Sarah S. Stroup - The Authority Trap: Strategic Choices of International NGOs

This book began with many conversations about what scholars and practitioners know about international nongovernmental organizations. We have had scores of meandering Skype calls, working visits in Toronto and Middlebury, drinks, coffee dates, and conference presentations. We selected cases, took turns interviewing subjects, and debated our findings, finally landing on the idea of the authority trap. Four years of collaboration have produced a great friendship and hopefully better scholarship.

Many people have given generous feedback on parts of the book, improving our argument and pointing out errors (we claim full responsibility for the remaining flaws). Thanks first to the participants in our book workshop held in Washington, DC, in September 2015. Martha Finnemore, Jennifer Hadden, Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, David Lake, Amanda Murdie, and Abraham Newman offered sharp critiques and priceless support, and we thank them for their generosity and insightfulness. We also shared chapter drafts in seminars at Dartmouth College, the University of Toronto, Claremont Graduate University, the University of Washington, the University of Southern California, and the University of Denver. We are grateful for the opportunities to get such a wealth of feedback, and we thank in particular Debbi Avant, Steven Bernstein, Mary Kay Gugerty, Patrick James, Lissa Rogers, and Brian Greenhill. We presented pieces of the book in progress at annual meetings of the American Political Science Association (in 2013, 2014, and 2016) and the International Studies Association (in 2014 and 2016); thank you to the wonderful panel participants. Our serious work on the book began after a workshop at the 2012 ISA annual conference that was convened by Hans Peter Schmitz and Beth Bloodgood.

We have floated our idea past many people and solicited suggestions shamelessly. We would like to thank in particular Clifford Bob, Anne Buffardi, Josh Busby, Sarah Bush, Charli Carpenter, Adam Dean, Lilach Gilady, Ben Graham, Duncan Green, Jessica Green, Seva Gunitsky, Laura Henry, Matt Hoffmann, Steve Hopgood, Jon Isham, Jonathan Jennings, Amme Kolovos, Randy Kritkausky, Sabine Lang, Ed Laurance, Charlie MacCormack, Mabrouka MBarek, Bill McKibben, George Mitchell, Clementine Olivier, Darius Ornston, Aseem Prakash, Will Prichard, Paloma Raggo, Stephan Renckens, Steve Saideman, Wayne Sandholtz, Hans Schmitz, Anna Schrimpf, Michelle Shumate, Kathryn Sikkink, Jackie Smith, David Suarez, Lisa Sundstrom, Ann Swidler, Trevor Thrall, Nick Weller, Scott Wilbur, Helen Yanacopulos, and Amy Yuen for their suggestions. David Lake has been an unflagging supporter of our work and helped us figure out which book we wanted to write. Michael Barnett offered early support for our ideas and led us to new and challenging literatures on global authority. Jeff Isaac helped guide our review essay to publication in Perspectives on Politics. Some of our findings feature in a volume on hierarchy edited by Ayse Zarakol, and we thank her, Alex Cooley, Janice Bially Mattern, Ann Towns, and the other participants of the workshops that took place in May 2014 at University of California, San Diego and June 2015 at the University of Cambridge. We could not have written the book without the diligence of our research assistants: Josh Berlowitz, Jack Clancy, Nick Delahanty, Olivia Heffernan, and Tom Yu at Middlebury, and Minah Ahn, Julia Chen, Jahaan Pittalwala, Kristen Pue, Noah Schouela, Takumi Shibaike, and David Zarnett at the University of Toronto. We also thank two anonymous reviewers for their thoughts in improving the book.

Roger Haydon made the prescient suggestion that we could and should write a book together, and his initial encouragement and supportive critiques have led to years of fruitful discussions and writing. We thank him for getting this project started. We gratefully acknowledge the generous support of our two institutions, Middlebury College and the University of Toronto, which made research and this collaboration possible. Thank you also to the Middlebury office in Washington, DC, for hosting our 2015 workshop.

We must thank our family and friends whose support makes our professional lives possible. Special thanks and much love to our patient partners, John and Rick, for enduring hours and hours of talk about the book and picking up the pieces when we disappeared to research or write. Madeleine and Henry Stroup were occasional participants in our many Skype calls and they offered welcome distractions, outdoor activities, and lots of hugs. We are grateful for both the space we received to think through our ideas, and the opportunities available when we needed to talk and do anything else.

Finally, we are grateful to the individuals who provided their time and frank reflections on our project. In the process of crafting this book, we have interviewed more than seventy people, sometimes multiple times, in various sectors and occupations. Though they are not personally acknowledged in the book, their thoughts are embedded firmly in these pages. The many INGOs and their state and corporate partners that we examine here affect global politics from different organizational, political, and economic positions. Our hope is that a clearer understanding of the authority trap proves a useful tool for them all.