The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement was launched by a 2005 call to pressure the State of Israel by cutting cultural, academic, and economic ties with it and has since grown in size and relevance.1 The movement has elicited strong responses from Israel, including the establishment of a ministry dedicated to combatting the movement. BDS has also received attention in academic literature, which has focused on the debate it engenders (Culcasi 2016), the legitimacy of academic boycott (de Shalit 2016; Falah 2016; Maira 2018; Newman 2016; Ross 2016), the question of whether or not the movement is antisemitic (Fishman 2012; Sheskin and Felson 2016), its recruitment of social actors (Baumgart-Ochse 2017; Hallward 2013, 2020; Hallward and Shaver 2012), Israeli responses to the movement (Olesker 2019), and comparisons to the anti-apartheid movement (Bueckert 2020; Cornelissen 2008).
This article aims to contribute to the academic discussion of the BDS movement by focusing how the movement remains relevant in the international arena. I treat the BDS movement as an instance of two previously theorized categories of transnational actor: as a social movement that engages in transnational collective action, and as a Transnational Advocacy Network (TANs). My focus in this article is on the concept of ‘fluidity’ and its implications for BDS movement activities. Fluidity refers to the ability of actors to act in multiple arenas simultaneously and adapt to their different political opportunity structures (POS) through flexibility in tactics and strategies. The more fluid an actor is, the more arenas it can introduce its agenda to and the better it can adapt its campaign to each arena. Fluidity depends on both its size—that is, the ability to physically be in many places at once—and its adaptability to different POS.
To empirically assess how the BDS movement employs fluidity in practice, this article looks at its activity through analysis of its POS, or the aggregation of characteristics, limitations, and advantages that an actor faces in a given political arena. POS have been explored in depth in the social movement and TANs literature (e.g., Alimi 2009; Alimi and Meyer 2011; Eisinger 1973; Keck and Sikkink 1999; Meyer 2004). The fluidity of the BDS movement means that as it operates across different arenas, the POS it operates within shift, and the movement is encouraged to adapt and employ different strategies in each arena. This article argues that it is this quality—working across sites with different methods—that makes the BDS movement a visible political actor despite lacking material resources: it leaves Israel to respond to the movement when, where, and however it chooses to operate, as in a game of Whac-A-Mole.
The goals of this article are threefold: (1) to outline the shifting POS within which the BDS movement operates across different fields; (2) to assess the type of strategies these changing settings encourage; and (3) to highlight the role of fluidity as a mechanism enabling the movement to enact different strategies in each of these settings. Similarly, by examining specific moments of the BDS campaign, I demonstrate that the movement adapts to and utilizes POS at three distinct levels of the international political field simultaneously: (1) at the level of interstate global governance institutions and intergovernmental organizations, using ‘outside’ campaigning based on public pressure; (2) within states, using substate administrative structures, applying ‘insider’ strategies based on policy-making and local politics, and by ‘scale shifting’ through diffusion to connect sites of campaigning across localities to create a translocal network; and (3) at the level of civil society, building solidarity with other movements as a resource for mobilization, moral authority, and becoming embedded within the larger context of the global justice movement.
The three campaigns I explore are the campaign outside the 65th FIFA congress in 2015, the Olive Declaration of local councils endorsing the BDS movement in 2014, and the ‘Ferguson-Gaza moment’ in the summer of 2014. I provide an account of each using academic literature as well as official proceedings and protocols, media, public interviews, and online content from BDS movement activists.
Theoretical Framework
Given the role of fluidity in the BDS movement, this article frames the movement through two theoretical lenses. First, I look at BDS as a social movement. Mario Diani defines social movements as “networks of informal interactions between a plurality of individuals, groups and/or organizations, engaged in political or cultural conflicts, on the basis of shared collective identities” (1992: 12). Specifically useful here is the concept of transnational collective action: “coordinated international campaigns on the part of networks of activists against international actors, other states, or international institutions” in which movements become international through the process of scale shifting (Tarrow and Della Porta 2005: 2–3). Scale shifting is based in three mechanisms: diffusion, the spread of movement ideas, practices, and frames from one country to another; domestication, the shifting of conflicts from an external origin to a domestic territory; and externalization, the act of challenging supranational institutions to intervene in domestic problems or conflicts (Tarrow and McAdam 2005: 125).
Second, drawing on International Relations (IR) literature, I conceptualize the BDS movement using Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink's concept of Transnational Advocacy Networks (TANs): “actors working internationally on an issue, who are bound together by shared values, a common discourse, and dense exchanges of information and services” (1999: 89). Due to the focus on the movement's activities in the international arena and the variety of actors—both institutional and grassroots—involved in it, I consider the BDS movement a TAN while also bringing in insights from social movement literature. The idea that networks of activists can be ‘fluid’ has been explored in both the social movement literature and TANs literature. A key aspect of fluidity is the understanding that movements not only shift from one locality to another (diffusion), from local to international (externalization), and from international to local (domestication), but that in each such site, the movement or network faces different POS. Adapting to different POS is key to a network or movement's ability to be fluid.
Political Opportunity Structures (POS)
Political opportunity theory considers the external circumstances of the political environment, its different variables, and the effects these have on the movements that operate within them. The relationships between different variables in the political environment create context, and these contexts collectively constitute a structure of political opportunities within communities (Eisinger 1973: 11). While POS only partially explain social movements, their mobilization and impact, they are nonetheless essential to understanding how movements operate (see Meyer 2004).
In mapping variables that determine the POS across the arenas in which TANs are engaged, I apply three categories of POS variables: ‘institutional arrangements,’ ‘resource configuration,’ and ‘policy environment’ (Dellmuth and Bloodgood 2019: 260). While these categories are interdependent, they are useful for making sense of the key components of POS as well as the opportunities and challenges that TANs face in different arenas.
Institutional arrangements refers to the rules and procedural arrangements of political organizations (March and Olsen 1984). These arrangements represent the design of institutions, including decisions about which actors have a voice at the table. This in turn affects whether institutions are ‘open’ or ‘closed’ and for whom. The degree of openness or closedness is an important aspect of how POS are conceived. An open system, in which “groups are likely to be able to gain access to power and to manipulate the political system” (Eisinger 1973: 25), is a decisive factor in the strategies that TANs implement (Keck and Sikkink 1999; Risse and Sikkink 1999). Institutional access means that actors can use insider politics: directly influencing policymakers and formulating policies. For example, local climate NGOs have been found to impact government positions via lobbying tactics (Rietig 2016). On the other hand, lack of institutional access limits networks to outsider political strategies, relying on media and public mobilization to pressure decision makers from outside of political institutions, often through negative campaigning (Binderkrantz 2005; Ciplet 2019; Rietig 2016; Sikkink 2005).
