ABSTRACT
The World Social Forum (WSF) in 2002 in Porto Alegre was the second annual international gathering of transnational civil society in counterpoint to the World Economic Forum (WEF) of business leaders and the political elite in Davos. Its emergence is, in various ways, remarkable. Firstly, its scale makes it one of the most impressive and truly global examples of transnational civic activism. Secondly, it attempts to transform a heterogeneous global protest movement into a positive-cause protagonist of global policy change, enabling the movement to come together for the first time in order to define its own agenda rather than merely reacting to agendas set by governments. The WSF sees itself as recasting the WEF. Within two years, Grzybowski (2002) celebrates, they have become seen as ‘anti-Porto Alegre’. Thirdly, the WSF functions as an intermediate structure that inter-links citizens and civil society organizations (CSOs) from different countries, playing a potentially crucial bridging role for the formation of transnational social movements.
