• 1 Vittorio de Filippis and Christian Losson, "Prague submergée par la rue," in Libération, (...)
• 2 Levi and Olson, "The Battles in Seattle," p. 325.

At first sight, the demands of the protesters seem clear and unequivocal. A participant in the Prague demonstrations puts it this way : "To advance the citizen's control [over globalisation]."1 But this is where the consensus ends and where difficulties begin. As mentioned at various points in this essay, the people that participated in the protest actions in Prague and other cities represented a great variety of different and at times conflicting interests and constituencies, from steelworkers to feminist and environmentalists. They ranged from radical anarchists to moderate reformers. "There was a cacophony of voices and issues," say Margaret Levi and David Olson about Seattle.2 And once these voices were picked up by global television networks, they became intertwined with an infinitely more diverse and random array of voices and images, all flickering and babbling away without much form or direction.

• 3 Michael Ignatieff, The Warrior's Honor : Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience (London : (...)
• 4 Paul Virilio, "The Vision Machine," tr. J. Rose in J. Der Derian, The Virilio Reader (...)

Media representations follow their own logic - different from the logic of the events they seek to capture - blending information and entertainment in often highly problematic ways. Indeed, information is often a secondary issue : "The entire script content of the CBS nightly half-hour news," Michael Ignatieff reminds us, "would fit on three-quarters of the front page of the New York Times.3 This is one of the reasons why Virilio believes that "the paradoxical logic of the video-frame privileges the accident, the surprise, over the durable substance of the message."4 It also privileges a specific key target audience : the television viewers of the Western World, those with the spending power to sustain the networks' advertisement rates and corporate profits. It is hardly surprising, then, that not all forms of protest receive the same level of media attention. There is a significant different between coverage of activism in developed and developing countries.

• 5 For summaries of recent protest movements in the Third World see Jessica Woodroffe and Mark (...)

For decades, sustained popular protests against the key multilateral economic institutions have taken place in many parts of the Third World. Countless IMF-sponsored structural adjustment program have triggered sustained protest reactions by the local populace. These protests have increased in recent years. One can find many examples for the year 2000 alone : twenty million Indian workers went on strike to oppose IMF and World Bank policies ; some five thousand students, environmentalists and displaced people overwhelmed police lines protecting an Asian Development Bank meeting in Chiang Mai ; small anti-IMF protests in Argentina were dispersed by the police, but precipitated a mass protest of 80,000 people ; tens of thousands of Korean workers and students repeatedly took to the streets to protest against IMF-mandated austerity measures. The list could go on, and would also include protests in Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Mexico, Brazil, Columbia, Costa Rica, Honduras, Haiti, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Malawi and Zambia, to name just a few counties, and only for protest during the year 2000.5

• 6 For a sustained engagement with the issue see Ponna Wignaraja (ed), New Social Movements in the (...)

A single molotov cocktail in Seattle, Washington or Quebec is worth far more media capital than an entire protest march in Cochabamba, Lagos or Port-au-Prince. Twenty million Indian workers on strike or 80,000 Argentineans descending into the streets generate far less global attention than two dozen protesters in Davos, Melbourne or Gothenburg. Southern social movements clearly operate not only in a different local environment, but also according to very different rules of power.6 But what does this say about the dynamic of protest ? About the struggle for voice and representation ?

• 7 Scholte, "Cautionary Reflections on Seattle," p. 119.
• 8 See Kaldor, "'Civilising' Globalisation," p. 112.

One of the main criticism against the protests in Prague and Seattle was that the protesters were predominantly from the West and thus represented a very particular, often white and middle-class perspective. Here too, one could go on debating the provenance and motivations of the protestors. They certainly were not all rich and not all Westerners. But in most protest actions the Third World was clearly underrepresented. Significant political implications result. Some go as far as arguing that the new wave of global activism runs the risk of reproducing the very same neo-liberal practices of exclusion it so strongly opposes.7 It is questionable, for instance, to what extent the calls for higher labour and environmental standards, which was a central demand of most protest actions, is actually shared in the Third World. Many developing countries face the challenge to promote basic economic growth and may not be able afford the same environmental standards that are now established in the developed world. Indeed, some representatives of the Third World in Seattle argued that the US government was able to use the protest as a convenient pretext to break off discussions on trade issues, for a successful WTO negotiation round could have brought certain benefits to the developing world and undermined the traditional support base of the Democratic Party.8

• 9 F.R. Ankersmit, Aesthetic Politics : Political Philosophy Beyond Fact and Value (...)

