Why do some international organizations work closely with private sector actors, while others collaborate with nongovernmental organizations and other civil society organizations? What leads international organizations to choose to work with one type of actor while screening others out? I argue international organizations primarily collaborate with nonstate actors in order to access two key benefits: information and political support. Who gets in, and conversely who gets left out, is a function of which nonstate actors’ skills the international organization and its member states will most benefit from. Organizations that spend their time coordinating and regulating international behavior will rely heavily on the assistance of private sector actors, while organizations that spend their time implementing projects and working on the ground in member states will collaborate primarily with civil society actors.

I test this theory of differential nonstate actor access at international organizations using an original dataset which details the access that 72 international organizations provide to private sector actors and civil society actors. I show that international organizations with a broader policy scope offer more access to nonstate actors generally, and that the type of work the organization is engaged in can be used to predict with whom they choose to work.

I further support these empirical findings using two case studies which examine in more detail the access that international organizations in the tails of the distribution provide to nonstate actors. First, I look at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which coordinates member states’ defense capabilities and collaborates extensively with private sector actors, and second, I look at the Council of Europe, which works to improve human rights conditions on the ground and allows access exclusively to international nongovernmental organizations.

This dissertation speaks to important questions of whose voice is heard at the international policymaking table, the balance of perspectives policymakers receive, and the power of nonstate actors in our political system.

Overall air quality in China has improved for six consecutive years (Krotkov et al 2015). A little-studied aspect of pollution control in China is that the source of air pollution is dominated by heavy industry and that improvements have varied by sector. In my dissertation, I assess how corporate governance and competition policy has proven to be a useful tool for improving environmental compliance. Through case studies using both large N statistical analysis and in-depth interviews, I provide an empirical story that substantiates that as energy sectors have become more competitive, the Chinese government is able to impose stricter air quality standards and to enforce them more effectively. Monopolies avoid regulation through their control of information and of market supply of an essential commodity. By contrast, if the government breaks the monopoly, suppliers compete not just to sell product but also on compliance in order to gain permits and other government-issued advantages.

How do individuals in non-democracies organize collective action? Throughout history, it is common for those in power to structure society so as to make mass action highly unlikely; yet, from peasant revolts in the Middle Ages to urban arisings during the Arab Spring, individuals surmount these barriers. This dissertation argues that they surmount these barriers because mobilization occurs through interpersonal connections that connect individuals. These social networks transmit information necessary for protest mobilization, while state repression is most effective against institutions and prominent individuals.

This argument is tested in the context of the Arab Spring. In Chapter 1, 13.8 million geolocated messages and daily data on protests are gathered for the Middle East and North Africa from November 1st, 2010 through the end of 2011. These data reveal that protest mobilization correlates with coordination from individuals on the periphery of their country’s social network, not those who are prominent. Because the identification strategy for who is prominent in a network may average away impor- tant differences, Chapter 2 focuses on activists in Bahrain and Egypt. A supervised topic model on those activists’ messages still shows no effect for coordination; this finding reinforces Chapter 1 since these individuals are those most likely to affect protest mobilization. Qualitative evidence suggests that their effect occurs through generating common knowledge about mass dissatisfaction before protests occur.

Chapters 3 and 4 focus on methodological points. Chapter 3 introduces a technique for using Twitter data to analyze network structure as it evolves. Analyzing network structure over time requires data on the entire network, which is difficult for two reasons. First, Twitter imposes limits on acquiring data that make it effectively impossible to get complete network data. Second, those same restrictions make it effectively impossible to analyze that network as it changes. This chapter introduces a measure that can be collected rapidly enough from Twitter to obviate these issues. Chapter 4 is a general purpose introduction to Twitter. It explains what questions Twitter data can answer, how to acquire those data, and programming approaches.

This dissertation analyzes how political actors mobilize in international legal institutions to shine a spotlight on the behavior of repressive governments. The international relations literature focuses on the role of states, international institutions, and non-governmental organizations, largely leaving individual victims of abuse aside as passive targets of government repression. By focusing on individual petitions of human rights abuse in the United Nations, I show that victims of human rights abuse are important actors in global politics. My research addresses three questions: (1) Why do some repressive governments voluntarily invite criticism of their poor human rights practices by allowing individual petitions? (2) Why do individual victims bring petitions to expose human rights abuses when doing so opens them up to retaliation by abusive governments? (3) How do petitions affect respect for human rights in these repressive societies? I argue non-governmental organizations (representing victims) and political activists file international human rights petitions about specific instances of abuse to name and shame abusive governments. Although these rulings are not legally binding, they can, under certain conditions, apply sufficient pressure on governments to improve human rights. I employ a multi-method approach to test my argument from different angles and levels of analysis. I focus on the United Nations Human Rights Committee (HRC) which oversees the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. I interviewed HRC members and organizations who represent victims before the Committee to ground this research with practitioners’ experience. I test my theoretical expectations with original data on petitions, cross-country quantitative analysis, and policy case studies. I present a novel dataset of 984 petitions, including information on individual identities, the role of third-party representation, and the specific rights under contestation. This dissertation shows that victims of human rights abuse, when supported by non-governmental organizations, can sufficiently pressure some repressive governments to improve respect for human rights. The European Union has a crucial role throughout this process. Economic dependence on the EU not only incentivizes regimes to participate but also increases the reputational costs of HRC naming and shaming, which leads to short-term improvements in human rights.

This dissertation investigates how social networks impact counterinsurgency effectiveness. Drawing evidence from the Philippines, I find that counterinsurgency is more likely to succeed when civilians have social ties to other villages experiencing quality governance (Chapter 1), civilians have direct social ties to government security officers (Chapter 2) and local politicians are not members of political clan networks (Chapter 3).