The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly? Policy Expertise and Advocacy in Global Governance

In recent years, scholars of global civil society and transnational actors in IR have increasingly turned to theories of interest group behavior in order to explain the mobilization, tactics, and influence of advocacy groups in global governance. This article builds upon these efforts and develops an expertise based explanation of global advocacy. The article contributes to the study of Interest Groups in Global Governance in three ways. First, it distinguishes between a power-based and an expertise-based theoretical tradition within the study of interest group behavior. Both theoretical traditions operate with very different assumptions concerning among other things the nature of the policy process, the interests of decision-makers, and the behavior of interest groups. While the former emphasizes the rent-seeking behavior of special interests leading to inefficient public policies or even outright regulatory capture; the latter leaves more room for expertise-based decision making and the possibility of socially efficient and welfare enhancing policy solutions. Clarifying the differences between the two approaches sheds light on divergent theoretical expectations and inconsistent research findings across cases. Second, it develops a model of policy expertise and interest group behavior in global governance which provides insights to many questions raised in the study of global advocacy. The model explicates the importance of policy expertise in the advocacy process, establishes important scope conditions, and derives observable implications which can be tested across a large number of potential cases. Third, it demonstrates the usefulness of the theoretical model by an empirical analysis of the mobilization and influence of interest groups in the global policy field of climate change.