Kindred Winecoff notes that anti-globalization protests have died down over the years, and wonders why:
I can think of a few possibilities. First, the protests were loudest in the 1990s because of NAFTA (1994), the establishment of the WTO to supplant the GATT (1995), the fairly brutal "Big Bang" liberalization of the post-Soviet economies throughout the 1990s, the harsh austerity measures that came with IMF aid following the East Asian financial crises (1997-8), and the accession of China to the WTO (2001). It was a pretty active decade for neoliberals, which means it was a fairly active decade for anti-capitalists and anti-globalizationists despite the collapse of the Soviet system a few years prior.
Since 2001? Not much has happened on the globalization front. Doha is stuck in limbo, even modest FTAs with small countries have been slow in progressing through Congress, and the IMF had basically nothing to do for nearly a decade. Now that the IMF has been pressed into action again it's largely taken a more accommodating line toward recipient states, and it's pretty difficult to argue that Greece, e.g., is a victim of Western economic imperialists. The globalization of the Naughties was a kindler, gentler, calmer globalization compared to the Brave New World Is Flat globalization of the 1990s.
But I think that's only part of it. I think a better explanation is that people in general, and college students in particular, only have attention for one cause at a time, and environmentalism has definitely become the sexy issue over the past 8-10 years. When I hear people complain about China's trade practices these days, the arguments are less about the use of sweatshop labor and more about environmental degradation. To me it seems that the one has simply supplanted the other as the most pressing issue for the socially conscious.
Dan Drezner responds with two points. First, he says the change is actually more recent:
I would dispute the empirics of Winecoff's assertion. The protests didn't die out with the change in the decade -- they were pretty robust at G-8 summits in the first part of the naughties, as well as the 2003 Cancun WTO Ministerial and the 2005 Hong Kong Ministerial. This is a more recent phenomenon.
He then offers some alternative explanations:
I'd proffer three possible explanations. The first, which I don't really buy, is that the protestors have wised up and realized that these meetings are not the cause of the ills that they bemoan and bewail.
The second possibility, which I'm very unsure about, is that public opinion has shifted. Anti-globalization activists usually demand greater state intervention in the economy, and that's an increasingly unappetizing idea for people living in the advanced industrialized economies.
The final possibility is an idea I floated in a book review many moons ago:
During boom times, antiglobalizers score political points by stoking fears of cultural debasement and environmental degradation. During leaner years, naked self-interest becomes the salient concern: in the current economic climate, American opponents of globalization talk less about its effect on the developing world and more about the offshore outsourcing of jobs.
Let's call this the Business Cycle Theory of Economic Protestors. I don't know if it's true either.
I'd go with three answers (focusing a bit more on the WTO than the World Bank/IMF). First, after Seattle, event organizers had a lot more awareness of the possibility of negative public reaction. As a result, they (1) held some of the meetings in locations where controlling the protests was easier (e.g., Doha) and (2) took security at these meetings more seriously than they had in the past. The protests are still there, they just won't get out of hand like they did in Seattle.
Second, as Winecoff notes, the WTO has seen a continued struggle to complete Doha, which probably makes protests in this area seem less important. The governments are doing a fine job on their own getting nothing done, so no need for protesters to try to get in the way in order to block the agenda.
And finally, there was that War in Iraq thing, which probably siphoned off a lot of the anti-globalization protesters, who now had more important things to worry about.
