Thinking Locally, Acting Globally? What the Seattle WTO Protests Tell us About the Global Justice Movement

Abstract

The “Battle in Seattle” has been credited with giving birth to a new, more radical phase in transnational social movement organizing; yet evidence suggests it may be misleading to speak of “global” social movements. In Seattle in 1999, the contribution of transnational movement organizations was quite modest compared with that of conventional, nationally based interest groups that focused on local resource mobilization and ideational preparation. This suggests that the basis of the new “global” social movements may be the well-established process of resource mobilization by which organized interest groups provide support for local activist communities.