What Was All the Shouting About? Strategic bargaining and protest at the WTO Third Ministerial (Seattle, Washington USA - 1999).

This paper offers both a theoretical critique of existing analytical frameworks for explaining how human rights norms evolve, and a practical discussion of specific new mechanisms central to cross-border advocacy on human rights in the context of international trade. It highlights two mechanisms ? blocking and backdoor moves ? that stand to enrich our understanding of how new normative understandings of human rights emerge. Empirically, the paper analyzes labor and economic rights advocacy in the context of the World Trade Organization’s Third Ministerial Meeting at Seattle (November 1999). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]