The international arena has a variety of institutions with different institutional settings. This encourages ‘venue shopping,’ in which actors turn to the institution that is most favorable to their interests (Alter and Meunier 2009; Ciplet 2019; C. Davis 2004; Drezner 2009; Keohane and Martin 1995). While usually considered horizontally between institutions of the same governance level, the variety of venues can also be exploited vertically, using multilevel governance structures to gain victories in higher or lower levels of governance such as municipal or regional bodies (Panizzon and van Riemsdijk 2019). At lower levels of governance, institutions tend to be more open and embedded within their local civil societies (Cooper and Herman 2020: 50), opening opportunities for local campaigners to promote their agendas.
Resource configuration highlights the resources actors can leverage across different venues. The social movement literature expands on the role of resources in the types of strategies and tactics movements choose (White et al. 2015) and distinguishes between different categories of resources (Cress and Snow 1996; Edwards and McCarthy 2004; Goldberg 2019). Links, alliances, and coalitions are an important resource, as they are a key part of a movement's ability to grow: “networks breed networks, and each effort to network is less difficult that the one before” (Keck and Sikkink 1999: 93). Links are also an important resource for a movement's ability to scale shift through the mechanism of ‘brokerage’ (Tarrow and McAdam 2005), which relies on connecting sites of contention into a growing movement. These links are often based on shared values and/or shared identities. Identities in social movements become flexible and malleable, as tools for forming collective solidarity through symbolic narratives (Della Porta 2005; McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001; Nepstad 2006). Building solidarity as a resource can also increase a movement's legitimacy in public opinion, and thus its ability to mobilize and recruit activists as well as its moral legitimacy to frame the agenda—all necessary for engaging in outsider campaigns based on public pressure (Barakso 2010: 162).
The ‘policy environment’ captures key characteristics of the issue at hand, for example the number of actors involved and the issue's complexity and salience (political weight). The policy environment also affects the relevant institutional arrangement, as issues seen as highly salient for states would be discussed in institutions with less access for non-state actors (Keohane and Martin 1995; Mearsheimer 1994). The complexity of an issue affects the strategies that movements or TANs can employ. The harder it is for individuals and policy makers to form individual opinions about the subject matter, the more likely they are to look to experts for explanations. This creates opportunities for TANs to produce accessible and persuasive information, setting the agenda on the issue (Chalmers 2014; Franklin 2007; Hayes et al. 2002). On more contested issues, we can expect multiple sources of expertise to produce competing facts and narratives. Highly salient, contested issues make it harder for advocacy groups to claim authority and influence policies. To cope with this competition, legitimacy becomes a valuable resource: actors seek to increase the legitimacy of the information they produce while discrediting the information produced by other camps (Andia and Chorev 2017; Nepstad and Kenney 2018). In increasing legitimacy, framing becomes highly valuable, including framing in moral terminology steeped in culture (Bob 2005; Shawki 2010; Wang and Liu 2021).
Fluidity
This article offers fluidity as mechanism explaining how TANs acquire influence in the international arena. TANs that can utilize their fluidity to venue shop and adapt their strategies to different POS in order to maximize resources can have greater impact. It will then be more difficult for their targets to respond to their operations. To do this, TANs need two main characteristics. The first is size. While literature on scale shifting describes the indirect diffusion of movements through emulation or media, scale shifting through ‘brokerage’—or direct links between activists, thereby constituting the network—is “likely to be far more consequential in its effects than diffusion” and may even produce new collective identities (Tarrow and McAdam 2005: 131). Brokerage thus requires enough active members to mobilize support at many different sites (both physical and institutional), which in turn forms the basis for a group's fluidity—its ability to be active across multiple arenas and engage different groups and institutions through different strategies, simultaneously.
The second key to a movement or network's fluidity is its adaptability or flexibility, understood as its ability to engage in different strategies in a way that maximizes the resources available in any given arena. In other words, simply being at many places at once is not enough—it is also important to adapt campaign tactics to the conditions and characteristics of each site of engagement. Social movement theorists might describe this as a movement's ‘repertoire of contention’ (Tilly 2010), which would depend to some extent on the technical know-how of the core activists of the movement and their ability to advance various campaign tactics in response to changing conditions. It might also depend on the type and diversity of activists in the network and the different campaign styles they bring with them.
In the next section, I utilize these concepts to map out the specific characteristics of the BDS movement across the sites in which it operates and to assess the diverse strategies its different POS encourage, highlighting the particular needs and connections that each strategy requires. I then illustrate how the BDS movement has maximized its resources and adapted its strategies to POS in three different campaigns.
The BDS Movement in the International Arena
In considering how the BDS movement mobilizes across settings, Hanspeter Kriesi (1996) offers the useful distinction between ‘social movement organizations,’ ‘movement associations’ as chapters or clubs created by the movement for activists, and ‘supportive organizations’ as movements or organizations that are friendly to the cause but that do not actively campaign for it.
The BDS movement includes several visible leadership bodies that are tasked with coordinating efforts and campaigns, the most prominent of which are the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) and the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) (BDS Movement n.d.b, n.d.c). Both PACBI and the BNC are themselves comprised of a number of groups and organizations. Nevertheless, we can consider any activist or group that aligns itself with the 2005 BDS call as a part of the TAN. Those who have endorsed and promoted the BDS call include a range of institutions and individual ‘influencers,’ from famous artists like Roger Waters, to local organizations like student unions and churches, to activist networks like Black Lives Matter (BLM) and institutional partners like municipalities, both of which I discuss below. While this openness renders the movement vulnerable to criticism arising from its more controversial members and their statements,2 it is key to the BDS movement's fluidity. It allows the movement to be both large enough, encompassing an array of individuals and groups, and simultaneously loosely enough knit that it can adopt and adapt a variety of campaign tactics while operating at different political levels.
In Israel, the movement enjoys minimal support from those with access to decision-making positions and is also poorly regarded by public opinion (Chaitin et al. 2017), making both insider policy influence and outsider public pressure campaigns challenging to achieve. In these circumstances, flexible adaptation might entail looking beyond the domestic setting. This is what Keck and Sikkink (1999) call the ‘boomerang’ model, in which local opposition turns to the international arena to leverage outside support and pressure on the state (93).
As a fluid network rather than a body with official representatives, it is difficult for the BDS movement to be represented in institutional settings, specifically in international institutions. Furthermore, the issues raised by the BDS movement are highly salient to the target state, Israel, since they directly impinge upon the state's core identity and principles. Israeli officials represent the BDS movement as rooted in the historic persecution of the Jewish people (Fishman 2012). Protection from this persecution is central to Israel's raison d'être as a state. It can thus be expected that Israel will try to restrict the BDS movement's access to forums in which relevant discussions take place. To compensate for this impeded access, BDS activists seek access elsewhere, for example, through ‘embedded’ institutions where civil society actors enjoy greater opportunities to promote their campaigns: municipalities, unions, or religious organizations. Simultaneously, BDS activists engage ‘outsider’ campaign strategies targeting important venues of decision making where they are denied formal access, utilizing opportunities for symbolically meaningful campaigns. This can be done by latching on to the movement-supportive activities of individuals with access and enhancing those activities through campaigning, or by choosing symbolic occasions on which to spread the movement's message (Bob 2005).
