Fernando Pedrosa *

One of the various consequences caused by the so-called oil crisis of 1973 is that it is a moment that is generally chosen as a turning point and from which internationalization, interdependence, globalization, or whatever we want to call it, appears as an unavoidable element of economic and social analysis.

Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye defined in Transnational relations and world politics: Introduction, that plot model, then the novel, as transnational. The international sphere no longer belonged exclusively to the state or governmental world, and other actors began to be protagonists with accepted legitimacy.

The economy was the one that adapted the fastest to that “new world” and in the 1970s it was embodied in the so-called transnational companies. Interestingly, transnationalism was also a common practice among radical and armed left groups. They skillfully used informal networks as a way to implement their revolutionary plans. Without fixed geographic bases, they managed to connect different groups and places on an intercontinental map whose hubs were, among others, Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization, Gaddafi’s Libya and Castro’s dictatorship in Cuba.

Networks and actors

Transnational activity has spread beyond the left. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, this was the dominant trend in globalized politics. He boomerang effectwhich Margaret Keck and Katherine Sikkink defined so well in the book Activists without borders, showed the democratization of access to the international arena for national actors. So it didn’t matter how small, isolated or disenfranchised they were. Any group could appeal to the world to get resources or put limits on the nation-states that persecuted them.

But changes have also been observed in society, not only in the transformations suffered by some sectors, for example, in the reduction of the number of traditional workers and the increase of workers related to the service sector. It can also be seen in the fragmentation of politics, which has begun to show the diversification of social demands. These included environmental protection, feminism, anti-nuclearism or demands for more freedoms in the face of the advance of difficult and bureaucratized European states.

Networks beyond borders have given new life to the associative world. Non-state or para-state actors and groups have also settled comfortably in this new terrain: organized crime, financial networks, the media. Other phenomena that soon began to repeat themselves and that did not respect state borders were forced migrations, pandemics or climate disasters.

The phenomenon of globalization took shape as a crisis of nation-states that began to rapidly realize the ability to intervene and regulate a market that was no longer exclusively national and gained a different dimension in its logistical, organizational scale and resource management scale.

National becomes international

Simply put, the formula for success built since World War II, the welfare state, began to have serious problems in its continued sustainability, and its political and intellectual legitimacy wavered with it. Other demands were also growing in societies that the stagnant European social democracies could not even properly characterize.

This framed the well-known crisis of representation (which, corrected and increased, continues to this day) which then reflected the growing social dissatisfaction with the nationalized political system that could no longer provide answers to problems and challenges that had a global character.

For politicians, activists and all those who understand political action beyond theoretical reflection, it has also turned into a challenge that requires innovative responses that transcend national borders, but for which there was precedent. And it challenged the political world beyond whether the protagonists occupied central positions in states and governments or were part of small party or non-governmental organizations.

In the document The world is not enough. Political networks and struggles for democracy in Latin Americapublished by Diálogo Político and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, I presented research that attempts to organize and find strategic meaning in the current world of transnational political activism.

To do this, I have emphasized three types of strategies: international governmental networks, informal policies, and transnational policies. The latter divides them between transnational networks of activism and party political networks beyond borders.

The aforementioned paper also started from the transversal hypothesis that gave meaning to the tense and conflicting map of Latin American politics. Leaders and movements, especially those belonging to the so-called the pink tide, the 21st century left, the new Latin American left or the populist left, and their successors, translated the current political transnationalism into a new meaning. And that meaning became dominant.

Out of bounds

This wave of activism and transnational politics was well used by those who adhere to authoritarian, illiberal, even anti-democratic projects. It emptied the internationalist movement of its traditional liberal influence based on ideas of cosmopolitanism or the internationalization of democracy. The San Pablo Forum, Clacso, and riots organized to delegitimize non-leftist governments in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru are just a few examples of an equation that is much more coordinated than it appears.

This new transnational phenomenon is sustained from discourse catch all, hegemonic pronouncement from the political, academic and cultural world, which combines contemporary elements and elements of the 20th century with the patriagrandistic tradition, widely present in the political history of the region. Elements from the classic socialist discourse propagated by one of the most important and traditional hubs of the network, Cuba, were added to this.

This model of regional nationalism as the basis of renewed national political activism captures some classic issues in this type of movement: an agonal view of politics, anti-liberal ideas and an anti-imperialist but at the same time conservative narrative. However, the research also shows the renewed transnational activity of political parties, in a range that far exceeds the universe of the left.

Probably the most important (and optimistic) result of the text published by Diálogo Político is that transnational party organizations (TPOs), despite not being popularly recognized, have grown significantly. They can become a very useful tool both for dealing with the demands of societies dissatisfied with national politics, and as a hope for dealing with the authoritarian discourses of the left and the right that are becoming stronger today in Latin America. (OR)

*This text was originally published in Political Dialogue

Fernando Pedrosa is a doctor of contemporary political processes and coordinator of the Asian and Latin American Studies Group of the Institute of Latin American and Caribbean Studies of the University of Buenos Aires.