All for one and one for all: Human rights networks in Mexico

This dissertation demonstrates that the current literature on human rights organizations misses two crucial aspects: interorganizational relationships between various nongovernmental organizations and variation among human rights NGOs. In order to fill this gap in the literature, this dissertation examines domestic human rights networks, which are defined as a set of autonomous nodes engaged in a self-aware, extra-organizational effort at coordinating the resources and activities of a number of individual organizations to act towards a common goal. While both the individual organizational literature and the international network literature provide important insights into how human rights NGOs influence human rights outcomes, I argue that studying the domestic human rights network provides the answers to critical questions precisely because it constitutes the area where the individual organizations and the international network merge. By examining the domestic human rights NGO network we gain invaluable insights into the mechanisms by which human rights violations are transformed into issues, and how and when individual NGOs work together domestically and internationally to influence human rights outcomes within a particular country. Mexico presents an excellent opportunity to apply theories of interorganizational relations and networks to an emerging and growing human rights NGO sector in order to answer relevant and important questions regarding the mechanisms by which human rights conditions improve or not. This dissertation provides a systematic analysis of a formal Mexican human rights NGO network, la Red Civil de Organismos de Derechos Humano "Todos los Derechos para Todos." I find that the domestic network structure and the domestic network's position within the transnational network benefit and constrain domestic human rights activities and priorities.