Social Movements for Global Democracy

Smith has gathered a very impressive collection of data on complex global processes and structures. Writing from an engaged, critical perspective, she offers a coherent, thoughtful analysis of contested processes of globalization and constructive insights on potential pathways toward global democratization. This excellent book will be of great interest to sociologists and other students of this critical issue of our times.

The most comprehensive and well-documented study to date on current transnational movements. Smith deserves credit for penning such a thorough, reflexive, and multifaceted book.

This impressive book presents a distinctive and provocative point of view. It successfully combines the construction of an analytical framework with the advocacy of a political agenda without allowing the political agenda to overwhelm the analytical framework or the analytical framework to obscure the political issues at stake. Social Movements for Global Democracy will play an important role in future debates over globalization.

At last, a book that takes seriously the role of international institutions in opposing global neoliberalism! While acutely conscious of the biases of these institutions, Smith vigorously argues that the new forms of democratic participation encapsulated in the movement for global justice must engage them in contentious interaction. Her book is a challenge to movement activists and to institutional elites alike.