Citizen action and national policy reform: making change happen 9781350219168, 9781848133853, 9781848133860

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1.1 Assessing campaign ‘success’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 3.1 State–society mobilizations and interaction in land reform implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 7.1 Configuration of civil and political society and its impact on CMP processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

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Abbreviations

ACHNU Asociación Chilena Pro-Naciones Unidas/Chilean Pro-UN ­Association ADFM Association Démocratique des Femmes du Maroc/Moroccan Women’s Democratic Association AKP Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi/Justice and Development Party ANC African National Congress APV Arranque Parejo en la Vida/A Fair Start in Life ARC Agrarian Reform Community ARV antiretroviral BJP Bharatiya Janata Party/Indian People’s Party CARP Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Programme CEDAW Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women CHP Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi/Republican People’s Party CME Collectif Maghreb Egalité/Maghreb Equality Collective CMP Common Minimum Programme CMP City Master Plan CNEGSR Centro Nacional de Equidad de Género y Salud Reproductiva/ National Centre for Gender Equity and Reproductive Health CPE Coalition Printemps de l’Egalité/Spring of Equality Coalition CPMSR Comité por una Maternidad Sin Riesgo/National Safe Motherhood Committee CPU Corporación de Promoción Universitaria/Corporation for the Promotion of University Studies CSO civil society organization DAR Department of Agrarian Reform DVB Delhi Vidyut Board/Delhi Electricity Board EC European Commission EmOC Emergency Obstetric Care FDFM Front de Défense des Droits des Femmes Marocaines/Front for the Defence of Moroccan Women’s Rights ­FNA

Federação Nacional dos Arquitetos/National Federation of Architects vii

FNE

Federação Nacional dos Engenheiros/National Federation of Engineers FNMPP Foro Nacional de Mujeres y Políticas de Población/National Forum of Women and Population Policies FNRU Fórum Nacional para Reforma Urbana/National Forum for Urban Reform GAN Grupo de Apoyo Nacional/National Support Group for the Convention of the Rights of the Child IAS Indian Administration Service IMF International Monetary Fund ISMI International Safe Motherhood Initiative LGBT lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender MDG Millennium Development Goal MIDEPLAN  Ministerio de Planificación Nacional/National Planning Ministry MKSS Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan/Workers’ and Farmers’ Power Union MNRU Movimento Nacional para Reforma Urbana/National Movement for Urban Reform MP member of parliament NAC National Advisory Council NCPRI National Campaign for People’s Right to Information NGO non-governmental organization OAB Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil/Brazilian Bar Association ONPFM Organisme National pour la Protection de la Famille Marocaine/National Group for the Protection of the Moroccan Family PAN Partido Acción Nacional/National Action Party PANIFD Plan d’Action pour l’Intégration des Femmes au Développement/Plan of Action for the Integration of Women in Development PC do B Partido Communista do Brasil/Brazilian Communist Party PFL Partido da Frente Liberal/Liberal Front Party PIDEE Fundación de Protección a la Infancia Dañada por los Estados de Emergencia/Programme for Children Injured during the State of Emergency PJD Parti de la Justice et du Développement/Justice and Development Party PMA Pharmaceutical Manufacturers’ Association PNI Programa Nacional en favor de la Infancia/National Programme for Children viii

Política Nacional a favor de la Infancia y Adolescencia/ National Policy in Favour of Children and Young People PRI Partido Revolucionario Institucional/Institutional Revolutionary Party PT Partido dos Trabalhadores/Workers’ Party RAP Réseau d’Appui au PANIFD/Network of Support for PANIFD RCC Royal Consultative Commission of Oulema RNI Red Nacional por la Infancia/National Network for Children RTI right to information SENAME Servicio Nacional para los Menores de Edad/National Service for Minors TAC Treatment Action Campaign UAF Union de l’Action Feminine/Union for Women’s Action UAMPA União das Associações de Moradores de Porto Alegre/Union of Porto Alegre Residents’ Associations UDP Universidad Diego Portales/Diego Portales University UNICEF United Nations Children’s Fund USFP Union Socialiste des Forces Populaires/Socialist Union of Popular Forces WLP Women’s Learning Partnership WPTPC Women’s Platform on the Turkish Penal Code WWGPC Women’s Working Group on the Penal Code WWHR – New Ways  Women for Women’s Human Rights – New Ways

ix

Abbreviations

PNIA

Foreword

We live in an age of growing cynicism about whether collective citizen action can make a difference to pressing issues of social justice and government accountability. Drawing on rich case studies of citizen action for national policy reforms in eight countries, this book argues that change through public action is possible, and usefully investigates how and under what conditions this occurs. This book is the sixth in the series on Claiming Citizenship: Rights, Participation and Accountability. It differs from earlier volumes in at least two respects. First, while the previous volumes focused largely on citizen mobilization and the dynamics of citizen participation at the local level, this volume reminds us of the continued importance of the national level as an arena for change and contestation. The national, it suggests, is a ‘missing middle’ which sits between the local and the global, leaving a gap in the large literature on citizen action which this volume seeks partially to fill. Second, while the other volumes have all emerged directly from the work of the Development Research Centre on Citizenship, Participation and Accountability (Citizenship DRC; see further information at www. drc-citizenship.org), a network of researchers across a dozen countries with coordination based at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, this volume has a slightly different trajectory. The project was originally inspired by Dr Gary Hawes, then a programme officer with the Governance and Civil Society division of the Ford Foundation. While a visiting fellow at IDS, he and I discussed at length the absence of documentation on a number of important citizen-led initiatives for reform which had emerged, especially in the global South and especially in newly emerging democracies. Together we developed a concept note, and the Ford Foundation agreed to support a research project. Using our various networks, we assembled a series of possible case studies where citizen action had contributed to significant national-level reforms, from which the cases in this volume were drawn. We also recruited a number of researchers who were deeply knowledge­able about the national contexts of these countries and who often were already aware of the reform efforts that we proposed x

to study. Agreeing to join what was then a somewhat open-ended journey, they came together in our first meeting in Washington in 2005, followed by subsequent workshops in Johannesburg and Sussex in 2006. Each of these meetings contributed to deepening our themes for investigation, as well as to the overall synthesis. However, following the early momentum on the project and the publication of interim research products, we were delayed in com­pleting this final book, as other priorities took over. Gary Hawes, who had been a major driver and supporter of the project throughout, moved on from the Ford Foundation. Subsequently, Rosemary McGee, a colleague at IDS in the Participation, Power and Social Change team with a background and interest in the subject of the book, agreed to join us to assist in the final editing of this volume, as well as in helping to draft the introductory synthesis. As the substantive themes of this project as well as its commitment to learning from empirically grounded case studies in the global South were so similar to its own approach, the Citizenship DRC welcomed a proposal to include this study as an additional volume in this series. As series editor and director of the Citizenship DRC, I am extremely grateful to Gary Hawes and the Ford Foundation for their support to enable this project to happen, as well as for Gary’s unwavering participation throughout. As one of the co-editors, I also wish to thank Rosemary McGee, for very ably stepping in to help complete the project, bringing to the task her intellectual as well as her editorial and organizational skills. We are both indebted to Karen Brock, who also provided skilful assistance in shortening longer versions of some of the cases, and in doing a final edit of the entire manuscript. We are also grateful to numerous people who have offered comments on the manuscript along the way, especially to Jonathan Fox, Gary Hawes and Mark Robinson. Finally, we wish to thank each of the contributors, who stayed patiently with us on a journey that took longer than expected to complete, and who constructively contributed their time, insights and critiques throughout. John Gaventa, Director Development Research Centre on Citizenship, Participation and Accountability December 2009

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1 ·  Introduction: making change happen – citizen action and national policy reform J ohn G aventa and R osemary M c G ee 1

How can ordinary citizens – and the organizations and movements with which they engage – make changes in national policies which affect their lives, and the lives of others around them? Under what conditions does citizen action contribute to more responsive states, pro-poor policies and greater social justice? What is needed to overcome setbacks, and to consolidate smaller victories into ‘successful’ change? These are the questions taken up by this book. Understanding the answers is important for a number of contemporary debates that cut across policy, activist and academic circles. In international development debates, the challenge of building responsive and accountable states which in turn will work to alleviate poverty, protect rights and tackle social inequalities has been a focus of attention in recent years. Much of the debate centres on im­proving the institutions of government – state bureaucracies, parliaments and ­justice systems. Yet, as this book demonstrates, states are not built through institutions alone. Organized citizens also play a crit­ical role, through articulating their concerns, mobilizing pressure for change and monit­oring government performance. For those concerned with citizen advocacy, in recent years there has been a great deal of attention on building global or transnational citizen action, as witnessed in significant citizen mobilizations such as the Make Poverty History campaign on aid, trade and debt in 2005, as well as the continuing Global Call to Action Against Poverty, the UN Millennium Campaign, and now campaigns on climate justice. Yet increasingly, activists in these campaigns are also turning their attention to the importance of national policy change, with the realization that unless there are changes at this level, international policies will have little traction. Similarly, an explosion of work over the last decade has focused on citizen participation and citizen mobilization to strengthen the ‘voice’ of civil society actors in governance and development programmes. Much of this has been on the local level, or on forms of public ‘consultation’, 1

which – while broadening participation – often lack real power to make a change. Recognition is mounting that policy change must scale up from the local to embrace the national as well, and that programmes for citizen participation must go beyond articulating voice to exerting real influence. How can this be done? Drawing from eight case studies in which organized citizen action has contributed to significant national policy changes, this book will engage with, and we hope bring fresh insights to, these debates. Looking across these cases of change, we ask how and under what conditions they occurred, and what can be learned from ‘successful’ examples of citizen mobilizations changing national policy. Each of the subsequent chapters in this volume attests to the power of people to make change happen. They fundamentally affirm that citizens can engage with states to create policy reforms which are important to the lives of poor people and for achieving social justice, but that intensive, long-term, organized collective action and coalition-building are required to do so. When this ensues, the results can be significant: • In South Africa, the Treatment Action Campaign led to public recog­nition of HIV/AIDS as an issue, and to over sixty thousand people gaining access to publicly supplied antiretroviral medicines (­Chapter  2). • In the Philippines, the National Campaign for Land Reform secured the redistribution of half of the country’s farmland to 3 million poor households, contributing to their economic rights and livelihoods (Chapter 3). • In Mexico, a campaign to reduce maternal mortality put the issue of maternal healthcare on the national agenda in an unprecedented way, contributing to important changes in national budget priorities and health delivery mechanisms at the local level (Chapter 4). • In Chile, an NGO-led campaign on child rights attained a new policy framework benefiting children, contributing to a decrease in child poverty (Chapter 5). • In India, a grassroots-inspired campaign led to the passage of a strong National Right to Information law in 2005, and also provided impetus for further laws to enhance social security based upon new structures of public accountability (Chapter 6). • In Brazil, the Right to the City campaign established a national framework for citizen participation in urban planning, critical to achieving housing and other social rights (Chapter 7). • In Morocco, a women’s social movement carried out a successful 2

Such policy changes, at best momentous and at least stepping stones towards future significant reforms, also constitute steps towards inter­ nationally recognized development goals, and social and economic rights. Several of these gains link directly to the donor-established Millennium Development Goals – for instance, those related to gender equality (Morocco and Turkey), maternal health (Mexico), combating HIV/AIDS (South Africa), and ending poverty and hunger (Philippines). Others represent the sixty-year-old struggle to realize basic social and economic rights enshrined in the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights, such as those advancing child rights in Chile, housing rights in Brazil or women’s rights in Morocco and Turkey. Others still establish the preconditions necessary for realizing these economic and social rights – for instance, the right to information in India and popular participation in urban planning in Brazil. By gleaning lessons for how change happens from case studies such as these, we can build more successful movements and provide better-attuned support towards achieving these international goals for development, social justice and deeper democratic engagement. Project and case study background

While these cases are both inspirational and instructive, they have inevitably been shaped by their own particular contexts. The eight countries from which the cases are drawn are largely classified as middleincome nations, notwithstanding the high levels of inequality and large numbers of poor people within them.2 Each has at least a modicum of democratic space, which is a prerequisite for citizen engagement on national policy issues, but is not a given everywhere. Each has a functioning state apparatus, another prerequisite for effective action on policy change, for without a functioning state there are few incentives to change its policies in the first place. To a degree, these characteristics may limit the extent to which conclusions can be drawn for how change happens in other settings which lack these qualities. On the other hand, the fact that the successes arose in these contexts is an important finding in itself. In embarking on this project, we used our extensive networks to purposively seek 3

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campaign for reform of the moudawana, the Islamic family law affect­ ing women’s rights (Chapter 8). • In Turkey, a campaign for women’s rights led to a new penal code with thirty-five amendments for the protection of sexual rights (­Chapter 9).

nominations for examples of significant national-level policy changes which involved a high degree of civil society mobilization or collective citizen action, and which presented very strong evidence of being able to make a difference for social justice and the material well-being of large numbers of people. Because we were interested in ‘developing’ or at least non-Western countries, we excluded countries in the global North. Despite our attempts to capture diversity, most of the cases repeatedly nominated were in emerging or existing democracies characterized by functioning states and at least some democratic space. So it may be that rather than reflecting a sampling bias, this pattern arose precisely because these are the kinds of settings where we can most expect collective citizen action on national policy to emerge.3 Such purposive case study sampling, as well as the ‘thick description’ case study approach we have used, affords us understandings of the complexities of change processes in these settings, as well as suggesting broader propositions about how change happens, which then can be explored more fully elsewhere.4 Following the selection of cases, the process of developing this volume has been an inductive and interactive one, involving experienced researchers who were either from or deeply involved with the countries from which the cases are chosen. These researchers first came together in a workshop in Washington in 2005 to share an early overview of the proposed case for study.5 At that meeting, pooling their knowledge of the cases involved, the researchers collectively identified key themes for exploration. Refined over time, these have continued to shape the project. In early 2006, the researchers met again in Johannesburg, to discuss emerging findings and to hone some nascent propositions. A synthesis workshop followed in November 2006, where propositions were further developed and suggestions were made for deepening each of the cases. Since that time, the work has emerged in various iterations – the full in-depth cases published online in 2007, a set of policy briefs and a short synthesis for policy-makers (Gaventa 2008) and finally this collection. Participation and national policy change: citizen ‘voice’ or collective action?

The themes of the book help to inform, and are informed by, a number of key debates in the literature about the importance of ‘the national’ as an arena of change and the role of citizen participation, voice and advocacy in the policy process. This literature, we argue, needs to be read in conjunction with a somewhat separate stream of literature 4

The importance of ‘the national’  During the 1990s a number of writers began to speak of the decline of the nation-state, and with it the weakening of national policy arenas for bringing about significant changes in social policies that affected poor people. On the one hand, many argued that with globalization new forms of global authority were emerging, breaking the monopoly of legitimate state power linked to national governments (Rosenau 2002). On the other hand, there was a greater emphasis on ‘the local’, on approaches to decentralization, which arguably would bring governments closer to the people they were meant to reach. Simultaneously, arguments of globalization and decentralization were connected with notions of neoliberalism, which urged the weakening of state control and the expansion of unfettered market forces.6 Many scholars and activists concerned with questions of where and how organized citizen engagement could make a difference followed a parallel trajectory. On the one hand, with a decline of attention to ‘the national project’, the focus of many shifted to the new opportunities for empowered forms of participation in governance at the local level offered through decentralization (McGee et al. 2003; Gaventa 2004; Cornwall and Schattan Coelho 2006). On the other hand, the last few years have seen an explosion of work on the need for new forms of global citizen action, which could influence global policies and players (Edwards and Gaventa 2001; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Tarrow 2005). National-level change represented something of a ‘missing middle’. In recent years, however, the importance of ‘the national’ has regained prominence in academic, development and advocacy circles. Even work along the twin axes of globalization, on the one hand, and decentralization, on the other, often began to point to the significance of the nation-state as a mediating and necessary force for change.7 As Houtzager, among others, has argued the territorially defined nation-state today remains the only actor able 5

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on collective action and social movements, with which many of our findings resonate. By linking a collective action approach to questions of how national policy change happens, our findings will suggest a more contentious and political approach to the policy process, and to ideas about citizen participation within it, than the narrative which has dominated many development and democracy debates in recent years. By offering core propositions about how change happens from this series of empirically grounded cases in the global South, we also hope to contribute to the existing social movement literature as well.

to extract the vast resources from society that make possible significant distributive and redistributive policies, and the only actor capable of providing public goods on significant scale. It is also the only organizational form of authority with which most people have contact in their daily lives and that provides the most readily available route for poor social groups to influence the conditions of their own lives. (Houtzager and Moore 2005: 4)

The assertion has proven itself in practice in a number of contexts. In Latin America, social movements in countries such as Bolivia and Brazil focused on capturing national political power as a way to achieve their goals. International NGOs began to recalibrate their global campaigns to include change at the national level, recognizing that international gains on issues such as debt, trade, climate or the Millennium Development Goals required national, as well as international, commitment. And ­during the global financial crisis of 2009, in both North and South, growing attention has been paid to how nation-states can respond, providing safety nets to global forces through national policies and occasionally asserting their regulatory power over failed global systems. The resurgence of the national has also been seen clearly as a factor in the development arena. The World Bank’s 2004 World Development Report argues, for instance, that ‘making services work for poor people involves changing not only service delivery arrangements but also public sector institutions’ (2004: 1), including national governments. But, as J. Fox argues, ‘the causal processes through which institutions become pro-poor are less well understood’ (2005: 68). The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness in 2005 argued strongly for ‘national ownership’, in which partner countries ‘exercised effective leadership over their development policies and strategies, and co-ordinated development actions’. Increasingly aid discourse focused on ‘building effective states’ (DfID 2006), which could be capable, accountable and responsive to poor people, while also worrying about countries labelled as ‘failed states’ and therefore by implication not able to respond to pressing poverty and social needs.

Participation with the state: citizen voice in democratic policy pro­ cesses  As ‘the national’ has regained importance in development c­ ircles, so too have debates developed on how citizens could gain voice in shaping national policies that affect their lives. Traditionally, in much of the mainstream literature, national policy was the province of elites – government officials, technocrats or experts with little con6

Engagement is regarded as an important governance norm that can strengthen the decision-making arrangements of the state and produce outcomes that favour the poor and the disadvantaged. In this light, engagement emerges as conducive, if not critical to attaining the Millennium Development Goals. (Ibid.: 23) 7

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cern for or focus on public involvement (Grindle and Thomas 1991). Increasingly that paradigm has also been challenged, as broader, more inclusive understandings of democracy and governance have come to the fore. Policy processes themselves are now widely understood in the literature as needing more inclusive stakeholder participation, and as involving networks of actors, with different sources of knowledge and legitimacy. For democracy reformers, expanding citizen engagement in the policy arena is about the deepening or extension of democracy itself (Dryzek 2000; Fung and Wright 2003; Gaventa 2005). The project is one of extending the scope of citizen involvement from choosing representatives through elections, who in turn make policies, to a more substantive role, which engages citizens throughout the policy-making process – from defining priorities, to shaping policy proposals, to monitoring implementation. A growing literature exists on how to achieve such deepened forms of democracy and on how to develop more deliberative and inclusive ­approaches to policy issues (Chambers 2003; Clarke 2002), yet much of this has focused at the local level, or on forms of consultation and deliberation which lack substantive influence in creating new policy change. Parallel arguments about the importance of participation in policy processes have developed in the area of development aid policies. In a 1998 World Bank speech, now Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz ­argued that ‘broadly participatory processes (such as “voice”, openness and transparency) promote truly successful long-term development’. Moreover, he went on, ‘Participation does not refer simply to voting. Participatory processes must entail open dialogue and broadly active citizen engagement, and it requires that individuals have a voice in the decisions that affect them’ (Stiglitz 2001: 221–3, quoted in Odugbemi and Jacobson 2008: 41). A decade later, the idea of civic engagement in public governance is a proposition widely accepted by multilateral organizations. A UN report (UN 2008), entitled People Matter: Civic en­ gagement in public governance, for instance, argues that engagement is important in policy development, as well as in budgeting, service delivery and accountability processes.

International aid and financial institutions have encouraged such citizen voice and participation at the national level largely through mandating the involvement of poor people and other stakeholders in donor-created fora and processes, such as the Poverty Reduction Strategy process, launched by the World Bank and the IMF in the name of national ownership and broad consultation on poverty policies (Robb 2001). Much has been invested by national civil society actors, often supported by international NGOs, in scaling up from the local level to engage in these new ‘invited spaces’ for reform. More recently, their labours have extended from augmenting citizen voice in formulating policies, to holding governments to account for implementation and delivery of existing policies. Yet at the end of a decade of such pro­ cesses, with a few exceptions, there is little evidence that such ‘invited participation’ at the national level has substantively changed national policies and priorities (Brock et al. 2004; Rowden and Irama 2004). According to one review of attempts to mainstream citizen voice and accountability, the effects of such interventions have ‘remained limited and relatively isolated at the micro-level’ (Menocal and Sharma 2008: x). Indeed, the review identified relatively few examples of how citizen voice in this approach contributed to policy change and a dearth of examples of how the effects of citizen voice and accountability could be scaled up to the national level.

Challenging the state: citizen and civil-society-based advocacy  While one strand of literature has focused on strengthening citizen voice and engagement in policy processes mainly through participation within ‘invited spaces’ created by the state, another has focused on more external and sometimes more adversarial approaches to advocacy, largely as a counterbalance to state power. This literature is deeply rooted in normative concepts of the importance of an autonomous civil society which can hold the state to account through advocating for and with various societal groups. In practice, many arguments for ‘civil society’ participation implicitly promote roles for professionalized NGOs and other formal associations in bringing about change (Court et al. 2006). Some challenge both this interpretation of ‘civil society’ and the idea that organized and professional intermediaries are necessary and de­ sirable, arguing for a more participatory approach to advocacy processes (Samuel n.d.; VeneKlasen and Miller 2002). The advocacy approach has a long history in development debates. The early 1990s, for instance, saw a growing concern with how NGOs could move from service delivery or participatory development in local 8

consists of deliberately building a political power base for furthering the goals of local communities and organizations through the political pro­ cess […] this involves developing strategies from the micro to the macrolevel with the objective to bring about governmental policy changes. (1996: 348–9)

In 1994, studies in the Philippines by the Institute for Development Research showed how NGOs were able to take advantage of openings which developed following the overthrow of the Marcos regime to ­develop new coalitions and to increase their role in policy advocacy (Miller 1994a; Covey 1995). While a plethora of manuals and related studies on advocacy followed (e.g. Cohen et al. 2001), by the beginning of the next decade much of the advocacy literature had turned its attention to the global and transnational level. Only more recently, with the renewed emphasis on the state, has a focus on national policy advocacy re-emerged (Menocal and Sharma 2008; Dalton 2007). While there is thus a vast literature on the advocacy approach to policy change, there are also growing critiques of it. Increasingly, some have challenged the possibility of NGOs, as key advocacy agents, bringing about far-reaching change, suggesting that their approach has become apolitical and excessively focused on professional and technical issues of evidence and effectiveness, to the exclusion of more fundamental changes in state power and politics (Bebbington et al. 2007). Some have wondered whether large NGOs have not themselves become too much part of the aid system to really work against it (Shutt 2009), while others widely challenge the idea that civil society itself can be seen as autonomous or independent from the state, and that such change will come from outside of the state alone.

‘Working both sides of the equation’: linking actors in state and ­society While both the literature on citizen voice and civil society advocacy challenged the presumption that national policy was the province of government alone, some have also argued that it went too far in the other direction, challenging legitimate state authority and responsibility too strongly with a ‘civil society’- or ‘society’-based view. Increasingly, therefore, a third view has emerged – one which argued that policy change would come neither through state reform on the one hand, nor social action on the other, but through their interaction, through 9

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projects into the arena of policy advocacy. For instance, over a decade ago, Uvin and Miller referred to this as the process of political scaling up, which

‘working both sides of the equation’ (Gaventa 2004). Building on a long history of academic work in state–society relations, such an ­approach argues that it is through the interaction of states and societies, or synergy (Evans 1996), that effective change will happen. Applying this to the level of policy change, J. Fox argues that ‘an interactive approach to institutional change suggests that pro-poor reforms require changes in three distinct areas: within the state itself, within society and at the state–society interface’ (2005: 70). Similarly, Houtzager and Moore ­argue for a ‘polity’ approach, in which ‘the capacity and nature of both state and societal actors are understood as the outcome of a two-way exchange’ (2005: 2). More recently, this more interactive approach to state and society is also increasingly reflected in civil society and donor policy circles. An important Oxfam publication in 2008 focuses on both, as reflected in its title, From Poverty to Power: How active citizens and effective states can change the world, and argues for a more contentious view of how change happens: ‘too often’, Oxfam’s research director writes, ‘discussions about development are considered on the basis of policies rather than politics’ (Green 2008: 13).

Bringing in collective action and social movement perspectives  The emphasis on change happening at the interface of state and society, rather than from either alone, constitutes a welcome re-entry of politics into development debates (Hickey 2008). Yet on the whole, the literatures both on citizen voice and advocacy in policy change pay remarkably little attention to politics, nor do they portray citizen engagement as a contentious process in which conflict and contests over competing in­ terests occur. Strikingly as well, with the slight exception of the ­literature on synergy between state and society, much of the literature on how citizens and civil society organizations (CSOs) interface with national policy does not engage at all with another important literature: that on the role of social movements and collective action as a base for em­powered participation and advocacy. To a degree, the gap is understandable: the voice and advocacy literature focuses on explaining how to strengthen citizen engagement and influence in the policy process, while, on the other hand, the vast literature on social movements and collective action focuses on explaining the hows and whys of these movements themselves, but not necessarily the policy changes to which they contribute. Nevertheless, there is a need to bring these approaches together: it is precisely by looking at how and under what conditions policy-focused collective action and social movements emerge that we can also gain some insights into 10

episodic, public, collective interaction among makers of claims and their objects when a) at least one government is a claimant, an object of claims, or a party to the claims and b) the claims would, if realized, ­affect the interests of at least one of the claimants. Roughly translated, the definition refers to collective political struggle. (2001: 5)

This concept of ‘contentiousness’, we shall argue, is important for under­standing how citizen action leads to national policy change, especi­ally where such change is redistributive or supports the interests of previously marginalized groups.8 Taking a contentious view of citizen participation and advocacy, which recognizes the importance of collective political action, is necessary, we argue, to move from voice, to presence, to real influence in policy processes (Goetz and Gaventa 2001).9 Second, the classical social movement approach is important in its consistent articulation of several concepts relevant to explaining how and why collective action and social movements emerge. These include the importance of political opportunities, sometimes crystallized as static opportunity structures, sometimes as changing political environments; mobilizing struc­ tures, both formal movement organizations and the social networks of everyday life; [and] collective action frames, both the cultural constraints that orient participants and those they themselves construct. (McAdam et al. 2001: 14–15)10

While we arrived at our own findings through a more inductive ­approach, and while we realize that some of the social movement debates have moved to new terrain, we find these factors highly relevant for ordering and presenting our propositions and findings. The implicit argument which emerges is that when political opportunities exist, and mobilizing structures are present, and when issues can be framed appropri­ately, then collective action is more likely to occur. Using this framework, we shall articulate in the following pages seven specific propositions which further elaborate the conditions under which collective action can lead to national policy change. From this discussion 11

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when and how organized citizen action can bring about national policy change as well. There are two broad reasons why this is so. First, unlike the literature on citizen voice and participation, much of the social movement literature, especially that related to what is known as the ‘political pro­ cess’ approach, focuses on the idea of ‘contentious politics’, defined by McAdam et al. as:

we will return to the question of what we mean by ‘success’ in terms of citizen action and national policy, and how it is measured, and finally look at implications for various social and political actors. Political opportunities: spaces for collective action towards policy change

An important line of thinking in the social movement literature concerns the idea that collective action emerges in response to, or because of, changes in the external environment, that is, in the political opportunity structures that enable such action to occur. In an important text on social movements (McAdam et al. 1996), Tarrow defines the concept of ‘political opportunity structures’ as the ‘consistent – but not necessarily formal, permanent or national – signals to social and political actors which either encourage or discourage them to use their internal resources to form social movements’ (Tarrow 1996: 54). A poli­ tical opportunity, so the argument goes, creates one key incentive for citizens to mobilize. While Tarrow talks of opportunity structures, other writers use concepts of ‘political space’ or ‘policy space’ to analyse under what conditions citizen action contributes to change on policy issues. Webster and Engberg-Pedersen (2002) argue that the strategies carried out by the poor to secure their interests by effecting change in the actions and policies of others are contingent upon the political space which is available. Grindle and Thomas (1991) use the concept of ‘policy spaces’ to mean ‘moments in which interventions or events throw up new opportunities, reconfiguring relationships between actors or bringing in new ones, and opening the possibilities for a shift in direction’ (cited in Brock et al. 2004: 22), a concept also used in our own previous work on participation in national policy processes in Nigeria and Uganda (ibid.).11 Political opportunities or policy spaces don’t just occur.12 They are themselves shaped by the contexts in which they are found and in which they are created. McAdam et al. (1996: 27) summarize four key ‘dimensions’ or factors which shape political opportunities, including the relative openness of the political system, the stability or instability of ‘elite alignments’, ‘the presence or absence of elite allies’ and the state’s capacity and propensity for repression. While each of these may be ­important, they betray the origins of much of the earlier ­social movement literature, which drew almost entirely from studies on West­ern demo­cracies. In our case studies, drawn from very different political ­contexts, three additional contextual factors seem especially important.13 12

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First, as discussed earlier, it is clear that some ‘background’ level of democratic opening is critical to allow the space for any given reform to come to the fore. In several of the countries – the Philippines, Mexico, Brazil and Chile – the political opportunities available changed as victories were gained in the struggle for democracy. In turn, with gains in democratization came new political spaces within which CSOs and activists could operate.14 For instance, as the rights to a free press and to assemble were re-established and respected it became easier to engage in public education and to mobilize for public participation in policy debates. In some cases, the process of democratization led to the appointment of officials and civil servants with progressive tendencies and this widened further the political spaces in which civil society could operate. In other cases, when new, democratic governments came to power, civil society actors found that they were welcome partners within or alongside government in a process of collaborative policy reform, such as in the cases of the Philippines and Chile. Second, in each of these countries functioning state institutions exist which make the struggle for policy reform a potentially useful exercise. As Baviskar points out in the case study on the Right to Information (RTI) Act in India, the fact that India was a large bureaucracy, well schooled in the colonial arts of note-taking and filing, meant that there was information to be had. She notes that the implementation of the RTI Act ‘relies heavily on a somewhat peculiar characteristic of the Indian bureaucracy – its passion for paper. Despite innumerable and routine subversions, rational-legal record-keeping about its decision-making process remains the hallmark of Indian government’ (Chapter 6, this volume). Similarly, Friedman, in his case study of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) in South Africa, argues that not only did democracy bring political space for action, it also brought constitutional processes, courts, participatory structures such as health clinics, formal checks on government and the like, without which mobilization and policy influence would not have been possible. Such a campaign could not have happened, he suggests, under apartheid (Chapter 2, this volume). Third, in each of these settings, there were long histories of civil society action, many of them coming out of previous struggles to create democracies in the first place. In Brazil, South Africa, the Philippines and Chile, struggles against repressive regimes had created a repertoire of activism, replete with skills, networks and tactics, on which these later campaigns could build. India has a history of social movements for accountability, as seen for instance in the movement opposing the Narmada Dam, which helped prepare activists for the later RTI

campaign. Even in Morocco, which is still led by a monarch, the case study observes that new democratic openings in the 1980s and 1990s allowed the space for CSOs to flourish, while in Turkey women have been advocating for their rights since the Ottoman Empire. Such histories of prior mobilization by CSOs meant that when new political spaces opened up post-democratization, there were activists and organizations in place which had the political capabilities to use them. This historical view challenges the idea of political opportunities as openings created from above to which activists merely respond. Rather, these cases would suggest, the process is more cyclical in nature. What appears a new political opportunity may in fact have been shaped by previous collective mobilization and action – or, as Gamson and Meyer put it, ‘opportunities open the way for political action but movements make opportunities’15 (1996: 276). For instance, while in the South African case the declining influence of President Mbeki and increased political competition were important in opening up the possibility of new alliances and concessions for the TAC, as Friedman points out, ‘it is also important to see that the political environment itself is an outcome of collective action and that activism is not simply a passive recipient of political opportunity structures. This was certainly the case in the latter stages of the AIDS campaign: the change in the internal environment of [the governing] African National Congress was very directly a result of collective action […] It would, therefore, be appropriate to understand political opportunity as a product as well as a precondition of collective action and to examine ways in which action can produce opportunity structures more conducive to citizen action’ (Chapter 2, this volume). Each of these cases therefore offered certain contextual preconditions for collective action, which were themselves often contingent on previous actions. Yet these conditions do not mean that change comes quickly, easily or automatically. In none of the cases studied did a positive change in the political opportunity structure lead to immediate victories for the advocates of policy reform. Success always required that coalitions be built, alliances with like-minded figures in government be strengthened, broad programmes of public education implemented, and citizens mobilized to put pressure on new governments – all of which amounted to an intense long-term process, not simply a short-term campaign. As activists make their demands, new forms of resistance and opposition may also emerge, closing some spaces and opening others simultaneously. In some cases, as noted in the Turkey chapter, such 14

Proposition 1  Political opportunities are opened and closed through historic, dynamic and iterative processes. While political opportunities create pos­ sibilities for collective action for policy change, these openings themselves may have been created by prior mobilization. The importance of some democratic space, the existence of state institutions whose policies are worth struggling for, and the existence of a prehistory of activism are all thus critical for explaining the contexts of collective action. In the cases in this book, two additional factors seem to have been particularly important for ‘triggering’ how and when the particular campaigns for reform took place. The first has to do with changes in political leadership, which either brought into power reformers with close links to civil society actors, or at least helped create a new opportunity for action from below. The case studies from Brazil, Mexico, Chile and the Philippines all point to the importance of electoral victories, which brought new national leadership to power. In Morocco, reform was aided by a new monarch, King Mohamed VI, following the death of his father, linked to a promodernization faction more open to gender equality. In India, Baviskar outlines the ‘new political conjuncture’ that occurred when the leader of the elected Congress Party, Sonia Gandhi, declined the position of prime minister and, instead, headed the National Advisory Council, a body that included people close to the emerging grassroots RTI movement. In Turkey, a ‘political earthquake’ in 2002 precipitated by the resignation of  the coalition government created new opportunities, especially through the temporary appointment of a new female justice minister, an ally of the women’s rights movement, who ordered a review of the Penal Code. In the Philippines, the election of Ramos in 1992 was accompanied by the appointment of a reformer in the Department 15

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opposition involved miscalculations and blunders by those in power, serving in turn to crystallize mainstream support for the campaign. In other cases, opposition could close down the spaces for action, while groups had to shift their tactics to new realities. As Pittman argues in the case of Morocco, it was not only the opening of political space which affected the emerging movement, but also the nature of the opposition and how the movement responded. ‘The interplay of activist and opposition forces […] affects the movement playing field and political opportunities at stake,’ implying in turn the need for a more iterative and dynamic understanding of change rather than an ‘opportunity’ or ‘space’ that occurs at a given point in time (Chapter 8, this volume). It is this observation which leads to our first proposition:

of Agrarian Reform. In Chile, the migration of leaders from CSOs into government following the democratic openings in the 1990s created the possibility for ‘social actors to influence public policy’, especially following the election in 2000 of Lagos, who then actively called for more participation of CSOs in the policy process. In every case, then, changes in political leadership, either through electoral politics or other forces, helped to trigger opportunities for collective action to emerge, often bringing into power allies of campaign activists or former civil society leaders themselves. While other social movement theorists have also written about the importance of political competition or changes in political regimes for creating opportunities for collective action, what was significant in these cases was not only the competition, but that at least some of the elite competitors were linked or at least sympathetic to more grassroots reform movements, if not drawn directly from them. This gives rise to our second proposition. Proposition 2  Civil society engagement in policy processes is not enough by itself to make change happen. Competition for formal political power is also central, creating new impetus for reform and bringing key allies into positions of influence, often in synergy with collective action from below. While national politics are clearly important, a further critical factor that emerges from the case studies is the role of international discourses, norms and agreements in putting pressure from above on national governments, which in turn may open more space for domestic coalitions to bring pressure to bear from below. In most cases in this collection, activists and campaigning organizations were able to link their struggle to international standards of acceptable state behaviour, international law and treaties, or internationally agreed-upon goals, giving greater legitimacy to their claims. For instance, the campaign for children’s rights in Chile built on the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1990), while in Mexico the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1981) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979), as well as the Millennium Development Goals on maternal health, provided important sources of leverage. Sometimes international events or conferences can be particularly important. In the South African case, the international AIDS conference in Toronto in 2006 was a turning point, in that the government was visibly criticized by the international community, at a time when its support was needed  by the regime. In Mexico, activists could draw on the Mexican government’s statements at the UN International Conference on Popula16

Proposition 3  While international allies, covenants and norms of state be­ haviour can strengthen domestic openings for reform, they can also be the subject of fierce domestic opposition. Successful reform campaigns depend on careful navigation to link international pressures with differing and constantly changing local and national contexts. Evidence from our cases suggests that while the concept of political opportunity or political space is an important factor in explaining collective action for policy reform, a more dynamic and iterative account of what creates such spaces is required than is usually given. In addition, a reading of our cases offers two particularly important triggers for mobilization in response to policy openings – those involving changes in national political leadership and those involving international pressures on domestic debates.16 At the same time, we argue below, such political opportunities are not enough to trigger change by themselves. 17

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tion and Development (2004), as well as other international fora where it had made public commitments to the international community on maternal mortality. In other places, overt pressure on national governments from outside actors created the conditions for domestic actors to apply pressure as well. In Turkey the EU accession negotiations provided a propitious climate for the campaign for gender-equitable reforms to the Penal Code, since the EU was pressing hard to bring into line with European laws oppressive Turkish laws relating to honour crimes, the death penalty and freedom of expression. In India, pressure came more from international donors, pushing a good-governance agenda, in particular the World Bank’s promotion of transparency as an aid condition. In several cases, though, appealing to international standards or ally­ ing with outside actors was a double-edged sword. In the context of social movements in India, campaigners for the right to information had to distinguish and distance themselves from the World Bank’s position, in order not to be seen as part of a neoliberal agenda, even as their cause was indirectly furthered by pressure from the Bank. Similarly, in both the TAC in South Africa, and the campaign for women’s rights in Turkey, international actors built up political pressure on national govern­ments on the one hand, yet on the other hand such support opened the national campaigns to charges of promoting a foreign agenda, posing tricky ­issues of navigation and framing. In Morocco, movement success was directly linked to a strategy of balancing appeals to universal human rights with local cultural and religious norms. This gives rise to a third proposition.

