The Globalization of the Anti-Apartheid Movement

Abstract

During the last decades of the twentieth century, the process of globalization started to change the meaning of politics. The action spaces of states opened up and collective action in the context of civil societies was increasingly stretched across borders. As a consequence, political action became an increasingly complex and multi-dimensional activity. The mobilization of transnational collective action was facilitated as actors had access to new resources, including new means for electronic communication as well as cheap air travel. Influential social movement researchers have however been sceptical to the thesis put forth that this development has resulted in the emergence of transnational social movements and a global civil society. For example Sidney Tarrow has argued that:

it is hard to find, combined in the same movement, the conditions necessary to produce a social movement that is, at once, integrated with several societies, unified in its goals, and capable of sustained interaction with a variety of political authorities.¹