This program unfolds within the geographical context of San Francisco, a center of international business and art that has developed a unique culture. Important to an understanding of the program is the vibrancy of the city’s many cultures and languages, and the pride residents take in the diversity of their city. Equally diverse are the social and economic divides that position the very rich alongside the very poor. The affluence of the city’s business life does not necessarily extend to more marginal, under-resourced communities. It is these communities that the All Stars Project has selected as its target population. The stark contrasts between the cosmopolitan corporate world and the circumscribed and underdeveloped experiences of many young people from the surrounding boroughs are the cultural dissonance on which the ASTSN/DSY programs are based. Promoting and guiding the meeting of these two worlds is the central strategy of the development project.
Another key role of interpersonal networks in movement aggregation and mobilization has obvious implications for the likelihood that social movements can form across transnational space. Even if “objective conditions” (eg., economic interdependence, cultural integration or hegemony, or institutional diffusion) produce the preconditions for the appearance of similar movements in a variety of countries, the transaction costs of linking them into integrated networks would be difficult for any social movement to accomplish in the absence of activists whose ties cross national boundaries on a regular basis and exhibit the mutual trust and reciprocity of domestic social networks. Cheap international transportation, electronic communication and lobbying, and international subcontracting provide resources for various kinds of social networks to form across national boundaries (Bob 1997; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Wellman and Giulia 1998).
Moreover, sustained cooperation with actors from other countries against the actions of one or another state or international institution is the most pregnant possibility for unbundling territorial limits. When domestic activists interact routinely with others with similar claims, they can form transnational networks and identities and take advantage of international opportunities to advance these claims.
Domestic social actors do not access the international system when they protest domestically against external agents; nor do they do so when they temporarily borrow the resources of external actors on their native soil, though much good can come of this resource borrowing. More positive outcomes can result when domestic actors externalize their claims, seeking the intervention of transnational advocacy groups, third-party organizations, or international institutions. But this mechanism is partial, selective and vertical, and can create a split between domestic and transnational activists. Internationalization, in contrast, forges horizontal links among activists with similar claims and is most likely to produce transnational social movements.
Basically, such the orientation on internationalization and closer integration implies that the ideal social movement of the 20th century would have tolerant approach to the most burning social and cultural issues. This means that it would be mainly focused on the development of basic principles common to representatives of different socio-cultural groups. In fact, this is the major condition of the further development of the social movement because, otherwise, it could not be adequately perceived in different communities that may represent even one and the same state, while in global terms the need to develop universal humanistic principles tolerant to different cultures is vitally important since it prevents the social movement from internal conflicts caused by cultural or ideological contradictions.
In conclusion, international institutions can thus play a facilitating role in all processes but are particularly important as targets and fulcra for internationalization. This leads to the paradox that international institutions can be the arenas in which transnational contention forms. I do not maintain that states create international institutions in order to encourage contention; states are more likely to delegate than to fuse sovereignty, (Moravcsek 1998). But because the norms and practices of international institutions mediate among the interests of competing states, they can provide political opportunities for weak domestic social actors, encouraging their connections with others like themselves and offering resources that can be used in intra-national and transnational conflict. At the same time, the focus on the internationalization and inclusiveness are very perspective to social movements of the 21st century.