Peter Knaack The globalization of the “anti­globalizers”: A transnational network analysis of the social movement organization Attac. 1. Introduction How is “globalization from below” supposed to work? What organizational structures do the
political actors of civil society develop, and what mechanisms allow them to transcend national
borders in order to participate in the global political arena? The objective of the present article is to
answer these questions by investigating the inner functioning and the outer political efficacy of an
exemplary transnational social movement organization. I will start with a discussion of the
association between globalization and the rise of networks as dominant structures. Transnational
actors in business, as well as those involved in both institutional and contentious politics, tend to be
structured as networks, so I will focus on the dynamics that originate from this particular
organizational architecture. After a brief introduction to the transnational social movement
organization under study, I will proceed to a network analysis, both on a European and global scale.
Due to the nature of its structure, a series of positive and negative network effects arise. On the
other hand, several features of the agents of political action and their environments present
impediments to its full functioning as a transnational network. The combination of such network
effects and obstacles leads to a core dilemma of transnational political actors of civil society, which
will be discussed afterwards. The article will conclude with some reflections on the future
development of the role of civil society actors in the field of global politics.
Transnational networks and globalization If we understand globalization as the process of growing interdependence across national borders,
the contemporary world offers us a view of a very heterogeneous set of global developments in the
economic, political, and social realms. On an abstract level, I would argue that it is because economic
globalization has occurred at such an impressive pace that this subset of global integration has
received the majority of journalistic and academic attention, often leading to an exclusive
identification of this process with the term globalization. In an approach that includes all dimensions
of globalization, Manuel Castells has identified the structural transformation of the relationships of
production, power, and experience from vertical-hierarchical forms of organization to networks as
the defining characteristics of today’s world (Castells, 2004).
The emergence of networks that transcend national borders as a dominant organizational
structure has been most prominently observed in the world of business, where they are referred to as
globally integrated production networks managed by transnational corporations (Dicken, 2003;
Castells, 2000: 166ff.). This development has been interpreted by some as a challenge to the power
of the nation-state (Strange, 1992, 2001). Other scholars point to the emergence of
transgovernmental networks below, around and independent of traditional international
organizations as a state response to economic globalization (Slaughter, 2004; Raustiala, 2002;
Berman, 2005). This can be interpreted as a process of economic globalization followed by the
globalization of governmental politics.
But where do we find political actors of civil society in this world of globalized business and
professional, elite politics? Castells argues that identity building in the network society largely
happens as a defensive reaction against a globalization that dissolves the control and autonomy of
1 local institutions, and against the networking and flexibility that blur the boundaries of membership
and disconnect people from their locations. Resistance identities, understood as the “exclusion of the
excluders by the excluded” mobilize people around national, local and religious themes (Castells,
1998: 65ff.; Castells, 1997: 7ff.; Mittelman, 2000: 165ff.). Due to the very nature of their aims,
resistance identity organizations hardly engage in communication with each other or with the state.
However, there is another civil-society-based reaction to globalization that is currently emerging, a
social movement that proceeds beyond mere resistance to form what Castells would call a project
identity of alternative globalization (Castells, 1998: 8ff.; Araya, 2001).
The global justice movement This new social movement has been distinguished from its predecessors in three dimensions: (1)
structure, (2) constituency and identity, and (3) geographic scope. Let me briefly analyze the
originality of this social movement in each of these dimensions.
The network structure of the new movement has been identified by many scholars as its most
important feature. In contrast to the labor movement with its vertical structures and hierarchical
institutions, the new movement is made up of a set of horizontally connected nodes that maintain a
high degree of autonomy. This network setup allows for the organization of big scale collective
action without recurrence to a homogeneous activist base or a strong collective identity (Andretta,
2003: 78f.). Furthermore, a broad range of goals, collective action frames and strategies can coexist
within the network, and its architecture makes repression or co-optation of the movement much
more difficult (Jensen-Lee, 2004: 549f.). The success of this network structure is frequently
associated with the emergence of new information and communication technologies, in particular the
internet. Jeffrey Juris (2004: 342) identifies the network logic in three dimensions of the
contemporary social movement: (1) in its computer-supported infrastructure, (2) in its organizational
structure, and (3) in its political norms. This last dimension refers to the network as a political model,
in which traditional, vertical decision-making structures are replaced by an anti-hierarchical,
consensus-based setup. If we review these three network features, there is no doubt that the
contemporary movement is the first one to count on the internet, but is a networked organizational
structure and network norms really what distinguishes it from its predecessors?
Gerlach & Hine (1970) developed the SPIN model to describe the structure of the so-called New
Social Movements that emerged in the 1960s as segmented, polycephalous, and integrated networks.
Thirty years later, one of the authors makes some arguably minor changes but concludes that the
SPIN model is still valid today (Gerlach, 2001; Bennett, 2003a; 2004). But the network structure of
the contemporary movement is not the only aspect inherited from the past. The consensus
principle, a critical stance towards hierarchy, and the norms associated with it, were also
characteristic of the New Social Movements. Thus, if the network structure is not what determines
the originality of the movement, maybe it is its constituency and identity?
In one of the first large scale empirical studies on this topic, Donatella della Porta and colleagues
interviewed around 800 participants during the anti-G8 protests in Genoa, 2001, and an additional
2400 participants at the first European Social Forum one year later in Florence. Their results show
that the contemporary social movement recruits its members from three different clusters. The first
one is called the traditional left, or antineoliberals. This cluster includes trade unions, parts of the
social democrats and socialists who have become disenchanted with their respective parties, and new
organizations with mainly “reformist” claims, such as Attac. A second cluster, called “ecopacifist”,
embraces activists in the fields of ecology, pacifism, feminism and human rights. This cluster has
grown out of the (no longer new) New Social Movements, and comprises the majority of the NGOs
2 that actively participate in today’s movement. A third cluster consists of anti-capitalist activists whose
claims are more radical than that of the other groups. Surprisingly, overlapping membership seems to
be the dominant pattern. The Italian study found that around 45% of participants at the above
mentioned events say they belong to organizations in each of the three clusters (della Porta et al.,
2006: 43ff.).
This study confirms that parts of the Old and New Left, together with activists with religious
inspiration and a great amount of formerly politically inactive individuals merge into a very
heterogeneous constituency that distinguishes the contemporary social movement from prior
generations. Given the social heterogeneity of the movement and the diversity of its original
collective action frames (Snow et al., 1986), one may wonder what common identity unites its
different factions. For many scholars, the protests against the WTO Ministerial Summit in Seattle in
1999 represent the starting point for the construction of a shared master frame. Della Porta et al.
(2006) note: “From Seattle to Porto Alegre, the movement against neoliberalism tried to make sense
of the demand for globalization of rights that had emerged during the collective mobilizations of the
previous twenty years.” (64). An early attempt to define the movement as “anti-globalization” has
never been accepted by the activists themselves. Even though this label is still frequently used in the
media, empirical studies reveal that less than 5% of activists refer to the “anti-globalization” scheme
as main objective of the movement (della Porta et al., 2006: 82ff.).
Rather, in Seattle the traditional scheme of globalization vs. protectionism was replaced by one
that puts two kinds of globalization into opposition: the neoliberal and the egalitarian. Since then (if
not before), the fight against neoliberalism is the common “negative” denominator of the
movement. But the internal differences between the more radical, anti-capitalist wing and the
reformist, anti-neoliberal one within the movement have triggered movement entrepreneurs to find a
set of commonly shared values and “positive” goals. As Tarrow (2006) remarks: “Global justice has
proven an excellent frame-bridging symbol.” (74). The ambiguity of this master frame and the
acceptance of “democracy from below” as a procedural meta-frame allow for the coexistence of a
rather big range of the left spectrum. As a complement, activists have developed a “tolerant identity”
that frames internal differences primarily as enriching assets of the movement (della Porta, 2005:
175ff.; Juris, 2004: 350ff., della Porta et al., 2006: 62ff.).
