Eschle, Catherine and Stammers, Neil (2004) Taking part: social
movements, INGOs and global change. Alternatives, 29. pp. 335374. ISSN 0304-3754
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Taking Part: Social Movements, INGOs, and Global Change.
by Catherine Eschle , Neil Stammers
Can social movements make a difference in global politics? That question is,
ultimately, one that only the historical practice of transnational social movements
will answer. But is that answer likely to be heard or understood by analysts, even if
it were to ring in the air around them? We think not, unless there is a fundamental
shift in the way the transformative agency of social movements is conceptualized. In
this article we try to substantiate this claim through a critique of existing approaches
to the study of transnational social movements. We argue that the attention given to
transnational social movements across several different academic disciplines has
failed to generate the intellectual and disciplinary synthesis needed to understand
their potential. On the contrary, the limitations of each discipline have simply been
replicated by others, leaving the field cluttered with incommensurable or
overlapping analyses, concepts, and jargon.
Investigation of the relationship between social movements and global change is
relatively new. Only in the last decade or so has a distinct literature on this topic
emerged. Debates in the theory of international relations about the role of
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and movements have clustered around the
notions of global civil society and global governance. At the same time, a more
unified body of work has emerged from politics and sociology that attempts to
globalize existing approaches to social movements. These two branches of enquiry
frequently focus on similar kinds of movement activism and organization. They have
both been influenced by arguments about globalization and been given increasing
impetus in the last few years by the wave of high-profile activism opposed to
processes and institutions associated with neoliberal aspects of economic
globalization.
For the most part, cross-disciplinary engagement on globalization and social
movements remains limited. Yet some of the most significant problems with existing
academic work traverses disciplinary divides. These problems include a simplified
and simplistic conceptualization of movements and organizations; the privileging of
either instrumental or expressive dimensions of movement activism; an assumption
of a hierarchical relationship between global and local domains of politics; an
underdeveloped awareness of the dangers of bureaucratization and oligarchy in
movement organization and, conversely, of the potentialities of movement-based
contributions to democratic praxis. In responding to these problems, the ultimate aim
of this article is to point toward a more holistic, complex and critical understanding
of movement activism and its potentially transformative role in global politics.
There are certain things that this article--constructed as it is as a critique of
contemporary academic literature in IR, politics, and sociology--does not try to do. It
offers neither an empirical case-study of movement activism nor a detailed
interrogation of activist representations of the movements of which they are a part.
This is not because we see such analyses as unimportant. We draw briefly on some
activist texts and depictions of movements to help make our argument and, indeed,
believe that activist representations of themselves and the world are a vital source of
knowledge that can have constitutive power. However, what we offer here is an
immanent critique of the concepts used in academic literature. Further, much of our
discussion is concerned with how to conceptualize social-movement activism in
terms of geographical space, and we do not attend to the historical, diachronic
dimension of such activism. Again, this is not because we deem it unimportant. As
Alejandro Colas argues, movement agency needs to be evaluated in the context of
"changes and continuities in the structures and processes of social life through time."
(1) However, our focus here on contemporary literature, and its difficulties in
conceptualizing movement organization across borders, encourages a largely
synchronic analysis. Finally, a major preoccupation in the existing literature is a
focus on activism judged to have the potential to foster "progressive" social change.
We replicate this pattern, partly because of our object of study in this article but
partly because we also have a normative commitment to exploring such potentials.
That said, we recognize the importance of developing an analytic framework capable
of analyzing "regressive" movements. At least some elements of our proposals for
analytical reconstruction are indeed relevant to the study of social movements in
general.
Our argument will be elaborated in three main parts. The first will review the
existing academic literature, outlining the distinctive disciplinary trajectories of
debate before cutting across the disciplines to delineate pragmatic, structuralist, and
transformationalist approaches. The second part will analyze key problems with each
of these three approaches and detail their different manifestations. The third part will
provide suggestions for analytical reconstruction.
An Overview
The relationship between movement activism and global change has long been
neglected because of the separation of the study of social and political interactions
within states from the study of relations between them. Most approaches to social
movements in sociology and politics have had "a national bias and a tendency to
ignore global or world-systemic developments," even when comparing activism in
different countries. (2) The discipline of international relations was purposely
established to study "global or world-systemic developments" conceived narrowly as
interstate relations. From the dominant view, only states are capable of effective
agency in global politics; activities inside states and nonstate actors are largely seen
as irrelevant. Together these disciplinary biases have helped to obscure the
possibility that social movements might be affected by, and effect, processes of
global change.
However, the last few decades have seen an increasing challenge to these
foundational ontological assumptions and the disciplinary division of labor
associated with them. In IR, for example, we find a marked growth in literature on
nonstate actors in the context of a sustained assault on realist hegemony. There have
been two main waves of argument here, the first emerging in the 1970s and early
1980s in the form of liberal theorizing of interdependence or transnationalism. This
approach pointed to empirical evidence that states were being locked into a web of
cooperative as well as conflictual relations. A range of actors operating inside and
across states became the legitimate focus of enquiry. (3) This approach is currently
undergoing a revival, (4) coinciding with a second wave of interest in nonstate or
transstate actors that has been highly influenced by postpositivist interventions into
international relations and by the development of the literature on globalization.
Liberals feature strongly here, too, alongside more radical voices. This second wave
has a common concern with NGOs and/or social movements, frequently locating
these actors in a newly emergent realm of global civil society, and granting them a
key, if contested, role in processes of global change, the operations of international
organizations, and/or processes of global governance. (5)
Although these arguments in international relations draw eclectically upon a range of
arguments from social and political thought, there has been only limited attention
paid to social-movement theory as it has developed in sociology and politics. It is
even rarer to find awareness of the recent efforts of a few social-movement theorists
to overcome their national bias and extend their frameworks to the global level. (6)
This latter tranche of work has largely sought to extend the compass of resourcemobilization theory, the political-opportunity structures approach, and associated
arguments about repertoires of contention and framing. Resource-mobilization
theory examines the availability of social resources and the capacity of
entrepreneurial movement organizers to access these. The political-opportunity
structures approach adds a concern with changes in the political context, particularly
shifts in patterns of access, realignments within the polity, divisions within existing
elites, and lessons movements learn from one another as evident in the spread of
repertoires of action. More recently, attention has been paid to the frames activists
develop to mobilize supporters and that may aim ultimately to challenge dominant
paradigms in society. (7) Most efforts to globalize these social-movement theories
are closely aligned with liberal perspectives in international relations, but they use a
different language. They talk primarily of transnational social-movement
organizations (hereinafter, TSMOs), transnational advocacy networks, and the
involvement of both in processes of transnational contention that take advantage of
the new political opportunities made available by international organizations and
regimes and that involve the development of transnational frames and multilevel
action repertoires. (8)
The difference in language between liberal-oriented approaches in the different
disciplines may have functioned to obscure cross-disciplinary affinities, although a
few social movement theorists have recently recognized overlaps with debates in
international relations. (9) Further, it should be noted that analyses of framing, with
their emphasis on ideas, ideology, and culture, may explicitly move beyond a liberal
framework. (10)
Some limited attention has also been given by sociologists to the global applicability
of new social-movement theory. This approach posits that deep structural change in
the nature of modernity has produced movements that are diffuse in form, broadly
cultural in orientation, and aiming to constrain state and economic power rather than
to gain control over it. While these arguments developed within and about a
specifically European context, it has also been argued that structural change has
occurred globally, that movements exhibiting these distinctive traits are found in
other parts of the world, and that they can stretch across state borders. (11) As we
will show below, such an approach appears to have had extensive, but largely
unacknowledged, influence on recent writing in IR.
In what follows, we group the contemporary literature on social movements and
global change into three main perspectives that cut across disciplinary divisions. It
should be stressed that these are ideal-type categorizations, pitched at a level of
generality that will not capture the nuances of individual theorists. The first approach
is pragmatic in its orientation. This is work that builds on a broadly liberal and/or
social democratic outlook and on an empiricist epistemology. Pragmatists tend to
emphasize formal organization and to see the interface between state and nonstate
organizations as the basis of political life: the appropriate arena for democracy and
the source of social change through the shaping of state policy. Conditions of
globalization are understood to be embedding states into networks of cooperation
with each other and with INGOs or TSMOs. Perhaps two main versions of
pragmatism can be discerned. One is more analytical: exploring the role played by
NGOs/TSMOs within international organizations and changing global structures
with an eye to assessing movement origins, impact, and effectiveness and with the
ultimate aim of developing better concepts and better understanding within
academia. The other is more overtly normative and political in its orientation. It is
particularly concerned with the need to restructure and democratize international
organizations and thus to improve processes of global governance. INGOs or
TSMOs are valued for their capacity to render interstate negotiations more inclusive
and transparent. (12)
The second approach could be labeled structuralist. Often drawing from Marxist
traditions, it also connects to some ecologist and poststructuralist arguments. It is
characterized by an assumption that the emergence, orientation, and outcomes of
movement activism are fundamentally shaped or determined by deeper social
structures, processes, and institutions. Consequently, this approach tends to focus
primarily on those structures, processes, and institutions as sources of change and on
the large-scale trends in movement development to which they give rise, paying
much less attention to the details of specific movement activism and to questions of
organization and strategy. Again, two strands of this approach can be distinguished.
The first is optimistic in outlook, emphasizing that structural changes in capitalism
and the state system associated with globalization have induced a shift in movement
form and orientation: No longer national and statist, movements are now
transnational and "anti-systemic," with the capacity to enhance the propensity of the
system to crisis and collapse. The second version of structuralism is more
pessimistic in its predictions for movements, tending to emphasize the adaptability
of the capitalist and state system and the fact that transnational dimensions of
movement organizing are likely to be fragmented or co-opted into that system. Some
pessimists turn to movement activism in a national or local context as the more
likely source of resistance. By definition, such activism is likely to be
nonuniversalizable. Thus more pessimistic versions of the structuralist approach
conclude that the possibilities for radical transformation on a global scale are
extremely limited. (13)
The third approach cuts across what is beginning to resemble a familiar polarization
between reformist engagement with the system and revolutionary challenge or
withdrawal. This approach could be labeled transformationalist. Adherents draw on
a range of traditions, including liberalism and neo-Gramscianism, but also
anarchism, ecology, feminism, poststructuralism, and social-movement theory.
Transformationalists emphasize the emancipatory potential of social movements and
their organizations globally, drawing attention to the ways in which movements may
combine materialist and institutionalist strategies with the reshaping and enacting of
alternative cultural norms, values, and lifestyles. This latter form of activism may be
aimed primarily at changing attitudes and practices within global civil society or an
equivalent, but it is also perceived to be central to what movements are about and to
have potentially transformative and democratizing effects on international
institutions.
Again, two strands to this approach can be identified. Much of the
transformationalist literature has a rather utopian bent, insofar as it tends to depict
movements and INGOs as beyond power, as organized in similar ways, and as
pursuing essentially progressive goals. However, a more critical transformationalist
approach is also emerging, which is more sensitive to the substantive and
organizational differences within and between movements and to problems of power
and oligarchy. (14) We hope to have contributed to such an approach in this article.
