ABSTRACT
This volume pursues two related goals. First, on the empirical side, the contributors have explored how participation in transnational activism by Latin American social movements and labor unions affected their efforts to resist neoliberal globalization at the domestic level. Second, on the theoretical side, we asked if the outcomes we observed confirmed theoretically driven expectations and, if not, what adjustments to theory they implied. Our effort was inspired by a growing recognition in the literature that despite the intensity of internationalization and neoliberal globalization the national state remained a relevant arena of resistance, and activists therefore necessarily straddle both the transnational and domestic levels. However, for all these advances in the literature, little systematic work on the domestic effects of transnational activism in the struggle to reform neoliberalism has been undertaken. This task, if anything, we believe is even more urgent today. The international financial crisis of 2008–2009 and its aftermath underscore how deeply and inextricably intertwined the transnational and the national levels are and how vitally significant the national state remains for transnational governance.