Such quarrels over the meaning and direction of the protest movement illustrate how the struggle over legitimate representation is one of the most pivotal political challenges faced by global protests movements. Indeed, representation is, as Ankersmit stresses, at the hart of politics.9 But how is one to establish appropriate standards and rules of enforcement for a protest movement that is all about defying conventional mechanisms and boundaries of politics ?

• 10 William E. Connolly, The Ethos of Pluralization (Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, (...)
• 11 Connolly, The Ethos of Pluralization, p. 157.

The most accepted standards of legitimate representation are democratic principles. The political legitimatisation process in the modern state is largely built around electoral accountability and the various legal and institutional frameworks that surround it. But democratic principles cannot easily be applied to transnational protest movements and their engagement with multilateral institutions. Democracy, as we know it, is intrinsically linked to the territorial boundaries of the nation state and its key political institutions. William Connolly correctly notes that "it is probably impossible even to imagine a form of democratic politics today that breaks entirely with this model [of the territorial imaginary]."10 But Connolly also recognises the rapidly changing dynamics of globalisation, the fact that virtually all aspects of life transgress the boundaries of sovereign states, from the flow of capital and labour to criminal organisations, media networks and protest movements. "Only democratic citizens," he stresses, "remain locked behind the bars of the state."11

• 12 Connolly, The Ethos of Pluralization, p. 154.

The challenge, then, consists of finding a way of extending democratic accountability to the struggle over the direction of global governance and the various political, social and economic dynamics associated with it. While such a project may well be impossible to imagine today, Connelly points in a promising direction. He approaches democracy not only as a set of political institutions, but also, and perhaps even primarily, as an ethos, a cultural disposition. This ethos, Connolly stresses, needs to "foster a recurrent problematization of final markers" - foundational norms which continue to reinstate themselves.12 In the context of the struggle over global governance, such a democratic approach would entail regular public scrutiny and discussion of how norms, values and institutions function. Necessary as well would be a more generic promotion of transparency and an awareness of the political dimensions of representation, that is, sensitivity to who or what is excluded and included, and why.

• 13 See Luc Boltanski, Distant Suffering : Morality, Media and Politics, tr. G. Burchell (...)

In some ways, the activists in Seattle can only speak for themselves. But this does not mean that they cannot engage political problems and criticise, say, issues related to economic governance or North-South relations. In fact, the process of convincing others across political, cultural and linguistic divides is the very subject of politics. Indeed, the most effective target of activism in the information age may well be the people with the spending power to influence politics. Comfortably installed in front of their television sets, this target audience does not usually suffer from unequal globalisation. In fact, they are the ones who profit from existing political dynamics.13 By questioning political, social and economic privileges, and by disturbing the stable foundations upon which these privileges rest, the protest movement is able to contribute to a democratisation of global governance, even if it cannot always perfectly represent all people affected by unequal globalisation processes.

• 14 Speaking of Prague, one commentator notes that even the wildest interpretations estimated the (...)

The form and method of representation can be as significant as its content. The protest events in Seattle, Washington, Prague, Melbourne, Quebec, Gothenburg, Davos and Genoa are good examples. Without doing injustice to the uniqueness and complexities of each event, it is fair to say that most of them proceeded in a comparable way : the overwhelming majority of protesters engaged in a variety of peaceful and nonviolent forms of protest, while a small minority committed acts of violence.14 At times, as in Seattle, molotov cocktails and battles with riot police led to looting and the destruction of property. Media attention, in turn, focused often on these violent incidents, leading to a relatively uneven representation of the overall protests. The latter, violent episodes have attracted by far the most media attention, overshadowing both the substance of the protests and the presence of an overwhelmingly violent majority of dissidents. The violent nature of recent protests against globalisation pose a number of key questions for both social movement agency and politics in general. What is the exact nature and impact of violence ? To what extent can violence be justified as an act of dissent ? Is violence an effective way of promoting social change ? How can peaceful activists who engage in nonviolent protests or civil disobedience co-exist with those who advocate violence as a revolutionary strategy ? Do they belong to the same movement ? Do their different engagements reinforce or hinder each other ?