As the BDS campaign is one that involves normative framing of moral claims and the creation of a ‘symbolic narrative’ (Nepstad 2006), being in control of the agenda and narrative is a crucial aspect of BDS activity. To do this persuasively, the BDS movement relies on its legitimacy. One way the BDS movement increases its legitimacy is through partnerships and by building solidarity across movements and organizations, recruiting support and embedding itself as a part of a larger global justice agenda. This can be done through brokerage. Maia Hallward shows how brokerage was used by the BDS movement when it cooperated with the organization CodePink in a campaign against the Israeli company Ahava (2013: 66). Through this mechanism of brokerage, the BDS movement can scale shift and project its cause beyond its original context, mobilizing more support and growing as a movement.
Another way of increasing legitimacy is by utilizing ‘information politics’: “the ability to move politically usable information quickly and credibly to where it will have the most impact” (Keck and Sikkink 1999: 95). The BDS movement does this by promoting information and analyses produced by experts who align with its narrative, as well as by publishing the personal testimonials of individuals. In the context of a highly complex issue like the Israel-Palestine conflict, with layers of history and emotion, such activity can shape how the public views and understands the conflict. In the next section, I illustrate how these practices of fluidity across shifting POS were put into practice in three different cases: the campaign outside the 65th FIFA Congress, the Olive Declaration of municipalities endorsing the BDS movement, and the solidarity campaign that united the BDS and BLM movements during the ‘Ferguson-Gaza moment.’
BDS Movement Strategies across Different Arenas and POS
The 65th FIFA Congress
Tensions between the Israel Football Association (IFA) and the Palestinian Football Association (PFA) go back many years. These tensions reached a climax in 2015 at the 65th annual FIFA congress in Zurich. Ahead of the congress, the PFA presented a motion to suspend Israel from the league (Lee 2015). The motion gained political and media attention, including responses from Israeli politicians and reports of behind-the-scenes cooperation between Israel and other states such as Germany (Eichner 2015). Shortly before the congress, the president of FIFA traveled to Jerusalem to meet with Israeli and Palestinian representatives to work out a compromise (Dorsey 2015). The meetings were a success: despite vowing not to back down,3 the PFA withdrew the motion, agreeing to the compromise of a committee to monitor Israel's interference in Palestinian football (FIFA 2015a: 29–30).
At first glance, the story has little to do with the BDS movement: it was an official Palestinian representative acting vis-à-vis an official Israeli representative through an intergovernmental institution. However, the episode illustrates how the BDS movement launched an outsider campaign, latching on to an opportunity created by an insider representative.
Choosing FIFA as an arena for a campaign makes sense in terms of POS. As far as access is concerned, FIFA governs sports—a soft issue not directly related to military or financial power—with lower salience for states and more opportunity for outside actors to influence policymaking. Since Palestine is a full member, BDS activists have links to an insider actor who can promote their issue, which they can then support through an outside campaign of public pressure. The arena is also of symbolic importance. FIFA was the first international organization to recognize Palestine when it admitted it as a member state in 1998 (Dorsey 2015).
The symbolic impact of FIFA as an international institution governing sports relates to wider literature on soft power and the role of sports and culture in international politics. This literature addresses the impact of sports on foreign policy (Reiche 2015), their symbolic importance to national identity construction (Ismer 2011; Scheve et al. 2014), and the political significance of cultural megaevents for the host country, including the host's vulnerability to naming and shaming campaigns (Alekseyeva 2014; Black 2007; Bowersox 2016; Cornelissen 2008; Giulianotti et al. 2015; Gorokhov 2015; Jaskulowski and Majewski 2016; Press-Barnathan and Lutz 2020).
Sports as an arena for contestation and boycotts has also been widely discussed in this literature. David Black (1999) identifies sports as an arena that inspires national passions and identities, making boycotts an effective form of punishment while creating incentives for participation and mobilization. The hierarchy of institutions that govern international sports as an exclusive club is an important factor for success. Comparing the anti-apartheid movement to the BDS campaign, Malcolm MacLean proposes a three-part model of sports boycotts. He suggests that such boycotts are a part of a broader suite of isolating activities; that they target institutions that govern and monopolize access to elite club play in both target and sender states; and that they have “an effect that tends to be cultural and to do with national psychological well-being” (2014: 1842). FIFA fits these criteria as a forum: its monopolistic governance of football means that Israel, for which sports and cultural inclusion are important to the psychological well-being of the nation, has no ability to venue shop for a different sports-governing forum should its life be made difficult in this venue.
Furthermore, FIFA has a history of serving as a political arena specifically in cases of football clubs in annexed territories. One example is the case of Crimean football clubs playing in the Russian Football Union while still being associated to the Football Association of Ukraine following the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014. More recently, Russian teams in general have been suspended from all FIFA and UEFA (Union of European Football Association) competitions in response to Russia's attack on Ukraine in February 2022 (MacInnes 2022). This, according to Andreas Zimmerman, makes FIFA a compelling arena for political action like the efforts to have Israel suspended (Zimmermann 2015).
Choosing FIFA as an arena in which BDS activists had connections to an insider (the Palestinian representative) created a symbolic moment and a site at which they could engage as a movement in an outsider campaign of public pressure. BDS activists recruited their resources to tell a compelling story. Utilizing the emotional pull of sports, activists simplified the complex issue of the Israel-Palestine conflict into an issue-specific story with a simple narrative. They curated and promoted content, including emotional testimonials, that highlighted individual stories of Palestinian football players under Israeli military control (Gharqoud 2015). They also highlighted expert evaluations, such as the piece by international legal scholar Andreas Zimmerman referenced above, which reviews the history of FIFA's involvement in international politics and the legal precedents for suspending Israel. Both testimonials and expert accounts shaped the narrative and imparted legal and normative legitimacy to the campaign. Another move to attract public attention and invest the campaign with legitimacy was the publication of opinion pieces and letters signed by prominent BDS supporters calling on FIFA to vote in favor of suspension (e.g., Berger et al. 2015). BDS campaigners also mobilized physically at the congress in Zurich itself. International summits can be an important site for transnational activism (Kolb 2005), and BDS campaigners actively protested, even interrupting the congress (Haaretz 2015). It could be argued that the BDS campaign surrounding the congress had minimal impact. Reut Ber, Moran Yarchi, and Yair Galily (2017) conclude that the campaign received limited exposure in traditional international media outlets. One explanation for this is that the 65th congress was already the subject of so much controversy that news of the BDS campaign was secondary to stories of corruption and controversies involving the president's reelection (FIFA 2015b). Nevertheless, the campaign received strong reactions from Israeli politicians, leading Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to meet with FIFA President Joseph “Sepp” Blatter to highlight the seriousness with which Israel viewed attempts to “oust Israel from international institutions” (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2015a, 2015b). The campaign also helped set the stage for further campaigns. Indeed, the issue was not dropped, and a FIFA committee was set up to address it, its work being monitored at subsequent congresses (FIFA 2016: 20). The saga also continued outside of FIFA, with the cancellation of a friendly match between Israel and Argentina in 2018, which was hailed as a BDS victory (Belcastro 2020; Eglash 2018).