Skeptics could still be inclined to state that the global justice movement is little more than a
conglomeration of various older movements. In order to complete the analysis of the originality of
the movement’s characteristics, let’s focus on its geographic scope. Della Porta et al. (2006) define
the contemporary movement as “supranational networks of actors that define their causes as global
and organize protest campaigns that involve more than one state.” (18), thus emphasizing that not
only their goals but also their actions go beyond national borders.
But again, transnational activism, in the many forms that have been systematized in Tarrow
(2006), has a long history. Mechanisms of diffusion of contentious politics across borders can be
traced from the Reformation, to Gandhi’s nonviolent resistance and up to contemporary xenophobic
nationalist movements. Even on a higher level of organization, transnational coalitions have been the
backbone of the Anglo-Saxon anti-slavery movement of the 19th century, and of the antifootbinding campaign in turn-of-the-century China, among others (Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Sikkink,
2005). Not even transnational demonstrations are new, as Rucht (2001:80ff.) reminds us with
reference to pacifist mobilizations in 1899 that brought people on the streets in 19 countries.
Another famous example of a transnational coalition of civil society actors with global claims,
which even formed an international secretariat and a series of institutionalized meetings, is the
International Workingmen’s Association. Founded in 1864 under the leadership of Karl Marx, what
3 was later called the First International and all its follow-ups reflect a whole century of transnational
emergence, institutionalization, ideological conflicts, and fracturing of the left. Tarrow (2006: 3ff.)
refers to this and other instances of multinational coalitions as “mobilization from above”. Indeed, as
has been discussed above, the pyramidal, hierarchical setup of the labor movement has not been
reincorporated in the contemporary one. But this distinction between historical and contemporary
activism refers merely to its structure, not to its transnational nature.
Nevertheless, a case can be made for the difference in quality of transnational coordination
between the older movements and the current one. While the New Social Movements spread to
many countries through various mechanisms of diffusion, they acted primarily within their national
political framework. This holds true even in the eighties and early nineties and in a rather denselyknit multinational political space like Western Europe. A study on contentious politics between 1984
and1997 in the European Community reveals that more that 80% of protests against EC policies
remained within the domestic level of member states (Imig & Tarrow, 2001). In contrast, the global
justice movement has gained major media and academic attention in association with international
events, both protests against big summits and its own regular gathering at the World Social Forum
(WSF) (Leggewie, 2003: 112f.; Andretta, 2003: 78f.; John & Knothe, 2007).
In summary, the contemporary social movement can be characterized in three dimensions:
structure, identity and geographic scope. When looking in isolation at each of these dimensions we
can find historic parallels, but their combination creates an entirely new phenomenon, that is, a
transnational network that mobilizes people from a heterogeneous background to struggle for global
justice.
In order to further clarify the dynamics of what I perceive to be the civil-society counterpart to
the transnational networks of institutional politics and business, an explorative and in-depth study of
a sample of this movement is necessary. As Kolb (2005) argues, studying the global justice
movement as a whole is impossible due to its complexity. Focusing on specific processes of a
relevant social movement organization (SMO) appears much more rewarding.
Until today, the majority of transnational SMOs in the global justice movement, like Earth Action
or PGA, serve as mere umbrella organizations, connecting a variety of national organizations that
preserve their own identity. Such organizations, based on arguably weak ties, may not tell us as much
about the dynamics of transnational networks as a genuine transnational social movement
organization. One such organization is Attac. Over the last few years, Attac has gained a reputation
for being prone to protest action, for acting on a global scale, and for relating its primary demands to
the area where globalization today is most pronounced, that is, financial markets. The fact that Attac
represents these central characteristics of the global justice movement at large, and has a genuine
transnational network structure makes it especially interesting for this case study.
Attac The story of Attac is well-told in several recent publications (Birchfield & Freyberg-Inan, 2004;
Grefe et al., 2002; Waters, 2006; Bemerburg & Niederbacher, 2007, Raab, 2007), so I would like to
focus rather on a few specific aspects of its foundation, transnational spread, and current
developments. Attac was founded in France in 1998 as an organization focused on raising awareness
about financial globalization, market speculation, multinational corporations, and the hegemony of
US-inspired neoliberalism. Its primary objective is to reclaim sovereignty and democratic control visà-vis the market logic of neoliberal globalization. An editorial article by Ignacio Ramonet on the
power of financial markets and the 1997 Asian crisis, published in the French leftist-intellectual
newspaper Le Monde diplomatique (LMD) sparked the birth of the organization. The organizational
4 structure of LMD, though formally independent, remains an important backbone of the movement,
to different degrees in different countries. Waters (2006) provides a revealing description of the
movement in France: “It seems that the typical Attac activist is a university-educated teacher or civil
servant in his/her forties or fifties, who reads Le Monde diplomatique, participates in left-wing
politics, is knowledgeable about world affairs and committed to an active participation in public life.”
(151).
Three partially interdependent processes account for the spread of Attac beyond France. First, the
media outlets of LMD in other countries provided the intellectual framework; Ramonet’s article
alone was translated into 8 languages. Second, French expatriates engaged as brokers in Attac
chapter foundations in several countries. Third, and most importantly, Attac France organized a
conference at the end of 1998, inviting representatives from other European countries, Latin
America, Africa, Asia and North America, in order to agree on an international platform that would
come to form the basis of an international movement for the democratic control of financial markets
and against neoliberal globalization (Eskola & Kolb, 2002; Padilla, 2004; Gambina, 1999).
The transnational social movement organization Attac was founded with nothing more than the
text of the international platform, a few mailing lists, an international website, and the intention to
hold international meetings once a year as formal channels of interaction. The French founders
opted against the creation of any transnational superstructure, although they informally adopted the
(occasionally controversial) role of supervisor, as will be explained in greater detail below.
Attac’s subsequent development can be divided in two phases. During the first years of its
existence, Attac grew in France at an impressive speed, and it also expanded internationally. Around
2005, the French chapter had around 30,000 members and additional Attac chapters were created in
42 countries. The success of this process of brokerage and diffusion is dependent on personal links
and similarity in worldviews – the pattern of the spread of Attac in the world provides a clear
example of that. The strongest Attac chapters are concentrated in continental Western Europe. Attac
outside of Europe has mainly emerged in French-speaking ex colonies such as Lebanon, Morocco,
Togo and other West African nations. Furthermore, chapters were founded in Japan and almost all
South American states, often with the intellectual and logistic support of the different Le Monde
diplomatique editions in those countries. On the other hand, the gap between the French intellectual
founders and the Anglo-Saxon world are evident: there is an Attac chapter in Quebec that has never
turned into Attac Canada. The existence of Attac UK was as ephemeral as the stay of the French
exchange students who ran it, and there has never been an attempt to found an Attac chapter in the
US.
In 2006, the discovery of an attempted fraud in an internal election triggered a deep crisis in Attac
France, with half of its members leaving the organization. At the same time, several other European
chapters grew stronger, above all Attac Germany, which emerged as the biggest chapter to date with
around 20,000 members. On the other hand, the activist base of most Attac chapters outside of
Europe diminished to the extent that it is not always clear whether they still exist or not. On the basis
of activity in worldwide mailing lists and participation in regional or global events, I was able to
identify 18 active Attac chapters in the period of July 2008-9, four of which can be found outside the
European network.
Method Attac is a transnational network of civil society actors, and as with any other network, a mere
examination of the nodes and their properties does not reveal a satisfactory picture unless the
relations between the nodes are taken into account. In this case, I take the national chapters of Attac
5 as nodes, and focus on the interactions between the chapters that are the essence of its function as a
transnational network. My research is based on a long tradition of social network analysis that, since
its origins in Moreno’s sociometry of the 1930s, has been refined and employed by investigators in
economics, political science, anthropology, sociology and other social sciences (Barnes, 1972;
Wasserman & Faust, 1994: 8ff.).
