Examination of the negotiated relationships between feminist social movements and state institutions controlled by the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front political party in El Salvador based on ethnographic research in the semiurban municipality of Suchitoto shows that “critical collaboration” characterizes the local feminist movement’s efforts to work alongside state actors in the formulation, implementation, and oversight of public policies addressing women’s rights, violence against women, and gender-equitable community development. Theoretically, critical collaboration shows that civil society actors interested in deepening emancipatory processes under moderate leftist governments need not be subordinated to constituted state power or contentiously confront it. Rather, by pursuing their agendas through critical and autonomous engagement with ostensibly sympathetic state institutions, feminist movements may engender practices and demands for flexible and responsive “cogovernance” that radically transforms elements of the state and society in the long run. A partir de una investigación etnográfica en el municipio semiurbano de Suchitoto se hace un análisis de las relaciones negociadas entre los movimientos sociales feministas y las instituciones estatales controladas por el partido político de izquierda Frente Farabundo Martí de Liberación Nacional en El Salvador. Se muestra cómo la “colaboración crítica” ha sido la característica de los esfuerzos del movimiento feminista local para trabajar junto con los actores estatales en la formulación, implementación y supervisión de políticas públicas relacionadas con los derechos de las mujeres, la violencia contra las mujeres y un desarrollo comunitario equitativo en materia de género. Teóricamente, la colaboración crítica muestra que los actores de la sociedad civil interesados en profundizar los procesos emancipatorios bajo gobiernos de izquierda moderados no necesitan estar subordinados al poder estatal ni tampoco confrontarlo. Más bien, al promover sus agendas a través de un compromiso crítico y autónomo con instituciones estatales aparentemente comprensivas, los movimientos feministas pueden generar prácticas y demandas de “cogobierno” flexible y receptivo que, a largo plazo, transformen radicalmente elementos tanto del Estado como la sociedad.

“Globalization” refers to the growing web of economic, political, and cultural processes that connect people across national borders. In Latin America in the 1990s and beyond, the policies of globalized neoliberal capitalism coincided with regional democratization, new technologies of communication, and changing ideas on the Left to both generate varied grievances and facilitate varied forms of resistance. Harms were especially pronounced for the historically marginalized—precariously employed workers, rural people, women, and indigenous communities—who often took the lead in the social movement activism enabled by democratic circumstances and who were often joined by such other social categories as students and the middle classes. In so doing, these movements established new connections across borders that linked local, national, and transnational analyses and practices. The movements, therefore, were not only responding to the harms of injurious globalizing processes but were themselves globalizing actors who forged alternative global visions. Our analysis draws on world-system perspectives, the political sociology of social movements, and analyses of Latin American cultures of opposition and activism.

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This chapter focuses on the great wave of democracy that had touched every continent. In the early 1970s, Western Europe was home to several non-democratic countries, most of Latin America was under military or other forms of authoritarian rule, the eastern half of Europe was ruled by communist parties, much of Asia was undemocratic, and in Africa colonial rule was largely being succeeded by authoritarian regimes. By the early twenty-first century, things had changed considerably, albeit to different degrees in different places. The chapter looks at regions of the world that underwent significant change in democracy between 1972 and 2004, including Mediterranean Europe, Latin America, Soviet/Communist Bloc, Asia, and Africa. It considers what was distinctive about each region’s democratization and what they had in common. It concludes with an overview of challenges faced by democracy in the early twenty-first century.