It must be stressed that the boundaries between pragmatism, structuralism, and
transformationalism are fluid and shifting. It can be particularly difficult to
distinguish between normative pragmatists and utopian transformationalists, with
both talking of the democratizing potential of NGOs and with some prominent
transformationalists shifting recently toward a more conventionally liberal
acceptance of the need for institutional cooperation with the state and market
systems. (15) There has also been some movement recently among structuralists,
with a shift from pessimism to optimism in the light of the increasing prominence of
movement activism against neoliberal elements of economic globalization and the
consequent hope that a more generalizable, and genuinely anticapitalist movement,
may be emerging. (16) So we stress again that our categories should be understood
as simplified ideal-types, intended to highlight the cross-disciplinary ways in which
certain problems in the theorization of movements and global change manifest
themselves. The next part of this article discusses four such problems.
Key Problems
Transnational Social Movements and TSMOs
The first problem centers on the opaque and confused conceptualizations of
transnational movements and the organizations associated with them. The task of
disentangling these conceptualizations is complicated by inconsistent or
contradictory terminology. (17)
For example, political scientists and sociologists tend to use the labels "transnational
social movements" or "global social movements," while IR theorists tend to invoke a
variety of what could be called stand-in concepts, including "networks of global civil
society," "the multitude," and "social forces." (18) Furthermore, whereas several
political scientists and sociologists use the term TSMOs, theorists in international
relations have talked rather of interest groups, pressure groups, and transnational
activist groups. However, lately there appears to be considerable cross-disciplinary
convergence around the concept of NGOs and/or INGOs. (19) Of course INGOs and
TSMOs are not necessarily the same kind of organizational entity, and indeed, there
are many INGOs that have no organizational or substantive links to movements. It is
specifically the TSMO subset that is the main focus of interest for most political
scientists and sociologists attempting to globalize social-movement theory. It is also
the focus of much international relations work in this area. So, notwithstanding these
terminological differences, generalizations can be made about the ways in which
movements and their organizations are misconceptualized.
The main problem with pragmatist approaches is that movements are reduced or
subordinated to the formal organizations associated with them. TSMOs/INGOs are
frequently the exclusive focus of study to the neglect of less formal, extrainstitutional kinds of movement activism or indeed to the consideration of
movements themselves. This can be seen, for example, in the work of
interdependence theorist Peter Willetts, which has moved from an emphasis on
"promotional pressure groups" to a focus on "campaigning" NGOs. (20) Both of
these categories could be seen as substitute labels for TSMOs. However, Willetts
does not investigate the relationship between these organizations and wider social
movements. Rather, the main thrust of analysis remains the impact of groups on state
policy making and on interstate institutions. (21) A similar dynamic is evident in the
work of Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, which focuses on the integration of
NGOs, state agencies, and international institutions in "transnational advocacy
networks" (a particular kind of network distinguished by "the centrality of principled
ideas or values motivating their formation"). (22)
Again, the NGOs under discussion are clearly organizations closely associated to
social movements. Keck and Sikkink claim that examining the role of NGOs in
transnational advocacy networks "helps both to distinguish NGOs from, and to see
their connections with, social movements." (23) Yet, in fact, their study makes no
attempt to explore this relationship. Even in pragmatist work with a declared focus
on movements, as in the volume edited by Jackie Smith et al., entitled Transnational
Social Movements, we find an overwhelming focus on TSMOs and their relation to
other formally structured organizations. (24)
In contrast, utopian transformationalists tend to neglect the distinctive characteristics
of TSMOs/INGOs and to describe such groups in terms more usually reserved for
less formal kinds of movement activism. More specifically, it is the so-called new
social movements that provide the template for understanding TSMOs and INGOs.
For example, an influential early article by Richard Falk surveys groups ranging
from Greenpeace to the Sanctuary movement and concludes they are converging on
a "new politics," involving
repudiation of war and technologies of violence as inevitable
instruments of social conflict; adoption of identity patterns and
affinities that arise from shared commitments;... coalitions and
support activities in transnational arenas and networks; a refusal
to regard access to state power as the prime stake of political
activity ...; an emergent awareness that the decisive political
battleground for the remainder of this century is associated with
an
activation of cultural energies. (25)
One result of assuming such a convergence is that both formal and informal kinds
of movement activism are depicted as sharing the same kind of structural
characteristics and as operating in the same kind of way. Now, while some TSMOs
and INGOs may be structured according to the nonhierarchical network principles
supposedly characteristic of new social movements (a point discussed at more
length below), in our view some analytical distinction must be maintained between
formal organizations and less formal moments of activism. Further, as we have
already pointed out, many INGOs are entirely unconnected to social movements.
Indeed, John Boli and colleagues insist that most INGOs are economic or technical
in character and tend to support and diffuse dominant cultural norms. They point
out that only a relatively small group are associated with the "social movement
sector" and attempt to challenge dominant cultural values in the ways suggested by
new social-movement theory. (26) In sum, there are significant distinctions
between different kinds of INGOs, and between INGOs and less formal kinds of
activism, that are lost by the over-enthusiastic application of new social-movement
categories by utopian transformationalists. Like transformationalists, structuralists
acknowledge a role for both INGOs/TSMOs and less formal, more socially
embedded, forms of activism. However, they are rightly critical of the utopian
tendency to perceive the two as equivalent phenomena. Indeed, many structuralists
appear skeptical of the possibility that the two might be connected in any way. A
preference for the use of the terminology of (I) NGOs, rather than TSMOs, enables
institutionalized, technical associations to be taken as paradigmatic, and then all
such groups to be criticized for reproducing extant relations and structures of
power. As Craig Murphy puts it:
Our own period is also characterized by non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) playing a further essential role in
international governance. Increasingly, as a consequence of
neoliberal marketization, the services once provided by public
intergovernmental organizations are now contracted to private, nongovernmental, often "social movement"--style, organizations....
[This] has allowed donor aid budgets to remain stagnant or even
fall
throughout the post--Cold War era. (27)
Murphy offers an important reminder of the contribution of many NGOs to the
diffusion of neoliberal norms and practices, but he does so by refusing to draw any
distinction between NGOs and TSMOs or what he calls "social movement"--style
organizations. Murphy's quotation marks are indicative of a skepticism that
transnational organizations can retain any authentic, grassroots-movement
connections. Murphy and other pessimistic structuralists tend to map these forms of
political agency on to different levels of analysis. The Relationship Between Global
and Local
This brings us to a second key problem: a simplified and hierarchical
conceptualization of the relationship between global and local. The interpretation of
globalization in the literature under review is significant here. Globalization tends
to be understood as primarily economic, technological, and/or political in its origins
and character, in contrast to the approach more widespread in sociology that
emphasizes cultural shifts and the restructuring of space and time. (28)
In the literature under review, we find that the growing integration and
liberalization of worldwide market relations receives particular emphasis, along
with the development of communications and transport technologies and the rapid
growth of global governance institutions above and beyond the state. These
dimensions of globalization, particularly the latter two, are stressed by theorists
drawing on resource-mobilization theory and the political-opportunity structures
approach, as creating new enabling conditions and sources of grievance that
underpin the transnationalization of activism. (29) In contrast, structuralists tend to
see technological and institutional developments as reflective of a shift in the more
fundamental structures of capitalism and its class relations, pointing to continuities
as well as changes, and disagreeing over whether resistance is newly enabled or
constrained. (30)
Whatever the emphasis, these approaches share a tendency to characterize
globalization as centripetal and homogenizing, sucking economic and political
forms "upward." This means that globalization may be perceived as functioning to
eradicate cultural differences located at the local or national level, although the
theorists examined here disagree over the extent to which this is occurring. (31)
One result is the tendency to assume that the less formal, socially embedded aspects
of movements are local or national in character, and that only the more formally
structured, institutionally oriented NGOs or TSMOs are active in global politics.
This tendency can be found among both structuralists and pragmatists, albeit with
rather different readings of its analytical and political implications. The pessimistic
structuralist characterization of economic globalization as overwhelmingly
totalizing and destructive leads them to locate any possibility of resistance at the
local level. As noted above, INGOs are interpreted as supporting and reproducing
extant global power. Pragmatists have a more optimistic view of INGO/TSMO
capacity. The global level is privileged as the source of progressive change,
reinforcing the tendency to focus on INGOs/TSMOs, rather than less formal, more
socially embedded aspects of movements.
This hierarchy of levels has been perhaps most clearly elaborated by Sidney
Tarrow, a key exponent of the political-opportunity structures approach. Tarrow
rightly distinguishes between transnational social movements and "the larger
universe of international nongovernmental organizations and elite transnational
activist networks" (these are the transnational advocacy networks of Keck and
Sikkink). However, he does so by insisting that social movements depend upon
interpersonal "social networks" embedded in everyday life and "domestic"
(national) societies, which help to generate collective identities. (32) Interestingly,
there is a strong parallel here with new social-movement theorist Alberto Melucci's
emphasis on "subterranean networks"--less visible, often latent, connections linking
activists in their everyday lives--as a key dimension of movement construction.
(33)
Tarrow insists that such networks are very difficult to transnationalize. Thus, most
movement involvement in "contentious politics" is likely to remain at the national
level. The adoption of the goals, tactics, and identities originating in movements in
other contexts should not be mistaken for the transnationalization of movement
networks, but is instead evidence of the existence of cross-border processes like
"diffusion" through which national movements learn from each other. (34) It is
only through TSMOs in transnational advocacy networks that movements are likely
to become cross-border in form and participants in processes of transnational
contention. (35)
This view contrasts with that propounded by optimistic structuralists and
transformationalists, who insist on a broader understanding of what constitutes a
transnational or global movement, one that is more inclusive of localized,
grassroots activism. For optimistic structuralists, the contradictions inherent in
globalized capitalism are key here, relocating resistance from nationalist, statist,
and proletarian movements to poststatist, networked movements of all oppressed
and exploited peoples. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, for example, insist that
some of the most important recent struggles, from the intifada to the Zapatistas,
may be "focused on the international relations own local and immediate
circumstances [but] they all nonetheless [have] posed problems of supranational
relevance ... [they] leap vertically and touch immediately on the global level." (36)
Others have emphasized the connections of such local struggles to transnational
mobilizations. Writing from a utopian transformationalist perspective, Leslie Paul
Thiele offers the following definitional criteria:
A social movement may be considered transnational in two senses:
first if it has [a] multinational membership and organizational
structure: and second, if its concerns and allegiances are
explicitly global rather than solely national or local.... Many
smaller peace and environmental groups exemplify the second sense
of
transnational.... [They] share information, tactics and a culture
of
art, music, literature and activities with their international
counterparts [as well as an] orientation to global citizenship and
stewardship. (37)
This is to move away from an insistence that it is cross-border organization that
defines a movement as transnational or global. Thiele is insisting that orientation,
identification, and activism are also key to evaluating whether "social" or
"subterranean" networks embedded in everyday life and specific localities can still
be considered part of processes of global contention. Further, he claims that such
activism can have a global impact. In contrast to Hardt and Negri's structuralist
emphasis on problems posed by local groups for the "new figure of imperial
capitalist regulation," Thiele points to the potential of such movements to induce
long-term changes in "the worldviews and life-styles of the general public as much
as influencing policymakers.... The political significance of this social osmosis
should not be ignored." (38) Scott Turner makes a similar argument when he
defines global civil society in terms of small-scale movement activity that is
oriented "toward general transformation of public consciousness, which in turn
affects the parameters of legitimacy within which traditional institutions must
operate." (39) Turner's examples of such activity focus on Third World protests
against logging, ranging from Filipino farmers "fasting for trees" to Buddhist
monks wrapping trees in their order's saffron robes. (40)
These are important acknowledgments of the contribution of less conventional,
more localized moments of movement activism to global politics. However, they
are marred in their structuralist formulations by a lack of concrete detail and, not
unrelatedly, by the tendency to analyze activism in terms of an underlying
functionalist logic. More significant for our analysis here is the problem with
utopian formulations, which are notable for downplaying the enormous diversity of
organizational forms, strategies, and goals of movements worldwide.
