Abstract
Why was Anti-Slavery International (ASI) so effective at changing norms slavery and even mobilizing the support that ended the transatlantic slave trade at the end of the nineteenth century, and why has that success not continued on into subsequent eras? This article claims that ASI's organizational structure is the key to understanding why its accomplishments in earlier eras have yet to be replicated, and why today it struggles to make modern forms of slavery, such as human trafficking, salient political issues. Organizational structure is defined by how an NGO distributes power over agenda-setting (proposal and enforcement power) and its implementation. Those NGOs that centralize agenda-setting and decentralize the implementation of that agenda will be most effective at changing international norms. This paper demonstrates the tractability of that claim with a comparative analysis of ASI past and present to show that changes in organizational structure have led to differences in their effect on international norms, in spite of the fact that slavery in its modern forms persists as a political and social problem.
Notes
Since 1995, ASI has gone by its current name. At the risk of historical anachronism, I use only ASI in this piece, as the NGO has undergone many name changes over the years.
It was originally called the London Society for Mitigating and Gradually Abolishing the State of Slavery Through the British Dominions.
This is the date that the modern NGO, ASI, refers to as its founding date.
http://www.antislavery.org/english/what_we_do/antislavery_international_today/frequently_asked_questions.aspx (Accessed January 6, 2010).
Now, UK members pay £35 per year http://www.antislavery.org/english/what_you_can_do/membership.aspx (Accessed January 15, 2010).
References
Anstey, Roger T. 1981. “Religion and British Slave Emancipation.” In The Abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Origins and Effects in Europe, Africa, and the Americas, Eds. David Eltis and James Walvin, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, p. 37–61
Bachrach, Peter, and Morton S. Baratz. 1970. Power and Poverty: Theory and Practice. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bales, Kevin. 2004. Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy. 1st ed. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Bales, Kevin. 2005. Understanding Global Slavery: A Reader. 1st ed. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Bales, Kevin. 2007. Ending Slavery: How We Free Today's Slaves. 1st ed. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Bales, Kevin, and Peter Robbins. 2001. ““No one shall be held in slavery or servitude”: A Critical Analysis of International Slavery Agreements and Concepts of Slavery.” Human Rights Review 2(2): 18–45.
Barabasi, Albert-Laszlo. 2002. Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means. New York: Plume.
Carpenter, R. Charli. 2007. “Setting the Advocacy Agenda: Theorizing Issue Emergence and Nonemergence in Transnational Advocacy Networks.” International Studies Quarterly 51(1): 99–120.
Cunneen, Mary. 2005. “Anti-Slavery International.” Journal of Global Ethics 1(1): 85–92.
Dahl, Robert. 1961. Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Davidson, Julia O’Connell. 2010. “New Slavery, Old Binaries: Human Trafficking and the Borders of ‘Freedom’.” Global Networks 10(2): 244–261.
DiMaggio, Paul J., and Helmut K. Anheier. 1990. “The Sociology of Nonprofit Organizations and Sectors.” Annual Review of Sociology 16: 137–159.
Drescher, Seymour. 2009. Abolition: A History of Slavery and Antislavery. 1st ed. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Gallagher, Anne T. 2009. “Human Rights and Human Trafficking: Quagmire or Firm Ground? A Response to James Hathaway.” Virginia Journal of International Law 49: 789–848.
Hansmann, Henry B. 1980. “The Role of Nonprofit Enterprise.” Yale Law Journal 89(5): 835–901.
Hathaway, James C. 2008. “The Human Rights Quagmire of Human Trafficking.” Virginia Journal of International Law 49: 1–59.
Hudson, Bryant A, and Wolfgang Bielefeld. 1997. “Structures of Multinational Nonprofit Organizations.” Nonprofit Management and Leadership 8(1): 31–49.
James, Estelle, and Susan Rose-Ackerman. 1986. The Nonprofit Enterprise in Market Economics. Chur, Switzerland: Harwood Academic Publishers.
