Within the last decade, a new generation of activists has emerged to protest the increasing power of supranational financial institutions, such as the World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund and the World Economic Forum, and the accompanying deterioration of democratic structures and institutions in various regions of the world. The World Social Forum (WSF) was founded as a site in which these new social and political actors are attempting to move beyond protest and toward the construction of alternative, radically democratic social and political institutions and advocacy networks.

This dissertation is a study of the WSF from the perspective of political organization, which problematizes the decades-old issue of the fragmentation of left-wing activism and corresponding debates over centralization and autonomy. It looks at the three most prominent groups in the WSF---anarchist and autonomist social movements, NGOs and other "civil society" actors and left political parties---in terms of their respective theories of social change and democratic praxis. It understands each of these groups as contemporary political organizational forms---with political assumptions, functions and power resources---that share a common opposition to neoliberal globalization, yet operate in contention with each other over issues of agency and social change.

In addition, the text analyzes the WSF itself as a political organizational form, identified as an "open space" rather than an organization. It provides a theoretical discussion of the WSF's open space paradigm, both in terms of the way the space is theorized and produced, as well as the various concepts of openness its constituents employ. It argues that current conceptions and practice of the WSF open space tend to reiterate liberal democratic political forms rather than contest them. Given the WSF's objective to oppose neoliberalism, it recommends that the WSF adopt the alternative view of the open space conceived by autonomist social movement actors under the rubric of "horizontalism."