Framing and localizing anti-corruption norms in transnational civil society organizations: Transparency International in Portugal

ABSTRACT

Social mobilisations against corruption have been found to be notoriously difficult to sustain. A major problem from a frame analysis perspective is that the opaque and often abstract, systemic nature of the problem makes consensus about who is responsible and what should be done about it hard to reach. Based on an ethnographic case study tracing the local implantation of Transparency International in Portugal, this article shows how social mobilisations can be successfully created and maintained despite divergent and sometimes outright contradictory ways of framing the addressed social problem (i.e., corruption) among leaders, members and supporters. Process-tracing techniques serve to highlight ‘scholarly activism’ and trans-European advocacy coalitions as key mechanisms: Action-oriented social research fulfils the double function of providing funds for an independent non-governmental and non-business organization and, maybe more importantly, of creating common reference points for members and supporters (frame alignment) despite the persistence of divergent individual frames. However, the intellectually elitist nature of the self-identified ‘grassroots movement’ and the strong emphasis on academic ‘objectivity’ and social ‘respectability’ prevents broader advocacy coalitions with more dispersed, non-hierarchical social movements which address similar causes albeit with a very different repository of action.

KEYWORDS:

• Anti-corruption
• advocacy coalitions
• norms
• frame analysis
• political ethnography

Acknowledgement

The author wishes to thank Luís de Sousa, whose open and welcoming attitude was essential for enabling this in-depth field research into Transparency International’s presence in Portugal, as well as the many TIAC members and observers in Lisbon and Berlin who were willing to share their insights without shying away from sensitive issues. He also thanks the anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback and takes full responsibility for any potentially remaining inaccuracies.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Interviews have been anonymised as far as possible in an organization with relatively few roles and leading figures. Line numbers indicate the position of interview quotes in the AQUAD 7 software used for qualitative coding. All translations from Portuguese are my own.

2 Cf. for instance: TVI24 (07/12/2009): ‘Corrupção: portugueses em organismo internacional’; Público (08/12/2009) ‘ONG de combate à corrupção está a formalizar-se em Portugal’; Esquerda (07/12/2009) ‘Transparency International pode ter pólo em Portugal’.

3 Building on Sabatier’s (1988) ‘advocacy coalition framework’, ‘evidence-based advocacy’ refers to the increasingly common use of academic research, commissioned experts and special-purpose reports for advocacy by transnational CSOs like TI or Amnesty International (cf. Schophaus, 2009). The use of academic research for activist purposes and a mostly cooperative attitude towards political decision-makers both conform with Sabatier’s emphasis on ‘political sub-systems’ which transcend the borders between different spheres of society (politics, academia, civil society) (1988, pp. 131–135).

4 Cf. e.g., the statutes of TI Germany, TI France or TI Spain. Transparency International notes ‘democracy’ and ‘justice’ among its seven organizational values, but doesn’t claim any clear causal link with corruption.