Gone are the days of the hegemony of la pensée unique (or the one-and-only-way of thinking) and the euphoria created by the globalization of markets. Rising unemployment and insecurity, the insidious dismantling of public services, repeated fi nancial crises, ecological imbalances and US unilateralism: all these have helped to undermine the neoliberal discourse. People have lost their confi dence in the capacity ? or will ? of those who govern to guarantee priority for collective security, even rights, over the interests of powerful private groups. This is responsible for the emergence of a ?world citizens? movement? that seeks new forms of collective and democratic regulation. It has taken only a few years for the ?alternative world galaxy? to force its way, often in a spectacular fashion, on to the international scene and attract responses from broad sectors of the population.