ABSTRACT
Since 1848, upsurges of social and political reform and revolutions have involved some transnational political activities and international networks. Although most of the modern movements – liberalist, socialist, and feminist – have usually focused on state powers, a series of new multilateral and cosmopolitan visions emerged with the late nineteenth-century wave of competing imperialisms and liberal globalisation.1 The capacity of these movements to achieve social transformations has depended on the wider politico-economic context of their actions. The core groups of intellectuals and activists often forge, debate and propagate ideas quite systematically over an extended period of time. However, the moments when demands for reform and transformative mass movements come to the fore and achieve at least some of their goals have, as a rule, been exceptional. Sudden economic downturns and crises, as well as major wars, tend to push or even compel people to reconsider the business as usual of their everyday practices and thereby instigate transformative ethico-political responses. The triggers may consist of a number of overlapping processes that reinforce each other. Together these processes may combine to produce a tipping-point, beyond which the dilemmas of organising collective actions are relatively easy to overcome and transformative mass movements can emerge.
