Activism, Transnational

Transnational activism can be defined as the mobilization of collective claims by actors located in more than one country and/or addressing more than one national government and/or international governmental organization or another international actor. An example is the Occupy Wall Street movement that began in the United States in 2011 in protest against global corporate capitalism and then became a feature of anticorporate protest in London, Rome, Berlin, and other cities around the world. While forms of transnational activism have been present since a distant past, economic and political globalization has apparently increased their frequency, as well as attention to them.

Social movement studies, like other areas of the social sciences, have been late to acknowledge phenomena of transnationalization and are still in search of adequate theories, concepts, and methods to address them. In fact, most research in the social sciences has time and again confirmed the important role that national political opportunities play in influencing social movement mobilizations, their scope, duration, and forms. The modern repertoire of contention has emerged with the creation of the nation-state, and social movements have played an important role in the establishment of (national) citizenship rights. Thus, it was at the national level that movements fought for access to the public sphere and to decision makers, forged alliances, and suffered from state repression. Case studies as well as cross-national comparisons have addressed these issues in depth, remaining (like most political sociology and political science) anchored in the nation-state. In this regard, social movement studies were not exceptional: Research on political parties or interest groups showed the same pattern. On the other hand, for a long time, international relations have considered states as the main, or even only, actor. This situation started to change in the first decade of the 21st century when research in the social sciences addressed transnational activism via different concepts. In what follows, these concepts are reviewed by distinguishing the actors, forms, and identities in transnational activism.