Transnational Protest: States, Circuses, andConflict at the Frontline of Global Politics1

KATE O’NEILL

Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and ManagementUniversity of California at Berkeley

Transnational antiglobalization protests have become a hallmark ofglobal activism since 1999. Over this time, the transnational protestmovement has generated its own internal and external dynamics ofconflict and cooperation, playing them out on a global scale. This essayaddresses these dynamics, focusing on the role of performance andtheater as a means of generating cooperation within a diversetransnational movement, on intramovement conflict, and on the roleof the state with respect to transnational protest. By breaking downdominant conceptions of the state as a unitary actor, transnationalprotests have helped fuel an as yet understudied form of cooperation:that among policing agencies, across local and national levels of lawenforcement, and across national borders. Cross-national policecooperation has become particularly important in the context of thewar against terrorism. However, it has also been shaped by the need tomaintain public order that has arisen as a result of the large, and oftendisruptive, street protests against globalization, which have involvedactivists from many countries.

Meetings of international governmental organizations (IGOs), once the exclusiveprovince of grey-suited policy elites, have been transformed in recent years, at leaston the outside, into sites of colorful, populous, and sometimes violent street protest.Since November 1999, when some 30,000 to 50,000 protesters marched against theWorld Trade Organization (WTO) at its meeting in Seattle, it has become clear thatmeetings of the WTO, the World Bank, the Group of 8 (G-8), the InternationalMonetary Fund (IMF), regional development banks, the European Union (EU),and the United Nations (UN), alone or in combination, provide focal points forsocietal actors otherwise shut out or excluded from these deliberations. The groupsuse these opportunities to express grievances against the processes or policies ofIGOs, or, more generally, against neoliberal globalization. This particular crystal-lization of global governance has enabled many and diverse societal groups to builda transnational protest movement that targets these meetings, sharing tactics anddemands while also relying on local mobilization. Perceptions of economicglobalization have likewise transformed the act of political protest. Protest hasalways been an important resource of the powerless or the oppressed. Increasedcommunications, shared stories and information, and common understandings ofthe local impacts of globalization have allowed groups previously isolated to claim

1The author would like to thank Alastair Iles, Stacy Van Deveer, Mark Philbrick, Kevin Wallsten, and TraceyBrieger, as well as her other students involved in the movement, for their thoughtful comments on this article.

r 2004 International Studies Review.PublishedbyBlackwellPublishing,350MainStreet,Malden,MA02148,USA,and9600GarsingtonRoad,OxfordOX42DQ,UK.

International Studies Review (2004) 6, 233–251

common cause with counterparts in other parts of the world (Shepard and Hayduk2002).

The transnational protest movement has also generated its own internal andexternal dynamics of conflict and cooperation, playing them out on a global scale.This essay addresses these dynamics, focusing first on the role of performance andtheater as a means of generating cooperation within a diverse transnationalmovement. Second, it examines the major source of intramovement conflict: theinvolvement of a minority wing of radical and violent groups who participate intransnational street protests, and the way in which these groups have raised thestakes in terms of confrontation with state actors. Third, and arising out of theprevious two emphases, the essay examines the role of the state with respect totransnational protest. By breaking down dominant conceptions of the state as aunitary actor, and as one whose importance has diminished on the global stage, itis possible to explore how transnational protest has helped fuel an as yetunderstudied form of cooperation: that among policing agencies, across local andnational levels of law enforcement, and across national borders. Cross-nationalpolice cooperation has become particularly important in the context of the waragainst terrorism. However, it has also been shaped by the concern for maintainingpublic order in reaction to large, and often disruptive, street protests againstglobalization that have involved activists from many countries.

This essay is intended to contribute to the international relations literature as wellas the literature on transnational social movements in three ways. First, protesttends to be downplayed as an important force in international relations (IR) theory.Protest events, often viewed as ‘‘irrational’’ manifestations of mass feeling, do notfit into the field’s predominantly rationalist theories of global governance andstate behavior. It is hard to trace direct effects of transnational protest onpolicy outcomes, especially because these are vehemently denied by governmentrepresentatives and IGOs. Even scholars examining the role of nonstate actors inworld politics tend to focus on individual components of the movement and, then,almost wholly on the more routine activities of international nongovernmentalorganizations (NGOs) or transnational networks of activist groups. This essay seeksto redress this balance by demonstrating the impact of the transnational protestmovement over and above the sum of its parts: as an international actor in its ownright, as an important source of collective identity, and as a source of conflict andconfrontation that, in turn, influences the choices and activities of state actors.

Second, the literature on transnational social movements and global civil societyoften downplays or misspecifies the role of the state in dealing with societal actors.This essay seeks to establish that, even though the state is not the direct target ofthe transnational protest movement, it is its major opponent. Further, it is import-ant not to view the state as a unitary actor. By disaggregating the state intoits component parts and studying the different levels, important patterns andstrategies on the part of state and movement actors become more apparent.

Third, this essay puts center-stage two aspects of the movement often used by itsderogators to dismiss it: its ‘‘traveling circus’’ dimension, and the violent anarchistwing, which has gained perhaps a disproportionate amount of media attention but,at the same time, much less attention from social movement theorists. It is arguedhere that the ‘‘traveling circus’’––the role of performance and theatricals––inbuilding movement cooperation is absolutely key to understanding how main-stream movement actors seek to influence public opinion, maintain internalmomentum, and differentiate themselves from the ‘‘dark side’’ of the movement. Inturn, the ‘‘dark side,’’ consisting of groups that have received relatively littleattention in the social movements literature as compared to progressive organiza-tions, is important in that its actions have helped trigger a repressive state reaction.

The first part of the essay outlines the basic components of transnational protests:participants, tactics, and targets. The second part moves on to provide an

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understanding of particular impacts of transnational protests arising from theinternal and external dynamics of the movement itself and its interactions withstate agencies, particularly law enforcement agencies. It then discusses how themovement has helped generate a further level of interstate cooperation. The con-clusion pulls together the impacts of these dynamics and their implications for thestudy of protest, especially for IR theory and the role of IGOs as the immediate(proximate) target of the movement.

Transnational Protest: Who Is on the Street and Why?

