Balancing friends and foes: Explaining advocacy styles at global diplomatic conferences

The growing attempts by non-state interests to influence global policy processes has attracted much scholarly interest in recent years. One important question thereby is what characterizes and explains the interactions of non-state advocates with policymakers. In order to clarify this matter, we analyse the advocacy strategies of non-state actors, more precisely whether and why they address opponents instead of more like-minded policymakers. For this purpose, we analyse evidence collected through 228 interviews with advocates who attended the WTO Ministerial Conferences (Geneva 2012) and the United Nations Climate Conferences (Durban 2011; Doha 2012). Our results show that transnational advocates predominantly target like-minded policymakers and that their activities are much less focused on their opponents. Variation in advocacy towards opponents or like-minded policymakers is explained by the alignment of non-state actors with policymakers, the salience of topics on the political agenda, group characteristics, and whether or not advocates hail from democratic countries.