ABSTRACT
From this perspective, political activity at the level of the state is inherently problematic. States, far from being the focus for political organization and political demands, are the central barrier to emancipatory political practice. Operating on the terms of the state can only legitimize and perpetuate discourses and practices of political regulation that are built on and maintained by exclusion and war (Foucault 2003: 98-9; Connolly 1991: 465-6; Pogge 1994: 198; Campbell 1998; Linklater 1998: 6; Kaldor 2003: 36). It is the rejection of state-based approaches that marks out this project as distinct from those of the past, and its development can be traced from the post-1968 ‘new left’ through the 1980s civic ‘oppositionists’ in Eastern Europe to the Seattle protests and the anti-globalization and environmental activist movements of today. There has been little critical analysis of
the emergence of global activism and markedly little examination either of their claims for extending the ideas and concerns of political community beyond the state or of the limitations of the ethos, which asserts that power can be challenged globally rather than at the level of constituted government.