In order to identify the nature of the interactions between the national nodes of the Attac
network, I rely primarily on semi-standardized interviews with 30 activists from 20 countries. A first
wave of interviews dates back to 2005, and covered all active South American chapters at the time.
The results of that investigation have been updated in follow-up interviews in 2009. I undertook a
second wave of interviews during Attac’s European Summer University in August, 2008, one of the
first big regional events of the organization. The final wave of interviews took place around the
annual international Attac meeting at the World Social Forum in Belém, January 2009.
The selection of interviewees poses a crucial challenge of my research design. As I have
mentioned before, Attac lacks an official transnational superstructure. In addition, as Attac is a leftwing social movement organization, many activists share a certain reticence towards delegation and
hierarchies in general, although the heads of each national chapter are elected on a regular basis. As
prior research has revealed, personal, informal ties between activists are of central importance in
social movement organizations (Bennett, 2003b). There is no reason not to assume that there are
several parallel or intersecting sets of ties that form the transnational network of Attac, and indeed
preliminary results from my research suggest there are two main transnational networks: one that
links activists from several local chapters in different countries, and one that unites the heads of
national chapters. While both networks certainly deserve attention, in this article I will focus on the
latter one.
But the problem of selection is still not resolved. Who is part of the leading transnational
network, and who is not? Two mechanisms helped me to select the interview partners. First, many
activists know who in their national chapter is “in charge” of exchange with the other countries, so I
asked coincidental participants at the European Summer Academy to introduce me to that person in
their group. Second, personal network ties are by definition reciprocal. While interviewing each
activist that is part of the leading network, I asked him or her to identify counterparts in different
countries. In other words, participants have been selected according to ties of affinity and similar
hierarchy. The following interview with the identified counterpart served to check the validity of the
prior interviewee’s statements and to further explore the network.
Interview data has later been categorized and transformed into a UCINET dataset that allows for
detailed network analysis and visualization (Borgatti, Everett & Freeman, 1999). The information
gathered from the interviews has been complemented by an analysis of the web sites of each Attac
chapter, communication on half a dozen mailing lists dedicated to global or European topics, and
participant-observation during the European Summer Academy and the international Attac meeting
at the WSF.
Some earlier studies on social movement networks have restricted themselves to the analysis of
mailing lists, press communiqués or web page content (le Grignou & Patou, 2004; Uggla, 2006).
Others have created visualizations of SMO networks based on hyperlinks between the organizations’
web sites (van Aelst & Walgrave, 2004). This restricted research design usually leads to an incomplete
analysis of the object of study. In relatively informal organizations, and especially in politics, the true
nature of interactions that define the dynamics of the network are hardly ever written down and
published for a broad audience. Therefore, a multi-method research design that combines the
analysis of public features of an organization with participants’ insider information is likely to
6 generate a much more detailed picture of the object under study. Having discussed the advantages
and limits of the particular type of network analysis undertaken here, let’s take a look at the network
properties of Attac.
2. Analysis of the Attac network Attac is first and foremost a network of local chapters with a high level of autonomy, although
the key campaigns are voted upon on a national basis. A network analysis of each national Attac
would be an interesting endeavor, but as my interest rests on the transnational dynamics of this
network I simplify the empirical data to represent every national chapter as a unitary node.
The ties between the nodes do not stand for mere communication; given the widespread use of
mailing lists and my preliminary observation results, it is not unlikely that, over time, a subscriber has
received (and responded to) a mail from activists in almost every country with an active Attac
chapter. Instead, I focus on what I regard as essential elements of political network dynamics, that is,
the transfer of financial, human and intellectual resources. Financial resources are of importance,
especially as they allow the leaders of the smaller Attac chapters to travel to European and global
meetings. However, most of these resources are pooled in a Europe-wide solidarity fund, so it is hard
to identify the exact flows from one chapter to another. As a general idea, the poorer chapters of
Eastern Europe, Latin America and Africa tend to be supported financially by Scandinavia,
Germany, and France. By human resources I refer to speakers at conferences or protest events on the
one hand, and activists that have participated in demonstrations on the other. The category intellectual
resources has a fourfold meaning in this study. First, the identification of an issue for a campaign is the
very basis of the work of any political actor. Second, Attac members elaborate on this issue through
the production of texts and audiovisual formats, thereby providing the specific Attac “framing”. As
Attac is a multi-language network, translations of such texts have been taken into account. Third,
these issues and analysis are communicated to a wider audience, through a mix of press statements,
conferences, publications, and other media. Finally, I include protest forms as an intellectual
resource, given that Attac and other organizations of the global justice movement became famous
for their spectacularly staged events, which brought them a great deal of media attention.
The first graph depicts the European Attac network. The size of the node represents the
resources of each national chapter, as measured in the number of due-paying members. Blank nodes
symbolize chapters with such a low level of activity that their existence is not always clear. This is the
case when a national chapter has fewer than 10 members, and/or when it has not been mentioned by
any of the interviewees. The transfer of resources always has a sender and a receiver, so ties can
represent directionality. The following graph features an intuitive simplification of tie characteristics.
A line stands for a resource transfer from the thicker to the thinner end, whereas an equally thick line
corresponds to reciprocity. This simplification is necessary to arrive at a readable graph, a more
detailed incursion of the nature of these transfers will be provided in the following chapters.
The graph reveals at a glance the heterogeneity of the Attac Europe network. It is possible to
distinguish two sources of power within a network. One is based on the singular attributes of the
node, and the other is a product of its relational position in the network. According to Leiras (2007:
68ff.), the power of an organization is a function of its political, economic, organizational and
symbolic capital. These aspects tend to be highly interdependent, as the example of the French and
German Attac chapters shows. Both organizations count on over 10,000 dues-paying members,
which gives them the amount of human and economic resources necessary to organize large-scale
mobilizations and produce high-quality political communication material. In addition, both chapters
have an affiliated “academic council” of like-minded economists and social scientists that enhance
the legitimacy and credibility of Attac’s messages.
7 Graph 1: The European Attac network
The second measure of power in a network is a result of the “actor’s location at the centre of
exchanges of practical and symbolic resources” (Diani, 2003a: 106). Diani (2003a) distinguishes
between two types of influential players in a network: leaders and brokers. Nodes with a high
number of connections to other nodes can be regarded as leaders, whereas brokers have the capacity
to link segments of the network that do not communicate directly (McAdam, 2003: 293ff.) Again,
Attac France and Germany, with in-degree measures of 13 and 12 respectively, have the central
position of leaders. In addition, they form the hub of communication inside the network, linking the
nodes in North, East and Southern Europe that are not directly connected. Thus, in this case the
power of leaders and brokers are concentrated in the same nodes of the European Attac network.
Beyond the leaders and brokers, a second group of Attac chapters can be identified with average
resources and degrees of centrality (in-degree of 4 to 6): these are the chapters in Norway, Finland,
Austria and Spain. Finally, a more peripheral group of Attac chapters, located mainly in Eastern and
Southern Europe, share the characteristics of having very limited resources and very few connections
to the rest of the network. Nevertheless, the European network in general is tightly knit, especially in
comparison to the global network, as the graph below shows.
8 Graph 2: The global Attac network
Given that Attac defines itself as a global network, its actual geographic reach is somewhat
surprising. At first glance, the graph reveals the high concentration of Attac in European countries;
there are only 4 active chapters outside the European network, and each on a different continent.
Beyond the above described financial flows, those four chapters maintain almost exclusive ties with
Attac France. Only Attac Japan has additional connections with their counterparts in Finland and
Germany.
The case of Attac in Africa is especially interesting. Attac Morocco joined the European network
in 2007 and is therefore much more connected to the European than to the African Attac chapters.
