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The contemporary wave of protests -including the most recent Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street and anti-austerity protests as well as earlier mass mobilizations of the global justice movement- signal intensified contestation over political authority and the organization of economies. Drawing from organizational records in the Yearbook of International Organizations (1983- 2013), we examine how the patterns of transnational organizing around human rights and environmentalism reflect these conflicts. In particular, we consider whether and how networks of relationships between transnational social movement organizations, inter-governmental organizations, and other international nongovernmental organizations indicate a shift away from inter-state arenas and towards more autonomous, movement-centered spaces. Such a shift would indicate changing patterns of political authority as movement challengers seek solutions to increasingly urgent global problems in a context of diminished institutional legitimacy, declining U.S. hegemony, and enhanced capacity for transnational organizing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National gender quotas-policies that require women's representation among candidates or legislators-are becoming more effective over time. Using data on 145 countries from 1990 to 2010, we document this trend with latent growth curve models. Part of the explanation for increasing effectiveness is that that countries have ratcheted up targets for women's inclusion and quotas are increasingly written in ways that make them more effective at achieving stated goals. Political elites and policymakers have learned over time which quota policies are most effective and increasingly implemented quotas with provisions that lead to success. But, changes in rules alone do not account for the increasing effectiveness of quotas over time. It appears that changing norms about women's representation in politics are also increasing quota effectiveness regardless of policy design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research we report here is designed to contribute to sociological knowledge about the costs of violence against women by turning from the debates over the causes of violence against women to analyze the temporal dynamics of partner-perpetrated abuse and earnings. Our empirical strategy is to evaluate changes in women's earnings growth and to estimate the difference between women's projected and estimated earnings during a 6-year period that includes a plausibly abuse-related event: petitioning for a civil restraining order (Protection from Abuse [PFA]). We use Latent Growth Curve analysis to model women's earnings trajectories, and confirm that there are two ways that petitioning for a PFA shifts women's earnings: a "shock" effect, in which earnings losses occur in the quarter of petitioning but are relatively quickly recouped, and a "fundamental shift" effect, in which we observe longer term effects on the slope of a petitioning woman's earnings trajectory. We report differences across groups of women but more importantly take advantage of longitudinal, individual-level analysis. We find overwhelming evidence that the period around petitioning for a PFA is universally one of tremendous earnings instability and financial costs for PFA petitioners, a group of extremely economically disadvantaged women. All but the poorest women who petition for a PFA take a serious hit to both their short-term and longer-run earnings. Welfare receipt helps limit effects to the period immediately around petitioning, and we find only modest differences in the trajectories of Black and White welfare recipients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Politics is arguably the arena in which gender inequality remains most pronounced. Yet in recent decades, women in some countries and regions of the world have made significant gains in their legislative presence at the national level. Research suggests that one broad force that impacts women's political representation, especially across the less developed world, is large-scale internal armed conflict. But beyond broad statistical associations, we know little about the specific mechanisms through which war may positively affect women's political incorporation. In this paper, I identify seven potential mechanisms through which war may benefit women in politics. Then, I investigate whether these mechanisms were indeed present in four countries where women experienced political gains following large-scale government civil wars: Rwanda, Mozambique, Uganda, and Tajikistan. Similarities across these cases suggest that in post-war settings, structural and ideological mechanisms may work in conjunction with political openings to produce post-conflict gains in women's political presence. Across all four cases, the proliferation of women's organizations â?” both domestic and international â?” during periods of reconstruction is a potential catalyst for women's post-conflict legislative gains. But without changes in the political context such as democratization or the toppling of the prior regime, it is unlikely that rising women's activism would be sufficient to produce the magnitude of gains in women's political representation observed across post-war countries. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although women remain underrepresented in national politics throughout the world, they have also made significant progress towards equality in recent decades. Yet, for the almost 2 billion women living under regimes with limited political rights and civil liberties, we know little about the processes that facilitate their entry into politics. One broad mechanism that may impact women under both democratic and closed systems is elite turnover. In this paper, I compare two routes to elite turnover-elections and legislative interruptions-and assess their impact on women's parliamentary representation. Analyzing the likelihood that women will achieve 10 percent women in parliament for 153 countries from 1950 to 2000, I find that the effect of legislative interruptions is similar in magnitude to the effect of democratic elections. Although breaks lasting 3 to 10 years increase the likelihood that women will reach the 10 percent threshold, the effect of the longest legislative breaks is negative. Interruptions are also less effective vehicles for representation when considering more significant barriers-15% and 20% women in parliament. Across all outcomes, frequent interruptions hinder women's political progress. In sum, non-democratic routes to elite turnover can foster real gains in women's representation, but only when legislative breaks are rare, and this route is ultimately less effective than regular democratic elections at facilitating high levels of women in politics. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past cross-national research on women’s representation in national legislatures has largely focused on Western Industrialized nations. Efforts to extend models that explain Western female participation to worldwide samples have met with mixed success. Through separate analyses of 38 high-income, 87 middle-income, and 63 low-income countries, I demonstrate that while we are fairly confident about the forces that differentiate high-income nations from one another, past models fail to explain variation across low-income samples. I then explore two sets of factors that may be more salient predictors of parliamentary participation in low-income nations: internal armed conflict and international linkages. Recent internal war is found to have a significant positive effect on women’s participation in national legislatures cross-nationally. The relationship between international linkages and female parliamentary representation in more complex, with treaty ratification showing positive effects, while the increased presence of international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) has slightly negative effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite an overall positive trend in human rights practices, threats to civilians remain. Furthermore, since 2001, progress in human rights in many countries and regions has slowed or even reversed. In this paper, we investigate the relationships between human rights and the world polity. Specifically, we consider how the growing connectedness of countries through international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) affects national-level human rights practices from 1975 to 2000. Controlling for time-varying country-level factors such as level of democracy and history of conflict, we use Latent Growth Curve Models to estimate the effects of the growing institutionalization of the world polity on changing human rights practices. We find that embeddedness in the world polity network positively affects both where countries begin in terms of human rights practices, and how fast they make improvements over time. We also find that improving democratic capacity leads to improved human rights, as does economic development. We also find that a recent history of conflict significantly depresses a country's respect for human rights, especially later in the human rights trajectory. We conclude that country-level factors are important predictors of human rights practices, but that the global arena sets the stage for human rights trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]