Author Description

""Beyond the Boomerang" provides a substantial update and revision to one of the most prominent theories in transnational advocacy, Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink's boomerang theory. Their 1998 book, Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Cornell University Press), remains one of the first broadly applicable theories for why groups of NGOs and interested individuals formed transnational advocacy networks. Keck and Sikkink argued that these networks formed when local NGOs (typically from the global South) faced local blockages, usually in the form of intransigent government officials, and reached out to international NGOs (typically from the global North) to rally international pressure on behalf of the local actors. Their book has been cited more than 12,000 times and is a standard text for graduate students around the world. Since publication, the empirical conditions that prompted their theory have changed. The types of actors involved in transnational advocacy have diversified. Northern NGOs have lost power and influence and been restricted in their access to southern states. Southern NGOs have developed a capacity to undertake advocacy on their own and often built closer relationships with their own governments. International institutions have become more open to southern NGOs and more skeptical of southern NGOs' claims to speak for southern populations. The result is that the boomerang theory, although still useful, no longer provides the broad explanation for advocacy. A wealth of recent articles (many by contributors to this volume) showed a growing scholarly recognition of the need for new theory. "Beyond the Boomerang" offers cutting-edge scholarship and synthesizes a new theoretical framework to develop a coherent, integrated picture of the current dynamics in global advocacy. "Beyond the Boomerang" editors Christopher Pallas and Elizabeth Bloodgood propose a new theory called transcalar advocacy. Contributors to this