Transnational Advocacy Without Northern NGO Partners: Vietnamese NGOs in the HIV/AIDS Sector

Abstract

Existing scholarship on transnational advocacy can give the impression that low- and middle-income country (“Southern”) nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) require high-income country (“Northern”) NGO partners to effectively engage actors outside their own state. However, Vietnamese NGOs (VNGOs) have had significant success in their efforts to change the policies and practices of bilateral and multilateral actors toward Vietnam without significant Northern NGO partnership. This article asks how VNGOs have achieved such influence and whether their advocacy effectiveness is likely to be mirrored elsewhere. Drawing on a novel case study of VNGOs in the HIV/AIDS sector, it finds that expertise, credibility, and high organizational capacity have allowed VNGOs to successfully adopt Northern NGOs’ insider lobbying strategies and implement them independently. While the development of VNGO capacity has been accelerated by the unusual legal environment in Vietnam, we predict that as Southern NGO capacity increases elsewhere, reliance on Northern partners will decrease.