Kaufmann, Chaim D., and Robert A. Pape. 1999. “Explaining Costly International Moral Action: Britain’s Sixty-Year Campaign Against the Atlantic Slave Trade.” International Organization 53(4): 631–668.
Kaye, Mike. 2005. 1807–2007: Over 200 Years of Campaigning Against Slavery. United Kingdom: The Printed Word.
Keck, Margaret E., and Kathryn Sikkink. 1998. Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Korey, William. 1998. NGO’s and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: A Curious Grapevine. 1st ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Lake, David A., and Wendy H. Wong. 2009. “The Politics of Networks: Interests, Power, and Human Rights Norms.” In Networked Politics: Agency, Power, and Governance, Ed. Miles Kahler. Ithaca: Cornell. University Press; p. 127–150
Lindenberg, Marc, and Coralie Bryant. 2001. Going Global: Transforming Relief and Development NGOs. West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press.
Lukes, Steven. 1974. Power: A Radical View. London and Basingstoke: The Macmillan Press Ltd.
McDonagh, Pierre. 2002. “Communicative Campaigns to Effect Anti-Slavery and Fair Trade.” European Journal of Marketing 36(5/6): 642–666.
Miers, Suzanne. 2003. Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press.
Nooruddin, Irfan and Sarah Wilson Sokhey. 2009. “Credible Certification of Child Labor Free Production.” Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Toronto.
Podolny, Joel M., and Karen L. Page. 1998. “Network Forms of Organization.” Annual Review of Sociology 24: 57–76.
Powell, Walter W. 1990. “Neither Market nor Hierarchy: Network Forms of Organization.” Research in Organizational Behavior 12: 295–336.
Price, Richard. 1998. “Reversing the Gun Sights: Transnational Civil Society Targets Land Mines.” International Organization 52(3): 613–644.
Provan, Keith G. 1983. “The Federation as an Interorganizational Linkage Network.” The Academy of Management Review 8(1): 79–89.
Quirk, Joel. 2006. “The Anti-Slavery Project: Linking the Historical and Contemporary.” Human Rights Quarterly 28(3): 565–598.
Quirk, Joel. 2007. “Trafficked into Slavery.” Journal of Human Rights 6(2): 181–207.
Ruggiero, Vincenzo. 1997. “Trafficking in Human Beings: Slaves in Contemporary Europe.” International Journal of the Sociology of Law 25(3): 231–244.
Rutherford, Kenneth R. 2000. “The Evolving Arms Control Agenda: Implications of the Role of NGOs in Banning Antipersonnel Landmines.” World Politics 53(1): 74–114.
Temperley, Howard. 1972. British Antislavery: 1833–1870. London: Longman.
Temperley, Howard. 1980. “Anti-Slavery as a Form of Cultural Imperialism.” In Anti-Slavery, Religion, and Reform, Eds. Christine Bolt and Seymour Drescher, Hamden, CT: Archon Books, p. 335–350
Watts, Duncan J. 2004. Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age. New York: W.W. Norton and Co.
Weissbrodt, David, and Anti-Slavery International. 2002. Abolishing Slavery and its Contemporary Forms. New York and Geneva: United Nations.
Welch, Claude E. 2009. “Defining Contemporary Forms of Slavery: Updating a Venerable NGO.” Human Rights Quarterly 31(1): 70–128.
Welch, Claude E. 2008. “Defining Contemporary Forms of Slavery: Updating a Venerable NGO.” Working paper.
Wilson, Ellen Gibson. 1990. Thomas Clarkson: A Biography. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Young, Dennis R. 1992. “Organising Principles for Inernational Advocacy Associations.” Voluntas 3(1): 1–28.
Zald, Mayer N., and Patricia Denton. 1963. “From Evangelism to General Service: The Transformation of the YMCA.” Administrative Science Quarterly 8(2): 214–234.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Wong, W.H. Is Trafficking Slavery? Anti-Slavery International in the Twenty-first Century. Hum Rights Rev 12, 315–328 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12142-010-0189-0
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12142-010-0189-0