How Far Does the Classic Social Movement Agenda Go in Explaining Transnational Contention?
This paper analyses the new form of contention represented by the global justice movement (GJM) through the lenses of the classic social movement agenda for explaining contentious politics. The paper takes up each of the three core components of the classic agenda (political opportunities, mobilizing structures and framing processes) in order to ascertain their relevance for explaining transnational episodes of popular contention. Underlying many analyses of the GJM and transnational contention is the idea of the emergence of a global civil society. A certain number of scholars argue that the new (transnational) “protest cycle” attests to the emergence of a “movement of movements”, and reflects a decline of nationally based forms of contention and the emergence of a global civil society. The paper states that this view overlooks the crucial impact of a number of domestic factors and overstates the idea of an emerging transnational civil society. Every protest cycle rests on previous mo
