Interrupting Street-level Sovereignty: Falun Gong’s Transnational Boomerang

• In Event: 505 - Section on Global and Transnational Sociology Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 11. Social Change, Protest, and Civil Society

Abstract

The transnational advocacy networks of the Chinese religious movement Falun Gong exploit what Keck & Sikkink (1998) have termed the “boomerang effect.” Unlike the Keck & Sikkink model, the Falun Gong networks are grassroots and religious: they do not involve elite NGOs and do not target national-level governments. Instead, mainland Chinese activists in these networks send local information about police repression to their overseas counterparts, who then make telephone calls directly to street-level bureaucrats. Using activists’ reports and interview data, I conclude that the aim of the advocacy network is not to alter national policy but to interrupt its implementation, one bureaucrat at a time. As in the Keck & Sikkink model, the network interferes with state sovereignty, but at the local rather than national level. Moreover, the article shows how global forces have shaped the transnational distribution of labor in telephone activism and how targeting street-level bureaucrats is an alternative way to pressure states that are unresponsive to international human rights norms.

Author

• Andrew Junker, University of Chicago