The increased visibility of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and social movements at the international level invites continuing evaluation of the extent and significance of the role they now play in world politics. While the presence of such new actors is easily demonstrated, international relations scholars have debated their significance. The authors argue that the concept of global civil society sets a more demanding standard for the evaluation of transnational political processes than has been applied in prior accounts of transnational activity. Further, most empirical studies of this activity have focused on a limited number of NGOs within a single issue-area. Using three recent UN world conferences as examples of mutual encounters between state-dominated international politics and global civic politics, the authors develop the concept of global civil society to provide a theoretical foundation for a systematic empirical assessment of transnational relations concerning the environment, human rights, and women at the global level.

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Between 1993 and 2000, nearly every democracy in Latin America passed a law prohibiting domestic violence. Between 2001 and 2006, five countries strengthened their legislation, and Brazil passed its first law. What explains these advances with respect to women's rights? While other work has focused on domestic or international factors, this article brings to light the role of the region. It reveals that the two inter-American women's rights organizations have been active in both establishing regional norms and promoting their national adoption and implementation. While this suggests that regional governance can promote women's social rights, there is no automatic institutionalization of these norms. Case studies on Chile and Brazil illustrate the impact of national context.

2 Encountering Latin American and Caribbean FeminismsIn November 1999, nearly 1,300 women from virtually every country in Latin America and the Caribbean journeyed to the coastal town of Juan Dolio, Dominican Republic, to take part in an event that many of the region's activists have come to regard as a key arena for collectively reimagining feminism and its relationship to a wide range of struggles for human dignity and social justice. Since the first such gathering was convened in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1981, the Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Encuentros [Encounters] have served as critical transnational sites in which local activists have refashioned and renegotiated identities, discourses, and practices distinctive of the region's feminisms.The eighth in this series of biannual or triennial meetings, the Juan Dolio event-billed as "the last Encuentro of the millennium"-aimed to "take stock" of the past three decades of feminism in the region. Dominican organizers proclaimed the gathering's objectives to be threefold: (1) to produce a balance sheet of the last thirty years of "el quehacer feminista" (loosely, feminist action) in Latin America and the Caribbean; (2) to create spaces for dialogue that would further feminist analysis of and political positionings vis-à-vis "new" and "old" forms of oppression; and (3) to identify the mínimos comunes [lowest common denominators] that 3 would foster the creation of links and alliances within the Latin American and Caribbean women's movement. 2 As participants in this as well as past Encuentros, and as analysts of Latin American feminisms with diverse and extensive links to activists and scholars throughout the region, 3 we recognized that the Juan Dolio meeting's agenda also offered us a unique opportunity to reflect collectively on the past and present dynamics and future prospects of feminisms in the South of the Americas. 4 Our shared interest in bringing Latin American experiences more centrally to bear on recent debates concerning the "internationalization" or "globalization" of feminisms served as a further inspiration for this collaborative essay. While much of the recent literature on transnational feminist organizing has focused on how "official" international public arenas, such as the UN women's conferences, have fostered transborder links among feminists, 5 scholars largely have overlooked the rich history of "extra-official" processes, such as the Encuentros, by which feminists have come together within world regions to build solidarity, devise innovative forms of political praxis, and elaborate discourses that challenge gender-based and sexual oppression. Moreover, the prevailing focus on UN-related conferences often misses how these alternative transnational linkages affect movement dynamics on the national and local levels. In analyzing the Latin American and Caribbean Encuentros, we wish to draw attention to movement-centered, intraregional feminist processes and their local effects, thereby underscoring the dynamic and mutually constitutive ...

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In the last two decades most Latin American countries have made the political transition to formal liberal democracy. With a few notable exceptions, the threat of authoritarian reversals has diminished. But although democratic stability does not seem to be imminently imperiled, the quality of the democracies in the region often seems quite low. Instead of consolidated democracies, observers have found "hybrid" or "delegative" regimes, run on the principles of"neopopulism" and "neopluralism."I In order to ensure another transition, the economic transition from state-led to market-driven economies, presidents are ignoring legislative and judicial branches, their own parties, and many interest groups. As a result of these developments, analysts are increasingly using the institutionalization of political interaction as the litmus test of democratic consolidation. This article continues this concern with the quality of democracy and the institutionalization of political interactions but turns from issues of decision making to theorize about developments in the arena of representation, particularly civil society. Under pressure from the economic transition, traditional institutions of representation, including corporatist unions and political parties, seem to be in transformation, if not decay.2 As these institutions lose their legitimacy, there is a search for others, such as social movements, nongovernmental organizations, and "associative networks," to replace or augment them.3 Indeed, analysts claim that an "institutionalized civil society" is an arena in which to assess the institutionalization and consolidation of regional democracies.4 The ongoing transformation of civil society is a potential third transition in Latin America and other transitional regions, as important as the often concurrent and mutually constitutive political move from military to civilian rule and the economic turn to market-oriented economies. This analysis departs from the classic definition of civil society as the realm of associative life separate from the family, the state, and the market.5 Civil society is instantiated by actors like social movements, interest groups, nongovernmental organizations, 21

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R R R R Resumo esumo esumo esumo esumo: Este artigo examina os Encontros Latino-Americanos e do de 'inclusão' e de 'expansão' do movimento; e (3) debates centrados nas diferenças, desigualdades e desequilíbrios de poder entre mulheres em geral e entre as feministas em particular. P P P P Palavras-chave alavras-chave alavras-chave alavras-chave alavras-chave: ativismo feminista, movimentos feministas latino-americanos, feminismos transnacionais.