Transnational Social Movements

Abstract Modern social movements, generally thought of as political, emerged in tandem with modern nation states, as groups of people organized to alternately resist new claims being made by national authorities (such as taxes or military conscription) or to advance their own claims that states provide a variety of public goods and services (such as education, health care, and various forms of financial assistance). Ongoing competition between authorities and citizen challengers generated new structures—including parliaments, bills of rights, and bureaucratic checks and balances—to routinize public participation in national politics and to otherwise enhance the accountability of political leaders to citizenry (see, e.g., Tilly 1984; Markoff 1996; Tarrow 1998). Today, as states increasingly turn to international political arenas to manage their economies and ecologies and other aspects of social life, social movements are becoming increasingly transnational in their structure and focus.