Transnational social movements and changing organizational fields in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries

Abstract

Recent decades have seen dramatic changes in the global political arena, including shifts in geopolitical arrangements, increases in popular mobilization and contestation over the direction of globalization, and efforts by elites to channel or curb popular opposition. We explore how these factors affect changes in global politics. Organizational populations are shaped by ongoing interactions among civil‐society, corporate and governmental actors operating at multiple levels. During the 1990s and 2000s, corporate and government actors promoted the ‘neoliberalization of civil society’ and the appropriation of movement concepts and practices to support elite interests. Not all movement actors have been passive witnesses to this process: they have engaged in intense internal debates, and they have adapted their organizational strategies to advance social transformation. This article draws from quantitative research on the population of transnational social movement organizations (TSMOs) and on qualitative research on contemporary transnational activism to describe changes in transnational organizing at a time of growing contention in world politics. We show how interactions among global actors have shaped new, hybrid organizational forms and spaces that include actors other than states in influential roles.

Impact of Globalisation On Economic Growth in Romania: An Empirical Analysis of Its Economic, Social and Political Dimensions

“…Moreover, he has revealed two types of causality relationships: (1) one way causality relationship between economic growth and globalisation and (2) two way causality relationship between political and social globalisation and economic growth. In the last years, it raised the attention given the political dimension of globalisation, due to changes in the political arena, shifts in geopolitical arrangements, popular mobilisation and contestation over the direction of globalisation (Smith et al, 2017). …”

Transnational Social Movement Organizations and Counter-Hegemonic Struggles Today

“…17 Our other work has uncovered some important insights into how global issues are framed by movement groups and how this changes over time. Environmental groups may be especially likely to be subjected to efforts at co-optation or to see their framings of issues subverted due to pressures from a more organized and active transnational business elite (Smith, Plummer and Hughes 2017). we note that larger and more concentrated populations of indigenous peoples tend to be located in the global South, and this likely explains much of this difference. Yet, coupled with our observation about women's mobilization, and given that indigenous ideas and framings have found their way into the central discourses in social movement spaces such as the World Social Forums as well as climate justice and food debates, we might see this reflecting the expectation that counter-hegemonic mobilization emerges from outside the core (see, e.g., Markoff 2003;Santos 2006;Arrighi et al 1989).…”

“…The data for our study come from the Transnational Social Movement Organization (TSMO) using a detailed set of selection criteria to identify organizations whose primary purpose was to advance some form of social or political change (Plummer, Smith and Hughes 2017). Whereas we include records of right-wing organizations, the data for such groups is not reliable due to their often covert nature and the resulting lack of information in Yearbook entries.…”

“…We also reviewed organizations' goals and reevaluated and updated our coding scheme taking into account the changes in how issues and goals There is also lag time between a group's founding and its entry into the Yearbook. Smith, Plummer and Hughes (2017). The following years are excluded from the time series due to the lack of availability of access to the printed, English language editions of the Yearbook: 1955;1957;1975;1979. jwsr.org | DOI 10.5195/JWSR.2018.850…”

Introduction to Ecologically Unequal Exchange in Comparative Perspective

“…And, Ciplet and Roberts remind us that politics matters while the core countries continue to triumph over the periphery with the help and legitimation of the semiperiphery. Since ecological debt (the approach taken by Hornborg and Martinez-Alier 2016 in their recent special issue) faces serious political obstacles, the problem remains of how to create a unified movement for socio-ecological justice (see Martinez-Alier et al 2016;Smith et al 2016).…”