Papers by Lisa McIntosh Sundstrom
Europe-Asia Studies
We argue for analytically separating women’s and LGBTQ+ rights and differentiating the degrees of... more We argue for analytically separating women’s and LGBTQ+ rights and differentiating the degrees of sexism and LGBTQ-phobia in Russia to better understand its conservative turn in the 2010s. Comparing Putin’s speeches to domestic audiences (1999–2020) with public opinion, we identify a somewhat conservative trend regarding women’s rights and a far more conservative one on LGBTQ+ rights. While Russia made a sharper conservative turn in summer 2021, we find that until 2020, state discourse and public opinion on these topics mostly echoed Soviet approaches, suggesting that the conservative ‘turn’ amounted more to a ‘return’ than to a novel development.
This brief introductory chapter introduces the motivation for the book, the importance of the BRI... more This brief introductory chapter introduces the motivation for the book, the importance of the BRICS states to contemporary understandings of global governance as well as current debates about their relevance as a group, and our central focus on NGO mediation between global and local contexts. We articulate our argument that much of the crucial work of global governance takes place domestically within countries, and that if these efforts do not succeed locally, then internationally launched initiatives to improve global governance are destined to fail in practice. Much of this work is carried out by domestically-rooted NGOs, and the BRICS countries provide a helpful spectrum of varying domestic contexts through which we can analyze factors shaping NGOs’ success at mediation efforts. The introduction also summarizes the organization and logic of the chapters in the book.
The world’s problems are increasingly global in scale. Climate change, pandemics, and the actions... more The world’s problems are increasingly global in scale. Climate change, pandemics, and the actions of multinational corporations are all beyond the ability of any single state to address. States and civil society actors have joined a growing number of global governance institutions to address these challenges collectively. While global governance is initiated at the international level, the effects of global governance occur at the domestic level and depend upon the actions of domestic actors. NGOs act as “mediators” between global and domestic political arenas, translating and adapting global norms for audiences at home. However, NGO participation in global governance varies significantly by country and by issue area. The role of domestic NGOs in global governance has been relatively neglected—a puzzling gap since domestic implementation determines whether global “best practices” are applied for the common good or languish as words on the pages of international reports. The BRICS st...
Bringing Global Governance Home, 2021
This chapter compares the efforts of NGOs in Russia and South Africa to mediate global approaches... more This chapter compares the efforts of NGOs in Russia and South Africa to mediate global approaches to tackling the HIV/AIDS epidemic in their home contexts. It illustrates both the benefits and drawbacks of engaging with GGIs that offer significant levels of authority to NGOs along with very specific rules and standards. Such strong tools, when placed in NGOs’ hands, can help them to mediate effectively in a welcoming domestic political environment; but if dominant political actors oppose global norms, they can lead to pitched battles between civil society and government actors. NGO activists who persevere in a relatively open democratic regime that protects civil and political rights, such as South Africa, can contribute to domestic normative change over time, leading eventually to government policies that align with global principles. Where the political environment is relatively closed and repressive of civil society, as in Russia, NGOs may struggle to muster sufficient authority ...
Forests, 2017
Under what conditions do private forest governance standards influence state policy and behavior ... more Under what conditions do private forest governance standards influence state policy and behavior to become more oriented toward sustainability? We argue that governance schemes targeting firms may indirectly shape state behavior, even when designed to bypass state regulation. Through an examination of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) in Russia and Brazil, we find that the FSC has influenced domestic rhetoric, laws, and enforcement practices. FSC has had a more disruptive and consequential impact on Russia's domestic forest governance; in Brazil, earlier transnational environmental campaigns had already begun to shift domestic institutions toward sustainability. Based on interview data and textual analysis of FSC and government documents, we identify the mechanisms of indirect FSC influence on states-professionalization, civil society mobilization, firm lobbying, and international market pressure, and argue that they are likely to be activated under conditions of poor and decentralized governance, overlapping and competing regulations and high foreign market demand for exports.