Nevertheless, activists from Togo took the initiative in 2008 to invite Attac Morocco and the feeble
chapter of Burkina Faso to an African Attac meeting. This was the first and last intent to date to
establish an Attac network beyond Europe.
In summary, the network analysis of Attac reveals the existence of two very different subnetworks. A tightly interwoven web spans a large part of Europe and Morocco, connecting around
14 national chapters, albeit with differences in group size and connectedness. Attac France and
Germany are the central nodes, with regards to both their resources and position within the network.
The remaining active Attac chapters are scattered all over the planet. These Attac groups are small
and not interconnected; their link to the global Attac network is almost exclusively restricted to the
founding chapter in France. Now that we have established the particular setup of this web, let’s
move on to the network effects of an organization like Attac.
3. Network Effects Being part of a transnational network is very different from being part of a national organization.
But what is the nature of this difference? What does networked collaboration mean for each of the
nodes and their political environment? As we have seen above, the combination of network
structure and transnational reach is something relatively new in the world of social movements. Until
now, few systematic investigations on the effects of this constellation have been undertaken. In
9 addition to relevant work carried out in social movement studies, in this section I will draw on
concepts from the fields of government networks and economics in order to analyze four network
effects that I discovered through the interviews with Attac activists.
Pooling Resources In his book on transnational activism, Tarrow (2006: 161ff.) exposes a set of coalition benefits
and costs. The balance of the two determines the duration of a transnational coalition. Attac is a
transnational social movement organization and not a mere coalition, but several of Tarrow’s
coalition benefits are a useful basis for the analysis of network effects. One of them is pooling
resources.
A movement whose name-giving primary purpose is the taxation of financial transactions needs a
considerable amount of economic expertise in order to gain credibility. Since the beginning, it has
been the goal of Attac to confront neoliberal thinking on its very own playing field: economics
(Susan George). The problems that are identified and the proposed alternatives in the globalization
discourse are almost always of a complex and often technical nature, therefore the counter-expertise
provided by the members of the Scientific Council are of crucial importance. However, only a few
chapters count on such institutions, most notably the French and German ones. As a Norwegian
Attac member notes: “We are dependent on help on these huge international issues which take a lot of time and
resources to collect and produce information. I think that's very important.“ As such expertise is widely shared
within the network, and to the extent that language barriers are overcome by translation, all the
nodes in the Attac network can benefit from the intellectual production of the resource-rich
chapters.
This does not imply an uncritical repetition of ideas produced elsewhere. A Belgian activist
explains: “I would say, every pertinent source of analysis is used. But we have our own reflection of the reading of
documents, of analysis. It is a mixture of the two, which I think is necessary because we in Belgium don’t have the
capacity to do all this work, so we share the work with others.” 1. However, as compared to the circulation of
ideas and analysis in the global justice movement at large, texts produced by Attac members tend to
enjoy higher rates of acceptance within the network.
Motivation A classic network effect identified by economists is that the utility of the network increases
significantly with every additional member, that is, increasing returns to scale (Ray, 1998: 132ff.;
Raustiala, 2002: 64ff.). A classic example is the telephone network that becomes more useful with
every additional telephone connected. To translate this concept into politics is not easy, but as the
concept of utility is associated with the user, I propose activist motivation as an equivalent to utility,
which grows with every additional national chapter added to the network. It is important to
distinguish this phenomenon from the very well-known dilemma of collective action (Olson, 1968;
Lowery et al., 2004). Free-rider problems arise with growing membership in a single organization,
not in a transnational network in extension. In fact, every chapter is in charge of all the political work
in their respective national polity. However, smaller groups in particular can be greatly motivated by
being part of a bigger network. With reference to the European Partnership Agreements (EPA), a
Danish activist comments: “If we were the only ones doing campaign on the EPAs, we would feel pretty
1
My translation. Original version: “Je dirai toutes les sources d'analise pertinente sont utilisées. Mais il y a une reflexión propre de lecture des document, d'analise. C'est un melange des deux, et je crois que c'est necessaires parce que nous n'avons pas en Belgique, l'association n'a pas la capacité de faire tout ce travail, donc le travail qu'on fait on compartage avec d'autres.” 10 demoralized very very quickly. Because one little country would not be able to change the EU policy at all. But to know
that we have more or less the same political agenda as campaigners elsewhere in Europe, that's super important.”
Note that transnational networking does not automatically translate into improved political
effectiveness, nor do activists expect this to be the case. Rather, it is the possibility of working
together on a common goal that is at the source of motivation, as an Attac member from Morocco
explains: “When we entered the European network, which was recently, less than a year ago, but it gave us a
tremendous impulse.” 2 While the motivational effect might be strongest in smaller nodes of the
network, big chapters do also benefit from it, as a French activist notes: “At the moment of the internal
crisis of Attac France two years ago, it was very important to have the support of the European Attacs that showed
that they were with us. To show also that there was another Attac that was getting stronger, which was Attac
Germany etc., so that above all is important.” 3
Reputation While pooling resources and networked motivation happen, albeit to a lesser extent, in the global
justice movement at large, there is another network effect that is particular for a social movement
organization: reputation. Again, it is in the economics and business literature that we can find
elaborations on network reputation. Managers that want to extend their business countrywide or
across borders face the decision of whether or not to engage in arms-length contracts with outside
firms or keep production in-house, depending (among other things) on the level of certainty with
which outsourced production will meet the company’s quality standards and thus not damage its
reputation. Likewise, franchising contracts are made wherever the license-giver can make sure that
the outlets meet the quality standards associated with the brand, while local licensees benefit from
the reputation of the overall network (Dicken, 2003: 202ff.; Navaretti & Venables, 2004: 24ff.;
Kaplinsky, 2005).
Translated to the world of social movements this means that Attac has a brand name as an
important transnational actor in the global justice movement. This reputation is an important asset
for national chapters in three ways. First, it enhances their visibility (Kolb, 2005: 108ff.). To give an
example from Morocco: “Frequently, people have written us that got to know Attac through international actions.
Or because they read the Monde diplomatique.” 4 Second, it gives the national chapters a strategic identity as
a transnational player, often as the only one, in their respective political environments. A Danish
activist explains: “When a privatization offensive is purely of a national character, mostly there would be no need for
us. But once the European Union is involved, many trade unions tend to be very blind of the political dynamics in that
case.” Third, it raises the status and legitimacy of the national chapter. Raustiala (2002: 57ff.) has
identified an equivalent effect in transgovernmental networks of regulators, whose members gain
status and domestic power through their membership in the network. An activist from Austria
explains how this effect translates into the world of civil society actors: “We have recognized in our work
2
My translation. Original version: “Cuando entramos en la red europea, que hace poco, hace un año no más, pero nos dio un impulso tremendo.” 3
My translation. Original version: “Au moment de la crise interne d'Attac France il y a deux ans, c'était très important d'avoir le soutien des Attac d'Europe, de montrent qu'ils étaient avec nous. De montrer aussi qu'il y avait un autre Attac qui était en train de se renforcer qui était Attac Allemagne etc., donc ca surtout est important.“ 4 My translation. Original version: “Muchas veces nos ha escrito gente que han conocido Attac por acciones internacionales. O por leer el Monde diplomatique.”
11 that when we present a paper where we say, this is a European paper, that is, a paper written by the European Attac
network, it has a different weight than if it is ‘only’ made by Attac Austria.” 5
There is a darker, less-often told side of reputation, though. Just as the image of a brand name
rises and falls with every franchise outlet, so does the image of Attac with every national chapter.
Negative experiences with recently established chapters in Eastern Europe that allegedly used the
intra-network solidarity of Attac to help apparent “delegates” emigrate illegally to Western Europe
have made activists more cautious about accepting newcomers. As a reaction to this situation, a
catalogue of requirements was established. Only after accepting these requirements and meeting with
leading activists in person will a group in a new country be allowed to join the Attac network.
