Abbreviations:
SMs = Social Movements
TSMs = Transnational Social Movements
NGOs = Non Governmental Organizations
INGOs = International Non Governmental Organizations
IGOs = International Governmental Organizations
TANs = Transnational Advocacy Networks
TC = Transnational Coalitions
UNDCHR = United Nations Declaration of Human Rights

Introduction

This essay argues that the existence of social movements challenge and modify, although have not entirely transformed, the current state centric world order. Social movements (SMs) in this essay include the transnational variant, hence transnational social movements (TSMs). This essay attempts to elucidate SMs and TSMs, and then critically examine their post cold war expansion and challenge to the state centric world order. It will be demonstrated that SMs and TSMs are emerging as a new powerful force in international politics and are transforming global norms and practices.

Keck and Sikkink (1998: 33) argues that "the sustained and specific processes through which individuals and organizations create something of a global civil society" is still lacking of convincing studies since there is yet support to buttress such claims (Keck and Sikkink, 1998: 33). Such assertions are important when considering SMs and TSMs. This is because the rise of SMs and TSMs may indicate that the face of international politics is undergoing change. For instance, on the theoretical level, realism discounts non state actors in world politics as of lesser significance and that the state is the pre eminent actor (Dunne and Schmidt, 2001). In a slightly different nuance, liberalism, particularly the neo liberalism strand, propounds that the state is "the legitimate representation of society" and that an understanding of neo liberal institutionalism places non state actors as subordinate to the state (see Keohane, 1989a: 8; Dunne, 1998). The cosmopolitan approach, however, reflects the significance of the rise of non state actors in global affairs and the development of a "global civil society" whose agendas include democratization, human rights, and global justice (see Scholte, 2001; Doyle, 1983a, 1983b; Russet, 1993).

Thus said, world politics may be transiting from realism to a neo liberal, even cosmopolitan, framework. Falk (2004: 39) exclaimed: "Such world order inconclusiveness is an insignia of our era!" The place of SMs and TSMs in world politics is still open to question; it remains to be seen whether a neo liberal

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