The opportunities need to be matched by social mobilization structures, which can convert political opportunities into actual change. Mobilizing structures: actors, networks and coalitions

After political opportunities, a second factor often used to explain the emergence of collective action has to do with the mobilizing structures: ‘the collective vehicles, formal as well as informal, through which ­people mobilize and engage in collective action’ (McAdam et al. 1996: 3). Who exactly are the change agents in our eight case studies of national policy change, and how are they linked through organizational forms and alliances? A scan of the growing literature on policy advocacy in the global South that has emerged since the late 1990s may give the impression – explicitly or implicitly – that the key change actors are Northern-based international NGOs in coalition with their Southern NGO partners (Dalton 2007; Perkin and Court 2005; Jordan and van Tuijl 2006; CARE and ActionAid International 2006; Kanji et al. 2002). Yet the case studies of successful national change in this volume present a different picture. The leading change agents are nationally based, with little evidence of international NGO actors to the fore. The key actors are a nucleus of usually urban-based actors of two broad kinds: professional groupings of academics and the intelligentsia, acting as individuals or members of their professional associations; and domestic NGOs, often middle-class, urban, professional and fairly elite, identified by profession or faith, sometimes explicitly advocacy focused or rights based and sometimes strongly service-delivery oriented. Among these are media organizations and women’s rights or feminist organizations, both especially prominent in the Turkey and Morocco studies. Central both to the networks to which they belong and specifically to the case-study campaign or initiative, these NGOs and professional associations harbour the professional and technical expertise necessary for getting the issue on to a government agenda in the first place (Gurza Lavalle et al. 2008). They infuse an initiative and its diverse ­actors with the necessary social and political legitimacy in adversaries’ eyes, are well placed to feed an effective communications strategy and engage in detailed, proposal-oriented policy dialogue with government. What they lack in autonomy from the state they compensate for with their influencing power over the state, by reason of their allies within, articulateness, and professional and strategic expertise. A number of writers talk about the importance of ‘thickening’ disparate ‘civil societies’ in order to influence policies (ibid.: 47; J. Fox 18

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1996). In our cases, this thickening happens through the medium of collective organizations that call themselves variously campaigns, alliances, national committees, networks or coalitions. These collectives have diverse memberships and shifting organizational forms that adapt over time to fit the evolution of the initiative and its external context, including becoming more or less broad based as circumstances require. They can be seen as the advocacy spearheads that penetrate the state realm, usually at the national (or federal) level, but in the Mexico, Brazil, India and South Africa cases also at provincial (or state) levels. Generally peopled by individuals from the NGOs and professional associations and formed for the specific purposes of the campaign or initiative in question, many of these coalitions draw on the much longer trajectories of experience and relationships of those who constitute them, which pre-date the present campaign. Their lead actors have various relationships with the state, ranging from purposefully adversarial – as in the case of agrarian reform NGOs in the Philippines – to closely cooperative and even subcontracting – as in the case of Chilean child-focused NGOs. Even the most adversarial of them are capable of initiating and sustaining fluid dialogue with the state, and usually beyond the handful of close allies they have within it. In some cases there is but one forum or coalition throughout the initiative; in others (particularly Turkey, but also Chile and Brazil), there are several, and/or the forum itself mutates, dissolves and reforms itself in response to the circumstances and needs of the advocacy struggle. Although indispensable, the coalitions are but the ‘thickeners’ of claims and agendas that emanate, directly or indirectly, from needs, experiences and rights held by actors in local communities and at the most local levels of governance. These, too, take diverse organizational forms, ranging from social movements to trade unions to associations to claimant groups; and are organized around various logics – territorial (neighbourhood), occupational (peasant or other livelihood or trade), ethnic (indigenous group), or a specific set of rights (people living with AIDS; rights to information, treatment, land). Spatially speaking they are located across wide areas of the country and reflect the interests of rural citizens or citizens from minor urban centres. Perhaps best described by the Latin American term bases (bases or grass roots), these local groups harbour a legitimacy born of the firsthand nature of their members’ needs or rights claims, and bring to the national collective the convening and mobilization power for securing and sustaining credibility among grassroots constituents and policy targets alike. A continuous reality check against which campaign strategy

is regularly tested and adjusted and on which communication actions can draw, they permit the campaign to successively rebut accusations of class bias, elitism or irrelevance. What these actors lack in professional and strategic expertise and articulateness they make up for in legitimacy and convening power. It is at this level of the collective that success is actually experienced and demonstrated – as objectively detectable changes in local realities and practices that benefit their members and participants, as we argue below in relation to measuring success. In emphasizing the central role of NGOs and other associations as protagonists, we do not wish to detract from the importance of citizen bases in such initiatives – both normatively stated and empirically observed by many commentators and activists, in these and other cases of policy change from below. Our cases represent something of a spectrum in respect of how central ordinary citizens’ roles are and how prom­ inent NGOs are in relation to them. At the citizen-based end of such a spectrum would be the South African case, and at the NGO-based end, the Chilean case. Adversaries and critics of these collective action coalitions may per­ ceive these local actors as less than autonomous and subject to instrumental utilization by other more powerful actors in the collective. It could be contended that citizens are brought out in force only when the campaign’s legitimacy is questioned or urgent activism is needed to drive a gain home – for instance, the mass women’s march organized in the last stage of the Turkish campaign, or the sit-ins led by the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (Workers’ and Farmers’ Power Union) in the India case. Some other studies cite the instrumental use of citizen bases to lend legitimacy to what are essentially the campaigns of urban NGOs, and the consequent withdrawal of bases (Covey 1995: 860). There is no indication in any of our case studies that the bases experienced these instances as utilization; quite the contrary in some cases, especially South Africa. This is possibly because of a high correlation of interests between the bases and the other more powerful actors, or because it is precisely these instances of sporadic mass mobilization that tend to trigger tangible and immediate successes, felt throughout the collective. Faith groups emerge as playing very diverse roles, not conforming systematically to common socially conservative stereotypes. Left-wing, liberation-theology-inspired Catholic organizations in Chile and the Philippines, after playing important roles in anti-dictatorship and prodemocracy movements, have redefined themselves around social justice issues such as land reform and child rights. In Mexico the heterodox 20

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Catholics for the Right to Choose helped provide social legitimacy by aligning itself with the maternal mortality reduction campaign, and in South Africa the Catholic Church allied with the TAC despite the two having radically different positions over condom use. In the two majority-Muslim countries, religious groups and leaders were not generally among the change agents but among the detractors and adversaries, politically and socially conservative, as well as powerful; but here too a few remarkable exceptions stand out, such as King Mohamed VI in Morocco and Moroccan women’s NGOs’ use of progressive interpretations of Koranic and Islamic teaching. Media and popular communications actors appear prominently in many of the case studies, usually located close to the central NGOs and professional organizations. They have acted as communicators about the change process in these eight countries, where media reach and access are generally widespread. In the Morocco and Turkey cases, they play a particular additional role, less of disseminating and communicating the policy change process than of actually helping shape it. In these two cases the issues at stake were intimately bound up with ongoing social and political conflicts reflecting deep divisions within society. Within these dynamics, communications media act as agents as well as transmitters of change, as seen in their active membership of the collectives and the close and supportive relationships between them and the key change agents. Thus, even when operating in a restrictive environment as they do in Morocco, the communications media occupy a particular niche in contexts where contrasting worldviews are locked in struggle and sociocultural paradigm shifts are under way, rendering certain issues particularly contentious and therefore newsworthy. It is clear that the central actors gained substantially from these alliances with the media, in terms of profile, as a vehicle for popular mobilization and public opinion-shaping, channels of strategic communication about the issue or campaign to the targets in cases where channels for direct dialogue were not forthcoming, and scope for outing key issues and naming and shaming detractors. While we see in every case a broad-based coalition composed of a mixture of urban professionals, with strong links to local community or faith-based groupings, these society-based coalitions did not bring about change by themselves. Alliances were also important, be they with the media or with experts and technicians whose knowledge and technical skills could help to legitimize the struggle. A number of analysts of social movements have written on the importance of the politics of knowledge in shaping and framing campaigns

for reform (Leach and Scoones 2007). These cases are no exception. In nearly every one there is strong evidence that civil society reformers were able to mobilize specialist knowledge that contributed to the overall quality of laws, policies and programmes ultimately implemented by governments. This technical knowledge was provided by civil society policy analysts, budget specialists or legal scholars. These specialists provided legitimacy to the campaigns and ensured that governments could not dismiss out of hand the claims being made by the coalition reformers. Further, the technical specialists contributed to broader patterns of public education through the media, educational systems and, in several cases, in testimony before legislatures. In the Mexico campaign to increase the quality and quantity of funding for maternal healthcare, much debate revolved around the national government’s budget allocations for this sub-sector. Many governments – Mexico’s included – have traditionally taken the position that budgeting is a prerogative of the executive branch. Technocrats in the Ministry of Finance jealously guard the details of how budgets are constructed and regard the whole subject of budget allocations as too complex to allow citizens any participation in the process. Yet in the civil society campaign for better maternal healthcare, the Mexican NGO Fundar brought independent expertise on budgets to the table. In Chile, as Fuentes explains, civil society policy experts engaged in detailed negotiations with their counterparts in government to improve the quality of legislation, policies and programmes designed to enhance children’s rights. In India, former civil servants brought years of government experience to the civil society RTI campaign. Their expertise helped civil society actors find the public spaces where the campaign could maximize its impact, while also helping to build alliances with potential allies still in government. In the campaign in Turkey to reform the Penal Code, detailed research on alternatives was carried out by specialists on comparative legal systems and policy analysts. Even representatives of the conservative religious government had to acknowledge that the women’s coalition in support of gender-equitable reform had been the only actor in Turkey to work intensively on formulating and integra­ ting its demands into the draft law, an undertaking that favoured their chances of getting their demands integrated into the new Penal Code despite the strong opposition of the government. These cases, then, were not single-actor campaigns but rested on very complex mobilizing structures, which linked a national nucleus of reformers to local and faith-based groups, and also included links to media and expertise. Yet all of these were networks based in society, 22

Proposition 4  Successful policy change occurs not through professional advocacy alone, but involves complex and highly developed mobilizing struc­ tures which link national reformers to local and faith-based groups, the media and repositories of expertise. Such structures are built over time, deeply grounded in the societies where they are found, and linked to the biographies of those who lead them. While these mobilizing structures are built on complex and diverse alliances across social actors, what is perhaps most striking is how they include alliances with actors inside the state as well. Yet, on the whole, in the abundant literature on alliance-building, discussion of alliances with reformers inside the state is scant. Some NGO analysts cast state actors as opponents of civil society reform activities, who are inclined to respond to influencing efforts by challenging their credibility, representativity or legitimacy, or by attempting to corrupt or co-opt them ( Jordan and van Tuijl 2006; CARE and ActionAid International 2006). Other accounts of policy advocacy, while amply recognizing that any one organization will not get far in policy advocacy unless it forges links with a range of allies, situate state actors as merely targets, to be brought round to societal actors’ viewpoints (Dalton 2007: 15; Court et al. 2005). Others still take an optimistic view, asserting that in relation to certain policy advocacy causes, such as those broadly related to poverty reduction, ‘there is general agreement among national political leaders, civil society, and the international community that less poverty is a good thing’ (Phillips Mandaville 2004: 6) – but whether such agreement actually translates into easy advocacy wins probably depends on the redistributive impacts of the pro-poor policy change in question. J. Fox more cautiously concludes that ‘pro-poor reform initiatives are likely to have broader and deeper institutional effects if accompanied by strategic interactions between policy-maker and civil society counterparts that help the latter to identify and overcome obstacles to change’ (2005: 68). In these cases for reform, while the state may have been target or collaborator at different stages, actors within the state were themselves key change agents, often contravening the stated and unstated norms of their trade and risking ostracism or career disadvantage to forge 23

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existing beyond the perimeters of the state. This finding is consistent with the abundant and increasingly sophisticated literature on NGOled policy advocacy that demonstrates the need for alliance-building in policy advocacy campaigns as a key to success (Dalton 2007; Covey 1995; Brown and Ashman 1996; Perkin and Court 2005). This leads us, then, to our fourth proposition.

alliances with social advocates. One of the major lessons that can be drawn from this collection of case studies therefore is the importance of building alliances with progressive figures within government and from the broad cast of actors often simply assumed to oppose change. In countries that are democratizing after long periods of authoritarian rule, governments are frequently made up of coalitions in which reformists sit side by side with representatives of elites that are trying their best to hold on to what remains of their power and privilege. In other examples, even in those countries that are not on a clear path to greater democracy, there are almost always some progressive elements who occupy vital political spaces or control government institutions, and can be engaged to advantage by society-based reformers. While it is important for reformers based in civil society to ally with others in the state, the converse is also true. Well-built social mobilization structures provide ways for state reformers to achieve their goals of policy change as well. For example, Ernesto Garilao, the Secretary of Agrarian Reform in the Ramos administration in the Philippines (1992–98), was one of a few progressives in a government dominated by traditional politicians. To achieve his own agenda within government and to accelerate the implementation of agrarian reform in the face of strong opposition from conservative landowners, especially in the national legislature, he opened a dialogue with like-minded figures from leading CSOs that had independent expertise in social mobilization, public education and the implementation of agrarian reform programmes. As the Philippines case study illustrates, both sides benefited from this partnership: the six-year tenure of Secretary Garilao was the high point in implementing a contentious land reform programme. The minister had mass public support that could be mobilized when needed to pressure the legislature to approve funding necessary for programme implementation. He also knew that at the local level potential beneficiaries could be mobilized at critical points and places where the local police and military units might be siding with the landowners to block the transfer of land ownership to programme beneficiaries. The evidence from the Philippines resonates with several of the other cases as well. This leads to our next proposition. Proposition 5  Alliances between social actors and champions of change inside the state are critical to make policy change happen. Social mobiliza­ tion structures provide opportunities for state-based reformers to generate change from within, just as political opportunity structures provide spaces for social actors to do so from without. 24

Framing the issue: mobilizing strategies and managing contentiousness

A third argument used to explain the nature of successful collective action focuses on framing processes, by which is meant ‘the conscious strategic efforts by groups of people to fashion shared understandings of the world and of themselves that legitimate and motivate collective action’ (McAdam et al. 1996: 6). Framing strategies will depend a great deal on the nature of the issue, and how contentious it is to different actors. In an earlier study of national advocacy, Covey argues that a campaign’s ability to win policy advantage depends partly on how effectively it counters the forces of opposition, specifying that ‘[f]raming a winning issue requires that the alliance define the debate in terms compelling to grassroots groups and which limit the opposition’s ability to mobilize its own forces’ (1995: 862). Leach and Scoones, also writing about social movements, tell us that [m]obilization takes shape around and actively involves the construction of particular ideas, meanings and cognitive and moral construction of a ‘problem’. [It] involves struggles not just to promote a given social or political agenda, but to establish and promote certain meanings and problem-definitions as legitimate as against those who would dispute them. (2007: 11)

In short, the framing of the issue is central to generating mobilization, to the way citizens coalesce around it and act on it, and to the overcoming of opposition. The cases described in this volume offer rich pickings in terms of how their core issues were framed. Framing was at the very heart of the South Africa case. The TAC’s definition of the problem – the cause of, and hence the appropriate treatment for, HIV/AIDS – was pitted against the beleaguered black government’s racial-political framing of medical explanations of HIV as stemming from racist white supremacy and black inferiority discourses. This deadlock in problem definition came to actually constitute the issue during several years of the campaign. In the Mexico initiative, the problem of high maternal mortality was delinked from the dominant explanation, which centred on high-risk pregnancies, and reframed in terms of the lack of adequate emergency obstetric care, which pointed to an entirely different set of policy solutions and budget 25

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In building alliances, the framing of key issues is critical. It is to this issue that we now turn.

prescriptions. Brazil’s multifaceted urban chaos, spanning issues of poor service coverage, untrammelled urban speculation, land use and titling disarray, was framed as a multiple negation of rights and the solution found in a new, multifaceted Right to the City with ample provision for democratic citizen participation in urban policy processes. In Morocco, activists underscored both Muslim and international human rights frames in the campaign for reform of the Islamic family law, deliberately casting reform as stemming from the Maghreb rather than international or Western actors. Similarly, protagonists in the Turkey case framed the gendered reform of the Penal Code as a national, women’s, issue, not one inspired by Western cultural values or connected to the EU accession process the country was undertaking at the time. The Brazil case illustrates well Leach and Scoones’s point that framing is often about mobilized citizens overwriting the narrowly technical constructions that get advanced by other actors – typically bureaucrats or social conservatives – with alternative constructions that emanate from ‘deeper moral and political commitments’ (ibid.: 12). Conversely, the Morocco, Turkey and South Africa cases illustrate how profoundly moral and political the constructions of meaning can be on both sides of the struggle – mobilized citizens on the one hand and the government or religious establishment on the other. In them we see exemplified the ‘protracted clashes over alternative framings’ which do not reach straightforward resolution (ibid.: 12), and, particularly in Morocco and Turkey, how these deadlocks were eventually broken through a combination of foresight and clever manoeuvring. As argued earlier, all eight of the case studies in this volume are examples of ‘contentious politics’ (McAdam et al. 2001), consisting as they do of collective political struggles. Our cases suggest that the framing of claims in successful stories of policy change is in itself an intrinsically contentious and dynamic process. If in analysing degrees and dynamics of contentiousness we focus on the claim in question rather than on the actors and politics of the process, which are many analysts’ prime focus, there are various ways of classifying or ranking our eight cases. Yet as illustrated below, even the crudest attempt to rank these in order of contentiousness of the claim, and to derive lessons about how contentiousness is best navigated for a successful outcome, soon runs into difficulty. The cases with significant redistributive dimensions – the Philippines, India and Brazil – were the most sharply contentious. However, highlighting the evident moral appeal and universal applicability of the RTI in the Indian context helped to counter this; and in the Philippines 26

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and Brazil, the wave of mobilization for social justice driven by the anti-dictatorship, pro-democracy struggles gave these highly contentious claims the necessary traction at those points in time, although only via a very protracted struggle in each case and with successes that, albeit complete in de jure and symbolic terms, remain partial in practical and implementation terms. Some cases – the reduction of maternal mortality in Mexico, the securing of child rights in Chile – were social welfare claims which might at first appear not to be especially contentious, having limited redistributive dimensions, evident social benefits that offset costs to the public purse, and constituting long-overdue steps towards modernization, of a kind with wide social and political appeal in these relatively urbanized and rapidly democratizing societies. Viewed from a different perspective, the position of the Mexican Catholic Church on reproductive health and abortion, as well as cultural factors of machismo and prejudice towards the most affected indigenous women, made even that issue a sensitive and difficult one. While this and the Chilean claim could be considered as ‘pushing on an open door’, from another vantage point there were local factors which meant collective action was still necessary for the hinges of the door to do their work. Turning to South Africa, the claim – the quest for treatment for people with HIV/AIDS – does not appear contentious at face value in certain circles. Yet it proved one of the most contentious of all because it directly challenged the intellectual, political, social and moral authority of the key power-holder in the nation, the country’s second black president in the post-apartheid era, and the fierce loyalties to the ANC forged during the anti-apartheid struggle. Contentiousness in this case derived not from the nature of the claim but from the tenacity of the president’s position in the face of evidence to the contrary. In the Turkey and Morocco cases the claims were highly contentious in the eyes of the male population, the religious establishment and the political configurations constructed around this religious establishment and justified by it. That the cause stood to favour large numbers of women, and male progressives, did not make it non-contentious even from the perspective of these prospective beneficiaries. On the other hand, the causes were less contentious from the perspective of Western societies and dominant international rights discourses. Contentiousness, in this sense, is very much in the eyes of the beholders. The level of contention of an issue, some have argued, relates to types of strategies that are needed to mount a successful challenge. In earlier work for this study, for instance, we argued that ‘contentious

issues require contentious politics’ (Gaventa 2008: 3). For instance, in the cases of maternal mortality in Mexico and child rights in Chile, the fact that there was little contention over the validity of the issue itself meant that the campaign had more of a technical and informational nature, and was characterized by collaboration rather than protest. On the other hand, in the cases of land redistribution in the Philippines, HIV/AIDS in South Africa, the right to information in India, and women’s rights in the highly conservative environments of Turkey and Morocco, the issues were initially very contentious, and evoked clear divisions of interest in society. Campaigns on these required a greater focus on collective action and popular mobilization, as well as skilful use of highprofile media. They also often involved conflict and antagonism, rather than more comfortable partnerships with government. This required strong, relatively independent civil society actors who could challenge and hold their own against powerful interests. On closer inspection, the contentiousness of the claim itself is not as fixed as we and much of the literature seems to assume, and a more nuanced, contextualized, dynamic understanding of it is helpful for honing an appropriate strategy. This does not render invalid the proposition we were working with earlier, but it does imply a need to qualify that proposition to capture the fact that a given issue is not uniformly, ubiquitously, eternally contentious to the same degree. Rather, the level and nature of ‘contentiousness’ are themselves constantly changing and shifting, requiring coalitions themselves to be able to adapt their strategies to changing circumstances.17 The Turkey case in particular shows how when the adversary upped the stakes by resorting to ultra-conservative counterproposals and vilification of the campaign protagonists, these regrouped, restrategized and devised ways of upping and outing the mobilization on to the streets and across the country, while their legal experts continued engaging with the system to push specific and detailed proposals for reform of the Penal Code. In explaining how change agents in these cases moulded their actions and mobilization strategies to the fluctuating contentiousness of their issues, the difference between strategy and tactics is key. The Turkey campaigners’ strategy from the outset was to carefully avoid any framing of their struggle to reform the Penal Code to reflect women’s rights in terms of international law or standards, until late in the day external circumstances – Turkey’s process of accession to the EU, the appointment of a sympathetic and Turkish UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, and the intensification of opposition from the religious right in government – made this highly tactical. The deci28

Proposition 6  Policy change on contentious issues requires contentious forms of mobilization. Contentiousness is a dynamic and contingent con­ cept. Successful collective action must also be dynamic, with the ability to frame issues carefully, adjust to changing circumstances and audiences, and draw upon a wide repertoire of strategies. While contention is part of policy change, its management and effective framing are critical to success. But as we discuss below, ‘success’ itself is in turn a contentious concept. The problem of ‘success’

We started with a reasonably clear criterion of ‘successful’ policy change, looking for examples where there was strong evidence of impact towards social justice and material well-being for large numbers of people. The more we investigated and discussed these cases, the more we began to problematize what was meant by ‘success’ in campaigns to change national policy in the first place. There are different positions in the growing literature on how one measures success in advocacy or citizen engagement in policy change: while some want to focus on the narrow change – literally a change in policy, as seen in a law or procedure – others argue that the metrics of success must be understood more broadly. Coe and Mayne, for instance, argue that ‘the primary focus of many campaigns has traditionally been to change institutional policy and practice. But campaigners are increasingly recognising that securing policy change is not enough to achieve lasting and sustained changes in people’s lives’ (2008: 30), either because a new policy doesn’t immediately translate into practice and/or because policies alone do not overcome other power relations in society which will affect whether and how the policy is taken up. They point to other goals that might also be important beyond the policy change itself, such as strengthening the capacity of civil society to hold institutions accountable for their actions, creating wider democratic spaces for future engagement, and changing individual or group attitudes and behaviours (ibid.: 31). 29

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sion was then taken to depart from strategy and arrange a high-profile dialogue meeting involving the UN Special Rapporteur, the government and the campaigners. The possession of multiple ‘repertoires of collective action’ or sets of tactics by change agents was key to facilitating adaptation of strategy to emergent situations in the course of their ­action (Ganz 2005: 224). This, then, leads us to our sixth proposition:

Similar arguments for the broader view of success have been made by others, some of whom also point to potential trade-offs and conflicts across these various goals (Chapman and Wameyo 2001; L. Fox 1997; Miller 1994b). For instance, Coates and David (2002: 530) warn that ‘short-term successes of advocacy work may often be won at the expense of longer-term aims – such as building capacity among partners and contributing to more fundamental change in the future’. While Covey argues that a policy advocacy alliance can successfully combine the goals of policy change with the strengthening of civil society and thereby of democracy (1995: 862), she insists that this combination of objectives needs to be an explicit goal, contemplated in the design of the initiative, if it is to succeed. Leslie Fox (1997) proposes a continuum of advocacy strategies extending from ‘transformational’ (citizen empowerment) through ‘developmental’ (civil society strengthening) to ‘instrumentalist’ (policy influence). Instrumental objectives are said to carry no inherent value or normative dimension and as such ‘may or may not advance democracy or contribute to its consolidation’ – whether they do or not depends on how far the policy change objectives advance the broader public interest (ibid.: 12). Transformational objectives, on the other hand, are about ‘the ability of the marginalized or disadvantaged – the powerless or poor majority – to challenge the status quo by gaining a sense of their own power, including the capacity to define and prioritize their problems, and then acting to address and resolve them’ (ibid.: 9). These and policy change objectives can serve as mutually reinforcing. Conversely, citizen empowerment processes pursued with no substantive policy gain ensuing can end in frustration and disempowerment. The case studies in this volume illustrate and echo the trade-offs involved in achieving success, while also adding further degrees of complexity to the debate. It is noteworthy, for instance, that few of the struggles described set out to achieve ‘transformational’ objectives relating to citizen empowerment. Most aimed at ‘instrumentalist’ objectives consisting of securing changes in, or implementation of, policies or laws. Several probably did lead to some empowerment of some of the actors involved; and their policy change outcomes undoubtedly have empowering potential – for instance, for Moroccan women within the household, Brazilian users of urban services, or indigenous Mexican women giving birth. But the possibility remains that one factor in explaining the policy change successes in the Philippines, Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Morocco and Turkey initiatives is that these focused very singlemindedly on their policy-change objectives rather than attempting to transform the social bases or strengthen the social actors with whom 30

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they worked. The India and South Africa case studies, on the other hand, can and do assess the success of these initiatives in large measure on the basis of the transformational experience that the initiative represented for the grassroots actors involved. Many of the cases, although solidly focused on concrete policy changes, illustrate that the degree to which policy change actually has an impact on the lives of people at the grass roots is contingent on a number of factors. First, as is discussed in the literature above, a long chain of actions and reactions runs from a change in or adoption of a law or policy to actual implementation on the ground. In India, even though the RTI Act was passed, and despite the presence of reformers and allies within the bureaucracy, there were others who continued to oppose and resist its implementation. A number of the cases, including the Philippines, South Africa and Chile, show that implementation can take many years, requiring continuous and sustained pressure from below. Second, in several of the case studies, policy success at one level of governance did not automatically translate into success at other levels, owing to differences in state or provincial laws, as well as differing degrees of political will, civil society demand and bureaucratic support for reform down the line. The case study in Brazil, for instance, shows dramatically how the same national policy for the Right to the City had dramatically different forms of implementation at the local level, depending on the level of civil society organization and the level of political will to implement the policy closer to the grass roots. In the Mexico case, the national campaign for budgetary support for maternal care suffered when it reached the state and local level, where transparency laws were weak, local organizations were not initially mobilized, and state-level leaders could resist any national-level change. In both cases, mobilization at the state and local level became necessary for real implementation of change at the global level to occur. Third, policy implementation is mediated not only by different administrative levels of governance, but by powerful social actors, who are able to resist and impede change. In the Philippines, there were strong anti-reform elements in both the state and in society, including powerful landholders whose interests were directly threatened by the laws for redistribution. In Morocco and Turkey, deeply entrenched patriarchal structures and norms could block the implementation of legal changes. In Morocco this made it strategic to focus on building public awareness to deal with entrenched social structures and attitudes, while in Turkey, it meant that breaking of taboos on issues of sexuality and fostering a

new climate of public opinion were at least as important as the legal battles won. In both cases, the campaigns took on a more holistic approach that engaged with changing social and cultural attitudes, not only with changing articles of the law. While there are thus a number of facets of success and several factors that contribute to a successful policy reform and to its sustained success, this is not to detract from the importance of the policy changes themselves. On the contrary, as we have seen, these policy changes were important for a variety of reasons, both contributing to concrete development goals, and enabling the realization of fundamental human rights. Yet the case studies attest to other dimensions of success besides the policy changes, reflecting those outlined by Coe and Mayne (2008) and others. These are often of quite different orders to the policy change gains themselves: namely, strengthened capacity to hold institutions to account, the widening and institutionalizing of democratic spaces, changes in individual attitudes and behaviours. It is not always clear, even in these case studies, which element of the multifaceted ‘success’ attained should be considered most important. In the South Africa case, there was a tension between focusing on saving lives immediately and building a tight single-issue coalition to do so, and the long-term goals of building broader coalitions for democratic reform. In India, the realization of the ‘right to information’ led to debate on whether information was really enough to secure change, while in Morocco there were similar internal debates as to how successful and complete the changes actually were. The emerging lesson is that ‘success’ itself is a contingent and contentious term, the meaning of which will vary greatly across different initiatives. As J. Fox has written, when considering approaches to and criteria for assessing advocacy impact it helps to keep one proposition in mind: where you stand depends on where you sit. Policy changes that may seem quite small in San Francisco or London – for better or for worse – often loom much larger when seen from below, at the receiving end. (2003: 520)

That said, these cases offer insights into what should be considered successful citizen action for national policy change, as well as how the attainment (or not) of this might be assessed. These insights are apposite in the current environment in which donors and policy-makers increasingly demand evidence of success against agreed indicators or measures. Our cases demonstrate that meanings and depths of ‘success’ cannot be assumed or at times predicted; and that tangible victories in terms of policy language or programme implementation must not 32



The policy change

The broader environment

National Intermediate Local

Specific reforms in law or policy frameworks Better programme implementation Material improvement in quality of life

New patterns of decisionmaking and participation Greater government accountability and capability Sense of citizenship and capabilities to claim rights

blind us to outcomes in the broader policy environment, such as building greater citizen awareness or stronger organizations for future campaigns. Building cultures and constituencies for change in the broader policy environment can be as significant an action in the long term as changes in government policies themselves. Conversely, simply changing policy or legislating new rights without building popular awareness of such changes does not mean they will be taken up. To be sustainable, policy success may need to be successful in terms of each aspect of change detailed in Table 1. The better implemented national-level changes are, the more likely they are to gain popular support. The more campaigns help to create perhaps less tangible outcomes in the broader environment, such as changes in decision-making processes, greater accountability and stronger citizens, the more citizen engagement will be able to hold on to the gains made, and the more they are likely to translate into material improvements in people’s lives. From this we derive our final proposition: Proposition 7  ‘Success’ can be understood in many different ways, especially among the different actors in a broad-based campaign or social movement. In general, robust and sustainable changes require campaigns which link the national to the local and which pay attention to the processes of empowering citizens and deepening democratic governance as well as to effecting policy change itself. Implications for current debates and practice

Drawing upon the rich examples which are described more fully in the following case studies, this introduction has argued that collective citizen action can be an important force of national policy change – change which in fact goes beyond the policy itself, towards also building more responsive, accountable and democratic states and societies. 33

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table 1.1  Assessing campaign ‘success’

However, it is not always so. Using in-depth analysis of where positive change has happened through citizen action, we have sought to understand the conditions under which it may be so. Working inductively upwards from the findings of these case studies, and using a lens derived from social movement literature to interrogate other literatures on citizen voice, participation and advocacy, this introduction has offered seven propositions for how and when successful citizen action for national policy change occurs. These are related in turn to the political opportunities available, the mobilization structures and agents, and the framing of issues and management of contention – all of which have bearings on the nature and meaning of success itself. In summary: In relation to the nature of existing political opportunity and policy spaces: Proposition 1  Political opportunities are opened and closed through historic, dynamic and iterative processes. While political opportunities create possibilities for collective action for policy change, these openings themselves may have been created by prior mobilization. Proposition 2  Civil society engagement in policy processes is not enough by itself to make change happen. Competition for formal political power is also central, creating new impetus for reform and bringing key allies into positions of influence, often in synergy with collective action from below. Proposition 3  While international allies, covenants and norms of state behaviour can strengthen domestic openings for reform, they can also be the subject of fierce domestic opposition. Successful reform campaigns depend on careful navigation to link international pressures with differing and constantly changing local and national contexts. In respect of mobilizing structures, the identity and positioning of change agents and their ability to form and sustain broad alliances: Proposition 4  Successful policy change occurs not through professional advocacy alone, but involves complex and highly developed mobilizing structures which link national reformers to local and faith-based groups, the media and repositories of expertise. Such structures are built over time, deeply grounded in the societies where they are found, and linked to the biographies of those who lead them. Proposition 5  Alliances between social actors and champions of change inside the state are critical to make policy change happen. Social mobilization structures provide opportunities for state-based reformers to generate change from within, just as political opportunity structures provide spaces for social actors to do so from without. 34

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As regards the way that issues are framed and mobilized upon, including how contentious they might be: Proposition 6  Policy change on contentious issues requires contentious forms of mobilization. Contentiousness is a dynamic and contingent concept. Successful collective action must also be dynamic, with the ability to frame issues carefully, adjust to changing circumstances and audiences, and draw upon a wide repertoire of strategies. Concerning the nature of policy success itself: Proposition 7  ‘Success’ can be understood in many different ways, especially among the different actors in a broad-based campaign or social movement. In general, robust and sustainable changes require campaigns which link the national to the local and which pay attention to the processes of empowering citizens and deepening democratic governance as well as to effecting policy change itself. Each of these propositions, if more generally true, has important implications for how policy change occurs through collective action. Taken together, some overall themes also emerge about how change happens, many of which challenge existing approaches to change taken by donors, civil society actors and governments alike. First, the cases illustrate time and again that citizen action can play an important role in promoting change, but such change comes through broad coalitions of deeply embedded social actors, who also link to and build alliances with reformers in the state. Such an approach challenges state-based or civil-society-based approaches to change alike. Rather it argues for coalitions for change, which link social and political actors, media, experts, international agencies, national organizations, faithbased groups and others in a common effort. In this linking, ‘political opportunities’ are important, especially those which are created through changes in political leaders, but equally important are ‘social mobilization opportunities’, which enable political reformers in turn to take up causes and achieve their aims. Second, the nature of such change is dynamic, iterative and may take many years to achieve. Progress at one moment can lead to setbacks the next. But success on one front also creates spaces, coalitions and repertoires which can contribute to change on other fronts. This view challenges fundamentally approaches which are more linear, or which believe that policy fixes for severe development and democracy problems will occur quickly or predictably according to predictable models that fit neatly into time-bound project cycles. Third, such change on fundamental issues requires contention and contestation – both inherent in how they are framed as well as

in how they are fought. But at other times it requires commonality and collaboration among a broad range of stakeholders who will not always agree. This view challenges approaches to participation and civic engagement which reduce such processes to technical approaches, or to notions of and processes of ‘national ownership’ achieved through non-contentious consultation and dialogue but which veil vast chasms of differences in power and interests. On the other hand, this view also challenges those who argue that change must always come from below and from outside through confrontation. The trick is to combine these, and know when to use which to achieve change. Fourth, while national change is critical, it is enabled and underpinned by international alliances, norms and frameworks, as well as by grassroots and local actors and organizations. Indeed, these cases challenge assumptions about the directionalities of change – some emerged from above, some from below, yet the two were always linked. Interestingly, whether from national or local levels, these significant movements for change were always led by actors deeply rooted in their own societies, suggesting that international actors, whether the inter­national NGOs or other international organizations, may support national change strategies, but rarely will create sustainable policy reform if the movement for reform does not have deep national roots. In practical terms, such lessons on how change happens have important implications. For donors, this approach means broadening their understanding both of how policy reform will happen and who will bring it about. While these cases involved broad-based coalitions, donor aid often goes either to state institutions alone, or, on the society side, to urban-based middle-class NGOs, which, while clearly important in these cases, by themselves lack strongly embedded civil society bases and may not be capable of mounting widespread coalitions for change (Robinson and Friedmann 2005). These cases suggest a different approach, one in which donors help create the opportunities for coalitions that link government reformers, media and technical expertise with national and local collective actors. Critical also is maintaining some democratic space – a policy environment where reform coalitions can operate freely and challenge governments on contentious issues. For activists, the cases speak to the pivotal role played by nationally initiated and led campaigns for policy changes that protect rights and contribute to overcoming poverty as well as deepening democracy and amplifying citizen voice in the society in question. At the same time, campaigners need to be alert to opportunities offered by changes in democratic structures and spaces, while being flexible and capable 36

Notes 1  We are grateful to all of the participants in the Participation and National Policy project for the stimulating discussions, case studies and commentaries from which many of the ideas of this chapter are drawn. We are also grateful to those who made helpful comments on the early drafts, including case study authors, Karen Brock, Jonathan Fox, Gary Hawes, Mark Robinson and Nick Benequista. 2  Indeed by some predictions, within a few years the majority of people living in poverty in the world will be in such ‘middle-income countries’, perhaps making this sample of countries even more significant. 3  This point is consistent with writers in the social movement field who take a ‘political mediation’ approach. As Amenta et al. (2005: 516–17) write: ‘instead of asking whether movements are generally influential or whether certain

aspects of movements are always influential, as others have done, we ask under what conditions are social movements likely to be influential. Our political mediation theory holds that political contexts mediate the influence of challengers’ mobilization and strategies.’ 4  While we will not go into extensive methodological discussion here, a great deal of work exists on the value of multi-country case study analysis to generate propositions and comparative insights. See, for instance, Yin (2003). 5  This meeting was co-sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson Inter­ national Center for Scholars. The case studies from Morocco and ­Turkey were added later in the project. 6  An in-depth review of the global­ization and citizenship literature may be found in Benequista and Levine (2006). 37

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of adapting strategy to a constantly changing political context; create a web of alliances, including with state reformers and unanticipated bedfellows, but be prepared to back this with pressure if necessary; be strategic in the framing of the issues, depending on the audience and the national context; recognize that grassroots mobilization and inclusion take time but are important for sustainability of the gain; think about how international pressure opens and closes space for ­national and local action, without assuming that the best campaigns for ­national  change will be internationally led or linked; and be committed for the long haul, not the quick fix. Finally, similar lessons apply to those inside governments who seek to bring about policy reform and more responsive and accountable states. National policy change is vital for achieving more just and fair societies, as well as for inclusive services and inclusive democracies. Yet it will not emanate from the state alone, but from the synergistic effects produced by the actions of organized citizens. Just as political opportunities create possibilities for effective citizen mobilization, so too does organized citizen action create new possibilities for state reform.

7  See, for instance, other volumes in Zed’s ‘Claiming Citizenship’ series, such as Cornwall and Schattan Coelho (2006) and Gaventa and Tandon (forthcoming), for ­discussions of engagement in local and global arenas, also pointing to the importance of the national arena. 8  For a further review of theories of social movements, and how social movements complement participatory strategies, see Thompson and Tapscott (2010). 9  Each of the case studies in this volume meets Tarrow’s definition of contentious politics. Each involves collective interaction among actors, not just individualized voice and ­participation, and each involves broadly public processes of claimmaking, not just those created by state-created consultation. To differing degrees, each also involves struggles over interests, though how these are presented, as we shall see, becomes part of the strategy of framing issues. 10  These factors were earlier articulated by McAdam et al. (1996). In the later book, McAdam et al. (2001: 15) also refer to a fourth elem­ ent of the ‘classic social movement agenda’, which they call ‘established repertoires of contention, how these repertoires evolve in response to changes in capitalism, state building and other less monumental processes’. While we do not use or address this concept directly, it ­resonates with our section on mobilizing strategies and framing processes. 11  For further elaboration of the idea of ‘spaces’ for citizen participation, see Cornwall and Schattan Coelho (2006), Cornwall (2002) and Gaventa (2006). For the purposes of

this discussion, we will focus not so much on the conceptual distinctions across these ideas, but more on the conditions under which political spaces or opportunities for collective action on policy issues occur. 12  As in the larger social movement literature, the concept of political opportunity structure has generated a great deal of debate and critique, in part for placing too much emphasis on structure and not enough on agency and mobilization strategy (Goodwin and Jasper 2004). 13  Much of the debate has drawn from empirical examples in Western democracies. Tarrow himself recognizes the need ‘to challenge our own political process models by confronting them with new and more demanding contexts …’ (2004: 45). 14  This echoes points made by political mediation theorists, who ­argue that ‘an extension of democratic rights entails lowering the legal restrictions on institutional participation for the common citizens, including their ability to ­assemble and discuss issues’ (Amenta et al. 2005: 520). 15  Commenting on Gamson’s point, McAdam et al. (1996: 36) recognize that such a historically iterative approach is an important gap in social movement literature. ‘Given that most movement scholars would probably say that they study movements because they view them as a powerful force for change in society, our collective failure to undertake any serious accounting of the effect of past movements on the various dimensions of political opportunities is as puzzling as it is lamentable.’ 16  Social movement literature almost entirely ignores the importance 38

political mediation model, they argue: ‘social movement organizations capable of achieving their goals quickly are not simply those that are well mobilized. Rather, those that carefully tailor their tactics and strategy to the environment in which they seek their reforms are the most efficacious.’ They call this the pro­ cess of ‘strategic adaptation’.