Furthermore, reputation allows for blackmailing. In the case of the Polish chapter, internal
quarrels have led to the expulsion of a group of dissidents, who now engage in the denigration of the
national leaders. Taking into account that this is a chapter with less than 40 members, such a
campaign would be of no interest to anyone else, and probably both dissidents and leaders would
drift into marginality like so many political factions before them. However, Attac Poland is Attac. As
the dissidents have the power to hold the brand of Attac hostage in front of the significant public of
the European Social Forum (in Malmö, September 2008), this has become an issue for the entire
network. A Hungarian Attac member comments: “These days we try to settle the personal differences between
Poland, you know inside the Polish movement, because there might be a scandal if they don't settle this. Because those
people who were expelled, and people who were fired from Attac Poland now are forming a coalition. And in Malmö it
can be a big scandal. This is not subtle.” Several delegations of German, Austrian, Swedish and Hungarian
Attac members have travelled to Poland and/or interviewed the Polish leadership and dissidents in
order to solve this problem and save the reputation of Attac.
Undermining nationalist frames The extent to which a transnational campaign meets nationalist resistance greatly determines its
success. In their analysis of historical transnational campaigns, Keck & Sikkink (1998) take the
example of the anti-footbinding campaign, started by Western missionaries in early 20th century
China. It was quickly adopted by Chinese intellectuals who developed their own frame, interpreting
the end of footbinding as a necessary step to strengthen China against foreign intervention. To the
contrary, a similar campaign against female circumcision in Kenya triggered domestic opposition that
turned this practice into a symbol of the integrity of national values and traditions. The former
campaign was very successful, while the latter failed, and Keck & Sikkink (1998) conclude: “One of
the most important differences between the two campaigns has to do with how the advocacy
campaign articulated with nationalist discourse.” (73).
A transnational social movement organization like Attac has the potential to mobilize activists in
different countries for the same claims, thus subverting nationalist interpretations. When Attac
decided to campaign against the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe (TCE), it successfully
employed this network effect with an interesting twist. In the months before the French referendum
in 2005, opposition to the treaty was associated in public opinion with nationalist sentiments, in part
because many of the opponents came from the political right. As an activist from Austria tells:
“That’s when we developed the idea to take people from other EU countries, where there was no referendum, to France.
So they can join the discussion and take the message to the French that we weren’t allowed to vote, but that we would
5
Mi translation. Original: “Das haben wir schon gemerkt, in unserer Arbeit, wenn wir ein Papier vorlegen, wo wir sagen, das ist ein europaeisches Papier, also ein Papier vom europaeischen Attac‐Netzwerk, das hat noch ein anderes Gewicht als wenn es halt, in Anfuehrungszeichen, ‚nur‘ von Attac Oesterreich ist.“ 12 vote against it, and that their No is a European No.” 6 The transnational network structure of Attac
facilitated the exchange of activists across borders, and Attac was the only organization that involved
foreigners in the French campaign. A German member evaluates the Attac campaign, noting:
“Because the opponents (of the Treaty) are always confronted with ‘you are against Europe, and we French are alone
and the others support it’ and so on. Therefore this has been a boost in legitimacy for the No-campaign in France in
general.” 7
4. Network Obstacles Both the negative and positive network effects mentioned above may lead to the erroneous
assumption that transnational social movement organizations are, for better or worse, smoothly
integrated networks. This chapter intends to explain some of the crucial reasons why this is not the
case. In sequence of increasing importance, I will refer to three network obstacles that hinder the
functioning of a transnational social movement organization.
Language The existence of language barriers is one of the most obvious and most frequently mentioned
impediments to fluid cooperation across borders. Oral and written translation remains a clumsy and
resource-intensive endeavor, so in many ambits of transnational cooperation we have seen the
crystallization of a standard language. The connection between power and the choice of the standard
language is maybe most clearly demonstrated by the clear dominance of English as the international
business language. Attac, however, is a French idea. The original LMD text, the original political
strategy and expertise, all have been produced and published in French. No wonder that the Attac
network spread to a great extent along language lines. My research shows that until today, many
leading Attac activists throughout the network are able to speak French. That this is not the case for
the entire network caused some trouble. As a German activist recalls: “At the first meetings, people didn’t
understand each other at all. Because one half always spoke English and the other one French.” 8 From a pragmatic
point of view, the best option would be to adopt the language spoken by the majority of the network
members. A Norwegian activist reasons: “Of course there would be language barriers, I suppose. But I don't
think that will be critical, I guess, there are at least so many people who speak English, I suppose, in every Attac that
it would be possible to coordinate things.” Humans, however, are not merely pragmatic beings, and
especially inhabitants of old empires seem to have a considerable reluctance to use a language other
than their own. The question of the standard language in the transnational Attac network turned into
a confrontation that erupted at a European meeting in 2003. “Initially this was a tremendous fight. And at
some point, the Scandinavians, Austria, Germany all of us together, won it against the French” 9, a German
activist bluntly states. Even though English is accepted as the primary language among the European
6 My translation. Original: "Da haben wir die Idee entwickelt, sozusagen Leute aus den anderen EU‐Laendern, wo es keine Abstimmung gegeben hat, nach Frankreich zu bringen, damit die eben dort auch mitdiskutieren und den Franzosen und Franzoesinnen die Nachricht bringen, dass eben wir nicht abstimmen duerfen, wir aber auch nein stimmen wuerden, und das ihr Nein ein europaeisches Nein ist.“ 7
My translation. Original: : “Da ja die Gegner immer erstmal damit konfrontiert sind, ihr seid gegen Europa, und wir Franzosen stehen ganz allein und alle anderen sind dafuer und so weiter, ja? Ist das halt ein Legitimitaetsgewinn gewesen fuer die Nein‐
Kampagne in Frankreich insgesamt.“ 8
My translation. Original version: "Und die ersten Treffen, da haben sich die Leute überhaupt nicht gegenseitig verstanden. Also weil die eine Hälfte immer Englisch und die andere Französisch geredet hat.“ 9
My translation. Original version: „Am Anfang war das voll der Kampf. Und den haben wir halt irgendwann gemeinsam, alle zusammen, die Skandinavier, Österreich, Deutschland gegen die Franzosen gewonnen“ 13 Attac chapters now, my research indicates that much of the communication beyond Europe is still in
French.
Lack of Resources In a survey of over 300 transnationally integrated social movement organizations, Smith (2001:
106ff.) has detected the lack of financial resources as the primary obstacle to integration. However,
the article leaves open what the surveyed organizations would want to use the money for. In the
interviews I conducted, Attac members repeatedly referred to two complementary uses of desired
extra financial resources: travels and professional staff. The high value activists attach to regular faceto-face meetings may be surprising given the frequent use of computer-based communication by
Internet-savvy activists and the importance of ICT in many academic accounts (e.g. Castells, 2001;
Juris, 2004; van Aelst & Walgrave, 2004). Bennett (2005: 206f.) introduces concepts like “virtual
brokerage”, “hyperlinked diffusion”, and “virtual emulation” that may give the reader the impression
that the essence of political activism happened online. However, many activists have learned that
electronic communication, especially in political issues, varies between marginally productive and
outright annoying unless they have had the prior chance to meet face-to-face, establish trust and
socialize. In fact, the most important mailing lists in the Attac network are closed to outsiders, and
some lists require a formal self-introduction of the prospective new member before he or she is
approved for admittance by the other list members. However, even this can only be a feeble
substitute for real-life encounters. A Norwegian activist explains why: “As I know your face, not just your
voice, and I know what you like, what funny things about you, and annoying things about you, things that I like, it’s
much better, easier to communicate on email. […] There’s so many misunderstandings that one can make semantically
in email, so to understand the other people it’s very important.” Therefore, many activists see the lack of
money for travel for face-to-face meetings as an obstacle for transnational cooperation.