• 15 Alice Dvorska cited in Irene Stehli, "Alice im Globalisierungsland," in Tages-Anzeiger, 23.9.2000.
• 16 Vidal, "Real Battle for Seattle," p. 3.

To engage these difficult questions it is necessary to enter terrains that are both analytical and normative. Consider one of the organisers of the Prague protests, a young Czech chemistry student. In principle she is against the use of violence, but believes that "at times it is nevertheless legitimate." When talking about the actions in Prague, she insist on drawing a distinction between different forms of violence : "Violence committed by demonstrators against objects ; violence committed by the police against demonstrators, and, worst of all, violence committed by institutions like the IMF and the World Bank that rob millions of people of their livelihood."15 She is not alone in drawing such a distinction. "They are worried about a few windows being smashed," said a Philippino participant in the Seattle protests. "They should come and see the violence being done to our communities in the name of liberalization of trade."16

• 17 Frantz Fanon, Les Damnés de la Terre (Paris : Édition de la Découverte, 1985). See also (...)
• 18 Henry David Thoreau, Walden and Civil Disobedience (New York : W.W. Norton, 1966/1848) ; (...)
• 19 Jonathan Freedland, writing about the events in Seattle, in "Powerless People," in The Guardian, (...)

The debate between violent and nonviolent forms of protest is, of course, not new. Frantz Fanon had already argued that violence is inevitable if existing structures of power - as those of colonialism - are being challenged and overthrown.17 It is an integral part of social change. Others disagree. They advocate nonviolent forms of dissent, basing their positions on a long tradition of thought and activism that stretches back to the words and deeds of Henry David Thoreau, Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, to name just a few key figures.18 They consciously employ nonviolent forms of protest when the official channels for political action, such as elections, referenda, petitions or lobbying do not exist or are considered inadequate for the resolution of the conflict in question. Nonviolent action thus seeks to empower those who do not have access to conventional forms of political influence. While such actions usually occur only in desperate circumstances, they are not necessarily manifestation of powerlessness, as Jonathan Freedland suggested with respect to the events in Seattle.19

• 20 Richard B. Gregg, The Power of Nonviolence (Philadelphia : J.B. Lippincott, 1934), p. 89. The (...)
• 21 See Thomas Weber, "The marchers simply walked forward until struck down : nonviolent (...)

Nonviolent dissent can also be seen as an effective resistance strategy in itself. Indeed, the choice of nonviolent over violent protest is considered not only a moral, but also a strategic decision - a decision for the more sound and efficient form of struggle. Richard Gregg, in a classical study on the subject, suggests that nonviolence works by way of producing a change of mental attitude in the mind of those against whom the action is directed. Nonviolent action thus works not unlike military strategies, for it seeks to « to demoralize the opponent, to break his will, to destroy his confidence, enthusiasm and hope. »20 But instead of using violence to counter violence, which would only drain the resisters' energy and reassure the attacker about the adequacy of the chosen method of repression, nonviolence is considered to be a more effective form of political intervention. Some recent studies have found mixed evidence about the ability of nonviolent action to change the position of its opponents. Instead, they stress that nonviolence can engender social change by influencing third parties.21

• 22 For this interpretation I have relied insight derived by Karl-Erik Paasonen, who has conducted (...)
• 23 For various discussions on this issue see Mohandas Gandhi, Satyagraha, tr. V.G. Desai (...)
• 24 Amartya Sen, "All Players on a Global Stage," in The Australian, 16.5.2001, pp. 7, 11. The (...)

