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This paper examines a range of women’s movements as the basis for mapping their strategies vis-à-vis states. Relying on the secondary literatures on selected women’s movements in Latin America, North America and West Europe, the paper investigates strategic dimensions of 1) insider v. outsider position; 2) separatist v. coalitional stance; and 3) movement autonomy v. state involvement. Two factors are identified as potentional influences upon women’s movements’ strategic behaviors: the context of movement emergence and anticipation of state reconfiguration. The paper concludes with a schema for testing hypotheses concerning women’s movements’ strategic action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that, while much of what is happening with some of the “Left” regimes in Latin America can only be characterized as alternative modernizations, there are more radical thoughts and practices emerging from the space of some social movement ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Politics of exclusion has been the norm for Latin American states since their inception. The most recent wave of democratic transitions, coupled with neoliberal policy expansion has however affected the dynamics of democratic participation. While previous incarnations of democracy and dictatorship were able to exclude and marginalize vast populations through policy and force, the third wave transition governments have been hindered by neoliberal structural adjustment in marginalizing these populations. Antiquated party structures and elite civic associations have limited the political space for new political voices to be heard in civil society-state synergy. Thus,my research shows that social movements have resulted from the an assymetry of social capital in marginalized populations and state capacity to process new policy input demands from those populations. The case of CONAIE in Ecuador is used to illustrate social capital formation among indigenous populations, where state capacity to disrupt social capital formation or to process policy inputs was reduced by structural adjustment and loan conditionality and and vertical oriented party structure. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past few decades, two strategies for improving women?s political representation have become commonplace around the world: state feminism, which involves national policy machineries for improving gender equality, and gender quotas, which encompass national and party policies for increasing the number of female candidates for elected office. These two strategies seek to improve women?s representation in very different ways: state feminism aims to incorporate women's gender interests into public policy, thereby improving women's substantive representation, while gender quotas seek to improve women's access to electoral politics, thereby increasing women?s descriptive representation. Although recent work has analyzed the global diffusion of these strategies, as well as their adoption and implementation in individual countries, much less attention has focused on differences in their origins and outcomes in different world regions. Seeking to initiate a dialogue across research on the global North and South, we outline and compare trends in both policy areas in Western Europe and Latin America. We discover that in Western Europe, state feminism grew largely out of mobilization by women's movements and gender quotas were generally adopted voluntarily by political parties, while in Latin America, state feminism emerged from a combination of activism by women's movements, international organizations, and state actors and gender quotas were more often imposed through national legislation on all political parties. Probing these differences, we then utilize the comparison to assess the strengths and weaknesses of state feminism and gender quotas as strategies for improving women's descriptive and substantive representation. We conclude by arguing for more explicit cross-regional analysis of developments in gender and politics as a means for not only improving the study of women in politics, but also for devising more effective policies for incorporating women and women's concerns into the political arena. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International relations scholars have amply described indigenous politics through state-centric analyses. They have focused on the productive power of advocacy/issue networks to mobilize support, transcend political isolation, and create ?political wedges? for indigenous activism. Through this approach scholars have been able to measure the ?successes? of indigenous activism. Yet they have not brought this understanding to detailed case studies. On the other hand, area specialists pursuing such case studies using a local level of analysis have tended to slight the importance or even the existence of a transnational element. These scholars have dismissed the TIPM as an artificial product of alienated indigenous intellectuals with little or no ?authentic? connection with the local setting. It appears in these studies as if indigenous politics play out solely within their respective national arenas. The aim of this paper is to address this gap and consider the role of the TIPM through a ?glocal? level of analysis. In particular this paper will address the interesting puzzle: How have indigenous discourses been produced in Latin America and what are their real material implications?In this paper I will draw upon postcolonial research. Like much postcolonial work, the aim of this paper is not to measure the ?success? of indigenous activism or show that conceptions of Indian-ness are false, but rather to show that the institutionalized production of certain kinds of ideas about Indian-ness has important effects, and that the production of such ideas plays an important role in the production of certain sorts of structural change. I argue that indigenous activity is organized on the basis of this structure of knowledge and has regular effects which include the essentialization, ?greening? and commodification of indigenous groups. Consequently, the TIPM ironically mirrors historic ?indigenismo? programs that were formed in Latin America to generate productive members of society and solve the ?Indian problem?. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]