Over the past two decades, opportunities for NGOs to engage in collective action have increased tremendously. NGOs are no longer confined to the national level but also enjoy access to the regional and international level and are present at the United Nations, lobby policy-makers in the European Union and are making their way into economic institutions, such as the World Bank or the World Trade Organization. While the ever-growing number of governmental organizations presents non-state actors with unprecedented choices for engagement, it also poses new challenges. They need to adapt to the highly idiosyncratic structures of these organizations. Comparing non-governmental organizations in the United Nations and the European Union across a range of different issue areas, this book examines how the choice of venue and institution affects the actions and strategies of NGOs. In this volume two major international organizations are compared: the United Nations and the European Union. Both organizations are increasingly sought out by non-governmental organizations and exhibit interesting differences with respect to their institutional structure, scope, membership, culture and rules. To ascertain the effects of these institutional variations, the authors contrast NGO activities in both organizations across environment, human and women's rights - issue areas where NGOs have been argued to be more prominent - as well as socio-economics and security - issue areas where NGOs have been less visible.

Trafficking in women has become a severe human rights problem in the European Union. Cur-rently the trade in human beings generates higher profits than trafficking drugs or weapons. The book describes the history and the dimension of the phenomenon in the EU. It centers around the question, when, how and why the European Union started to fight trafficking in women. The author argues that it has been due to power of international norms, successfully operating advo-cacy-networks and favorable political opportunity structures that the problem could draw public and political attention.

Comparing non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the United Nations and the European Union across a range of different issue areas, this volume examines how the choice of venue and institution affects the strategies of NGOs. Despite significant differences with respect to their scope, membership as well as their institutional rules, the authors find that the UN and the EU have surprisingly similar effects on civil society organizations and regulate access in such a way that it significantly constrains the agency of NGOs. Highlights include: A comprehensive outline of the volume's main research questions, situated within the existing literature on the topic Eight case studies of NGO involvement in the UN and the EU across a range of different areas, including human rights, the environment, socio-economic and security issues A theoretically grounded summary of case study findings, challenging the findings of previous studies regarding the power of NGOs A discussion of the finding's implications for the broader literature, as well as for studies relating to the EU and the UN in particular Transnational Activism in the UN and the EU will be of interest to students and scholars of International Relations, European Studies, and Global Politics. Jutta Joachim is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Hannover, Germany. Birgit Locher is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Political Science at the University of Tubingen, Germany.