Transnational Contention: Seattle and After

反对世界贸易组织的西雅图抗议活动不仅受到媒体的广泛关注，而且表明公众压力对国际经济机构的政治问责日益重要。 这种压力的重要性提出了关于国内社会运动、跨国组织和国际机构之间关系的几个问题。 社会运动在与跨国对手的斗争中面临着集体行动的特殊问题。 他们可以通过在国内组织起来对抗全球经济行为者的后果、支持跨国伞式集团或创建跨越两个或更多国家的运动组织来处理这些问题。 本研究课题探讨了国内活动家如何选择某些渠道成为跨国行动者，以及为什么选择这些渠道。在研究社会运动的“跨国化”时，本研究课题将重点放在跨国行动主义的五个领域（劳工、宗教/人权、土著群体、全球变暖、基因食品）和三个国际机构（联合国、欧盟、世界贸易组织）。 它从现有的《国际组织年鉴》档案中创建了一个定量数据集，并在数据集中增加了有关国际会议抗议活动、活动家团体的成立和政府资助以及国内运动、跨国组织和国际机构之间的网络联系的信息。 对数据集的分析使调查人员和其他对跨国流动感兴趣的人能够了解国内形式的争夺如何让位于跨国动员。

The Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization not only received much media attention, but also demonstrated the growing importance of public pressure for political accountability of international economic institutions. The importance of such pressure raises several issues about the relationships among domestic social movements, transnational organizations, and international institutions. Social movements face special problems of collective action in contending against transnational opponents. They may deal with the problems by organizing domestically against the consequences of global economic actors, by supporting transnational umbrella groups, or by creating movement organizations that span two or more nations. This project examines how and why domestic activists select certain channels to become transnational actors.In studying the "transnationalization" of social movements, the project focuses on five sectors of transnational activism (labor, religious/human rights, indigenous groups, global warming, and genetic foods), and three international institutions (the United Nations, the European Union, and the World Trade Organization). It creates a quantitative data set from the existing archive of the Yearbook of International Organizations, and adds to the data set information obtained on protests at international conferences, on founding and government funding of activists groups, and on network links among domestic movements, transnational organizations, and international institutions. Analysis of the data set allows the investigators and others interested in transnational movements to understand how domestic forms of contention give way to transnational mobilization.