Setting the Global Agenda: Advocacy & Attention on Global Displacement Crises

Mahoney , Christine (2011) Setting the Global Agenda: Advocacy & Attention on Global Displacement Crises. UNSPECIFIED. (Submitted)

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Abstract

Systematically investigating why some issues get on the political agenda and others receive little attention has been a traditionally difficult endeavor since the universe of issues is endless, how do we study the issue that wasn’t there? When we move to talking about the “global agenda” this becomes even more difficult. Likewise, systematically investigating the counterfactual of interest group influence is equally troubling, since we cannot rewrite history and either insert or remove the participation of an advocacy organization. The paper seeks to shed light on these topics by studying advocacy on a certain set of global issues: protracted displacement crises. This set of issues is unique in that it is largely fixed, there are currently 62 major refugee and internal displacement crises with over 10,000 people displaced, many of which have been going on for years, some decades. In these situations, tens of millions of people around the globe live at the edge of existence, their human rights are violated on a regular basis, and the deplorable nature of their condition threatens to spill over as insecurity to the region. In short, these are ALL issues, what varies is our attention to them in the Global North. This paper is a first exploration in systematically collecting data on the “global agenda” – which massive forced displacement crises are being discussed in the powers of the Global North? How does attention vary across the power players in the Global North? Can advocacy by human rights organizations or the governments of the US or the EU member states explain attention to some issues over others? Data is presented from a cross-sectional database on attention to all 62 protracted refugee and internal displacement crises in American and European media outlets in 2010.

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