Herro: Demanding Their Rights? Collective Identity and the Tactics of Older Persons’ Organisations at the UN

Annie Herro (Univ. of New South Wales - School of Social Sciences) has posted Demanding Their Rights? Collective Identity and the Tactics of Older Persons’ Organisations at the UN (Global Society, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

Recent scholarship in International Relations focuses on the tactics of international non-government organisations and transnational advocacy networks, with scholars mostly explaining the diverse and dynamic tactics of organisations working on similar issues. Based on multiple qualitative data sources, this article explores why the members of a transnational advocacy network, comprising organisations of, and representing, older persons, that are calling for a UN Convention on the Rights of Older Persons adopt tactics that are static, uniform and surprisingly softly-softly, despite their modest gains since the issue was put on the UN’s agenda nine years ago. The article demonstrates many of the existing explanations for tactical choices, but it extends what we know by importing the concept of collective identity from social movement studies. It argues that the older persons’ network has a weak collective identity that is conservative in nature, which influences the tactics deployed at the UN.