Is it desirable to be a nongovernmental organization (NGO)—and even more desirable to be an NGO that is a household name? Yes, according to some important parts of the international relations literature. Many scholars believe that it is NGOs’ principled nature that most defines these actors, setting them apart from corporations or governments. Opinion polls reinforce this belief, showing that the public sees corporations and governments as significantly less trustworthy than broadly recognized NGOs. From this standpoint, being a household name such as Amnesty International, CARE, or WWF is tremendously attractive: within the already well-regarded population of NGOs, these organizations are particularly esteemed and valuable.

In The Authority Trap, Sarah Stroup and Wendy Wong question this belief, emphasizing how difficult it is to be an NGO. Although NGOs’ principled commitments are distinguishing features, those commitments often clash with pragmatic concerns about survival, status, influence, or authority. This trade-off between principles and pragmatism generates an “authority trap” that the authors believe ensnares the entire NGO population: the leading NGOs dilute their aims to maintain their privileged position, and other NGOs confront the unenviable choice of bandwagoning behind bland options or abandoning hope of any change at all.

The book explores this trap in steps. Chapter 1 introduces key concepts. “Leading NGOs” are the subset of international NGOs that possess access to and deference from multiple audiences at once, while “vanilla victories” are the palatable but modest policy changes that leading NGOs tend to obtain. Then chapter 2 discusses the audience-based nature of leading NGOs’ authority. Here authority is defined as the capacity and right to act, which leading NGOs acquire when governments, corporations, or other NGOs defer to them. Building from the assumption that attention is a prerequisite for deference, chapter 3 uses data related to governments, corporations, and NGOs to establish that few NGOs garner attention from even one of these audience types, let alone two or three. When the authors calculate the list of leading NGOs, it is equally interesting to see which famous names make the cut (e.g., Amnesty International, CARE, WWF) and which fall short (e.g., International Planned Parenthood, BRAC, Conservation International).

Next, three chapters present paired case studies relating to three audience types: governments in chapter 4, corporations in chapter 5, and fellow NGOs in chapter 6. The case studies seek to show that leading NGOs differ from other nongovernmental organizations in the strategies they favor and the outcomes they get. Specifically, leading NGOs tend to employ collaboration and competition much more than condemnation; they target sympathetic middle-power states; and they bring about only modest, incremental changes. Chapter 7 concludes with a warning about the harm that could accompany vanilla victories.

This book delivers valuable insights into tensions stymying both “the best” and “the rest” of the NGO population, but even more impressive is how the book can connect to a question that travels beyond NGOs: With various types of power, is more really more? It has taken decades for international relations scholarship to move away from a simplistic answer to this question, and much of that updating has stemmed from harsh real-world lessons—states with huge conventional militaries that fear terrorist groups, governments with vast nuclear arsenals they cannot justify using, export-led economies with their fortunes tied to trading partners’ whims, or corporate monopolists with growing fears of regulation and nationalization. The Authority Trap extends this “more is not always more” lesson to leading NGOs. In the authors’ memorable words, NGOs that strive to maintain deference from multiple audiences can expect their megaphone to be accompanied by a muzzle.

The book’s argument is sure to resonate with ordinary people’s experiences. The authors themselves note the parallels between the NGO authority trap and the median voter theorem: after political candidates in majoritarian systems win a primary and advance to the general election, they are usually pulled away from their own partisan platform and toward voters’ ideological middle ground. Life is filled with many other examples of ostensible wins reducing freedom, because “promotions” regularly force people to balance their own needs with the needs of a broader group. NGOs face this when they win a coveted seat at the negotiating table, and the rest of us face this repeatedly in other contexts. The book does a great service in helping readers understand a conundrum that is ever present and fundamentally human.

Because the subject is so valuable to NGOs and beyond, it is important to note three elements that would benefit from further refinement by these authors or by other researchers. The first is the main explanatory factor: multiple audiences. The Authority Trap uses deference from multiple audiences to separate “leading NGOs” from other nongovernmental organizations, and it argues that the contortion needed to maintain deference from multiple audiences is what hamstrings these leading NGOs into seeking bland, incremental policy changes. For producing such outcomes, however, it is not clear whether multiple audiences are a sufficient or even necessary condition.

With their relatively elevated status and large operations, leading NGOs might stay close to the status quo for many other reasons: perhaps because they have a stake in defending a status quo that they helped create, or because they represent the aggregate position of heterogeneous internal actors such as national chapters, or because they must choose their battles when they participate in several policy projects or venues at once. The book demonstrates that multiple audiences can be part of the explanation. However, are multiple audiences correlating or interacting with prominent NGOs’ other traits? Do similar outcomes occur regularly even in the absence of multiple audiences? Researchers could isolate the answers by examining particular NGOs as their deference from multiple audiences waxes and wanes.

A second element that would benefit from further refinement is the main outcome of interest: vanilla victories. The book defines this central concept as “changes that yield only incremental improvements but are widely palatable and often not particularly satisfying to anyone involved” (p. 127). The palatable-but-not-satisfying nature of vanilla victories makes sense intuitively, but its neither/nor position is slippery empirically.

Exactly where is the tipping point in palatability and satisfaction that demarcates a vanilla victory versus a “real” victory? Could an outcome be understood in one way initially but in a different way as years pass? Could an outcome be a real victory according to some actors but a vanilla one according to others? And if a leading NGO pushed for a particular outcome because that is what threads the needle of responding to multiple audiences at once, then for that leading NGO at least, would not this victory be both palatable and satisfying? Without answers to these questions, it is not clear how other researchers could replicate the book’s findings or extend the investigation to other empirical settings. To capitalize on its tremendous potential to lead, The Authority Trap must help others to follow.

A third element that would benefit from further refinement is the underlying motivation: the harmfulness of vanilla victories. The book focuses on establishing a link between multiple audiences and leading NGOs, and then between leading NGOs and vanilla victories. Periodically, it fuels interest in these linkages by musing about the damage that vanilla victories may inflict. The overall NGO population can be hurt, because even bland outcomes sometimes impose onerous costs, particularly on the vast number of small organizations. Leading NGOs can be hurt, because a long series of merely incremental changes might sour other NGOs enough to end their deference. And entire policy areas can be hurt, because diluted agreements that deflect attention, consume resources, and invite path dependence may be unhealthier than reaching no agreement at all.

It is clearly disappointing if NGOs are unable to improve global governance, but it is incredibly alarming if, perversely, they make things worse. Is the danger more hypothetical than actual? Would it manifest only at certain times or under certain conditions? At what point do vanilla victories that are individually palatable become collectively repugnant? What is the prescription for reducing these hazards? With The Authority Trap establishing the links from audiences to NGOs to vanilla victories, future research could establish the parameters around the book’s broader normative implications.

Honing these three elements—multiple audiences, vanilla victories, and harm—is important, because this book is important. It admirably demonstrates how challenging it is to balance an organization’s own principles, needs, and discrete choices with the pragmatic considerations, other actors, and accumulated decisions that pepper its environment. For NGOs and policy areas we care about, the authority trap risks outcomes not disgusting enough to reject but not delicious enough to savor. Complicated yet ubiquitous, the underlying tension between agent and structure will resonate with readers’ own experiences in discovering that, when it comes to authority, more is not always more.