This is where the debate over the politics of protest actions becomes explicitly strategic and tactical. The issues at stake are well illustrated by how activists differ about the point at which an action does and perhaps should become violent. Some non-violent activists reserve the right to employ violent means for reasons of self-defence. They argue that they have a moral right to self-protection, perhaps even to physical responses, if attacked by the police.22 Others disagree. They advocate a more principled adherence to nonviolence, and this for ethical and, above all, for strategic and tactical reasons. The classical example here is Gandhi, who urged his fellow activists to adhere to strict principles of nonviolence. He called off a protest march as soon as the slightest acts of violence were committed by activists. For him this was necessary because the power of nonviolence is located in its manipulative potential, in its ability to convert the opponent or third parties. Nonviolence, then, is seen as a psychological weapon, an intervention that causes emotional and moral perturbations which in turn trigger processes of social change. It seeks a conversation with the consciousness of the opponent and the public at large. Violent acts of protest generally fail to reach this objective, Gandhi argued. Principled nonviolence, by contrast, can be an exceptionally effective means. Recall the moment when Gandian activist were beaten by the police without attempting any form of retaliation. It remains one of the most striking and powerful images of the resistance movement against Britain's colonial occupation of India. Striking because these images capture an ethical and political commitment that can hardly be matched. Powerful because they manage to initiate forces of transformation that violent acts never can : they evoke pity which, in turn, can either convert the opponent or generate public pressure that can lead to a process of accommodation.23 A similar position has recently been advanced by Amartya Sen, who argued that the ant-globalisation protest would be fare more effective if it were to employ not violence, but humour as a strategy of dissent and transformation.24

• 25 Viner, "Lessons to Be Learnt," p. 23.
• 26 Patrick Bishop, "Small Cheese Faces Big Mac on Home Ground," in The Daily Telegraph, 30.11.1999, (...)
• 27 Daniel Johnson, "The Dwarfs Who Posture on the Shoulders of Giants," in The Daily Telegraph, (...)
• 28 Boris Johnson, "Aimless, Feckless, Hopeless and Legless in Seattle," in The Daily Telegraph, (...)
• 29 Rowell, "Faceless in Seattle," p. 3.

The verdict of Seattle on the issue of violence and nonviolence is mixed. On the one hand, violence attracts fare more media attention than nonviolence does. In a world were entertainment and information are intrinsically linked, a molotov cocktail or a street fight between protesters and police offers far more spectacular and attractive 'news' material than does a peaceful protest march. On the other hand, this media attention is gained at a certain price. Recall that the main purpose of the protest, and of the ensuing media spectacle, was to draw attention to the undersides of globalisation and to win the hearts and minds of global television audiences. This is where the dissident event could leave its most enduring impact on the policy debates that surround globalisation. The fact that the evens in Seattle turned violent, however, gave critics an easy target : the protesters could now be dismissed as disgruntled youths or demonised as dangerous anarchist radicals who are not in tune with the needs and wishes of the general populace.25 This is why some commentators were able to speak dismissively of a "counter-culture carnival,"26 of the "globetrotting anti-globalisation mob,"27 of "hippies and yippies" with their "bedraggled beards and their mobiles phones hooked up to the internet."28 It is also unlikely that violence which leads to the destruction of property can win over the sympathy of the public, especially in the US where, as one commentator puts it, "private property is God."29 These issues are central not only to the political foundations of global activism, but also to its tactical and strategic efficiency.

• 30 James Harding, "A New Era of Protest," in Financial Times, 2.2.2002, p. 7.

The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 have further highlighted the crucial relationship between violence and dissent. Consider the World Economic Forum of February 2002, which was held in New York rather than Davos. The significant presence of protesters both in New York and at the alternative World Social Forum in Porto Alegre revealed that opposition to free-market oriented globalisation remains strong. But the strategic dimensions of dissent have changed fundamentally. It would have been a major public relations disaster for protesters to embark on a violent street fight with members of the New York police, who are considered the heroes of 9.11. Many protest groups that stress strict adherence to nonviolence thus stayed away from New York. And those that went to Porto Alegre faced the challenge of articulating some sort of common manifesto, one that seeks to articulate, as one commentator puts it, "a methodology of protest that distinguishes them from terrorists, bloody revolutionaries and bomb-throwing malcontents."30

• 31 J.G. Ballard, Super-Cannes (London : Flamingo, 2000).