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difference?, London: International Institute of Environment and Development. Keck, M. and K. Sikkink (1998) Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy networks in international politics, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Leach, M. and I. Scoones (2007) ‘Mobilizing citizens: social movements and the politics of knowledge’, IDS Working Paper no. 276, Brighton: Institute of Development Studies. McAdam, D., J. D. McCarthy and M. Zald (1996) Comparative Per­spec­ tives on Social Movements: Political opportunities, mobilizing structures and cultural framings, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McAdam, D., S. Tarrow and C. Tilly (2001) Dynamics of Contention, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McCammon, H., S. Chaudhuri, L. Hewitt, C. Muse and H. Sandres Newman (2008) ‘Becoming full citizens: the US women’s jury rights campaigns, the pace of reform and strategic adaptation’, American Journal of Sociology, 113(4): 1104–47. McGee, R. with N. Bazaara, J. Gav­ enta, R. Nierras, M. Rai, J. Roca­ mora, N. Saule, Jr, E. Williams and S. Zermeño (2003) ‘Legal frameworks for citizen participation: synthesis report’, LogoLink Research Report, Brighton: Institute of Development Studies. Menocal, A. and B. Sharma (2008) Joint Evaluation of Citizens’ Voice and Accountability, London: Overseas Development Institute. Miller, V. (1994a) ‘Policy influence by development NGOs: a vehicle for strengthening civil society’, IDR Reports, 11(1): 1–6. 41

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(forthcoming) Globalizing ­Citizenship: A new politics of inclusion and exclusion?, London: Zed Books. Goetz, A.-M. and J. Gaventa (2001) ‘From consultation to influence: bringing citizen voice and client focus into service delivery’, IDS Working Paper no. 138, Brighton: Institute of Development Studies. Goodwin, J. and J. Jasper (2004) Rethinking Social Movements: Structure, meaning and emotion, New York: Rowman and Littlefield. Green, D. (2008) From Poverty to Power: How active citizens and ­effective states can change the world, Oxford: Oxfam. Grindle, M. and J. Thomas (1991) Public Choices and Policy Change: The political economy of reform in developing countries, London: Johns Hopkins Press. Gurza Lavalle, A., G. Castello and R. Bichir (2008) ‘The backstage of civil society: protagonisms, networks and affinities between civil organizations in São Paulo’, IDS Working Paper no. 299, Brighton: Institute of Development Studies. Hickey, S. (2008) ‘The return of politics in development studies I: getting lost within the poverty agenda?’, Progress in Development Studies, 8(4): 349–58. Houtzager, P. and M. Moore (eds) (2005) Changing Paths: Inter­ national development and the new politics of inclusion, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Jordan L. and P. van Tuijl (2006) NGO Accountability: Politics, principles and innovations, London: Earthscan. Kanji, N., C. Braga and W. Mitullah (2002) Promoting Land Rights in Africa: How do NGOs make a

— (1994b) ‘NGO and grassroots policy influence: what is success?’, IDR Reports, 11(5). Odugbemi, S. and T. Jacobson (2008) Governance Reform under Real-World Conditions: Citizens, stakeholders and voice, Washington, DC: World Bank. Perkin, E. and J. Court (2005) ‘Networks and policy processes in international development: a literature review’, ODI Working Paper no. 252, London: Overseas Development Institute. Phillips Mandaville, A. (2004) ‘Legislatures and civil society: potential partners in poverty reduction’, Unpublished paper, Washington, DC: National Democratic Institute. Robb, C. (2001) Can the Poor Influence Policy? Participatory poverty assessments in the develop­ ing world, Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Robinson, M. and S. Friedmann (2005) ‘Civil society, democratization and foreign aid in Africa’, IDS Discussion Paper no. 383, Brighton: Institute of Development Studies. Rosenau, J. (2002) Governance in the Twenty-first Century: The global governance reader, London: Routledge. Rowden, R. and J. Irama (2004) ‘Rethinking participation: questions for civil society about the limits of participation in PRSPs’, Washington, DC/Kampala: ­ActionAid International USA/ ActionAid Uganda. Samuel, J. (n.d.) ‘What is peoplecentred advocacy?’, Unpublished paper. Shutt, C. (2009) ‘Changing the world by changing ourselves: reflections

from a bunch of BINGOS’, IDS Practice Paper, 2009(3). Stiglitz, J. (2001) ‘Participation and development: perspectives from the comprehensive development paradigm’, in H. J. Chang (ed.), Joseph Stiglitz and the World Bank: The rebel within, London: Anthem Press. Tarrow, S. (1996) ‘States and opportunities: the political structuring of social movements’, in McAdam et al. (1996), pp. 41–61. — (2004) ‘Paradigm warriors: regress and progress in the study of contentious politics’, in J. Goodwin and J. Jasper (eds), Rethinking Social Movements: Structure, meaning and emotion, New York: Rowman and Littlefield. — (2005) The New Transnational Activism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thompson, L. and C. Tapscott (2010) Citizenship and Social Movements: Perspectives from the global South, London: Zed Books. UN (United Nations) (2008) People Matter: Civic engagement in public governance, New York: United Nations. Uvin, P. and D. Miller (1996) ‘Paths to scaling-up: alternative strategies for local nongovernmental organizations’, Human Organiza­ tion, 55(3): 344–54. VeneKlasen, L. and V. Miller (2002) ‘The advocacy debate: changing policy, changing people’, in C. Clark, B. Harrison, V. Miller, J. Pettit and L. VeneKlasen (eds), ‘Advocacy and citizen participation’, Participatory Learning and Action, 43, International Institute of Environment and Development. Webster, N. and L. Engberg-Pedersen (2002) In the Name of the Poor: 42

for poor people, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Yin, R. (2003) Case Study Research: Design and methods, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

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Contesting political space for poverty reduction, London: Zed Books. World Bank (2004) World Develop­ ment Report: Making services work

2 ·  Gaining comprehensive AIDS treatment in South Africa: the extraordinary ‘ordinary’ S teven F riedman

The fight for a comprehensive government response to HIV and AIDS has been one of the more significant sagas of post-apartheid South Africa – and one of the strangest. The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) is justifiably seen as the clearest evidence thus far that citizen action can change policy in the new South African democracy. The ability of a coalition of activists, opinion-formers and local and international civil society organizations to prompt the government to change a policy on HIV and AIDS which it had energetically defended seemed to confirm that citizen action could exert influence in post-apartheid South Africa. The campaign to win comprehensive support for people living with AIDS can be judged a success: not only have tens of thousands of lives been saved, but progress in winning support within government created a platform for potential gains. The campaign pressed multinational companies to make medicine available at lower prices or to give up their right to exclusive supply in exchange for a royalty (Friedman and Mottiar 2004). It has also played a role in protecting people living with AIDS from violent victimization where they live. In various ways, the needs of people living with AIDS reached the consciousness of people in a position to do something about them in a manner which would not be conceivable without the campaign. The campaign defied many routine assumptions of political analysis. Campaigns for policy change are generally needed when governments are divided from campaigners by differences in interest or ideology: the campaign can then be analysed as a process in which campaigners try to pressure or persuade political power-holders to revise their understanding of their interests. By contrast, the campaign for a change in South African government policy on HIV and AIDS was fought between a government and a coalition who were not divided by any noticeable difference of interest or value. The activists who led the fight for a change in policy had not been expecting to campaign against the government at all. Their intended targets were the multinational pharmaceutical companies which were expected to obstruct attempts to secure afford44

The Treatment Action Campaign: structure and governance

Launched in 1998, TAC was a response to the HIV and AIDS epidemic whose impact was becoming apparent: in 2002, 5 million South Africans were believed to be HIV positive (Directorate Health Systems Research 2002). TAC aimed to ‘campaign for greater access to treatment for all South Africans, by raising public awareness and understanding about issues surrounding the availability, affordability and use of HIV treatments’ (TAC 2007). Its founders were two former anti-apartheid activists, Zackie Achmat (who is HIV positive) and Mark Heywood; they sought to use the techniques developed in the fight against apartheid to press pharmaceutical firms to offer affordable medication to people living with AIDS.4 TAC employed a multi-strategy approach to campaigning, using methods ranging from civil disobedience and street demonstrations through action in the courts to measured pamphlets spelling out scientific arguments. It was not only a campaigning organization: it also ran programmes which offer important services to its members, providing treatment and information. It also combined service provision with civil disobedience – in 2002, for example, it imported generics from Brazil, ignoring the patents held by pharmaceutical companies (Nessman 2002). TAC is a membership organization; during the period of the research, important aspects of its internal structure were unconventional. There was no clear-cut distinction between members and ‘supporters’, ‘volun­teers’ or ‘activists’,5 although membership – which was free – was 45

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able treatment for people living with the virus.1 Since the government had passed a law allowing it to undercut their dominance of the market by importing cheaper medicines (TAC 2001), and since its own constituency is severely affected by the virus, it was expected to ally itself with the campaign for a comprehensive response to AIDS. Instead, it became its prime opponent. Despite its unusual character, the campaign has many features which help us understand how citizen action might achieve national policy change. This chapter discusses the campaign in the period 1998 to 2007, its achievements and limits, and its implications for a clearer understanding of the obstacles and openings which face attempts by campaigners to alter national policy.2 All descriptions of TAC structure and procedures date from 2007, when the research on which this chapter is based was conducted. At the time of writing, in 2009, the campaign continues.3

r­ elevant in the election of office bearers. Members elected the national executive, but social sectors – children, youth, faith-based organizations, healthcare professionals and trade unions – were also represented.6 In 2005, membership was said to be around 12,000 (TAC 2005) but activists pointed out that the numbers participating in TAC marches – which they estimated at between 8,000 and 15,000 – indicated an ability to mobilize people well in excess of membership.7 Most TAC members were women, which is unsurprising given that women are far more likely to be HIV positive (Department of Health 2002). They also appeared to be active participants, attending meetings in greater numbers than men and being more active in TAC activities.8 Despite its unconventional approach to membership, TAC had a formal structure which provided for internal representative democracy. The basic unit was the branch. Each province in which it was active also had a provincial executive committee; its prime decision-making structure was the national executive committee. National leadership was nominated by branches and elected at a national congress every two years, where four national office bearers were also elected. There was broad agreement within TAC that major strategic decisions were initiated by the national leadership, although some compromise between its view and that of other levels did seem evident. There were tensions between the national leadership and the provinces: ‘often there is resistance to national control: national has directed that all the treatment literacy campaigns be run in the same way in all the provinces – but we here in Gauteng [Province] have some ideas of our own and are constantly voicing our need to do things our way’.9 These did not become a serious source of conflict. Finances were tightly controlled at the national level, a strategy justified on the grounds that it guards against wastage and corruption. The fact that the national level took decisions was not in itself a sign that members lacked a say. Provinces and branches were consulted about strategies and tactics,10 but over-romantic views of internal democracy within TAC would be inappropriate. There were structural constraints to some expressions of democracy because some of TAC’s strategies required technical knowledge which was unavailable to grassroots members lacking formal education. In some cases, concerns for financial probity may also have created constraints to internal democracy. It is almost inevitable that at times a divide emerges between, on the one hand, the small group of national officials whose formal education or political histories or both give them an inbuilt advantage in addressing technical and strategic issues and, on the other, the grass roots. 46

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But it would be equally misleading to reject TAC’s constitutional structures as a fig leaf for control by a small group of leaders. Members were free to express their opinions and there was no disciplinary procedure for people who held dissenting views: ‘TAC has a culture of speaking openly’.11 TAC had functioning democratic structures and this was in itself an important guarantee that members retained a voice, since they had inbuilt mechanisms which forced leadership to respond to membership, even if this happened in practice less often than it could. With time, TAC grew in size, scope of activities and funding. Unlike most social movements, it had in 2007 a substantial full-time staff, administration and donor-funded programmes. In 2004, it employed forty people and had a budget of R18 million,12 with all revenue sourced from donations.13 TAC did not accept donations from the South African government, pharmaceutical companies or from USAID, which was ‘seen to promote the interests of the US government’.14 The bulk of TAC activ­ ity was concentrated in the metropolitan areas of Gauteng, Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, the provinces that are home to the country’s three largest urban centres. However, TAC did have active branches in smaller towns, and was seeking to build a presence in provinces farther away from the major urban centres.15 TAC was not affiliated to a political party and members supported a variety of parties, although African National Congress (ANC) members were numerically dominant.16 Achmat frequently stated that he was a ‘loyal member of the ANC’, illustrating that TAC had a political identity unlike that of most social movements, which ensured a relationship with both party and government. But Achmat also called for the demo­ c­ratization of the ANC, and substantial ANC support within TAC did not dissuade it from launching a civil disobedience campaign which attempted to charge government ministers with culpable homicide. The ANC may have been an expression of the political identity of many TAC members, but it was one which did not impel them to loyalty when the ANC was seen to deny or obstruct treatment to people living with HIV and AIDS. Support for the ANC did not, in principle, constrain activism by forcing supporters to support government policy positions. But for the minority of members who were actively engaged in the ANC, a very strong ethic of loyalty and obedience did prevail. This presented activists with a complex array of choices; their relationship with the governing party could present delicate strategic questions and required complicated balancing acts which posed challenges to the campaign from the outset.

Why did participants join TAC? More was at stake for people at the grassroots than the hope of receiving medication: TAC […] talks and teaches positive living, that this illness is not a sin – life is not wasted or less valuable, it must go on. People who come to us are the poorest of the poor, those with no resources, education, information – that is what they come to TAC meetings for, that and the hope of getting treatment.17

TAC also sought to play a role in eradicating the stigma of HIV/AIDS and to ‘provide vital information about HIV which the ordinary person has trouble accessing – TAC is there for the man or woman at ground level’.18 People joined TAC, in one activist’s view, not only ‘because it is vocal about important issues concerning them and has no political agenda’ but because ‘it is a forum to share the experience and pain of living with HIV’.19 ‘TAC’s biggest success has been […] that it has gone some way to ending discrimination about HIV and AIDS. People are not afraid to be open about their HIV status any more.’20 Many noted the sense of hope, efficacy and self-worth which people drew from belonging. A brief biography of the campaign

TAC became focused on changing government policy in early 2001, when international pharmaceutical firms based in South Africa, represented by the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers’ Association (PMA), abandoned their court action to overturn a law which sought to reduce the price of medication to the poor by allowing the import of cheaper generic medicines. TAC had mobilized members in support of the government position, demonstrating outside the courtroom and portraying the companies’ action as an attempt to place profit before medical need. TAC activists assumed that a government victory would bring much cheaper AIDS treatments, in particular that antiretroviral treatments (ARVs) would be imported and distributed to those unable to pay. When the legal victory against the PMA was accompanied by manufacturers cutting the costs of key medicines in an attempt to repair their public image,  the  way seemed open for the distribution of ARVs to the poor through the public health system. But the government did not use the legal victory to extend affordable AIDS treatment to its constituents. Instead, the response of Thabo Mbeki’s government was targeted not at HIV and AIDS, but at both the medication needed to combat it and the scientific theories which sought to explain it. There has been much speculation about government 48

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­ otives. One theory insisted that the government did not want to pay m the costs of distributing ARVs, even though companies were substantially reducing the cost of the drugs, and the amount required to fund support services was fairly trivial to a government which devoted two-thirds of its budget to social spending (Manuel 2000). Mbeki’s own statements on the issue suggested strongly that his response was chiefly a reaction to white racists who framed AIDS as a consequence of black promiscuity. The government never adopted a policy rejecting ARVs. But it did refuse to distribute them in public health facilities, and doctors in the public sector could not prescribe them without facing disciplinary action (Mbali 2005). The health minister repeatedly asserted that better nutrition was a surer antidote to AIDS than ARVs (Mail and Guardian 2003) and consistently undermined the notion that ARVs were an appropriate response to the virus. While this scepticism and lack of enthusiasm for a comprehensive response to AIDS never became government policy, it became clear to ANC politicians that publicly differing from the president and minister would be viewed as disloyal. For politicians who are relatively recently engaged in the difficult fight for majority rule, charges of disloyalty to the movement strike at the core of political identities and are experienced as deeply hurtful. Most, hoping to protect their careers but to avoid alienating their support base and violating their consciences, stayed silent on the issue. These currents within government created an unusual source of conflict. It remained official government policy to fight AIDS; policy was not formally opposed to ARVs and they remained available in the private health system. When TAC, as an act of civil disobedience, imported cheaper ARVs, no action was taken against it. And yet the effect of the government position was to deny treatment to people living with AIDS who could not afford ARVs, and to obstruct a coherent national response to it: mixed messages from the government ensured that there was no consensus on what should be done and how to do it. TAC and others concerned about people living with AIDS therefore soon found themselves locked in a battle with the government, pressing it to launch a comprehensive response to the virus, including distribution of ARVs. Before long, the campaign to change the government’s attitude overrode the fight against the pharmaceutical companies. AIDS became a major political liability for the Mbeki administration, which found itself increasingly isolated on the issue as support coalesced around attempts to secure a comprehensive response. As Mbeki’s position hardened into a dissidence which rejected conventional understandings of AIDS, and TAC began to campaign for change, concern became widespread.

Medical professionals, NGO activists, the media and major civil society organizations were dismayed, as were international organizations and interests. TAC took the lead in initiating and sustaining the campaign and ensuring that pressure for a policy shift was sustained by a broad alliance. It also kept the issue in the public eye, employing a range of tactics, including legal action, public mobilization, civil disobedience, international influence and copious attempts to influence media and public opinion (Friedman and Mottiar 2004; Jones 2005; Mbali 2005). By August 2003, it had won a commitment by the government to a comprehensive AIDS strategy which included the distribution of ARVs at public facilities (TAC 2003). The national cabinet agreed to appoint a task team to devise this strategy and in November 2003 it adopted a detailed plan to combat AIDS. ‘Activism’, the then deputy minister of health confirmed, ‘did change policy and force government to alter course – partly by strengthening differing voices in government.’21 After winning the policy change, TAC engaged in a campaign to ensure that the promises made in 2003 were kept. It achieved some success. By 2005 at least 60,000 people were benefiting from publicly supplied ARVs.22 In two provinces, Gauteng and Western Cape, TAC participated in provincial efforts to distribute ARVs and to enhance AIDS prevention.23 Partnerships were formed with public health facilities to enhance efforts to fight AIDS.24 Key figures within government retained contact with TAC, albeit in secret discussions.25 While its successes depended to a degree on the attitudes of provincial politicians, it insisted that activism continue to help ensure that parts of the government take AIDS seriously:26 ‘there is incremental forward movement – although it is insufficient when compared to need’.27 Despite this, progress in providing treatment through ARVs lagged way below the targets promised by the 2003 plan.28 In late 2005, the deputy minister of health reported in an interview that ‘we still hear about nurses refusing to give women nevirapine [an ARV used to prevent mother-to-child transmission]. In the Eastern Cape it is claimed that ninety per cent of mothers are not getting it.’29 Activists complained also that there was ‘no proper monitoring, no data on how people are doing, and public messaging does not encourage people to take up treatment’.30 Sites offering treatment were unevenly spread and in some towns there were no ARVs at all;31 survival sometimes depended on where a person lived. Nor, activists insisted, should the fight against AIDS be measured purely by the availability of ARVs – prevention efforts were, they believed, failing.32 The then deputy minister agreed: 50

National government hostility to TAC had not abated. Many provincial health departments and the governments of which they are part refused to work with TAC or to implement energetic AIDS programmes.34 Activists talked of a sustained campaign in government to prevent engagement with TAC, which extended down to clinic level.35 The government attitude compromised the fight against AIDS, sending out mixed messages with very concrete effects. Evidence of this climate is the story of Gordon Mthembu, TAC organizer and chair of one of its Johannesburg branches.36 A trade unionist and veteran of the 1980s struggle against apartheid, Mthembu became deputy chair of his local ANC branch. But, after being diagnosed HIV positive in 2000, he joined TAC, becoming its provincial chair. In 2003, he played a major role in investigating, with the National Health and Allied Workers Union (a formal ANC ally), ‘political interference’ at the local Natalspruit hospital, also leading two marches on the hospital to press for changes in the way it was run. As a consequence, he was accused of bringing the ANC into disrepute. He was sidelined from ANC activities and was not informed of meetings. He says he has faced ­ostracism from some in the ANC and was removed from his local post. I have been labelled a rebel because I joined TAC – which they describe as an anti-government organization. I was told I am no longer a member of the ANC because I belong to TAC. I replied that I believe in the Freedom Charter and the constitution and would not stop.37

So even in a province whose government seemed sympathetic to the campaign, local politicians saw it as a challenge to the ANC’s authority on AIDS. They were motivated partly by the strong sense of loyalty which South African parties in general, and the ANC in particular, ­attract. ‘National government’s attitudes are very influential. People follow its lead because they don’t want to be seen to be going against their organization.’38 Most important of all to activists, senior government figures were said to be actively trying to undermine the fight against AIDS. These 51

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Even if we can show that our plan to roll out ARVs is in full swing, that is not the point. The issue is our impact on public health. If we concentrate only on how many condoms we distribute or how many people are on ARVs, and not on the comprehensive messages we are sending out on fighting the disease, we will not understand the impact of our interventions.33

claims centred around the activities of Mathias Rath, who, with other AIDS ‘denialists’, ran an aggressive campaign to persuade people ­living with AIDS to abandon ARVs for the vitamins he was marketing. Rath and his denialist perspective found resonance at different levels of govern­ment. A provincial health official insisted that there was no hard evidence that Rath was compromising people’s health by persuading them to abandon ARVs. Activists of the SA National Civic Organization (Sanco), an ANC ally, have supported him. The health minister refused to distance herself from him39 and associated in a variety of ways with him and other denialists.40 This confused people living with the virus, making effective treatment more difficult, as well as ensuring that the authorities did not act against Rath as legislation requires. In this political climate, activists insisted that despite the gains made after 2003, both the head of government and the minister charged with combating AIDS remained hostile and were working to undermine their own commitments. Implementation depended on the support of many officials and politicians, who frustrated attempts to deal effectively with AIDS in the hope of retaining the favour of the president and those around him.41 But in late 2006, the tide again appeared to turn in the campaign’s favour. The potential impact of the political environment on activism was starkly illustrated by a shift in government attitude which opened new opportunities for a more effective response to HIV and AIDS. Change was perhaps most clearly signalled in November 2006, when two politicians with responsibility for AIDS, then Deputy Minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge and Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, ‘emerged from the shadows’ to take a leading role in the government’s response to the virus (Cullinan 2006). Mlambo-Ngcuka, who had been nominally responsible for the government’s response but had played a marginal role, now took the lead, urging TAC and other activist groups to cooperate with her government and committing it to an assertive plan which initially aimed to treat 650,000 people with ARVs and to distribute 500 million condoms a year by 2011. Madlala-Routledge, whose commitment to addressing the virus had always been clear to activists, was now permitted to speak publicly in support of more energetic action and a partnership between government and activists. This pattern continued. A new plan aimed to provide treatment, care and support services to 80 per cent of HIV-positive people and their families by 2011 and to reduce the rate of HIV infection by 50 per cent in five years. Equally significantly, national health ministry 52

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officials who had been forced into silence were able to address members of parliament and to answer questions on their plans (Daniels 2007). Cooperation between activists and the government was sustained, and the new AIDS plan was enthusiastically endorsed by the activists. By 2007, activists were not convinced that the government had changed course fundamentally. They noted that senior figures, in­cluding some in the health ministry, remained committed to denialism, and that members of parliament were reluctant to hold government to account on HIV and AIDS.42 Activists argued that it was far too early to conclude that the government was now committed to working with them to fight the virus and that another retreat, like that which occurred after 2003, remained possible. One reason for this scepticism was that an apparent proximate cause of the government’s new approach seemed to owe more to happenstance than political change: the health minister became seriously ill prior to the November change, creating a space for her deputy to step into. In principle, if the minister had returned, a reversion to the previous approach would have been possible. But the positive change pre-dated her hospitalization – three months earlier, the national cabinet stated publicly that HIV caused AIDS, while senior government representatives began talking of the need to work with activists to tackle the virus. There were also indications that the government was changing course in response to political realities, including the Sixteenth International AIDS Conference in Toronto in August 2006, which heard unprecedented criticism of South Africa’s approach from within the UN (Blandy 2006) and saw TAC protests directed at the official South African exhibit, which highlighted beetroot and garlic as remedies for HIV and AIDS. While international condemnation of the government approach had been a constant throughout the campaign, it was forced to endure far more explicit public embarrassment than ever before at a major international event. More important, however, was a change in the political environment which emboldened governing-party politicians who disagreed with ­national leadership. At an ANC conference in 2006, Mbeki’s critics won several important battles. This prompted many ANC politicians to abandon their previous assumption that the president was invulnerable within the movement and prompted open questioning of Mbeki and his cabinet ministers by ANC activists and parliamentary committees (Friedman 2006). HIV and AIDS was one of the issues on which opposition crystallized, seeming to many Mbeki opponents an epitomization of the aspects of his leadership style which they resented – an aloof refusal

to hear the voices of the grass roots and an insistence on imposing the presidency’s view of an issue on activists. AIDS appears to be one of the issues on which a beleaguered national leadership felt it needed to make concessions to activist opinion; the fact that doing so would help to defuse international criticism must have made the strategic decision easier. This made the change far more enduring than a shift in course prompted by the illness of a single politician. At the time of the research, it was not clear whether the new atmosphere of challenge to national decision-making would endure within the ANC, particularly since Mbeki was nearing the end of his presidential term. At the time of writing, with President Jacob Zuma recently elected, the question remained unresolved. The shifting political culture of the ANC did not, of course, mean that an unobstructed way to an effective and energetic response to the virus was suddenly open; entrenched government resistance seemed likely to continue to challenge activists. Even if there were no re­calcitrance, ­governments do not generally implement with enthusiasm changes which they have been forced to make under pressure. And so a continued campaign to ensure that the government kept its latest promises was needed. But it seems probable that the new administration will be more likely to recognize its obligations to people living with AIDS, and that the campaign will proceed on new terrain in the future. This will open new opportunities for activists, just as it poses new strategic challenges. Speaking to power: the political context

Both the hostility which the campaign faced until 2006 and the political advantages it enjoyed must be placed in context. The TAC campaigners were deeply embedded in the culture of the coalition which brought the ANC to power. Much of their style and strategy was based on the experience of anti-apartheid activism. This allowed the campaign to win allies whose anti-apartheid credentials could not be impugned and who could not easily be discredited as enemies of majority rule. It also ensured that, even before the second ‘thaw’, TAC had allies within government. It was claimed that up to half the national cabinet supported the campaign before its demands became government policy.43 Senior politicians and officials in government met privately with campaigners to compare notes and exchange ideas.44 At times, allies were gained precisely because of government ambiguity. Supporting more energetic responses to AIDS did not require a break with government policy. This significantly helped the campaign by creating space for cooperation 54

My experience of activism taught me a lot – in particular, that the greater the pool of leaders we have, the better. I also learned that you can’t just tell people that they must follow the ANC – you have to work among them and earn their respect. It is important to bring people along with you, to sit round a table with them.46

While it would be simplistic in this case to divide the government into former activists sympathetic to the campaign and former exiles opposed to it, personal political histories and experiences do play a role, and campaigners seeking to win allies in government need to be sensitive to them. Throughout its campaign TAC has sought to cultivate partnerships with sympathetic people in government – a stance which it has justified not only by pragmatic need but because a government elected by the majority is the appropriate source of implementation and the role of campaigners is to make government do what democratic principle says it should do. Respect for electoral democracy is a key feature of TAC’s approach.47 Willingness to seek alliances with sections of government does not mean muting criticism. On the contrary – TAC’s approach sometimes seemed calculated to anger government, not win its support. But it does mean assuming that confrontation and willingness to cooperate can go hand in hand and that it is possible to confront parts of government while working with other office-holders. Government politicians’ willingness to tackle AIDS in the period in question responded to shifts in the wider political environment. Achmat therefore argued that, in the provinces in which opposition parties were realistic contenders to govern – KwaZulu-Natal and Western Cape – a favourable government response was more likely because the incentive to act was enhanced. Not surprisingly, major opposition parties greeted the government’s ambiguity on AIDS with relish, portraying themselves as friends of comprehensive treatment. Where these parties can challenge for office, ANC politicians, presumably suspecting that grassroots sentiment is overwhelmingly in favour of a vigorous response, were more inclined to be helpful to people living with AIDS. The workings of multiparty democracy can offer opportunities to activists. This confirms the truism that the success or failure of campaigns 55

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with officials, as well as creating situations in which officials who took more energetic action were enabled to do so by ‘quiet political signals that it is fine to act’.45 A history of activism during the mobilization against apartheid might be considered grounds for support for the TAC, and for some it is:

– and, indeed, the capacity to campaign at all – is influenced by the broader political environment in which campaigning occurs. This ­reality has been conceptualized by Sidney Tarrow’s notion of a ‘political opportunity structure’, which he defines as ‘consistent – but not necessarily formal, permanent or national – dimensions of the political environment which either encourage or discourage people from using collective action’ (Tarrow 1994: 18). However, it is also important to see that the political environment itself is an outcome of collective action and that activism is not simply a passive recipient of political opportunity structures. This was certainly the case in the latter stages of the AIDS campaign: the change in the internal ANC environment was very directly a result of collective action and the way in which it affected the campaign was a consequence of the campaign’s collective action. It would, therefore, be appropriate to understand political oppor­ tunity as a product as well as a precondition of collective action and to examine ways in which action can produce opportunity structures more conducive to citizen action. The key change in the political opportunity structure facing AIDS campaigners is, of course, the defeat of apartheid and the birth of formal democracy in 1994 – a clear product of collective action. This appeared to remove the threat of repression from some types of action – and created potential new opportunities for influence, such as use of the constitutional court or engagement with government. But the new space of action is less clear cut than it seems: apartheid’s response to campaigning, particularly in its later phase, was uneven and, as the system began to unravel, substantial space for mobilization opened. In theory, democracy legally protects the mobilization which effective campaigning often requires, further reducing the risks of acting, but social movement campaigners cite frequent cases in which mobilization – in South Africa’s new democracy as well as many others – is met with repression. And apartheid’s fall ended a key reason for popular collective action – the system itself. While this has not prevented significant popular mobilization since 1994, it remains probable that democratization has reduced the depth and breadth of mobilization – not surprisingly, given the depth and breadth of popular rejection of minority rule. Activists insist, however, that democracy has done more than create an opportunity to focus on AIDS: it has offered many other advantages. A key strategic resource created by the new environment is the rightsbased constitutional order, and the campaign has repeatedly used the courts to cement victories. Participatory structures created since 1994, such as district health committees, hospital and clinic committees, 56

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designed to give citizens a say in health issues, also offer opportunities for influence, and TAC did seek to use them.48 Just as it has opened opportunities, democratization has created new strategic challenges for campaigners. Winning and retaining public opinion have come to matter in a way it did not when campaigns were underpinned by a broad anti-apartheid consensus among the black majority. The legitimacy of the government and the popularity of the ruling party are also new realities which activists tackling government policy forget at their peril: ‘a major tactical error would be to lose support amongst our members as other [activists] have done when they are seen to be threatening democratically elected leaders’.49 While many other campaigns seem to assume no difference between apartheid and democracy, the AIDS campaign has understood that, while a new ­opportunity structure does not demand wholesale abandonment of past strategies and tactics, it requires substantial reflection on what needs to change and what may stay the same. A perhaps unexpected contextual influence on the progress of the campaign has been the weak form of federalism introduced by the constitution. The ANC viewed federalism as a device to weaken the impact of majority rule, and the 1996 constitution introduced a system of ‘cooperative governance’, which in reality meant that provinces operated within parameters set by the national government. These arrangements ensured that provinces had little leeway to adopt their own course of action, and limited the possibility that provincial diversity might create opportunities for TAC. But the provincial system did create unexpected openings for the campaign: ‘It has created space which would not have been there without it. Yes, it allows provinces to resist dealing with AIDS but it also allows them to move ahead of national government.’50 Perhaps the most significant example is Gauteng, whose ANC government was eager to act vigorously against AIDS even before 2003 (Mothibeli et al. 2002), and where senior provincial officials and politicians especially committed to implementation worked closely with TAC. While any attempt by provinces to implement AIDS policy vigorously was, in effect, a rebellion against the centre because the president and health minister were not keen to see the 2003 decision implemented, provinces that were asked by national government why they were vigorously fighting AIDS could answer, accurately, that they were implementing government policy. They would probably find it impossible to make their own decisions on AIDS if they were contradicting a clear government policy. Here, as in other cases, the fact that national government was in a sense working

against its own policy created opportunities as well as constraints for the campaign. While the campaign was seeking a policy change, the battle was fought on a national level. When it turned to pressing the government to implement its decision, making gains against AIDS depended on whether the provincial government was prepared to join the fight against the virus.51 It is possible, therefore, to conclude that the key variable in success was a political context over which activists had no control. But the evidence suggests that it is simplistic to see either the efforts of campaigners or political developments as the sole determinants of the success of a campaign. Without a conducive political environment, no successful campaign is possible: there are few cases in which politicians have no option but to heed campaigners. But campaigning can often ensure that the political context becomes favourable – and remains so. Both vigorous and astute campaigning and politicians and officials willing to listen are essential ingredients of a successful campaign. For campaigners, success may depend on an ability to sense the opportunities that the political environment offers – not only in terms of what already exists but also what can be created with suitable effort – and the ways in which these may be actualized. There is a mutually reinforcing relationship between activism and a favourable political environment; stressing one to the exclusion of the other fails to grasp the preconditions for effective campaigning. How, then, did this campaign become effective? The politics of enhanced possibility

Among those who engage in campaigns for social justice, discussions of attempts to secure change are currently dominated by a keen awareness of constraints. The AIDS campaign, by contrast, tended to assume possibility rather than constraint. Popular mobilization played a significant role in the campaign; a high point was the civil disobedience campaign in response to the government’s failure to sign an agreement for an AIDS treatment plan. But it was characterized by a sense of possibility, an assumption that not only sections of government but a broad spectrum of society domestically and internationally could be recruited to its goals. This strategic optimism proved well founded. Two strategies, therefore, dominated TAC’s approach. First was an attempt to build a ‘moral consensus’ around the need to respond effec­ tively to AIDS. This, rather than organized strength in numbers, was seen by its leaders as their most effective resource.52 They assumed that a small movement with limited organizational power could compensate by appealing to a sense of compassion and fairness across social 58

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­ arriers which are often assumed to impede a common morality. Second b was a stress on building alliances to support demands. In both cases, the strategy assumed that potential support stretched well beyond the ‘natural’ constituency of social justice campaigners. The search for a moral consensus was based both on a strategic assessment of the AIDS issue and a more general point of principle. On the former, Achmat said the campaign sought to expose and highlight the government’s ‘moral weakness’ on AIDS: this was a particular consideration in the decision to use civil disobedience. It did not assume that a well of automatic moral support was already available, but that one could be built. On the latter, he declared that ‘morality is usually left to the churches but we all have a duty to be moral. The left needs to give a sense of morality to politics.’53 At first glance, there is nothing remarkable about either perspective, but in reality they express a novel strategic perspective. A campaign which seeks to build broad social consensus about the morality of the campaigners’ demands needs to go well beyond moralizing. First, it needs to be sensitive to the moral universe of its constituency. Thus, TAC was always aware of the need to endorse the norms and rules of the 1994 constitution, not only because it believed that they offered possibilities, but also because it knew how much a part of most of its members’ moral universe they were. And it was always willing to tailor its strategies to prevailing moral sentiment – Achmat said that the TAC-government rapprochement of 2006 was partly prompted by an understanding that the public wanted the two to cooperate against the virus. Considerable attention also needs to be paid to framing the moral issue in terms that speak to the universals which bind people across society’s divides. The AIDS campaign may show, therefore, that singleissue campaigns can attract a wide array of moral allies, including sections of the middle class and business. This creates the rationale for the second aspect of this campaign’s strategy – the willingness to seek recruits to the moral consensus in unlikely places: among police officers during the civil disobedience campaign,54 in the mainstream media and among business people and professionals. The second part of Achmat’s formulation – morality as a principle – is also relevant here because it is an important aspect of morality’s effective use as a strategic resource. If morality is a campaign’s core strategic asset, it must become essential to all activity – from financial management and commitment to internal democracy to the way in which campaigns are designed – since losing the moral high ground

would be to lose the campaign’s chief rationale. This means accepting constraints which do not apply when morality is seen only as a useful device for occasional use. One example is Achmat’s decision not to take ARVs while others did not have access to them, a decision which threatened at one stage to cost him his life. In his view this is one of several cases which demonstrated ‘a distinct tension between morality and strategy’.55 Another is the considerable effort devoted to ensuring that the civil disobedience campaign – a strategy which relies largely on moral example to make its impact – was subject to strict discipline that required participants to give themselves up for arrest.56 South Africa’s specific context may offer advantages for cam­paigners seeking to advance moral arguments, particularly those based on a ­notion of rights. Since the stress on human rights played a major role in defeating apartheid, rights-based language has a strong resonance in current majority political culture. But in all democracies, particularly new ones whose citizens have won their freedom relatively recently, rights-based moral appeals may have particular resonance. Morality has also become an important international resource for campaigners. Advances in communications technology mean that ideas and information can travel the globe more quickly than ever before and one effect is to enhance the moral vulnerability of international businesses: an environment in which a company official can be faced with immediate moral embarrassment in America and Europe because of actions in Africa is one which offers considerable scope for activists who see the moral high ground as an important source of influence. Alli­ances between local campaigners and civil society organizations in the North become important potential sources of power in this context. This dimension enhances the likelihood that the stress on morality which has played an important role in the AIDS campaign may become an increasingly central aspect of the armoury of single-issue campaigners. Much the same can be said of the stress on alliances. While the South African campaign’s most effective alliances have been with  North­ern activist groups which could place pressure on multinational drug companies and the government, the TAC leadership tended to see dom­estic alliances as an equally important resource. Calculating which interests with potential leverage are likely to be potential allies is a major factor in strategic decisions. Again, at first glance this does not seem particularly significant. Groups campaigning for change rarely if ever represent a majority in society – nor do they encompass all potential sources of influence on their issue. Effectiveness therefore depends on building alliances. 60

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TAC sought allies wherever they might be found. Some were obvious like-minded groups, but allies also included senior business people, media and even, in one case, an organization supported by a pharmaceutical company (Friedman and Mottiar 2004). A stress on alliances as an indispensable strategic resource rather than as a useful adjunct entails a willingness to tolerate serious differences – AIDS campaigners have worked with the Catholic Church despite a wide chasm in their approach to the use of condoms.57 Sometimes, alliances entailed significant compromises. Thus, when a key ally of the campaign, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), objected to the civil disobedience campaign on the grounds that it was a rebellion against government authority, it was agreed that COSATU’s failure to participate would not jeopardize the alliance.58 TAC remained open to the possibility that opponents on some issues can be allies on others. The key feature of the campaign to change government policy was the ability to compensate for a lack of numbers and organized power by assuming a potential for influence and alliances. Its success shows that the expanded possibilities which it visualized were genuine sources of influence rather than naive illusions. But while these approaches proved highly successful in winning policy change, they proved far less so in ensuring that it was implemented after 2003. The coalition which was assembled to win the 2003 concession did not resurface after the victory. A TAC activist suggests that this was avoidable, the result of strategic error.59 TAC did not recognize that it is much easier to persuade allies to rally round when a policy change is to be won than when that change must be turned into practical gains. The issues are less clear cut and it is far more difficult to instil a sense of urgency among the like-minded. What evidence we have suggests that opportunities were indeed missed after 2003. A survey from 2004 shows considerable public dissatisfaction with government attempts to tackle AIDS (Kuper Research 2004), suggesting that the moral consensus forged by the campaign still held after 2003 – and that public consciousness was not dulled by the shift from a dispute of principle to a battle over the details of implementation. Sustained mobilization efforts may have yielded continuing results. One reason why this did not happen may be insufficient ability to generate ‘pressure from below’:60 TAC devised a strategy to push provinces ‘in a more helpful direction’ but was not able to implement it as well as it hoped because of a lack of capacity at provincial and district health committee level.61 TAC had far fewer local activists than it needs: ‘we need resources to develop a new activist cadre: we have fifty or sixty and

need five or six hundred’.62 And it may partly have been impaired by its success: ‘we are arrogant at times, assuming that we are the repository of all knowledge on AIDS’.63 Some activists believed campaigners ‘let the minister run wild after 2003’ because they wanted to allow the government to get on with implementing its decision. The decision not to attack the government was deliberate – it was an attempt to ‘coax it into partnership’. But the year spent doing this was ‘wasted’ because only more pressure would have worked;64 by September 2005, many activists at TAC’s conference ‘felt we should revive our street presence’.65 We cannot know whether a sustained campaign would have yielded greater implementation gains. But failure to sustain a winning campaign strategy may have limited progress after 2003. And the clear implication is that campaigns need to focus at least as much effort on winning implementation as they do on pursuing policy changes. So this is winning? Evaluating impact

If the emotions of campaigners are a guide, the fight to win an appro­priate response to AIDS achieved far less than its admirers have claimed. The mood among senior TAC activists towards the end of 2005 was largely gloomy. Achmat confessed to deep despair at the ‘genocide’ triggered by official indifference to people living with AIDS. Another TAC leader insisted that gains since 2003 were relatively trivial compared to the need for change.66 What lies behind the TAC leadership’s sense that, after the victory of 2003, the fight was not being won? The first explanation may stem from the nature of the issue. Activists engaged in an attempt to win help for millions living with a deadly virus are likely to adopt different standards to those seeking new rights or a greater share of resources for the poor – the price of insufficient progress in the AIDS case is not a dream deferred but the preventable death of thousands. Second, TAC strategists’ understanding of national policy change was one in which the protagonists are guided by a calculation of interests and strategic objectives. In this model, governments resist policy change because it forces them into directions into which their selfinterest would not compel them. When the change is conceded, they are naturally reluctant to implement it. Whether they do so depends on their calculations of the costs and benefits of acceding to pressure weighed against their desire to retain their preferred policies. Senior TAC strategists expected the president and minister of health to drag their feet, but not to actively obstruct progress: ‘we were hoping for benign neglect and would have settled for that’.67 But in the view of 62

We were a top-down organization but now our members are showing a potential to lead. Branch members used to keep quiet in meetings but are beginning to participate actively – it started small with ideas for Tshirt designs but grew with ideas on how to deal with local clinics.70

In this way, TAC implicitly aided democratization by ensuring not only that people were able to claim their rights but that they are better able to participate as democratic citizens. Equally important is whether those with least power gain a sense of their ability to become active citizens. TAC leaders reported in 2004 that membership mostly comprised society’s weakest: ‘members are eighty per cent unemployed, seventy per cent women, […] seventy per cent in the fourteen to twenty-four age group, and ninety per cent African’.71 And they were convinced that it had enhanced their sense of their ability to exercise their rights: ‘Participation in TAC makes [our members] aware of what they can do.’72 TAC’s role in fighting the stigma of HIV and AIDS was itself an important contribution to change, one which one activist argued is still a priority.73 And information on the virus and how to cope with it helped participants take control of a vital aspect of their lives.74 Crucially, victories – including those in the courts – are said to ‘facilitate empowerment’ of members, enhancing members’ belief that their actions can 63

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the campaigners, the president and minister of health waged war not against a threat to their government’s policy, but against that policy itself, for reasons which were far from clear.68 To AIDS activists – and many others – government resistance was intolerable precisely because it was inexplicable. Where people are dying because politicians who by any ‘rational’ political calculation should be actively trying to prevent their death are seen to be obstructing efforts to help them, anger is inevitably heightened. One activist described the conflict as a ‘stupid fight’ – ‘when most activists take on the government, they are dealing with rational self-interest. We are not.’69 Given the context, the pessimism of senior TAC activists may be under­ standable. But campaigns are not judged only by the policy c­hanges they win, or the way those changes are implemented; they are also a means by which citizens exercise their right to be heard (Robinson and Friedman 2005). The campaign for a comprehensive response to AIDS must, therefore, be judged by whether it gave voice to citizens who would otherwise not be heard, enabling them to claim their rights, deepening democracy and redistributing power. An obvious test is whether those meant to benefit participate in shaping the campaign. Participants did enjoy a say in TAC decisions:

make a difference.75 For thousands who would otherwise experience not only voicelesseness but also stigmatization, TAC has been a vehicle not only to secure treatment but also to acquire a voice and a new sense of dignity and political efficacy. Whether or not the more pessimistic view of progress since late 2003 is accepted, this is a clear achievement of the campaign. Disappointment with the government approach to AIDS, however, meant that this heightened sense of efficacy was not channelled into party politics. It was unclear whether the active citizenship which the campaign encouraged would be channelled into ANC politics, that of a new and yet-to-be-born opposition, or would remain in civil society. It was also not clear whether disillusion would prompt rejection of party politics – or a new engagement. Successful campaigns for policy change can open possibilities for wider impact by the campaigners: winning a specific issue can place broader goals on the agenda, building momentum for deeper gains for the poor and weak. Leaders of the AIDS campaign insisted that they had a far broader vision than winning a comprehensive response to the virus. Achmat suggested that: TAC is not a single-issue campaign – we also deal with governance, corporate governance and domestic violence. We are aiming to reorder the health sector. We need to build a culture of complaint. We have a progressive social democratic vision and shouldn’t hide it.76

While TAC leaders harboured a vision of social change which goes well beyond treatment for people infected by AIDS, it did seem likely that, for the foreseeable future, the demands on its time and resources made by HIV and AIDS would be so great that active engagement in a wider agenda would remain sporadic and secondary. It seemed likely to continue to speak for people who see progress on treating AIDS as their reason for participation. This would limit opportunities to tackle broader issues in a systematic way, even if, as at the time of the research, they were raised sporadically by AIDS campaigners. As long as the gains of the campaign for an effective response to AIDS remained fragile, so too would campaigners’ attention be focused primarily on seeking to preserve and cement the AIDS gains. In consequence, substantial campaigns to win broader social change using the AIDS campaign as a springboard looked likely to be deferred.

