City Research Online City, University of London Institutional Repository Citation: Davies, T. R. and Peña, A. M. (2014). Globalisation from Above? Corporate Social Responsibility, the Workers' Party and the Origins of the World Social Forum. New Political Economy, 19(2), pp. 258-281. doi: 10.1080/13563467.2013.779651 This is the unspecified version of the paper. This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link: https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/3628/ Link to published version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2013.779651 Copyright: City Research Online aims to make research outputs of City, University of London available to a wider audience. Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the author(s) and/or copyright holders. URLs from City Research Online may be freely distributed and linked to. Reuse: Copies of full items can be used for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge. Provided that the authors, title and full bibliographic details are credited, a hyperlink and/or URL is given for the original metadata page and the content is not changed in any way. City Research Online: http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/
[email protected] Globalisation from Above? Corporate Social Responsibility, the Workers’ Party, and the Origins of the World Social Forum Alejandro Milcíades Peña & Thomas Richard Davies Abstract In its assessment of the origins and early development of the World Social Forum this article challenges traditional understandings of the Forum as representing ‘globalisation from below’. By tracing the intricate relations among elements of business, civil society, and the Workers’ Party in the first years of the Forum, this article reveals the major role played by a corporate movement stemming from the Brazilian democratisation process in the 1980s, and how this combined with the transformed agenda of the Workers’ Party as it gained higher political offices to constrain the Forum’s activities from the outset.