Transnational advocacy networks and the rise of China: the case of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank

• In Event: Political Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Geopolitics (Table 16)

Abstract

This paper analyzes how transnational advocacy networks (TANs) adapt to a transforming global institutional order shaped by the rise of emerging powers, focusing on environmental and social advocacy at the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). As a China-initiated multilateral development bank with global reach and no US participation, the AIIB offers a critical case for examining how transnational civil society navigates an increasingly multipolar and fragmented system of global governance.

Building on the foundational work of Keck and Sikkink on TANs, the paper situates civil society within an altered institutional environment no longer dominated exclusively by the Bretton Woods institutions. The expansion of development finance by emerging economies, especially China, has unsettled a once tightly coupled regime centered on Western-led organizations such as the World Bank. Although existing scholarship finds that the AIIB largely converges with established multilateral development banks, it has nonetheless been the target of sustained contestation by civil society organizations (CSOs) which view the bank as a threat to international environmental and social norms.

Drawing on CSO documents, 32 interviews across twenty organizations, and observation at the AIIB’s 2023 and 2024 annual meetings, the paper proceeds in three parts. First, it compares the political opportunity structure at the AIIB and the World Bank, showing that while the AIIB emulates legacy banks, China’s domestic political context and institutional design constrain traditional access points for advocates. Second, it traces the emergence of a TAN around the AIIB, highlighting its embeddedness in preexisting advocacy networks oriented around Western-led institutions. Third, it analyzes how this embeddedness shapes CSO strategies. Advocates adapt their strategies to the AIIB by invoking legacy precedents to define institutional legitimacy, mobilizing European member states as proxy lead shareholders, and leveraging the AIIB’s symbolic insecurity as a new institution heavily associated with China's global power. The findings suggest that, in this context, TANs function less as norm entrepreneurs than as norm defenders, reinforcing existing standards and contributing to institutional convergence rather than transformation.

Author

• Andrea Zhu, University of California-Los Angeles