| This dissertation provides a systemic-level framework for explaining and understanding the dynamics and security impacts of transnational mobilization. Transnational mobilization is the process by which relatively weak non-state actors activate transnational networks, harness spatially dispersed material resources, and consolidate coalitions of political support in order to project power and carry out a political project. The dissertation contains a model of the international system that is composed of states, transnational networks and systemic-level opportunity structures, and demonstrates that relatively weak non-state actors draw on incentives and constraints in the international system in order to devise strategies of transnational mobilization.; Two cases of transnational mobilization by non-state actors are discussed: Algerian political entrepreneurs in France during the Algerian War of Liberation (1954--1962) and Kurdish political entrepreneurs in Germany during the Kurdish Conflict in Turkey (1984--2000). These two cases are analyzed by using a structured, focused comparison of transnational mobilization across the two interstate dyads of Algeria-France and Turkey-Germany, with data drawn from both primary and secondary sources.; In the case of the Algerian War of Liberation, a non-state actor, the Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN) was able to capture a state apparatus and become a state actor in the international system. Algerian independence from France, however, did not alleviate the security impacts of transnational mobilization in the Algeria-France dyad. In the case of the Kurdish Conflict in Turkey, a non-state actor, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), has begun to transform itself into an institutionalized political movement. This outcome points to the potentially fruitful role that institutions of global governance, such as those found in the European Union, can play in mitigating the security impacts of transnational mobilization. Institutions of global governance can help to resolve the tensions between states and transnational social forces that characterize contemporary conditions of globalization. |
