Framing and localizing anti-corruption norms in transnational civil society organizations: Transparency International in Portugal

ABSTRACT Social mobilisations against corruption have been found to be notoriously difficult to sustain. A major problem from a frame analysis perspective is that the opaque and often abstract, systemic nature of the problem makes consensus about who is responsible and what should be done about it hard to reach. Based on an ethnographic case study tracing the local implantation of Transparency International in Portugal, this article shows how social mobilisations can be successfully created and maintained despite divergent and sometimes outright contradictory ways of framing the addressed social problem (i.e., corruption) among leaders, members and supporters. Process-tracing techniques serve to highlight ‘scholarly activism’ and trans-European advocacy coalitions as key mechanisms: Action-oriented social research fulfils the double function of providing funds for an independent non-governmental and non-business organization and, maybe more importantly, of creating common reference points for members and supporters (frame alignment) despite the persistence of divergent individual frames. However, the intellectually elitist nature of the self-identified ‘grassroots movement’ and the strong emphasis on academic ‘objectivity’ and social ‘respectability’ prevents broader advocacy coalitions with more dispersed, non-hierarchical social movements which address similar causes albeit with a very different repository of action.