Seattle 99 was not the first antiglobalization protest of its kind. Protests had beenwell attended against G-8 meetings in London in 1999 as well as against the OECD-sponsored Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI) in 1998. Indeed, thereader should see Gerhards Jurgen and Dieter Rucht (1992) on early West Germanprotests against the IMF and the World Bank in 1988 and Rucht (2002) for morehistorical context. (For a protest chronology, see Lichbach and Almeida 2001: Table3). But the Seattle protests sparked off more than three years of action around theglobe. Early in 2000, protesters marched against the IMF and the World Bank inWashington, DC; against the Asian Development Bank in Chiang Mai, Thailand;and the World Economic Forum in Melbourne, Australia. Later in that same year,the scene shifted to Prague and to the UN Framework Convention on ClimateChange meeting in The Hague. In 2001, demonstrations occurred in Davos,Switzerland, against the World Economic Forum, in Quebec against the Free TradeAssociation of the Americas, in Gothenburg against the EU, and, most violently, inGenoa in July against the G-8. The terrorist attacks in the United States onSeptember 11, 2001, dampened the cycle, at least temporarily, and the WTO heldits first ministerial meeting since Seattle in Doha, Qatar, in December. Subsequently,however, the movement has regained momentum with protests in Johannesburg atthe World Summit on Sustainable Development, in Sydney, New York City,Florence, and Washington, DC, over the course of 2002, and in Cancun, Mexico, atthe WTO Ministerial Meeting in September 2003, which broke up over the issue ofagricultural subsidies.

In late 2002 and early 2003, the movement turned its attention to the war inIraq. Over February 14–16, 2003, it was estimated that close to seven million peoplemarched in dozens of cities around the world protesting the war on Iraq (Protestsaround the World 2003). Without the template provided by the antiglobalizationprotests, it is unlikely the same number would have mobilized; for manyparticipants, US involvement in Iraq (especially the handing out of contracts tolarge multinationals such as Bechtel Corporation) dovetailed with antiglobaliza-tion concerns under the Global Justice umbrella (Bello 2002). Although theorganizing groups were different––among the most prominent being ANSWER(Act Now to Stop War and End Racism)––many participants were the same.2 InNovember 2003, antiwar protestors gathered in London against the visit byPresident Bush even as antiglobalization protestors were in Miami marchingagainst the Free Trade Association of the Americas––a neat simultaneity that did notgo unnoticed in the press.

Analytical work on transnational protest occurs so far mainly in three sources, allbroadly under the umbrella of social movement theory. First, the movement’stransnational dimensions have excited global civil society and transnational networktheorists (for example, Wapner 1996, 2000; Fox and Brown 1998; Keck andSikkink 1998), and, second, reinvigorated theories of protest cycles (for example,

2See www.internationalanswer.org, which contains links to many prominent antiglobalization and global justice

organizations. On participation and links with the antiglobalization movement, see Esther Kaplan (2003) andStrategy Conference of the Global Peace Movement (2003).

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Tarrow 1998; Della Porta and Diani 1999). Third, the movement has generated an‘‘activist-scholar’’ literature of its own, reflecting its concerns about outcomes,resources, and continued mobilization (for example, Cockburn and St. Clair 2000;Danaher and Burbach 2000; Shepard and Hayduk 2002; Aronowitz and Gautney2003). This literature is a vehicle through which policy platforms are developedand movement members and supporters (and sometimes opponents) can assesstheir prospects; it has yet to be assimilated into more conventional academicanalysis, existing largely outside the bastions of peer-review, but it deserves moreattention for its first- and third-person accounts of the rationales, processes,narratives, and assessments of the prospects for transnational protest. Allthree strands of theory are helpful in providing information on, and analysis of,participants (and participation), tactics, and the targets as well as the goals of themovement.

Participants, Targets, and Goals

The transnational protest movement is made up of wide-ranging and diversegroups of organizations and individuals. The terms ‘‘transnational protest move-ment’’ and ‘‘transnational protesters’’ are used here as shorthand for groups whouse mass, or street, protest actions as part of their repertoire to target internationalactors including IGOs, multinational corporations, and, more generally, the forcesof global capitalism rather than states directly (although the US administration wasthe main target of the antiwar movement).3

Even though the movement’s membership overlaps with other types oftransnational activists such as mainstream NGOs, not all transnational protestgroups fit neatly into the category of ‘‘transnational network’’ or ‘‘transnationalsocial movement’’ (Khagram, Riker, and Sikkink 2002). Although engaging inprotest is the common denominator across all groups, their origins and motivesmay differ. For example, many local, or grassroots, groups engage in antiglobaliza-tion protest: farmers in France, landless workers in Brazil, indigenous groupswhose lands are threatened by transnational corporations. In fact, most protestshave a preponderance of local participants––as was the case with labor organiza-tions in Seattle. Also, not all participant organizations are explicitly focused oneconomic globalization, yet they may see the protests as an opportunity to get theirmessage onto the streets. This group also includes the more professionalinternational NGOs. Their choice to widen their traditional repertoire to engagein protest as well as lobbying or litigation activities is indicative of a desire toincrease their street credibility, to reach a more diverse and younger support base,and to build broader alliances with other groups. Thus, the transnational protestmovement represents a convergence of transnational, global, and local interests andactivists.

Comprehensive demographic analysis of transnational protest participants is ashard to find as accurate counts of numbers of participants at each demonstration.We have far more information on a group, or interest-based, level than onindividual participants (Podobnik 2003). Most protesters are young (under 30),certainly, and many are students, though the claim in sectors of the media that theyare all overprivileged young people is hotly disputed by the movement. Availabledata on nationality of protesters at the main site (not counting sympathy protestselsewhere) suggest the majority of participants are local, but a significant minority

3Some differences in terminology are used to describe the movement. ‘‘Antiglobalization’’ is a very commonterm, but obscures the fact that many groups are in favor of globalization on more democratic, socially responsibleterms. The term ‘‘anticapitalist’’ is particularly common in Europe––it stresses the continuities between the current,

transnational movement and longer-term leftwing movements; its class-based overtones make it less popular in theUnited States. The movement itself is converging on Global Justice as a positive descriptor of its aims and stance.

