The Politics of Transnational Networking: Civil Society and the Governance of Trade in the Americas.

The paper argues that a multilevel field of contentious collective action has emerged around trade agreement negotiations in the Americas. Building on empirical evidence from field research in Brazil, Chile, Mexico and the United States, it focuses on the challenges of coordinating such a field. More especifically, it presents the cases of cross-sectoral coalitions created in Mexico and in Chile to act as brokers in trade-related mobilizations. Coordination problems are put in the context of power relations among civil society organizations, of broader dilemmas of connecting the local and the global, and in the context of the negotiation of a new generation of trade agreements. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]