SUBVERTING GLOBAL POWER: GRASSROOTS RESISTANCE, THE STATE, AND THE UNDERMINING OF THE NEOLIBERAL PROJECT

Grassroots-level resistance to global economic and governance policies presents a significant challenge to both international relations scholarship as well as to the global power structure itself. The success of these localized efforts undermines the top-down neoliberal project by preventing its full implementation. It subverts global power by constraining the options available to institutions and elites. The question this study begins to answer is what makes resistance successful. Resistance falls into the four categories of GMOs, transnational mining, privatization of basic needs goods, and IMF and World Bank austerity reforms. The academic literature both mischaracterizes and fails to adequately theorize this resistance, and as such further examination and indeed a rather extensive research agenda are warranted. The dynamics of the resistance reveal the role of the state as fundamentally distinct from that which the international relations field assumes. The state is being transformed towards transnational capitalist ends. Successful resistance also makes clear the impact that the local level has on the global and suggests the need to much further explore this relationship than scholarship has thus far attempted. The study suggests that the methods of successful resistance often target the adversary on its own terms, operate on a narrow scale, and under certain circumstances bypass the state, but further quantitative analysis is needed to fully substantiate these hypotheses.