 |
Actualizing Human Rights Norms in Distanced Spaces; an Analysis of the Campaign to Eliminate Conflict Diamonds and the Capital Market Sanctions (Sudan) Campaigns in the United States
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, social justice activists in the United States initiated two coalition based campaigns aimed at ameliorating the violence associated with extractive industries in Angola, Sierra Leone and Sudan. The ideological diversity and the disparate interests of the coalition participants were an intriguing puzzle and part of this dissertation is an exploration of how it is that these widely diverse actors were able to collaborate and successfully run the campaigns despite their significant differences. I advance the argument that the coalitions were operable because they were more strategy driven than they were sustained by commonality of principle.
Although the campaigns took place during the same historical time space and were motivated by the same phenomenon of violence in extractive industries , they had divergent trajectories and different outcomes. A second component to the dissertation is thus an analysis of the contextual factors that impinged on and contributed to each campaign’s particular outcome. A tripartite opportunity structure framework is utilized for analysis and I argue that while human rights formed the broad basis of the normative claim, the economic and strategic interests within the U.S. context largely determined the campaign outcomes.
Dissertation Committee:
Agnieszka Paczynska, Ph.D. (chair) Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution
Terrence Lyons Ph D, Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution
John Dale Ph D. George Mason University
Contact: Julie Shedd, 703.993.3650