Looking at the role of fluidity in the case of the FIFA campaign illustrates how tactics and resources can be adapted to a specific set of POS. On the one hand, the limitations of the arena of international institutions, where states can block TANs’ access to decision-making processes and cooperate with each other against TANs and movements, would seem to limit the influence TANs can have in such arenas. However, through the movement's size and its ability to mobilize its activists and adapt to the setting, and by utilizing technical know-how in its choice of narrative elements and symbolic moments and venues, the BDS movement was able to apply public pressure through an international institution. Its focus on a low-salience institution with high symbolic value is an example of the importance of venue shopping, even when the movement is reduced to outsider campaigning, as these symbolic moments will have a better chance of gaining public attention. However, the campaign also makes evident the disadvantages to nonstate actors attempting to operate through an intergovernmental organization, as opposed to states with direct representation and power in the organization.
The 2014 Olive Declaration and Municipal Politics
Activists aligned with the BDS movement can also endorse and promote the movement's agenda from within political institutions, using insider forms of contention where access allows it. The 2014 Olive Declaration is an example of how a movement can utilize institutional arrangements of municipalities that are more accessible to civil society actors. Utilizing the fluidity of the BDS campaign to engage multiple municipalities simultaneously, activists can then connect these sites of contention to create a network—scale shifting across localities to create a translocal movement.
In 2014, an international conference of municipalities and civil society organizations gathered in the city of Seville, Spain, in support of Palestinian rights. Participants signed the Olive Declaration, reaffirming support for Palestinian rights and endorsing BDS measures. Key signatories included United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of Palestinian People (which posted the declaration on the UN website), the Andalusian Fund of Municipalities for International Solidarity (FAMSI), and the Junta of Andalusia, with collaboration from the Parliament of Andalusia (ICLG 2014). The Olive Declaration is an example of BDS activism at both the local and transnational levels, in which activists first worked at the substate level, through municipalities, to gain insider access and ‘do’ foreign policy, and then utilized those municipalities as a transnational network.
The idea of ‘doing’ international politics via local governance institutions like municipalities has garnered academic attention. One relevant concept is that of Municipal Foreign Policy (MFP): “a loose network of citizen activists throughout the USA, who have sought to involve themselves directly in international affairs” (Kirby et al. 1995: 268). Andrew Kirby, Sallie Marston, and Kenneth Seasholes see this as an expression of a Habermasian ‘public sphere.’ In the social movement literature, a related concept is that of a ‘Human Rights City’ in which municipal institutions amplify the voices of movements promoting human rights and challenging neoliberal globalization (Smith 2017). For these local institutions to become transnational, municipalities must be connected as a network. Emma Smeds and Michele Acuto (2018) analyze city-led action as part of city networks to review city climate policies. Bertie Russell (2019) and Laura Roth and Bertie Russell (2019) also offer insights into the current movement of politically ambitious progressive/radical local governments and discuss the local entry point to translocal politics as both strategic, with its ability to mobilize a range of social forces both within and outside the municipality, and at the same time transformative, with the goal of creating political institutions more embedded in social movements and civil society.
The municipal arena has become a central site for BDS campaigns, particularly in the UK and Spain. Davina Cooper and Didi Herman review municipal BDS campaigns in the UK and consider some of the limitations and opportunities of working through local governments. Municipalities are seen as more embedded in their communities and in civil society and can take practical policy measures in the local field, including divestment and boycotts. However, their limited ability to execute policy beyond their municipal boundaries means that working within such institutions can be viewed as watering down action in favor of taking moral stances and declaring solidarity. Still, even the latter has the value of claiming responsibility for the issue and stimulating greater political engagement (Cooper and Herman 2020).
In the case of the Olive Declaration, the way this engagement spread beyond the local context resonates with the brokerage and diffusion mechanisms described by Sidney Tarrow and Doug McAdam (2005), in which individual or, in this case, institutional linkages forge new connections between sites of contention and help disseminate the agenda of the movement beyond its original local context, whether to other municipalities or transnationally. In this way, the Olive Declaration represents how the BDS movement utilizes fluidity to maximize its resources through POS at a variety of different sites. By simultaneously acting in different arenas where it had insider access to institutions, the movement utilized both its size, reaching multiple locations, and its adaptability to new institutional environments (diverse municipalities). Next, it forged links between the institutions in which it was represented, thus creating a coherent institutional network in support of its cause. This gave the movement international visibility, legitimacy, and reach beyond what individual activists or local organizations could have achieved alone.
One of the limitations of working through substate institutions is that they are still subordinate to states. In some ways, working through municipalities can be seen as a stepping stone toward access to state politics. The Olive Declaration itself calls for pressure on national governments for action in “holding [Israel] accountable.” Indeed, in some cases, working at the substate level has enabled the BDS movement to successfully scale up to diplomatic efforts by states (Wajner 2017). However, states do not necessarily approve of activist municipalities meddling with their foreign policy. For example, in a governmental procurement directive issued in 2016, the UK banned local councils and municipalities from participating in BDS, noting that local-level boycotts can “harm foreign relations to the detriment of Britain's economic and international security” (UK Crown Commercial Service 2016). This measure was overturned by the high court in 2019 but continued to be introduced as legislation (Harkov 2020). In France and even in Spain, where the Olive Declaration originated, states have taken legal action against municipalities participating in boycotts of Israel, deeming it a violation of state principles and norms of equality and as a form of hate speech and discrimination (ECHR 2009).4 This pushback shows that operating through more accessible venues with more hospitable policy environments does not always lead to engagement at the state level and can sometimes lead to restrictions rather than endorsement from the state.
BLM: The ‘Ferguson-Gaza Moment’
Transitions from the local to state level rely on broad appeals to public opinion and support from civil society. An important resource for achieving this support is solidarity with other social movements, specifically movements with high mobilization and moral legitimacy. BDS activists are active within many of the other movements that comprise the broader ‘global justice movement,’ including LGBTQ+, feminist, and human rights movements. This has helped situate the BDS movement as an increasingly legitimate member of the global justice movement (Baumgart-Ochse 2017). A significant moment that highlighted the impact of solidarity between movements took place in the summer of 2014, when BDS activists showed their support for Black Lives Matter protesters in Ferguson, Missouri.
