CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

The article explores another example of the two-way traffic between globalization and domestic advocacy. We show how norms codified at the global level have reshaped domestic advocacy processes and identify the significance of domestic advocacy networks for embedding those norms in local political practices. In contradiction to suggestions that the generation of rights-based conventions is an empty, if well-intentioned, gesture, our analysis shows that global rights instruments and domestic advocacy processes can, in fact, feed off each other and bring about changes on the ground. Global rights instruments, we suggest, can contribute to struggles for rights at the domestic level by altering the political opportunity structure within which domestic rights advocacy groups work. To illustrate, we use the example of the global norm of children rights, codified in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) on domestic processes of advocacy in Argentina. Specifically, we show how the CRC radically reshaped the terrain of domestic advocacy, leading to the emergence of a national, rights-based civil society coalition concerned with the rights of children and young peopl. The CRC, we argue, changed both the opportunity structure of Argentinas non state organizations (NGOs) concerned with childhood, becoming a crucial resource for rights activists in their struggles with the state, and the identity of the NGOs themselves. Despite some external support, activism was almost completely focused on domestic institutions and campaigns drew on established domestic patterns of rights campaigning. Yet, although the focus of activism was resolutely domestic, the inspiration and the norms that legitimised domestic mobilization came from outside the nation state. In the end, domestic advocacy turned the CRC from a mere declaration of principles into the inspiration for concrete legislative and institutional reform.

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