What is the role of civil society actors in the diffusion of ideas and the construction of international norms? I will address this question relying on the experience of a political sociologist specialized on social movements who discovered international relations. At the time, I was working on the advocacy of same-sex marriage in Belgium and Spain, attempting to explain the similarity of LGBT arguments and strategies across these three countries. This puzzle urged me to use new analytical tools, which became increasingly present in my research. This trajectory is intertwined with the globalization of my research object: same-sex marriage and LGBT rights more broadly. This presentation will also discuss the relevance of the “velvet triangle” as a process to explain norm diffusion.