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comes from abroad (Lichbach and Almeida 2001: Table 7; Fisher 2002). Furtheranalysis suggests that personal contacts and affiliations are the main draw for manyprotesters (Fisher 2002; Tarrow 2002).

An important defining factor of the transnational protest movement is thenebulous nature of its target: neoliberal globalization. Starting in the late 1980s,activist groups began targeting international financial institutions, such as the IMFand World Bank, as the most visible agents of globalization, working either throughlobbying home governments (Fox and Brown 1998) or through protest (Gerhardsand Rucht 1992). Other campaigns have focused on multinational corporations.

By targeting these particular institutions, transnational protesters have sought toachieve a variety of goals, both internal and external to the movement. Theseinclude changing the inequitable impacts and opaque decision-making processes ofneoliberal globalization (Woods and Narlikar 2001). Activist writers offer trenchantcritiques of neoliberal globalization as a reason for protest directly against IGOs(see, for example, Mander and Goldsmith 1996; Wallach and Sforza 1999; Danaherand Burbach 2000). Naomi Klein (2001) outlines the intellectual links from local toglobal that serve to unite the movement. From throwing ads out of classrooms to re-claiming land for farming to protesting the privatization programs of the IMF orthe environmental degradation caused by free trade measures, groups find acommon thread in opposing the parcellization and privatization of their lives,environments, and livelihoods.

Protest Repertoires and Tactics

Sidney Tarrow (1998:2) defines protest as contentious politics: when ‘‘ordinarypeople . . . erupt onto the streets and try to exert power by contentious meansagainst national states or opponents.’’ The repertoire of protest actions covers thegamut from civil to ‘‘uncivil’’ disobedience and includes a broad range of activitiesfrom petitions to public demonstrations and marches to theater and other sorts ofperformances such as sit-ins and occupations as well as the destruction of property.The transnational movement has adopted all of these. More generally, ‘‘they areunconventional methods of intervening in a government’s [or other body’s]political decision-making’’ (Della Porta and Diani 1999:168). Protest actions aredesigned to utilize a number of channels, both direct and indirect (the media,public opinion), to reach their ultimate target. Further, they many be positive(designed to gain public sympathy) or negative (threatening social disorder anddisruption). Although broad, this definition distinguishes protests from moreconventional and direct modes of social movement influence. Another importanttactic employed by the transnational protest movement is education. Case in point:open teach-ins, often run by prominent international activists such as VandanaShiva or Martin Kohr of the Third World Network, have been an important activityfor many participants.

So, why protest? Lipsky (1965) describes protest as the ‘‘resource of thepowerless.’’ According to protest cycle theorists, protest occurs at the inception of asocial movement, as it expresses grievances and builds initial support (Tarrow 1998;but also see Goldstone 2003). Moreover, protests occur out of frustration, forexample, aroused by a closed system that refuses to recognize more conventionalexpressions of discontent or, alternatively, a repressive regime that shows signs ofweakness (Kurzman 1996).

And, then, why do people engage in transnational protest? These are really twoquestions. First, why do established international NGOs and networks turn toprotest? Second, why have local (community) groups started targeting globalactors? With regard to the first query, international NGOs have made importantstrides in becoming actively engaged in international politics, both at the domesticand international levels (for example, Princen and Finger 1994; Betsill and Corell

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2001). Yet, frustrations remain. Consider, for instance, that the formal participationof NGOs in international negotiations is a very distant prospect. As Goldstone(2003) points out, protest and lobbying are not mutually exclusive activities formore institutionalized social movements. On the second question, probably themain reason why so many local groups have chosen to target their energies andresources into transnational protest is that they feel powerless to influence policy-making processes directly, given the perceived disempowerment of local andnational governments, the opacity of many IGOs, and the centralization ofcorporate power (Klein 2001). They also have real grievances, resulting from theinequities and other social impacts of economic globalization (Rucht 2002). Societalactors fear that states are ceding important powers to institutions and corporationsthat lack accountability and transparency and that the underlying dynamics of freemarket capitalism will undermine social and environmental policies and practicesat local, national, and international levels. Other motivations for protest includereaching the media and the broader public.

Of the many international and regional organizations engaged in globalgovernance, some have been more protest-prone than others. This targeting isprobably related to perceptions of the scope and depth of their power, theirimmunity from social concerns, and their impact on the daily lives of ordinarycitizens.4 For example, both the World Bank and the IMF have long been targetsfor protest. Regional development banks, the Group of 8, and the World EconomicForum have been similarly targeted, though more recently. The WTO’s incarnationas an organization with wider powers than its predecessor, the GATT, has triggeredprotests since its 1995 inception. Recently, even the more ‘‘society-friendly’’organizations (the UN and the EU) have been targeted, although more to bolsterelements within these organizations that are supportive of the environment orsustainable development.

Despite the relative inaccessibility on a day-to-day basis of most IGOs, theirmeetings provide a good opportunity for protesters to get their messages across.The meetings are announced and planned well in advance and often attended byimportant officials and state representatives. They are also held in internationalcities, usually fairly accessible to a range of people and providing a local populationto mobilize as a protest base. (On the importance of spatial dimensions andgeography for political protest, see Sewell 2001.) These facts, coupled with the wideavailability of electronic means of networking and organizing, create a globalstructure conducive to protest organizing in an attempt to reach the main agents ofglobalization and the global public audience.

However, street protest is only the most visible part of the movement’srepertoire. It has generated networks of its own engaged not just in organizingprotests but also in generating new campaigns, many of which have taken on a lifeof their own. No one organization or individual can usually be identified as the‘‘leader’’ of the protest. Instead, protest organization is a highly decentralizedprocess, relying on Internet sites and e-mail bulletins as central nodes in thenetwork for notifying and mobilizing activists.5 The Direct Action Network (DAN)was key in coordinating Seattle and other protests, as was the Berkeley-basedRuckus Society (Sellers 2001). Between meetings, transnational alliances have beeninspired to work more intensively to lobby IGOs, for instance, to get banks andwealthier countries to forgive the highly indebted, poorer countries their vast

4Wallsten (2002) also points to the institutional vulnerability of some IGOs; if their funding is dependent on

donor governments, then opponents are likely to lobby their own governments to exert financial pressure. UnitedStates activists have used this tactic against the World Bank.