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What does South Africa’s AIDS campaign tell us about the possibilities for effective campaigns to win greater social justice in the current climate? The first point of significance is that the campaign was waged in a constitutional democracy. Perhaps the most compelling confirmation that democracy has opened up opportunities for influence is the fact  that the AIDS campaign, which has been far more concerned to use the instruments offered by constitutional democracy than any other attempt to win change in post-apartheid South Africa, has also been far more successful than its counterparts in winning change. Democratic governments face constraints which authoritarians do not. The most obvious is that voter opinion does matter – even the ANC, with a seemingly unassailable lock on electoral victory, cannot simply ignore the needs and demands of people who support it. Further, the types of opinion formers which governments must take seriously change in a democracy – in this case, figures such as Mandela, former Medical Research Council head Professor Malegapuru Makgoba and Anglican archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane were important influences. But this derived in part from their public credibility in a democratic en­ vironment: they would not have had the same impact on the apartheid government. Since it may be safely assumed that influential opinion formers sympathetic to social justice are easier to find in formal demo­ cracies, mobilizing sentiment in support of change towards greater equity becomes more possible in a democracy. The campaign shows, therefore, that liberal democracies do create openings which, if used, can produce changes in national policy. As implied earlier, it is not fanciful to see the South African AIDS campaign as something of a test for the proposition that formal democracy creates opportunities for change which campaigners need to use more effectively. The campaign was premised throughout on respect for constitutional democracy and use of its instruments: while the civil disobedience campaign may seem an exception, the campaign was conducted so as to recognize the legitimacy of the democratic order, not to challenge it. TAC’s gains vindicate its assumption that the system born in 1994 does allow citizens to win concrete change. The case also seems to invite campaigners to expand their sense of possibilities. A key feature of this campaign was the opportunities offered by advances in communications technology which now make coordinated cross-national campaigns for justice far more effective by creating opportunities for pressure on power holders which were not 65

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Conclusion: more than we thought, less than we hoped?

nearly as effective before. Second, the campaign’s assumption that the range of potential supporters – and the scope for demonstrating power holders’ moral weakness – was far greater than campaigners often ­assume is confirmed by the range of the coalition which endorsed its demands and the degree to which a government supported by more than two-thirds of the electorate was isolated on this issue. Campaigns for structural change do not emerge out of a vacuum. They are invariably a cumulative result of campaigns to win reforms on particular issues. It is through single-issue campaigns that the poor and marginalized acquire the organization and sense that they can make a difference which make more ambitious attempts to use democratic rights to win equity possible. If the lessons drawn here show only how the preparatory campaigns might succeed, they may also point to the potential beginnings of a sustained attempt to ensure that formal democratic rights are turned into policy changes which create a more just society. Notes 13  Interview, Khumalo, TAC executive member, 2005. 14  Interview, Geffen, 2004. 15  Interviews, Heywood, Geffen, 2004. 16  Interview, Mthathi, TAC general secretary, 2005. 17  Interviews, Durban grassroots activists, 2004. 18  Interview, Mvotho, TAC Khayelitsha district organizer, 2004. 19  Interview, Mvinjelwa, 2004. 20  Interview, Mthethwa, chair, TAC KwaZulu-Natal, 2003. 21  Interview, Madlala-Routledge, deputy minister of health, 2005. 22  Interview, Achmat, TAC chair, 2005. 23  Interview, Cape Town government official, 2005. 24  Interview, Khumalo, 2005. 25  Interviews, TAC activists, 2005. 26  Interviews, Heywood, Achmat, 2005. 27  Interview, Heywood, 2005. 28  Interviews, Geffen, 2004, Mthathi, 2005.

1  Interview, Heywood, TAC treasurer, 2004. 2  The research is based on key informant interviews between 2003 and 2005. Analysis of several of these interviews has already been published in Friedman and Mottiar (2004). 3  See www.tac.org.za/­ community/, accessed May 2009. 4  Interview, Heywood, 2004. 5  Interviews, Mvinjelwa, TAC Western Cape provincial adminis­ trator, 2004; Mpongose, TAC KwaZulu-Natal provincial executive committee, 2003; Nkala, TAC KwaZulu-Natal organizer, 2003. 6  Interview, Cele, TAC KwaZuluNatal coordinator, 2003. 7  Interview, Geffen, TAC national manager, 2004. 8  Interview, Xaba, secretary, TAC KwaZulu-Natal, 2003. 9  Interview, Ramuthwala, 2005. 10  Interview, Cele, 2003. 11  Interview, Berold, 2005. 12  Interview, Heywood, 2004. 66

50  Interview, Heywood, 2004. 51  Interview, Achmat, 2005. 52  Interview, Achmat, 2004. 53  Ibid. 54  Ibid. 55  Ibid. 56  Ibid. 57  Ibid. 58  Interview, Mpolokeng, HIV and AIDS co-ordinator, COSATU, 2004. 59  Interview, Geffen, 2004. 60  Interview, Khumalo, 2005. 61  Interview, Geffen, 2004. 62  Interview, Heywood, 2004. 63  Ibid. 64  Interview, Achmat, 2005. 65  Interview, Khumalo, 2005. 66  Interviews, Mthathi, Khumalo, 2005. 67  Interview, Achmat, 2005. 68  Interview, Mthathi, 2005. 69  Interview, Geffen, 2004. 70  Interview, Kunene, TAC Gauteng provincial organizer, 2004. 71  Interview, Achmat, 2004. 72  Interview, Heywood, 2004. 73  Interview, Dlamini, treatment project coordinator, 2004. 74  Interview, Geffen, 2004. 75  Interview, Mvotho, 2004. 76  Interview, Achmat, 2004.

References attending public antenatal clinics in South Africa – 2001, ­summary report’, Nelson Mandela/ HSRC Study of HIV/AIDS, South African National HIV Prevalence, Behavioural Risks and Mass Media Household Survey 2002, www.avert.org/safricastats.htm, accessed 7 September 2007. Directorate Health Systems Research (2002) National HIV and Syphilis Antenatal Sero-Prevalence Survey in South Africa 2002, Pretoria: Department of Health.

Blandy, F. (2006) ‘SA government under fire at Aids conference’, Mail and Guardian, 19 August. Cullinan, K. (2006) ‘Deputies bring new energy to HIV/AIDS’, Health E-News Service, www.health-e.org. za/news/article.php?uid=2003 1530, accessed November 2006. Daniels, L. (2007) ‘State unveils “ambitious” plan for HIV’, Cape Times, 28 February. Department of Health (2002) ‘National HIV and syphilis sero-prevalence survey of women 67

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29  Interview, Madlala-Routledge, 2005. 30  Interview, Geffen, 2004. 31  Interview, Achmat, 2005. 32  Ibid. 33  Interview, Madlala-Routledge, 2005. 34  Interview, Achmat, 2005. 35  Interview, Mthathi, 2005. 36  Interview, Mthembu, TAC organizer, 2005. 37  The Freedom Charter, adopted in 1955, was regarded until the 1990s as the definitive statement of the ANC’s vision. 38  Interview, Madlala-Routledge. 39  Remarks by Minister of Health Vuyo Mbuli Show, SABC Radio, December 2005. 40  Interview, Geffen, 2004. 41  Interview, Achmat, 2005. 42  Discussion, AIDS strategy workshop, Johannesburg, 2007. 43  Interview, Geffen, 2004. 44  Interviews, Mthathi, Heywood, 2005. 45  Interview, Geffen, 2004. 46  Interview, Madlala-Routledge, 2005. 47  Interview, Achmat, 2004. 48  Interview, Heywood, 2005. 49  Interview, Achmat, 2004.

Friedman, S. (2006) ‘Spring of hope, winter of worry for South African democracy’, Business Day, 6 August. Friedman, S. and S. Mottiar (2004) ‘A rewarding engagement? The Treatment Action Campaign and the politics of HIV/AIDS’, Centre for Civil Society, University of KwaZulu Natal, www.nu.ac.za/ ccs/, accessed 7 September 2007. Jones, P. (2005) ‘A test of governance: rights-based struggles and the politics of HIV/AIDS policy in South Africa’, Political Geography, 24(4), May. Kuper Research (2004) Socio-Political Trends and Government Perform­ ance Barometer, Johannesburg: Kuper Research. Mail and Guardian (2003) ‘Manto’s garlic won’t stop Aids’, 10 Nov­ ember. Manuel, T. (2000) ‘Budget speech’, 23 February, www.finance.gov.za, accessed 7 September 2007. Mbali, M. (2005) ‘The Treatment ­Action Campaign and the history of rights-based, patient-driven HIV/AIDS activism in South Africa’, in P. Jones and K. Stokke (eds), Democratising Development: The politics of socio-economic

rights in South Africa, Leiden and Boston, MA: Martinus Nijhoff. Mothibeli, T., V. Mvoko and P. Sidley (2002) ‘ANC chiefs grapple with AIDS policy’, Business Day, 19 February, new.hst.org.za/news/ index.php/20020223/, accessed 7 September 2007. Nessman, R. (2002) ‘Generic AIDS drugs come to S. Africa’, Associated Press, 29 January. Robinson, M. and S. Friedman (2005) ‘Civil society, democratization and foreign aid in Africa’, IDS Discussion Paper 383, Brighton: Institute for Development ­Studies. TAC (2001) ‘An explanation of the Medicines Act and the implications of the court victory’, Treatment Action Campaign statement, 24 April. — (2003) ‘TAC welcomes cabinet statement committing to antiretroviral treatment rollout’, TAC News Service, 8 August. — (2005) ‘TAC Political Report 2003/05’, Prepared for the Third TAC National Congress, Cape Town, 23–25 September. — (2007) ‘About TAC’, www.tac.org. za, accessed 7 September 2007. Tarrow, S. (1994) Power in Movement, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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3 ·  Redistributing land in the Philippines: social movements and state reformers S aturnino M . B orras , J r and J ennifer C . F ranco

This chapter examines the national citizens’ campaign for land reform in the Philippines. In a society such as the Philippines today, where land still connotes wealth and power concentrated in the hands of the few, land reform holds a great deal of political significance and generates intense political conflict. It is probably the only public policy area that continues to mobilize a range of pro- and anti-reform actors in both the state and civil society, and to encourage the rise of sustained strategic alliances. The history of land reform in the Philippines has been marked by a pattern of periodic cycles of intense social mobilization in favour of land reform being met by a lukewarm state response and government inertia. Government accountability to poor rural citizens demanding land reform has never been automatic; nor have government promises of reform made under intense social pressure been enough to deliver real results. Instead, there has been a steady succession of promises broken and opportunities lost. Yet this basic pattern has been broken. Despite a host of pessimistic predictions about the inherent flaws of the 1988 Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Programme (CARP), after an initial lag an unexpectedly pos­ itive trend in land reform implementation took hold. Between 1992 and 1998, land redistribution took off and the momentum continued into the next presidential term, though at a diminishing pace. After 2001, government inertia reasserted itself, and since then implementation of the programme has lumbered on half-heartedly, suffering serious legal assaults on its scope and legitimacy. But, according to the government, by 2007 6 million hectares of private and public lands – about half of the country’s farmland – had been redistributed to 3 million poor rural households, representing two-fifths of the agricultural population. In addition, 1.5 million hectares of land had been subjected to leasehold, benefiting about one million tenant-peasant households.1 The aggregate gains in land redistribution made during the 1992–98 69

period are quite remarkable. And if one takes a close look at any one of the hundreds of individual land conflict cases from this period that were hard fought between an entrenched rural elite and tenant or farm worker claimants, and then won by the latter, the achievement becomes all the more remarkable (Franco 2008). It is precisely through such difficult political-legal struggles to control the meaning and purpose of the development process – waged both inside and outside state structures – that new collective identities and attitudes towards authorities are constructed at the grass roots. These identities and attitudes are potentially important indicators of democratization. This, then, poses a question. If the Philippines has such a long and tarnished record in land reform, what explains the broadly unexpected outcome of partial but significant success in land reform during this particular time? This chapter examines the reasons behind and possible wider implications of the fact that slightly over half of Philippines’ land reform accomplishment over the past thirty-five years was achieved during this one six-year period. Why did the central state carry out a redistributive land reform at the time when, globally, this type of public policy had been dropped from the agendas of most nation-states and international development institutions? What were the dynamics of interaction among the key actors in state and civil society, and between the two? What are the implications of insights from this case for our broader understanding of how citizens’ participation in national policies can make a significant impact? We argue that this unexpected outcome was mainly the result of the ­peculiar nature of state–society interactions around national policymaking and implementation during this period. We contend that the authoritative interpretation and implementation of agrarian laws is a very complex and perhaps unexpectedly open-ended process, which results from the actions and interactions of state and societal actors at different levels of the polity. In the late 1980s, the potentials of the land reform programme remained beyond the limits of many people’s political imaginations, and much had to be rethought and then proved before positive momentum could begin. This momentum was not fuelled by willpower alone; rather, movement forward in land redistribution was the result of the ongoing strategic interactions of key actors and their chosen political strategies within changing yet specific historical-institutional contexts. Historical context of land reform

The history of citizens’ engagement with the state on land reform is characterized by cycles of resistance and acquiescence, independence 70

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and co-option, success and failure. Citizen engagement has always been marked by socio-economic and geographic diversity, as well as by pluralism in terms of political strategies. Such diversity and pluralism have shaped perceptions of what is desirable and possible. Agrarian unrest in particular is long-standing, going back to the Spanish colonial period (1565–1898) which saw the introduction of the concept of individual freehold private property in land. This concept laid the foundations for the development of land monopoly, which has persisted despite a long and variable line of agrarian reform initiatives (McCoy and de Jesus 1982); the government’s own data showed that by 1998 ‘not more than five per cent of all families owned eighty-three per cent of farm land’ (Putzel 1992: 27). It was not until the twentieth century that notions of justice became firmly anchored in organized demands for land by the peasantry. Successive peasant uprisings not only spread the call for agrarian justice nationwide, but also kept pushing land reform on to the national government agenda; they also gave rise to political strategies aimed at pushing the state to respond to peasant demands in democratic ways. Over time this has led to getting land reform on the central state agenda, expanding its scope and deepening its legal basis, and pushing government to keep its promises. The significance of the current land reform programme cannot be understood without reference to this history of agrarian unrest, and rural poor Filipinos’ increasingly focused and politically sophisticated struggle for agrarian justice. If this has been primarily about land, it has necessarily also been about expanding the existing limits to political democracy and democratic state-building. Historically, social pressure from below increasingly pushed the Philippine state to respond with programmes that emphasized resettlement programmes involving land frontiers. This pattern of resettlement and repression, rather than redistribution (Abinales 2000), was the dominant character of programmes during the first three-quarters of the past century. By the 1960s, however, state response to renewed agrarian unrest began to move tentatively towards redistribution, introducing the possibility of progressive measures under the 1963 Land Reform Code, and an agrarian reform programme which followed a decade later under the authoritarian regime of President Marcos. This programme’s failure to deliver wide reform (Boyce 1993) fanned the flames of agrarian unrest and heightened peasant demands for justice. By the early 1980s, peasant protest had spread across the country, largely in the form of a Maoist-inspired revolutionary movement. It is partly because this movement played a key role in linking and mobilizing the anti-dictatorship

movement nationwide that agrarian reform made it on to the agenda of the new government installed after Marcos’s fall in 1986. But landed elites and their allies experienced a political resurgence which led to the promulgation of a compromise land reform law (Lara 1986). The parameters of state-sponsored agrarian reform have come a long way since the 1930s. Persistent protest contributed to ratcheting up the content of societal demands for agrarian justice over time (Putzel 1992) and altering the nature of state response. Every new state response brought failure and unkept promises, which kept movements alive (Herring 2003) while teaching social movement actors how to sharpen their advocacy and increase their political impact. The persistent challenge from below slowly changed the way the central state related to social movements. In the authoritarian era, the state preferred to work with co-opted peasant groups, and repeatedly repressed autonomous groups. But the liberal democratic gains during the post-authoritarian period facilitated the entry of more reform-oriented officials into the state bureaucracy, especially within the executive branch, and provided democratic rights – albeit partial and uneven – which strengthened the political capital of rural citizens for claim-making vis-à-vis the state (Franco 2001a). Changes in the ‘political opportunity structure’ (Tarrow 1998) – such as progressive changes in the legal framework of land rights – can lead to changes in the nature, form and scale of peasants’ campaigns for land reform.2 For example, between 1972 and 1986 the most consistent mobilizations by peasants for land occurred in tenanted rice and corn farms, lands which were the subject of the Marcos reform. When peasants and workers mobilized in farms not covered by reform, they did so for demands other than land, such as labour-oriented claims. The more systematic, concrete and sustained mobilizations by peasants and farm workers for land outside the rice and corn sectors arose only after CARP was passed into law in 1988 (Kerkvliet 1993). Another crucial factor determining citizen mobilization has been the availability of allies. During the 1970s and 1980s, when only clandestine struggle was possible, the Communist Party was the peasants’ main ally, leading an insurgency. In the post-authoritarian context of the 1980s, however, NGOs began to emerge as allies for peasants and farm workers. By the 1986–88 period, when the national land reform policy debate unfolded, several progressive peasant organizations had emerged. A national coalition of peasants, the Congress for a People’s Agrarian Reform, was formed in 1987, but within five years it had collapsed amid disagreements about how to respond to the CARP law of 1988 and the 72

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presidential election of 1992. This collapse, together with splits in the revolutionary left, created an opportunity for realignments within the peasant movement and NGO community that would prove favourable to the cause of land reform. The emergence of new formations of auton­ omous rural social movements ushered in a new era characterized by a combination of militancy and pragmatism among rural people’s movements which had an especially positive impact on efforts to initiate full and meaningful implementation of CARP’s progressive provisions. The different organizations and networks that came to occupy civil society space during this time embraced different strategies for land reform campaigning. Broadly, these can be divided into four groups. The first, comprising those identified with the revolutionary communist left, opposed CARP and worked to undermine it, arguing that genuine land reform would be implemented after the seizure of state power by the worker–peasant alliance. Its strategy was to focus on media work, capitalizing on carefully selected negative land reform cases that have big political propaganda value. The second group was the traditional peasant organizations, co-opted by the state, which relied on a few charismatic, well-connected leaders to follow up cases in various Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) and government offices. This strategy was essentially the manifestation of a double-sided patron–client relationship: between the leader and the ordinary poor people, and between government officials and the leader. The third type was the ‘conservative reformists’, mostly connected to Catholic institutions and NGOs, who favoured a conflict-free partnership with government. Their focus was on technical legalities; often the key actors were NGO leaders or staff, rather than organized claimants themselves. By reducing land reform to a development project issue, this strategy depoliticized the land reform process, focusing on less politically controversial and contentious landholdings. Finally, the fourth group might be called the ‘progressive left reformists’, who developed and promoted the bibingka strategy, combining autonomous and militant social mobilization from below with initiatives by state reformists from above (Borras 1999, 2001; Fox 1993). Its forms of collective action have ranged from forcible land occupation to dialogues, from street marches to legal offensives, from petition letters to occupation and padlocking of DAR offices and gates to dramatize protests. By persistently navigating between outright opposition and uncritical collaboration with the state (Franco 1999a), members of this group attempted to maximize the reformist potential of CARP, while

r­ emaining strategically concerned with redistributive land reform beyond the existing policy. This strategy proved to be groundbreaking;3 we now take a closer look at how it worked. The bibingka strategy: mobilizations ‘from below’ meet reformist initiatives ‘from above’

There are at least four important political openings for poor peasants campaigning for land reform: access to power, shifting alignments, availability of influential elites and cleavages within and among elites. The availability of all or some of these opportunities can create possibilities that even weak and disorganized actors can take advantage of; conversely, the strong may also grow weak. Regime transitions, even periodic administration turnover through competitive elections, offer changes in the structure of political opportunities and openings that can be potentially favourable to the landless poor, especially when the ruling classes are fragmented into competing factions (Tarrow 1998).

Land reform dynamism after 1992  For all President Corazon Aquino’s promises of ‘people power’, the political opportunities for agrarian reform during the first post-Marcos government (1986–92) were quite limited. Although this period witnessed the promulgation of the CARP law, there was bureaucratic inertia and lack of political will when it came to implementing it. A DAR bureaucracy dominated by conservative forces opted to work with farmers’ associations that they could control in exchange for limited concessions. A group of reformists within the DAR bureaucracy led by former activists were isolated and overpowered, and had limited impact. The effect of large sections of the rural social movement choosing to boycott the CARP programme was to further strengthen the hand of the anti-reform forces, and to further isolate the few reformists within the state. It seemed that the political system was inherently flawed and that nothing could be expected from this or any agrarian reform programme under the prevailing political dispensation. This state of affairs was significantly altered by the 1992 elections, which divided the political elite, and shifting political alignments within the state brought about by the electoral process favoured the cause of agrarian reform. The new president, Fidel Ramos, entered office with a very weak electoral mandate and sought to broaden his political base, recruiting some reform-minded civil society activists into the state bureau­cracy, including the DAR. Reforms initiated by a team at the DAR under the leadership of Ernesto Garilao (1992–98) were to con74

there were more pressures from the family of Cory Aquino than from the family of Fidel Ramos for us to make anti-land reform decisions or favour presidential friends in our decisions. And if there was pressure [from President Ramos], it was done in a subtle way. It was so subtle that you cannot even […] you’re not even sure, that it was there […] I think there is not much debate to say that Ramos was never an anti-land ­reform president, as compared to Aquino.4

Over time and to varying degrees, and at different organizational levels, the DAR bureaucracy has been subject to the influences of both anti- and pro-reform state and societal actors. There are many different opinions and positions among DAR employees and officials in this huge bureaucracy, ranging from active pro-land reformists, to ‘fence-sitters’, to rent-seekers, to land reform opponents. However, the political and geographic location of lower-level employees and officials leaves them especially vulnerable to anti-reform influences and manipulation: most DAR employees at these lower levels face the daily threat of coercion, reprisal and harassment by landlords in active resistance to the government reform programme. As a result, many local DAR officials who were supposed to be front-line CARP implementers had become immobilized. It is important to note that local-level bureaucracies, just like the local peasant groups, need allies at the top if they are to pursue land reform. If they do not perceive support from allies at the head of the bureaucracy, they will tend to remain fence-sitters or might become anti-reformist. Thus, the nature of the leadership in the national DAR office is of critical importance in determining the orientation of those at lower levels: the top leadership’s orientation tends to be mirrored at the lower levels of the bureaucracy. Meanwhile, the DAR is embedded within the broader state apparatus and bureaucracy that directly and indirectly facilitates or blocks efforts to implement land reform. For example, the DAR must contend with Congress in terms of yearly decisions on its budget allocations to the various CARP components. Historically, Congress has been the bastion of landowning classes and their allies, and the source of the most serious 75

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tribute immensely to a favourable change in the political environment for autonomous local land reform movements to emerge. It is relevant that President Ramos and his wife did not come from big landowning families. Comparing attitudes to land reform in the Aquino and Ramos periods, Gerry Bulatao, a DAR official during both administrations, noted:

anti-reform attacks against CARP. The DAR must also contend with a judiciary that, like Congress, is known to be heavily influenced by the elite. It is not uncommon to see landlords use the judiciary – from local to supreme courts – to block the implementation of land reform (Franco 2008). Finally, the DAR deals directly with a complex web of state agencies, large and small, in the everyday implementation of land reform. More than twenty agencies are directly involved in the various aspects of CARP implementation, and many have demonstrated little sympathy for the cause of land reform. Despite the entrenched anti-land reform leaderships of these agencies, some pro-land reform enclaves have emerged in some of them since the early 1990s. Ramos’s election initially elicited grim predictions about the fate of the already much weakened CARP. But the appointment of Ernesto Garilao as the new DAR secretary suggested differently. Garilao himself believed that he had been selected by Ramos to become the DAR sec­ ret­ary because he was ‘not politically controversial – considering that at that time agrarian reform was very controversial’.5 In his first few days in office, he convinced Ramos to drop a campaign promise which ­favoured the landed elite, which he achieved with little opposition. Garilao continued by bringing several respected NGO activists into key positions in the DAR leadership, and proceeded by framing his plan: The vision was there, and it was very simple – more lands to be distributed at a shorter time, faster rate of resolving agrarian disputes. So I ­approached some friends from the NGO community, and I told them that since it’s them who know how to make these things work they should join me in running the department. And most of them did.6

He also consolidated the ranks of existing liberal reformers in the bureaucracy and gave some of them more important positions, and sought informal consultations with members of the broad community of autonomous NGOs and peasant organizations. Garilao explained that When President Ramos appointed me secretary […] I brought in a number of NGO development practitioners to become agrarian reform state implementers. We adhered to the principle that for the redistributive programme to succeed, it must have the support of the public in general, and of [a] major constituency in particular, the landless ­farmers. Since that was not present in 1992, we had to develop strong constituency support. (Garilao 1999: ix)

Garilao calculated that it was likely that popular support for his 76

at times I would tell the president or other cabinet members or congressmen that if we don’t do this or that then the militant farmers’ groups are going to rally against us […] I used this kind of bargaining strategy within the government many times, and it proved effective.7

The reform-oriented officials could not have consolidated their ranks and their position had it not been for the critical engagement by the former communist left, which had formerly refused to cooperate with CARP. This group opted to drop their strategy of boycott and adopt a position of ‘critical engagement’ with the land reform law. Garilao said, It was necessary to view them as autonomous partners and that we intersect in areas where there are common agreements, and seek resolutions in areas of difference […] Our thinking was that if we were to have a strong civil society support, we had to get the agrarian reform actors of civil society to penetrate the agrarian reform state apparatus. (Ibid.: xix–xx)

The positioning of the DAR between 1992 and 1998 thus differed from the previous four years of CARP implementation in several ways. Garilao had a dynamic two-way relationship with the executive branch of government, especially with the Office of the President. He was able to stabilize the agrarian reform front, and in doing so earned the government’s confidence, or at least tolerance. He demonstrated ability and willingness to challenge anti-reform policy currents in other agencies and groups of state actors. Through Garilao’s efforts, liberal reform advocates became deeply and widely entrenched within the DAR nationwide. The appointment of progressive, radical reformers in regional and provincial DAR positions brought the reformist leadership closer to the rank-and-file field officials and employees. The signal from the national leadership of its serious reformism was picked up by field personnel, leading numerous fence-sitters to jump on to the nationwide bandwagon of reformism. Autonomous peasant groups and NGOs started to interact with these local DAR reformers, leading to numerous gains in land reform. By the time Garilao left the bureaucracy in mid-1998, what generally remained to be redistributed under the DAR was the more politically contentious private landholdings. 77

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reformist actions would, in turn, strengthen his leverage within the broader state bureaucracy. He commented that

Framework for constructive initiatives from below  During the Garilao ­ eriod, various forms of pressure politics, such as pickets, dialogues, p street marches, camp-outs and land occupation, were increasingly employed by peasant organizations and their allies. Most of these actions had clear demands associated with particular landholdings. Complementary to these local actions have been campaigns intended to bring the poor people’s movements in direct contact with state actors. This latter type of initiative, directed towards the national level, aimed to improve and systematize implementation mechanisms to speed up and broaden the scope of land redistribution. It focused on altering the context of local struggles for land, which campaigners saw as a key battlefield. For instance, in 1994 the PEACE Foundation8 and its network of peasant organizations and NGOs initiated a dialogue with the DAR regarding contested large landholdings scheduled for expropriation in areas where its network had direct operations. The resulting workshop, which drew in the DAR, is a good example of a state–society interface driven from below. Instead of dealing separately and on an individual basis to resolve each case, PEACE proposed that a joint PEACE–DAR team be formed to resolve the cases and work out operational mechanisms for implementation. This resulted in the formation of a working committee whose main objective was to fast-track land acquisition and distribution in places where there was strong landlord resistance to reform. Distinct roles for each of the involved parties were mutually agreed. The dynamic and often conflict-ridden interaction between local DAR officials and local NGOs and peasant organizations was mediated by national-level DAR officials and NGOs; former activists who had been recruited into the DAR played an important role in these mediation processes. Many pro-reform social organizations found that this type of a state– society interface neutralized opponents of reform in the bureaucracy. As one veteran activist said: When the local officials know that your organization has connections with their higher officials, they respect you and pay attention to your demands. But when they know that you have no contacts at the top, most won’t even give you the minimum attention, let alone respect.9

The joint initiative proved relatively effective in hastening the process of land reform implementation. Later, the coverage of the committee expanded geographically, and embraced a major national rural social movement coalition. Still later, it became the main mechanism under 78

Independent initiatives from above  While in cases of public policies that aim to redistribute wealth and power state actors often simply react 79

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the Garilao DAR through which peasant groups and NGOs interfaced with DAR officials in a systematic and programmatic way. The mechanism was also replicated at the lower levels of the provinces. Notably, however, it was not maintained during the post-Garilao period, owing to fundamental divisions within the rural social movement groups with regard to terms of engagement with the new DAR leadership ushered in by the Estrada presidency (1998–2001). Many NGOs boycotted the successor mechanism, Task Force Fast-Track, and despite some comprehensive work locating bottlenecks in the land acquisition and redistribution process, the recommendations it made did not survive Estrada’s ousting from office in 2001. The election of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who defeated Estrada through a combination of military and middle-class mobilization, marked the end of the era of state–society interface mechanisms in land reform; these mechanisms were completely dismantled during her administration (Franco and Borras 2005). In summary, one category of reformist initiatives ‘from below’ consisted of an attempt to construct a predictable framework for state– society interaction that would complement peasant-led collective actions by incorporating policy-oriented and operational issues at the interface between the DAR and civil society. That many value-added gains were made in this complementary effort is beyond doubt. However, it should also be noted that many of the gaps in peasant-led direct action were not covered by the initiative; the bulk of effort remained limited to the pending cases put forward by autonomous peasant organizations and NGOs. The initiative failed to broaden its scope to cover, for instance, agendas that the state was reluctant to table, such as a systematic ­accounting of the ‘missing lands’ that had been deducted quietly from the original CARP scope (Borras 2007). The Garilao-era interface mechanism also failed to realize the importance of public lands under the DAR’s jurisdiction (ibid.). Finally, it also at times resulted in a tendency among some NGO leaders to position themselves as self-appointed ‘brokers’ between the government and local peasant associations, which was not helpful in the context of the development of peasants’ organizational autonomy and capacity. Overall, like peasant-led direct action, the broader national-level initiative to improve the institutional context for land reform implementation had both strengths and weaknesses, even as it contributed to shaping the nature, character and extent of land redistribution.

to pressures from below, there are also times when reformist initiatives originate with state officials. The Garilao DAR distinguished itself through its efforts to gain greater control over the land reform process vis-à-vis other state agencies and institutions. It brought about improvements in resolving agrarian law implementation cases, which speaks of its relative influence over the many other agencies – such as the Land Bank of the Philippines and the Land Management Bureau – that are linked in some way to case resolution. It was also credited with the passage of a new law which extended the implementation ­period and budget allotment of CARP by ten years (Borras 1999) and for preventing, to a large extent, the use of the police and military against the landless and near-landless claim-makers. It also gave priority to systematic databanking and improving the quality of DAR data, not only computerizing and professionalizing information systems, but also setting up checks and balances. Another important independent initiative of the Garilao DAR was the Agrarian Reform Community (ARC) development programme launched in 1993. An ARC was officially defined as a barangay10 or a cluster of contiguous barangays where a critical mass of farmers were awaiting the full implementation of agrarian reform, and where ‘these farmers and farm workers will anchor the integrated development of the areas’ (DAR-BARBD 2000: 18). By 2000, the DAR had launched some thousand ARCs, covering about a million hectares of ‘reformed’ landholdings. Initially, most NGOs and peasant organizations were highly critical of the ARC development programme, but slowly over time many were drawn into it. The ARC developed differently from the dispute-centred political dynamics of land reform. In an ARC project, conflicts concerned control over the nature, pace, extent and direction of development projects, such as training and education programmes for micro-credit and social preparation programmes for infrastructure projects like road construction. The main challenge for state and non-state reform actors revolved around the issue of making the post-reform agricultural sector socio-economically productive and viable. This required capacity and skills different from those needed at the land reform stage. The ARC strategy contributed to the cause of agrarian reform in the country in at least three ways. First, the ARC concept was partly responsible for reinvigorating the interest of foreign donors in CARP: within four years close to a billion dollars in foreign development assist­ ance had been mobilized through the ARC projects. Second, the ARC concept helped shield CARP from attacks by anti-land reform forces which contended that land awarded to peasants became unproduc80

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tive. The DAR was able to produce empirical evidence that agrarian reform actually works, especially when systematic support services are delivered to the reformed sector. Finally, the ARC strategy can be seen as an oppor­tunity for pro-reform forces in both state and society to experience the building of capacity and skills related to rural development. For these reasons, subsequent DAR administrations decided to continue the ARC strategy. Nevertheless, autonomous rural social movement groups remain critical of the ARC concept, strategy and outcomes, contending that the programme is exclusionary, covering only a fraction of land reform bene­ ficiaries. Many have realized, however, that criticizing post-land-reform development undertakings may only give ammunition to opponents, and hence, despite differences of opinion on strategies, social actors have increasingly begun interfacing with ARC projects. This has resulted in some unexpected outcomes. First, NGOs discovered that most of the communities that were declared as ARCs in fact have pending issues related to land redistribution. Some NGOs have therefore ended up not only undertaking development projects, but also assisting peasants to consummate their land reform struggles. Many of those who benefit from ARC support are not peasant farmers but local elites, and many of the existing ARCs do not necessarily reflect the interests of the previously landless and land-poor segments of the communities (Franco 1999b). Second, many NGOs were attracted to the ARC programmes because of the generous funds on offer. This led to a significant drain of activist NGOs and individuals away from working on the land redistribution struggles, which became increasingly unattractive because of their political contentiousness, unpredictability and lack of funding. By the late 1990s, ‘good governance, local governance’ and micro-finance within and outside ARCs had became favoured NGO activities, despite the largely unresolved land question in the country. The DAR and many NGOs justified this bias by saying that after ‘widespread’ land transfers, the focus of development work ought now to turn to farm development – while glossing over the fact that successfully completed land transfers up to that point were in fact not nearly as widespread as they were assumed to be. Unfortunately, this same argument – emphasizing a dire post-land-transfer scenario unless more funds were channelled that way – was, and still is, used by anti-land-reform elites within and outside government to justify continuing cuts in funding for land redistribution. The new state–society synergy did not automatically ensure full and meaningful implementation of land reform, since it still had

to ­overcome anti-reform forces both within the state and in society. G ­ arilao explained in retrospect the opportunities and limits of the bibingka strategy: The civil society partners of the DAR were given all the opportunities to penetrate the state agrarian reform apparatus, get into alliances with national and local DAR bureaucrats, and use legal and extralegal political action to assert and seek favourable resolution of issues, concerns and interest […] Not all the agrarian reform partners fully utilized this opening. […] When reforms do not move as fast, it is easy to accuse government of lacking political will and sincerity, and other pejorative terms in the civil society cookbook. In many cases, reforms do not move fast because social pressure from the constituency is weak. Many have the mistaken notion that press releases and letters to the editor constitute sufficient social pressure […] [P]easant social mobilization complemented by friendly media support is a more effective combination. State reforms are rarely won by state reformists alone. They are won […] when the alliance between autonomous peasant organizations and state reformists is much stronger than whatever coalition of the anti-reformists within and outside government can mount. (1999: xx) Fading state reformism in the post-Garilao era

President Estrada, elected with a huge majority in 1998, appointed Horacio Morales, Jr, as DAR secretary. Morales was a well-known figure among NGOs, active in civil society for many years. Like Garilao, Morales recruited progressive NGO and academic activists from his immediate political community to occupy top positions within the DAR, most of whom had long and deep knowledge of agrarian and rural reform and extensive exposure to militant peasant movements. Like the Garilao DAR, the Morales DAR first consolidated its own alliance with its political community, and the pro-reform alliance with a broad spectrum of autonomous rural social movements as its strategy. Changes within and outside the DAR, however, resulted in differences between the Garilao and Morales administrations in terms of implementation processes and actual redistribution outcomes. First, a substantial portion of the autonomous rural social movement groups refused to critically engage the Estrada–Morales administration on the issue of agrarian reform. According to Morales, a section of civil ­society working on agrarian reform was ‘anti-Estrada, anti-­administration, anti-Morales, anti-DAR […] they were not open to any dialogue’.11 Whatever the exact differences between Morales and these rural social movements, 82

