Abstract
This paper argues that political representation in transnational civil society networks needs to be investigated as practice with regard to its flexibility, relationality and dialogical agency. Analysis of transnational representation from a practice-theoretical perspective can facilitate a better understanding of the actual representation practices of civil society actors in a transnational setting. The question raised is this: how do representation practices ensue, change or shift within the broader structures in which they are embedded? By focusing on flexibility, relationality and dialogical agency as the key theoretical concepts for representation practice, this study delves deeper into those aspects through empirical analysis of qualitative interviews with activists from two major transnational civil society networks: the Clean Clothes Campaign and Friends of the Earth. The study finds that transnational representation in civil society networks evolves in a non-linear fashion, is characterised by shifting agency, discursive claims and a disembodiment of representation. The paper concludes with a discussion of how future research can pursue such critical engagement without falling back into standard, static notions of political representation.
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Notes
Aggregative accounts of representation clearly adhere to the realist assumption of an authentic and static political constituency with fixed interests and preferences, but the trusteeship model leaves room for a more dynamic way of doing representation through deliberation and persuasion. The trusteeship model does, however, still hold to the idea of unity of the constituency and a coherent and unified common good that can be achieved in the process of representation.
Discursive representation operates under the assumption that people have multiple interests and ideas which change dynamically. Such ideas and interests are then subsumed in certain discourses (Dryzek and Niemeyer 2008: 8‒10).
See https://cleanclothes.org/about/mission (last accessed on 24 October, 2019).
See http://www.foei.org/en/who-we-are (last accessed on 24 October, 2019).
Interviews are numbered consecutively—for the FoE: F1, F2 …; for the CCC: C1, C2 …
This interview analysis was part of my dissertation. The empirical data and parts of the analysis are taken from that work (see Knappe 2017). The interviews were conducted in 2012 and 2013.
Because the interviews were transcribed with intonations and accentuations, excerpts from them read differently compared to standard English-language quotations. The quoted material here tries to replicate spoken language to the degree that it is still readable and understandable. Accentuations are marked using upper-case letters; all other non-accentuated words, including nouns and pronouns such as ‘I’, are written exclusively in lower case.
Interview data are of course limited in analysing the very micro-level material or bodily practices of everyday interaction in meetings, discussions, etc. However, since this paper is interested in the broader ensembles of practice in transnational civil society networks, there is some justification for sticking to this data.
Author’s translation.
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Acknowledgements
Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 2017 ECPR panel on ‘Representation Studies Beyond the Constructivist Turn’ and the 2017 EISA Panel on ‘Translating International Practices’—I want to thank the organisers and participants of these panels and other smaller fora, in particular, Henrik Enroth, Alejandro Esguerra, Frank Gadinger, Anna Holzscheiter, Frank Nullmeier, Vincent Pouliot and Daniel Schade as well as two anonymous reviewers and the editors of JIRD for their valuable comments. I would also like to thank Mary Elizabeth Kelley-Bibra for her excellent language editing.
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Appendices
Appendix
Clustered list of interviewees
Clean Clothes Campaign:
Large Western European organisations | C1 |
C2 | |
C6 | |
C9 | |
C10 | |
Smaller Western European organisations | C4 |
C5 | |
Southern European organisations | C3 |
Northern European organisations | C11 |
Central-and Eastern European organisations | C7 |
C8 | |
Asian organisations | C12 |
C14 |
Friends of the Earth:
Large Western European organisations | F1 |
F2 | |
F4 | |
F5 | |
F10 | |
Southern European organisations | F6 F8 |
Northern European organisations | F9 |
Central-and Eastern European organisations | F3 F7 F11 |
South American organisations | F13 |
African organisations | F12 |
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Knappe, H. Representation as practice: agency and relationality in transnational civil society. J Int Relat Dev 24, 430–454 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-020-00197-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-020-00197-6