From Transnational Advocacy Networks to Trans-Spatial Regime Networks: Colliding
Structures of
Global Governance Regarding Indigenous Peoples and Oil
Leslie Wirpsa, Ph.D.
School of International Relations
University of Southern California
S.V. Ciriacy-Wantrup Post-Doctoral Fellow
In Natural Resource Studies
Institute of International Studies
University of California, Berkeley
2004-2005
A paper prepared for presentation at the 46
th
Anuual International Studies Association
Convention, Honolulu, Hawaii, March 2-7, 2005
Draft copy: Do not cite without permission of the author
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Hayward Alker, Afef Benessaieh, Carolyn Cartier, Arne Jacobson, Terry
Karl, and Ann Tickner for previous comments on this material and Anu Kulkarni for inspiration
developing my theoretical framework. Fieldwork and writing were supported over time by the
Center for Latin American Studies at Stanford University, the Colombian Commission of Jurists,
the Haynes Foundation and the School of International Relations at the University of Southern
California, the Program on Global Security and Cooperation of the Social Science Research
Council, the S.V. Ciriacy Wantrup Foundation at the University of California at Berkeley, the
United States Institute for Peace and the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia.
Introduction
This article converses with practical and theoretical advances by international relations,
sociology and political science scholars to build interdisciplinary bridges regarding the study of
the effect of transnational norms on global governance, the dynamics of transnational social
movements, and the emergence of global civil society. It proposes that international relations
regime theory as reconstructed here can be adapted as an analytical tool useful not only to this
inter-disciplinary pursuit, but also to the study of “new arenas for [transnational collective]
action,” the cultural politics of and changing power relations involved in globalizing processes,
as well as a contemporary “blurring of distinctions between domestic and global levels of