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their impact on the process and outcome of land reform was negative: pro-reform forces were divided and weakened. Second, the Morales DAR suffered when Estrada developed a close relationship with a notorious anti-reform landlord, and lobbied for some of the land use conversion applications of his friends. Third, these unfavourable political developments aggravated the difficulty that the Morales DAR was confronted with the most politically contentious private landholdings, those left over after the Garilao DAR’s reforms. Fourth, Morales failed to resist President Estrada taking on an undersecretary for legal affairs who was a well-known anti-land-reform official who had engaged in massive landuse conversions for speculative real-estate deals. Finally, in contrast with Garilao, Morales did not have a hands-on management style, which had some adverse impacts on his work within the bureaucracy. In the end, the Estrada presidency lasted only thirty months before being ousted by a mobilization of urban-based middle and upper classes, supported by the Catholic Church and the media, and backed by the military. Vice-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo took over the presidential seat in January 2001, and in spite of the earlier assurances by civil society leaders, the era of state reformism came to an abrupt end. The new president appointed politicians to head the DAR who had no background in agrarian reform or dealing with autonomous social movements. Although some important specific land reform cases have been successfully fought by peasant groups since 2001, they have been few and far between and largely overshadowed by the much larger number of land reform losses and by serious reversals in the land-reform-enabling environment. In response, the bulk of the highly mobilized pro-land-reform civil society coalition has not stood idly by. Accustomed to the tolerance and even appreciation shown to them by state reformists and attuned to the mechanisms of the state–society interface that had been institutionalized during previous administrations, many land reform activists were initially disoriented by the change in the political environment for land reform and vulnerable to the administration’s divide-and-rule tactics. But the broad coalition of groups most involved in the struggle have since regrouped and rallied to try to push the momentum back in favour of land reform, building pressures on the DAR at different levels of the system, from the bottom upward. Most significantly, land reform activists and advocates in society have increasingly had to focus their attention on reforming the DAR bureaucracy at the very top, in order to check serious anti-reform rollback attempts and as a prerequisite to unleashing reformist momentum once again at lower echelons. Between

2001 and 2005 there were four DAR secretaries, two of whom were forced out of office after persistent and massive civil society mobilizations made it next to impossible for them to stay at the DAR helm (Franco and Borras 2005). The replacements of ousted secretaries have generally been less reformist than their predecessors: while pressure from below has been strong enough to force a change in DAR leadership, it has not been strong enough to ensure the direction of that change. The pro-reform coalition in civil society was forced into a very difficult position; one of the cardinal preconditions for the effectiveness of the bibingka strategy is the presence of reformists within the state, especially at the top. The loss of reformists at the top has immediate and devastating effects on the dynamism and manoeuvrability of state reformists at lower echelons; even the most reliable former reformist allies have tended to retreat when they fail to get support for their actions from above under the current dispensation. In addition to their continued relative fragmentation, today’s peasant organizations and their allies share some common political weaknesses. Their strategies are focused on the expropriation of a few big private landholdings within the scope of CARP, at the expense of other crucial issues such as redistribution of public lands, tenancy reforms through leasehold and lands missing from the scope of the CARP. They engage the state only on issues that are included in the scope of existing policy: they tend to lose sight of their strategic role in the wider challenge, which is to resolve the land question in society as a whole. Conclusion

Poor rural citizens who have been traditionally socially marginalized and politically excluded engage in contentious politics vis-à-vis the state when their calculation of the risk involved and possible benefits suggests the possibility of a net gain. Changes in the political opportunity structure are critical factors that determine when and how citizens will overtly engage the state, especially on issues concerning the radical redistribution of wealth and power. Progressive reformist laws can be a powerful incentive for such an engagement. But state–society negoti­ ations around a reformist policy that matters to poor people are not smooth and conflict-free (Gaventa 2002). In the case examined in this chapter, the ‘rule of law’ has not been used equally by contending actors in the policy process. Poor people need political and logistical resources to engage in contentious politics, and such resources are not always available to them; thus they have always sought alliances to extend the 84

Administration

Degree of social mobilization ‘from below’

Degree of state reform initiative ‘from above’

Degree of pro-reform state–society interactions

Marcos (1972–85) Aquino (1986–92) Ramos (1992–98) Estrada (1998–2000) Macapagal-Arroyo (2001– )

low-low low-low high high high

low-low low-medium high medium-high low-low

low-low low high medium low

political reach of their mobilization. A state–civil society alliance that is national, pro-reform and mutually reinforcing is a promising strategy for policy outcomes benefiting a large section of the poor. This is the main lesson that can be drawn from the Philippine land reform case. The overall political environment for Philippine land reform has not remained fixed; indeed, it appears to have come full circle, as the structure and climate of opportunity have metamorphosed across four distinct periods. Following the scandalous first years of CARP implementation during the Aquino administration, the Philippines entered into a period of pro-reform breakthroughs and relative accomplishment when the DAR was led by Garilao – a kind of ‘golden age’ of land reform. This was followed by the brief, controversial, contradictory but also still relatively productive era of CARP implementation under the Morales DAR, before descending rapidly into the situation of gridlock that prevails under the Macapagal-Arroyo administration today. Against this shifting backdrop of land reform, the lessons and insights from the Philippine land reform experience in terms of the nature of state–society action and interaction are summarized in Table 3.1. The Philippine experience in land reform, particularly during the 1992–98 period, makes clear the importance of the presence of both a high degree of social pressures from below and a high degree of independent state reform initiative from above, and then a high degree of interaction between the two. Under certain circumstances reformers within government agencies can autonomously initiate reforms ‘from above’ that run counter to the interests of dominant social groups in society. By themselves, however, they are likely to achieve only a limited impact. Similarly, autonomous and capable civil society organizations 85

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table 3.1  State–society mobilizations and interaction in land reform implementation

can play a positive role in redistributing wealth and power through agrarian reform, but on their own are likely to achieve only a limited impact through their mobilizations ‘from below’. The most promising condition is when autonomous mobilizations ‘from below’ by peasant movements and their allies meet autonomous reformist initiatives by reformers ‘from above’ within governmental institutions. This kind of mutually reinforcing, symbiotic state–society interaction is most likely to be able to overcome the considerable obstacles and constraints to redistributive agrarian reform, while taking advantage of the opportunities. This explains not only the relatively successful land redistribution campaign between 1992 and 1998, but also the current lack of success, as the diminution of state reformists leaves even highly mobilized social forces with nowhere to go institutionally. If the land reform process in the Philippines today has any hope of regaining its former momentum, then this problem will have to be addressed. Indeed, it is this understanding that has provided the basic logic behind the repeated efforts of the civil society pro-land-reform coalition to engineer from below the replacement of successive harmful DAR leaderships. But if the ‘fall’ of successive DAR leaderships since 2001 is testament to the political strength of the pro-land-reform coalition, Macapagal-Arroyo’s subsequent ‘failure’ to appoint a pro-reform DAR secretary points to civil society’s current political weakness. This suggests that conditions are now ripe for the forging of a potentially more meaningful alliance between the pro-land-reform coalition and those within the larger civil society space who are opposed to the current Macapagal-Arroyo administration. A critical juncture occurred beginning in 2008 when the Philippine Congress started deliberating whether or not to extend the implementation of the land reform law beyond its original twenty-year mandate, which ended that year. The landlorddominated Philippine Congress has been pushing against the extension of the law, and was met with only a lukewarm endorsement for extension by President Macapagal-Arroyo. While a section of the broad civil society has been able to forge an alliance with the pro-agrarian reform section of the Catholic Church leadership, boosting their pro-extension campaign, they remained fragmented by ideological and political differences. The post-2001 weak performance of the DAR also became a liability in the 2008/09 land reform law extension campaign. Notes 1  The official data on land re­distribution and leasehold accomplishment are hotly debated.

Our own calculation is that despite some real problems in the official story about accomplishment, the sig86

196,873 hectares of agricultural land to around 60,000 households (or 360,000 rural poor individuals) under CARP (Franco 2001b). 4  Interview, Gerry Bulatao, 21 January 2002, Quezon City. 5  Interview, Ernesto Garilao, 11 January 2002, Makati City. 6  Interviews, Ernesto Garilao, 11 January 2002 and 14 July 2005, Makati City. 7  Interview, Ernesto Garilao, 11 January 2002. 8  Philippine Ecumenical Action for Community Empowerment, an NGO founded in 1977. 9  Interview, Steve Quiambao, 14/21 May 1997, Netherlands. 10  The smallest administrative division in Philippine local government. 11  Interview, Horacio Morales, Jr, 18 January 2002, Quezon City.

References critique, Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press. Boyce, J. (1993) The Political Economy of Growth and Impoverishment in the Marcos Era, Quezon City: ­Ateneo de Manila University Press. DAR-BARBD (2000) ‘Agrarian Reform Communities (ARCs): situation report, as of December 2000’, Quezon City: Bureau of Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries Development. Fox, J. (1993) The Politics of Food in Mexico: State power and social mobilization, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Franco, J. (1999a) ‘Between uncritical collaboration and outright opposition: an evaluative report on the partnership for agrarian reform and rural development services,

Abinales, P. (2000) Making Mindanao: Cotabato and davao in the forma­ tion of the Philippine nation-state, Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. Borras, S., Jr (1999) The Bibingka Strategy in Land Reform Implemen­ tation: Autonomous peasant move­ ments and state reformists in the Philippines, Quezon City: Institute for Popular Democracy. — (2001) ‘State–society relations in land reform implementation in the Philippines’, Development and Change, 32(3). — (2003) ‘Inclusion-exclusion in public policies and policy ­an­alyses: the case of Philippine land reform, 1972–2002’, Journal of International Development, 15(8): 1049–65. — (2007) Pro-Poor Land Policy: A 87

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nificant level of accomplishment is not at all fictitious. For a systematic discussion about this issue, refer to Borras (2007, 2003). 2  Tarrow (1998) identifies four important political opportunities: access to power, shifting alignments, availability of influential elites and cleavages within and among elites. It is important to note that the agrarian structure of the Philippines is highly varied from one farm sector to another and across different geographic locations, creating the conditions for a wide diversity and variability in the nature, pace and orientation of rural organization and mobilization historically (Franco and Borras 2005). 3  Between 1992 and 1998, the PEACE Foundation network alone, using the bibingka strategy, was involved in the redistribution of

PARRDS’, IPD Occasional Papers no. 12, Quezon City: Institute for Popular Democracy, www.ipd.org. ph, accessed 6 September 2007. — (1999b) ‘Organizational strength appraisal of organizations in top Agrarian Reform Communities (ARCs)’, Quezon City: Food and Agriculture Organization. — (2001a) Elections and Democratiza­ tion in the Philippines, New York: Routledge. — (2001b) ‘Building alternatives, harvesting change: PEACE network and the institutionalization of Bibingka strategy’, Quezon City: PEACE Foundation. — (2008) ‘Making land rights accessible: social movements and political-legal innovation in the rural Philippines’, Journal of Development Studies, 44(7). Franco, J. and S. Borras, Jr (eds) (2005) On Just Grounds: Struggling for agrarian justice and exercising citizenship rights in the rural Phil­ ippines, Quezon City/Amsterdam: Institute for Popular Democracy/ Transnational Institute. Garilao, E. (1999) ‘Foreword’, in S. Borras, The Bibibgka Strategy in Land Reform Implementation, Quezon City: Institute for Popular Democracy. Gaventa, J. (2002) ‘Exploring citizenship, participation and accountability’, IDS Bulletin, 33(2), Brighton: Institute of Development Studies. Herring, R. (2003) ‘The political

impossibility theorem of agrarian reform: path dependence and terms of inclusion’, in M. Moore and P. Houtzager (eds), Changing Paths: The new politics of inclu­ sion, Ann Arbor: University of ­Michigan Press. Kerkvliet, B. (1993) ‘Claiming the land: take-overs by villagers in the Philippines with comparisons to Indonesia, Peru, Portugal, and Russia’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 20(3). Lara, F., Jr (1986) ‘Land reform in the proposed constitution: landmarks and loopholes’, Agri­ cultural Policy Studies, 1, Quezon City: Philippine Peasant Institute. McCoy, A. and E. de Jesus (eds) (1982) Philippine Social History: Global trade and local transforma­ tions, Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. Putzel, J. (1992) A Captive Land: The politics of agrarian reform in the Philippines, New York/London: Monthly Review Press/Catholic Institute for International Relations. — (2002) ‘The politics of partial reform in the Philippines’, in V. K. Ramachandran and M. ­Swaminathan (eds), Agrarian Studies: Essays on agrarian rela­ tions in less-developed countries, New Delhi: Tulika. Tarrow, S. (1998) Power in Movement: Social movements and contentious politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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4 ·  Reducing maternal mortality in Mexico: building vertical alliances for change M ichael D . L ayton , B eatriz C ampillo C arrete , I reri A blanedo T errazas , A na M ar í a S á nchez R odr í guez

Maternal mortality – death resulting from pregnancy and birth – often results not only in the preventable loss of a human life, but also in family break-ups. Although it can be construed as a public health concern, it intertwines with problems like gender equality, poverty, marginalization and effective state delivery of basic services. The last two decades have seen impressive efforts at the local, national and international levels to reduce maternal mortality. The fifth Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets reducing the maternal mortality rate by three-quarters by 2015. Although this should be an attainable target, the problem persists in the developing world, where 98 per cent of deaths occur (Keith-Brown 2005). Mexico has an unusually high rate of maternal mortality, and those who suffer most are poor, indigenous rural peasants, many of whom do not speak Spanish. Most are in much the same situation today as they were in 1990, the MDG benchmark year. High maternal mortality rates are principally a failure of political will and attention, reflected in poor policy design and inadequate budget allocations. How can neg­ lected communities and their advocates not only win policy commitments from the state, but turn those commitments into actual reforms, increased spending and improved governmental practices? How can citizen engagement offer a vehicle for these communities to address this social injustice? In Mexico, civil society efforts have taken place against a background of transition to democracy. For seven decades, Mexico was governed by a single party, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI, Institutional Revolutionary Party). A gradual process of democratization began as early as 1989 when PRI lost a series of sub-national gubernatorial elections; it lost its majority in Congress in 1997, and the presidential election of 2001. One factor in PRI’s electoral decline was mobilization of social groups and civic alliances united by their commitment 89

to free and fair elections. But democratization ‘was more a result of a decomposition of the previous order than the result of a massive opposi­ tion between state and civil society. No strong organized opposition with roots in labour or peasant movements emerged to challenge the dominant regime’ (Franceschet and McDonald 2004: 17). This lack of a firm social basis for the democratic transition has shaped efforts to reduce maternal mortality. This chapter examines a campaign by Mexican NGOs to make government take maternal mortality more seriously and provide the leadership, programmatic changes and funding necessary to reduce it. In spite of the difficulties presented by an adverse and complex environment, the campaign was largely successful in achieving its short-term goals and making progress towards the ultimate goal of reducing the maternal mortality rate. This chapter examines the impact and limitations of citizen engagement in modifying public policy. It highlights the conditions under which citizen activism can contribute to the formulation and implementation of national policies that have a positive impact on the poor, and some of the trade-offs involved in such efforts. The context of maternal mortality in Mexico

Access to healthcare is a basic right guaranteed by the Mexican constitution, and stated in several international human rights agreements to which the Mexican government is a signatory. How well the government fulfils these obligations is a key indicator of its progress in the democratic transition. For decades, the healthcare system in Mexico was based on three pillars: mandatory health insurance for all employees in the private and public sectors, co-financed by employers, employees and the state; private medical services, financed by the users; and medical services for the general public, those without public or private insurance. This third pillar consists of hospitals and clinics serving those who are ­either unemployed or working in the informal sector. In 2003, Congress enacted the legislation to expand healthcare to those excluded by the previous system. The Seguro Popular de Salud entitles beneficiaries to a series of medical services, and is financed by the federal and state governments and a needs-based contribution from the participants (Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública 2007). Healthcare provision for the general public was originally administered by the Federal Ministry of Health, but was decentralized during the late 1980s, creating in practice thirty-two health services, one for each state (Pérez et al. 2005). This increased power and responsibility 90

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at the state level, viewed by many as a critical aspect of strengthening democracy, was not matched by greater accountability and transparency, placing more power and resources at the state and local levels and out of range of public scrutiny. Although Mexico has made some progress in allocating a greater share of public spending on healthcare to the poor, Scott (2004) found high levels of inequality between states in terms of health measures and funding, and a relatively low level of public spending compared to other Latin American countries. In addition, healthcare workers’ unions are a major obstacle to reforms aimed at improving the quality of health services, especially at the local level. The major unions were once an integral part of the PRI’s corporatist structure, and their leaders are a holdover from the old regime, embodying the elements most resistant to change. This has led to the persistence of ‘blackmail, corruption, corporatism, untouchable power groups and political concessions’ (Nigenda and Ruiz 2004: 4) in the sector, undermining even the most basic changes in healthcare policy and practices. These are particularly acute in the southern states of Guerrero, Chiapas and Oaxaca, where both maternal mortality rates and poverty levels are highest (Paqueo and González 2003). The Ministry of Health states that the national maternal mortality rate has steadily decreased in the past fifteen years, from 89 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1990, to 83.2 in 1995, 72.6 in 2000 and 63.3 in 2005 (Secretaría de Salud 2005). These national-level statistics hide vast inequalities between states, and state-level indicators demonstrate that women who live in conditions of poverty and marginalization have the highest maternal mortality rates (González 2005). Hence, the 2005 maternal mortality rate for Guerrero stood at 128 deaths per 100,000, more than double the national level (ibid.), and maternal mortality is three times higher in indigenous communities than in the rest of the country (Damián 2004). Ninety-eight per cent of indigenous municipalities in Mexico are characterized by high levels of outmigration, a subsistence economy, limited communication, poor transportation access, a dispersed population, and environmental degradation (Secretaría de Desarrollo Social 2007). The interplay of these factors impedes women’s access to sanitary living conditions and basic health information and care, much less emergency medical interventions, one of the key factors in reducing maternal mortality. Shortcomings regarding access to health services are not the only problem. The precarious conditions in which indigenous people live also increase the risk of contracting infections that could complicate a pregnancy: for example, 40 per cent of their housing has

dirt floors and lacks plumbing (Comisión Nacional Para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas 2002). Cultural factors combined with institutionalized discrimination also underlie high rates of maternal mortality in indigenous communities. Indigenous women generally have limited control over their reproductive lives: traditional practices ‘pressure women into childbearing that begins very early, lasts very late into the childbearing years, and entails having many children, putting their health and lives at risk’ (Damián 2004: 167). Methods of contraception are not widely understood or used, and are frowned upon. Indigenous women are often reluctant to consult a medical doctor to confirm the fact that they are pregnant, and when it is time to give birth they most commonly use parteras (traditional midwives) who are cheaper than medical centres, immediately available in the community, and share their gender, culture and language (ibid.). Given these factors, health authorities often do not recognize the women as being pregnant, and therefore official statistics may underestimate maternal mortality by anywhere from 30 to 50 per cent (Díaz et al. 2002). The final and most controversial sociocultural factor related to maternal mortality is that of abortion, identified as the fourth leading cause of maternal mortality in Mexico, to which 8 per cent of such fatalities are attributed.1 Owing to the clandestine nature of the practice it is difficult to measure its full impact upon maternal mortality, as deaths attributed to haemorrhage or infection might well be linked to an abortion that the woman sought illegally, which both she and her physician would be reluctant to report. The risk arising from illegal abortion is accentuated by the lack of information available to doctors concerning the situations in which abortion is legally permissible. Throughout the struggle to reduce maternal mortality there has been an underlying tension between the universally acknowledged right to adequate healthcare and to safeguard the lives of women giving birth, and the more controversial side of reproductive rights, particularly the right to abortion. Evolution of the campaign

Mexican civil society organizations (CSOs) are still developing their skills at influencing national policy. Democracy is relatively new and existing channels are limited and ill defined. But coalitions of women’s groups and advocates for women’s reproductive rights are well established and have long-standing support from international funders and allies.2 The campaign to reduce maternal mortality engaged two of the 92

Maternal mortality and the international agenda  Since the end of the eighties, international fora on reproductive health and women’s rights have provided Mexican women’s groups with a framework that would help them develop their arguments to engage the national government on the issue of maternal mortality. Their participation in these events also gave activists important ties to international actors, which in turn gave them new-found legitimacy with the government. After five years of activism, Mexico joined the International Safe Motherhood Initiative (ISMI) and in 1993 held the first National Conference on Safe Motherhood. The event gathered representatives of international agencies, NGO leaders, government officials and researchers to discuss maternal mortality, and produced a ‘Declaration on Safe Motherhood’. This became an important reference point on the Mexican agenda, identifying maternal mortality as a problem that deserved atten­ tion. Nevertheless, diagnosing the problem was far from identifying strategies to tackle it, and the declaration framed maternal mortality as associated with high-risk pregnancies, which in turn favoured preventive interventions. The event opened the door of the policy arena to Mexican activists. The Comité por una Maternidad Sin Riesgo (CPMSR, National Safe Motherhood Committee) was instituted to implement the recommendations of ISMI, and became the first space for civil society participation around maternal mortality. Two more national conferences took place in 1998 and 2003, tracking policy advances and constituting a channel for continuous dialogue among the government, civil society and academic 93

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three strongest networks in Mexico, women’s groups and NGOs working on budget analysis and public funds transparency. The partnership between the two proved to be strategic. On the one hand, the transparency movement contributed budget research, documentation and monitoring of governmental policies; on the other, the policy expertise and wideranging skills of the women’s groups provided the substantive policy foundation of the campaign and a high level of political acumen. At the end of 2002, the campaign was on the eve of achieving its first clear-cut impact on government policy, the allocation of federal funds to a newly created programme designed to reduce maternal mortality and improve early childhood health. Although national events made this accomplishment ephemeral, this first battle inaugurated a period of progressive influence of CSOs on public policy concerning the reduction of maternal mortality at the federal level. In this section, we analyse the evolution of the maternal mortality campaign.

actors. The CPMSR has become an important space for the exchange of information and experiences. Three international conferences – the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, the 1995 World Conference on Women in Beijing and the 2000 Millennium Development Summit in New York – have been particularly important in helping Mexican activists to reframe the issue and clarify strategies. Each led to a significant shift in the scope and conceptualization of the maternal mortality problem, and gave activists additional leverage with government officials. The Cairo conference established the priority of sexual and reproductive health rights over demographic objectives. Maternal mortality began to shift from an ‘overlooked health problem to a central development goal’ (Family Care International 2006: 11). Reframing the problem simul­ taneously endorsed adequate health services and programmes as the strategy for solving it. This new perspective, adopted after lobbying by a large international coalition of CSOs in Cairo, reflected a rights-based approach which acknowledges women as individuals with their own needs, and an importance beyond their role as mothers. It was ratified at the Beijing conference. In Mexico, it was gradually adopted by public officials after campaigning by civil society groups. Furthermore, the Cairo and Beijing meetings decisively influenced Mexican feminist groups, who used the events as triggers to form two new national campaigning networks centred on promoting women’s reproductive and sexual rights, the Foro Nacional de Mujeres y Políticas de Población (FNMPP, National Forum of Women and Population Policies) and the Coordinación de Organizaciones Civiles por un Milenio Feminista (Coordination of Civil Organizations for a Feminist Millennium), both of which participated in Beijing. Subsequent international fora continued to enhance the policy framework that would set the stage for a maternal mortality campaign in Mexico. For example, the 1997 Technical Meeting of the Safe Motherhood Initiative in Sri Lanka recognized the unequal and very limited advances achieved in one decade, and discussions focused on agreeing the ten most effective strategies to reduce maternal mortality rates. It discussed evidence that redirected the debate towards the reasons why women were denied quick access to proper attention and the larger social, economic and political factors indirectly contributing to maternal mortality (ibid.). In the second half of the nineties, the renewed drive of Mexican feminism, coupled with international momentum and the changing domestic political situation, led to a reorganization of existing women’s rights organizations. In 1998, shortly after the PRI lost its majority in 94

A priority for the new government  The early years of the administration of President Vicente Fox (2000–06) and his Partido Acción Nacional (PAN, National Action Party) were marked by a proclivity to use progressive discourse, especially if promoted by the international agenda, often without undertaking the necessary policy actions to achieve results. This reflected the fact that the Fox cabinet was not exclusively made 95

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Congress, three women’s organizations came together and formed the Consorcio para el Diálogo Parlamentario y la Equidad (Consortium for Parliamentary Dialogue and Equity), which had an explicit focus on developing advocacy capacity, in anticipation of increased opportunities to influence public policies. The 2000 Millennium Summit saw the goal of maternal mortality endorsed in the adoption of the fifth MDG. In part, the inclusion of such a narrow goal – reduction of maternal mortality, rather than a broader set of reproductive rights – and the restrictions upon the participation of NGOs in the event may be considered as drawbacks, compared to Cairo and Beijing. Nevertheless, the fifth MDG represented a valuable asset for the campaign in terms of visibility and legitimacy, and of framing the issue as part of poverty as well as health. This definition of the problem would later help Mexican activists to emphasize the socio-economic and cultural dimensions affecting safe motherhood indicators in the country. Furthermore, since maternal mortality is a strong indicator of effective access to healthcare, advocates turned their attention towards the state of public health services. During this period, two axes of civil participation in the public policy debate in Mexico emerged alongside the international evolution of the maternal mortality problem and its framing. On the one hand, the CPMSR acted as an official mechanism of interchange between the national and international arenas, as well as a highly specialized forum promoting dialogue between the Mexican government and civil society. On the other hand, the feminist networks and associations acted as umbrella organizations, covering broader agendas and embracing a wider conceptualization of reproductive rights. While events in the international arena offered Mexican CSOs a series of important tools and arguments with which to advance their agenda, it seems unlikely that any of these resources would have been of use without the previous dialogue between government officials and Mexican activists, or the growing group of politically and technically specialized activists and organizations who became professional through their participation in international and national fora.

up of PAN members, but was a reflection of the coalition government and included a number of social democrats who had supported Fox in order to defeat the PRI. The administration identified the reduction of maternal mortality as one of its chief public health policy objectives for the 2000–06 term, a priority that corresponded directly with the MDG. In May 2001, this commitment was translated into a programme called Arranque Parejo en la Vida (APV, A Fair Start in Life). APV was implemented as one of the free government services offered to those with no affiliation to the social security system. It includes sixteen basic actions to ensure healthy pregnancy, safe delivery and post-partum, healthy newborn and early childhood development, and a support package of sixteen other actions covering human development, an active social support network, community participation, monitoring and evaluation and the strengthening of the health service structure (Secretaría de Salud 2007). Although the long list of actions appear to reflect the recommendations made by the international fora and promoted by civil society groups, the programme lacked many of the key elements necessary to guarantee its success, including formal operating rules, depended on private funds for key infrastructure needs and relied on the coordination of local social networks for key services. Many key interventions did not receive governmental funding, thus endangering their provision and their continuity. One of the researchers who evaluated the programme found that APV is ‘a strategy within health services rather than a formal public programme’.3 Despite its shortcomings, the programme was announced with great fanfare in the media, and the First Lady, Marta Sahagún, adopted APV as part of her official activities. Her efforts to raise private sector funds to improve the infrastructure for APV contributed to the politicization of the programme, given the public perception that she was abusing her privileged position to attract attention and funds to her cause with the ultimate purpose of advancing her own political career. Sahagún’s political orientation as a member of PAN opposed to abortion also conflicted with the agenda of the most important women’s network, the FNMPP. Emphasizing this contentious issue threatened the consensus gained by the maternal mortality policy framing of recent years, and combined with the politicization of the programme, it turned the APV into a focal point for activism. Despite confrontations between feminists and the PAN, which continued unabated, some advances were made. The Fox administration took significant steps to institutionalize the importance of a gender perspective in public health policy, creating the Centro Nacional de 96

The maternal mortality advocacy coalition  In 2002, the MacArthur Foundation asked FUNDAR, a centre for analysis and research with a core focus on budget analysis, to evaluate the level and use of public resources allocated to the reduction of maternal mortality.4 The newly created APV had some basic features that made it a suitable subject for budget monitoring: an explicit target group of beneficiaries, quantitative goals and a geographic focus on the states and municipalities with the highest maternal mortality incidence. FUNDAR aimed to ensure that the annual debate in Congress over the federal budget included the issue of maternal mortality and to strengthen the actions of programmes focused on reducing maternal mortality. FUNDAR did not have specialized knowledge of maternal mortality, so it identified local partners in Chiapas and Oaxaca who had knowledge of and credibility on the issue. In addition, it formed a reference group of civil society actors with a track record on reproductive health issues and grassroots mobilization. These included leading feminists with experience in international fora and public policy activism during the nineties, and grassroots CSOs from Chiapas and Guerrero. Members of this group were to become the core of an ad hoc coalition formed around the objective of reducing maternal mortality. The implicit collaboration agreement meant that research work should be of use to the advocacy agenda, that FUNDAR would seek to remain a non-partisan research organization and that other actors would undertake advocacy activities. By means of this alliance the group established its own relationships and connections within the decision-making process. Other actors joined the campaign. Three medical doctors who were trained in budget analysis and linked to grassroots organizations in the FNMPP carried out the research in Chiapas, Oaxaca and Guerrero. Although their main task was to produce research, they would also become increasingly linked to those engaged in political activism related to the issue, and they became the leaders of the advocacy process at a local level. Another key member of the coalition was Comunicación e Información de la Mujer, AC (Women’s Communication and Information), a feminist organization specializing in media from a gender 97

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Equidad de Género y Salud Reproductiva (CNEGSR, National Centre for Gender Equity and Reproductive Health) within the Health Ministry, which sought to incorporate a gender perspective across a wide range of issues. The institutional space for women’s policy machinery within the state was expanded and many NGO leaders were included in government offices.

perspective, which obtained international funding to undertake a project linked to the campaign and developed a communication strategy to disseminate findings. From the outset the coalition had a very plural and diverse nature: health and budget experts, advocates for women’s issues and re­searchers, Catholics for the Right to Choose (CDD, Católicas por el Derecho a Decidir), media specialists, grassroots organizations and members of international organizations.5 According to one of its leaders, the key to sustaining a diverse coalition and creating the appropriate synergies to make it effective has been the establishment of ‘manageable and useful agreements for all members’ of the coalition.6 Although perspectives and specific issues of relevance were different, the general problem of reducing maternal mortality was shared between members and represented the basis of the coalition. FUNDAR’s director points out that each organization ‘stretches the arguments’ towards its own cause and there was ‘no need to reach a consensus’ because that wears out relationships, rendering them ‘bureaucratic’ and ‘less productive’.7 This gave the campaign a unique character. On the one hand, it was extremely flexible, allowing each of the member organizations to pursue their own advocacy objectives and means to undertake them; on the other hand, the central goal was absolutely shared and gave them necessary cohesion. This meant that the coalition was loose and flexible, with each member independently going ahead with its own actions, while some coordinated actions were undertaken from time to time.

Influencing federal government  The research which monitored the implementation of the APV revealed a fundamental contradiction between the government’s rhetorical commitment to reducing maternal mortality and the lack of an adequate budget allocation to achieve that end. Using these findings as a basis, the coalition began a dialogue with policy-makers in the federal government with the aim of improving the programme’s design and increasing resources. By offering informed budget analysis, policy expertise and political support, the organizations also developed important alliances with government decision-makers, some of whom became important allies of the feminist agenda. One key ally was the head of the CNEGSR, which provided the coalition with information on the APV programme not available to the general public.8 This collaboration with government officials, however, did not prevent the coalition from criticizing the Health Ministry: the relationship was simultaneously one of cooperation and tension. 98

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The campaign was successful in making headway in the national legislature,9 particularly with the Health and Gender Equity Committees which oversee the APV, some of whose members showed a great interest in the issue. Working with these actors presented the coalition with two main challenges. First was a lack of technical knowledge and accurate information on the maternal mortality issue among the committee members and their staff. Second was the ongoing challenge of overcoming the conflict between the coalition’s agenda and that of the PAN representatives on the committees. The coalition’s effort to inform the debate and help educate committee members generated momentum, and additional allocations for APV were approved in the 2003 budget. Although it was not clear whether these allocations represented a real increase in resources for the programme, the detailed enumeration of the allocations would allow the coalition to document enormous inequalities in the criteria for the distribution of resources between states, and to continue to monitor the APV programme. For example, the distribution of resources to the states for 2003 revealed that whereas Chiapas obtained 980,192 pesos for APV with a 93.2 maternal mortality ratio, Nuevo Leon received 23,968,069 pesos with a ratio of only 28.5 (FUNDAR 2004: 3). The coalition was also able to point out other deficiencies, such as the failure to use clear indicators and specific goals to evaluate the programme and allocate resources. Furthermore, it was possible to document the failure of the state governments to spend the money they were allocated: in Chiapas, research confirmed that of the highest budget ever allocated to the state in 2003, only 45 per cent of the resources had been spent by the end of October (Freyermuth 2005: 29). For the 2004 federal budget process, the coalition implemented a significant media campaign to publicize these findings, but this time was disappointed by the results of their efforts. The national budgetary structure changed, aggregating the resources of APV and other health strategies into one spending category, meaning that APV resources were not specifically earmarked and could no longer be monitored. The situation was worsened by a decentralization process that left the federal government with few mechanisms with which to hold states accountable.10 Local monitoring processes were also difficult, as ­Oaxaca, Guerrero and Chiapas all lacked laws assuring access to public information. The fragility of budget allocation monitoring became a central worry for the coalition. This turn of events encouraged the coalition to embark on a new approach. This concentrated on advocating a policy approach – the

­ mergency Obstetric Care (EmOC) protocol – developed by the UN Popu­ E lation Fund and Columbia University in 1997, which had become influential in the international reproductive rights movement. The Mexican campaign thus moved on from influencing budget allocation to influen­ cing policy design, focused on persuading CNEGSR to introduce the EmOC protocol in local health services delivery.11 The coalition undertook new research which showed that the EmOC protocol was less expensive to provide than the traditional high-risk pregnancy monitoring procedures, as well as highlighting the need to establish an effective network of services among the three levels of government at the local level. Meanwhile, however, the coalition continued to work to influence budget discussions. In November 2004, the groups co-organized a public forum which served as a highly visible arena in which to criticize shortcomings in the design of the APV programme, question the supposed priority of APV when it did not even appear in the budget, and point out how the revised budget structure obstructed accountability (CIMAC 2004b). But this event was overshadowed by a larger dispute between the Congress and the executive on budget priorities. The presidential budget proposal was substantially modified by a coalition of five opposition parties which sought to increase the amounts allocated to social spending in general and to gender programmes in particular. This dispute ended up in the courts, and was resolved only many months later. The problem of the use of block grants in the budget remained unresolved and the coalition continued to demand the modification of the budget structure to facilitate monitoring, becoming one of many voices demanding broad fiscal reform. These consistently failed in the face of complex political negotiations, conflicting interests and the highly technical and closed policy process of the Treasury. Although the new budget process precluded the earmarking of public funds to maternal mortality, the coalition’s budget campaign helped the Health Ministry’s internal budget negotiations. Ongoing dialogue with CNEGSR staff allowed the coalition to influence the preparation of the 2006 Annual Operative Programme of the Secretary of Health, and as a result of these negotiations, EmOC was included among the medical interventions covered by the Seguro Popular. Furthermore, the head of CNEGSR acknowledges that because of pressure from the campaign, the Centre began to generate data on how much the various public health strategies spent on maternal mortality. Despite this, she opposed the coalition’s concentration of pressure at the federal level, arguing that the Ministry of Health, in its oversight role, did not have the ­legal capacity to interfere in the state governments, which have the real 100

Advocacy in Chiapas, Oaxaca and Guerrero  The incidence of maternal mortality is concentrated in select communities in a few key states, most notably Chiapas, Oaxaca and Guerrero. Research and advocacy work with local partners in these states produced mixed results. It is important and instructive to assess the lessons learned at this level, as the only way to reform healthcare services is through state-level interventions. In late 2004 coalition members, together with the Gender Equity Committee of the federal Chamber of Deputies and local partners, planned local fora in each of the three states. What happened in each case illustrates the opportunities and obstacles of state-level campaigns.13 Of the three states, Chiapas has advanced the most in terms of addres­sing the provision of emergency obstetric care. In part this is due to a strong chapter of the Safe Motherhood Committee, and a number of capable leaders. Sadly, the effort to reform medical services was also given a major boost by a tragedy. The deaths of thirty-four newborns in less than two months in the Comitán hospital between December 2002 and January 2003 led senior politicians to attempt to correct gaps in healthcare provision (Marcial 2003). One result was the integrated programme Better Life, which aims to improve local hospitals, nutrition and transportation. While it did not target localities with the highest incidence of maternal mortality, preliminary data show a reduction of maternal mortality of nearly 10 per cent over the last few years. When the Chiapas forum took place in August 2005 it attracted a diverse audience, including governmental representatives, indigenous women from a number of states and national leaders. Advocates sought and won improvements to the Better Life programme so that it would 101

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power to earmark and spend money and the true responsibility for the provision of health services.12 Nevertheless, the coalition had continued to do field research on state health services, and the findings had a valuable impact on policy advocacy. For example, researchers found centralized allocation of resources at the state-level operation of services, where the local Health Jurisdictions – the operative bodies under the local Health Ministry – have no decision-making power to reallocate earmarked resources among municipalities. They also revealed the inability of municipalities to pay for transportation expenses in cases of obstetric emergencies and the lack of resources to hire translators in indigenous communities (FUNDAR 2006). These findings, combined with the response at the federal level on the need to pressure the states, led the coalition to concentrate its attention and advocacy work at the state level.

better serve the indigenous communities it had not yet reached and where maternal mortality remained high. In this case a responsive and receptive state government and a strong, diverse array of local citizens’ groups made all the difference. When research for this chapter was carried out, a forum had yet to be held in Oaxaca, as the local leadership decided the timing was not right. They had been engaged in prolonged negotiations to reach an agreement with the state Health Secretary for a programme similar to Better Life, and they believed that a forum would ruin any chance they had of concluding and implementing the agreement if it were even slightly critical of the local government. Furthermore, the political environment in Oaxaca was highly charged, and in the context of the pending presidential election in July 2006 tensions were especially high. After violent clashes between police and protesters from the teachers’ union, months of a bloody stand-off in which protesters and others lost their lives led to an intervention by federal forces. So although the local women’s organizations brought a high degree of credibility and experience to their campaign, they had to act with caution in such a context. While Oaxaca has a strong collection of organizations, all attention remained focused on restoring a level of order to the state. The forum in Guerrero was held in July 2005, and brought together over four hundred participants. Leadership from local villages attended en masse, as well as groups from half a dozen other states and key ­national organizations, and all three levels of government were represented. The most glaring absence was the Secretary of Health for Guerrero, who sent a sub-secretary to represent him. Despite excellent attendance, the immediate impact of the event was limited. The state government is not responsive to its poorest communities. Civil society is severely under­ developed: there is only one clearly identified NGO working on health ­issues, a new organization formed by health professionals. FUNDAR’s ­local researcher is not affiliated to any grassroots group focused on health, because none exists. The mix of political caciques, armed insurgency and narco-trafficking poisons the political and social context, weakening the prospects for citizen engagement. As such, the event laid groundwork for the future, promoting the issue with local leaders and beginning to cultivate ties between the state and national networks.14 Accomplishments and lessons learned

The campaign to reduce maternal mortality has had three clear accomplishments. The first is that the issue has been firmly placed on the federal agenda as well as the agendas of many state govern102

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ments. Advocates have successfully challenged the federal government to move beyond simply signing international agreements to debating how those commitments can be fulfilled. Maternal mortality has shifted from ‘being an issue that had zero relevance in budget debates and no relevance in the design of policies related to maternal health’ to something that has to be taken into account each year when the federal budget is considered.15 Second, the campaign also succeeded in achieving key budget and policy gains. The coalition’s research established unequivocally that levels of federal support were inadequate to reduce maternal mortality and that the key health initiatives did not reflect international best practices. Although budget gains in terms of targeting healthcare resources to the reduction of maternal mortality achieved in the 2003 budget seemed to be nullified by changes in the budget reporting format the following year, advocates succeeded in achieving a dramatic increase in funding for the CNEGSR in the 2006 budget. This funding meant that the Secretary of Health – as well as CSOs – was in a position to better monitor the performance of state governments in their use of federal funding to reduce maternal mortality, as well as offer training and other support. In addition, through a regulatory change, the Health Ministry now requires the states to report each maternal death, opening the way for an immediate inquiry and substituting for the lack of transparency and data at the state level. From the point of view of the right to information and possibilities of building greater accountability, this was a very important gain. The third and single most important policy impact was the paradigm shift in preventing maternal mortality, from monitoring high-risk pregnancies to ensuring the provision of emergency obstetric care. This change was made possible by citing international best practice as well as providing field research demonstrating the importance of such services. The Health Ministry is now seeking to change the protocol in the basic health regulations to provide for emergency obstetric care, which would represent an important institutional change. What can be learned from the successes of the campaign, and how can one assess its weaknesses? The loosely formed coalition had four key elements that gave it strength. The first was its diversity, which resulted in a wide range of knowledge and complementary abilities that allowed the coalition to operate successfully on a number of fronts. A second key strength was its flexibility, both in terms of its ability to respond to opportunities and obstacles in the environment, and its capacity to accommodate the preferences and needs of its members. This meant

that little time was spent on formal processes and bureaucracy and the focus remained on the advocacy work.16 The third key factor was tenacity: each participant brought an unwavering dedication to the goal of reducing maternal mortality. This shared commitment prevented the diversity and flexibility of the coalition from devolving into atomization. The fourth and final factor was long-term funding, particularly from the MacArthur Foundation, which allowed the coalition to cultivate the skills and relationships necessary to effect political and social change. This was particularly important in supporting the coalition’s ability to undertake critical analyses of government initiatives, and to develop the political capital and expertise necessary to make the most of them. An important contextual condition for the success of the campaign was its link to the international level, manifested in a variety of ways. The fact that the United Nations repeatedly endorsed the reduction of maternal mortality, and that the Mexican government was a signatory to several international initiatives, gave the cause both social and political legitimacy and a moral lever in its engagement with government. The international connection also gave organizations the standards by which to review and critique governmental programmes designed to reduce maternal mortality. This link to the international scene contrasts strongly with the lack of a strong social basis for the effort. One limitation in the advocacy work was the lack of grassroots mobilization; this is a not uncommon observation of NGOs in Mexico, and the women’s movement in particular (Zapata 2005). The director of one of the few grassroots organizations involved in the coalition observed that ‘the achievements could not be sustained, because we got lost in technical issues and we were not able to involve the people’.17 But this is clearly a double-edged sword. Technical skill at the national level, the capacity to bring sophisticated analysis and data to inform policy debates, also supports state and local efforts that enjoy community support, and although there is a tension between highly technical research skills and grassroots mobilization, there is also a complementarity that makes for a powerful combination. Conclusion: opportunities for citizen engagement?

