Marcos Ancelovici

Bio: Marcos Ancelovici is an academic researcher from Université du Québec à Montréal. The author has contributed to research in topics: Social movement & Collective action. The author has an hindex of 10, co-authored 21 publications receiving 358 citations. Previous affiliations of Marcos Ancelovici include Massachusetts Institute of Technology & McGill University.

Organizing against Globalization: the Case of ATTAC in France

Abstract: This article argues that the current opposition to globalization is not a structural side effect of economic integration. Instead of assuming that globalization generates resistance, it stresses the political and interpretive processes that shape collective action. It substantiates this claim by studying the rise of an antiglobalization social movement organization called ATTAC in France. It holds that ATTAC's emergence is the product of political entrepreneurs whose actions were constrained by the ideational and organizational legacies of previous contentious episodes, particularly the December 1995 strikes. Finally, it contends that ATTAC's success stems in part from its ability to produce a hybrid discourse that marries state interventionism with participatory politics.

Streets Politics in the Age of Austerity

Abstract: The past few years have seen an unexpected resurgence of street-level protest movements around the world, from the uprisings of the Arab Spring to the rise of the anti-austerity Indignados in Spain and Greece to the global spread of the Occupy movement. This collection is designed to offer a comparative analysis of these movements, setting them in international, socioeconomic and crosscultural perspective in order to help us understand why movements emerge, what they do, how they spread, and how they fit into both local and worldwide historical contexts. As the most significant wave of mass protests in decades continues apace, this book offers a timely, authoritative analysis.

In Search of Lost Radicalism: The Hot Autumn of 2010 and the Transformation of Labor Contention in France

Abstract: The fall of 2010 was an unexpectedly contentious season in France, reminiscent of May 1968 and the Italian “hot autumn” of 1969. After the government announced it would increase the minimum retirement age from 60 to 62, protests began: great numbers of workers took to the streets several times in just a few months; gas stations shut down because of strike-generated shortages; high school students surprisingly joined in to defend retirement at age 60; and public opinion both supported the protests and faulted President Sarkozy for intransigence. French trade unions managed to mobilize between 1 and 3.5 million people on ten separate occasions between 27 May and 6 November 2010. The “contentious French” were alive and kicking!1 The mobilization of such large numbers over several months stands in sharp contrast to what was happening almost simultaneously across the Channel. As the Conservative-led government of Prime Minister David Cameron announced “the biggest shake-up in Britain’s sprawling welfare system since the years immediately after World War II,” with cuts in government spending amounting to a total of $130 billion,2 very little was taking place in the streets. Although students mobilized in significant numbers—most notably on 10 November 2010, when 50,000 students demonstrated and occupied the headquarters of the Conservative Party in London—British trade unions remained mostly quiet. Britain is not unique in this respect. In spite of drastic austerity measures, trade unions in Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain have not managed to mobilize significant numbers of people over extended periods of time. Greece, Portugal, and Spain experienced more protests as well as general strikes but these events were relatively isolated and the mobilizations did not last.3

Standardization for Transnational Diffusion: The Case of Truth Commissions and Conditional Cash Transfers

Abstract: The study of the transnational transfer of practices and institutions generally looks at the intermediary and final stages of the process, with much less attention devoted to its initial steps. In contrast, this article theorizes the early part of the trajectory of transfer, conceptualized as the process through which local ideas and practices are turned into a “standard model,” which we term the process of standardization. Drawing upon the public policy and social movement literatures, we identify three potentially robust mechanisms as central to the process of standardization—certification, decontextualization, and framing—and apply this framework to two cases: the transnational spread of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions and the use of conditional cash transfers as a social policy instrument. We find that the key actors in shaping the content of these standards were neither the innovators nor the early adopters but intermediary entrepreneurs located at the intersection of a complex mix of state and nonstate networks.

The Production of Space

Abstract: ‘The Production of Space’, in: Frans Jacobi, Imagine, Space Poetry, Copenhagen, 1996, unpaginated.

Education at a Glance

Abstract: A detailed review of the education sector in Australia as in the data provided by the 2006 edition of the OECD's annual publication, 'Education at a Glance' is presented. While the data has shown that in almost all OECD countries educational attainment levels are on the rise, with countries showing impressive gains in university qualifications, it also reveals that a large of share of young people still do not complete secondary school, which remains a baseline for successful entry into the labour market.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

Abstract: What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

The New Transnational Activism

Abstract: The New Transnational Activism, first published in 2005, shows how even the most prosaic activities can assume broader political meanings when they provide ordinary people with the experience of crossing transnational space. This means that we cannot be satisfied with defining transnational activists through the ways they think. The defining feature of transnationalism in this book is relational, and not cognitive. This emphasis on activism's relational structure means that even as they make transnational claims, transnational activists draw on the resources, the networks, and the opportunities in which they are embedded, and only then - if at all - on more distant transnational links. But we can no more sharply draw a line between domestic and international politics in studying transnational activism than we could ignore local politics in studying its national equivalent. Understanding the processes that link the local, the national and the international is the major undertaking of the book.