focused pressure by activists onto a singular target state, the “buckshot model” shows the “buckshot” of blame across multiple targets, linking to diverse causal frames and proposed solutions to the problem. How is it possible that international anti-hunger campaigns would behave differently from civil and political rights campaigns already documented in the literature? I argue that anti-hunger activists are working in an environment without a prescriptive norm around hunger. This lack of a norm is both constitutive of the diffusion of blame in this issue space but also makes less possible certain campaign outcomes (namely the centralized pressure on one target actor we have come to expect in the transnational advocacy literature). Why does hunger lack a prescriptive norm? Three factors contribute to the lack of a prescriptive norm in the hunger issue space. First, hunger is at once both a development problem and a human rights issue. The legacy of competing analytic frameworks around the problem (development vs. human rights) makes the construction of such a prescriptive norm difficult. Second, while traditional human rights frameworks would ascribe responsibility to national governments for hunger within their borders, anti-hunger organizations with in-country missions have strong incentives not to blame national governments for fear of jeopardizing the safety and security of staff and active programs. Even as historically “development” focused organizations embrace “rights frameworks,” they remain hesitant to centralize pressure on national governments while they retain on the ground operations. vii Third, international human rights law does not provide a prescriptive norm in this issue space. While in the case of civil and political rights campaigns, activists often leverage international human rights law to focus campaigns on a single target actor (national governments who signed onto the specific human rights treaty in question), international human rights law is leveraged far less often in the case of the right to food, despite the fact that nearly all states have ratified at least one legally binding treaty attributing responsibility to national governments for the right to food within their borders. Chapter 5 examines why this is the case. viii Table of Contents Abstract of Dissertation…………………………….…………………………………………………………vi List of Figures……………………………………………………………………………………..………………..x List of Tables………………………………………………………………………….………..………………….xi List of Abbreviations and Acronyms…………………………………………………………..……..…xii Chapter 1: Introduction………………………….…………………………………………………………... 1 Chapter 2: Boomerang or Buckshot?………………………………….….…………………………… 13 Chapter 3: Not all Human Rights have Norms…………………………..…………………...……. 62 Chapter 4: Hunger at the Nexus of Rights and Development…………………...….……….. 87 Chapter 5: On International Human Rights Law.…….………………………………………… 125 Chapter 6: Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………...………….148 References………………………………………………………………………………….……………………160 Appendix….…………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 178 ix List of Figures Figure 2.1: The Boomerang Model...................................................................................................23 Figure 2.2: Multiple Channels of Blame…………………………………………...…………………..32 Figure 2.3: The Varied Causes of Hunger……………………………………………………………..36 Figure 2.4: The Buckshot Model………………………………………………………………………….46 Figure 3.1: The Diffusion of Blame………………………………………………………………………72 Figure 3.2: Oxfam Executive