What does this campaign reveal about the opportunity for citizen engagement in Mexico? It is important to recognize that the state – at least at the national level – has become increasingly responsive over the last few decades. That said, moving from citizen demands to change in governmental performance and then to change in the living conditions of the most disadvantaged citizens is a long, arduous and complicated 104

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process. In this case, each success brought the struggle to a new level, revealing the limitation of each advance and making plain the next challenge. The struggle to reduce maternal mortality has begun to achieve its ultimate objective: over the last fifteen years, the rate of maternal mortality in Mexico has gradually been declining, by almost 30 per cent according to the Health Ministry. Now that the campaign has succeeded in influencing federal policy and has made progress at the state level, advocates have encountered the most entrenched barriers to citizen participation and policy change in the very states with the highest incidence of maternal mortality. These factors overlap and are mutually reinforcing. The first of them is Mexico’s uneven political and socio-economic development, perhaps best illustrated by the differences in maternal mortality levels between states. In terms of political development the scenario is the same: some states have free and fair elections, alternation in office, and a basic respect for human rights, while others are dominated by single parties and local caciques, and face guerrilla insurgencies to promote change. The challenges facing advocates in the latter context seem close to insurmountable, and are likely to change only slowly over time. A second factor is the emphasis upon reinvigorating federalism and decentralized governmental authority. Having mastered budget monitoring and advocacy at the national level, coalition members were confronted with the challenge of applying these tools in thirty-two distinct state contexts, in which the public availability of budget data and the openness of governmental officials were the exception, not the norm. Given the context described above, this trend has contradictory effects: in some rare cases it means greater accountability and more innovative government, while in most others it means reinforcing the power of authoritarian governments. Thus, the opportunities for and impact of citizen engagement have been severely curtailed, depending on the local situation. A third factor is the high incidence of maternal mortality in marginalized communities. Such small, isolated villages are not integrated into the modern economic and social context, and the promotion of economic development and the provision of basic social services such as healthcare present a daunting challenge, even to the most well­intentioned state. In addition, these communities tend to be concentrated in states that are more authoritarian. Women’s organizations in general and indigenous women’s organizations in particular have taken major strides in opening spaces, promoting

and advancing their policy agenda. While they represent an important new avenue for citizen engagement, they clearly face serious cultural challenges both in terms of attitudes in government and the population as a whole. The struggle to reduce maternal mortality is slowly being transformed from one in which advocates, principally from Mexico City and principally NGOs, have argued on behalf of indigenous women for their right to access adequate healthcare, to one in which state and local advocates join with indigenous women to argue on their own behalf. Through struggles such as this, opportunities for citizen engagement are being expanded and the state is slowly becoming more responsive. The trajectory of this campaign brings to mind the words of Spanish poet Antonio Machado: caminante, no hay camino: se hace camino al andar (traveller, there is no path: the path is made by walking) (Correa 1980). The advocates involved in this struggle have won important breakthroughs, only to see a subsequent challenge looming ahead. Their tenacity has begun to bear fruit, not only reducing the number of women who die giving life, but also bringing about a more just society and opening opportunities for greater citizen engagement for those who have been historically neglected and ignored. People interviewed during the research

Name

Affiliation

Graciela Freyermuth David Meléndez Hilda Reyes Zapata Erika Cervantes Pérez Nelly Palomo Patricia Uribe Zúñiga Helena Hofbauer Balmori Daniela Díaz Echeverría Martha N. Murdock Sharon Bissell Sotelo Diva Hadamira Gastelum Bajo

Researcher, FUNDAR, Centro de Análisis e Investigación; Academic, CIESAS-Chiapas Field researcher (Guerrero), FUNDAR, Centro de Análisis e Investigación Technical consultant, Afluentes, SC; Researcher, Instituto Nacional de Perinatología Journalists network coordinator, Comunicación e Información de la Mujer, AC Director, K’inal Antzetik Director, Centro Nacional de Equidad de Género y Salud Reproductiva Director, FUNDAR, Centro de Análisis e Investigación Researcher, FUNDAR, Centro de Análisis e Investigación Programme director, Family Care International, Latin America and the Caribbean programme Programme officer for the Population and Reproductive Health area, MacArthur Foundation (Mexico office) Deputy, Federal Congress; head of the Gender Equality Committee 106

1  The three leading causes of ­maternal mortality in Mexico are toxa­emia during pregnancy (31 per cent), haemorrhage during childbirth (22 per cent) and complications during puerperium (10 per cent) (CIMAC 2004a). 2  Interview, Murdock. 3  Interview, Díaz. 4  Interview, Bissell. 5  Interview, Reyes. 6  Interview, Hofbauer.

7  Ibid. 8  Interview, Uribe. 9  Interview, Díaz. 10  Interviews, Uribe and Díaz. 11  Interview, Hofbauer. 12  Interview, Uribe. 13  Interview, Díaz. 14  Interviews, Díaz and ­ Meléndez. 15  Interview, Hofbauer. 16  Ibid. 17  Interview, Paloma.

References CIMAC (2004a) ‘Persisten índices de mortalidad materna en México’, www.cimacnoticias.com/ noticias/04may/04051413.html, accessed 4 September 2007. — (2004b) ‘Desapareció la muerte materna del Presupuesto de Egresos de la Federación’, Red por los Derechos Sexuales y Reproduc­ tivos en México, 40, November. Comisión Nacional Para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas (2002) ‘Indicadores socioeconómicos de los pueblos indígenas de México, 2002’, cdi.gob.mx/index. php?id_seccion=397, accessed 4 September 2007. Correa, G. (1980) (ed.) Antología de la Poesía Española (1900–1980), Madrid: Gredos. Damián, G. (2004) ‘Doscientas trece voces contra la muerte. Mortalidad materna en zonas indígenas’, in M. Castañeda, D. Díaz and G. Espinosa (eds), La mortalidad materna en México. Cuatro visiones críticas, Mexico, DF: FUNDAR, Centro de Análisis e Investigación. Díaz, D., D. Sánchez-Hidalgo, G. Freyermuth and M. Castañeda (2002) La mortalidad materna: un

problema sin resolver, Mexico, DF: FUNDAR, Centro de Análisis e Investigación, www.siyanda.org/ docs/muerte_%20materna.pdf, accessed 4 September 2007. Family Care International (2006) ‘The Safe Motherhood Initiative: a review 1987–2005’, Family Care International Working Paper, New York. Franceschet, S. and L. McDonald (2004) ‘Hard times for citizenship: women’s movements in Chile and Mexico’, Citizenship Studies, 8(1), March. Freyermuth, G. (2005) ‘Chiapas. El programa Arranque Parejo en la Vida y sus tropiezos con las inequidades de la realidad’, in D. Díaz, D. Sánchez-Hidalgo, G. Freyermuth and M. Castañeda (2002) La mortalidad materna: un problema sin resolver, Mexico, DF: FUNDAR, Centro de Análisis e Investigación. FUNDAR (2004) ‘Mortalidad materna y presupuesto público ¿qué nos dice el programa Arranque Parejo en la Vida?’, Presentation at the 7th annual meeting of the Women’s Parliament of Mexico, Puebla, 11 March.

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Notes

— (2006) ‘Presupuesto público y mortalidad materna: seguimiento al programa Arranque Parejo en la Vida. Reporte final 2003–2006’, Mimeo, Mexico, DF: FUNDAR, Centro de Análisis e Investigación. González, M. (2005) ‘Requiere muerte materna enfoque in­ tegral’, Cimac Noticias, 24 ­August, www.cimacnoticias.com/ noticias/05ago/05082412.html, accessed 4 September 2007. Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública (2007) ‘El seguro popular’, www. insp.mx/Portal/seguropopular/ seguro01.html, accessed 4 September 2007. Keith-Brown, K. (2005) ‘Investing for life: making the link between public spending and the reduction of maternal mortality’, International Budget Project, Mexico, DF: FUNDAR and Population Council. Marcial, J. (2003) ‘Chiapas: la muerte tiene permiso’, Imagen Médica, February, www.imagenmedica. com.mx/datos/modules.phpname =Sections&op=printpage&artid= 100, accessed 5 September 2007. Nigenda, G. and J. Ruiz (2004) ‘The decentralization of human resources and the health system in Mexico’, Human Resources Development Journal, 3(2). Paqueo, V. and C. González (2003) ‘The health sector’, in G. Hall (ed.), Development Strategy for the Mexican Southern States, Washington, DC: World Bank, wbln0018.worldbank.org/LAC/

LAC.nsf/0/541D538865DA825 A85256DC5007A7BC8?Open document, accessed 5 September 2007. Pérez, M., D. Díaz and H. Hofbauer (2005) ‘The life of every woman counts: using budget analysis to monitor the reduction of maternal mortality. A case study of the Mexican Experience’, Mexico, DF: FUNDAR. Scott, J. (2004) ‘Desigualdad en salud y en los recursos para la salud en México’, CIDE Working Paper no. 302, Mexico, DF. Secretaría de Desarrollo Social (2007) ‘Microrregiones: ¿qué es una microrregión?’, www.microrregiones.gob.mx/estrategia. html?func=txt2&im=micro3, accessed 17 September 2007. Secretaría de Salud (2005) ‘Salud: México 2001–2005 – información para la rendición de cuentas’, Mexico, DF: Secretaría de Salud, Subsecretaría de Innovación y Calidad, evaluacion.salud.gob. mx/saludmex2005/sm2005.htm, accessed 4 September 2007. — (2007) Arranque Parejo en la Vida, www.salud.gob.mx, accessed 5 September 2007. Zapata, M. (2005) ‘The feminist movement in Mexico: from selfawareness groups to trans­national networks’, Paper presented at the ‘Conference on Women and Globalization’, Centre for Global Justice, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, www.globaljusticecenter. org/papers2005/zapata_eng.htm, accessed 5 September 2007.

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5 ·  Protecting the child in Chile: civil society and the state C laudio F uentes

Since the re-establishment of democracy in Chile in 1990, democratic governments have taken important steps towards the protection of the child. The statistics reveal a significant improvement in the material conditions of the poor and, in particular, of children in Chile. From a legal perspective, officials approved and implemented several inter­ national conventions related to the rights of the child and incorporated these standards into domestic law. By promoting international stand­ ards, generating an institutional framework, pursuing specific policies and establishing a strategic plan of action for improving the rights of the child, the government provided excellent opportunities for civil society actors to influence and cooperate in this area. This chapter addresses the role played by activists and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that recognized opportunities for influen­ cing the government and thereby created the conditions for social and policy change. The next section charts the advances secured over the period 1990–2006 in terms of the enshrining of children’s rights in national legislation and policy and their progressive realization. This is followed by an analysis of context, focusing on social and economic policy and then on the political conjuncture and its implications for the identity and positioning of social actors. Three subsequent sections narrate developments in the child rights and policy field over three successive periods of post-transition government, from the perspective of the nature and dynamics of government–NGO relations. The conclusion weighs up the influences of various contextual factors, and the ­closing reflection points to the central importance of the boundaries and interfaces of NGOs and government in any attempt to explain changes secured in national policy in Chile in this period. Milestones in the realization of children’s rights, 1990–2006

In analysing this case, the first contextual factor that needs to be considered is the transition to democratic rule in Chile, which provided a new political environment for the advancement of the rights of the 109

child. Specifically, the elected centre-left coalition, the Concertación, implemented important policies after 1990, with the three consecutive governments of the coalition (Aylwin 1990–94, Frei 1994–2000 and Lagos 2000–06) making significant decisions concerning children’s rights. One of the first decisions made by the Aylwin government was to approve several international agreements soon after the return to democ­racy. The administration was strongly committed to the ratification of international treaties that had been postponed by the military dictatorship. By 1992, the Chilean government had ratified several inter­ national conventions.1 Soon after the ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the government established a task force with representatives of four state agencies (the Servicio Nacional para los Menores de Edad – SENAME, the National Service for Minors – and the Ministries of Planning, Justice and Education); plus the Grupo de Apoyo Nacional (GAN, National Support Group for the Convention of the Rights of the Child). The task force was charged with preparing the first report submitted by Chile to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. In 1992, the Ministry of Planning developed a National Action Plan in Favour of Children following the commitment of the president at the World Summit for Children in 1990. The plan was the first effort by the Chilean government to promote coherent and coordinated policies towards the issue of children’s rights. Several other steps favouring children were taken by the authorities, including the approval of sixteen laws and decrees concerning the child.2 Most of the measures taken by the first government were oriented towards the establishment of new laws, domestic legal harmonization with international norms, and the creation of an institutional framework in order to regulate a hitherto unregulated sector of society. With the aim of disseminating information on these important changes, the government joined efforts with UNICEF in order to promote a national campaign in favour of children’s rights. The Frei administration (1994–2000) continued the strategy of the previous government by approving legal initiatives, which included a law protecting children from all forms of discrimination, an adoption law that ended discrimination against children born out of wedlock, a law against domestic violence, the regulation of national and international kidnapping, and the regulation of the duties and rights of parents concerning financial benefits obtained by the couple. In 1995, the government established the National Committee Against Child Abuse and, in 1996, launched the National Advisory Committee for the Prevention and Eradication of Child Labour. In addition to these legal 110

The policy context: social and economic backdrop

These strides towards the realization of children’s rights took place against a backdrop of constant and targeted increase of social spending by the Concertación governments. Social spending patterns had in­direct effects on the improvement of the living conditions of the general population, which, of course, also had a cascade effect on children. The improvement of social conditions in Chile can be explained by considering both the rates of economic growth and the targeted social policies carried out since the country’s return to democracy. In 1987, more than half of the population under fourteen years of age (57 per cent) lived beneath the poverty line. A national survey showed a relatively similar figure (52 per cent) for the same age group in 1990. In terms of welfare, the military regime tended to reduce the role and budget of the state as a provider of minimal conditions for children. Although in comparative terms the Chilean state devoted more resources than other countries in Latin America to welfare, it tended to favour the development of private mechanisms of child protection (churchbased and other charity organizations). By 1990, the main problems were poverty, domestic violence, delinquency and poor state services for children, such as protection centres and detention centres (Zanzi Gardilcic 1994). A favourable macroeconomic environment, with a GDP growth rate 111

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and institutional initiatives, the government recognized two flaws in its strategy to date: the absence of a national children’s rights policy discussed and approved by different sectors of society, and the lack of mechanisms to follow up the programme commitments.3 The third Concertación administration (2000–06) also took important steps towards promoting children’s rights by ratifying several inter­ national treaties, and by adopting in April 2001 a National Policy in Favour of Children and Young People and an integrated action plan for the next decade. This programme was developed after several meetings were held in all regions and at different governmental levels. The meetings included representatives of regional, provincial and municipal governments, as well as civil society actors. Overall, the three democratic governments after the military regime advanced important measures to protect the rights of the child and managed to incorporate international standards within domestic law by approving several conventions. In addition, the first and third governments pursued specific action plans concerning children, which helped to mobilize important sectors of society.

averaging 8.2 per cent between 1989 and 2004, helped the economy to provide jobs and increase public spending. Indeed, figures reveal a reduction in poverty from 38.6 per cent in 1990 to 18.8 per cent in 2003. The drop in extreme poverty during the same period was even more impressive, from 17.4 to 4.7 per cent. This significant reduction had an important impact on children: while in 1990, 50.7 per cent of the population below the age of eighteen were officially poor, by the year 2003 this figure had been reduced by almost half, to 26.9 per cent. In terms of social spending, figures reveal an increase of over 150 per cent between 1990 and 2004 (Ministerio de Planificación 2002). The sector that received the most significant increase relative to other sectors was education, while the pension system witnessed a relative drop. Other indicators show an overall improvement in social conditions: between 1990 and 2002, the rates of children attending primary school increased from 95 to 97 per cent, and of secondary school from 77 to 85 per cent. The percentage of children registered in pre-school education increased from 5.4 per cent to 11.3 per cent. Health conditions of the population in general, and of women in particular, also registered important advances, with figures on life expectancy and public spending on healthcare increasing, and figures on maternal mortality, children mortality and undernourished births declining steadily. The political context: social actors in the democratic transition period

During the military regime, organized civil and political society actors focused their efforts on the defence of basic political and civil rights. After the military coup and the subsequent banning of political parties, various NGOs were created with the aim of defending and advancing human and social rights. Many NGOs emerged during the 1970s and 1980s as the result of conscious efforts by activists with strong links to political parties. An extensive network of NGOs at the national and local levels was developed and devoted their attention to diverse issues, such as human rights, women’s rights, the media, rural studies, the environment, housing, education and decentralization (Piña 1989; Oxhorn 1995). The role of the Catholic Church and progressive political parties was crucial in this regard. As will be described below, several of the organizations concerned with the issue of children’s rights were closely linked to faith-based and grassroots organizations promoting the advancement of the living conditions of the poor. The transition to democracy was a turning point for many individuals working with NGOs. One of the most immediate impacts was that 112

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many of these professionals went to work for the government, as the elected officials were from a broad coalition of Christian Democrats and Socialists who previously were part of the opposition. The case of Lorena Martínez, current director of the Division for the Protection of Children’s Rights at SENAME, is a good example of this move from the non-governmental to the governmental sector. During the military regime, she worked for an NGO devoted to the promotion of education rights. After the transition, she went to work for the government National Institute for Youth and, later on, the SENAME. There are many examples of professionals migrating from the realm of civil society to government positions.4 This situation opened a window of opportunity for social actors to influence public policy, given that the background of many of these new government authorities made them sensitive to the demands of civil society. The transition signified a turning point, too, for NGO funding from international agencies, which declined substantially. However, rather than leading to a large reduction in non-governmental activities devoted to children’s rights, this led to consolidation of efforts: soon after the transition, an important group of approximately forty NGOs dedicated to this end came together to establish a network called the Red Nacional por la Infancia (RNI, National Network for Children). Most participants of these organizations were professionals such as lawyers, psychologists and social workers who were committed to human rights and who saw a good opportunity following the transition to democracy to continue working in the field of social justice. Many of these organizations were closely related to the Catholic Church. By 2005, more than three hundred NGOs were registered in the database of the SENAME and accredited to provide professional services to the state. Among these organizations, two were particularly important: Asociación Chilena Pro-Naciones Unidas (ACHNU, Chilean Pro-UN Association) and Opción.5 After Chile signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child, both NGOs played a key role in driving this national network to monitor the country’s compliance with the treaty’s commitments. ACHNU was founded in 1991 by Osvaldo Torres, a member of the Socialist Party who formerly worked for an international organization devoted to the rights of the child. ACHNU is an active member of the Worldwide Federation of United Nations Associations and has consulting status as an agency of the United Nations system. According to Torres, the organization’s objectives from the beginning were related primarily to policy advocacy. Torres makes the following observation: ‘One of the crucial issues debated within civil society actors at the ­beginning of

the transition was whether social actors should or should not become involved with government officials in order to promote social policies. We decided that we had to.’6 By contrast, Opción is a private institution that was founded in July 1990, three months after the transition to democracy. It was originally created with the aim of providing psychological support to abandoned children. Working closely with the SENAME, Opción’s first approach was to promote the rights of the child by working directly with vulnerable children. Initially, the NGO operated only two centres for the support of children, both of which were in the country’s capital. By 1992, ­Opción had established seven additional centres and, by the year 2002, there were twenty. By 2005, the NGO administered twenty-nine centres nationwide, all of them working in close collaboration with SENAME. Thus, the end of the military regime and the democratic transition stimulated the spawning and strategic regrouping of a variety of NGOs – church-related, rights-focused, service-delivery-oriented – focused on children. But in the policy and political context described above, a direct causal link cannot simply be assumed between the existence, activities and influence of these social actors, and the improvement of the social conditions of children in Chile over the past two decades. While citizen activism has clearly played certain important roles, the steps towards progressive realization of children’s rights are better understood as the outcomes of a multifaceted and oscillating relationship between government and social actors, in particular a diverse range of NGOs, over this period. Measuring the impact of citizen activism on government policy out­ comes is always difficult, and particularly so in a period when the country has experienced general social improvements resulting from intertwined economic, social and political factors. In this case, organized civil society actors seem to have had a partial but important influence on policy issues concerning children, through establishing a network of policy experts within and outside government dedicated to enhancing children’s rights; boosting the social legitimacy of certain governmental policy options by engaging in public–private dialogue; and monitoring the government’s actions concerning children. These roles have been played out under a succession of post-transition governments, each marked by rather different government–NGO relations, with the emphasis shifting between overlap, alliance, technocratic engagement, subcontracting, remobilization, and collaborative policy implementation at different moments. The following section examines government–NGO relations and the progressive realization of children’s rights in terms of these shifts. 114

Common cause and collaboration in policy development, 1990–94  Speci­ fic conditions allowed for intense cooperation between NGOs and the government soon after the transition to democracy. Both sectors shared a strong ideological commitment to the protection of human rights, which helped them to establish a collaborative agenda at the beginning of the first democratic government. Once Chile signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990, it established a joint committee to produce the first national report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, led by a representative of the Ministry of Planning, and invited the participation of members of civil society. This was forthcoming, led by the GAN, and consisting of  some thirty organizations including Fundación de Protección a la Infancia Dañada por los Estados de Emergencia (PIDEE, Programme for Children Injured during the State of Emergency), Opción and ACHNU, which had spearheaded the formation of this group as well as pro­ moting the Convention through videos and public dissemination within their networks.7 The GAN’s main goals were to provide insights for the development of the National Programme for Children (1992–2001), to advise the government in the development of the national report to the Committee on the Rights of the Child, and to help in the promotion of children’s rights nationwide. The first report was considered a joint effort between the government and these civil society actors, the pivotal role of the latter receiving explicit government recognition.8 This encouraging start was followed through when the government demonstrated the political will to include non-governmental actors in the decision-making process. Months after the participation of Chile in the World Summit for Children (September 1990), the Ministry of Planning developed the Programa Nacional en favor de la Infancia (PNI, National Programme for Children), which set basic guidelines on the rights of the child, taking into consideration the opinion of universities, NGOs and UNICEF. By the end of the first democratic government (March 1994), childfocused NGOs and the Catholic Church had accomplished two goals. First, they had influenced the agenda-setting process by participating in the development of the first planning initiatives to promote children’s rights; and second, they had helped the government through specific initiatives to spread knowledge of the Convention across the nation. Public campaigns were supported by UNICEF and the Ministry of Planning, and were partially implemented by some NGOs. 115

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Government and NGO relations

The technocratic turn, 1994–2000  The ‘honeymoon period’ between the government and organized civil society ended when the first democratic government left power. At this point government–NGO relations can be said to have come of age. Between 1994 and 2001, no significant initiatives relating to the rights of the child were undertaken by the govern­ment or social organizations. Three factors contributed to this: the Frei administration’s more technical approach to social policy ­issues, a less aggressive government policy concerning the participation of civil society within the policy-making process, and the lack of a clear strategy by NGOs to promote their agenda. Although the second Concertación government (1994–2000) was led by the same centre-left coalition, the new authorities adopted a more technocratic approach towards social policy issues. The general conclusion by observers in civil society is that the Frei administration took a managerial view of the social policy agenda, becoming more concerned with the creation of indicators of ‘good management’ than with establishing a new closeness in the relationship between the government and citizens (de la Maza 2003). The government’s main priorities during this time were related to the overall reduction of poverty, the environment, and an important housing initiative. It is generally considered to have been an effective government, maintaining high rates of economic growth and undertaking important and strategic state interventions through social policies (Meller 1999; Raczynski and Serrano 2003). The reason for the distance between the government and civil society actors on the issue of children’s rights is that, after the development of the first PNI, no major specific policy was encouraged to promote the subject. Probably the most interesting indirect development during the period was the approval by the Congress of a major reform of the justice system in Chile, which had an indirect yet important impact on children and youth issues. During the military regime, a group of lawyers and researchers linked to the Christian Democratic Party, the non-governmental Corporación de Promoción Universitaria (CPU, Corporation for the Promotion of University Studies), developed several proposals concerning the modernization of the judicial system. At the same time, the law school of Diego Portales University created a research programme to analyse problems in the criminal justice system and propose structural reforms. In 1992 and 1993, these lawyers published important studies demonstrating the inefficiency of the Chilean penal system and, along with other lawyers, judges, law professors, representatives of professional associations and policy-makers, created a Forum for the improvement of the criminal 116

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system.9 In 1994, the conservative think tank Paz Ciudadana (Citizen Peace) joined the Forum to promote changes in the judicial system, a move which allowed the Forum to gain the support of the right-wing opposition. Moreover, given the close links between Paz Ciudadana and the most important Chilean newspaper, El Mercurio (The Mercury), the debates regarding the judicial reform soon became part of the mainstream media. The Forum included an executive directorate with representatives of CPU and Paz Ciudadana, plus a technical commission which was chaired by a representative of the Diego Portales University. Between 1993 and 1994, this team met with key governmental authorities to lobby for and promote their proposed reforms. The Forum proposed a major reform to the criminal code in order to abolish the traditional inquisitorial system in which the judge assumed prosecutorial functions. The proposal included the establishment of a prosecutor’s office in charge of the investigative part of the trial, and the creation of an oral trial based on adversarial hearings, in which both parties have the right to produce their own evidence and contradict the evidence presented by the other side. In this new system, the judge would still maintain the right to question witnesses. As empirical studies revealed serious violations of individual rights under the inquisitorial system while it operated in Chile (Correa Sutil 1993; Jiménez 1994), the reform was framed in the context of the protection of citizens’ rights, such as the right to a fair trial based on the cross-examination of physical evidence. After the inauguration of the second democratic government in March 1994, the Forum lobbied the new minister of justice, Soledad Alvear. She supported the proposal for three reasons: first, it provided a solution to increasing pressures from right-wing sectors regarding the lack of a government policy to deal with crime; second, it provided a set of policies consistent with the government platform; and third, it was supported by diverse and important sectors of the political spectrum (Vargas 1998). At the end of 1994, the Ministry of Justice officially added two ministry officials to the Forum’s executive commission and other ministry official experts to the Forum’s technical commission. To demonstrate the government’s commitment to these reforms, the Forum was invited to move its headquarters to the Ministry of Justice. Six months later, in June 1995, the ministry sent the proposed legislation to Congress, which finally approved it in 1998.10 The relevance of these judicial reforms to children and youth lay in the abolition of a clause called ‘arrest on suspicion’, which allowed the police to detain any individual for up to twenty-four hours, and

the debate on whether teenagers under eighteen years of age should be treated as adults when facing criminal charges. With the exception of the institutions mentioned above, no other representatives of civil society offered proposals or policy initiatives regarding these two issues affecting minors (Fuentes 2004). NGOs like ACHNU and Opción began to address the subject of criminal justice only at the end of the 1990s, just after the abolition of arrest on suspicion was implemented. The most important NGOs working in the field tended to concentrate on two areas: direct intervention in child rehabilitation, rights promotion and crime prevention, usually linked to government agencies (PIDEE, Opción), and policy initiatives related to the systematization and documentation of the social status of children in Chile, and the production of educational materials (ACHNU). According to the executive director of ACHNU, although his organization proposed some initiatives concerning the protection of minors accused of criminal charges, the technocratic character of the debate on the criminal code reform inhibited them from influencing the government.11 To summarize, in the case of the Forum and the high-profile issue of judicial system reform, the government’s approach was technocratic. Representatives of political parties were involved, as well as a very limited group of scholars and institutions linked to political parties, but no inputs were made by NGOs concerned with children’s rights.

Regeneration through joint policy implementation, 2000–06  The election of a new government in 2000 mobilized both social actors and the government on the issue of the rights of the child. The government coalition led by Ricardo Lagos won the election in a very competitive second round by a margin of just 2.6 per cent. As the president recog­nized the need to ‘re-enchant’ the population, the new authorities promoted a set of initiatives involving the active participation of social organizations. Between July and December 2000, the government organized a set of workshops and seminars across the country to prepare a new National Policy for Children and Young People, Política Nacional a favor de la Infancia y Adolescencia 2001–2010 (PNIA). Representatives of the Ministry of Planning received suggestions for the new plan over a two-month period, involving individuals from the twenty-two state ministries, representatives from national, regional and local levels of government, and social actors. UNICEF played a crucial role by helping the government to coordinate dialogues nationwide. The incoming government also created a Council of Ministers for Children and Young People, with an executive secretary based in the 118

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Ministry of Planning, entrusted with monitoring policy implementation. In 2002, the Chilean government and UNICEF published the first report on the advancement of goals by introducing an Index for the Development of Children. This tool measured progress in children’s rights realization in terms of education, family income, health and housing conditions. In August 2003, the Council’s executive secretary delivered the first report on the National Policy, including the policy actions taken by the government in several areas at the national and local levels. Two subsequent reports were released in 2004 and 2005, but the reports stopped in 2006 when consultations began for a new set of policies. The government’s programme and actions mobilized NGOs, with the government taking the initiative of specifically calling for their engagement in this field. It was clear to the Lagos government that close collaboration with institutions like UNICEF, ACHNU and Opción enhanced society’s perceptions of its legitimacy and of the participatory nature of policy processes.12 The three policy areas where NGOs and government officials co­ alesced most closely were the prevention of sexual exploitation of ­minors, the creation of a government office for the protection of rights, and the participation of civil society with SENAME during the Lagos administration (2000–06). In the first case, ACHNU, the Ministry of Justice and UNICEF promoted two national conferences on rules for punishing the sexual exploitation of children. This initiative resulted in an action plan that included legal reforms and social policy measures. The government was willing to accept NGO and UNICEF recommendations because ‘the government lacked the expertise on the subject and it required some ideas concerning prevention and punishment of misbehaviour’.13 In the second case, the government and NGOs agreed to create an Office for the Protection of Rights at the municipal level. This proposal had been jointly developed by ACHNU and SENAME at the end of the 1990s, with support from the Swedish government’s development cooperation programme, and a pilot programme was conducted focusing on one of the main obstacles to child rights: the lack of entry points for children and citizens to denounce abuses and build their child rights awareness. The idea was included in the PNIA and by 2003 close to one hundred municipalities across the country had opened such offices. For NGO activists, this is one of the main achievements in terms of policy implementation since the return of democracy in 1990.14 In the third case, soon after the inauguration of the third ­Concertación

government in 2000, the director of SENAME, Delia Del Gatto, reactivated an existing advisory board and included representatives from a wide range of social organizations in order to advance various reforms. The board included representatives from the left-wing Opción as well as more conservative organizations, such as the Fundación Niño y Patria (Child and Fatherland Foundation, related to the National Police), Socie­ dad Protectora de la Infancia (Children’s Protection Society), Hogar de Cristo (Home of Christ, related to the Church), ACHNU and others. Even though several NGOs had a critical approach towards government agencies, they recognized SENAME’s proactive role in establishing an institutional channel of communication with civil society.15 According to Del Gatto, two motivations caused her to convene this board. First, many of the 320 registered NGOs were pressurizing the government to open up spaces for participation. Second, and probably more importantly, the government wanted to review the involvement of many of these organizations in the child fostering system through public contracts. According to Del Gatto, these NGOs participated in close to one thousand projects with the government, and by the year 2000 such participation was unregulated. As Del Gatto explains: ‘For more than twenty years, the director of SENAME relied upon a discretionary mechanism to assign public contracts, without regulations or institutional mechanisms to verify the quality of the services that these institutions were providing.’16 The first task of the advisory board was to modernize the mechanism by which public contracts and subsidies were allocated to NGOs. This topic was particularly sensitive for both the government and NGOs, as many of the latter depended exclusively upon government resources to survive, and as most foster homes were managed by NGOs through this form of contract. After six months of working on a draft, the ad­ visory board submitted a proposal to the government that was accepted by all of the organizations involved. A good example of the effects of such feedback was the government proposal to promote a reduction in the number of children in foster homes.17 According to SENAME, children needed to have a close relationship with their families and, consequently, the body promoted a yearly reduction in the number of children living permanently in these foster homes and the setting of specific objectives to be achieved once they were living with their real families, such as school attendance and regular visits to health centres. The advisory board rejected this policy based upon the socio-economic context in which many children lived with their real families. They suggested a case-by-case analysis of the socio-economic conditions of 120

Civil society actors working on the subject of children are mostly organ­ ized to carry out government projects. When you are in a position where you are receiving money from the government, you can mostly provide policy recommendations. However, [subcontracted NGOs] do not keep the government accountable or control governmental policies, as they are closely linked to us. To perform an ‘accountability’ role, NGOs should have complete financial independence from the government, and this is not the case.18

Lorena Martínez, current director of the Division for the Protection of Children’s Rights at SENAME, adds: ‘NGOs have mostly played a role by showing the government problems existing in governmental policies.’19 While the Lagos government opened up these opportunities for participation, in April 2001 close to forty organizations participated in a first meeting of the Red Nacional de ONGs por la Infancia de Chile (National NGO Network for Children in Chile). The main organizers, once again, were ACHNU, PIDEE and Opción, as well as some organizations close to the Catholic Church (Hogar de Cristo, among others). Since then, the network has held annual meetings in Santiago and other regional locations in Chile. The central substantive concerns of NGOs discussed at the first meeting were the lack of institutions in central government to coordinate actions; income distribution disparities that had an impor­ tant effect on poor families; domestic violence; the situation of children at work; and the legal and concrete conditions of children in the justice system. However, this more proactive and critical attitude towards government policies did not translate into specific campaigns on the part of the NGOs. As one public official stated, while several organizations participated in the policy implementation of some initiatives, no NGO took action,20 in an activist sense. Instead, most NGOs continued to work on targeted programmes, trying mainly to influence the policy process by monitoring the government at the international level (UN Committee on the Rights of the Child) and by promoting children’s rights at the local level. 121

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children’s families. Government officials subsequently accepted that in many cases it was impossible to request that specific objectives be accomplished and a more flexible set of policies was enacted. In this sense, NGOs played a critical role in influencing the implementation of certain programmes by proposing policy initiatives that were in most cases adopted by policy-makers. As Del Gatto suggests:

Representatives of NGOs saw the problem differently. For them, the government opened up few avenues for permanent consultation with them: The main problem is that there is no specific place at the ministerial level to address the issue of childhood. Indeed, the government created an inter-ministerial Council for Childhood, but it only worked when a given Minister of Planning – who is in charge of coordinating this council – was interested in carrying out particular policy initiatives.21

The lack of an institutional, permanent space for policy debate concerning children was perceived as one of the main obstacles for advancing the policy agenda. The difficulties were exacerbated by the fact that children’s rights fell across the domains of several different government agencies, including the Ministries of Justice, Finance, Planning and Education, and other agencies that do not necessarily work together in a coordinated fashion. Probably the most interesting and concrete case of policy influence was the campaign related to access to information on children under the custody of SENAME.22 In 2004, this governmental agency established an information system that requested not only basic personal data from these minors, but also intimate and sensitive information, such as incidents of domestic violence, drug abuse by children and relatives, and sexual habits. According to NGOs, SENAME was not requesting permission from these minors to obtain and publish this information. The NGO Initiative on the Rights of the Child criticized the system for violating international agreements signed by Chile, particularly the right of minors to privacy. The network launched a campaign targeting the national headquarters of SENAME and requested a meeting with the national director, ­Delia Del Gatto. In June 2005, the government and the campaigning NGOs agreed to establish a round table to analyse relevant policy ­options. After two meetings, they agreed on a protocol outlining the rights and responsibilities of operators of the database, a partial modification of the questionnaire, and an improvement to the data security system. In addition, in cases in which the family had a sensitive health history (for example, those suffering from HIV/AIDS), the family had to explicitly give consent before this information could be divulged, so as to afford it protection from discrimination. In November 2005, an official agreement was signed by SENAME and the NGO Initiative on the Rights of the Child.23 Given the specificity of this campaign, it aroused little media attention, 122

Conclusions

The question regarding the conditions under which social actors can affect national policies is both theoretically and empirically relevant. While it is true that one should be cautious of making generalizations, in the case considered in this chapter four crucial contextual elements stand out: first, the political context (whether it favours or hinders ­social participation); second, the institutional context; third, the socio­ economic context (whether scarcity is the main issue that needs to be addressed); and fourth, the strength of organized civil society. In Chile, the political context has been favourable to social participation in two periods: immediately after the transition to democracy and at the beginning of the third Concertación government. A window of opportunity for NGOs to influence the political arena was opened as governments set out to define their programmatic goals. In the first period (1990–92), there was a collaborative effort that can be explained by the ideological commitment against the military regime shared by the new government and civil society actors. In the second period (2000–03 or so), the story is more complex. On the one hand, the government decided to address the issue of civil society participation within the national policy process. On the other hand, some NGOs tried to gain leverage by initiating more autonomous and adversarial action on the issue of children’s rights. It is very difficult to establish a causal relationship between these two processes. The most likely explanation is that the government’s decision to include NGOs within the consultation process caused the latter to become more aware of the need for more autonomous collective action. It seems clear that the government’s newfound interest in engaging civil society is closely linked to electoral and programmatic motivations. As political actors promoted new policy agendas, they opened up spaces for collaboration with social actors, principally NGOs. A second important factor that must be taken into consideration is the degree of institutionalization of the state and the particular features of those institutions. Chile is a case of a highly institutionalized state, which implies that the crucial debates focus on defining and implementing the ‘rules of the game’. In addition, Chile’s strong presidentialism 123

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but it nevertheless constitutes an example of the effective modification of existing government policy and the influencing of policy implementation. The existence of policy alternatives, a strategic campaign targeting government actors, and the receptiveness of the government to this campaign opened a window of opportunity for policy influence.

affects how and where actors must focus their attention, given that almost all initiatives and debates involve the executive branch. Because the executive plays a central role in identifying problems, generating legal proposals, distributing resources and implementing reforms, civil society actors will tend to focus their attention on influencing government agencies. Social actors seldom try to influence legislators or the judicial system. The existence of various entry points is also a crucial institutional characteristic that needs to be considered. As social actors recognize, one of the main obstacles to practising advocacy on the issue of children’s rights is that there is no single and centralized institution addressing the issue. Several state agencies are responsible for this area, including the presidency, the Ministries of Justice, Planning and Education, SENAME, the Servicio Nacional para Mujer (National Service for Women), the Consejo Nacional para el Control de Estupefacientes (National Service for Drug Prevention), the Instituto Nacional de la Juventud (National Institute for Young People), and others. While the existence of several entry points sometimes helps social actors to advance their ideas by allowing them to push them simultaneously or sequentially through different avenues, the downside is that when several government institutions are involved in the decision-making process, it is far more difficult to obtain results, owing to the problems of joined-up government action and the diffusion of responsibilities. The absence of a clear institutional framework makes decisions highly dependent upon those in charge and how willing they are to promote policy change. Another contextual aspect is the strength of particular civil society organizations. Chile is well known as a case of high party institutionalization and weak civil society. In general, it is political parties that have acted as intermediaries between social demands and the state. As was observed in this chapter, the origins of many civic organizations are closely linked to political parties. The transition to democracy was also a transition in the relationship between parties and civil society. At the beginning of the 1990s, it was safe to expect close cooperation between the government and NGOs, given that they shared the same ideological background. However, what is interesting in this case is the emergence of new NGOs at the beginning of the transition and the consolidation of a network eleven years after the return to democratic rule. The increasing number of activities by NGOs at the beginning of the twenty-first century can be identified as a new attempt by them to act collectively and to increase or maintain their independence from the government. 124

