The agency of the governed in transfer and diffusion studies

Abstract

Research on global norm diffusion and institutional transfer has long neglected the agency of the governed. In the last decade, conventional top-down approaches have been increasingly challenged because they have downplayed interactions between the global and the local, in which the governed constantly coproduce and change global standards, their meanings, and their functionality. This collection explores adaptational dynamics between the global and the local, by asking: How and why do actors on the receiving end of North-South relations shape processes of norm diffusion and institutional transfer; and to what effect? This introductory contribution covers the key concepts that characterise the nascent research field of local agency in global contexts, and presents some empirical evidence from various sites of contestation.