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Category: Project

Description: Despite the long-recognized role of international organizational networks in spreading global norms, including democracy, democracy-promoting international non-governmental organizations (DINGOs) remain understudied. This visualization addresses this gap by plotting nations’ degree centrality within various DINGO networks over time from 1981 to 2015, thereby quantifying, for the first time, the configuration of nonstate democracy promotion networks. Results indicate that all networks are extremely dense, and nations’ mean centrality increases over time. Although dispersion tends to decrease over time—particularly after 2000, relatively high dispersion persists for one network: civil liberties. Thus, although more nations are increasingly integrated within DINGO networks overall, this trend is not uniform. We suspect this difference reflects nations’ growing disillusionment with an enterprise that only condemns civil liberties when geopolitics allows and the subsequently declining traction of civil liberties norms. Results suggest a pivotal yet potentially controversial role of DINGO networks and motivate further research exploring their effects.