5Examples of lists and informational websites include the Independent Media Center (http://www.indymedia.org/),

the UK-based Schnews (http://www.schnews.org.uk/), and Stop IMF (http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/stop-imf/).On the role of the Internet, see, for example, Deibert (2000) and People Power Gets Caught Up in the Web (2003).

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debt or to prevent unsustainable logging.6 By launching these multifaceted globalcampaigns on the back of protest and seeking to move beyond mere opposition,such organizations stand a greater chance of having their voices heard in policycircles. The movement has also helped galvanize the World Social Forum––a seriesof global civil society summits designed to develop a positive rather than a negativeagenda for itself (Teivainen 2002). Set up to parallel the World Economic Forum, ameeting of business and economic leaders held in Davos, the World Social Forumhas met three times in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and in January 2004 in Mumbai, India.7

Impacts of Transnational Protest

Although a number of authors have addressed key questions concerningtransnational protest (the ‘‘who, what, and why’’ of the movement), in many waysthe study of transnational protest remains marginalized in political science moregenerally and especially in the IR literature. Even transnational social movementtheorists prefer to focus on component parts of the movement, rather than on themovement as a whole. An important reason for this relative marginalization is thatprotests are often seen as transitory phenomena or as an example of irrationalcollective behavior that, especially in the case of transnational protests, have fewdirect impacts on government or state behavior. Unfortunately, taking such a stancemeans that several important impacts of the transnational protest movement areomitted from scholarly analysis. The following sections demonstrate that importantdynamics of cooperation and conflict internal and external to the transnationalprotest movement are generating wider impacts that yield interesting insightsabout the development of global civil society and the role of the state in a globalizedworld.

Intramovement Cooperation or ‘‘Why Dancing Tomatoes Matter’’

Cooperation among movement actors is extremely important for any socialmovement, especially a transnational movement that encompasses a large numberof diverse groups. In a strategic sense, cooperation is an important component ofresource mobilization and pooling. Shared grievances can be an important triggerfor intergroup cooperation and participation, but may not be enough to bridgegaps in ideology or understanding among the different participants over the longerterm.

Cooperation within the transnational protest movement can also be understoodon two deeper levels. First, it is a process of diffusing ideas, strategies, and practicesamong movement actors, helping them develop tools that they can use and takeback with them to local contexts. Second, it is a vital part of the process of collectiveidentity building by movement actors (Taylor and Whittier 1995; Melucci 1996;Klandermans and deWeerd 2000). According to these authors’ definitions,collective identity is a shared definition of groupness ‘‘concerned with theorientation of action and the field of opportunities and constraints in which theaction takes place’’ (Melucci 1996:44). As well as being an ongoing process ofconstruction by relevant actors, it creates ‘‘in-group’’ and ‘‘out-group’’ actorcategories as well as the ability to ‘‘recognize and be recognized’’ (Melucci 1996:45).This process is viewed by social movement theorists as important to both the unityand success of the movement and its longevity. Cooperation is part of the iterative

6See http://www.jubilee2000uk.org/ on the debt forgiveness campaign. See also www.ran.org and www.globalexchange.org

7See http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/main.asp?id_menu¼14_1&cd_language¼ 2 and http://www.wsfindia.org/anotherworld.php

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process of identity building, whereby communication and cooperation generatecollective identity, thus generating, in turn, even deeper cooperation.

The obstacles facing the transnational protest movement in its attempt to achieveeffective cooperation among its various members at any level beyond the mostimmediate are formidable. This section focuses on the peaceful wing of themovement, which has sought to define itself vis-a-vis two main ‘‘outsider’’ groups:states and IGOs as agents of globalization, and the radical or violent part of themovement itself, which has attracted so much unwelcome attention fromauthorities. The obstacles that they face include the significant cultural, linguistic,socioeconomic, and ideological boundaries that separate movement members.

In response, the movement has experimented with and adapted a colorful rangeof performance-based tactics. Their unmediated visual impact reaches out both topotential allies in the world outside the movement and across the boundaries thatdivide the participants––communicating shared ideas, opening opportunities forfurther cooperation, and enabling other tactics such as street action and teach-ins.

Performance-based tactics have a lengthy history in social movement theory.Songs, theater, and performance were pivotal in the internal evolution of civilrights, peace, and labor movements (Krajnc 2000a), and they played atransformative role in the counterculture movements of the 1960s in the UnitedStates. Transnational protesters also draw on a long history of direct-action protest,tactics used in the 1980s and 1990s by groups from the Campaign for NuclearDisarmament to ACT-UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) to the New York Citycommunity gardens movement (Boyd 2002).

In Seattle and in subsequent protests, giant puppets, colorful costumes, and boldgestures were the order of the day. News reports (see Salon.com 1999) happilyhighlighted the mix of Monarch butterflies, giant tomatoes, and bare-breastedwomen in the parades (especially in contrast to the heavy-handed police presence).Participants from different countries adopted national dress to demonstratediversity. At other protests, the ‘‘Pink Bloc’’ (protesters dressed as fairies) has putin an appearance and, instead of rocks, protesters have thrown teddy bears at thepolice (Harding 2001). Another tradition revived in Seattle was one of storytelling.Paul Hawken’s (2000) ‘‘Skeleton Woman Visits Seattle’’ was widely circulated one-mail. This practice has emphasized the level of personal involvement andcommitment individual protesters experienced and shared with others, generatinga set of myths that are drawn on by subsequent actors. Internet activity has enabledthese stories to be presented unmediated by scholars or the press (see Auyero2002). In Britain at least, a party (rave) culture has arisen in tandem with radicalenvironmental and anticapitalist movements. Schnews (http://www.schnews.org.uk/),the main bulletin for the protest movement, urges participants to ‘‘party andprotest.’’ Art for direct action has itself become a movement (see http://www.artandrevolution.org/).

Such street theatricals lent credence to the term ‘‘traveling circus,’’ applied as anepithet by some of the press and leading politicians to highlight the immaturity andsuperficiality of the movement (Clueless in Seattle 1999). This phrase has also beenattributed to British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In reality, however, a key part of thestrength of the transnational protest movement probably lies in this ‘‘travelingcircus’’ element. It builds momentum, attracts participants, and engenderscommunication across the diversity of groups present, providing the symbolicglue that holds together similar groups from different countries.

