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Zimbabwean civic organizations and social movements have faced profound strategic dilemmas in their efforts to contribute to transformative change and peace in Zimbabwe. While major civic strategic actions over the last decade have contributed to significant social, political and economic change, they have at times also fuelled the very polarizing processes that have severely undermined peace and stability. This paper discusses the research methods used to assess the outcomes of three strategic actions taken by two pivotal social movement organizations in Zimbabwe, and secondly, the contributions of their actions for transformative change and peace. It reflects on the broad findings the analysis produced, and the challenges and benefits such methods have for evaluating outcomes and impacts of social movements working to bring national level change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human rights have both a legal and a social dimension, connected to their grounding in both law and morality. They are used in legal regulatory systems and in social movements, but in very different and sometimes incompatible ways. Through a comparativ ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why is it so hard to get an answer to the question, What is “the” feminist perspective on the War in Iraq? In this paper, I argue that feminist normative perspectives, often misunderstood as specific political commitments to certain forms of social change, are in fact better understood in scholarly research, not as political but as methodological commitments. Feminism like realism and other perspectives on international relations is theoretically and empirically diverse. Despite this diversity, feminist scholars share a set of normative commitments that they realizes through a broadly shared research ethic. Consequently, while the feminist answer to the opening question may be more varied than say “the” realist perspective on the same topic, most feminists share a commitment to certain epistemological premises, including the premise that we should be suspicious of any claims that characterize anything as normatively laden as epistemology to be “shared.” I argue that this irony is one of the features of feminist inquiry in the field of international relations as in other fields of political and social science that keeps it internally dynamic and able continually to adapt its perspective to the phenomena under examination. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transnational social movement studies have long neglected the way activists from the South, and particularly from Africa, have participated in World Social Forum processes. Alterglobal activists have also been accused of neglecting or dominating southern voices. The organization of the WSF in Nairobi was seen as an opportunity to make African voices heard. This examines how Africans activists participated in Nairobi, and the complex relationship they have to northern, and other southern (such as Asia and Latin America) activists. The African alterglobal movement is seen as a space of tensions (i.e between South Africans and the rest of the continent, between French and English speaking Africa, or between NGOs and more radical organisations) also reflected in national mobilisations. Our team of 23 French and 12 Kenyan scholars made collective ethnographic observations in a hundred workshops, and conducted 150 biographical interviews of African activists in order to examine how Africa was referred to in the WSF, how activists financed their trip to Nairobi, and how afrocentric, anti-imperialist and anticolonial arguments have been used. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though most social movements form in order to press for significant social change, unequivocal policy success is rare and difficult to achieve. Instead, movements may win incremental victories--increased public attention or media coverage, Congressional hearings, judicial rulings in lower courts--that stop short of the movement's ultimate goals. Drawing on data collected from different anti-death penalty organizations around the United States, this paper investigates how such partial success affects the subsequent level of support and resource endowments of movement organizations. In so doing, this paper contributes to a larger body of work that studies movement outcomes, while reorienting the focus to how movements react to lesser gains. Ultimately, I argue, the impact of small victories is curvilinear: movements initially benefit from incremental advances both in terms of support and income levels. However, continued success produces an eventual tipping point where gains actually contribute to sharp declines in support and resources. Overall, small gains or setbacks in formal institutional arenas--legislatures and courts--have more of an impact than more informal changes in behavior, attitudes, and practices. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individuals from different countries vary significantly on the degree to which they engage in political activism. Scholars attribute these variations to different value systems rooted in larger institutional and ideological structures as well as internalized within the individual level of interactions. These effects are also mediated through the individual and their organizational affiliations in which they are embedded producing particular patterns of behaviors. This study utilizes hierarchical methods to determine individual as well as national level factors that may influence political activism. By examining variation in activism, signing petitions and engaging in protests, across 57 countries over the last three decades of the 20th century, I test not only how individual membership and volunteering for social movement and non-social movement organizations predict activism, but also the relationship with national contextual factors such as engagement with international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) and transnational social movements (TSMOs), international development aid inflow, economic development, and democratic openness. I find strong evidence that linkages to INGOs and TSMOs positively and international development aid negatively affect individual patterns of activist behavior across a wide spectrum of countries. Findings are included for cross-level interactions between organizational affiliation, international aid, and INGO and TSMO density. I conclude with a discussion of implications for world society and world systems perspectives and of possibilities for future research in the fields of organizational and international development studies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extending a prevailing typology (Tarrow 2005), the paper conceptualizes four processes of transnational activism that operate on two levels: international and intranational. It also explores relationships between discrete processes, the four newly-conceptualized as well as the six existing. The paper then lays the groundwork for future research to use the complemented set of ten processes to revisit the causal weights of governmental complex internationalism and socioeconomic globalism on a rising tide of transnational activism over the last 100 years. The empirical portion of this scoping paper extrapolates from bioenergy and biodiversity activist sectors using global campaigns during the 1889-1945 period. These and similar sectors portray the typology that has demarcated the scope of transnational activism as standing remarkably incomplete—failing to note, let alone explain widely documented modes of activism. Due to prevailing transitology in the analysis of activist "transition" from the intra- to the inter-national level, processes that mix conventional intranational and international levels of analysis lie un-conceptualized. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The argument presented here is that the progressive antisystemic movements will find their greatest support in the semiperiphery. Democratic socialist parties and regimes that are coming to power in the semiperipheral countries will be the forereachers that show how the progressive transnational movements (feminism, environmentalism, labor, indigenism) can work together to democratize global governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I examine the extent to which, and the conditions under which, supranational agents are able to take advantage of their discretion to pursue their own policy preferences ? for example, by seeking to advance the process of European integration beyond the lowest-common denominator preferences of the EU member governments. Faced with the threat of such supranational activism, I argue, member-state principals adopt both administrative procedures and oversight mechanisms in order to limit supranational discretion; yet these control mechanisms are themselves costly and are unlikely to be perfectly effective in preventing agents from pursuing their own preferences. In this context, I argue that the autonomy and influence of a given supranational organization depends primarily upon the efficacy and credibility of various control mechanisms established by member-state principals, and that these vary both across organizations and over time, leading to varying but predictable patterns of supranational autonomy and influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data from the Yearbook of International Associations show that, since the mid-1980s, a larger percentage of transnational social change organizations were organized within either the global North or South than was true in the past, when most groups organized across the North-South divide. I explore two different explanations for this organizational pattern. One might interpret the regionalization of transnational organizing as a result of the failures of prior organizing efforts to overcome the North-South polarization that divides the international community. In other words, we may be seeing a parallel of Benjamin Barber?s ?jihad,? or local resurgence against attempts to globalize political discourse. Alternatively, the regionalization might reflect activists? efforts to take advantage of institutional openings in order to maximize their influence in global political arenas. Data from the Yearbook on the ties between regionally organized transnational social movement organizations and other non-governmental organizations are used to assess the extent to which transnational organizations relate to groups within or outside their own regions. The analysis showed that groups in the global South were more likely to maintain cross-regional ties than were their Northern counterparts. On the other hand, Northern groups were significantly more likely to report only regional ties. Environmental and women?s organizations were the most likely to maintain only regional ties while economic justice and human rights organizations were the most likely to report cross-regional ties. I conclude that these findings best support the argument that the regionalization of transnational social change organizations signals their adaptation to the institutional environment rather than polarization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

World revolutions are clusters of revolutionary activity and social movements across several countries that successfully change the world order and incite thoroughgoing social transformations. We seek to identify world revolutions in a data set that covers revolutionary activity from 1492 to 1992 in twenty-four countries at the core of the world-system and in close geographical proximity to them. Our statistical analyses investigate the thesis that patterns of societal revolutions indicate a small number of clusters, some of which qualitatively altered the world order and deserve to be called world revolutions. Determining which clusters can be called ?world revolutions? involves interpreting the content and spread of ideas and organizational forms through history. We employ data pertaining to revolutionary situations, wars, economic cycles, hegemony, the outcomes of revolutions, and various other economic and control variables. Our approach is grounded in a world-system theory that also incorporates aspects of world polity and social movement theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women’s struggles for equality are by no means new. One constant of women’s movements is that they vary cross-culturally and that gender social change is something that women in a culture do for themselves. This poster presentation will examine the role o ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many countries in the global South have become increasingly reliant on private investment from the global North to finance state expenditures and indigenous publicly-listed corporations. The East Asian crisis of 1997 changed the rules of investment in the developing world. In contrast to other institutional investors and the World Bank, however, US public pension funds have sought to balance social and financial issues in their formulation of good corporate governance policies vis-à-vis the South. In this essay, I explore the role played by union-based US public pension funds not only because they wield as an aggregate force almost half a trillion dollars worth of investment capital, but also they represent the largest voice in terms of progressive shareholder activism vis-à-vis corporate behaviour. Specifically, I investigate corporate governance practices of two major US public pension funds, California Public Employees? Retirement System and New York City Employees? Retirement System, in order to identify and understand the limitations and possibilities of transformative politics in the South. I argue that when we contextualise these corporate governance policies within the spatial configurations of capital accumulation and restructuring, we are able to understand several contradictions underpinning these relatively more socially-oriented forms of corporate governance. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a study of global party formation at the World Social Forum. We will report the results of participant observation and survey research conducted at the 2005 meeting of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Our study examines the personal and network characteristics of participants in the World Social Forum and asks respondents to identify potential contradictions as well as grounds for cooperation among a long list of transnational social movements that are represented at the WSF. We seek to identify zones of dispute and disagreement and to examine potential strategies for overcoming differences and contradictions among counter-hegemonic movements. The idea is to facilitate collective action by examining the nature of contradictions and helping potential allies to formulate solutions that resolve or segment differences. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Responding to the marginalisation of feminist activism in dominant accounts and practices of the so-called ?anti-globalisation movement?, this paper describes and explains the emergence and contexts of what we are calling ?feminist anti-globalisation activism?. Part of a larger project being developed with Bice Maiguashca on the shape, nature and implications of that activism, based on fieldwork conducted at European and World Social Forum sites, what is offered here is a diachronic narrative of movement emergence. We recognise this narrative to be sketchy, partial and contested but we think it offers interesting insights into the character of contemporary feminism, North and South, as well as enriching understanding of ?the anti-globalisation movement? itself. After briefly establishing the contours of feminist anti-globalisation activism, the first part of the paper offers a broad brush account of the main structural and institutional factors that have shaped the emergence of this activism at the state, regional and global levels. We point here to the homogenising and divisive impact of economic globalisation, the constraining and facilitating role of international institutions and regimes, and the major continuities and shifts in global political norms, ideologies and frames. The second part focuses on movement predecessors of feminist anti-globalisation activism. We begin by sketching the reorientation of transnational feminist networks toward anti-globalisation politics, in large part due to the growing influence of Southern feminists, before complicating the story by outlining distinctive trajectories of feminist movement activism in the four countries visited in the course of the fieldwork: Brazil, India, France and the UK. The paper ends by discussing the tensions involved in constructing transnational movement histories: striving to reflect and nurture nascent solidarities across borders while being reflexive about our own situated perspectives and sensitive to the conflicts and contestations between different localities and between North and South. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I argue that the commitment to abstraction and the application of theory has become a substantial and potentially debilitating source of difference and debate within the field of development. At the heart of this new “impasse” are two contradictory suppositions about the nature of ignorance (and enlightenment) and the construction of knowledge. The first concerns the viability and desirability of constructing abstracted or universal understandings about particular circumstances and events. The second – and more intractable – problem concerns the role that theory can and should play in the construction of knowledge. Drawing upon the debates that emerged during and after the perceived impasse of the late 1980s, I argue that the post-modern rejection of universal truths and values stands in direct opposition to a project which aims for general theory and a moral certainty that progress is achievable and desirable. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do some antisystem Islamist groups utilize violent tactics while others chose non-violent ones? Also, when a group chooses violence, why do some groups direct their violence towards targets outside of their country of origin while other groups with similar long-term goals continue to conduct violent acts within the domestic realm? This theoretical paper develops a model utilizing the core concepts from Social Movement Theory to explain tactical choice and targeting by antisystem Islamist groups over the past twenty years, thus laying the foundation for future steps in this research project. The model presented here portrays antisystem groups as rational actors responding to political opportunities within the boundaries delineated by their ideology and resources. This project speaks to critical gaps in the literature regarding tactical choice and change in terrorist groups and also the way that Social Movement Theory can be applied outside of democratic contexts. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Andean Region is characterized by longstanding international stability alongside high levels of internal conflict and violence. What IR considers a a zone of peace, is, in fact, an area in which armed subversive and paramilitary groups, extralegal systems of justice, human rights violations, violent social movements, and criminality are pervasive at the national level. This region highlights a contradictory pattern of conflict increasingly found on the global perphery, in which formal democratic regimes embrace a normative commitment to the peaceful resolution of external conflicts at the same time that domestic institutions are incapable of imposing the rule of law or guaranteeing security, civil freedoms or human rights. This paper assesses the role international and domestic institutions may play in this contradiction, which is not well-accounted for from the persepctive of the democratic-peace thesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transnational citizens groups have been important counter-hegemonic forces in global political arenas. Moreover, the forces that propel global economic and political globalization have also contributed to growing numbers of transnational linkages among those who would challenge existing configurations of power, producing a vibrant and dynamic transnational social movement sector. This paper uses data from the Yearbook of International Associations to explore changes in the structures of transnational social change organizations as well as in their ties to global political institutions over recent decades (1973-2003). It relates changes in the sector to both domestic political and ideological contexts as well as to broader changes in the global institutional and economic environment. Particular attention will be paid to the question of why, during the 1990s, did transnational social change associations tend to organize more frequently within the particular geographic regions of the global North or South than across this North- South divide? I will also investigate whether we find important variations in the geographic and ideological orientations of groups with links to the UN system and to global financial institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]