A second obstacle mentioned by many activists is information overload. A Spanish Attac member
reports that he receives between 15 and 50 mails through the international and European networks
on a daily basis, not even taking into account the national flow of information. He concludes: “Really,
among the Attacs, there are so many things that must be done that sometimes we don’t have enough people to do
everything.” 10 In addition, frequently it is the national leaders that are in charge of both national
campaign management and transnational coordination. Therefore, several of them expressed the
desire to employ a person to take care of communication management. The fact that only the biggest
Attac chapters have the financial resources to do so explains in my opinion to a large extent the high
correlation between node size and connectedness in the Attac network.
Political heterogeneity Social movements do not operate in a vacuum, but within a complex set of context features that
have been the object of much political science research in the last decades. Every social movement is
made of activists with a very particular, mostly national, political socialization, and every successful
social movement can only act within the general spectrum of what is considered politically acceptable
at least by a significant minority. The factors that help explain why, when, and how social
movements get started, mobilize significant amounts of people, influence institutional politics or not,
and decline, have been collected and analyzed by a multitude of studies of political opportunity
structures (Meyer, 2004; Tarrow, 1988, for critical accounts see Goldstone, 2004; Meyer & Minkoff,
10
My translation. Original version: "Realmente es que los Attac, hay tantas, se tienen que hacer tantas cosas que a veces no tenemos tanta gente para hacer todo, no?” 14 2004). These political opportunity structures happen to be very different across countries, and so are
the movements.
Thus, Attac-wide consensus may never be reached in a series of topics like nuclear power (France
in favor, Germany against), military and security policy, or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A French
activist recalls another dimension of heterogeneity: “There are extremely different forms of militant cultures
between countries, and that translates into the action forms that the Attacs can have.” 11The commitment to nonviolent action is part of the international platform and thus shared by all chapters, but Attac
Germany has a wider interpretation of this concept that includes acts of civil disobedience,
something that would not be considered acceptable in Attac France or Austria, for example.
These national differences are more a result of social movement cultures than of political
opportunity structures per se. However, the relationship to state and government has an additional
influence on the characteristics of each chapter. For example, the president of Attac Morocco is
currently in prison, and according to activist accounts, the Tunisian Attac chapter was dissolved soon
after its foundation due to consistent state repression. On the other side of the spectrum, Attac
Finland receives a yearly funding of €70,000 by the Foreign Ministry for special projects, which more
than doubles their membership-fee budget. Similar kinds of state funding boost the budgets of Attac
Norway and Sweden. This attachment to state elites may create internal tensions, as a Finnish activist
notes: “It's a choice whether you, like, sort of follow the people's opinion, or whether you want to maintain your allies
at the national level.”
National public spheres The role of the media is an essential issue in the discussion of the dynamics of transnational social
movements. As Oliver & Myers (2003) state: “any network analysis of communication in protest
waves in the modern era is sterile if it does not treat the mass media.” (184). For any social
movement organization, the role of the media can be evaluated according to two outcomes: political
efficacy and member recruitment. Let me briefly review the two in the context of transnational social
movement organizations.
The complex interplay between civil society, the state and the market via communicative action in
the authority-free, consensus-based deliberative space of the public sphere has been thoroughly
elaborated by Jürgen Habermas since the 1960s. However, as Fraser (2007) notes, his model of the
public sphere has always been based within the territorial framework of the Westphalian nation-state.
Globalization undermines this basic assumption and therefore leads to two problems. First, as the
sum of people affected by a political decision is no longer identical to the sum of people involved in
that decision (through deliberation in the public sphere and democratic mechanisms of preference
articulation), a legitimacy deficit is arising. Second, the translation of civil society’s communicative
power into binding laws and administrative power is disrupted because international institutions are
not held directly accountable to a public sphere, leading to an efficacy deficit (Habermas, 2006:
149ff.; Fraser, 2007: 20ff.).
Social movements as civil society actors have always relied on the media as part of the public
sphere in order to further their claims. But how do transnational social movements relate to the
described transformations of the public sphere?
11
My translation. Original version: “Il y a des formes extremement differents des cultures militantes entre país, y que c'est ce traduit dans les formes d'action que peuvent pouvoir les Attac.” 15 More optimistic interpretations point to the salience of new media strategies adopted by activists
in order to raise awareness across borders. Regular counter-summit mobilizations and big
simultaneous demonstrations like the one on February 15th, 2003, both heavily reliant on prior
Internet-based coordination, can be regarded as successful strategies to draw media attention (Rucht,
2004: 39ff.). Kolb (2005) provides an excellent description of how the counter-summit to the G8
meeting in Genoa, 2001 established Attac as a relevant actor in the political spectrum of Germany. A
German activist confirms: “Without Genoa, and the media hype that followed, Attac Germany would have
probably never ascended so much.”12
Visibility, however, does not translate easily into efficacy. When asked about political actions
targeted at national versus international institutions, a French Attac member responds: “There are
democratic institutions, levers that you can pull, like the European Parliament, national institutions, that still are a bit
democratic: you can put weight on them through public opinion. At the international level it is much more complicated
to influence organizations that are not elected, like the G8, the WTO.” 13 This commentary is in line with the
general distrust of political institutions in the global justice movement. International institutions lack
democratic responsiveness and accountability, and no international polity has emerged as comparable
to the nation state, not even on a European level (della Porta & Tarrow, 2005: 12ff.; Rootes, 2005:
22ff.). Given the juxtaposition of relatively open domestic and closed international political
opportunity structures in most democracies today, transnational social movements in these countries
engage mainly in what Sikkink (2005: 155f.) calls “defensive transnationalization”. A German Attac
member explains the prevalent strategy: “We direct ourselves to the broad public, and in my opinion the EU
Commission is hardly interested in this, while in Germany, if you manage to generate a certain level of protest, then
there is certain openness in the political system.”14
The fact that transnational social movements still play out a significant part of political conflicts
within the boundaries of the national public sphere takes us to the limits of national media attention.
Political entrepreneurs have experimented with different forms of political action in the European
framework. For instance, several demonstrations against policies of the EU Commission have taken
place exactly where these decisions are being made. For example, European trade unions organized a
demonstration of more than 30000 people in Brussels in 2005, and the European Attac chapters
mobilized more than 5000 activists for a demonstration in Strasbourg in 2006. The one thing that
unites these efforts at political influence is their lack of repercussion in the national media outlets in
Europe (Grefe et al., 2002: 169ff.). On the other side, rather random circumstances like the
circulating 6-month presidency of the European Council turn European politics into a domestic
issue. An Austrian activist reports: “When there is a connection, like the presidency, of course it is easier to get
through. That is, the media then ask for different opinions on this topic.”15 Summing up several years of
experience with European activism, a German activist concludes: “There are separate political public
spheres that ensure that it makes sense for every Attac to first think about what fits the respective political public
12
My translation. Original version: „Ohne Genoa hätte es, und dem Medien‐Hype, der da gefolgt ist, wäre Attac Deutschland wahrscheinlich nie so aufgestiegen.“ 13
My translation. Original version: “On a des institutions démocratiques, des leviers sur lesquels on peut justement peser, qui sont le parlement européen, qui sont les institutions nationales, qui sont encore un peu démocratiques, sur lesquelles ont peut peser: on peut peser sur l’opinion publique. Au niveau international c’est beaucoup plus compliqué dans le sens ou l’on doit peser sur des organisations non éluées qui sont des organisations comme le G8, la OMC et la c’est beaucoup plus compliqué.“ 14
My translation. Original version:“Wir richten uns an die breite Öffentlichkeit, und das interessiert die EU‐Kommission meiner Meinung nach relativ wenig, während in Deutschland, wenn du es halt schaffst, ein gewisses Maß an Protest zu erzeugen, dann hat das schon, dann gibt es schon ne gewisse Offenheit im politischen System.“ 15
My translation. Original version: „Und wenn es einen Aufhaenger gibt, so wie die Praesidentschaft, dann ist es natuerlich leichter, auch durchzukommen. Beziehungsweise die Medien fragen ja dann auch nach, praktisch zu verschiedenen Meinungen, zu diesem Thema.“ 16 sphere of my own country, which is exactly not Europeanized. And this makes international cooperation difficult, of
course. I suppose this is the biggest obstacle of all.”16
A second function of the media for social movements refers to member recruitment. As the
protest issue and tactic are projected via media coverage to potential actors, the media complement
the traditional recruitment process through personal networks (Oliver & Myers, 2003: 184f.). Let us
see how transnational movements perform in this aspect.