An extensive and broadly conceived engagement with political issues is crucial if the global dissident movement is to contribute to the construction of a better world, rather than merely oppose existing policies. To engage this problematique the present essay has first demonstrated that globalisation does not necessarily, or at least not only, lead to a centralisation of power and a corresponding loss of democratic participation and political accountability. Taking the anti-WTO protest actions in Seattle as a case in point, the essay has argued that globalisation has also increased the potential to engage in acts of dissent that can subvert the very processes of control and homogenisation. In doing so, the essay counters images of a hyperreal world, of an increasingly shallow and media dominated globe in which nothing can penetrate beneath the surface. Political dissent, according to this doomsday scenario, becomes all but impossible, for there is nothing left to dissent against. There is only a twenty-for-hour-a-day-blur of information and entertainment. We are caught in a world that resembles J.G. Ballard's Eden-Olympia : a financially thriving but highly unequal high-tech information society, seemingly run by a few successful elites, but in reality spinning out of control and spiralling into an ever deeper moral void, fed by the very need for progress and economic expansion.31

• 32 Needless to say, this is an overly crude portrayal of realist ideas. But central tendencies of (...)

But making global governance more humane, more transparent and more democratic is no easy task. Principles of transparency and democracy have historically been confined to the territorial boundaries of the sovereign nation state. Within these boundaries there is the possibility for order and the rule of law. But the space beyond is seen as threatening and anarchical - that is, lacking a central regulatory institution. The standard realist response to these perceptions is well know : protect sovereignty, order and civility at the domestic level by promoting policies that maximise the state's military capacity and, so it is assumed, its security.32 It is questionable to what extent realist policies remain adequate - and ethical for that matter - at a time when process of globalisation have lead to a fundamental transformation of political dynamics.

• 33 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus : Capitalism & Schizophrenia, tr. B. (...)

The Battle for Seattle, and the media spectacle that issued form it, may well demonstrate that the struggle for power takes place in a realm that lacks a central regulatory institution. But realist interpretations make the mistake of embarking on a fatalistic interpretation of this political realm, constituting conflict as an inevitable element of the system's structure. It may be more adequate - and certainly more productive - to characterise the international system in the age of globalisation and transnational dynamics not as anarchical, but as rhizomatic. For Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari a rhizome is a multiplicity that has no coherent and bounded whole, no beginning or end, only a middle from where it expands and overspills. Any point of the rhizome is connected to any other. It has no fixed points to anchor thought, only lines, magnitudes, dimensions, plateaus, and they are always in motion.33 How, then, is one to reach a moral position in a world of webs, multitudes and multiplicities ? Are the lines, dimensions and plateaus of the rhizome so randomly arranged that we are no longer able to generate the kind of stable knowledge that is necessary to advance critique and, indeed, dissent ? Is the very notion of political foundations still possible at a time when social consciousness gushes out of five-second sound-bites and the corresponding hyperreal images that flicker over our television screens ? Are there alternatives to realist approaches that protect domestic order by warding off everything that threatens it from the outside ? Answers to such questions do, of course, not come easy. And they may not be uniform either. But an adequate response will need to engage in one way or another with the search for political engagements beyond the territorial boundaries of the nation state.

• 34 Connolly, The Ethos of Pluralzation, pp. 154-5.
• 35 See Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence (Oxford : Polity, 1991)

An extension of democratic principles into the more ambiguous international realm is as essential as it is difficult. It will need to be based on a commitment to democracy that goes beyond the establishment of legal and institutional procedures. William Connolly has pointed in the right direction when arguing for a democratic ethos. The key to such cultural democratisation, he believes, "is that it embodies a productive ambiguity at its very centre, always resisting attempts to allow one side or the other to achieve final victory."34 Such a model is, of course, the antithesis of prevailing realist wisdom, and perhaps of modern attitudes in general, which seek to achieve security and democracy through the establishment of order and the repression of all ambiguity.35

• 36 See Doug Bond, « Nonviolent Direct Action and the Diffusion of Power, » in P. Wehr, H. (...)

The political significance of protest movments is located precisely in the fact that they cannot be controlled by a central regulatory force or an institutional framework. They open up possibilities for social change that are absent within the context of the established legal and political system.36 The various movements themselves are, of course, far from unproblematic. The violent nature of recent actions against neo-liberal governance may well point towards the need for greater political awareness among activists. But such awareness can neither be imposed by legal norms or political procedures. It needs to emerge from the struggle over values that takes place in civil society. The fact that this struggle is ongoing does not detract from the positive potential that is hidden in the movement's rhizomatic nature. These elements embody the very ideal of productive ambiguity that may well be essential for the long-term survival of democracy.