Interest Groups & Advocacy, 2019
Global governance institutions (GGIs) increasingly rely upon NGO involvement for expertise, promo... more Global governance institutions (GGIs) increasingly rely upon NGO involvement for expertise, promotion of rules and standards, and democratic legitimacy. Yet NGO participation in GGIs is unevenly distributed by country of origin. This paper examines patterns of NGO participation in GGIs, and how participation is shaped by incentives and pressures at global and national levels. First, we map NGO participation by country of origin across 42 GGIs based on the roles that GGIs grant to NGOs and by variations in domestic conditions of income level and political regime type. Second, to delve more deeply into domestic factors, we provide an exploratory statistical regression based on NGO participation in two major GGIs, the UN Global Compact on corporate social responsibility and the UNFCCC Conferences of Parties on climate change. We find evidence that participation patterns reflect both the varying institutional design of GGIs and NGO capacity linked to domestic conditions. We observe that NGOs with constrained capacity due to domestic factors gravitate toward GGIs that offer the most significant roles for NGOs, with the greatest opportunity to influence policy. We suggest that domestic civil society factors beyond level of economic development and regime type shape NGO participation at the global level. Analysis of this wide-ranging set of GGIs provides more general confirmation of patterns of NGO engagement in global governance previously identified in studies limited to particular issue sectors or cases.
Oxford Bibliographies Online Datasets
International nongovernmental organizations (NGOs or INGOs) are studied from a wide range of acad... more International nongovernmental organizations (NGOs or INGOs) are studied from a wide range of academic disciplinary perspectives, and the perspectives and literature are diverse and growing rapidly. This article approaches the topic from a political science perspective and, in particular, from the perspective of the international relations field in political science. It also includes a range of sources from helpful instructional readings to more sophisticated works that have been influential among scholars in the field. The list incorporates both some of the newest work of theoretical and empirical importance and older works that have been important to the development of this topic of study. The scholars who study international NGOs use a variety of conceptual categories for their analysis. Hence, anyone searching for literature on this topic will find fruitful results by searching for a number of terms, including, for example: “transnational civil society,” “transnational advocacy n...
Global Commons, Domestic Decisions, 2010
Canadian Foreign Policy Journal, 2003
... s * Lisa McIntosh Sundstrom is Assistant Professor of Political Science at UBC. Her areas of ... more ... s * Lisa McIntosh Sundstrom is Assistant Professor of Political Science at UBC. Her areas of research include Russian civil society development, democratization, and foreign democracy assistance. ... 53 s 4. Author's interview with Ella Polyakova, Co-Chair, Soldiers' Mothers of St. ...
Bringing Global Governance Home, 2021
NGOs from Brazil and Russia participate in the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), a global private... more NGOs from Brazil and Russia participate in the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), a global private governance initiative that promotes sustainable forestry using certification and labeling, contributing to increases in certified forest territory and certified companies in both more democratic Brazil and less democratic Russia. The chapter argues that while Brazilian NGOs participate in FSC more robustly at the national and international levels, FSC has been a more consequential site for mediation in Russia. It argues that differences in Russian and Brazilian NGO engagement with FSC are linked in part to the timing of global governance intervention. Brazilian NGOs achieved some policy goals during earlier efforts to save the Amazon rainforest, while in Russia NGOs leveraged the FSC at a crucial moment following post-Soviet market reforms when forestry companies sought export markets.
Courting Gender Justice
Chapter 6 is a comparative inquiry into the international and domestic opportunity structure for ... more Chapter 6 is a comparative inquiry into the international and domestic opportunity structure for gender discrimination court cases. The chapter asks, how generalizable are the barriers and opportunities to bringing sex-based discrimination cases to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) from Russia to other Council of Europe member states? The chapter examines social, interpersonal, and material barriers to bringing gender discrimination and LGBT discrimination cases in Turkey. It looks at types of gender discrimination, including domestic violence and honor killing, as well as violence against members of the LGBT community, such as hate crimes. The chapter includes an in-depth analysis of discrimination cases from Turkey regarding both women and LGBT citizens, and finds that, with a few illuminating exceptions, the barriers in Turkey are similar to those in Russia (these include reluctance to go to court, stereotypical attitudes toward sex-based and LGBT discrimination among la...