Years before the global justice movement emerged there was a proliferation of environmental
movement organizations (EMO), some of which extended their realm of action transnationally. In an
interesting article that traces the development of some British EMOs, Rootes (2005) reports
stagnating membership numbers for Greenpeace and Friends of Earth since the early 1990s. In his
view, this is an instance of a dilemma between the local, national and transnational: while these
organizations gain influence by way of providing scientific expertise and professional lobbying at an
international level, they need to maintain wide public support for financing and legitimacy in the eyes
of national governments (Fisher, 1997). The author also notes that after an initial international
expansion phase, Greenpeace chapters have declined or even disappeared in a number of countries.
As Rootes (2005: 41f.) states: “The reasons vary, but the common thread is the perception that, in its
insistence on being a transnational elite-dominated EMO, it was insensitive to the local and domestic
concerns and perspectives of many who had previously supported it.”
In a similar vein, Uggla (2006) has argued that Attac chapters were able to maintain or gain
members and political standing to the extent that they incorporated national issues on their agenda.
The author notes a general tendency towards national issues in the rather successful French and
German chapters, while Attac Sweden, which maintains exclusively the original international claims,
faces dwindling membership numbers (see also Routledge, 2003). This argument, although
somewhat contradicted by the experience of the Finnish, Norwegian and Hungarian chapters, is
actually taken up by the interviewed Attac members. When asked about the effects of exclusively
national campaigns, activists generally reported positive outcomes in terms of political standing and
sometimes in terms of membership growth. The results of international campaigns, however were
somewhat mixed. On one hand, activism in international issues like world trade and financial markets
brought the Attac chapter new members (as mentioned above in the German case) and reputation as
a transnational player. On the other hand, the interviewees recognized that only a limited number of
Attac members are and remain interested in international issues.
Again, the agenda setting power of national media plays an important role. An Austrian activist
reports how local members created a working group on migration, after being inspired by the work
of Attac Spain. Interestingly, she attributes the subsequent failure of the Austrian working group to
the lack of salience of the issue in the national public sphere. In her words: “It is difficult, if this is not
taken in the public sphere, it is difficult to come up with it just on your own.” 17
As it seems, taking on international issues is a riskier endeavor than campaigning on issues that
are discussed widely in the respective national public sphere. A Swedish activist admits: “I really want
to work with national issues, because I think we will get more members than if we were only working with
international issues. Because people will not see us then, we are not meeting people on the street, if you can say it like
that.”
16
My translation. Original version: “Dann gibt es die getrennten politischen Öffentlichkeiten, die einfach dafür sorgen, dass jedes Attac sinnvollerweise erstmal überlegen muss, was passt denn in die jeweilige politische Öffentlichkeit meines eigenen Landes, die ja eben nicht europäisiert ist. Und das erschwert natürlich die internationale Zusammenarbeit. Vermutlich ist das das stärkste Hemmnis überhaupt.“ 17
My translation. Original version: “Es ist sehr schwer, wenn das in der Oeffentlichkeit ueberhaupt nicht besetzt ist, ist es natuerlich schwer, das ganz allein rauszubringen.“ 17 5. Efficacy vs. Representation How can a transnational SMO, in spite of these network obstacles, act beyond national borders,
taking advantage of synergies and positive network effects? This question references the historic
problem of coordination and the dilemma of the inner functioning of democratic organizations.
More than 40 years ago, Robert K. Merton eloquently described the dilemma between the
instrumental and the group-maintaining functions of every voluntary association. The tension
between the effective attainment of an organization’s goals and the adequate representation of its
members’ preferences becomes especially salient in democratic associations (Merton, 1966).
Long before the advent of the global justice movement, the first social movement generation
confronted with the “democratic dilemma” was the labor movement. The need for efficient,
technically competent administration, patterns of bargaining at a national level, and the insight that a
union’s usefulness is a function of its collective strength and unity were at the base of a trend
towards the centralization of union power. But this increase in efficacy came at the detriment of local
channels of preference articulation. Thus, unions were widely criticized for having succumbed to the
“iron law of oligarchy” (Michels, 1962). Lipset (1961) recognizes that, in contrast to voluntary
associations in general, “the concern for union democracy emanates from several sources: the image
which unions perpetuate of themselves as champions of the underprivileged, the view of many
intellectuals that unions are or should be agents in the building of a better society, the belief in the
need of a counterbalance to the employer’s power, and the view that an institution to which is
delegated some of the authority of a democratic state has a special obligation to be democratic in the
exercise of this authority.” (p. 4).
All of these factors can be translated into valid concerns for the current global justice movement
and its organizations. In fact, today’s SMOs regard internal democracy and representation as central
values. But it has become much more difficult to live up to this expectation, for two reasons. Unlike
their predecessors, organizations of the global justice movement tend to have a very heterogeneous
member base (Kaase, 1984), and their range of claims and activities transcends national borders.
Jeffrey Juris (2004: 353ff.) distinguishes between two distinct “forms of practicing democracy”
that are relevant for social movement organizations. First, political representation can be channeled
through permanent structures that allow these movements to be in direct contact with institutional
actors, that is, as a lobby. Second, movements can be structured radically as networks, with flexible
patterns of coordination and direct participation. Historically, these networks remained confined to a
local context, but new networking technologies now enable them to work on regional and global
scales.
This is a very useful dichotomy that has been put into a diachronic perspective by Bennett (2005).
The author distinguishes between two generations of the global justice movement. Originally, the
field was dominated by NGO-centered networks that initiated campaigns in brokered coalitions to
reach specific political goals. These campaigns were discontinued as soon as the targeted
governments or corporations ceded to the demands of the NGOs. In contrast, a second generation
of social movement actors has emerged, direct action networks that forward a wide range of claims in
decentralized campaigns that are difficult to “switch off” once they have started. This kind of
“permanent campaign” is rarely targeted at a specific government, rather at a variety of corporations,
economic blocs, or international institutions like the WTO or the IMF. I do not agree with Bennett’s
generational approach, as I regard NGO networks as the latest stage of the New Social Movements
and the result of their professionalization. From my perspective, NGO networks are both
predecessors of and participants in the global justice movement. However, Bennett’s distinction
18 between the lobbying strategy of NGO networks and the broader, direct action strategy of the
contemporary movement proves highly relevant for this analysis.
The futility problem of representation Bennett mentions the tension between NGO networks and the direct action strategy of the global
justice movement, something that was confirmed in my interviews. In fact, Attac decidedly adopted a
non-NGO strategy in order to avoid the loss of mobilization potential that the main NGOs in the
field suffered throughout the 1990s. A French activist summarizes what is a general consensus across
the network: “We are not a lobby group. We are a people’s education group.” 18 And even though Attac
started as “the Tobin-tax movement”, as soon as activists in the local chapters started working on
the topics they were interested in, it evolved into the multi-issue network it is today (Faschingeder et
al., 2003: 9f.; le Grignou & Patou, 2004: 169ff.).