There is a strong tendency to depict all movements and TSMOs as pursuing a
settled, progressive global agenda, one closely linked for utopian
transformationalists to claims of the new social-movement type. Such claims are
frequently tempered by brief asides on the differences between movements, with
some recognition of the more conventionally materialist, instrumentalist,
development-oriented, and occasionally militaristic strategies of some groups,
particularly those from the South. (41) Nonetheless, such differences are largely
seen as appropriate contextualizations of new social movement politics, rather than
a deviation from them. Indeed, some utopian transformationalists ultimately
represent diverse groups as constituting a single, unified movement of the new
social movement variety. (42)
The uncritical universalization of assumptions from new social-movement theory is
compounded by the accompanying interpretation of globalization as
homogenization/integration, with the consequent neglect of cultural differences and
of particularist, reactionary movement tendencies. In effect, utopian
transformationalists carve out a role for the less formalized, more localized, aspects
of movement activity at a global level through making the highly contentious
assumption that the supposed new social-movement form and its associated
emphasis on cultural orientation is now applicable to movements worldwide.
Instrumental and Expressive Dimensions of Movement Activism
The third problem we wish to identify is closely related: It is the tendency to
privilege either the instrumental or the expressive dimension of movement activism
and to ignore the relationship between the two. The instrumental dimension
involves the articulation of concrete strategies and demands, frequently aimed at
powerful institutions and intended to produce specific material effects upon social
relations. The expressive dimension is oriented toward the construction and
reconstruction of norms, values, identities, and lifestyles inside a movement and in
the wider social and cultural milieu. (43)
It is clear that the focus of pragmatists on TSMOs both feeds off and reinforces an
emphasis on the instrumental dimension of movement activism. Insofar as TSMOs
are directly engaged in activity of the pressure-group type--campaigning, lobbying,
negotiating, and so on--they will be pursuing concrete demands through interstate
organizations. The narrow conceptualization of globalization as primarily
economic, institutional, and technological in nature also mitigates against
recognition of the implications of expressive movement activism. Tarrow's
extension of the political-opportunity structures approach demonstrates these
tendencies clearly. His definition of a transnational social movement involves
"sustained contentious interaction with powerholders in which at least one state is
either a target or a participant," and he is principally concerned with the
opportunity structures afforded by states, international organizations, and
"international institutions." (44) Thus, the instrumental aspects of movements are
privileged.
This is not to say that pragmatists entirely ignore the expressive dimension. For
example, the Commission on Global Governance sees NGOs in global civil society
as helping to disseminate a new "civic ethic" encompassing universal values meant
to encourage a more cooperative mode of politics. (45) Tarrow recognizes
expressive activism as a key "internal" dynamic necessary to help a TSMO
mobilize resources or take advantage of a political-opportunity structure. He is also
increasingly incorporating an analysis of movement-framing strategies, which
chimes with an emphasis in other recent pragmatist efforts to globalize the
political-opportunity structures approach. The focus here is on how and why
activists succeed in framing issues in ways that mobilize others, create coalitions,
and challenge dominant cultural understandings. (46)
Arguably, most frame analysis provides a rather limited approach to culture,
reducing it to another instrumental strategy of movements. Some pragmatists have
focused explicitly on "noninstitutional efforts to change social beliefs, values or
practices," hinting that the relationship between TSMOs and transnational social
movements must be significant on this point and that the "deep politics of shaping
individual thinking and action ... clearly occupies much, if not most, social
movement energies." (47) Yet the bulk of pragmatist analysis pays little attention to
the detail or meaning of this kind of movement activism or to how it may effect
change on a global scale.
There is a noteworthy convergence among some pragmatists and utopian
transformationalists in terms of the role of culture in globalization processes. There
seems to be a shared view that culture, in the sense of values and lifestyles, will
largely follow economic, institutional, and technological processes and become
increasingly homogenized worldwide. (48) Among pragmatists, this escapes close
study, but is surely to be considered a good thing, reflecting "frame alignment"
among TSMOs and INGO elites. In contrast, utopian transformationalists imply a
sharp divide between what they depict as the technocratic values and culture of
international political and economic institutions and the progressive or
emancipatory values and culture assumed to be articulated within and by global
civil society. This view is probably reinforced by the importing of assumptions
from new social-movement theory. Thus it is not surprising that utopian
transformationalists like Falk, Thiele, and Turner should pay significant attention to
the expressive dimension of movements, as evident in the excerpts quoted above.
The problem with their analysis is that it downplays the significant cultural
differences between movements worldwide. What is more, the instrumental
strategies pursued by movements (including so-called new movements) and the
instrumental and technocratic orientation of many nonmovement INGOs tend to
disappear from view.
Pessimistic structuralists, on the other hand, interpret the cultural dimensions of
globalization in terms of a process of imposed Westernization in which INGOs are
implicated. "Authentic" cultural life remains located in local communities where it
may be defended by social movements. It is only here that the expressive
dimension of activism may raise interest. For example, Stephen Gill characterizes
"the new counter-movements" evident at Seattle and beyond as "seek[ing] to
preserve ecological and cultural diversity against what they see as the
encroachment of political, social, and ecological mono-cultures associated with the
supremacy of corporate rule." (49) This is certainly an orientation of some groups
involved in activism against neoliberal elements of economic globalization, but is
not true of all of them, and it downplays the possibility, noted by more optimistic
structuralists and utopian transformationalists, of cultural-ideological affinities that
may bind diverse "antiglobalization" activists together. (50)
Of course, structuralists of all varieties have a strong inclination toward privileging
the material dimensions of globalization and thus the instrumental demands and
strategies of resistance movements. This is hardly surprising given the Marxian
underpinnings of their framework. For example, in a recent shift toward optimism,
Robert Cox gives an account of "growth in civil society coming about as a reaction
to the impact of globalization." The movements he cites map closely on to those
struggles identified by Hardt and Negri as the most important of recent times, and
all are depicted as centering on material interests: strikes in France and South
Korea; riots provoked by rising food and transport prices in the Philippines; the
Zapatistas' armed revolt against the Mexican state; and self-help, self-reliance
community organizations in Africa. (51) The expressive dimension of movement
activism and its potential to contribute to global change has again disappeared from
view.
Democratic and Oligarchic Dynamics
The fourth and final problem we wish to highlight concerns the lack of attention to
the dynamics of oligarchic and democratic possibilities in movement organization
and activism. Although this may be expected from structuralists, it is a startling
omission from the work of normative pragmatists and utopian transformationalists,
with its heavy emphasis on the democratic character and role of social movement
activism and TSMOs/INGOs.
Normative pragmatists support current moves to enable an enhanced role for NGOs
within the United Nations, and in international financial institutions, on the basis
that NGOs make such institutions more democratic. They broaden representation
and render interstate negotiations more accountable, as well as more functionally
effective. (52) However, most pragmatists are working within the liberal pluralist
model of democracy in which it is assumed that groups compete in an open system
to gain influence over policy, thus helping to aggregate interests and disperse
power. This model has been heavily criticized in the context of national politics,
with critics pointing to the imperfect nature of such competition given the structural
advantage of powerful economic interests. More generally, liberal democracy has
long been criticized for its limited, procedural character and the extent to which
formal political equality obscures asymmetries of power in the wider social context.
It is not at all clear that the extension of liberal democracy into structures of global
governance would tackle such problems. It is also important to recognize that the
space allocated to INGOs in pragmatist schemes for extending democracy is
frequently rather limited. For example, the Commission on Global Governance
recommends the establishment of a Forum for Civil Society within the UN
structure, but this turns out to be a discussion body with no legislative powers and
no formal input into the rest of the United Nations. (53)
Utopian transformationalists are aware of the limitations of formal, representative
democracy and of an exclusive focus on the incorporation of INGOs into
international institutions. They want to allow a role for nonformal movement
activism and for more participatory elements of democracy. Dianne Otto makes this
clear in her account of a "postliberal conception of cosmopolitan democracy." This
would involve "the formation of regional and international democratic assemblies
and crossnational referenda"; localized social movement resistances to the
concentration of power; "networking, which operates horizontally and cooperatively, [as] an alternative to hierarchical institutional structures"; and
mechanisms within the United Nations "which are inclusive of a diversity of formal
and informal NGO formations, which encourage the building of global perspectives
from local participation, and which foster open debate and criticism." (54) Otto's is
one of the more developed transformationalist formulations of democracy.
Nonetheless, it pays only superficial attention to the extensive theoretical literature
on participatory democracy, and the precise role of movements and their
organizations remains sketchy.
Perhaps most importantly, in our view, there has been little attention paid by either
pragmatists or transformationalists to the question of oligarchic and democratic
dynamics within movements and their organizations. Particularly important here is
the extent to which INGOs/TSMOs necessarily encounter problems of oligarchy
and bureaucratization. Initially identified by Max Weber and Roberto Michels,
these are widely recognized as common organizational trajectories, if not exactly
iron cages or laws. Dieter Rucht outlines their consequences for TSMOs:
[A] declining performance in relation to organizational resources,
and a loss of initiative and emphasis particularly among the rank
and
file.... [C]hanges in structure tend to be accompanied by changes
in
ideology ... [whereby] some organizations ... become more
interested
in the international relations own maintenance and growth than in
the
original goal for which they were set up. A related aspect of this
is
the threat of an instrumentalization and commercialization of the
movements' aims ... [and the possibility of] co-option and
deradicalization. (55)
A trend in this direction finds confirmation in parallel claims about movements
being "NGO-ized" and INGOs/TSMOs becoming professionalized and
institutionalized. (56) We would suggest that this trend is a serious constraint upon
the democratic potential of INGOs/TSMOs. Indeed, it ought to be considered
whether the incorporation of formal democratic procedures within INGOs/TSMOs,
officially required as a precondition of being granted consultative status at the
United Nations, actually functions to legitimate oligarchy and to help it work more
effectively. It has been pointed out that an oligopoly of INGOs is currently
emerging: A handful of "operational" INGOs have become "market leaders,"
dominating interactions with the United Nations and functioning to stifle diversity
as other NGOs are forced to adopt similar practices and management styles if they
are to survive. (57) In sum, there seems to be a strong likelihood that INGOs and
TSMOs will become increasingly integrated into elite structures of power over
time, detached from the control of their memberships and from potentially broader
movement constituencies.
