Transnational Contention: Seattle and After
 

National Science Foundation Grant number 0110788*

Since the early 1990s, a number of changes in the international system have brought citizens of the world closer together  through economic and cultural globalization, new institutions of governance,  and  transnational forms of collective action. In the reflection and research that has accompanied these trends, it is the “globalization” thesis that has received the largest amount of attention, with somewhat less, but still substantial work on international governance. But there has been little reliance on the systematic study of contentious politics through techniques that have been developed over the last three decades in the social movement field. The cost has been to collapse nearly all forms of transnational contention into a reflex of economic globalization, to work from a generic concept of “transnational social movements”, and to pay scant attention to important variations in the actors and the mechanisms of transnational mobilization.

This project focuses centrally on transnational mobilization, defined as the mobilization of social or political actors from more than one society on behalf of common goals against other actors, states, or international institutions. It hypothesizes that would-be transnational mobilizers face an acute collective action problem which they attempt to overcome – at some cost -- by access to the resources, opportunities and incentives offered by international institutions. Even for non-institutional actors, these institutions become the site of key relational mechanisms that certify transnational actors, encourage the formation of transnational networks, shape how social movements and others frame their claims, and encourage them to model their actions in similar ways. Rather than responding in lock-step to “globalization”, non-state actors respond to the signals, incentives and opportunities of international institutions. 

 The project focuses empirically on such transnational networks as the religious human rights network in relation to the UN system, and on various economic protest groups’ relationship to the European Union. The goal is to understand the evolving relationship among international institutions and transnational NGOs and social movements.

For more information, please contact Evelyn Bush, Research Coordinator, at ebush@fordham.edu.
           *This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under
            Grant No. 0110788. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this
            material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Citizen Activists in a Transnational World.
A Grant for training and research from the Ford Foundation

This grant is for the investigation of non-state forms of collective action that cross national boundaries. More and more often, contentious politics is crossing national borders, involving coalitions of actors from different countries, and making claims on foreign actors or international institutions. Protesters say they represent grassroots social interests, but their links to their constituents is often obscure and they are often dismissed as irresponsible, unrooted cosmopolitans. In this project, a team of Cornell and other researchers will examine who these transnational activists are, the links among grassroots activism, transnational social movements, states and international institutions, and how the links between grassroots claims and international institutions can be strengthened. The project, which involves collaborators from Government, Sociology, City and Regional Planning, and Science and Technology Studies, sponsors a graduate seminar and a series fo workshop on various sectors of transnational contention, such as labor transnationalism.

For more information, click here or contact Jennifer Gomez, Program Administrator, at  jkg24@cornell.edu
           

Small grants to faculty and graduate students

           With the support of the College of Arts and Sciences and the Provost, the program is able to offer modest support for visiting faculty to participate in Cornell events and conferences and to Cornell graduate students for support of research and conference participation relating to contentious politics. For information, contact Jennifer Gomez at jkg24@cornell.edu.