Taking into account this emphasis on the interests of the activist base, how can transnational
cooperation be anything else than a mere multiplication of plurality? As I have mentioned above, the
founders of Attac decided to abstain from the creation of any supranational channels of
coordination. A German activist gives his opinion: “There you simply see that Attac has been founded as a
federation of independent national Attacs. And this is why the international cooperation is, in comparison to others
like Greenpeace or Amnesty and so on, structurally precarious. And this is the reason why we cannot take advantage
of the potentials, which surely are much bigger at that level.”19
The wasted potentials that this Attac member refers to are twofold. The first one is a loss of
efficiency, as political and intellectual work is being duplicated in several countries. When asked
about the production of brochures, a Spanish activist gives an example: “As far as I know, for example
on the Tobin tax, one has been made in Finland, one in France, they’re doing one in Germany, and in some other
places, everyone makes his own.”20 But the second dimension is much more significant for any social
movement: its political efficacy.
According to Bennett (2005: 213ff.), social movements have political capacity to the extent that
they are able to shape public debate, and to the extent that they develop effective political relations
with protest targets to influence political change. Transnational NGOs opted for the latter by
narrowing down their spectrum of issues and focusing on professional lobby work. But even if
organizations of the global justice movement choose the first option, in order to overcome the
national boundaries of the public sphere and shape the public debates in several countries,
transnational coordination is essential. A German activist recognizes that this is a lesson learned in
recent years: “With respect to financial markets it was almost grotesque. Because all the Attacs have made a
financial market campaign at some point, but never at the same time. Of course, this cannot work at all, when the
decisive level has been Europe for a long time now.” 21 Four years after the founding of Attac, leading
members from European countries met and shared their experiences of partial successes in public
discourse in their respective countries, and of their inefficacy at the European, let alone the global
18
My translation. Original version: “On n'est pas un group de lobbying. On est un groupe d'éducation populaire.“ My translation. Original version: „Da sieht man einfach, dass Attac als Föderation von unabhängigen nationalen Attacs gegründet wurde. Und deshalb ist die internationale Zusammenarbeit im Vergleich zu anderen, also Greenpeace oder Amnesty oder so, strukturell prekär. Und das führt dazu, dass wir Potenziale, die es auf der Ebene sicherlich viel größer gibt, nicht heben können.“ 20
My translation. Original version: “Yo más bien conozco, por ejemplo tasa Tobin se ha hecho uno en Finlandia, se ha hecho uno en Francia, se hacen en Alemania, se hacen en algunos sitios, cada uno hace el suyo.” 21
My translation. Original version: “Bei den Finanzmärkten war das schon fast grotesk. Weil alle Attacs haben irgendwann mal Finanzmarkt‐Kampagnen gemacht, aber nie zum gleichen Zeitpunkt. Das kann natürlich überhaupt nicht funktionieren, wenn die entscheidende Ebene längst Europa ist.“ 19 19 level. As a result, “Attac seminaire” was created in 2002, a series of half-yearly meetings in which
European activists gather to jointly analyze the political situation and coordinate campaigns.
The creation of Attac seminaire (or attacsem as it is usually called) has two implications. First, it
has greatly boosted the capacity of the European Attac chapters to coordinate their campaigns and
raise their political efficacy. The European Attac network has successfully campaigned against the
European Constitutional Treaty, and has recently decided to focus its attention on two transnational
campaigns. In addition, it has elaborated documents of proposals for an alternative Europe and
various other issues. Second, it has established a mechanism of delegation that runs counter to the
principle of broad-based representation. Attac seminaire is a group of 20-30 activists selected by
merit (not election) and the mailing list through which members maintain communication between
meetings is closed to everyone else. In fact, the majority of Attac members have never heard of its
existence.
The fact that these two implications are necessary conditions for each other reveals the tension
between efficacy and representation. In my opinion, to the extent that they narrow down issues and
actors involved in formulating content and strategies, social movement organizations can raise
political efficacy. At the same time, this process reduces representation at the activist base. This is
not a new finding; in fact, this story is as old as institutional politics itself. However, the architecture
of direct action networks is designed precisely to circumvent the fallacies of vertical structures. The
need for and the success of the Attac seminaire is evidence that the radicalism of this alternative
project has not withstood political reality.
The legitimacy problem of efficacy As a result, tensions arise between activists in favor of representation and those in favor of
political efficacy. A Danish activist (who happens to be an Attac seminaire member) noted: “At the
European Summer Academy, one issue came up repeatedly which was if we are to get the networks work properly we
should have common priorities. And to some people common priorities is a horrific thing. To some, it would be an
opportunity. I would regard it as an opportunity.” Note that this is not the conflict between radical and
reformist factions or between proponents of contradicting political claims, as predicted by many
observers. Rather, this is a meta-controversy about whether the currently prevalent inclusive identity
should be curtailed for a gain in efficacy or not.
In an attempt to solve this dilemma, Attac leaders have adopted a two-step process of decision
making. First, campaign priorities and contents are elaborated in the echelons of the European
leadership group, thus enhancing their efficacy. Then, the selected priorities and contents are
presented to each national chapter, where they are discussed by the broader member audience. As
decisions are made by consensus in the national assemblies, only campaigns and contents that ensure
widespread support within the activist basis will finally be adopted in the Attac network. However,
the cautious observer will rapidly perceive the difference between the agenda-setting power of the
leadership and the veto power (conditioned by social mechanisms of conformity and others) of the
activist basis. In fact, within the leadership group there are additional power inequalities. The
delegates of the big chapters can convincingly argue that they have the resources to play out a
campaign on the ground, so their suggestions tend to weigh heavier than the ones of the weaker
chapters. A Hungarian activist leaves no room for egalitarian left-wing ideals in social movements:
“You know, what happens in the economical political field in the European Union, it is the same thing is going on in
the civil society movements. The so-called leading or core countries of the EU, you know, French, German, even they
hide it, but you know, they are the leaders, and all the others, you know, just follow.”
20 This is not to say that the international relations paradigm of neorealism is the final explanation
for the behavior of political actors at all levels, not at all. Rather, even if the tension between efficacy
and representation has not been resolved by any structural political design up to date, social
movement entrepreneurs are trying to find new and innovative ways to minimize its shortcomings in
the complex field of transnational political coordination.
6. Conclusions Transnational social movement organizations are a new actor in the global political arena - a latecomer to globalization, one is tempted to say. These organizations are structured as networks, just as
their global counterparts in business and governmental politics are. However, social movement
networks face unique opportunities and challenges that condition the way these networks can deliver
on their intention to articulate civil society’s interests on a global scale.
Three strategies for exerting influence in global politics are available to civil society actors. The
first is to establish a direct channel to international institutions. NGO-centered networks, the
predecessors of the global justice movement, have been quite successful at lobbying on an
international level, albeit at the cost of losing a significant part of their original support base. In a
different approach, the global justice movement attempts to raise awareness through actions directed
at a broad audience.
The second approach to exerting political influence is what has made the contemporary
movement famous. In what can be termed as a strategy of “think global, act global”, activists
organize counter-summits and demonstrations at every major meeting of international institutions
like the FMI or WTO. This strategy has the great advantage that, as a German activist put it, “the
enemy does the coordination work”, setting the time, place, and agenda of the event. However this
strategy has two major shortcomings. First, summit protests put the movement in a reactive position,
with little chance to express their own ideas and proposals. Second, media coverage is as segmented
as public spheres are, so the movement has little control over how the protests are covered in the
national media outlets, or whether they are covered at all.
As a consequence, political entrepreneurs of the global justice movement adopt a third strategy:
“think global, act local”. This is where positive network effects like a strategic identity, domestic
leverage, and other reputational dynamics come into play. To the extent that they are able to improve
political efficacy across borders, while remaining representative to their activist base’s concerns,
transnational SMOs can exploit important synergies and become the decisive agent of civil society in
global politics.
However, language differences, lack of resources, political heterogeneity and national public
spheres represent significant obstacles to such transnational synergies. If these obstacles appear
paramount to leading activists, they will tend to implicitly shift to a strategy of “think national, act
national”. While it may be successful in terms of member recruitment and visibility, this strategy
wastes the potential that transnational SMOs have as relevant actors in the global political arena.
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