One challenge to the above argument is found in references to the proliferation of
network forms of organization. Normative pragmatists and utopian
transformationalists frequently assume that both social-movement type
mobilization and INGOs are increasingly taking a network form. (58) Assumptions
from new social-movement theory may be at play again here, along with the
influence of more general claims about the ascendancy of the network form as a
key organizational feature of globalization in the contemporary era. (59) The
network form involves an apparent flattening of hierarchies so that authority and
legitimacy flows more horizontally and interactively, rather than vertically in a
pyramidical command structure. Further, it is suggested that networks are "lighter,"
less bureaucratic, more flexible and mobile than traditional organizational forms.
There are also strong hints that the network form is inherently more egalitarian and
democratic. (60)
However, there is also a good deal of confusion. The notion of network as invoked
by Keck and Sikkink describes patterned interactions between INGOs, state
agencies, and international institutions, and there is no necessary implication here
that INGOs themselves will be organized according to network principles. When
others describe INGOs as networks they are often referring to the emergence of
coalition or umbrella groups of national NGOs that do not have a single center
dictating policy. (61) Lack of hierarchy between associated national organizations
does not necessarily imply a lack of hierarchy within those organizations. Further,
as Peter Waterman points out, networks can include vertical as well as horizontal
relationships among "unequals and unalikes." "Networks also have different
architectures, such as the star, the wheel and the web ... implying differential
influence and control." (62) There is little detail in this literature of the type of
network form that INGOs/TSMOs are adopting and little concrete evidence that we
are seeing the dissemination of more horizontal and equal forms of organization.
Thus it is far too soon to conclude that the bureaucratic and oligarchical tendencies
identified above are disappearing.
Perhaps the most important lacuna in the literature we are discussing is the lack of
attention to the possibility of networks between more formally structured
organizations and less formal dimensions of movement activism. We suggest below
that the democratic construction of such networks might militate against oligarchic
tendencies in TSMOs. However, although we think that democratizing possibilities
of the network form need to be investigated further, it should be noted that network
relations do not of themselves guarantee any equality of power and influence.
Christoph Gorg and Joachim Hirsch, who are closely aligned with the pessimistic
structuralist approach, make this point:
Present discussions surrounding network and governance ... reduce
democracy to its functional achievements in increasing the
'national competitive ability'.... In this sense, 'political
participation' has relatively little to do with emancipation or
plural control of power ... [but] is basically understood as an
economic efficiency resource. (63)
Certainly, much of the current praise of supposedly democratic network relations
within and between INGOs is expressed in terms of their functional utility for
service delivery, and this needs to be understood in the context of neoliberal
policies of cutting back state capacity. Recognition of the ways in which INGOs are
thus compromised has led many pessimistic structuralists to reject the possibility of
there being any significant democratizing potential in global movement
organizations. However, Gorg and Hirsch insist on the need for INGOs to strive for
autonomy from state structures. What is particularly interesting is their suggestion
that "the democratic significance of NGOs depends on the existence and
development of social movements," particularly democratic movements at the
national and regional level, seen as necessary to prevent INGOs "from evolving
into elitist-bureaucratic and quasi-state formations." (64) We disagree with the
hierarchy of levels implied here, but agree that the conceptual distinction between
NGOs and movements, and the character of the relationship between them, are
crucial for assessing global democratic possibilities. The next section of this article
begins with an effort to establish this conceptual distinction more precisely. Toward
Reconstruction
Transnational Social Movements and TSMOs
As we have seen, the concepts of social movement and TSMOs deployed in the
existing literature are frequently impressionistic and ungrounded in socialmovement theory. Those commentators who draw on existing literature to offer
more precise definitions do so in a rather narrow and limited way when set against
the wider range of possibilities within the field of social-movement studies.
There is extensive debate but little consensus in this field about what social
movements might be. As Mario Diani points out, "even an implicit, 'empirical'
agreement of the use of the term is largely missing." (65) Diani has developed a
synthetic concept of social movement that sheds some light on the problems
dogging its global application. For Diani, a social movement is defined as "a
network of informal interactions between a plurality of individuals, groups and/or
organizations, engaged in a political or cultural conflict, on the basis of a shared
collective identity." (66)
The first point to note here is Diani's insistence that "social movements are not
organizations, not even of a peculiar kind." (67) Thus a clear analytical distinction
needs to be maintained between organizations and the network of informal
interactions that constitutes a social movement. Even if an organization adopts a
network structure internally, this does not mean it can be seen as equivalent to a
social movement. Of course, as Diani makes clear, organizations may well be part
of a movement. Indeed, he argues that "bureaucratic interest groups and even
political parties" can be social movement organizations. (68) But he also insists that
a social movement need not give rise to any formal organizations at all. This is an
important corrective to the version of resource-mobilization theory, prevalent in
globalized accounts, that sees movements as largely created by and dependent upon
formal organizations.
More problematically, in our view, Diani's definition also implies that a socialmovement network could comprise a network of interactions linking only formal
organizations. We take the view that social movement networks must necessarily
encompass informal groups and extrainstitutional activism. Although the
significance of these may vary in different movements, or at different phases in the
life of a movement, the implication of our argument is that when symbolic activity,
lifestyle innovations, informal groups, noninstitutional articulations of collective
identity, and popular protests have disappeared, then a movement no longer exists.
Thus an informal network of interactions linking only formal organizations without
significant grassroots participation in processes of contention is not a social
movement. It is more closely aligned to Keck and Sikkink's notion of a
transnational advocacy network.
This indicates the need for precision in the different ways in which the term
network is being deployed. We are distinguishing here between
1. a network of informal interactions linking formal organizations (a transnational
advocacy network);
2. the flattening of hierarchies within organizations that nonetheless remain
formally constituted (a network organization); and
3. a network of informal interactions that ties together informal groups and
individuals, and sometimes formal organizations, in struggles for social change on
the basis of a shared identity (a social movement).
The network relations involved in the constitution of a social-movement course
through and link together the nonformal, extrainstitutional activism of diverse
individuals and groups, and they may also connect such activism to the
institutionally oriented activism of formally structured organizations.
The key question here is whether and how such networks can be considered
transnational or global. The definition above implies that there is no necessary
distinction in organizational form between social movements in general and
transnational social movements. There may, however, be a question of
organizational reach, with transnational networks stretching across borders to link
activists in different states. We see no particular reason why such networks should
be so much more difficult to forge than national networks, particularly if Tarrow's
apparently a priori assumption of national cultural cohesion is jettisoned. After all,
even national networks cannot rely on face-to-face relationships but must, to adopt
a phrase from Benedict Anderson, be "imagined." The globalization of
communications and transport technology has made it increasingly easy for people
from different geographical locations to meet up, communicate, and "imagine" or
construct commonalities and identities across borders. Problems of differential
access and influence due to economic, political, and cultural disparities are hardly
unique to transnational relations although they may well be more acute.
In this context, it is interesting to note that Tarrow's sharp distinction between
domestic social networks and transnational advocacy networks is refuted by Keck
and Sikkink. They insist that INGOs operating within transnational advocacy
networks are frequently underpinned by diffuse interpersonal connections, forged
through processes of exile and exchange and through international conferences.
(69) In other words, Keck and Sikkink believe that networks of informal interaction
can "upscale," stretching across state borders. The extent to which such networks
thereby retain a subterranean, socially embedded quality remains open to dispute.
What is clear is that the study of transnational social movements and TSMOs needs
to pay much closer attention than it has thus far to the networks linking together
activists in different geographical locations and in different kinds of groups.
The Relationship Between Global and Local
The theorization of social movements in a global context can be further fleshed out
by a richer and more complex understanding of the ambiguities of globalization.
More specifically, we want to argue in favor of a multidimensional, multicausal,
and "intersectional" understanding of globalization. Such an approach insists on the
intertwining of economic, political, technological, and cultural relations of power
on a global scale. These multiple processes are likely to intersect with each other in
complex, context-specific, highly uneven, stratified, and unpredictable ways: thus
there is no single underlying motor or direction to globalization. Attention is
focused on the rising density and stretching of social relations across the globe; the
reshaping of space and time; and the role of consciousness, reflexivity, and agency.
(70)
One implication of this approach is that the analysis of transnational opportunity
structures should not be limited to a focus on the narrowly political realm of
interstate institutions, but should encompass broader shifts in other kinds of social
relations and structures. (71) Another implication is the need for sensitivity to the
tension between homogenizing and fragmenting tendencies and the emergence of
diverse hybrid cultural forms.
Most importantly for our purposes, the multidimensional model of globalization
implies a complex and open-ended relationship between localized activism and
global processes. We should stress at this point that we are very much aware that
vast asymmetries of relations and structures of power suffuse the global and local,
ensuring that some global institutions and ideologies are enormously preponderant
in influence in many contexts. However, we are seeking an analytic formulation of
the relationship between the global and local that does not make an a priori
assumption about the totality and impact of such power.
Two insights seem significant here. The first is the argument that the local and the
global can be seen as mutually constitutive, with localities playing an active role in
shaping the impact and reception of global processes as well as being shaped by
them. This has been described by Roland Robertson as "glocalization" and receives
particular attention in anthropological and feminist accounts. (72) The second is an
extrapolation of Anthony Giddens's arguments about accelerating "time-space
distanciation," which implies the disembedding of social relations from their
familiar local contexts and their reembedding in altered forms in new contexts,
bringing previously separated traditions and activities into new proximity. (73)
All this enables us to go beyond Keck and Sikkink's recognition that globalization
enables movement networks to extend across state borders. The idea of
glocalization implies that locally situated, territorially bounded movements are
potentially both objects and subjects of global processes. The long-standing slogan
"Think globally, act locally" goes some way toward capturing the nature of the
involvement of these kinds of movements in global politics, but does so by
separating abstract consciousness of the global from concrete action that remains
locally expressed. The approach to globalization advocated here implies that locally
situated actors may not only think globally but act globally, because global
processes are manifested in local spaces and can be, at least partially, shaped and
redirected there. It should be added that a global consciousness is highly likely to
be accompanied by efforts to forge relationships with activists elsewhere, so that
many apparently localized movements may actually be connected to broader,
transnational movement networks. (74)
The notion of disembedding complicates things further. It means that the
"diffusion" of movement identities, goals, and tactics may not be due simply to
their detachment from domestic movement networks and mimicry elsewhere, but to
the transnationalization of networks themselves. Further, it is not sufficient to
assume that networks stretch only across neighboring state boundaries or follow in
the wake of the physical movement of people, as Keck and Sikkink imply. There
may be sharp spatial discontinuity apparent as networks reemerge in disparate
locations, bringing physically distant people into new relations of affinity.
Little detailed study has as yet been paid to such discontinuous networks, to our
knowledge. But there is suggestive evidence pointing in this direction emerging
from literature by and about activists in the so-called antiglobalization movement.