Externally, these performances convey the peaceful message to which themajority of demonstrators adhere. They are highly photogenic and attractive tomembers of the media, enabling demonstrators to reach out to a wider constituencyand capture the public’s imagination. The availability of electronic media hasenabled faster and unmediated transmission of messages and pictures, conveyingan immediacy that leads to more rapid mobilization. That these messages need to

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cross many linguistic barriers has lent a more visual focus to modern protestperformance: giant puppets rather than songs.

Internal to the movement, these actions function to enhance and strengthencooperation. At one level, they act as a resource mobilization device, bringing inpeople and money through benefit performances and parties. The theater andperformance, songs and folklore, along with informal education through teach-insand discussion also have been identified as key to the process of social learning andpublic education (Krajnc 2000a, 2000b).

Moreover, protest events provide a venue for the transnational diffusion of ideas,strategies, and practices among movement actors who share their experiences,their views of acceptable behavior, and their visions for change in highlycommunicative and visual ways (see Chabot and Duyvendak 2002). They are notthe only venue for such diffusion and networking; international summits, such asthe 2002 Johannesburg World Summit for Sustainable Development, providesimilar opportunities. As specific, and intense, focal points for concerted action andenergy from participants of many countries and beliefs, protest events give rise towhat might be termed a ‘‘whirlpool’’ model of transnational diffusion that isreinforced by the colorful swirl of costumes, performance, and story-telling.

And, finally, is there any evidence for the emergence of a collective ‘‘transnationalprotest’’ identity? Certainly participants cite the importance of their experiences interms of their own personal development.8 Many have followed up by becomingpractically full-time activists for the movement. Thus, in terms of individual impact,transnational protest has made its mark. At a collective level, perhaps the bestinternal evidence for the development of a common identity as a result oftransnational protest has been in the translation of antiglobalization protest tacticsand ideas to the arena of antiwar protest. This diffusion is evidenced in the massiveinternational demonstrations against the US war in Iraq in 2003, which has, as citedabove, made explicit linkages to the antiglobalization agenda as well as mobilizedmany of the same participants. Furthermore, movement members who stress thepeaceful message of the antiglobalization movement have deliberately utilizedparticular performance tactics, visuals, and costumes to distinguish themselves fromthe more violent wing of the movement, to be discussed next. However, it isperhaps too soon to know how these processes will stand up over the longer term.Part of the answer lies in the degree to which state agencies are successful inapplying repressive techniques or in negotiating with members of the movement(Farrow 2002; Cunningham 2003).

Sources of Conflict: Radical and Violent Transnational Protest

The global civil society literature tends to focus almost exclusively on progressivemovements (social justice, environment, and human rights), ignoring the role ofrightwing, ultranationalist, criminal, violent, or terrorist groups––which also arguablyconstitute transnational movements in terms of organization and tactics. Indeed, onlya minority of the work in social movement theory focuses on nonprogressivemovements (see, for example, Koopmans 1996; Rowell 1996; Freilich, Pienik, andHoward 2001). Yet, one of the main sources of conflict within the transnationalprotest movement as well as between the movement and state actors has been thepresence at most protest events of a radical, and often violent, minority of demo-nstrators whose actions (and the response to those actions) have led to extensiveproperty damage, many arrests, and, on at least one occasion, death. Post-September11, authorities are worried about the security aspects of transnational protests andabout any links that may exist between protesters and terrorist organizations. The

8Author conversations with student activists.

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presence of these radical groups has triggered a repressive state response as well asdistancing behavior on the part of the peaceful wing of the movement in reaction tomedia coverage of the protest events, which gives the impression that the radicalminority dominates the protest.9 This section of the essay will address who theseradical participants are, their tactics, and why they have generated such concern bothfrom other members of the movement and from state actors.

The dominant group on the radical side of the transnational protest movementis the loosely anarchist ‘‘Black Bloc,’’ whose masked affiliates have been heldresponsible for street violence and property destruction in Seattle, Prague, Genoa,and so on. Some organizing groups have blamed agents provocateurs from the policeforces for the violence, viewing them as being planted to justify more extremecrowd control techniques and, thus, the violence. In other instances, ordinarypeople simply get caught up in the moment: protests, demonstrations, and sportsfinals have always produced these urges (Auyero 2002). But for a small handful ofdemonstrators, violent protest acts as a ‘‘megaphone’’ for their message (Harding2001). Oregon-based activist John Zerzan spoke for many when he stated that‘‘things are not going to be stopped with polite and well-behaved marches’’ (seeBlack Bloc Protesters Make Their Mark in SF 2003).

The Black Bloc is more of a banner under which individuals and groups cometogether for protest, rather than an organized movement, according to members’own literature.10 It includes members from radical groups of all types, fromanarchists and radical environmentalists to ultranationalist groups. In theenvironmental movement, animal rights activists, anti-genetically modified (GM)foods activists and others have taken to more radical actions in response to whatthey see as growing corporate and government infringement on their rights andthose of the natural world. Organization is rarely formal. For example, the EarthLiberation Front, which has claimed responsibility for several recent bombings ofcar dealerships and a ski resort in the United States, has adopted a very loose, cell-based mode of organization whereby none of the participating groups are aware ofthe others. Different local radical traditions have contributed to different protestparticipation. For example, in Seattle, forest activists in the Northwest United Statesplayed a strong role; in Britain, the Hard Left is very important (see Kauffman1999). For nearly all these groups, however, their main goal is vandalism andconfrontation with authorities not harming civilians.

State authorities are certainly concerned about avoiding property destruction inthe protest area. They are even more worried about the potential for alliancesbetween some antiglobalization protest groups and terrorist organizations. Thisconcern was noted in Italy following the Genoa protests against the G-8 meeting inJuly 2001. In December 2002 a bomb that shattered the windows of Genoa’s policeheadquarters was planted by the hitherto little-known July 20th Brigade, named forthe day police killed a protester in the streets (Genoa Ghosts Haunt Italy inViolence a Year Later 2002). This action simultaneously pays homage to Europe’sRed Brigade tradition––a movement state authorities had hoped was moribund––and demonstrates how terrorist groups may be making linkages between globalcapitalism and their traditional concerns and support base.

