8
amount of it that seeks to target top state officials and other elites who will then push a
reform through national legislation. The inside out approach is also somewhat unusual
for civil society organizations, who more often work from the outside, or simply
supplement state activities, such as the provision of social services.
Of course, a “bottom up, inside out” strategy will touch only a small number of
individuals in one specific area. For any changes in practice or norms to have a larger
impact in a country, it needs to diffuse to other actors and areas. There are two possible
paths of diffusion, horizontal and vertical, through which they can spread. First, and
most simply, the officials exposed to these new norms and practices will interact with
others in their agency and other bureaucracies and hopefully spread these ideas. Second,
and more ambitiously, is the potential that a successful project will catch the eye of a
sympathetic official at a higher level in the state, or in another part of the state, and the
practices will be adopted in a greater area than the initial project. Further, a successful
experience with a NGO may make it more likely that previously skeptical state agencies
and officials will agree to work with civil society groups in the future. As Wade Jacoby
notes, institutions and practices will more successfully transfer to other locales when
there are local actors working to “pull in” proposed innovations.
24
To the extent this strategy has been discussed in the existing literature it tends to
be in works written for, by, or about practitioners. Thomas Carothers notes in his survey
of democracy assistance programs that much of this work in the early phase was targeted
23
On framing, see, for example: Rodger A. Payne, “Persuasion, Frames, and Norm Construction,”
European Journal of International Relations, 7, 1 (March 2001), 37-61. Keck and Sikkink discuss both
issues: Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders.
24
Wade Jacoby, Imitation and Politics: Redesigning Modern Germany (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 2000).
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