(75) The key role of large gatherings receives much emphasis in this literature, in
the wake of Seattle and subsequent demonstrations and conferences held in diverse
geographical locations: from Prague to Porto Alegre. The impression given is that
such events are key locations for often-disparate activists to recognize
commonalities and participate in processes of collective identity and goal
formation, which are then diffused to new national locations when activists return
home. (76) Commonalities may also be reinforced when large gatherings are held
simultaneously in several locations throughout the world, in designated global days
of protest. The key role of the internet in helping to coordinate such protests and in
constructing networks of transnational solidarity that do not rely on face-to-face
contact has been much remarked upon--along with the exclusions that this may
bring with it. (77) Further, recent commentary on the movement has criticized the
emphasis on large-scale protests as functioning to privilege young, white, rootless,
middle-class activists and has argued instead for the need to recognize and
strengthen a more pluralized and socially embedded identity in terms of links
between, diverse, local community struggles. (78)
In sum, there appear to be complex, contested, stratified, territorially discontinuous,
socially embedded movement networks underpinning this movement.
Instrumental and Expressive Dimensions of Movement Activism
Analyses of the relationship between the global and local with
regard to social movements is further complicated by the need to
acknowledge both the instrumental and expressive modes of activism.
We believe that, to adapt the work of Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato,
movements typically have dual faces and adopt a dualistic strategy.
Cohen and Arato elaborate this model with regards to Western
feminist activism: Feminist movements contest the norms and
structures of male dominance pervading civil society, but they also
challenge the ways in which these inform the structuration of the
subsystems in general and social policy in particular.... The dual
logic of feminist politics thus involves a communicative,
discursive
politics of identity and influence that targets civil and political
society and an organized, strategically rational politics of
inclusion and reform that is aimed at political and economic
institutions. (79)
Cohen and Arato insist that the legislative and judicial successes that have resulted
would have been impossible or much more limited without the accompanying
struggle to reconstruct the norms and practices in society more generally. Further,
they argue that a dualistic strategy maps to some extent on to a dualistic
organizational logic. In terms of second-wave feminism, this meant that "two
branches" of the movement emerged, with instrumental strategies pursued by longerstanding interest groups and expressive strategies emphasized by "younger"
grassroots groups. However, Cohen and Arato are keen to emphasize the complexity
of the relationship between the two branches of feminism and, in particular, to
critique the widespread notion that such movements become increasingly
formalized, institutionalized, and instrumental in character over time. They insist
that activists have crossed the organizational divide in both directions. "Nor has
learning on the part of activists entailed a one-directional shift from expressive to
instrumental rationality ... learning has occurred on both sides and in both
directions." (80) This can be mapped onto our understanding of transnational social
movements outlined above. We have distinguished between the informal, grassroots
groups/subterranean networks that are intrinsic to any movement and the formal
organizations or TSMOs that may or may not be associated with them. Cohen and
Arato's analysis implies that TSMOs typically face national and international
institutional structures and tend to pursue instrumental strategies, while informal
grassroots groups/subterranean networks are typically embedded in more localized
and everyday social relationships and tend to pursue expressive strategies. However,
we can also expect to see some combination of instrumental and expressive
strategies pursued by both branches of a movement. Continuity and feedback
between these dimensions of the two branches is likely to be provided by the
communicative, interpersonal, and informational linkages of a transnational
movement network within which both formal and informal groups are embedded.
Further, it may be the case that the instrumental demands of informal groupings are
potentially "thickened" by the movement network and activities of the international
relations of TSMOs, in the sense that they are thus likely to have a more direct and
effective impact upon international institutions. Conversely, the expressive
dimensions of TSMO activism could be potentially "thickened" by their articulation
outward through the movement network and into informal, grassroots modes of
activism, because they are thus entering deep into the noninstitutionalized world of
everyday social relations and tapping into more diffuse, long-term processes of
change.
This argument remains general and abstract. However, it offers a necessary analytic
corrective to the pragmatist focus on TSMOs and their instrumental strategies and
the pessimistic structuralist dismissal of such strategies. It also enables a more
complex rendering of the transformationalist insistence on the importance of
grassroots, expressive activism. There is clearly a need for more concrete studies of
the complex network relationships linking the two branches of transnational social
movements and the strategic use in both of instrumental and expressive strategies for
global change.
Democratic and Oligarchic Dynamics
The character and dynamics of network relationships are also crucial for considering
the potential of movements to contribute to a shift toward a more democratic world
order. The argument above indicates that TSMO instrumental strategies are likely to
contribute most effectively to such a shift when they remain connected via social
movement networks to informal grassroots groups and their typically more
expressive strategies. However, we have also argued that TSMOs, and more broadly
INGOs, remain subject to tendencies toward bureaucratization, oligarchy, and
assimilation. This highlights the limitations of pragmatist proposals for
democratizing global governance that simply argue for more extensive institutional
involvement for INGOs.
At the same time, there needs to be attention paid to the internal constitution of
INGOs. Here normative pragmatist arguments about changes in formal voting
procedures may provide a start but do not go anywhere near far enough. We would
suggest that it is also essential to construct and maintain democratic relationships
between the different organizational forms of movements if TSMOs are to be
"inoculated" against the dangers of oligarchy. As Cohen and Arato put it, the
"answer to the Michelsian dilemma" lies in a recognition of the plurality of different
kinds of groups within civil society "and in the possibility of a new type of
relationship between them ... involv[ing] a critique of democratic fundamentalism
typical of collective actors based in civil society and a critique of democratic elitism
typical of those based in political society." (81) To translate this into the language
used in this article, there needs to be a reconceptualization of the kinds of democracy
possible within and between the formal organizations, informal groups, and
subterranean networks involved in transnational social movements.
We can provide only pointers here to such a reconceptualization. We would start by
insisting that grassroots modes of democracy should not be too hastily dismissed as
"fundamentalist." After all, they have as yet received only fleeting attention in the
global literature, in the form of some rather sweeping generalizations from utopian
transformationalists. Indeed, there seems to us to be an urgent need for a more
systematic recovery of participatory, informal, group-based modes of democracy and
a more critical attempt to apply them to global politics. As well as a body of work in
political theory that could be useful here, (82) there is a literature generated by
movement activists. Current mobilizations against neoliberal elements of
globalization offer some examples, with a strong normative emphasis on the need for
enriching and globalizing democracy apparently taking two main forms: campaigns
to make the workings of the global economy, and particularly international financial
institutions, less secretive and exclusionary; and efforts to structure the movement on
a devolved and consensual basis, in part involving the adaptation of anarchist modes
of self-organization. (83) Arguably, these two democratic projects and the links
between them are still being worked out.
The lessons of second-wave, Western feminism may be instructive here. The
influence of anarchism is again evident, feeding into more radical strands of
feminism through their links with the New Left and given a specifically feminist
spin on the grounds that formal, representative modes of democracy had functioned
historically to delegate women's voice to men and to evacuate women from the
public sphere. Thus the widespread practice developed in the 1970s and 1980s of
organizing in nonhierarchical groups, with activities divided equally between
participants and decisions taken through inclusive dialogue that was expected
ultimately to generate consensus. This movement model of democracy was
sometimes advocated in "fundamentalist" ways and has been the subject of much
criticism among feminists. Indeed, it appears to have encouraged a turn among some
feminists toward more conventional representative, institutional models of
democracy and the inclusion of women within these. It is interesting to note,
however, that many of these feminist representative schemes incorporate a
participatory element. For example, they may insist on the inclusion of women's
caucuses in representative institutions or call for a more active, engaged version of
citizenship. (84) Further, other feminists have retained an insistence on the need for
a participatory basis to movement organization and have sought to develop a more
workable and inclusive participatory model, most notably through abandoning the
requirement of total consensus, specifying the conditions of inclusive dialogue and
accepting some voting and delegatory mechanisms. (85) In other words, just as the
feminist movement has strategically combined instrumental and expressive
strategies, so it has sought to balance representative and participatory modes of
democracy.
These feminist debates have also been extended to global movement relationships.
Increased awareness of the global scope and multidimensional character of relations
and structures of power has encouraged the proliferation of transnational feminist
movement networks and TSMOs and the redoubling of efforts to construct these in a
democratic form, enabling different groups of women worldwide to have a voice. It
is in this context that commentators have emphasized the emergence of a
distinctively nonhierarchical network form of feminist TSMO. (86) Further, there is
a growing feminist literature on the notion of "transversal politics." This is a version
of coalition building based on the recognition that all participants speak from a
specific material location, giving them a distinct but always partial perspective.
Different perspectives need not be lost or renounced in the process of seeking
agreement on specific political issues, but should, rather, be respected, voiced, and
heard. Hence, agreement should be sought through a process of open, participatory,
and empathetic dialogue. A notable example of this strategy can be found in the
efforts of feminist peace activists to build strategic solidarities between women on
different sides of ethnic conflicts. (87)
Another relevant development is the increased awareness in many sectors of
feminism of the racialized, class, national, and geopolitical hierarchies that stratify
the movement on a global scale and that have distorted agenda setting. Proactive
efforts to tackle such hierarchies can be seen in feminist mobilization against the
North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA) and associated economic
processes. This involved the organization of trinational meetings in Mexico and the
publication of newsletters in Spanish and English, while Canadian groups sponsored
the participation of Mexican women activists in a joint tour to oppose free trade and
recruited more women of color to their memberships and executives. (88) The key
challenge for such activists now may lie in the construction of more democratic
relationships between feminist activism and the newly crystallized, worldwide
movement against the neoliberal dimensions of globalization. (89)
It seems to us that these ongoing efforts point to an emergent model of democracy
emphasizing the importance of open and participatory dialogue and of
accompanying efforts to counter the multiple forms of coercive and hierarchical
power by which such a dialogue may be constrained. This model has implications
beyond feminism and resistances to economic globalization. It provides lessons for
the ways in which TSMOs and transnational movement networks of a wide range of
orientations could be constructed on a more democratic basis. Further, it offers an
important, if as yet underdeveloped, alternative to the dominance of formalized,
liberal, representative models of democracy in arguments about global governance.
Without implying that such formal models should be abandoned altogether, we want
to stress their profound limitations, particularly given that they are based on a view
of politics as limited to state, and at best interstate, institutions and do little to
constrain oligarchic, elite rule. Our sketchy conceptual reconstruction of the
relationship between social movements and global change, then, ultimately has farreaching implications. Taking transnational social movements seriously requires and
enables the development of more expansive and imaginative understandings of what
transformative politics might look like in a globalized world.
This article has sought to illuminate the relationship between social-movement
agency and global change. It has drawn attention to the emergence of a distinct body
of work on transnational social movements and INGOs. It has identified three main
approaches in this literature (pragmatic, structuralist, and transformationalist) and
explored problems in the ways that each of these deal with the core concepts of
transnational social movements and TSMOs; with the relationship between the
global and the local; with instrumental and expressive dimensions of activism; and
with the democratic and oligarchic potentials of movements and their organizations.
In the final section of the article, we put forward some tentative proposals for
conceptual reconstruction. First, we argued for a network concept of social
movement, one stressing the centrality of informal modes of activism in the
everyday and the need to maintain an analytical distinction between this and more
formal social-movement organizations. Second, we claimed that social-movement
networks can be conceived as transnational in scope and global in orientation if a
multidimensional analysis of globalization is adopted, along with a recognition of
the mutually constitutive relationship between the local and the global and the
impact of processes of disembedding. Third, we insisted that the formal
organizations and grassroots activism involved in transnational social movements
are likely to combine instrumental and expressive strategies in complex ways in their
pursuit of global change. Finally, we urged recognition of the oligarchic tendencies
facing TSMOs and identified mitigating strategies in the form of efforts to construct
the network relationship between TSMOs and less formal dimensions of movement
activism on a more democratic basis. Such strategies also indicate ways in which
global politics more generally could be made more inclusive and participatory.