Solidarity between black activists in the United States and Palestinian activists has a long history. Michael Fischbach (2018) describes the solidarity with Palestine expressed by “revolutionaries and militant activists” of the Black Power movement like Malcolm X and the Black Panther Party, who strongly supported the Palestinian cause and condemned Israel. This historical support has continued into the BDS era, with prominent activists like Angela Davis being outspoken supporters of the movement and drawing comparisons between Israel's treatment of Palestinians and the institutional oppression of Black people in the United States (A. Davis 2016).
A specific moment in this cooperation occurred in the summer of 2014, when two important political events coincided. In the United States, an African American man named Michael Brown was shot by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Brown's death sparked outrage, including protests and riots against police brutality led by the BLM movement. At the same time, Israeli-Palestinian tensions intensified with an Israeli crackdown in the West Bank following the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers. Those tensions soon boiled over into an Israeli ground and air operation in the Gaza Strip. What followed illustrated the importance of solidarity and underscored the role of grassroots activism and social media in cementing an alliance that would become a major resource for the BDS movement (Bailey 2015).
Social media played a vital role in drawing the world's attention to the violence in Ferguson. Livestreaming, hashtags, and digital protest created a field of activism, motivating further engagement and grassroots participation (Bonilla and Rosa 2015). Using the viral hashtag #palestine2ferguson, Palestinian activists offered support, pointing out similarities between the experiences of protesters facing militarized forces in Palestine and the United States and offering advice, for example, on mitigating the effects of tear gas. This created the ‘Ferguson–Gaza moment,’ a point of solidarity between the two movements. Exploring this moment in-depth, Cristina Mislán and Sara Shaban (2019) view social media engagement as creating a space for the building of transnational solidarities and collective identities. They show how activists employed digital media to convey feelings of community among Black and Palestinian activists, developing a shared identity and engaging in collective action both online and offline.
The use of this symbolic moment to reflect on similarities between the BLM and Palestinian movements illustrates two important strategies that TANs use to build solidarity and coalitions. First, it highlights the role of symbolic events, which have been identified as powerful motivators and catalysts for the growth of networks (Bob 2005; Keck and Sikkink 1999). It also illustrates the importance of what the social movement literature calls “attribution of similarity”—the way diverse groups can be identified with one another through symbolic narratives that help form collective identities and frame shared struggles.
The seeds of solidarity between Palestinian and BLM activists existed even before the symbolic events of 2014. The Palestinian solidarity group in St. Louis was already acting in coordination with the city's Organization for Black Struggle. This is a good example of how size and physical presence across many locations matters for being able to act fluidly: cooperation prior to the event may have planted the seeds for the eventual Gaza-Ferguson solidarity campaign. Throughout the Ferguson events, Palestinian groups in the area managed to forge a stronger alliance by giving center stage to the BLM movement and supporting rather than leading the protests. The online and offline solidarity events were followed up, cementing the BLM-Palestine partnership with joint conferences, workgroups, and delegations that were intended to “create and sustain solidarity” (Bailey 2015). In 2016, that solidarity was embodied in a manifesto issued by an alliance of groups affiliated with the BLM movement, which included declarations of support for BDS and solidarity with Palestinians despite the repercussions those statements carried in the mainstream media, politics, and sports (Dart 2021). Solidarity between BDS activists and the BLM movement continues as activists highlight the shared experiences of oppression and resistance that they consider part of a transnational, intersectional collective identity (Allen 2018; Hallward 2020).
In terms of POS, the ‘Ferguson moment’ highlights the role of solidarity and links between movements as resources for legitimacy, moral authority, and recruitment of a wider base of support within global civil society. As Mislán and Shaban (2019) point out, Ferguson also illustrates the power of digital media in forging collective identities and solidarities that unite different struggles and the initiative of individuals in creating these fields both online and offline. However, what Mislán and Shaban also emphasize is the affective and emotional connections that motivate this transnational collective identity, rather than strategic decision-making practices within social movements. Solidarities form when activists respond to specific moments and emotional contexts, rather than strategically calculating solidarity as a resource. The Ferguson case is thus a good example of how links between movements are created by individuals across a field of solidarity during specific moments, to be later maintained and utilized as a part of a larger network and movement.
Conclusion
This article has explored the BDS movement's campaigns at different levels of the international arena. It emphasized the importance of the movement's fluidity—its ability to act in multiple locations simultaneously while employing different methods of campaigning to fit the POS in each location. Through empirical examples, I have shown that this fluidity stems from the BDS movement's size—its presence across multiple sites and its strong base of supporters—and its adaptability or flexibility in adopting different campaign styles and tactics.
This article also works to bridge the often-parallel discussions of TANs and social movements. Despite their many similarities and several previous attempts to address the gaps between the two literatures, IR's exploration of TANs remains separate from the larger literature on social movements. While this article explores the BDS movement as a TAN, the many insights of social movement theory, including those on POS, identities, and the concept of how these movements become transnational through mechanisms such as scale shifting, are essential to explaining how the BDS movement operates fluidly in the international arena.
The three campaigns point to the strengths and weaknesses of the BDS movement as it operates as a TAN across different levels of the international political field. The first two cases show that, within traditional institutional settings, both outsider tactics of applying public pressure in symbolic venues and insider tactics of policy-making within institutions have been neutralized to some extent by the states and intergovernmental institutions involved. By contrast, the tactics utilized in the third case, in which the BDS movement spread its message and enhanced its legitimacy through acts of solidarity with other movements, seem more difficult for Israel as a state to counteract. This suggests that, in terms of POS, campaigns that align the BDS movement with the global justice movement and seek to solidify its status as a moral authority are the movement's point of strength. At the same time, fluidity—having the size and adaptability to engage in multiple strategies simultaneously—works to the BDS movement's advantage, as it can attempt campaigns in a variety of politically relevant arenas. Even when these campaigns are outmaneuvered by other state or institutional actors, it is the response they elicit and the very act of campaigning itself that help the movement maintain its relevance.
Notes
While difficult to measure, one indicator of the BDS movement's size comes from its official website, which links to more than eighty official BDS campaigns or chapters in dozens of countries, each connecting local organizations with other campaigns and events worldwide. The movement's leadership council, the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), is itself comprised of twenty-nine different organizations (BDS Movement n.d.a, n.d.b).
For an analysis of the way certain statements and images circulated by BDS supporters, as well as some of the movement's goals, have been construed as antisemitic, see Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy (2019).
“No to Peace Match, Yes to Israel Soccer Ban, Palestinians Say.” Times of Israel, 20 May 2015. http://www.timesofisrael.com/no-to-peace-match-yes-to-israel-soccer-ban-palestinians-say/.
“Court Annuls Municipal BDS Campaign in Northern Spain Over ‘Violation of Fundamental Rights.’” Algemeiner, 19 December 2019. https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/12/19/court-annuls-municipal-bds-campaign-in-northern-spain-over-violation-of-fundamental-rights/.