Courting Gender Justice
Over the past two decades, Russian citizens whose rights have been violated at home have appealed... more Over the past two decades, Russian citizens whose rights have been violated at home have appealed tens of thousands of cases to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), which rules on the basis of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). But only three of the Russian cases that have reached a judgment from the ECtHR have included gender discrimination claims, and all three of these cases were brought by men, not women. This chapter briefly discusses the domestic and international barriers to bringing gender discrimination complaints to Russian courts and to the ECtHR. The chapter also introduces our cross-national and cross-issue comparison cases: discrimination against women in Turkey, and against the LGBT community in Russia and Turkey, and court cases on these issues in Russia, Turkey, and at the ECtHR. The chapter includes our methodology (a description of our research process and our interviewees in both countries) and a brief explanation of how the ECtHR works. The c...
Courting Gender Justice
Chapter 3 focuses on the obstacles inherent in the domestic legal system itself, inhibiting women... more Chapter 3 focuses on the obstacles inherent in the domestic legal system itself, inhibiting women from making claims about gender discrimination in Russian police structures and courts. Here we examine both the legal obstacles and the practical barriers to bringing such cases. The law enforcement system creates incentives for police not to investigate cases that are hard to solve, such as on discrimination. In cases of domestic violence, court rulings may not produce satisfying results. Courts are reluctant to recognize gender-based employment discrimination. Sexual harassment in the workplace is not acknowledged in Russian law. Lawyers’ lack of legal training in discrimination law adds to the difficulty of proving discrimination in court.
East European Politics and Societies: and Cultures
This article examines Russian citizens’ support for and participation in civic activism today, ne... more This article examines Russian citizens’ support for and participation in civic activism today, nearly three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Specifically, we consider how activism has evolved over time in two key issue sectors—environmentalism and women’s rights. We draw on a recent nationally representative survey that challenges existing stereotypes of Russians as apathetic and/or fearful of participating in civic activism, showing, to the contrary, that Russians are willing and interested in engaging in public activities. Data from field interviews with environmental and feminist activists, along with the authors’ past twenty-five years of research in these areas of Russian civic activism, allow us to identify an ongoing shift from professionalization and formalization of NGOs in the 1990s and early 2000s, to informal organizing, often assisted by social media platforms, today. We argue that the three major social and political drivers of this change in Russian civ...
Courting Gender Justice, 2019
Chapter 5 takes up the international obstacles to successful gender discrimination claims at the ... more Chapter 5 takes up the international obstacles to successful gender discrimination claims at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), both across the Council of Europe, and from Russia specifically. The reluctance of the Court until recently to find violations of Article 14 alongside violations of other articles of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the limited set of circumstances in which discrimination falls under the Convention’s jurisdiction, and the very high bar of evidence required to prove discrimination, all play a large part in explaining the Court’s miniscule case record on gender discrimination. Yet we also document how the Court has become more open in the past several years to finding sex-based discrimination violations, in part due to the diffusion of successful logics of argument among women’s rights lawyers, as well as the emergence of standards in other international women’s rights conventions that the ECtHR has begun to acknowledge, such as the Co...
Women and the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community in Russia and Turkey face ... more Women and the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community in Russia and Turkey face pervasive discrimination. Only a small percentage dare to challenge their mistreatment in court. Facing domestic police and judges who often refuse to recognize discrimination, a tiny minority of activists have exhausted their domestic appeals and then turned to their last hope: the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). The ECtHR, located in Strasbourg, France, is widely regarded as the most effective international human rights court in existence. Russian citizens whose rights have been violated at home have brought tens of thousands of cases to the ECtHR in the last 20 years. But only one of these cases resulted in a finding of gender discrimination—and that case was brought by a man. By comparison, the Court has found gender discrimination more frequently in decisions on Turkish cases. Courting Gender Justice explores the obstacles that confront those who try to use domestic and inte...
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Papers by Lisa McIntosh Sundstrom