Transnational Contention: Seattle and After

Cornell University, Ithaca NY

Investigators

Abstract

The Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization not only received much media attention, but also demonstrated the growing importance of public pressure for political accountability of international economic institutions. The importance of such pressure raises several issues about the relationships among domestic social movements, transnational organizations, and international institutions. Social movements face special problems of collective action in contending against transnational opponents. They may deal with the problems by organizing domestically against the consequences of global economic actors, by supporting transnational umbrella groups, or by creating movement organizations that span two or more nations. This project examines how and why domestic activists select certain channels to become transnational actors. In studying the "transnationalization" of social movements, the project focuses on five sectors of transnational activism (labor, religious/human rights, indigenous groups, global warming, and genetic foods), and three international institutions (the United Nations, the European Union, and the World Trade Organization). It creates a quantitative data set from the existing archive of the Yearbook of International Organizations, and adds to the data set information obtained on protests at international conferences, on founding and government funding of activists groups, and on network links among domestic movements, transnational organizations, and international institutions. Analysis of the data set allows the investigators and others interested in transnational movements to understand how domestic forms of contention give way to transnational mobilization.