ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the effectiveness of Transnational Advocacy Networks (TANs) where getting an issue onto the agenda, motivating policy change and changing procedures and practices are features of effective TANs. It examines the dam projects of Sardar Sarovar in India and Ilisu in Turkey, both of which were led by top-down developmentalist states with a modernizing vision and contested by local as well as national and transnational networks. The chapter argues that social movements and TANs against the adverse effects of large dams are effective in changing global norms pertaining to such large-scale projects and these new norms provide pressure points to other social movements throughout the globe. It concludes that the social movements and TANs in these two cases were effective in changing the norms related to large dams even though, over time, hydropower lobbies attempt to challenge these.
