When international agreements fail to solve global problems like climate change, transnational networks attempt to address them by applying global best practices, like Integrated Watershed Management, locally around the world. Grassroots Global Governance uses nodal governance theory to explain why some efforts succeed and others fail, but also why the process of implementing global ideas locally causes them to evolve. Transnational actors’ success in implementing global ideas depends on the strategies they use to activate networks of grassroots actors influential in local social and policy ar ... More

When international agreements fail to solve global problems like climate change, transnational networks attempt to address them by applying global best practices, like Integrated Watershed Management, locally around the world. Grassroots Global Governance uses nodal governance theory to explain why some efforts succeed and others fail, but also why the process of implementing global ideas locally causes them to evolve. Transnational actors’ success in implementing global ideas depends on the strategies they use to activate networks of grassroots actors influential in local social and policy arenas. Yet, grassroots actors neither accept nor reject global ideas as presented by outsiders. Instead, they negotiate how to adapt them to fit local conditions. This contestation produces experimentation with unique institutional applications of a global idea infused with local norms and practices. Local experiments that endure are perceived as successful, allowing those involved to activate transnational networks to scale up and diffuse innovative local governance models globally. These models carry local norms and practices to the international level where they challenge existing global approaches. By guiding the way global ideas evolve through local experimentation, grassroots actors reshape international actors’ discourse, organizing, and the strategies they pursue globally. This makes them grassroots global governors. To demonstrate this, the book compares transnational efforts to implement local Integrated Watershed Management programs across Ecuador and shows how local experiments altered the global debate over how to conceptualize and implement sustainable development. In doing so, the book reveals the grassroots level as a terrain where global governance is constructed.