These efforts at conceptual reconstruction of the relationship between social
movements, INGOs, and global change fit best with what was described earlier as a
critical transformationalist approach. We believe that movements do have the
potential to contribute to emancipatory change in global politics because of their
distinctive capacity to combine transnational networks with socially embedded
grassroots activism as well as instrumental and expressive strategies for change.
However, we would stress that not all movements live up to this potential: They face
pressures toward oligarchy and assimilation and they are suffused internally by the
vast global asymmetries of power that also shape the world more generally. Further,
the significant substantive and organizational differences within and between
movements need to be acknowledged, particularly on a worldwide scale. Much
research still needs to be done on identifying and assessing those elements within
and among movements that can contribute most to progressive processes of global
change.
This article has been concerned largely with existing academic literature on
movements, but we believe that further theoretical insight is more likely to be gained
from study of the fertile ground of movement praxis. Indeed, it seems to us that the
critical transformationalist approach must be rooted in praxis, rather than abstraction.
Conversely, such an approach raises issues for activists about appropriate strategy
and organization. This article has particularly urged the need for the construction of
democratic relationships between formal and informal modes of activism in
transnational movement networks. Such relationships are likely to be crucial if the
world is to be changed for the better and if movements are to play a positive role in
that change.
Notes
1. Alejandro Colas, International Civil Society: Social Movements in World Politics
(Cambridge, U.K.: Polity, 2002), p. 18. For a general discussion of the diachronic
dimension of movement activism, see Neil Stammers, "Social Movements and the
Challenge to Power," in Martin Shaw, ed., Politics and Globalisation: Knowledge,
Ethics, and Agency (London: Routledge, 1999).
2. Valentine Moghadam, "Transnational Feminist Networks: Collective Action in an
Era of Globalization," International Sociology 15, no. 1 (1995): 57.
3. For example, Robert Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Transnational Relations and
World Politics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972); Richard W.
Mansbach, Yale H. Ferguson, and Donald E. Lampert, The Web of World Politics:
Non-State Actors in the Global System (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall,
1976); Peter Willetts, ed., Pressure Groups in the Global System (London: Pinter,
1982).
4. For example, Thomas Risse-Kappan, ed., Bringing Transnational Relations Back
In: Non-State Actors: Domestic Structures and International Institutions (Cambridge,
U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
5. For example, Marlies Glasius, Mary Kaldor, and Helmut Anheier, eds., Global
Civil Society Yearbook 2002 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Commission
on Global Governance, Our Global Neighbourhood (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1995); Ronnie D. Lipschutz, "Reconstructing World Politics: The Emergence
of Global Civil Society," Millennium 21, no. 3 (1992): 389-420; Roger Coate et al.,
"The United Nations and Civil Society: Creative Partnerships for Sustainable
Development," Alternatives, 21, no. 1 (1996): 93-122; Craig Murphy, "Global
Governance: Poorly Done and Poorly Understood," International Affairs 76, no. 4
(2000): 789-803. Although it was not produced in the disciplinary location of
international relations, see also Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000) for a distinctive take on similar
themes, one that has been much discussed by IR scholars. For a similar depiction of
two stages of debate in international relations, more particularly with regard to
NGOs, see Paul K. Wapner, Environmental Activism and World Civic Politics
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), pp. 11-12. Colas offers
overlapping categorizations, focusing more centrally on civil society, in Colas, note
1, pp. 10-15, 140-147.
6. There is some discussion of nonglobal social-movement theories in Matthias
Finger, "NGOs and Transformation: Beyond Social Movement Theory," in Thomas
Princen and Matthias Finger, eds., Environmental NGOs in World Politics: Linking
the Local and the Global (London: Routledge, 1994); Martin Shaw, "Civil Society
and Global Politics: Beyond a Social Movements Approach," Millennium 23, no. 3
(1994): 650-654; R. B. J. Walker, "Social Movements/World Politics," Millennium
23, no. 3 (1994): 669-700; Christine Chin and James H. Mittleman,
"Conceptualizing Resistance to Globalization," in Barry K. Gills, ed., Globalization
and the Politics of Resistance (Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 35-36. There
is a brief examination of recent efforts to globalize political-opportunity structures
theory in Colas, note 1, pp. 77-78, and in Craig Murphy's conclusion to his edited
volume Egalitarian Politics in the Age of Globalization (Basingstoke, U.K.:
Palgrave, 2002), pp. 208-209.
7. Taken together, these approaches are often characterized as constituting a North
American social-movement tradition. For a classic, early statement of resourcemobilization theory, see John D. McCarthy and Mayer N. Zald, "Resource
Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory," American Journal of
Sociology 82, no. 6 (1977): 1212-1241. Perhaps the most influential exponent of
political-opportunity structures theory is Sidney Tarrow, in Power in Movement:
Social Movements and Contentious Politics, 2d ed. (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge
University Press, 1998). For an early development of frame theory, see David A.
Snow et al., "Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement
Participation," American Sociological Review 51 (1986): 464-481.
8. For example, Jackie Smith et al., Transnational Social Movements and Global
Politics: Solidarity Beyond the State (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press,
1997); Jackie Smith and Hank Johnston, eds., Globalization and Resistance:
Transnational Dimensions of Social Movements (Lanham, Md.: Rowman &
Littlefield, 2002); Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders:
Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,
1998); Donatella della Porta and Hanspeter Kriesi, eds., Social Movements in a
Globalizing World (Basingstoke, U.K.: Macmillan, 1999).
9. Della Porta and Kriesi briefly namecheck IR authors associated with
transnationalism, global governance, and global civil-society perspectives in their
introduction to della Porta and Kriesi, note 8, p. 14. See also Tarrow's discussion of
global civil-society theory in "From Lumping to Splitting: Specifying Globalization
and Resistance," in Smith and Johnston, eds., note 8.
10. This is evident, for example, in the introductory discussion in John A. Guidry,
Michael D. Kennedy, and Mayer N. Zald, eds., Globalizations and Social
Movements: Culture, Power and the Transnational Public Sphere (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 2000).
11. An oft-cited classic new social-movement-theory collection is the winter 1985
issue of Social Research 52, with articles by many key exponents. See also Alberto
Melucci, Nomads of the Present: Social Movements and Individual Needs in
Contemporary Society (London: Radius, 1989). Melucci takes on board the impact
of globalization to some extent in both this text and his later Challenging Codes:
Collective Action in the Information Age (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University
Press, 1996). New social-movement debates are explored, although not endorsed, in
Robin Cohen and Shirin M. Rai, "Global Social Movements: Towards a
Cosmopolitan Politics," in their edited volume Global Social Movements (London:
Athlone Press, 2000), pp. 4-7.
12. Of course, analytical pragmatists, too, tend to have a normative interest in the
success of the movements they study and to be imbued with values of pluralism and
participation. Nonetheless, they tend not to be overtly normative in terms of the
declared focus of the IR research. See, for example, Keohane and Nye, eds., note 3;
Risse-Kappan, note 4; Tarrow, note 7; Keck and Sikkink, note 8; della Porta and
Kriesi, note 8; Leon Gordenker and Thomas Weiss, "Pluralizing Global Governance:
Analytical Approaches and Dimensions," in Gordenker and Weiss, eds., NGOs, the
UN, and Global Governance (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1996), 17-47; Willetts,
introduction and conclusion to Willetts, note 3; and also Willetts, "Transnational
Actors and International Organizations," in John Baylis and Steve Smith, eds., The
Globalization of World Politics, 2d ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp.
356-383. Willetts moves toward a more explicitly normative concern with the
capacity for democratization in "From Consultative Arrangements to Partnership:
The Changing Status of NGOs in Diplomacy at the UN," Global Governance 6, no. 2
(2000): 191-212. Normative pragmatist elements can also be found in Commission
on Global Governance, Our Global Neighbourhood; in several of the essays in Smith
et al., eds., note 8; and in Barbara Adams, "The People's Organisations and the UN-NGOs in International Civil Society," in Erskine Childers, Challenges to the United
Nations: Building a Safer World (London: Catholic Institute for International
Relations, 1995), pp. 176-187. Perhaps the strongest statement of normative
pragmatism can be found in Elizabeth Riddell-Dixon, "Social Movements and the
United Nations," International Social Science Journal 144 (1995): 289-303.
13. We use the structuralist label with some misgiving, given that some authors
included here have relatively complex understandings of the relationship between
structure and agency that grant movements some constitutive power. Nevertheless,
the label accurately conveys the overriding focus on context and/or "underlying"
forces. The more optimistic version of this approach can be found in the work of
world-systems theorists, as with Giovanni Arrighi et al., Anti-Systemic Movements
(London: Verso, 1989); and Samuel Amin et al., Transforming the Revolution:
Social Movements and the World System (New York: Monthly Review Press,
1990). See also Hardt and Negri, note 5. The more pessimistic version of the
structuralist approach includes much neo-Gramscian IR writing; most prominently,
Robert Cox, Production, Power, and World Order (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1987), pp. 368-395, and "Democracy in Hard Times: Economic Globalization
and the Limits of Democracy," in Anthony McGrew, ed., The Transformation of
Democracy? (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997), pp. 64-66; and Stephen Gill,
"Globalisation, Market Civilisation, and Disciplinary Neo-Liberalism," Millennium
24, no. 3 (1995): 404-410--reprinted in Gill, Power and Resistance in the New World
Order (Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave, 2003). Other examples of pessimistic
structuralism include Christoph Gorg and Joachim Hirsch, "Is International
Democracy Possible?" Review of International Political Economy 5, no. 3 (1998):
585-615; Mustapha Kamal Pasha and David L. Blaney, "Elusive Paradise: The
Promise and Peril of Global Civil Society," Alternatives 23, no. 4 (1998): 417-450;
and Murphy, note 6. There also seem to be elements of pessimist analysis in Cecelia
Lynch, "Social Movements and the Problem of Globalization," Alternatives 23, no. 2
(1998): 149-173.
14. Utopian transformationalists include Richard Falk, "The Global Promise of
Social Movements: Explorations at the Edge of Time," Alternatives 12, no. 2 (1987):
173-196; Lipschutz, note 5; Dianne Otto, "Nongovernmental Organizations and the
United Nations System: The Emerging Role of International Civil Society," Human
Rights Quarterly 18 (1996): 107-141; Leslie Paul Thiele, "Making Democracy Safe
for the World: Social Movements and Global Politics." Alternatives 8, no. 3 (1993):
273-305; Wapner, note 5. Utopian transformationalist elements are evident in R. B.
