Globalization and Collective Action

Abstract

Over the past 30 years, a new form of contention spread across the globe focusing on issues and grievances related to economic liberalization and integration. Besides ongoing ethnic and religious conflicts (Jenkins and Gottlieb 2007; Olzak 2006), economic-based protests may be mobilizing the largest numbers of participants in social movement-type activities. Recent examples abound from the mass-based mobilizations and riots that brought down Suharto in Indonesia in early 1998 in the midst of the Asian financial crisis, to strikes and demonstrations against public sector privatization in China, Colombia, India and South Africa in the early 2000s involving millions of workers, to the rising global food and fuel prices in 2008 driving street protests and disturbances in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Haiti, Honduras, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Mozambique, Peru, Philippines, Senegal, South Africa and even working-class immigrant neighborhoods in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. The collective actions are largely defensive in terms of protecting existing rights and subsidies gained in the period of state-led development. This chapter explores the origins and political consequences of this historically emergent form of contention. In particular, I highlight recent literature on (1) the conditions associated with two distinct waves of popular mobilization driven by economic liberalization and (2) the policy and electoral outcomes that this unrest has generated. Specific attention is given to lesser-developed countries (LDCs) in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.