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NGO strategies are closely related to the political and social context described above. Actors from civil society and even from the government recognize that when NGOs possess some particular expertise, they are more ready to exert influence on the policy-making process. One could speculate that the more financially dependent an NGO is on contributions from the government, the less likely it is to influence the policy process at the agenda-setting level. This appears to be true in the case examined in this chapter, given that NGOs require funding to survive and that the funding available is mainly reserved for direct intervention. Opción and ACHNU have been recognized by policy-makers as the only influential NGOs in terms of agenda-setting, particularly in the case of the creation of offices for the protection of rights and legislation to prevent child sexual exploitation. Usually, strategies have not been confrontational, but rather have engaged at the policy level. Opción has also tried to influence the legislative branch by providing insights to members of Congress. Child rights organizations have recognized the implementation of local offices for the protection of children as one of their main achievements during the last four years. Moreover, they recognize some indirect influence in the enactment of a new law to penalize child pornography. However, they have been less successful in promoting a reform of the 1967 Minors Law.24 Even though children’s rights are important from the perspectives of both development and democracy, very few initiatives undertaken by NGOs on this issue have sparked active public mobilizations or garnered significant media exposure.25 The social and political context described above in which NGOs have operated may partially explain this reality. Socially, the overall improvement in well-being in Chile has made this agenda less prominent and relatively uncontentious, as some political steps have been taken to solve these issues. Politically, NGOs have learned that, lacking resources and social support, a more effective way to influence the policy process is through the permanent contacts that they have developed with government officials. What can be learned from civil society actors’ impact on the promotion of the rights of the child in Chile? First, conceptually and empirically, the Chilean experience must be placed within the story of transitional countries. Civic organizations are likely to experience an internal transition once democracy is re-established. This trans­ ition involves departing from classic ideological alliances with parties and gaining political autonomy from the state. The issue of autonomy is probably one of the crucial issues civil society actors must face once democratic rule is established. This is particularly important in

c­ ountries where the development of civil organizations is closely related to the development of political parties. In the case of Chile and child rights, the establishment of a new civil society network in 2001 may be considered as a ­turning point in terms of having a more independent approach towards the government. The first results could be observed three years later when they promoted a specific, but effective, campaign against a government policy in order to protect the personal information of children living in foster homes. However, the fact that many of these organizations remain financially linked to the government makes them less inclined to take a more critical approach towards government policies. As this chapter has demonstrated, this is recognized by both civil society actors and public officials. The relative absence of independent ‘watchdog’ institutions in Chile is mostly explained by the close financial relationship between many civil society organizations and the government. One way to reduce the pernicious effects of financial dependence on government funding is to create collective entities. In the case of Chile, the establishment of a collective entity helped individual organizations to diffuse their opinions and, as a result, avoid direct conflicts with the government. This is the case because often a social actor speaking from a collective can safely voice an opinion that he or she could not voice individually without risk of repercussions. Second, in terms of policy influence, social actors who are in touch with social problems are more likely to exert influence when they are able to translate such views into policy options. As one policy-maker suggests: ‘As some NGOs carry out certain programmes, they learn from such experiences and bring these lessons with them to the table in order to improve existing programmes […]’26 Third, in this case it is difficult to assess the influence of international mechanisms on governments. Some NGOs are making efforts to produce an alternative report on the rights of the child. It is interesting to note that while the first report was put together by NGOs and the government (1991), in the second case, civil society organizations decided to produce their own, different report: ‘[…] the government requested that we write this [second] report together with them, but we decided to play a more independent role and we did not accept the offer’.27 Anecdotal information indicates that at some point government officials were concerned about the impact of the recommendations of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. In general, however, it seems that such influence has been sporadic and that the government’s commitment to following up on these recommendations has been lacklustre and vague. The case of social actors’ role in promoting the rights of the child 126

Notes 1  The Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the American Convention, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. 2  These bills consisted of the legal recognition of children born out of wedlock; the protection of children under eighteen years of

age charged with, or victims of, an offence; the creation of the National Service for Women; the creation of the National Institute for Youth; the creation of an intersectoral Advisory Commission to assess the situation of children living in irregular situations; the creation of a 127

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in Chile demonstrates increasing levels of associativeness, specific and recent policy impact within the policy implementation realm, and limited institutional capabilities to influence the political debate. In this case, civil society is represented by professional and small NGOs that are usually, but not always, linked to the Catholic Church and progressive sectors of society. Consistent with the conclusions of other authors, this case demonstrates that policy influence is more likely when policy alternatives exist, when actors are willing to act collectively rather than individually, and when key government authorities are willing to listen to social actors. Given the existence of a presidential system and a strong state apparatus in Chile, civil activists in this case are more likely to successfully exert influence at the executive level rather than through the media or the legislative branch. A cursory glance at the achievements in Chile related to the rights of the child, such as improvements in the living conditions of children and media campaigns to promote children’s rights, suggests that civil society exercised an effective influence on policy in this area. A closer examination of the case reveals a far more complex and interesting story. First, it is difficult to draw a clear dividing line between ‘the state’ and ‘civil society’. As stakeholders shifted in 1990, many of the new government authorities came from the NGO community. Consequently, it is essential to define the realms of ‘civil society’ and ‘the state’ carefully, in order to address accurately questions of influence and learning processes. This chapter demonstrates close collaboration between the NGOs and the government from the very beginning of the transition to democracy, and argues that this was due to the shared ideological commitment of actors in both sectors. If initially the influence of NGOs could be explained by the inclusion of many former NGO actors in the first transition government, later on, once the critical juncture of the early transition had come to an end at the start of the twenty-first century, it is better explained by the beginnings of the emergence of a more autonomous civil society.

new open system for childcare in the field of justice; the establishment of regulations for the allocation of resources by the National Service for Children and the private institutions submitting childcare projects; the regulation of international adoptions in order to facilitate the process and minimize possibilities for child trafficking; and several measures to protect the children of victims of human rights violations during the military regime. 3  The Frei administration recognized such problems in its report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. Interview, Ana María Farías, Ministerio de Planificación Nacional (MIDEPLAN, National Planning Ministry), November 2005. 4  Interview, Lorena Martínez, director of the Division for the Protection of Children’s Rights at SENAME, 3 August 2006. 5  ‘Opción’ not only means ‘­option’ in Spanish, but also ‘adoption’. 6  Interview, Osvaldo Torres, executive director of ACHNU, 14 June 2007. 7  Key interviewees provided the author with this figure for organizations composing the GAN, but no document could be found to exhaustively identify all of them. However, the Catholic Church and its associated NGOs chose to play an important role in this initiative. 8  In the words of the report: ‘The State and Government are experien­ cing difficulty in acting directly to tackle these emerging problems [of the situation of the child], while civil society, through non-governmental organizations (NGOs), community organizations, churches, universities, etc, has a wealth of experience and skill which should be drawn

upon […] The challenge consists in adapting the work of the state with a view to complementing and supporting the efforts of civil society and, in particular, of the families involved’ (UN Commitee on the Rights of the Child 1993: 8). 9  The Forum was composed of seventy members, most of them lawyers linked to various left, centre and right-wing political parties or representatives of different universities, professional associations and policy-makers (Vargas 1998). 10  The reform was implemented in stages in different regions of the country and was fully implemented by 2003. 11  Interview, Osvaldo Torres, director of ACHNU, 9 July 2006. 12  Interview, Ana María Farías, MIDEPLAN, November 2005. 13  Interview, Osvaldo Torres, director of ACHNU, 9 July 2006. 14  Ibid. 15  Interview with Frances Valverde, executive coordinator of ACHNU, 7 July 2006. 16  Interview, Delia Del Gatto, director of SENAME, 23 August 2006. 17  Interviews, Delia Del Gatto, 23 August 2006; Lorena Martínez, director of the Division for the Protection of Children’s Rights at SENAME, 3 August 2006; and Consuelo Contreras, director of Opción, 13 July 2006. 18  Interview, Delia Del Gatto, direc­tor of SENAME, 23 August 2006. 19  Interview, Lorena Martínez, director of the Division for the Protection of Children’s Rights at SENAME, 3 August 2006. 20  Ibid. 21  Interview, Frances Valverde, executive coordinator of ACHNU, 10 July 2006. 22  Interview with key informants

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is a website (observatorioinfancia. org) organized by the Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo Tecnológico y Social (Technological and Social Research Centre) to promote children’s rights. 26  Interview, Lorena Martínez, director of the Division for the Protection of Rights, SENAME, 3 August 2006. 27  Interview with Francis Valverde, executive coordinator of ACHNU, 7 July 2006.

References Correa Sutil, J. (ed.) (1993) Justicia y Marginalidad. Percepción de los pobres, Santiago: Universidad Católica de Chile. De la Maza, G. (2003) ‘Más pero no mejor: el problema de la calidad de vida’, in O. Muñoz and C. Stefoni (eds), El período del presidente Frei Ruiz-Tagle, Santiago: Editorial Universitaria y FLACSO-Chile. Fuentes, C. (2004) Contesting the Iron Fist. Advocacy networks and police violence in democratic Argentina and Chile, New York and London: Routledge. Jiménez, M. (1994) ‘El proceso penal chileno y los derechos humanos’, Cuadernos de Análisis Jurídico, 4. Meller, P. (1999) ‘Pobreza y distribución del ingreso en Chile (década de los noventa)’, in P. Drake and I. Jaksic (eds), El Modelo Chileno. Democracia y des­ arrollo en los noventa, Santiago: LOM Ediciones. Ministerio de Planificación (2002), ‘MIDEPLAN, gasto social’, cep.cl/ sw2002/Informe_Chile/Referencias/Varios/Mideplan_gastogloba. pdf, accessed 4 September 2007. Oxhorn, P. (1995) Organizing Civil Society. The popular sectors and

the struggle for democracy in Chile, Pennsylvania: Penn State Press. Piña, C. (1989) ‘Las ONGs en el ámbito local urbano: desafíos y potencialidades’, Documento de Trabajo, 433, Santiago: FLASCO. Raczynski, D. and C. Serrano (2003) ‘Programas de superación de la pobreza y capital social. Evidencias y aprendizajes de la experiencia en Chile’, Seminar on ‘Capital social y programas de superación de la pobreza: linea­ mientos para la acción’, CEPAL, Santiago, 10/11 November. Red Infancia Chile (2007) ‘NGOs alternative report on the rights of the child’, www.ongraices.org, accessed 25 May 2009. UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (1993) ‘Document CRC/C/3/ Add.18 June 3’, www.unhcr.ch/ tabs, accessed 27 May 2009. Vargas, J. (1998) ‘La reforma a la justicia criminal en Chile: el cambio del rol estatal’, Cuadernos de Análisis Jurídico, 38. Zanzi Gardilcic, O. (1994) ‘La infancia en situación de riesgo social: conclusiones y propuestas’, in Infancia en Riesgo Social y Políticas Sociales en Chile, Montevideo: Instituto Interamericano del Niño.

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at the Chilean network. A summary of this case can be found at: www. observatorioinfancia.cl/index. php?option=com_content&task= view&id=2211&Itemid=0&lang=es, accessed 5 September 2007. 23  A network of organizations from Valparaiso, in Chile’s Fifth Region, played an important role in this process. 24  These legal reforms are discussed in Red Infancia Chile (2007). 25  The most recent development

6 ·  Winning the right to information in India: is knowledge power? A mita B aviskar 1

All over India, along dusty rural roads and city streets, one can now see signboards in the local language announcing ongoing construction works. Whether repairing a road, building a school or bridge, or digging a check-dam, the government prominently displays basic information about the work undertaken. The signs make public the purpose and technical specifications of a project, and its cost, source of funding, executing agency and date of commencement. They declare the government’s commitment to transparency in public expenditure, acknow­ledging a demand that has been vigorously voiced by various social groups in India in the last decade, latterly under the rubric of the National Campaign for the Right to Information. Through the signboards, a major achievement in the struggle for greater accountability in governance is writ large across the Indian landscape. Mandated by the government as a response to public pressure, the signboards would be meaningless if the process of mobilization that led to them was not sustained. In the past, these signs would merely have served a cosmetic purpose. Even the literate few who could understand them would have found it almost impossible to negotiate their way through the labyrinths of government procedure to verify whether a project met its stated parameters. Take roadworks, for instance. Each year, a municipality spends millions of rupees on road repairs, usually subcontracting to private firms which often corner jobs by bribing the appropriate municipal officials to reject more competitive bids. Once their bid has been chosen, these firms short-change the public by ­using substandard materials and by cutting corners in the work pro­ cess. ­Another round of bribes at the time of inspection ensures that the work is approved and their payments cleared. Confronted with roads that become potholed barely a month after repair, most citizens can do little to challenge the rampant corruption in public works. This dismal state of affairs received a major jolt when citizens’ groups in various parts of India began using their right to information (RTI) to inspect government documents. Upon payment of a nominal fee and 130

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photocopying charges, any citizen can now ask for specific information and the competent government authority is required to respond within a short period. If information is not provided, or if it is inaccurate or incomplete, citizens can complain to a Public Grievance Commissioner. If an officer is found delaying or withholding information or supplying wrong information, they can be fined a fixed amount for each day of delay. In the example of road repairs, how did examining the public record help? Comparing government papers with physical inspections of the work and building materials with their official specifications showed precisely where the records had been fudged and by whom. Not only were groups enabled to demand that incompetent and corrupt officials be prosecuted and collaborating firms blacklisted, but their vigilance and continued public scrutiny ensured that future projects were less likely to be undermined by corrupt practices. As a result of these efforts, greater probity and efficacy in public works are much more likely. The National Campaign for People’s Right to Information (NCPRI) was formally launched in 1996 at a gathering of more than a hundred activist organizations. Campaign leaders described their goals as transparency in public life, empowerment of people, deepening of democracy, and fighting corruption, and their primary focus was to campaign for a national law on the right to information. In the same year, the NCPRI and the Press Council of India sent the first draft of such a law to the government for consideration. Since then, nine out of twenty-eight Indian states have enacted legislation to grant citizens RTI, and on 12 October 2005, the national government, led by the Congress Party, made operational a national Right to Information Act, a major milestone in the NCPRI’s ongoing struggle. As required by the Act, all government departments and public sector organizations are currently putting together the infrastructure needed to meet public demands for information. This entails appointing Public Information Officers and training personnel to answer queries. Such a flurry of bureaucratic activity in response to a new law is unusual. How was such a radical piece of legislation passed and notified?2 The demand for RTI grew from tiny sporadic initiatives dispersed across the country to a concerted campaign. The forging of horizontal links was matched by the leap in vertical reach, from targeting local governments and small projects to securing legislative action at the highest levels of the state. Translating legislation into practice seems much more likely with the strongly mobilized grassroots organizational network of the NCPRI.

The recent successes of the NCPRI are all the more impressive because its constituent organizations belong to that most marginal political group – people’s organizations. Neither NGOs that draw on donor funding, nor formal political parties, some of these groups achieve a prominence out of proportion to the numbers they represent, especially when they address issues of national development and the environment, but the majority labour on in relative obscurity. How were these small localized groups able to sustain a long-term campaign that resulted in opening up the public sphere, enabling popular participation that made the government more accountable to ordinary citizens? What strategies of networking did they use to expand and consolidate their sphere of influence? How were they able to win over neutral groups and neutralize hostile ones? There are also other intriguing aspects to the NCPRI. In the early 1990s, no observer of the social movement scene in India would have identified RTI as a significant political issue. The top contender would have been the campaign against displacement by development projects, spearheaded by the movement against the dams on the river Narmada, which focused its critique on the pattern of development that displaced poor communities by usurping their land and natural resources. Within this campaign, the question of citizens’ RTI did crop up repeatedly as social movements sought greater information on government projects. Yet, while the demand for greater public accountability was an intrinsic element of the social movements of the 1980s and early 1990s, they did not directly or explicitly focus on the RTI. What has enabled the current campaign to act in a concerted fashion? How does it draw on the networks and political analyses created by the National Alliance of People’s Movements, started up by the Narmada activists in the early 1990s? In what ways do its strategies diverge from those of previous campaigns? Another curious aspect of the success of the NCPRI is the fact that it has occurred during a period when successive governments have firmly established the Indian economy on the path of economic liberalization. Neoliberal policies have resulted in the shrinking of poor people’s access to basic subsistence and in the denial of government goods and services to them. Does this context make the RTI campaign an anomaly? Should it be interpreted as a democratic sop, meant to create political legitimacy even as the economic ground is being cut from under people’s feet? After all, what use is information if you cannot feed yourself? Left radicals may dismiss RTI as a liberal anodyne, and accuse the government of cold-blooded cynicism: if they don’t have bread, let them eat paper. What 132

The national campaign: a brief history

The formal launch of the NCPRI in 1996 could not have happened without years of prior effort by its constituent members to secure the RTI in their own spheres of work.4 Many people’s organizations campaigning against forestry projects, large dams and mining struggled to gain access to information about government projects, especially their social and environmental impacts. Activists had to rely on ‘leaked’ documents and information gleaned from government responses to the courts and development organizations such as the World Bank, which had liberal public disclosure policies (Fox and Brown 1998). Ironically the Indian government granted RTI to multilateral funding organizations before recognizing the same for its own citizens. The ­government’s 133

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does the unexpected success of the NCPRI tell us about the Indian polity and about the workings of democracy in an age of liberalization? Also, what has been the role of the international community in shaping the right to information movement in India? Is it mere coincidence that more than fifty nations around the world have passed RTI legislation since 1990? When the neoliberal global order, led by the IMF and the World Bank, also claims to promote ‘good governance’, what strategies does the NCPRI chart in order to escape being co-opted as part of this transnational project? I shall examine these and other questions about what the NCPRI has accomplished and the challenges that it continues to face by outlining a brief history of the campaign, analysing the reasons for its success and discussing its limitations. I have used detailed interviews with activists and scholars affiliated with the NCPRI to construct an oral history of the campaign and some of its constituent members, both organizations and individuals. Our conversations examined particular events that were critical to the campaign’s organization and efficacy, as well as conjunctures that created significant breakthroughs in terms of ideology and mobilization. I have also focused on two organizations that have been central to the NCPRI: the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), which started the RTI movement in rural Rajasthan, and the Delhi-based Parivartan, which went on to become the campaign’s leading activist group on issues affecting the urban poor, to chart the changes in their practices and perspectives. I also draw upon interviews with activists and analysts not associated with the NCPRI who have a different view of its activities. Access to secondary sources – newspaper records, press statements, government orders – supplements fieldwork which involved attending RTI workshops, public meetings and conventions.3

­ pprehensions that information made available to activists would be a used to undermine development projects were well founded. Through public interest litigation and by marshalling critical analyses from scien­ tists and other technical experts sympathetic to their cause, people’s organizations were able to mount comprehensive challenges to development projects. In many instances, they were able to stop, modify or stall projects. The debate grew increasingly polarized. The state’s accusation that people’s organizations were not ‘constructive’ and that they did not want India to develop was supported by dominant groups in the country. As economic liberalization proceeded in the 1990s, to be met by opposition from the National Alliance of People’s Movements, the charge that the ‘anti-development lobby’ was backward looking was voiced even more loudly. As the debate on development became increasingly adversarial, the middle ground for negotiation and compromise was eroded. During the 1980s and 1990s, while some people’s organizations were concentrating on mobilizing against particular development projects or government decisions, others were engaged in more wide-ranging mobilization around rural development. Small localized jan sangathans (people’s organizations) and wider jan andolans (people’s campaigns) occupied the social action field: sangathans would often join andolans on particular issues. In turn, the andolans could fairly quickly activate ­affected populations by drawing upon the long-term political mobilization effected by the sangathans. While the andolans caught the media eye, the sangathans were more low key, building networks of solidarity with others in their region while, at the same time, through their participation in the andolans, gaining a wider political canvas, becoming more shrewd about the media and aware of the importance of cultivating links to the intelligentsia.

Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan  One such sangathan, the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS, Workers’ and Farmers’ Power Union), was formed in 1987 in Devdungri village in southern Rajasthan in western India by Aruna Roy, Shankar Singh and Nikhil Dey, who began organizing poor farmers in this semi-arid region to secure access to land and state services.5 In a region marked by frequent droughts and extreme poverty, state services also include drought relief works that provide employment to those in distress. The MKSS activists found that corruption was rampant in these programmes, with local officials and contractors pocketing money by adding fictitious names to the official attendance register of workers employed in relief work, while turning away those desperately in 134

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need of wages. In other cases, the stipulated minimum wages were not paid to workers. When MKSS activists demanded that they be shown the attendance register and other records, so that villagers could check them, they met with flat rejection; such documents were apparently covered under the Indian Official Secrets Act of 1923. Rallying with the slogans: ‘Hamara paisa, hamara hisaab’ (Our money, our accounts), and ‘Yeh sarkar hamaari hai, nahin kisi ke baap ki hai’ (This government belongs to us, it’s not anyone’s personal property), and holding dharnas (sit-ins) at local government headquarters, the MKSS would succeed in securing occasional access to records. The MKSS proceeded to investigate all development spending at the village level. In the early 1990s, there had been a nationwide decentral­ization of the panchayats (village-level elected government), which vested them with greater power to undertake development work. De­centralization did not automatically bring with it greater accountability. The funds sanctioned for development would disappear into the pockets of elected representatives and government officials. While the papers filed in government offices recorded community halls built, roads repaired and hand-pumps installed, there would be no trace of such public facilities in the villages. Instead, local leaders would come to acquire new motorcycles or fancy extensions to their houses. The MKSS then widened the scope of its mobilization to demand access to the records of all development expenditure in the villages. Using the information thus obtained, the MKSS began to organize jan sunvais (public hearings) in villages to compare official records with actual employment and work done, detecting fraud and demanding that corrupt officials reimburse the money that they had embezzled (Mander n.d.). These proved to be a remarkably effective technique for organizing people behind the RTI and demonstrating its effectiveness. Each public hearing was preceded by rigorous preparation, amassing the relevant government records, physically inspecting public works done and cross-checking with villagers. In the jan sunvai, the information is read out in front of all the gathered villagers and people present public testimony. Claims can be challenged and verified. A panel of independent observers, usually lawyers, academics and journalists, examines the evidence. The responsible government officials are invited to respond to the findings and to take action. The jan sunvais brought to light the huge discrepancies between the official record and actual practice. In 1998, for instance, several sar­ panches (heads of local government) apologized for committing fraud and publicly returned money after being confronted with ­incontrovertible

documentary evidence at a jan sunvai. The fear of public humiliation led some sarpanches to approach short-changed workers and pay them in full, to persuade them not to take their complaint to the hearing. Villagers who had been denied payment despite repeated visits to the sarpanch and who had given up hope of ever receiving their dues found that their accounts were speedily settled when a jan sunvai was scheduled for their area. The jan sunvai also prompted action against officials found guilty of embezzlement. By bringing public pressure to bear in order to stop the abuse of development funds meant for the poor, the jan sunvais contributed to political empowerment in a profound way. The authority of the state relies on maintaining its distance. The more opaque the workings of power, the less likely that it can be challenged. Certain commonplace hegemonic ‘truths’ – for instance, the assertion that public works are a failure because workers are chor and kaamchor (thieves; dishonest, lazy, shirkers) can only be maintained as long as they emanate from an authority that is beyond scrutiny.6 As soon as workers gained access to documents, it became apparent that it was not they but the bosses who were chor, responsible for corrupt practices. The hegemonic power of the state was punctured. From birth, the rural poor are socialized to defer to those in power: upper-caste, upper-class men, especially government officials. As a political performance, where those of higher status are rendered accessible to investigation and critique, and where popular support gives courage to the poor to speak out against injustice, the jan sunvais are unparalleled. They enable the poor to literally speak truth to power. The principles underlying the campaign for the RTI emerged through the jan sunvais. They showed that the RTI was a fundamental enabling right, essential for the effective exercise of other rights: as the MKSS slogan declared, ‘jaanne ka adhikar, jeene ka adhikar’ (the right to information, the right to live). A working democracy demands public participation in decision-making; greater transparency is not only necessary as a check on corruption, but essential for planning programmes that respond to people’s concerns. More broadly, the RTI fosters greater political discussion and debate, expanding political participation beyond the ritualized act of periodic voting to greater involvement in the public sphere from which the poor have so far been excluded. This realization led the MKSS to demand that the state provide the RTI more systematically, through a comprehensive law for RTI. This demand was strongly opposed by an administration apprehensive that public scrutiny would not only reveal corruption, but also 136

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enable the public to challenge the mismanagement of public funds by incompetent or careless decision-makers. Yet there was a certain degree of support for the MKSS initiative from those within the bureaucracy who were motivated by the ideal of public service. Roy’s background as an Indian Administration Service (IAS) officer familiar with the workings of bureaucracy, the credibility of MKSS as an uncompromising and disciplined upholder of poor people’s rights, the momentum gained through the well-publicized jan sunvais and well-organized protest meetings, and the indisputable logic of its argument that people had a right to know what was being spent in their name, all combined to persuade some members of the administration that the MKSS cause deserved support. While gathering support from within, through discussions with ­senior officials, the MKSS also solicited the support of like-minded organ­izations in Rajasthan, Delhi and other parts of India, spearheading the formation of the NCPRI in 1996, eventually bringing together over four hundred groups. In April 1996, the MKSS organized the first demon­stration expli­ citly focused on the RTI. Peaceful protesters ­gathered outside the district headquarters in Beawar town, refusing to leave until the government made development records public. The dharna continued for forty days until the government issued an order stating that villagers could inspect records, but said nothing about allow­ing them to photocopy these. Dissatisfied with this limited access, the MKSS continued to protest. In May 1997, after a fifty-two-day-long dharna in Jaipur, the state capital, the government amended local government legislation to give the public full access to village records. The MKSS then began to organize for a comprehensive RTI. In 1998, the Rajasthan government agreed to constitute a committee to draft a RTI law. The MKSS objected to a com­mittee composed exclusively of bureaucrats, and after sustained agitation, succeeded in participating in the process. In 2000, the Rajasthan Right to Information Act was passed, and the MKSS worked to activate the administrative machinery to implement it. In the latter half of the 1990s, the RTI campaign of the MKSS was accompanied by mobilization for the right to food and employment. An inadequate, inefficient and corrupt drought relief programme and public distribution system for basic provisions, which were anyway being rolled back by the state’s neoliberal agenda, made survival even harder for the rural poor. Without a source of livelihood, and deprived of affordable food, the poor were left with no choice but to migrate in ever-widening circles in search of work. The MKSS, together with other organizations, campaigned for the right to food, resulting in the

Supreme Court of India appointing a committee to recommend an overhaul of state welfare policies to provide subsidized food grains across the country, including a system of public monitoring. It has also led the national campaign on the right to work. The energies of key activists then focused on putting in place systems of public oversight to ensure that employment funds are used effectively and honestly. MKSS’s work seems to have come full circle – from attempting to enforce minimum wage legislation in public works, which led to the demand for RTI, the organization is again spearheading the struggle for remunerative employment for all, to be guaranteed by the state.

Parivartan  Parivartan was started by Arvind Kejriwal, an officer of the Indian Revenue Service, in 2000 in the working-class areas of east Delhi, to facilitate people’s access to government offices. For about eight months, Kejriwal focused on assisting people at the income tax office where he was employed. The response from his colleagues was first encouraging, then hostile. Yet Kejriwal’s persistence did yield some systemic changes over the next eighteen months, owing in part to a public interest petition on the issue. Kejriwal then shifted his energies to the Delhi Vidyut (Electricity) Board (DVB), a public utility that touched the lives of most citizens. Kejriwal realized that while his efforts may have eliminated middlemen and touts and the chances of bribery, ‘we too were acting as brokers, albeit honest brokers’. If people were not encouraged to exercise their own agency, ‘they became dependent on Parivartan’.7 Now the organization insists that individuals or groups of citizens take action themselves, with Parivartan providing advice and information. When the Delhi state government enacted the RTI Act in 2002, Parivartan decided to use it in its work in the lower-middle-class localities of Lakshmi Nagar and Nand Nagri. The initial success was remarkable. However, the DVB was privatized soon after, so Parivartan had to shift its focus to other government departments. The organization used the Gandhian techniques of satyagraha, holding non-violent protests outside the offices of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi in March 2002 to ask it to set up mechanisms for compliance with the RTI Act. Over the next three years, Parivartan began monitoring the working of ‘fair price shops’, which supply basic provisions at subsidized prices to households below the poverty line. Those running the shops frequently divert supplies to the open market to sell them at higher prices, telling their legitimate poor customers that the sugar or rice ran out or never came. Without being able to check the records of the food suppliers 138

Other organizations and individuals  Through their struggles, MKSS and Parivartan have brought about the progressive widening and deepening of the RTI campaign. While these organizations democratize power by demanding information on behalf of marginalized groups, other organ­ izations and individuals have actively pursued the right to information, from different perspectives. One of these, Anna Hazare, a public figure respected as a crusader against corruption, likened the RTI campaign in the country to ‘the second freedom struggle. The first was against the white sahib, this one will be against the brown sahib’, the bureaucrat who lives off the poor.9 His efforts were central in forcing the Maharashtra government to repeal earlier ineffectual legislation and replace it with a stronger version. Maharashtra has a history of crusading public-spirited individuals whose imprint can be found on the shape the RTI movement has taken in that state. While Hazare has attracted a large following, he has led more by example than by mobilizing others for a collective struggle. 139

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and individual shops, it is impossible for customers to challenge the shop-owner’s claims and get their meagre yet essential due. Parivartan activists had participated in a jan sunvai organized by the MKSS in Beawar in April 2002 and were deeply impressed by its effectiveness as a mode of public action for creating greater awareness and accountability. In December 2002, Parivartan organized the first jan sunvai on the issue of ration shops in Delhi, in Sundar Nagri, where a comparison of government records of supply with the records of the shops revealed massive fraud. As a result of the sunvai, the licences of several shops were taken away and the public distribution system in the area improved. To pre-empt violent reprisals and disruptions, the organ­ ization ensures that its meetings are attended by NCPRI ­notables whose presence lends legitimacy and decorum to the proceedings. Parivartan has now become one of the key constituents of the NCPRI. Although its initial work was facilitated by the Delhi state government’s initiatives on RTI and on the decentralization of urban governance, Parivartan has since pushed beyond the confines of the participatory role prescribed by the government for NGOs. A head-on confrontation with the Delhi state government led to the scuttling of a proposed World Bank-funded water project which would have greatly increased water prices and deprived the urban poor of this basic resource. In this campaign, Parivartan drew upon the skills of NCPRI allies8 and demanded that the Delhi government live up to its much-hyped image as a transparent and accountable administration.

Another campaign by an individual, as opposed to a sangathan, that also received much acclaim has been led by Shailesh Gandhi, an engineer and the owner of a successful manufacturing firm who left this career to become a full-time RTI activist. In September 2003, Gandhi used the RTI Act to ask the Mumbai police commissioner for the names of politicians who had requested the transfer of police officials,10 resulting in a government inquiry into the scandal of the politician–police nexus. In 2006, using the RTI, Gandhi exposed how the Bombay Municipal Corporation had leased large areas of prime land in the city to corporate firms at ridiculously low rates, resulting not only in huge revenue losses to the exchequer but also the misuse of public land. While Gandhi holds frequent workshops to train others in using the RTI Act, like Hazare he has not directly engaged in grassroots mobilization. Shailesh Gandhi is on the Working Committee of the NCPRI, as are several other individuals who have waged solitary struggles for information. Among the founding members of the NCPRI are senior journalists Ajit Bhattacharjea (director, Press Institute of India), Prabhash Joshi (editor, Jansatta) and Bharat Dogra. The founders include lawyer Prashant Bhushan, who formed the Committee for Judicial Accountability, highlighting corruption and other irregularities in judicial appointments and functioning. Along with K. G. Kannabiran of the People’s Union of Civil Liberties, Bhushan has been active in campaigning for greater transparency in elections. The Election Commission of India has responded by making it mandatory for candidates contesting elections to disclose information about their finances and criminal records. NCPRI’s founder-members include former bureaucrats S. R. Sankaran, who retired in 1992 as Secretary of the Ministry of Rural Development, and Harsh Mander, who left the IAS in protest against state-sponsored communal violence in Gujarat in 2002. Harsh Mander’s involvement with the NCPRI is particularly important to note because it illustrates how the campaign has received crucial support from within a bureaucracy that, on the whole, has been hostile or indifferent to the cause. As an officer of the IAS, Mander was posted as Collector of Durg district in Madhya Pradesh in March 1987 at the height of one of the worst famines in decades.11 As the chief administrator of the district, he had to oversee the government’s Food for Work Programme, which meant providing employment to 100,000 workers every day. On reaching Durg, however, Mander found no sign of the money that had so far been spent on drought relief. As elsewhere, drought relief was a lucrative business for the powerful which left the poor to starve. He instituted a full-scale inquiry and ‘all hell broke loose’, 140

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including forceful demands from local government and state officials that the inquiry order be withdrawn. However, Mander was supported by Chief Minister Arjun Singh, who appointed a senior administrator to investigate. When Mander began arresting those involved in the scam this uncovered, he was posted out. Later, as Commissioner of Bilaspur, Mander continued ­crusading against corruption, instigating public disclosure regarding ration shops and recruitment for government jobs, another area where legal rules were systematically breached by patronage and the payment of bribes. However, Mander recognized that RTI initiatives from within the government had limited impact unless seized by a mobilized public. Empowerment could not be bestowed from above; changed consciousness and collective action had to emerge through political processes undertaken by the poor themselves. The MKSS was already facilitating this process of mobilization, and Mander was ‘old friends with Aruna and Bunker Roy’. In 1993, he saw MKSS social audit work at first hand and felt that he was seeing something of national and international importance. By now posted to the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration in Mussoorie, the premier training institute of the government,12 he organized a national workshop on the RTI, bringing Aruna Roy and others together with government officials. This was a key step in the decision to draft a national law and form the NCPRI for that purpose. Harsh Mander, Shailesh Gandhi and several of the founder-members exemplify an important facet of the NCPRI that is generally not at the forefront of the campaign’s public persona: the movement includes not only mass organizations but also well-placed individual activists and members of the intelligentsia. Although not unique in this, the NCPRI is unusual in the extent to which the support of key members of professional elites is constitutive of the movement. The combined strength of the sangathans and individuals that made up the NCPRI gave it national spread and regional representation as well as access to opinion-making intelligentsia in the capital. Besides state- and national-level meetings and conventions, the campaign organ­ ized a caravan of activists, ordinary villagers and students travelling from place to place, spreading the RTI message, communicated through songs, skits and speeches. Printed newsletters in Hindi and English, pamphlets and e-bulletins kept news of RTI events and discussions circulating, and the movement also received a fair amount of attention from the news media.

Analysing success

What accounts for the remarkable success of a campaign that started barely fifteen years ago in a cluster of villages in rural Rajasthan and brought about a major piece of legislation at the national level? Most participants and observers reply: ‘people’s struggle’. Years of work, mobil­izing collectively to enable very vulnerable people to join and stay in a protracted and arduous battle where success was uncertain, organizing public meetings and protests, persistently pursuing elusive government records, overcoming obdurate bureaucrats and hostile politicians, being harassed and attacked – without these there would be no national Right to Information Act. Yet this explanation is not enough. There are other social movements, such as the Narmada campaign, in which very poor people laboured long and hard against overwhelming odds to secure their lives and futures, only to have their fate sealed by an adverse Supreme Court judgment. In an unjust world, there are no guarantees; success does not always come to those who strive with truth and justice on their side. What other factors, then, might explain the achievements of the RTI movement?

An issue that concerns all  Many observers attribute the gains of the RTI movement to the very nature of the issue itself. The RTI is universally held to be a desirable right, to which each citizen is entitled. According to Arvind Kejriwal, it is uncontroversial; it is not ideologically divisive. No one can, at least publicly, oppose it. It is also an issue that affects everybody in some way or other, regardless of their social location. Middle-class resident welfare associations can use it to investigate why their streets are not being cleaned by the municipality and a poor slum-dweller can use it to find out why the allotment of a ration card has been delayed. It enables all people to be effective citizens.13 Yet it was not immediately obvious to all groups that the RTI would benefit them. The NCPRI built a broad constituency for the act by ­approaching groups working in different sectors and holding workshops where they would discuss the issues specific to each sector and the particular information needs that were a constraint on effective action in that sector. Such discussions would show how the RTI, as a basic right, could assist activists in different spheres of work. The NCPRI then helped these groups exercise the RTI, discuss their experiences, and devise further strategies. At an NCPRI convention in 2004, the range of issues included far more than rural and urban development, government programmes and civic amenities; there were peace activists who wanted to use the RTI to get information on India’s nuclear programme, and 142

Organizational strategy  The organizational structure of the NCPRI and its policy of inclusion are also noteworthy. From the start, the NCPRI sought to create a broad-based coalition of similar grassroots people’s organizations which had been fighting bureaucratic corruption and apathy around the country. Individual activists, lawyers, academics, journalists and many NGOs working on rights issues joined the campaign. These independent initiatives were linked together by the NCPRI without their autonomy being eroded.14 Avoiding the adversarial stance of most social movements vis-à-vis the state, the NCPRI has built alliances with key government officials, involving them in dialogue. The working of the NCPRI, including its sources of funds, is kept as transparent as possible. The organizational structure consists of a thirty-one-member working committee. Aruna Roy, the most visible face of the NCPRI, is not its convenor. The leadership of the NCPRI is committed to being democratic and participatory. Key people in the campaign have learned from the experience of other social movements that have tended to be more centred around one personality. The NCPRI’s approach to coalition-building draws upon the MKSS strategy in Rajasthan, which emphasizes inclusion, not only of all sections of society but also of state officials. In its public actions, the MKSS has always maintained that it embraces the government. The emphasis on hamari sarkar (our government), asserting ownership, is a key elem­ ent of democratizing the state and reducing the distance between state and citizen.15 The MKSS did not want to erode the state’s authority; ‘we want a powerful state, but one that is also open and accountable’.16 It focuses on the blurred boundary between state and citizen – the fact that a sarpanch is also a social being who inhabits the same world as other villagers (Gupta 1995). Addressing the state entails addressing the concerns of its functionaries, who are also citizens, albeit better-off ones. ‘We had to make the patvari [revenue official], thanedar [policeman] and retired javan [soldier] realize that it was in their interest too. If workers could build better roads, their motorcycles would run better.’17 Similarly, the MKSS appealed across class lines: ‘We got the town of Beawar on our side. People who wear nylon sarees, watch Hindi films – today, they think of RTI as their achievement.’ It was this framing of the RTI issue as a universal good that encouraged alliances, incorporating a range of social groups under a common broad umbrella. Of course, while the 143

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many who wanted to use it to target corruption in high places, including over defence contracts and deals with multinational corporations. The promise of the right to information seems limitless.

discourse of hamari sarkar claims to disavow adversarial politics, in fact its power derives from the sustained public pressure mounted by a vigilant, mobilized citizenry. Similarly, while ostensibly welcoming all to the cause, the campaign has been careful to ensure that its catholicism did not compromise its ideological integrity.18 The campaign’s assertion that its stance is non-adversarial is a way of disarming opposition that harks back to Gandhi’s maxim: ‘hate the sin, not the sinner’.