J. Walker's One World/Many Worlds: Struggles for a Just World Peace (Boulder:
Lynne Rienner, 1988), and in Manuel Castells's treatment of social movements in
Castells, The Information Age, vol. 2: The Power of Identity (Oxford: Blackwell,
1997). However, the work of Castells and Walker also has a critical dimension,
including a sensitivity to the differences between and within movements. Two other
works that bridge our categories are Colas, note 1, and Leslie Sklair, Globalization:
Capitalism and Its Alternatives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). The former
has a critical-transformationalist insistence on the power relations stratifying socialmovement activism, their interconnections with the state and capitalist system, and
their demonstrated transformative capacity in particular contexts. The latter draws on
sources ranging from political-opportunity structures theory to human-rights
discourses in order to sketch out the complex strategies, constraints, and possibilities
for countermovements to globalization. Yet both have a limited view of culturally
oriented activism and an overriding concern to outline the potentialities for socialism
in the context of the underlying forces of globalized capitalism, which points to
affinities with optimistic structuralists. Peter Waterman, who pays close attention to
the difficulties and potentialities of constructing solidarity across borders, and
between movements, fits more comfortably into the critical-transformationalist
category. See, for example, his Globalization, Social Movements, and the New
Internationalism, 2d ed. (New York: Continuum, 2002). The introductory chapter of
Guidry, Kennedy, and Zald, note 10, 1-32, with its emphasis on the interrelations of
power, culture, and the global/local relationship, pushes the North American socialmovement-theory tradition in a critical-transformationalist direction.
15. Richard Falk, in Predatory Globalization (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), has
moved toward an explicit endorsement of a market system and for the need to
reclaim the state, esp. in his chaps. 8, 9. Ronnie Lipschutz is a contributor to Coate et
al., note 5, which has a more institutional focus than his previous work. However,
note also the marked turn toward pessimistic structuralism in Lipschutz's paper
"Global Civil Society and Global Governmentality: Or, The Search for Politics and
the State amidst the Capillaries of Power," presented at "The Politics of Protest in
the Age of Globalisation" conference, University of Sussex, September 26-27, 2002.
16. For example, Stephen Gill, "Toward a Postmodern Prince? The Battle in Seattle
as a Moment in the New Politics of Globalization," Millennium 29, no. 1 (2000):
131-140, reprinted in Gill, note 13. For crossover activist/academic texts aimed at
strengthening the antisystemic, anticapitalist dimension of activism against
neoliberal globalization, see Emma Bircham and John Charlton, eds., AntiCapitalism: A Guide to the Movement, 2d ed. (London: Bookmark, 2001); John
Holloway, Change the World Without Taking Power: The Meaning of Revolution
Today (London: Pluto, 2002); Alex Callinicos, An Anti-Capitalist Manifesto
(Cambridge: Polity, 2003).
17. We note in passing the increasing use of the terminology of "resistance" in
literature on global activism. Found most frequently in structuralist texts (such as
Gill, note 13; Gill, note 6; and in chapter 3.3, "Resistance, Crisis, and
Transformation" in Hardt and Negri, note 5), this terminology has also found its way
into the high-profile pragmatist text of Smith and Johnston, eds., note 8. Clearly an
acknowledgment of the impact of oppositional activism against neoliberal aspects of
the global economy, the use of this terminology raises significant questions about
conceptual genealogy and political implications that are beyond the purview of this
article. Useful investigations are offered in Chin and Mittleman, note 6, and Guidry,
Kennedy, and Zald, note 10, pp. 17-19.
18. For obvious examples of social-movement terminology, see Smith et al., eds.,
note 8, and Cohen and Rai, note 11. Note Colas's insistence on international, rather
than global or transnational, in International Civil Society, note 1, pp. 75-83. The
term networks in global civil society is in Lipschutz, "Reconstructing World
Politics," note 5, p. 393; the phrase the multitude is in Hardt and Negri, note 5; social
forces is in Barry K. Gills, "Globalization and the Politics of Resistance,"
introduction to Gills, note 6, p. 8.
19. The abbreviation TSMOs is used in Smith et al., Transnational Social
Movements, note 8; Smith and Johnston, eds., Globalization and Resistance, note 8;
della Porta and Kriesi, Social Movements in a Globalizing World, note 8; Tarrow,
"Beyond Globalization," in Tarrow, note 7. The phrase interest groups is used in
Keohane and Nye, eds., note 3; pressure groups is in Willetts, note 3; activist groups
is in Wapner, note 5. INGOs is used in more recent work by Wapner and Willetts as
well as in that by other pragmatists such as Keck and Sikkink, della Porta and Kriesi,
and Weiss and Gordenker; transformationalists such as Otto; and structuralists such
as Gorg and Hisch, Hardt, and Negri, Murphy, and Pasha and Blaney. This
convergence in terminology may be partly explained by the fact that the United
Nations uses the concept of (I)NGOs and has played a much-remarked role as a
focus and sponsor of NGO activity and of research on this topic.
20. See Willetts, "Pressure Groups as Transnational Actors," in Willetts, note 3; also
pp. 299, 302, 307 of "Transnational Actors," Willetts, note 12, and NGO examples
used throughout "From Consultative Arrangements to Partnership," note 12.
21. This last point is perhaps controversial, given that many liberals in IR, including
Willetts, have been highly critical of statism in international relations. Indeed, their
work has been attacked by realist critics on the grounds that it focuses on social
interactions and neglects the state. However, it seems to us that this distinction
between statist (realist) and society-centered (liberal) approaches was always
overdrawn. The impact of nonstate actors upon the state and international
organizations remained a central conclusion of much liberal work, including that of
Willetts, and has been strongly restated in recent interdependence work; for different
judgments on this issue, see Wapner, note 5, pp. 11-12; and Risse-Kappan, note 4,
pp. 5, 14-15.
22. Keck and Sikkink, note 8, p. 1.
23. Ibid., p. 6.
24. It is worth noting that the concept of "transnational mobilising structures" used in
the volume by della Porta and Kriesi, eds., note 8 (see esp. pp. 17-21, 206-215)
appears to be a broadening of terminology, but still involves a focus on the growing
web of TSMOs, the relations between them, and the resources they wield. A more
promising shift is signaled in Smith and Johnston, note 8, which includes analyses of
localized movements, mass protests such as that at Seattle in November 1999, and
"the dynamics of transnational contention." These analyses still frequently
emphasize the role of formal organization and its relation to the political system, but
they also involve attention to the relationship of such organization to movement
constituencies; the role of networked, extra-institutional groups; and the theorization
of movement activism in terms of dynamic processes and interactions.
25. Falk, note 14, p. 191.
26. John Boli and George M. Thomas, "INGOs and the Organization of World
Culture," in their edited volume, Constructing World Culture: International
Nongovernmental Organizations Since 1875 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University
Press, 1999), esp. pp. 34-46. Falk and other utopian transformationalists insist briefly
that it is specifically emancipatory movement actors they are interested in; however,
no theoretical space is made for other kinds of movements and the distinction is lost
in the ensuing generalizations about movements, NGOs, and global civil society.
27. Murphy, note 5, pp. 795-796.
28. This argument is developed at more length in Eschle, "Globalising Civil Society?
Social Movements and Global Politics from Below," in Pierre Hamel et al., eds.,
Globalizing Social Movements (Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave, 2001). For examples
of this economic-political emphasis from the structuralists, see Gill, note 13, or,
more briefly, Lynch, "Social Movements and the Problem of Globalization," p. 150.
For an example from the pragmatists, see Tarrow's use of the term interdependence
in his "Beyond Globalization," note 19, p. 2. For an example from the
transformationalists, see Falk, note 15, chap. 8. There are some exceptions, where,
for example, attention is paid to the role of culture and particularly to the spread of
consumerism, such as Sklair, note 14, or to the homogenization of values and
lifestyles. We return to this point later.
29. For example, Tarrow, note 19, pp. 8-9; Smith et al., eds., note 8, esp. pp. 10-13,
56-69; della Porta and Kriesi, introduction to della Porta and Kriesi, note 8; Guidry
et al., note 10, pp. 1-3.
30. For example, Gorg and Hirsch, note 13, pp. 587-593; Colas, note 1, p. 149; Hardt
and Negri, note 5.
31. See, for example, the rejection of a "strong" globalization thesis that global
social and political interactions are already significantly integrated and that the
continuance of this process is inevitable, in Tarrow, note 19, pp. 1-2, and Keck and
Sikkink, note 8, p. 213. Note also Hardt and Negri's insistence that empire has no
center but is rather based on networked forms of power and authority.
32. Tarrow, note 19, p. 5, and Tarrow, note 7, pp. 184-189.
33. Melucci, note 11, chap. 3.
34. For more on cross-border diffusion, see David Snow and Robert D. Benford,
"Alternative Types of Cross National Diffusion in the Social Movement Arena," in
della Porta and Kriesi, note 8, pp. 23-39; Marco G. Guigni, "Explaining CrossNational Similarities Among Social Movements," in Smith and Johnston, note 8, pp.
13-29.
35. Tarrow, note 19, pp. 6-10; Tarrow, note 7, chap. 11. Tarrow's position on this
may be softening. In Tarrow, note 9, he argues that concepts like social networks,
just like political opportunities, are not "inherently domestic" (p. 238). While he still
insists that "much of transnational activism is rooted in domestic ... networks,"
arguably a stronger kind of relationship between the two is implied by the "dynamic,
interactive framework" developed here. Further, he also argues for more attention to
the "social appropriation of domestic institutions and organizations for transnational
purposes" and assesses movement "framing" of the globalization issue (pp. 243244), thus pointing to ways in which domestic networks may still be considered as
participating in processes of transnational contention.
36. Hardt and Negri, note 5, pp. 54-55. Their claim is that such movements are
nonuniversalizable, "incommunicable" across borders, so not transnational in form
but nonetheless globally constituted and constitutive. In contrast, Sklair's analysis in
Sklair, note 14, chap. 10, points to the complex ways in which local struggles make
"transnational connections" (p. 280). The common thread in optimistic structuralist
accounts is that the antisystemic potential residing historically in socialist
internationalism is being drastically reshaped to include new constituencies in
diverse localities. Cf. Colas, note 1.
37. Thiele, note 14, p. 280.
38. Ibid., p. 281; Hardt and Negri, note 5, p. 55.
39. Scott Turner, "Global Civil Society, Anarchy, and Governance: Assessing an
Emerging Paradigm," Journal of Peace Research 35, no. 1 (1998): 29-30.
40. Ibid., pp. 35-36.
41. See, for example, Falk, note 14, p. 174; Turner, note 39, pp. 33, 35-36.
42. See, for example, the influential article by Marc Nerfin, "Neither Prince nor
Merchant: Citizen. An Introduction to the Third System,' IFDA Dossier 56 (1986):
14.
43. For further discussion of these categories, see Stammers, note 1.
44. Tarrow, note 19, pp. 3, 5, 8-9.
45. Commission on Global Governance, note 5, pp. 41-75.
46. Tarrow, note 9, pp. 243-244. Framing is also discussed in Smith and Johnston,
note 8; and in Guidry, Kennedy, and Zald, note 10.
47. Smith et al., "Social Movements and World Politics," in Smith et al., note 8, pp.
70-73.
48. See brief mentions in Cohen and Rai, note 11, pp. 8-9; and Lipschutz, note 5, pp.
398-399; and lengthier analysis in the Commission on Global Governance, note 5,
pp. 46-75.
