Making knowledge legitimate: transnational advocacy networks' campaigns against tobacco,infant formula and pharmaceuticals

In this article, we examine three different cases in which health activists lobbied the World Health Organization and its member states to regulate the marketing practices of multinational companies. The campaign against tobacco manufacturers resulted in a binding treaty; the campaign against manufacturers of infant formula resulted in a non‐binding code of conduct; and the campaign against pharmaceutical manufacturers failed. We show that existing arguments regarding the success of global social movements and transnational advocacy networks fail to explain the divergent outcomes in these three cases. Instead, we argue that the effectiveness of global advocacy in these cases depended on the level of perceived legitimacy of the knowledge supporting the advocates' claims and on the prestige of the experts participating in the campaigns.     

Making and Remaking State Institutional Arrangements: The Case of U.S. Trade Policy in the 1970s*

Abstract The article describes the struggle between free-trade advocates and protectionists in the early 1970s in the United States over the institutional arrangements governing trade policy formation and implementation. The analysis of the struggle and its impacts offers several modifications to historical institutionalist analysis of institutional dynamics and change. First, the uneven distribution of benefits by institutions is an intended outcome of institutional designers. Second, institutions are causally effective when they reflect a balance of forces that no longer exists. Third, unanticipated effects within given institutional arrangements are the outcome of intended counter-strategies.