Constructing opposition in the age of globalization: the potential of ATTAC

This article examines the movement ATTAC and assesses its potential to function as a vital part of the emerging global opposition to neoliberal globalization. We analyze the agenda of the movement and assess its coherence, both in terms of policy evaluations and prescriptions and in terms of the fit of the movement's organizational structure with its substantive mission and official aims. To this end, we explain the emergence and stellar rise of the movement, compare the particularly successful nation-wide organizations of ATTAC in France and Germany, and examine the movement's transnational activities. We find ATTAC to be coherent in terms of agenda as well as organizational practices and to make a laudable effort to reflect its agenda of democratic empowerment in its political praxis. Acknowledging the enormous challenges faced by transnational civic opposition, we nonetheless conclude optimistically that ATTAC has the potential of serving as a core movement around which such opposition might usefully rally. As a subordinate contribution, our investigation poses the question of how to most usefully conceptualize the nature and role of the movement. We invite scholarly dialogue by locating ATTAC in the context of the study of social movements and transnational civil society and by enriching the theoretical debate on the nature of the emerging global opposition with our empirical observations on one of its main protagonists. Annette Freyberg-Inan is assistant professor at the Political Science Department of the University of Amsterdam. She specializes in the areas of International Relations Theory; International Political Economy and Globalization; European Integration, Democratization and Enlargement; Romanian Politics; Political Psychology; and Methodology. Her most recent publications includeWhat Moves Man: The Realist Theory of International Relations and Its Judgment of Human Nature(New York: SUNY Press, 2004); ‘Organic intellectuals and counter-hegemonic politics in the age of globalisation: the case of ATTAC’, with Vicki Birchfield, in Catherine Eschle and Bice Maiguashca (eds), Critical Theories, World Politics and the ‘Anti-Globalization Movement’(London: Routledge, forthcoming 2005); ‘Transition economies’, in Richard Stubbs and Geoffrey Underhill (eds), Political Economy and the Changing Global Order(Oxford University Press, 3rd ed., forthcoming 2005); Transition, Civil Society, and the Social Sciences in Romania(Stuttgart/Hannover: Ibidem Verlag, forthcoming 2005); ‘World system theory: how the fate of Kosovo reflects the logic and the grip of the world capitalist order’ in Jennifer Sterling-Folker (ed.), Making Sense of IR Theory(Boulder, CO: Lynn Rienner, forthcoming 2005); ‘Which way to progress? The impact of international organizations in Romania’, in Ronald Linden (ed.), Norms and Nannies: The Impact of International Organizations on the Central and East European States(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002). Vicki Birchfield is an assistant professor in the School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research interests include comparative and international political economy and European politics. She is currently completing a book manuscript entitledInstitutions, Values and Income Inequality in Capitalist Democraciesand has published articles in theReview of International Political Economy, European Journal of Political Researchand theReview of International Studies.