From this purported linkage, it has not been difficult for authorities to make theleap to the organization and membership of Al Qaeda and other radical (Islamic or

9It is also the case that conventional conservative groups also participate in transnational protest. Pat Buchananwill likely never repeat his role as spokesman for the movement for CNN, as happened in Seattle. However, farmers

movements, labor movements, and even the National Rifle Association have been active in the antiglobalizationmovement generally, even though not necessarily embracing the progressive concerns of their environmental andother marching partners.

10See Black Blocs for Dummies at http://www.infoshop.org/blackbloc.html (Version 4.1, April 7, 2003) and Letterfrom Inside the Black Bloc at http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID¼11230.

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other) terrorist groups, even though evidence for this particular link is slim, absentspeculation.11 Western Europe’s Black Bloc draws from the same constituency ofseverely disenfranchised youth that Al Qaeda or Hamas do in the Middle East andCentral Asia. Others have pointed out the apparent organizational affinities ofradical protest groups and Al Qaeda (Glasius and Kaldor 2002), depicting both thetransnational protest movement in general and Al Qaeda as postmodernorganizations without the same territorial basis or claims as their predecessors(Hardt and Negri 2001; Hari 2001). Since September 11, 2001, US officials havefrequently referred to terrorist groups as ‘‘nonstate actors’’––a term that is usedmuch more benignly in the general IR literature. Yet, this connection is far morethan rhetoric. It underlies the initiatives state authorities are undertaking tomonitor and control the activities of transnational activists, and it could potentiallylead to the reframing of transnational protest events from economic protests(tolerated within limits but protected by free speech rules if they exist) to threats tonational security (Konar 2001). The long-term implications for transnationalprotest are very serious, especially as free speech protections for foreigners aremuch weaker in many countries than they are for citizens.

The reactions by state authorities, the media, and the progressive community tothe presence of disruptive, even violent, elements in transnational protest situationshas been very strong––stronger than evidence of dangerous alliances would normallysuggest. The media, naturally, has devoted much attention to the rabble-rousers:pictures of tear-gassed demonstrators and young men and women in black masksthrowing stones at police sell newspapers. The mainstream of the movement hashad a difficult battle itself to get media attention as a result and have, for theirown protection, had to move rapidly to marginalize radical groups and to adoptexplicitly nonviolent action manifestos (VanDeveer and O’Neill 2004). Organizationssuch as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth have reiterated their commitmentto peaceful protest at their meetings and on their websites, in press releases, and inother communications. Prior to Genoa, mainstream groups had made an effortto accommodate the Black Bloc in its own sector of the protest, but since then,and especially since September 11, they have moved to distinguish them-selves more radically from the violent minority (Bruno 2001; Dickey and Nord-land 2001). The use of ‘‘creative nonviolence’’ (see above) has been part of thisactivity.

State authorities have reacted to the increased violence by expanding policepowers and, particularly, by extending transnational cooperation among policeauthorities. However, transnational protest, from the authorities’ point of view, isjust one of a number of transnational threats––including terrorism and footballhooliganism––that have emerged in recent years. These new forms of transnationalcriminal activity, added to such ‘‘traditional’’ crimes as the trade in illegal drugs andweapons, provide even more justification for international police cooperation. Themeasures resulting from this increased cooperation include sharing informationand preventing the travel of certain individuals and groups, which have, in turn,affected all groups engaged in transnational activism in very real ways. Peacefulgroups have seen their ability to attend demonstrations restricted, their publicimage affected, and other campaign activities come under surveillance.

Transnationalizing Public Order Enforcement

Even though a significant literature looks at the interactions between domesticsocial movements and the state (for example, Goldstone 2003), analysts of

11Johann Hari (2001) mentions the online dialogue within the antiglobalization movement in the days

immediately following the attack on the World Trade Center as to whether one of them had been involved given thatit was the symbol of global capitalism.

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transnational social movements, including protest movements, often bypass thestate altogether, focusing instead on the way transnational social movements targetIGOs directly (for example, O’Brien et al. 2000) or treating the state as a unitaryactor (Keck and Sikkink 1998). Some of the work in the more general field oftransnational politics discusses the decline, or changing role, of the state as thecentral actor in global politics (Sassen 1999; Spruyt 2002).

By setting up global civil society as an alternative to both global capitalism and thestate system and focusing on the activities of transnational networks, analysts canobscure the very real, if somewhat altered, role the state plays in theories ofglobalization. First, although states may not be the direct target of the transnationalprotest movement (especially the antiglobalization movement), they certainly are itsmajor opponents. It is government representatives who denounce the protests ordeny their impact on policymaking processes. Also, governments supply the lawenforcement personnel and tactics that are used to confront protests on the streetand develop policies to control the movement of protesters across national borders.These actions, arguably, have shaped the behavior of the transnational protestmovement as much as internal motivations or the reactions and policies of IGOs.

Second, an analysis of transnational protest events demonstrates that the statesthat protest actors confront are not unitary. Instead, the protesters encounter stateactors at several levels: as members of IGOs, as professional or political delegatesfrom ministries or agencies who are attending the meetings, and as the municipalhosts and law enforcement agencies (police or military) located in the locales wherethe meetings are held. Further, these different sets of state actors have their owninterrelationships.

According to Doug McAdam (1998:239–243), transnational activists areessentially engaging in a multilevel game that sometimes works to their advantageand sometimes does not. Yet, this negotiation is by no means as formal as the ‘‘two-level games’’ metaphor employed in IR theory (Putnam 1988). These interactionsand strategies are more experimental, not formally institutionalized, taking place ina context of uncertainty as to the respective roles of––and limits on––the actorsinvolved on all sides: states, transnational protest movement actors, and IGOs.Throughout, however, the dominant motif of interactions between states and thetransnational protest movement has been one of confrontation.