49. Gill, note 13, p. 133.
50. See, for example, Amory Starr, Naming the Enemy: Anti-Corporaie Movements
Confront Globalization (London: Zed Books, 2000). Starr identifies three main
strands in the movement: those seeking contestation and reform (which includes
universalist human rights and peace groups); those pursuing globalization from
below (in which she places socialist internationalists and the new kind of
internationalism pursued by the Zapatistas); and those seeking delinking,
relocalization, and sovereignty (which includes groups ranging from anarchists, to
small businesses, to religious nationalists). It is the last strand that Starr favors as
offering the most effective ideological possibilities for resistance, but it is
noteworthy that other strands include proponents of avowedly Westernized,
universalist frameworks. Starr herself downplays the role of expressive activism
against corporate power and neoliberalism, relegating culture and identity to a
strategic resource for those more concerned with fundamental economic issues and
insisting that cultural resistances are most likely to be constructed effectively within
traditional cultures (pp. 160-170). Her eclectic attempt to rework a Marxist account
of corporate globalization is avowedly structuralist, but her attention to the empirical
detail of movement activities and to questions of strategy, organization, and goals
moves her work beyond a structuralist approach.
51. Robert Cox, "Civil Society at the Turn of the Millennium: Prospects for an
Alternative World Order," Review of International Studies 25, no. 1 (1999): 13-25;
Hardt and Negri, note 5, p. 54. The depiction of resistances to neoliberal
globalization given in these accounts is notably narrower than that given by Starr. It
maps closely on to crossover activist/academic texts aligned with a more orthodox
Marxist perspective. See, for example, Bircham and Charlton, note 16.
52. For example, Adams, note 12, pp. 178, 184-185; Commission on Global
Governance, note 5, pp. 32-37, 254-260; Riddell-Dixon, note 12, p. 291.
53. Commission on Global Governance, note 5, pp. 32-35.
54. Otto, note 14, pp. 134-135.
55. Dieter Rucht, "The Transnationalization of Social Movements: Trends, Causes,
Problems," in della Porta and Kriesi, note 8, p. 218; see also Hans Gerth and C.
Wright Mills, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1970); R. Michels, Political Parties (New York: Free Press, 1962).
56. For example, Sonia E. Alvarez, "Advocating Feminism: The Latin American
Feminist NGO 'Boom,'" International Feminist Journal of Politics 1, no. 2 (1999):
181-209; David S. Meyer and Sidney Tarrow, "A Movement Society: Contentious
Politics for a New Century," in Meyer and Tarrow, eds., The Social Movement
Society: Contentious Politics for a New Century (Lanham, Md.: Rowman &
Littlefield, 1998), p. 20.
57. Antonio Donini, "The Bureaucracy and the Free Spirits: Stagnation and
Innovation in the Relationship Between the UN and NGOs," in Weiss and
Gordenker, eds., note 12, pp. 88-92.
58. We have seen above that Tarrow refers to social networks and that Keck and
Sikkink talk about transnational advocacy networks, while Marc Nerfin insists that
networking "reflects better the nature and goals" of what he calls "third system
associations and movements," a claim echoed in Ronnie Lipschutz's description of
"networks in global civil society."
59. For example, Castells, The Information Age, vol. 1: The Rise of the Network
Society, 2d ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), and Hardt and Negri, note 5. However,
note the reminder from Peter Waterman that "networking is both the oldest and the
most common form of human social relationship," in his "Social Movements, Local
Places, and Globalized Spaces: Implications for 'Globalization from Below,'" in
Gills, note 6, p. 143.
60. Keck and Sikkink, note 8, p. 8; Moghadam, note 2, pp. 78-79; Nerfin, note 42, p.
18; Otto, note 14, p. 135.
61. It is in this sense that the concept of network is used within the United Nations:
see Gordenker and Weiss, "Pluralizing Global Governance," pp. 23, 25-28; and it is
the predominant sense of the term in Moghadam, note 2.
62. Waterman, note 59, pp. 144. Similar concerns are articulated by Jeremy Brecher
et al. Globalization from Below, 2d ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: South End Press, 2002),
pp. 86-90, this time from a more concrete preoccupation with the strategy of the
movement against the neoliberal elements of globalization. Brecher et al. point to the
reproduction of inequalities within North-South networks and to organizational
difficulties in social-movement actions with a network form, as well as to the
problem of coopted NGOs. However, such concerns do not lead these authors to
abandon the network form. Waterman urges the replacement of "network babble"
with "network analysis," and Brecher et al. argue that activists need to develop a
more open, transparent, and democratic network involving stronger links between
NGOs and grassroots activists. Both arguments resonate with our proposals below.
63. Gorg and Hirsch, note 13, p. 596.
64. Ibid., p. 607.
65. Mario Diani, "The Concept of Social Movement," in Kate Nash, ed., Readings in
Contemporary Political Sociology (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2000), p. 155.
66. Ibid., p. 165 (emph. in orig.).
67. Ibid., p. 166.
68. Ibid., pp. 165, 167.
69. Keck and Sikkink, "Transnational Advocacy Networks in the Movement
Society," in Meyer and Tarrow, note 56, pp. 219-221.
70. Widely cited formulations of this approach in politics and sociology include
David Held et al., Global Transformations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), esp. the
introduction; Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to
Cosmopolitan Governance (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1995); and
Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990).
These can fruitfully be read in conjunction with a growing feminist literature giving
"intersectional" accounts of globalization, such as Marianne Marchand and Anne
Sisson Runyan, eds., Gender and Global Restructuring: Sightings, Sites, and
Resistances (London: Routledge, 2000); Signs 26, no. 4, special issue (2001); and
Feminist Review 70, special issue (2002). Feminist accounts have a distinctive focus
on pervasive transnationalized racial and gender hierarchies. Their general emphasis
on power relations is an important corrective to a discourse that tends to characterize
the multiple dimensions of globalization in more pluralist terms as social realms or
fields.
71. There is some sign of this broadening of the political-opportunity structures
approach, in terms of attention to recent shifts in the macroeconomic context. See,
for example, Gregory F. Maney, "Transnational Structures and Protest: Linking
Theories and Assessing Evidence," and Jeffrey Ayres, "Transnational Political
Processes and Contention Against the Global Economy," both in Smith and
Johnston, note 8, at pp. 31-50 and 191-205, respectively. However, note that this
adds an interest in economic structures to an existing focus on political institutions:
This approach thus remains locked within the narrower economic-political view of
globalization.
72. Roland Robertson, "Glocalization: Time-Space and
Homogeneity/Heterogeneity," in Michael Featherstone et al., eds., Global
Modernities (London: Sage, 1995). Feminist accounts strongly favor studying the
operations of globalization in specific local contexts because of their normative
commitment to exposing how apparently abstract, gender-neutral processes are
embedded within material, gendered social relationships. It is through an emphasis
on embodied agency within particular localities that women are made visible as sites
and sources of globalization. See, for example, Saskia Sassen, "Toward a Feminist
Analytics of the Global Economy," Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 4, no. 1
(1996): 7-41; Carla Freeman, "Is Local: Global as Feminine: Masculine? Rethinking
the Gender of Globalization," Signs 26, no. 4 (2001): 1007-1037.
73. Giddens, note 70, pp. 21-29. Giddens limits his discussion to money and expert
systems, but his argument can be extended to include other disembedding
mechanisms.
74. The implications of the mutual constitution of the local and global for theorizing
movements are developed in Guidry et al., note 10, pp. 7-16. Waterman reformulates
"Think globally, act locally" differently, arguing for a new slogan: "Think globally,
act locally; think locally, act globally. To which I would like to add: 'Think
dialectically; act self-reflexively.'" See Waterman, note 59, p. 148.
75. Many such activists reject the antiglobalization label, insisting that it falsely
defines the movement as local and/or protectionist. In other words, it implies a
global/local dichotomy, where "the enemy" is global and resistance is local. It has
been argued instead that the movement involves the construction of an alternative
kind of globalization, "from below"--one that is based on more humane, just, and
democratic interconnections between people on a worldwide scale. See, for example,
David Graeber, "The New Anarchists," New Left Review 113 (Jan.-Feb. 2002): 63;
Naomi Klein, Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the
Globalization Debate (London: Flamingo, 2002), pp. 77-78; Kevin Danaher and
Robert Burbach, "Making History," introduction to Danaher and Burbach, eds.,
Globalize This! The Battle Against the World Trade Organization and Corporate
Rule (Monroe, Me.: Common Courage Press, 2000), pp. 7-11.
76. Large mobilization events are emphasized, for example, in John Charlton,
"Action!" in Bircham and Charlton, note 16, pp. 342-385; and in Alexander
Cockburn, Jeffrey St. Clair, and Allan Sekula, Five Days That Shook the World:
Seattle and Beyond (London: Verso, 2000).
77. For example, Starr, note 50, p. xiii; Kathleen Staudt, Shirin Rai, and Jane L.
Parpart, "Protesting World Trade Rules: Can We Talk About Empowerment?" Signs
26, no. 4 (2001): 1251-1257; Klein, note 75, pp. 16-18.
78. For example, Chris Dixon, "Finding Hope after Seattle: Rethinking Radical
Activism and Building a Movement": www.zmag.org/dixonseattle.htm (no date
given; visited February 1, 2001).
79. Jean L. Cohen and Andrew Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992), pp. 549-550.
80. Ibid., p. 558.
81. Ibid., p. 561.
82. Some diverse examples of relevant theory include Ernesto Laclau and Chantal
Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Toward a Radical Democracy (London:
Verso, 1985); Paul Hirst, Associative Democracy: New Forms of Economic and
Social Governance (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994); Benjamin Barber, Strong
Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1984).
83. For example, Danaher and Burbach, note 75; Graeber, note 75, pp. 70-72;
Brecher, et al., Globalization from Below, note 62, pp. xi, 71-72, 84-90. See also
World Social Forum, "World Social Forum Charter of Principles" (2002),
www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/main.asp?id_menu=4&cd_language=2 (visited
December 15, 2002).
84. For a survey of recent developments in feminist democratic theory that make this
point about the incorporation of participatory modes, see Judith Squires, Gender in
Political Theory (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), chaps. 6, 7; see also Catherine
Eschle, Global Democracy, Social Movements, and Feminism (Boulder, CO):
Westview Press, 2001), chap. 3.
85. This analysis is developed at more length in Eschle, note 84, chap. 4.
86. Moghadam, note 2.
87. Nira Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation (London: Sage, 1997), pp. 129-130;
Cynthia Cockburn "The Women's Movement: Boundary Crossing on Terrains of
Conflict," in Cohen and Rai, eds., note 11, pp. 51-58; and Patricia Hill Collins, Black
Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and Empowerment, 2d ed. (London:
Routledge, 2000), pp. 245-249.
88. Christina Gabriel and Laura Macdonald, "NAFTA, Women, and Organizing in
Canada and Mexico: Forging a Feminist Internationality," Millennium 23, no. 3
(1994): 549-554, 558-562.
89. Eschle, "'Skeleton Women': Feminism and the Anti-Globalization Movement,"
Signs, forthcoming winter 2004/2005.
Catherine Eschle and Neil Stammers*
*Catherine Eschle, Department of Government, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow,
GI 1XQ, Scotland, UK. E-mail: catherine.eschle@strath.ac.uk; Neil Stammers,
International Relations and Politics Subject Group, School of Social Sciences,
University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9SN, UK. E-mail:
n.stammers@sussex.ac.uk