Globalization and Collective Action

In: Comparative politics, Volume 34, Issue 3, p. 355-375

Abstract

A review essay on books by (1) Margaret E. Keck & Kathryn Sikkink, Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell U Press, 1998); (2) Dani Rodrik, Has Globalization Gone Too Far? (Washington, DC: Instit International Economics, 1997); & (3) Yasemin Nuhoglu Soysal, Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe (Chicago: U Chicago Press, 1994). Globalization studies have sparked lively debates about how the changing international environment has catalyzed collective action. This review of three agenda-setting books concludes that globalization's impact on collective action is more indeterminate than current scholarship suggests. Future research needs to parse out descriptive treatments of globalization from globalization as a causal framework & to pay greater attention to causal mechanisms, relevant cases, & politicization of identities to address better the structured & contingent relations among international processes, the state, & collective action. Adapted from the source document.