Measuring Non-State Actor Influence in Processes of Normative Change

This study assesses degrees of preference attainment for all actor groups involved in one single process of normative change, including NGO activists, business interest groups, research institutions, policy-makers, practitioners, state delegates, international organisations, among others. It posits that influence can be confirmed when one actor group exhibits high levels of preference attainment and all other groups involved in the same process of change exhibit low levels of preference attainment. Degrees of actor group preference attainment are assessed for seven aspects of the norm emergence process: 1) whether or not change occurs; 2) agenda-setting at the national level; 3) agenda-setting at the international level; 4) the type of norm to emerge, such as soft or hard law; 5) whom the emergent norm primarily governs; 6) the substance of the emergent norm; and 7) the actors called on to implement the emergent norm. Individual activities, such as speeches, press releases, annual reports, meeting notes, draft resolutions, etc., are taken as the unit of analysis so that a sample of activities for all actor groups are analysed according to a set of variables that gage actor group preferences. The distance between these preferences and the new status quo—the emergent norm—is then calculated to determine each activity’s degree of preference attainment. Average degrees of preference attainment are then calculated for each actor group so that variance between actor group preference attainment levels can be shown. The method is empirically applied to measure actor group influence in the process that led to the International Code on the Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes. Results show that different actor groups influence different aspects of the norm emergence process, and that it is possible to quantify variance between levels of actor group preference attainment at different times and on different aspects of the norm emergence process.