Cross-border activism and its limits: mexican environmental organizations and the United States

Abstract

Non-governmental organizations have been at the spotlight of academic attention over the past two decades. Particularly analyses of globalization, democratization, and changing relations between state, market and civil society cannot go around the rise of these social actors in the local, national, regional and global spheres. As a result, there is a still growing amount of valuable publications on non-governmental organizations (NGOs) of all sorts and from all over the world, written by sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists and other social scientists. Most of the studies and theories on non-governmental organizations,new social movements, and transnational activism tend to focus on the advancements and promises of these relatively new social actors and processes, and they tend to conclude in positive words on their influence. This is in part a natural result of the rapid emergence and influence of these groups and their local, national and transnational activities. However, the positive approaches seem to be also partly based on a hope – more than a reality - that new actors of organized civil society and their transnational relations will bring about the necessary political and social transformations that governmental agencies and traditional political actors (e.g. political parties and unions) have failed to bring about.