Government actors at the national level have a strategic advantage when facedwith societal protest and conflicts within IGOs, namely that of buck-passing. If theyfail to achieve their goals or please public opinion, they have multiple ways ofshifting responsibility––to other countries, to the IGO itself, or to local authoritiesfor failing to maintain order. By hosting a successful meeting (keeping protests atbay), they may bolster their own position within the IGO vis-a-vis other states. Butsplits among states––such as north-south or US-EU disputes in the WTO ordivisions within NATO or the UN Security Council over the war in Iraq––areviewed by protesters as an opportunity to exploit. If powerful opinions are divided,then the movement may be able to obtain support from governmental quartersthey would not otherwise have been able to tap.

At the more local level, the transnational protest movement has to confront manydifferent states as meeting locations shift around the globe. The actors responsiblefor making sure IGO meetings run smoothly on the ground are most often city orother local authorities who often provide law enforcement and security forattendees and for local communities. Hosting an international meeting is not atrivial affair; the economic benefits, immediate and longer term, from gracious andsuccessful hosting are quite large as are the political payoffs that can establish a stateas an international player. In the face of protests, host cities face a dilemma. Do theycontinue to repress protests in the interests of providing a suitable venue forinternational meetings, devoting scarce resources to deploying local law enforce-ment officials; do they seek a more conciliatory approach; or do they call in the

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National Guard? One outcome so far seems to be that several cities, including Rome(home of some leading IGOs), now balk altogether at hosting meetings.

In fact, law enforcement and public order policies have become paramount andincreasingly crosscut local, national, and even international levels of state activity. Ashost countries seek to manage protests as they happen, many, often powerful,countries are increasingly attempting to coordinate strategies and share informa-tion about transnational activists. These practices have generated conflict betweenstate actors and the transnational protest movement and increased interstatecooperation around public order practices and surveillance and monitoringbetween protests.

The Seattle police in 1999 were taken entirely by surprise by the size andvociferousness of the protest. Their harsh reaction and lack of training andresources led to criticism and the resignation of the local chief of police as well ashead-scratching among protest organizers and authorities as to how they mighthave managed the situation better (Gillham and Marx 2000). The death, from apolice bullet, of a protester in Genoa in 2001 generated a groundswell ofcomplaints against police procedures. In Switzerland, in February 2001, the town ofDavos was practically turned into a military fort to prevent protesters reaching thesite of the G-8 meeting. In Prague, in November 2000, police actions in the citystreets stood in stark contrast to President Havel’s invitation to protesters to meetwith him and stay in the presidential palace. At the same time, other states andmunicipalities are pursuing more cooperative efforts, negotiating with demonstra-tors in advance regarding the rules that will govern the protest (Farrow 2002).

Developments in protest policing following the advent of transnational protestraise three dilemmas. First, are transnational protests strengthening the reach ofthe state? Second, what are the international impacts on the traditional domains ofmunicipal and national politics; are national protest policing styles converging on aparticular model (Della Porta and Reiter 1998)? How are police tactics diffusedacross national borders? Third, are we seeing a ‘‘globalization’’ of policing aboveand beyond the domain of international organized crime (Ericson and Doyle 1999)as states begin to cooperate over more law and order related issues?

Historically, national models of protest policing vary significantly (Della Porta andReiter 1998) and the locus of control is not always at the municipal level. Twoimportant dimensions distinguish protest policing. The first is onsite crowd control,which can be achieved through cooperation between police and demonstratorsworked out in advance or through confrontation during the event. The seconddimension consists of preventing protests, activist travel, and engaging insurveillance and infiltration activities (Phillips and Trofimov 2001).

With respect to crowd control and the maintenance of public order, large-scalepublic protests are among the most volatile of situations authorities confront. Ifevents unfold rapidly, chains of command and communication often falter, andemotions take over, even among the most well-trained law enforcement authorities.Police and military agencies with permission from city governments increasinglydeploy modern riot control techniques in protest situations that were oftendeveloped in the heat of violent sectarian conflicts. Activists and observers highlightthe ‘‘paramilitarization’’ of police tactics across protests as well as the lack of trainingof forces in peaceful dispute resolution––or at least in avoiding escalation (SeattleNational Lawyers Guild 2000). Cross-training is therefore becoming morecommon. Thus, for example, US crowd control experts trained Prague police in2000 (Vayrynen 2000:2). At the same time, some national differences in policingstyles remain. The Australian police reaction to demonstrators in Sydney(November 2002) differed markedly from the response in Genoa: the Australianpolice were on horseback, whereas the Genoa police were in tanks. In other cases,more cooperative approaches are taking hold. The city of San Francisco hasadopted this tactic, as have other cities in the United States, Canada, and Europe. If

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rules are negotiated rather than imposed, the argument runs, protesters are morelikely to obey them. Such a tactic, though, may weaken the movement, by makingmembers deal with police rather than their actual targets or state opponents(Farrow 2002).

States are also increasingly institutionalizing measures that seek specifically toprevent the gathering of transnational protesters by restricting their travel acrossborders, a process traced back to 1997 (Ericson and Doyle 1999; Ferguson 2000).For instance, the EU is seeking to develop a common policing policy, havingannounced a common arrest warrant in October 2001, and member states haveannounced plans to bar ‘‘potentially dangerous persons’’ who are ‘‘notoriouslyknown by police forces’’ from traveling within Europe, an extension of theSchengen Information System (Violent Protesters Face EU Travel Ban 2001).Opposition to this proposal came from Finland, Sweden, and Norway as well asfrom civil rights groups. United States police departments are taking more of aninterest in international cooperation, too.12 These moves are in part a response tothe terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, but they also have roots in earliertransnational justice concerns in Europe, including illegal immigration, organizedcrime, soccer hooliganism, and transnational protesters.13 Many US activists areconcerned about the Patriot Act and its proposed sequel, the Domestic SecurityEnhancement Act of 2003, which would grant extensive punitive powers to controlanyone who ‘‘aids or abets’’ any group that has ever engaged in violent actions, thuslinking measures to control protests with efforts to prevent terrorist attacks (Walker2003). It is almost certainly the case that national authorities have stepped upinfiltration and surveillance of activist groups (Lichtblau 2003). In the past, thesemeasures have been quite effective in dividing and weakening movements(Cunningham 2003).

