Faster Than a Speeding Bullet: Institutions and the Diffusion of Anti-Globalization Norms.

Popular opinion about international political economic phenomena has tended to vary according to traditional factors such as national identity, socioeconomic location or dominant political ideology. Yet, in the space of less than a decade, anti-globalization sentiment has spread throughout the world and been adopted by individuals without a history of shared national, socioeconomic or political identity. In seeking to explain the unique characteristics of this normative movement against globalization, this paper draws upon and develops the insights of sociological institutionalism to explain the widespread diffusion of new international norms. Further, using theories of cognitive evolution and complex social learning, it explains the causal role of ideational factors in uniting otherwise disparate groups around common political goals?goals that, when operationalized through institutions, actively shape new political realities. Importantly, this mutually constitutive relationship between transnational social movements and institutions remains functionally intact regardless of whether the ideas involved correspond to material reality or not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]