References
Alekseyeva, Anna. 2014. “Sochi 2014 and the Rhetoric of a New Russia: Image Construction through Mega-Events.” East European Politics 30 (2): 158–174.
Alimi, Eitan. 2009. “Mobilizing under the Gun: Theorizing Political Opportunity Structure in a Highly Repressive Setting.” Mobilization: An International Quarterly 14 (2): 219–237.
Alimi, Eitan Y., and David S. Meyer. 2011. “Seasons of Change: Arab Spring and Political Opportunities.” Swiss Political Science Review 17 (4): 475–479.
Allen, Lori. 2018. “What's in a Link? Transnational Solidarities across Palestine and Their Intersectional Possibilities.” South Atlantic Quarterly 117 (1): 111–133.
Alter, Karen J., and Sophie Meunier. 2009. “The Politics of International Regime Complexity.” Perspectives on Politics 7 (1): 13–24.
Andia, Tatiana, and Nitsan Chorev. 2017. “Making Knowledge Legitimate: Transnational Advocacy Networks’ Campaigns against Tobacco, Infant Formula and Pharmaceuticals.” Global Networks 17 (2): 255–280.
Bailey, Kristian Davis. 2015. “Black–Palestinian Solidarity in the Ferguson–Gaza Era.” American Quarterly 67 (4): 1017–1026.
Barakso, Maryann. 2010. “Brand Identity and the Tactical Repertoires of Advocacy Organizations.” In Advocacy Organizations and Collective Action, ed. Aseem Prakash and Mary Kay Gugerty, 155–176. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Baumgart-Ochse, Claudia. 2017. “Claiming Justice for Israel/Palestine: The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) Campaign and Christian Organizations.” Globalizations 14 (7): 1172–1187.
BDS Movement. n.d.a. “Join a BDS Campaign.” https://bdsmovement.net/get-involved/join-a-bds-campaign?country=All (accessed 2 August 2022).
BDS Movement. n.d.b. “Palestinian BDS National Committee.” https://bdsmovement.net/bnc (accessed 2 August 2022).
BDS Movement. n.d.c. “Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.” https://bdsmovement.net/pacbi (accessed 2 August 2022).
Belcastro, Francesco. 2020. “Sport, Politics and the Struggle over ‘Normalization’ in Post-Oslo Israel and Palestine.” Mediterranean Politics: 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/13629395.2020.1845938.
Ber, Reut, Moran Yarchi, and Yair Galily. 2017. “The Sporting Arena as a Public Diplomacy Battlefield: The Palestinian Attempt to Suspend Israel from FIFA.” Journal of International Communication 23 (2): 218–230.
Berger, John, Rodney Bickerstaffe, Breyten Breytenbach, Noam Chomsky, Richard Falk, Pat Gaffney, Rev Garth Hewitt, Ronnie Kasrils, Aki Kaurismaki, Bruce Kent, Ken Loach, Michael Mansfield, Miriam Margolyes, John Pilger, Bob Russell, Salman Abu Sita, Ahdaf Soueif, Jenny Tonge, and Benjamin Zephaniah. 2015. “We Call on FIFA to Suspend the Israel Football Association.” The Guardian, 15 May. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/15/call-on-fifa-suspend-israel-football-association.
Binderkrantz, Anne. 2005. “Interest Group Strategies: Navigating between Privileged Access and Strategies of Pressure.” Political Studies 53 (4): 694–715.
Black, David R. 1999. “‘Not Cricket’: The Effects and Effectiveness of the Sport Boycott.” In How Sanctions Work, ed. Neta C. Crawford and Audie Klotz, 213–231. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK.
Black, David R. 2007. “The Symbolic Politics of Sport Mega-Events: 2010 in Comparative Perspective.” Politikon 34 (3): 261–276.
Bob, Clifford. 2005. The Marketing of Rebellion: Insurgents, Media, and International Activism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bonilla, Yarimar, and Jonathan Rosa. 2015. “#Ferguson: Digital Protest, Hashtag Ethnography, and the Racial Politics of Social Media in the United States.” American Ethnologist 42 (1): 4–17.
Bowersox, Zack. 2016. “Naming, Shaming, and International Sporting Events: Does the Host Nation Play Fair?” Political Research Quarterly 69 (2): 258–269.
Bueckert, Michael. 2020. “Boycotts and Backlash: Canadian Opposition to Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Movements from South Africa to Israel.” Ph.D. diss., Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada.
Chaitin, Julia, Shoshana Steinberg, and Sharon Steinberg. 2017. “‘BDS—It's Complicated’: Israeli, Jewish, and Others’ Views on the Boycott of Israel.” International Journal of Human Rights 21 (7): 889–907.
Chalmers, Adam William. 2014. “Getting a Seat at the Table: Capital, Capture and Expert Groups in the European Union.” West European Politics 37 (5): 976–992.
Ciplet, David. 2019. “Means of the Marginalized: Embedded Transnational Advocacy Networks and the Transformation of Neoliberal Global Governance.” International Studies Quarterly 63 (2): 296–309.
Cooper, Davina, and Didi Herman. 2020. “Doing Activism like a State: Progressive Municipal Government, Israel/Palestine and BDS.” Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 38 (1): 40–59.
Cornelissen, Scarlett. 2008. “Scripting the Nation: Sport, Mega-Events, Foreign Policy and State-Building in Post-Apartheid South Africa.” Sport in Society 11 (4): 481–493.
Cress, Daniel M., and David A. Snow. 1996. “Mobilization at the Margins: Resources, Benefactors, and the Viability of Homeless Social Movement Organizations.” American Sociological Review 61 (6): 1089–1109.
Culcasi, Karen. 2016. “Engaging in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Debate.” Geographical Review 106 (2): 258–263.
Dart, Jon. 2021. “From Ferguson to Gaza: Sport, Political Sensibility, and the Israel/Palestine Conflict in the Age of Black Lives Matter.” European Journal for Sport and Society 19 (2): 151–169.
Davis, Angela Y. 2016. Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundation of a Movement. Chicago: Haymarket Books.
Davis, Christina L. 2004. “International Institutions and Issue Linkage: Building Support for Agricultural Trade Liberalization.” American Political Science Review 98 (1): 153–169.
Della Porta, Donatella. 2005. “Multiple Belongings, Tolerant Identities and the Construction of ‘Another Politics’: Between the European Social Forum and the Local Social Fora.” In Transnational Protest and Global Activism, ed. Sidney Tarrow and Donatella Della Porta, 175–202. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.
Dellmuth, Lisa M., and Elizabeth A. Bloodgood. 2019. “Advocacy Group Effects in Global Governance: Populations, Strategies, and Political Opportunity Structures.” Interest Groups and Advocacy 8 (3): 255–269.
de Shalit, Avner. 2016. “The Ethics of Academic Boycott.” Journal of Politics 78 (3): 642–652.
