This research contributes to gaps in the international relations literature explaining the emergence of transnational advocacy networks. Specifically, this research contributes to understanding TAN emergence due to a gap in institutional approaches to casualty recording in conflict and why actors join TANs. This TAN is particularly worthy of investigation because casualty records measure the scope of violence in a conflict and are often highly politicized and contested. Existing explanations of TAN emergence can be organized into three broad categories of analysis: sociological, political, and economic. The earliest explanations align with a sociological explanation for TANs as a mechanism for changing international norms. Social movement theorists account for TANs as a mechanism for civil society to challenge power structures. While other researchers suggest TANs should be treated like interest groups, and their emergence stems from an economic need for material incentives. This research extends the economic category of analysis and argues that actors join TANs for non-material, intangible incentives. Intangible benefits include knowledge, methodologies, data, or access to data sources. This research utilized a qualitative case study method to test all three categories of existing explanations using surveys, interviews, and archival records. Testing not only investigated hypotheses relating to the three categories of existing theories but also produced findings describing facilitators of TAN emergence, temporally-bound intangible benefits, and the types of intangible benefits available to actors. TANs are important to international politics because they influence norms, shape policies, and function as a bridge for local actors with the international community. This research produced findings with central themes about why resource-poor actors may spend their limited resources to join TANs. Further investigation into the intangible benefits available to actors joining TANs in settings other than conflict may provide greater insight into the value of intangible benefits to collective behavior. / Doctor of Philosophy / While body counts are generally presented as a measure of accountability or to raise awareness about civilian deaths in the public sphere, body counts are fiercely contested and highly politicized. This occurs during the conflict and decades after a conflict is resolved. Civilian body counts serve as political apparatuses for states and political actors to negotiate, challenge, and produce security narratives. Because of this politicization, the number of civilian casualties in violent conflict is not fully known, and their deaths' impact on the overall state's security is not well understood. While International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and human rights laws provide protection for civilians in conflict, documenting casualties is not addressed. International law does not prescribe methods for recording casualties; therefore, there is a gap in how international institutions approach accounting for casualties. In the early 2000s, facilitated by ICTs, civil society began to fill this gap by documenting casualties and collaborating across boundaries. This research traces the emergence of a Transnational Advocacy Network (TAN) that appeared in 2009 to collaborate on recording conflict casualties. This study produced five findings and contributes to understanding how ICTs facilitate TANs and identifying intangible benefits available to actors at network events that motivate their participation. Intangible benefits include knowledge, methodologies, data, or access to data sources. This research is worthy of investigation because TAN development is poorly understood yet they influence international politics by shaping norms, policies and linking local communities with international organizations.

This study is concerned with the concept of internationalisation as a tool for disadvantaged minorities to affect change in their situation. This phenomenon has been studied widely with respect to authoritarian regimes and later on with liberal Western democracies. The current study has focussed on the state of Israel and the situation of its Palestinian Arab minority to investigate the origins and purposes of internationalisation, the extent to which these efforts have achieved the objectives that were set, and whether this process is in any sense capable of achieving them. The analysis shows that the internationalisation process whereby the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel sought to reclaim their rights by invoking the support of the international community has emerged in the 1950s. It came to be perceived as necessary because internal legal and political processes were understood to be insufficient to achieve any redress for their grievances. The Arab leadership in Israel articulates internationalisation as a strategy designed to invoke the norms of democracy to question the conduct of successive Israeli governments, and counter the narrative offered by them on the world stage. The internationalisation strategy is seen to undergo a profound transformation from public memoranda, to civil and legal advocacy by invoking international conventions and treaties and finally to personal diplomacy. The results show that it is not a zero sum game; it is an especially effective method in different ways and with varying degrees of success. It created an extension of the critique of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories to its Palestinian minority. Using the international law in the modality of legal advocacy to compel the Israeli state to adhere to the commitments it had made by acceding to an international convention, proved more effective than mere political pressure. Another factors such as the nature of the claims, geopolitical circumstances, global momentum, and domestic politics are crucial as well for the success of the internationalisation. Yet, Israel’s response varied in particular cases to minimise external critics, and its respect for the international law was uttered by utilitarian justification to protect its reputation. The application of the social constructivist boomerang-spiral model to the process of internationalisation is deemed to be a particularly effective instrument to explore both the potential and the limits of the process of compelling the Israeli state to conform to internationally supported norms. The results of this study demonstrate that the construction of the state’s identity as a Jewish and concerns over national security are potentially in conflict with the egalitarian democratic norms that it claims to be governed by. The implications of these two elements for the operation of the Israeli state has resulted in a failure to fully integrate its Arab citizens. The Nation-State Law of 2018 reinforces the legal and systematic discrimination against the Palestinians in Israel and explains why internationalisation has not been successful. 443 It is the first comprehensive investigation into a selected series of case studies that document international appeals made by Israel’s Arab elite due to three chronological periods: 1948-1979, 1992- 2013 and 2015 onwards. On a theoretical level, it is the first time that the spiral model has been tested in the context of Israel and its Arab minority. This can serve as a strategic information source for Arab MKs, NGOs and Israeli decision makers.

[pt] O caso do apartheid na África do Sul foi singular porque institucionalizou um arranjo sociojurídico diametralmente oposto às normas que balizaram a gestação da ordem internacional pós-Segunda Guerra Mundial. A notável contradição catalisou uma reação em cadeia no combate ao regime sul-africano, e o ativismo antiapartheid conseguiu operacionalizar uma das mais dinâmicas redes de ativismo transnacional, desenvolvendo canais de diálogo e um amplo leque de estratégias de combate nas esferas doméstica, regional e internacional. O presente estudo - ancorado na literatura construtivista sobre o ativismo transnacional - irá problematizar a formação e funcionamento da rede de ativismo transnacional antiapartheid e suas ferramentas operacionais, como o efeito-bumerangue, analisando sua influência sobre a execução de sanções estratégicas, sociais, econômicas contra o regime segregacionista sul-africano. / [en] The case of apartheid in South Africa was unique because it institutionalized an socio-juridical arrangement diametrically opposite to the norms which has framed the gestation of the international order after World War II. The remarkable contradiction catalyzed a chain reaction in fighting the South-African regime, and the anti-apartheid activism could operate one of the most dynamic transnational advocacy networks, developing channels of dialogue and a wide range of strategies to combat on domestic, regional and international spheres. This study - anchored in the constructivist literature on transnational activism - will discuss the formalization and operation of the antiapartheid transnational advocacy network and its operational tools, like the boomerang pattern, by analyzing its influence on the implementation of economic, strategic and social sanctions against the South African segregationist regime.