Louis Edgar Esparza

Societies Without Borders recently published my latest piece on social movement coalitions. In it, I treat the coalition of developing countries that brought down the WTO meetings in 2003 as a social movement and apply theories of globalization and development to the analysis. It is an example of how social movement tactics can be used by state actors that share the ideals of the alter-globalization movement. The abstract follows the break, or access the full article.

A group of developing countries within the World Trade Organization, called the G22, formed in 2003 to bring attention to important economic concerns of the Global South. This coalition building at the global level is instructive to the literature on social movement coalition building and strategies in a transnational context. This article examines coalition building among nation-states within the context of the WTO. Drawing upon existing trading blocs, the G22 are able to leverage attention away from the WTO consensus. The declining signifi cance of the global institution is a result of the breaking of this consensus.