Much of the existing literature on Latin American democracies leads us to expect
limited civil society involvement in policy making. Scholars tend to emphasize a
plethora of institutional, structural, and societal factors that conspire against meaningful
citizen participation in the region. However, in the dissertation, I demonstrate that nongovernmental organizations and other civil society groups have managed to exert
considerable influence over policy making. In some cases, they have been effective
agents of change through their efforts to shape the content of policy, collaborate with
government officials, and pressure legislators to adopt reforms. This finding is puzzling
given the received wisdom, which suggests that groups’ advocacy efforts will meet with
little success.
The main goal of my project is to explain why some civil society organizations
are more likely than others to achieve policy influence in democratizing countries