Diani, Mario. 1992. “The Concept of Social Movement.” The Sociological Review 40(1), 1–25.
Dorsey, James M. 2015. “Can FIFA's Blatter Prevent Israel's Suspension from International Soccer?” Al Jazeera, 18 May. http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/5/18/can-fifas-blatter-prevent-israels-suspension-from-international-soccer.html.
Drezner, Daniel W. 2009. “The Power and Peril of International Regime Complexity.” Perspectives on Politics 7 (1): 65–70.
Edwards, Bob, and John D. McCarthy. 2004. “Resources and Social Movement Mobilization.” In The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, ed. David A. Snow, Sarah A. Soule, and Hanspeter Kriesi, 116–152. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons.
Eglash, Ruth. 2018. “Argentine Soccer Team Cancels Match in Israel amid Death Threats against Messi.” Washington Post, 6 June. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/06/06/in-win-for-boycott-movement-argentine-soccer-team-cancels-match-in-israel/.
Eichner, Itamar. 2015. “Officials Scramble to Prevent FIFA Vote to Oust Israel.” Ynetnews, 29 May. https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4662695,00.html.
Eisinger, Peter K. 1973. “The Conditions of Protest Behavior in American Cities.” The American Political Science Review 67 (1): 11–28.
European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). 2009. “Press Release Issued by the Registrar—Chamber Judgement, Willem v. France.” 16 July. https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/app/conversion/docx/pdf?library=ECHR&id=003-2803253-3069793&filename=Chamber%20judgment%20Willem%20v.%20France%2016.07.09.pdf.
Falah, Ghazi-Walid. 2016. “Does a Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions Help in Ending Israel's Military Occupation of Palestinian Territories?” Geographical Review 106 (2): 288–293.
FIFA. 2015a. “Minutes of the 65th FIFA Congress.” 28 May. Hallenstadion, Zurich, Switzerland. https://digitalhub.fifa.com/m/2e7dd8544cdd3532/original/dacsoi935lesdwxroyvf-pdf.pdf.
FIFA. 2015b. “REPLAY: FIFA 65th Congress 2015—Press Conference.” YouTube, 30 May. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgPjwBSHzT4.
FIFA. 2016. “Minutes of the 66th FIFA Congress 2016.” 12 May. Mexico City, Mexico. https://digitalhub.fifa.com/m/7a7086d44ab57cf1/original/aeczius0hhi0m5j7y8su-pdf.pdf.
Fischbach, Michael R. 2018. Black Power and Palestine: Transnational Countries of Color. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Fishman, Joel S. 2012. “The BDS Message of Anti-Zionism, Anti-Semitism, and Incitement to Discrimination.” Israel Affairs 18 (3): 412–425.
Franklin, M. I. 2007. “NGOs and the ‘Information Society’: Grassroots Advocacy at the UN—A Cautionary Tale.” Review of Policy Research 24 (4): 309–330.
Gharqoud, Iyad Abu. 2015. “FIFA Should Give Israel the Red Card.” New York Times, 28 May. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/29/opinion/fifa-should-give-israel-the-red-card.html.
Giulianotti, Richard, Gary Armstrong, Gavin Hales, and Dick Hobbs. 2015. “Sport Mega-Events and Public Opposition: A Sociological Study of the London 2012 Olympics.” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 39 (2): 99–119.
Goldberg, Sarah. 2019. “And They Took to the Streets: The 2011 Social Protests in Tel Aviv and New York.” Ph.D. diss., Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel.
Gorokhov, Vitalii Aleksandrovich. 2015. “Forward Russia! Sports Mega-Events as a Venue for Building National Identity.” Nationalities Papers 43 (2): 267–282.
Haaretz. 2015. “WATCH: Pro-Palestinian protesters interrupt Blatter at FIFA Congress” Haaretz.com, 29 May. https://www.haaretz.com/2015-05-29/ty-article/watch-pro-palestinian-protest-at-fifa/0000017f-eb28-ddba-a37f-eb6eeb8d0001.
Hallward, Maia C. 2013. Transnational Activism and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hallward, Maia C. 2020. “BDS and BLM: Positionality, Intersectionality and Nonviolent Activism.” E-International Relations, 5 August. https://www.e-ir.info/2020/08/05/bds-and-blm-positionality-intersectionality-and-nonviolent-activism/.
Hallward, Maia C., and Patrick Shaver. 2012. “‘War by Other Means’ or Nonviolent Resistance? Examining the Discourses Surrounding Berkeley's Divestment Bill.” Peace and Change 37 (3): 389–412.
Harkov, Lahav. 2020. “UK Plans Anti-BDS Law after Court Rules against Gov't Ban on Boycotts.” Jerusalem Post, 4 May. https://www.jpost.com/international/uk-plans-anti-bds-law-after-court-overturns-local-ban-626871.
Hayes, D. J., J. A. Fox, and J. F. Shogren. 2002. “Experts and Activists: How ßInformation Affects the Demand for Food Irradiation.” Food Policy 27 (2): 185–193.
International Conference of Local Governments and Civil Society Organizations in Support of Palestinian Rights (ICLG). 2014. “Olive Declaration.” United Nations: The Question of Palestine, 16 December. https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-201755/.
Ismer, Sven. 2011. “Embodying the Nation: Football, Emotions and the Construction of Collective Identity.” Nationalities Papers 39 (4): 547–565.
Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 2015a. “PM Netanyahu Meets with FIFA President Joseph Blatter.” Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 19 May. https://www.gov.il/en/Departments/news/eventfifa190515.
Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 2015b. “PM Netanyahu's Statement on FIFA Decision.” Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 30 May. https://www.gov.il/en/departments/news/spokefifa300515.
Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy. 2019. Behind the Mask: The Antisemitic Nature of BDS Exposed. https://www.gov.il/BlobFolder/generalpage/behind_the_mask/en/strategic_affairs_Behind%20The%20MAsk_en.pdf.
Jaskulowski, Krzysztof, and Piotr Majewski. 2016. “The UEFA European Football Championship 2012 and Pop Nationalism in Poland: Between Confirmation and Contestation.” Identities 23 (5): 555–571.
Keck, Margaret E., and Kathryn Sikkink. 1999. “Transnational Advocacy Networks in International and Regional Politics.” International Social Science Journal 51 (159): 89–101.
Keohane, Robert O., and Lisa L. Martin. 1995. “The Promise of Institutionalist Theory.” International Security 20 (1): 39–51.
Kirby, Andrew, Sallie Marston, and Kenneth Seasholes. 1995. “World Cities and Global Communities: The Municipal Foreign Policy Movement and New Roles for Cities.” World Cities in a World-System, ed. Paul L. Knox and Peter J. Taylor, 267–279. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kolb, Felix. 2005. “Mass Media and the Making of ATTAC Germany.” In Transnational Protest and Global Activism, ed. Sidney Tarrow and Donatella Della Porta, 95–120. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.
