Multi-Level Governance and Social Movements in Mercosur.

In this paper, I argue that social movements respond to two dimensions of political opportunity in deciding when and how to seek political influence in multilevel governance. One dimension, the degree of access or openness, is already common in the literature on transnational social movements. A second dimension of political capacity - the ability to generate authoritative outcomes - is also important, but much less studied. Both activists and scholars can assess institutions in multi-level governance for their simultaneous placement on these two dimensions. I briefly review the four resulting quadrants and the kinds of strategies social movements are likely to choose in them, discussing trade institutions that might fit in each: strong and open, strong and closed, weak and open, and weak and closed. I use this framework to argue that the Mercosur free trade area fits best in the weak and closed quadrant, and thus it is not surprising that regional social movements have directed little time to this level of governance. I also briefly review the politics of GMOs in the Mercosur region, showing that the politics of GMOs in Brazil and Argentina have surprisingly different patterns of political opportunity for their national movements that have led to very different concrete results. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]