Transnational Protest: States, Circuses, and Conflict at the Frontline of Global Politics
Author(s)
O’Neill, Kate
Abstract
Transnational antiglobalization protests have become a hallmark of global activism since 1999. Over this time, the transnational protest movement has generated its own internal and external dynamics of conflict and cooperation, playing them out on a global scale. This essay addresses these dynamics, focusing on the role of performance and theater as a means of generating cooperation within a diverse transnational movement, on intramovement conflict, and on the role of the state with respect to transnational protest. By breaking down dominant conceptions of the state as a unitary actor, transnational protests have helped fuel an as yet understudied form of cooperation: that among policing agencies, across local and national levels of law enforcement, and across national borders. Cross-national police cooperation has become particularly important in the context of the war against terrorism. However, it has also been shaped by the need to maintain public order that has arisen as a result of the large, and often disruptive, street protests against globalization, which have involved activists from many countries.
