Globalization and Popular Movements

This paper argues for analyses of the changing conditions of collective action on the international stage using the method of incorporating comparisons. Third World revolutions, national liberation movements, and related peasant-urban revolts of the 1950s and 1960s took place in a context shaped decisively by emerging states, developmental projects, and international sponsorship and control. Since the early 1980s, the "Third World" and developmental state has been increasingly submerged in a globalizing neo-liberal regime orchestrated by the interests of free trade, capital expansion, and structural adjustment. The transformation has shifted the fulcrum of political conflict from redistributional reforms of the developmental period to market-driven global integration and accumulation. The transformation does not necessarily affect the frequency of international political conflict, but it does change its form, potential, and objective. The argument is developed using case studies and empirical literature over the latter half of the twentieth century.