Governments as Allies and Targets

In what capacity should your entrepreneur seek alliances with governments? Which governments? Why?

While NORM chapters have emerged in a number of other country contexts, notably the UK and South Africa, it is unclear to what extent these groups are directly lobbying their own governments. The US-based norm entrepreneurs to whom I have spoken have avoided targeting change by governments in international contexts and have focused primarily on the United States. The argument is that because the US is a leading practitioner of circumcision, if it changes course there will be a contagion effect around the world. It's not clear this will be the case, however, given that the procedure is in fact even more widely practiced throughout Africa, the Middle East and in Muslim-majority countries. However, US-based intactivists are more uncomfortable addressing governments of Muslim-majority states directly, and retreat behind cultural relativist arguments when considering this.

But even in the US, intactivists told me that promoting their cause directly with governments was viewed as a last resort. They cite mixed impact on US legislative bodies so far. As noted in an earlier blog post, one effort to ban circumcision through the Massachusetts legislature was quickly shot down. One of the intactivists I interviewed in fact suggested that trying to promote government support was less likely to succeed than focusing on change through the grassroots, and if they could create social change instead they might not even need a government ban.

To the extent that they are correct in being ill-positioned to target governments directly, it is surprising that intactivists have sought few alliances with governments, as it would seem likely that government delegations would be in a better position to lobby their counterparts in Muslim-majority countries or help bring pressure to bear on states. In fact, intactivists have pointed out that there exist many sympathetic governments, particularly those in Europe and Asia where circumcision is not practiced, and particularly in the UK where it was once practiced but has now been largely eradicated. A reasonable strategy would seem to be to seek opportunities to gain support among such governments for language in global human rights documents that would raise the profile of this issue in government discourse more broadly.

Why has this not occurred? Part of the reason that sympathetic governments have not been lobbied to take a leadership role in a transnational campaign is lack of access: intactivists have little opportunity to send delegations and limited roster status at the UN makes it difficult to network with the appropriate governments officials in New York. However, given that Intact America headquarters is driving distance to New York it may be that this is not the entire reason. Further interviews may be required to understand whether movement identity is emerging as inherently cynical of government support, or whether intactivists simply lack procedural expertise to take advantage of their access to governments, or whether something else is at play.