Thus, it is becoming clear that many states are strengthening their rulesregarding protest in response to some of the particular challenges of transnationalprotest. This strengthening is in part a function of the need to prevent terroristattacks, but it has its roots pre-September 11. Moreover, national and local policeforces are increasingly engaged in cross-training and transfer of protest policingstrategies (be it confrontation or negotiation) across borders. Finally, meeting newtransnational challenges has encouraged direct international cooperation, in termsof sharing information about potential protesters as well as enacting and enforcingborder controls.

The implications of these developments for the movement, activists, and the stateare quite significant. First, they point toward an unequivocal strengthening of statesand state agencies––something of a puzzle for theories predicting the decline of thenation-state in the face of globalization pressures. Second, they highlight thenonunitary nature of the state, as local and national agencies and actors typicallyplay different roles in dealing with protests. It appears that transnational protestpolicing tactics from on-the-ground measures to movement surveillance are notbeing centralized. Rather, states are developing programs, actions, and policies thatcut across local, national, and transnational lines. Third, the implications for themovement and its activists in terms of the freedom to travel and to undertakecollective action are quite severe, especially in the context of growing international

12See Remarks from Opening Session of Policing for Prevention Summit on September 5, 2001, in whichCharles H. Ramsey, Chief of Police of the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Department, discusses opportunitiesfor international cooperation among police forces with respect to international protest; available at http://

mpdc.dc.gov/news/stmts/2001/090601b.shtm13European Union common justice concerns date back to the 1980s. Judicial coordination began among the five

‘‘Schengen area’’ countries, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, who were the first to

open borders to the free movement of people with a concomitant increase in law enforcement cooperation. In 1997,this area widened to include the then thirteen member states.

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awareness of terrorism. It has become, therefore, more important for the peacefulwing of the movement to distinguish itself as such and to disengage from thedisruptive groups and activists.

Conclusions

Despite the rise of a vociferous transnational protest movement worldwide in thelater years of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first and despite a vigorousand growing subfield of transnational social movement theory, study of this type ofmovement has remained marginalized within the field of IR theory. Such may bethe case because the transnational protest movement is viewed as too diffuse,irrational, or epiphenomenal to ‘‘real’’ politics or because scholarly attention hasfocused primarily on its component parts––NGOs and grassroots movements, forexample.

In this essay, the argument has been made that the dynamics of cooperation andconflict within the movement as well as between transnational protesters and statesgenerate interesting insights into global politics and civil society engagement atthe transnational level. We have focused here on three core sets of actors: themainstream (or peaceful) majority of the transnational protest movement, theradical minority of protesters, and state actors, especially those concerned with lawenforcement across different levels of government.

It has been noted that the use of performative and visual tactics by themainstream of the movement helps generate cooperation among its members thatgoes over and above shared grievances. Certainly, this is cooperation in a strategicsense, in that it helps mobilize people and resources and brings public attention toprotest events. However, such tactics also generate cooperation in a deeper sense,helping to convey new ideas and shared norms across linguistic and culturalbarriers and to build a form of shared collective identity that binds peacefulprotestors together as well as facilitates them differentiating themselves from moreviolent elements. These latter radical/anarchist groups play a high-profile role intransnational protests and their tactics have generated disproportionate attentionfrom the media as well as from state actors. The reason for this disproportionateimpact is in part the level of damage that they may do to property at protests, butalso because of possible linkages between radical/anarchist groups and terroristorganizations. Although the evidence is slim for links with organizations such as AlQaeda (despite the organizational similarities some have pointed out), there doappear to be more grounds for links with older European movements such as theRed Brigades. A spate of mail bombs sent to EU officials in December 2003 hasbeen traced to anarchist groups, for example.

By understanding the local, national, and global dimensions of state-movementinteractions and the fact that states comprise the key opponents of the transnationalprotest movement (although not the main target), it becomes clear that the stateis not weakened but is very possibly strengthened as a result of the rise ofantiglobalization protest. An area of cooperation and, indeed, transnationallearning that was highlighted in this essay was that of public order enforcement,both on the frontlines of the protest and in terms of surveillance of movementactivities between events. Even though public order maintenance is primarily thetask of local law enforcement agencies in most countries, national agencies such asthe US Federal Bureau of Investigation are playing a greater role. Further, local lawenforcement actors are engaging in cross-national training. In turn, the rise of thetransnational protest movement has been an important trigger (albeit not the onlyone) for greater international cooperation among law enforcement agencies,especially in terms of border control and information sharing.

Thus, by outlining these dynamics of cooperation and conflict, we can come tosee that even though it is hard to identify direct impacts of the transnational protest

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movement on actual policy outcomes, the movement is influencing several areasimportant to IR theory. These areas include the transmission norms and ideaswithin the movement to construct a collective identity, the conflict between differentviews about how to protest (peacefully or not), and the generation of new types ofinteractions between state actors and civil society actors. Moreover, movement-stateinteractions have catalyzed significant transboundary cooperation among states inthe arena of law enforcement.

By focusing on these understudied aspects of the transnational protest move-ment, this essay has deliberately left out the role of IGOs in these interactions. Insome ways, despite being the proximate target of protests (as the materialmanifestations of neoliberal globalization), these organizations have remainedabove the fray, leaving host governments to handle disruptions or member states totake the blame in cases of failed negotiations. However, IGOs do play a strategicrole in these state-transnational protest movement interactions in one importantway: by choosing their meeting locations. The strategy of the WTO in recent yearsin choosing relatively hard-to-reach locales reflects this capacity. The 2001 minis-terial meeting, held in Doha, is an obvious case. Less obvious is the site of the 2003Ministerial in Cancun, Mexico. Although Cancun is a popular tourist destinationand relatively cheap to reach, the meeting location itself was on a peninsula, withonly one road in, making it fairly easy for local police to keep protesters away fromthe meeting. At the same time, however, IGOs are increasingly reaching out to themore moderate, professionalized wing of the movement and seeking to consult withthem in various ways. It is possible that in the absence of more radical societalopposition, these interactions would not have happened. How these developments,in parallel with more repressive reactions by states and the internal momentum ofthe movement, pan out over the next few years will enable us to generate a morenuanced and accurate understanding of the impacts of transnational protest onglobal politics.

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