Kriesi, Hanspeter. 1996. “The Organizational Structure of New Social Movements in a Political Context.” In Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings, ed. Doug McAdam, John D. McCarthy, and Mayer N. Zald, 152–184. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lee, Geoff. 2015. “FIFA Must Suspend Israeli Membership as It Did Apartheid South Africa's.” Middle East Eye, 8 April. http://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/fifa-must-suspend-israeli-membership-it-did-apartheid-south-africas.
MacInnes, Paul. 2022. “Russia Suspended from All FIFA and UEFA Competitions until Further Notice.” The Guardian, 28 February. https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/feb/28/fifa-and-uefa-suspend-russian-clubs-and-teams-from-world-cup-and-all-competitions.
MacLean, Malcolm. 2014. “Revisiting (and Revising?) Sports Boycotts: From Rugby against South Africa to Soccer in Israel.” International Journal of the History of Sport 31 (15): 1832–1851.
Maira, Sunaina. 2018. Boycott!: The Academy and Justice for Palestine. Berkeley: University of California Press.
March, James G., and Johan P. Olsen. 1984. “The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life.” American Political Science Review 78 (3): 734–749.
McAdam, Doug, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly. 2001. Dynamics of Contention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mearsheimer, John J. 1994. “The False Promise of International Institutions.” International Security 19 (3): 5–49.
Meyer, David S. 2004. “Protest and Political Opportunities.” Annual Review of Sociology 30: 125–145.
Mislán, Cristina, and Sara Shaban. 2019. “‘To Ferguson, Love Palestine’: Mediating Life under Occupation.” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 16 (1): 43–60.
Nepstad, Sharon E. 2006. “Creating Transnational Solidarity: The Use of Narrative in the U.S.-Central America Peace Movement.” Mobilization: An International Quarterly 6 (1): 21–36.
Nepstad, Sharon E., and Alexis M. Kenney. 2018. “Legitimation Battles, Backfire Dynamics, and Tactical Persistence in the NFL Anthem Protests, 2016–2017.” Mobilization: An International Quarterly 23 (4): 469–483.
Newman, David. 2016. “The Failure of Academic Boycotts.” Geographical Review 106 (2): 264–269.
Olesker, Ronnie. 2019. “Delegitimization as a National Security Threat: Israel and BDS.” Israel Studies Review 34 (2): 33–54.
Panizzon, Marion, and Micheline van Riemsdijk. 2019. “Introduction to Special Issue: ‘Migration Governance in an Era of Large Movements: A Multi-Level Approach.’” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 45 (8): 1225–1241.
Press-Barnathan, Galia, and Naama Lutz. 2020. “The Multilevel Identity Politics of the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest.” International Affairs 96 (3): 729–748.
Reiche, Danyel. 2015. “Investing in Sporting Success as a Domestic and Foreign Policy Tool: The Case of Qatar.” International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics 7 (4): 489–504.
Rietig, Katharina. 2016. “The Power of Strategy: Environmental NGO Influence in International Climate Negotiations.” Global Governance 22 (2): 269–288.
Risse, Thomas, and Kathryn Sikkink. 1999. “The Socialization of International Human Rights Norms into Domestic Practices: Introduction.” In The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change, ed. Kathryn Sikkink, Stephen C. Ropp, and Thomas Risse, 1–38. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ross, Robert B. 2016. “No Space for Apartheid: Toward an Academic Boycott of Israel among Geographers.” Geographical Review 106 (2): 276–282.
Roth, Laura, and Bertie Russell. 2018. “Translocal Solidarity and the New Municipalism.” ROAR Magazine 8. Accessed through the Internet Archive's ‘Wayback Machine’: https://web.archive.org/web/20220707125124/https://roarmag.org/magazine/municipalist-movement-internationalism-solidarity/.
Russell, Bertie. 2019. “Beyond the Local Trap: New Municipalism and the Rise of the Fearless Cities.” Antipode 51 (3): 989–1010.
Scheve, Christian von, Manuela Beyer, Sven Ismer, Marta Kozłowska, and Carmen Morawetz. 2014. “Emotional Entrainment, National Symbols, and Identification: A Naturalistic Study around the Men's Football World Cup.” Current Sociology 62 (1): 3–23.
Shawki, Noha. 2010. “Issue Frames and the Political Outcomes of Transnational Campaigns: A Comparison of the Jubilee 2000 Movement and the Currency Transaction Tax Campaign.” Global Society 24 (2): 203–230.
Sheskin, Ira M., and Ethan Felson. 2016. “Is the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement Tainted by Anti-Semitism?” Geographical Review 106 (2): 270–275.
Sikkink, Kathryn. 2005. “Patterns of Dynamic Multilevel Governance and the Insider-Outsider Coalition.” In Transnational Protest and Global Activism, ed. Sidney Tarrow and Donatella Della Porta, 151–173. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.
Smeds, Emilia, and Michele Acuto. 2018. “Networking Cities after Paris: Weighing the Ambition of Urban Climate Change Experimentation.” Global Policy 9 (4): 549–559.
Smith, Jackie. 2017. “Responding to Globalization and Urban Conflict: Human Rights City Initiatives.” Studies in Social Justice 11 (2): 347–368.
Tarrow, Sidney, and Donatella Della Porta, eds. 2005. Transnational Protest and Global Activism, Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield.
Tarrow, Sidney, and Doug McAdam. 2005. “Scale Shift in Transnational Contention.” In Transnational Protest and Global Activism, ed. Sidney Tarrow and Donatella Della Porta, 121–148. Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield.
Tilly, Charles. 2010. Regimes and Repertoires. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
UK Crown Commercial Service. 2016. “Procurement Policy Note 01/16: Complying with International Obligations.” Gov.uk, 17 February. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/procurement-policy-note-0116-complying-with-international-obligations.
Wajner, Daniel F. 2017. “Grassroots Diplomacy in Battles for Legitimacy: The Transnational Advocacy Network for the Brazilian Recognition of the Palestinian State.” Diplomacy and Statecraft 28 (1): 128–151.
Wang, Rong, and Wenlin Liu. 2021. “Moral Framing and Information Virality in Social Movements: A Case Study of #HongKongPoliceBrutality.” Communication Monographs 88 (2): 350–370.
White, Peter B., Dragana Vidovic, Belén González, Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, and David E. Cunningham. 2015. “Nonviolence as a Weapon of the Resourceful: From Claims to Tactics in Mobilization.” Mobilization: An International Quarterly 20 (4): 471–491.
Zimmermann, Andreas. 2015. “Palestine v. Israel: 1:0? Palestine, Israel and FIFA: What Are the Laws of the Game? Part I.” EJIL: Talk!, 24 June. https://www.ejiltalk.org/palestine-v-israel-10-palestine-israel-and-fifa-what-are-the-laws-of-the-game-part-i/.