The bureaucracy: reform from within?  Even though activists struggling for the RTI have throughout had to deal with hostile politicians and state functionaries, individual officials supported the RTI from more than one perspective. Some bureaucrats turned to it as a way out of an impasse in which the administration had ceased to perform any civil service and was regarded only with fear, contempt and resentment by the public. Some senior bureaucrats were sympathetic from the start and used their power to push through progressive orders even before the legislation came into effect. The Department of Personnel and Training had long been concerned with administrative reforms and had suggested a series of changes to make officials more accountable;19 effective governance was already a topic of discussion within government. The prevailing ideology of economic liberalization and its condemnation of the state’s record fed into these debates by prompting some soul-searching among officials about the failure of service delivery and governance and measures to improve them (Saxena and Srivastava 2001). At the same time, some bureaucrats had participated in good governance training programmes organized by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, and were keen to facilitate social audits of government schemes. Dismantling the master’s house: paper tools 20  If particular bureaucrats facilitated the passage of an RTI Act, implementation relies heavily on a somewhat peculiar characteristic of the Indian bureaucracy – its passion for paper. Despite innumerable and routine subversions, rational-legal record-keeping about its decision-making process remains the hallmark of Indian government. In a system created by the colonial government for internal transparency and oversight, the paper trail is pains­takingly laid out. It is this commitment to documentation that makes it possible for the state to now be legible to its citizens.21 While some files may conveniently ‘disappear’ (Kejriwal 2006), most state records are now available for public scrutiny and the information they contain can be cross-checked against the situation on the ground. As I discuss below, the government clearly sees this penchant for paperwork as its 144

The national political conjuncture  In 2004, India went to the polls. The ruling coalition government led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya ­Janata Party (BJP, Indian People’s Party) launched a triumphal re-­election campaign on the theme of ‘India Shining’, totally misjudging the public mood. Faced with rising unemployment, inflation and worsening economic disparities, the majority of Indians were clear that their India was not shining. The BJP’s debacle allowed the Congress Party to form a coalition government if it could muster support from other political parties. Its negotiations with other parties resulted in the formulation of a Common Minimum Programme (CMP), policies that the Congress would adhere to and implement in order to keep its coalition partners on board. Sonia Gandhi, the president of the Congress, was expected to stake a claim to become prime minister. Gaining the moral high ground through declining to become prime minister, she went on to form a National Advisory Council (NAC) to implement the CMP. It included Aruna Roy of the MKSS and the economist Jean Drèze, key members of the NCPRI, and retired civil servant Naresh C. Saxena, who had supported the initiative throughout his career. Its very first business was to draft a national RTI Act, one of the promises of the Common Minimum Programme. This was then circulated around the world through various members’ international connections, in order to get feedback. Sonia Gandhi urged the government to present this bill before parliament; the rest is history. But how did the RTI reach the CMP? Before the elections, the NCPRI received a phone call from a Congress Party leader, saying that they ­wanted to include in their election manifesto the promise that they would enact and implement a comprehensive RTI Act. Sceptical about the prospects of the Congress winning, much less abiding by electoral manifesto commitments, a couple of NCPRI members nevertheless drafted a short statement, for inclusion in the Congress manifesto. To their surprise, and through the unexpected turn of electoral and post-electoral events, that statement resulted in the RTI finally being presented in parliament to become a national law despite the quiet resistance of many in the bureaucracy.22 The balance of political power within the ruling party, and between the ruling party and its allies, was delicate. Sonia Gandhi held that the Congress was voted to power on the issue of development and had to deliver on its election promises to the poor, a position not universally 145

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Achilles heel, seeking to protect it through far-reaching amendments to the  act.

shared in the Congress and at odds with other members’ commitment to economic liberalization and containing the fiscal deficit. However, the Left parties, whose support was essential to keep the Congress in power, backed Sonia Gandhi’s efforts to implement the CMP. The alliance was contentious, with several differences surfacing on economic and foreign policy issues. But the unchallenged authority of Sonia Gandhi within the Congress, and the Congress’s dependence on the Left to stay in power, created a situation within which the progressive charter of the CMP could be pursued. The NAC was an advisory body and its efficacy was entirely dependent on these power equations continuing to prevail. Recognizing that, in such a fluid situation, the efficacy of the NAC could be eclipsed at any time, Aruna Roy resigned from the Council in June 2006 in order to move back to campaigning for information and employment by mounting pressure from outside the government.

The international context: neoliberalism and good governance  More than forty countries have enacted RTI laws in the last decade. Was the Indian campaign part of a growing global trend? If it was, then how exactly did transnational institutions and processes affect the Indian movement? Campaign activists highlight the indigenous roots of RTI initiatives and emphasize that the process leading up to the Indian legislation was qualitatively different from that in other countries.23 They point out that nowhere else in the world was there such a popular upsurge to enact and implement the law. While this is true, there were some international inputs into the campaign. Some affiliates, such as the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, participated in international networks focused on RTI and brought in the experiences of rights-based organizations abroad, especially in South Africa.24 The spread of RTI legislation across the world can also be traced to institutions radically different from the rights-based organizations discussed above. The right to information has been a key element of the World Bank and Asian Development Bank’s ‘good governance’ programmes. Transparency in public decision-making is seen as critical to creating a climate conducive to capital investment, where transnational firms can transact business without having to pay bribes. The pressure to enact transparency laws is exerted by imposing conditionalities on Bank loans (Goldman 2005). Less emphasis is placed on a notion of transparency and participation that works downwards, making the state accountable to its poorest citizens. The NCPRI leadership is careful to distance itself from the neoliberal demand for transparency. While the campaign uses a similar vocabulary of ‘deepening democracy’ through 146

Limitations and challenges

While the NCPRI has charted a remarkably successful trajectory, the limitations and the challenges it faces also demand attention. Getting information can still be a time- and spirit-sapping ordeal. Instances of dilatory tactics, the levying of unlawful or inflated fees, and even outright refusal, far outnumber the success stories of full and accurate information received and, even rarer, corrective action taken. The Chief Information Commissioner’s office has taken up only a handful of complaints about information being denied and in none of these cases has anyone been penalized.25 Activists express their frustration with situations in which, even after uncovering conclusive information, they were still unable to prevail upon the state to take action. As Shanta Toofani, a veteran activist with Ankur, a Delhi NGO working with slumdwellers, dismissively declares, ‘the government’s handed the poor a child’s rattle to distract them. Have corruption and scams reduced as a result of RTI?’ So far, it is unclear what other forms of action will be mobilized by the NCPRI’s constituent members when confronted with the tactics and procedures that corrupt and incompetent officials hide behind. Another challenge to the RTI came in July 2006, when the bureau­ cracy struck back. Six months after the act came into effect, the Union Cabinet approved a set of amendments, crucially diluting the scope and power of the Act. The proposed amendments exempted from public scrutiny file notings, documents ‘under process’, documents related to competitive processes such as examinations and documents recording the material basis of cabinet decisions. All of these exemptions restrict 147

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‘public accountability’, it brings very different meanings to this discourse. As opposed to the neoliberal agenda of making the world safe for capitalism, the RTI campaign yokes the issue of transparency to the effective implementation of state social security programmes for food and employment. Yet, arguably, the varied, even contradictory, meanings attached to the RTI create a fertile political field which indirectly assists the NCPRI’s cause. Like the freedom struggle and other sprawling social movements, the NCPRI benefits from a rich and richly ambiguous set of understandings and aspirations (Amin 1988). The support that it has attracted from some quarters probably would not pass muster if carefully scrutinized for ideological coherence. The campaign’s ability to harness these diverse energies and contradictory trends to a common cause should be celebrated, with caution.

citizens’ ability to monitor the process of state decision-making. The NCPRI was swift to respond. In a lead editorial in The Hindu, Roy and Dey explained the significance of file notings: What is a government file, why this furore about not wanting to share file notings? To most lay persons the government file is a musty compilation of important papers […] Anyone who has had anything to do with babus [clerks] knows the diabolical significance and power the file holds to control many people’s destiny. The government file has two parts to it. The right side has the papers under consideration (PUCs) and the left side has the ‘notings’, the process through which opinions are written down, added to, and approved or disapproved. These ‘notings’ reflect the deliberations on the PUCs and through a series of comments arrive at decisions. As the Chief Information Commission explained in a ruling on file notings: ‘Most of the discussions on the subject/matter are recorded in the note sheets and decisions are mostly based on the recording in the note sheets and even the decisions are recorded on the note sheets. These recordings are generally known as “file notings”.’ This trail of responsibility and accountability is what the babus do not want disclosed. The government now wants to amend the RTI Act, so that file notings related to most matters are under wrap. As ordinary cit­ izens we will not have access to the reasons for decisions that affect our lives, many of which will be irreversible. The paper trail, vital to establish a chain of accountability, will now be invisible. It will protect the dishonest manipulators but also give no support to honest officers whose forthright views are overruled, who have to suffer the ignominy of being party to a bad decision they disagreed with. (Roy and Dey 2006)

The campaign followed up with a dharna in the heart of New Delhi, with jan sunvais, public meetings and signature campaigns being organized every day. Support for the dharna poured in, and the issue was extensively covered by the media. Ultimately, the prime minister withdrew the amendments, stating that more consultations with stakeholders were required. Their victory notwithstanding, RTI activists remain very conscious of the entrenched hostility of the bureaucracy to the Act. Keeping the Act intact and implementing it, in the face of future efforts to remove its teeth, will be a constant challenge. There are some areas of social action where the Act has limited utility. The Right to Information campaign has thus far focused on public accountability. Some activists feel that this needs to be supplemented by a legal right to greater private accountability. Corporate practices that have become more and more consequential in public life thanks 148

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to structural adjustment policies still remain off the record. The NCPRI has held that corporate firms are actually required to submit a great deal of information to the government and, for a start, this could be made available to citizens. Information on labour and environmental practices, for instance, could thus be available for public scrutiny. RTI activists also point out that the RTI is only one weapon out of many in a social movement’s armoury, not a magic bullet that destroys all ills at one go. A more complex issue that has implications for the RTI is the gap between law and justice. The NCPRI seeks to enforce a rational-legal bureau­cracy, where rules are strictly followed and erring officials penalized. While upholding the rule of law is generally a desirable public practice, what happens when the law is unjust? Harsh Mander observes that, in the current context of neoliberalism, laws are exercised to enforce contracts and uphold property rights, not to deliver social justice.26 In an unequal society, the poor are often compelled to violate the law in order to survive. The RTI can be used against the interests of poor people illegally cultivating Forest Department land, or those of urban squatters. In the abstract, the act empowers all citizens; in practice, it may do so in ways that further jeopardize the survival strategies of the poor. The relationship between knowledge and power is neither self-evident nor transparent. Power works most effectively when it is not readily ­available for analysis, when it seeps into consciousness to become ‘common sense’. The NCPRI has focused its attention on information as the sole component of a strategy to unravel powerful state practices and create greater political awareness. Does the Act’s dominant understanding of knowledge – as something embodied in documentary information – constrain its critical scope and effectiveness? Reflecting on their experience with eliciting information from government agencies, many activists point out that the most crucial elements of knowledge that orient actions don’t ever make it on to paper. Ingrained class, caste and gender prejudices and other implicit social understandings powerfully shape state practices but elude being pinned down, or traced through an analysis of government records. Without a paper trail to follow, can the NCPRI’s focus on public transparency reckon with these tacit forms of knowledge to allow their power to be challenged? And then there is the inverse: power that is blatantly, nakedly corrupt. Where knowledge is available, but to no avail; when the truth doesn’t set you free. All over India, the assault on lands, natural resources and labouring people has achieved a frightening momentum. Governments

openly declare that they will give corporate firms huge chunks of land at a discount, tax free and exempt from labour laws, to set up Special Economic Zones. In the so-called public interest of earning foreign exchange and economic growth, numberless people will be displaced, their lives destroyed along with the landscapes they inhabit. This information is there for all to see. And yet it moves no one. Faced every day with a surfeit of information about the abuse of power, most citizens simply shrug their shoulders and walk away. How does the RTI help in situations of entrenched and normalized inequality, where indifference and apathy prevail in the public sphere? Perhaps it does not, and to expect it to address all the complexities of knowledge, consciousness and collective action is unrealistic and unfair. For bringing about a better world, the Act is an achievement for the present and the future: ‘It’s given us a here and now. And even when the revolution comes, we’ll need the RTI to make power accountable.’27 Notes 1  This chapter owes a great deal to the generosity of many people. RTI campaigners, especially Nikhil Dey, Arvind Kejriwal, Harsh Mander, Aruna Roy, Naresh C. Saxena and Shekhar Singh gave me their time and attention. Thanks also to Dunu Roy and Rahul N. Ram. 2  Simply enacting a law is not enough; it must be ‘notified’ by the government with an accompanying set of rules to make it operational. 3  The best online archive of reportage on the Right to Information can be found at www.indiatogether. org/rti. The official website of the NCPRI is www.righttoinformation. info. The international freedom of information campaign website is www.freedominfo.org. 4  An informative prehistory of the Right to Information campaign, especially early attempts to seek information on environmental ­hazards, can be found in Singh (n.d.). 5  The MKSS emphasizes political mobilization and empowerment and

its focus is on getting the government to deliver state services, rather than providing an alternative to these. Details of MKSS’s early life and its first campaigns for the right to information can be found in Harsh Mander’s vivid account (Mander n.d.). 6  Talk given by Nikhil Dey at a public meeting against the dilution of the RTI, 5 September 2006, Indian Social Institute, New Delhi. 7  Interview with Arvind Kejriwal, 23 January 2006. 8  Aruna Roy intervened on the issue, as did academics from the Indian Institute of Management, who provided a devastating critical analysis of the project. 9  Anna Hazare, interviewed by documentary film-maker Bharat Rawal, 4 December 2004; www.india together.org/2005/feb/rti-hazare. htm, accessed 22 May 2009. 10  Such ‘requests’ are a common form of political interference in admin­istrative functioning, aimed at removing ‘uncooperative’ officials who fail to comply with the demands 150

the argument about legibility and ‘seeing like a state’, which focuses on enumeration and documentation as modes of governmentality. As the RTI campaign shows, legibility can be a two-way street. See Scott (1998) and Rose (1999). 22  Interview with Shekhar Singh, 26 January 2006. 23  Emphasizing grassroots and national origins is an enduring feature of social movement politics in India, where international links, however minor, are all too often seized upon by opponents as signs of co-option and corruption. While social movements have to constantly prove their patriotism and their indigenous authenticity, governments get away with being fully hand-in-glove with the transnational capitalist order. 24  See www.freedominfo.org for coverage of RTI campaigns worldwide. 25  Hazards Centre public meeting on the RTI, 22 February 2006. Indian government rules make it extraordinarily hard for a government official to be prosecuted. 26  Interview with Harsh Mander, 15 May 2006. 27  Nikhil Dey, speaking at the conference ‘Towards a Theory of Law and Social Movements’, Bangalore, 26 June 2006.

References Amin, S. (1988) ‘Gandhi as Mahatma’, in R. Guha and G. Spivak (eds), Selected Subaltern Studies, New York: Oxford University Press. Fox, J. and L. D. Brown (eds) (1998) The Struggle for Accountability: The World Bank, NGOs and grass­ roots movements, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Goldman, M. (2005) Imperial Nature:

The World Bank and struggles for social justice in the age of globalization, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Gupta, A. (1995) ‘Blurred boundaries: the discourse of corruption, the culture of politics, and the imagined state’, American Ethnologist, 22(3). Kejriwal, O. P. (2006) ‘Right to

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of elected functionaries and appointing more amenable ones in their stead. 11  Interview with Harsh Mander, 15 May 2006. 12  Arvind Kejriwal was a student of Mander’s at the Academy, illus­ trating the density of social and professional relations between key NCPRI activists. 13  Interview with Shekhar Singh, 26 January 2006. 14  Personal communication, Aruna Roy, 26 June 2006. 15  Nikhil Dey, speaking at a public meeting against the dilution of the RTI, Indian Social Institute, New Delhi, 5 September 2006. 16  Aruna Roy, speaking at the conference ‘Towards a Theory of Law and Social Movements’, Bangalore, 26 June 2006. 17  Ibid. 18  Thus the NCPRI does not include groups like the Bangalorebased Janaagraha, which works for transparency in urban governance, but from a perspective that supports the neoliberal reform agenda. 19  Interview with N. C. Saxena, 30 April 2006. 20  Audre Lorde, black lesbian poet and activist, wrote: ‘The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.’ 21  In saying this, I am inverting

Information Act: loopholes and the road ahead’, Economic and Political Weekly, 41(11). Mander, H. (n.d.) ‘The movement for Right to Information in India: people’s power for the control of corruption’, Unpublished paper. Rose, N. (1999) Powers of Freedom: Reframing political thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Roy, A. and N. Dey (2006) ‘To note the noting’, The Hindu, Delhi edn, 23 July. Saxena, N. C. and R. Srivastava (2001) ‘Design and implementa-

tion of programmes: delivery and governance issues in the Tenth Plan, Manpower Journal, 38(2). Scott, J. (1998) Seeing Like a State: How certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Singh, S. (n.d.) ‘Social mobilization and transparency: the Indian experience’, Paper prepared for the International Task Force on Transparency, part of the ­Initiative on Policy Dialogue based at Columbia University, New York.

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7 ·  Democratizing urban policy in Brazil: participation and the right to the city L eonardo A vritzer

Brazil underwent an intense process of urbanization during the twentieth century. At the beginning of the century, over 70 per cent of the population inhabited the countryside; by the end, more than 70 per cent were urban dwellers. In the process, Brazilian cities grew in an unfair, disorderly and illegal way. The unfairness was the result of a process of modernization with either no planning, or planning that assigned no space to the poor population, as was the case of Belo Horizonte and Brasília (Brasil 2004; Caldeira 2000). In these planned cities, the poor population had to occupy urban plots of land illegally. The disorderliness arose from an absurd process of land concession during colonial and imperial periods that created legal chaos in large cities such as São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro (Holston 1993). The illegality was due to a civil code written in 1916, crafted for a rural society, which did not provide adequate legal instruments for urban policy development as the country modernized (Fernandes 2002). The result was an urbanization process that ran completely out of control at the peak of Brazil’s economic growth during the seventies. The late seventies and early eighties in Brazil, the last years of the authoritarian regime, saw the constitution of a democratic civil society. Brazilian civil society reorganized itself, claiming many public goods and policies, among them access to urban land and property in large Brazilian cities (Gohn 1991). The issues of access to property and property legalization are at the origin of the housing movement in the city of São Paulo. In other parts of Brazil, such as Porto Alegre, the issue of the legal­ ization of state land occupied in the fifties was more pressing (Baierle 1998). In both cases, and in Belo Horizonte, the relationship between legal and illegal cities would come to the fore and would ­motivate the organization of hundreds of neighbourhood associations in capitals of the south and south-east of Brazil. The associative drive of the late seventies in Brazil was more selective and contingent on local context in state capitals of the north-east. In this chapter I will discuss the emergence and achievements of a 153

civil society movement in Brazil, the Movimento Nacional para Reforma Urbana (MNRU, National Movement for Urban Reform). This movement emerged during the National Constituent Assembly and is still active in Brazil under its newer designation of Fórum Nacional para Reforma Urbana (FNRU, National Forum for Urban Reform). It is one of the few cases in democratic Brazil of a national civil society movement. The MNRU was active in the constitution-making process, and later the FNRU secured the approval of the required infra-constitutional legislation on urban reform.1 Comparing the situation of the urban poor in Brazil twenty years ago and its situation today, the following changes stand out. In 1984, the last year of authoritarianism in Brazil, 64 per cent of Brazilians had access to treated water and 40 per cent to sewerage. In the wealthy south-eastern region, 82 per cent of the population had access to treated water and 55 per cent to sewerage. Today, the situation is much better owing to the actions of urban social movements and administrations led by progressive politicians. In 2002, 82 per cent of Brazilians had access to treated water (in the south-eastern region, 91 per cent) and 48 per cent of the population to sewerage systems (76 per cent in the southeastern region) (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografica e Estatistica 2003). The ­urban reform movement gave legal instruments to local governments to implement these changes. State capacity to curb speculation in large Brazilian cities was very low at the end of the authoritarian regime, as was state capacity to legalize occupations by the poor population. Today, every large Brazilian city has specific legislation allowing it to grant usage rights of state land to the poor, which in the long run will reduce the formation of new slums. Last but not least, few Brazilian capitals, except Porto Alegre, had a medium-term development plan. Today, all Brazilian cities with over twenty thousand inhabitants have City Master Plans (CMPs). These changes should not be underestimated. The poor population in Brazilian cities has acquired access to public goods and increased its access to housing in the last twenty years. The changes are linked to the movement for urban reform in Brazil and its actions at both national and local levels. Despite the depth of these changes, urban reform in Brazil was not a ‘high mobilization’ case, such as the agrarian reform or budget reform movements. The latter movements brought about change in Brazil through road blockages, illegal invasion of lands and intense mobilizations in cities. In contrast, the urban reform movement used the influence of its most important partners to mobilize resources 154

Social movements, constitution-making and legal change in Brazil

Urban reform was already on the agenda of the Brazilian left and progressive sectors by the end of the first democratic period in Brazil (1946–64). In 1963 a first national conference for urban reform took place, after which the issue would have to endure twenty years of author­ i­tarianism before returning to the political agenda. The emergence of urban social movements was one of the novelties of Brazilian democratization. In the first democratic period, associative tendencies among the urban poor were low, with very few neighbourhood associations created (Avritzer 2000; Boschi 1987; Singer and Brandt 1980); those created were leisure associations. The only exception in that period was Porto Alegre, which has the oldest tradition of neighbourhood associations in Brazil (Baierle 1998). The 1975–85 democratization period changed this picture. Associ­ative patterns greatly increased. In the cities of São Paulo, Rio de Jan­eiro, Belo Horizonte and Porto Alegre there was a huge increase in the ­creation of 155

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and influence at the political level, in particular in the National Congress. In the first part of the chapter I show how informal movements of public action constituted a movement for urban reform, discussing the different organizational configurations assumed by the urban reform movement from the early eighties to 2000. Second, I narrate how urban reform legislation emerged during the constitution-making process, and after the Constituent Assembly, as the need for infra-constitutional ­legis­lation became clear. I go on to discuss the legal and political disputes that took place in the Brazilian Congress over approval of the Statute of the City, and conclude by discussing how the Statute of the  City is being implemented in three different cities with different social movement trajectories: São Paulo, Salvador and Porto Alegre. Based on the different cases, I propose a typology of the effectiveness of national civil society in local contexts. The overall claim of the chapter is that civil society contributed in two capacities to the emergence of the new urban legislation in Brazil. First, through its capacity to gather popular actors and specialists, it created an agenda for Brazilian political society; and second, it had the capacity to influence the Brazilian Congress in the long term. Members of the Brazilian Congress do not stay in the house for long, and the MNRU and FNRU’s long-term influence on Congress from 1986 to 2002 was a key success factor in the approval of the Statute of the City.

associations; Recife, in the north-east, also saw the creation of many new neighbourhood associations (Silva 2003). These organizations claimed access to urban land and social services. Yet they were limited to the ­local level and were not articulated with a broader movement for political change. Salvador is the city which diverged the most in the process of the creation of voluntary associations: though associative patterns have increased there since the late seventies, neighbourhood associations were not created at the same pace as in other cities in the south and south-east of Brazil, and ethnic associations play an important role in Salvador’s civil society (Ireland 1999), although very disconnected from social policy demands. The MNRU was formed in 1982 with the aim of elaborating a proposal for urban reform during the National Constituent Assembly. The MNRU was formed originally by popular movements, neighbourhood associations, NGOs and trade unions (Brasil 2004). In composition the MNRU has been a hybrid between a social movement and an organized lobby from its very beginnings. During the eighties, it shared the mobilization characteristics of urban social movements in Brazil: the capacity to aggregate a broad spectrum and mobilize a diffuse range of social actors. Yet it has always counted on the support of national professional associations located in Brasília, and been involved in national politics. Its composition was atypical of Brazilian civil society in the period, ­owing to the weight of national and professional associations therein at a time when Brazilian civil society was mainly local. It included a few local institutions, such as the Federação das Associações de Moradores do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (Federation of Neighbourhood Associations in Rio de Janeiro) and the Movimento em Defesa dos Favelados (Movement for the Defence of Slum-dwellers); but professional associations such as the Federação Nacional dos Arquitetos (FNA, National Federation of Architects) and the Federação Nacional dos Engenheiros (FNE, National Federation of Engineers) constituted the bulk of its influence (ibid.). In addition, the MNRU was in the vanguard of strong NGO emergence on the Brazilian political stage from the 1980s onwards. The influential NGOs around in the eighties, few as they were, were part of the urban reform movement. The MNRU has also had a lobbying dimension and never hesitated to establish connections with political parties so as to make its presence felt in Brasília. Some of the movement’s best-known leaders were part of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT, Workers’ Party) delegation to the National Constituent Assembly, and the movement’s connections with left-wing PT and Partido Communista do Brasil (PC do B, Brazilian Communist Party) members of 156

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parliament (MPs) in Brasília were excellent. This created an active, lobby-like movement, even when most Brazilian civil society associations lacked the resources for it. The Brazilian National Constituent Assembly was a congressional assembly that accepted popular amendments. The years 1985 and 1986 were characterized by strong mobilization. An important dispute took place between civil society and state actors during that phase, over how social actors would influence the constitution-making process. Strong civil society actors – the Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil (OAB, Brazilian Bar Association) and the Conferência Nacional dos Bispos (National Conference of Bishops) – gained acceptance of a proposal that the Constituent Assembly would accept popular amendments. Up to twelve million people subscribed to popular amendment proposals between 1985 and 1986 (Whitaker 2003). The MNRU proposed an amendment for urban reform based on the principle of a right to the city, including especially the right to a decent living for the urban poor in Brazil. The right to the city was also seen as a way to unify and re-energize urban struggles through the integration of health, transportation, sanitation and housing and land demands. The MNRU’s popular amendment also proposed the subordination of private property to the aims of urban policy, for which it envisioned instruments such as progressive taxation on urban property; taxation on the appreciation of urban property; and state prerogative in the acquisition and expropriation of urban land. Thus urban reform ‘politicized the debate on planning by bringing to the centre of the debate the issue of the social function of property’ (Rolnik 1997: 3). The third element in the amendment was the democratic governance of Brazilian cities. It envisioned several devices for the exercise of democratic governance, among them public audiences, popular initiative, popular veto of legislation with 5 per cent of electorate support and the possibility of the Ministério Público2 (Public Prosecutor) intervening in the event of a legal vacuum. The popular amendment on urban reform was presented with 131,000 subscriptions and unleashed a lobby battle with conservative property interests. The Thematic Committee on ‘Urban Issues and Transportation’ had not initially attracted many powerful constituents: conservative sectors having more pressing short-term issues, conservative lobbies had not energetically nominated representatives to it. In accordance with Constitutional Assembly procedures, the popular amendment on urban reform was referred to the Thematic Committee, which held a public debate in which the proposal was defended by the architect

Ermínia Maricato.3 The committee decided to create a constitutional chapter on urban reform enshrining progressive taxation, expropriation of ­urban land with the use of public titles, and state capacity to designate ­urban  land (Antonucci 1999). The issue of urban reform then passed to the ‘systematization committee’, in which the pressure of conservative interests was stronger. Conservative interests, alleging that the systematization committee had been seized by left-wing interests, constituted a group called Centrão, charged with making amendments to the text that would transform it into a conservative charter. Property interests within the Constituent Assembly got the final decision on urban issues transferred to another arena outside the constitution-making process, which meant that instead of being automatically applied, the decision would require the passing of new legislation in order to come into action (Saule 1995). Most of the proposals of the subcommittee on urban issues were kept intact, but were integrated with the requirement, secured by Centrão, for cities to develop a ‘master plan’. Thus, the 1988 constitution requires a ‘CMP approved by City Hall as mandatory to all cities with more than 20,000 inhabitants’ (Federal Republic of Brazil 1988). All urban reform proposals were made dependent upon the fulfilment of this clause. Thus, the MNRU was partially successful in making its proposal for urban reform part of the constitutional text. This success was due to several factors. Notwithstanding its strong capacity for mobilization, expressed by the number of subscriptions to its popular amendment, the weight of professional associations among its membership brought not only legitimacy but the resources behind the proposal that were critical determinants. A further factor was the intense concentration on a single issue, a characteristic shared only by the health movement’s proposal to the Constituent Assembly. The MNRU crossed political borders, ac­ quiring support from different parties and movements. Conservative sectors did not mount stiff opposition since most of the issues were long-term ones that did not concern them half as much as, for instance, agrarian reform, over which the left was defeated by Centrão. The MNRU was able to incorporate the democratic management of urban policy and the social function of property into the constitution as broad principles, but both became subordinated to the requirement of the elaboration of a CMP. The consequence of this was the requirement of what the Brazilian legal tradition calls a statute or an infra-constitutional process of specification of the Constitutional Law. A fourteen-year battle over this infra-constitutional process followed the approval of the constitution. In the course of it, the form and make-up 158

National civil society, lobbying and the emergence of urban law: between the local and the national

Between 1988 and 2001 sixteen different projects of infra-constitutional legislation emerged and the project that became known as the ‘Statute of the City’ was approved. During this period the first popularly elected local governments were voted in in São Paulo, Porto Alegre and Belo Horizonte. The FNRU dedicated itself both to national law and to urban reform at the local level (Rolnik 2006). The thirteen years of political struggle would in the end be centred around the Law Project 181 of 1990, approved by the Brazilian Congress in 2001. The proponent of the law, Pompeu de Sousa, was a well-known newsman from Rio de Janeiro who moved to Brasília in the seventies, where he became linked to Editora Abril, the largest magazine publisher in Brazil. He was 159

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of the urban reform movement changed in response to an organizational debate on the characteristics civil society should have in order to assume a legislative battle in the National Congress. The MNRU, like other networks in the democratization movement, included trade unions, NGOs and professional associations. The inclusion of national associations already pointed in the direction of a national design, in contrast to many other movements. Likewise, the NGOs that joined the MNRU, while grounded in local urban civil society, also played broader coordinating roles in keeping with their interest in national issues. The professional associations that belonged to the MNRU were national in reach, and also brought to the movement a financial capacity which the local and small-scale members lacked but which was very necessary for effectively lobbying the Constituent ­Assembly. These factors, plus the strong personal connections between leading MNRU figures, the PT and the PC do B, meant that the MNRU already had in its midst the seeds of a national movement, in contrast to other civil society associations and reform movements which, even if they eventually become national, at that point worked within a local mobil­ ization logic. All these elements would become even more important as the need for a long battle over the approval of infra-constitutional legislation became clear. The MNRU became the FNRU, with a slightly changed membership that included the social movement coordina­ting body Central dos Movimentos Populares (Central Organization of Popular Movements), four key NGOs and three professional associations, the Federação dos Economiários (Federation of Economists), the FNA and the FNE (Almeida Silva 2002).

also close to the founders of the University of Brasília, which was an important project of the Brazilian left during the sixties. The Pompeu de Sousa project incorporated the following elements of the MNRU and the FNRU proposals: the collective right of urban dwellers to the city; coordination by the state of the process of occupation of urban land; the social function of private property; progressive taxation of urban property; and the requirement of elaboration of a CMP for cities of over twenty thousand inhabitants. But on certain central issues the law project lagged behind the FNRU’s proposals, formulating a restrictive version of democratic participation, especially the democratic administration of urban policy. Thus, while conservative sectors were unhappy that the democratic urban administration proposals to the Constituent Assembly had been resuscitated through the Pompeu de Sousa project, and sought to sink them, progressive civil society sectors like the FNRU were unhappy with Pompeu de Sousa’s dilution of the democratic forms of city administration they had originally proposed in their popular constitutional amendment. The initial strategic response of civil society, the PT and the PC do B to this situation was to support an alternative law project, the Lourdinha Savignon project. This featured the creation of urban land, the restoration of democratic participation in urban politics and the concession of the use of illegally occupied public lands (Arruda 2006). Until 1998, left-wing and conservative sectors each supported their own law project. Intense negotiations with the national Congress culminated in the late 1990s with the incorporation of key elements of the FNRU proposal into the Pompeu de Sousa project. Other PT members proposed other legal initiatives at various points, as did conservative members of Congress. Between 1992 and 1997 the dynamics of the FNRU moved from the national to the local level. FNRU personnel entered local governments in São Paulo and Porto Alegre in 1989, and in Belo Horizonte in 1993, leading to a refocusing of the movement’s aim. Local experimentation and specific pieces of urban legislation displaced the national-level struggle in the FNRU’s priorities (Rolnik 2006). As a consequence of this shift, the urban reform movement entered a period of less momentum and less effectiveness at the national level. At the same time, the withdrawal of FNRU support for the Pompeu de Sousa project led to it lying dormant in the Brazilian Congress until 1997. After elections in 1996, the FNRU refocused its efforts on the national level. The law project began to move through the various congressional committees, and negotiations between the the law’s proponents and 160

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FNRU for inclusion of more aspects of the FNRU’s agenda intensified. These negotiations prospered largely because urban reform proponents came on to the Committee on Consumers and Environmental Affairs just at the time the law project was tabled there. Elements of the FNRU proposal were reincorporated into the law: the right to the city as a conception for the elaboration of urban law; and local administration pre-emption prerogatives that enabled the administration to hold land in areas in which it anticipated the expansion of the city. The most contentious elements all along the way had been the framing of the legislation in terms of rights; the introduction of progressive taxation of urban property; pre-emption prerogatives of the state for holding urban land; and the mandatory nature of the CMP. After the reinsertion of these FNRU agenda elements into the Pompeu de Sousa project, the next step of the legal battle would be its report at the Justice and Constitutionality Committee, the most important committee of the Brazilian Congress. The final report on the law issued in 2000 focused on three main items: how to make the CMP mandatory; whether the occupation of public lands could be made legal; and whether the federal government could make participation at the local level mandatory. In a public hearing, the FNRU defended the maintenance of all the instruments, in the interests of conceding special housing rights and promoting the social function of private property. In the end, all the instruments were deemed constitutional: making the CMP mandatory, allowing progressive taxation and giving to local governments pre-emption prerogatives. Also, items relating to democratic participation were reinserted in the final draft of the law, providing for public hearings in the elaboration of CMPs and the plans’ nullification if these were not held (Arruda 2001). Public hearings, as the next section of this chapter shows, played a key role in negotiations over the approval of the São Paulo CMP and the nullification of the Salvador one. The final approval of the Statute of the City required its passage through the Senate and sanctioning by the president. The FNRU also lobbied at this level. Close observers differ in their views on the exact forms and effects of the lobbying but personal contacts between FNRU sympathizers and the president may have played a role, as may the broad front that pressed for the statute’s approval, in which the FNRU was joined by the PT, the Partido Socialista do Brasil (Brazilian Socialist Party) and a large part of the Partido do Movimento Democratico Brasileiro (Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement). The Statute of the City was approved in December 2001. The FNRU’s success can be attributed to three factors. First, the

strong presence of professional associations with influence over important party members and in the Brazilian Congress, capacity to mobilize the press, and special access to key members of the executive branch. Second, the FNRU, unlike most local movements in Brazil which act episodically in Congress, had long-standing partnerships with left-wing forces, and was able to grasp the opportunity structure in the political system and reach out to centre forces. Third, it was able to focus on a specific agenda over the long term, in contrast to conservative sectors, which shifted their agenda many times during the same period. Aspects of political context also played a critical role. The political force of the urban reform movement in Brazil changed radically during the period in question. The PT governed a handful of cities in 1988, none of them important during the crafting of the constitution. A few weeks after the enactment of the new constitution, the PT won important cities in the elections. In 2002, the PT administered 187 cities, several of which had implemented urban reform proposals. The federal bench of the PT and left-wing parties grew greatly in this period. By 2001, the number of PT MPs had grown from sixteen in 1988 to sixty. The implementation of the Statute of the City: an analysis of three cases

The role of civil society associations, in the form of the FNRU, in the emergence of national legislation on urban reform is unique among Brazilian civil society activities, not least in the extent of mobilizing and lobbying capacity exercised at the national level.4 But the story of changes won does not end with the passing of the Statute of the City. The effectiveness of the struggle and the policy itself depended on the implementation of the CMPs. This section traces this process in three cities – São Paulo, Porto Alegre and Salvador – demonstrating how the different characteristics of civil society actions as well as the different political contexts in each of the cities generated different results. Brazilian democratization spawned a surge in the creation of voluntary and independent forms of association. The total number of associations doubled in São Paulo in the seventies and tripled in Belo Horizonte in the eighties (Avritzer 2000). Thus, it is possible in the case of the large Brazilian cities to speak of a very impressive change in the pattern of association, involving an increasing propensity to associate, a greater number of associations, new associations for claiming material benefits such as community improvements, and the emergence of associations dealing with post-material claims – those that are not economically driven but relate to the quality of living in a more general 162

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sense. Though data are not available for Porto Alegre for the whole period, the available data show a huge increase in affiliation to associations in the democratization period. Different trajectories as well as different relations with political society need to be taken into account to understand the local contexts for civil society activism. The evolution of associationism in São Paulo during the democratic period is intriguing: as well as huge participation in informal and religious associations (Avritzer 2004), São Paulo shows both increasing and decreasing trends in participation in associations dedicated to public policies. The reason for this variation is that no other city in democratic Brazil has experienced so many changes in political administration. In the democratic period only once did the same city administration continue in power after local elections, and throughout the 1990s the transitions have represented full pendulum swings between left- and right-wing administrations. These two characteristics of São Paulo – the strength of civil society, and the dispute between left and right – are evident in the implementation of the city’s CMP, as is the very strong articulation of conservative interests in the city. In 1988, the PT won control of the city of São Paulo for the first time, in highly contentious elections that gave rise to an unstable PT majority in the City Council and to the non-approval of the PT mayor’s progressive urban policy proposals (Macaulay 1996). After a period of general demobilization of civil society actors (1992–2000), the PT’s progressive urban proposals were never approved. In 2000 the PT returned to power and proposed the implementation of a new CMP in accordance with the recently ­approved Statute of the City. Porto Alegre differs in showing greater continuity in the relationship between left-wing sectors, civil society associations and the city administration. Porto Alegre was traditionally more left-wing in the post-war period, and displayed a long tradition of associationism ­dating from the 1950s, which evolved in the eighties to produce a new umbrella associ­ ation, União das Associações de Moradores de Porto Alegre (­UAMPA, ­Union of Porto Alegre Residents’ Associations). In 1986, UAMPA demanded participation in deliberations on local-level budgets (Avritzer 2002a). While democratization was marked by struggles between right and left in other Brazilian state capitals, in Porto Alegre the struggle was between sectors of the left. After winning the city in 1988, the PT governed it for sixteen years. Thus, Porto Alegre contrasts with São Paulo in the high degree of administrative continuity and a left-wing government which actively sought collaboration. Salvador has had a much less active civil society since democratization

(Boschi 1999). Neighbourhood associations are not very active and the existing ethnic associations do not play a strong political role (Ireland 1999). Salvador’s political society has been dominated by the Partido da Frente Liberal (PFL, Liberal Front Party), the most stable conservative party in democratic Brazil. In addition to the PFL hegemony, Salvador is controlled by a family oligarchy.5 The left administered Salvador for a brief period between 1993 and 1996, in which this oligarchy blocked all its major political initiatives (Boschi 1999). Thus, civil society has been historically weak and political society has been dominated by conservative sectors. These three different patterns in the three cities determined very distinctive processes of implementation of the respective CMPs. In São Paulo, the CMP was drafted by Nabil Bonduki, professor of urban planning at the University of São Paulo, former president of the city’s association of architects, long a member of the urban reform movement, and PT city councillor. That he drafted the plan is indicative of the strength of civil society actors in the city at the time. His draft was submitted to the City Council by PT mayor Marta Suplicy in May 2002. It consisted of two parts, the first establishing parameters for urban development, the second consisting of specific regional plans; these were approved in two stages. The first part of the plan established the following parameters for urban development: the declaration of specific urban areas as of public interest if their owners did not assign them an immediate purpose; the designation, using a legal instrument created by the Statute of the City, of six new areas on the outskirts designated for the poor population; the creation of incentives for collective transportation to reduce car use and for the reoccupation of areas in the city centre so as to halt the occupation of green areas; the restoration of permeability to São Paulo’s soil and the broadening of exclusively residential areas, through the creation of cultural preservation zones (Folha de São Paulo 2002). Twenty-six public hearings were conducted on these provisions in addition to fifteen specific meetings with NGOs and technical personnel. More than 230 organizations participated in the process in August 2002. The most contentious element was the delimitation of neighbourhoods and licensing of construction in these neighbourhoods, issues critically important to property interests. The regional master plan had to be consolidated at City Hall and, to secure enough votes for its approval, City Council representatives made amendments to the plan that accommodated certain interests of property dealers. The government accepted their amendments and with their votes approved the plan. 164

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Civil society actors thus considered the process tainted (Estado de São Paulo 2002). The second stage, relating to the second part of the plan, which established specific regional plans, was highly contentious. Conflicts erupted over access to information and the status of civil society representatives. The city administration published the relevant information on proposed regional changes in the city administration’s official gazette and announced thirty-one public hearings for regions in early November 2003. These were attended by three different types of actor: members of neighbourhood associations who did not want their neighbourhoods to change; property speculator representatives with a limited voice in the meeting; and urban professionals. Property interests raised two complaints that led to litigation: they alleged incomplete information which prevented them from knowing whether the law would affect their properties; and the obstruction of the attendance of their representatives at the hearings. The courts upheld both claims against the city administration and the public hearings had to be held again before regional master plans were approved in July 2004. The cases of Porto Alegre and Salvador are very different from that of São Paulo. Porto Alegre’s contrasts with the São Paulo case in ­almost every respect. Porto Alegre had longer experience of institutional participation and of partnership between state and civil society actors (Baierle 1998; Avritzer 2002b). Moreover, Porto Alegre is the state capital with the longest tradition of city planning: it was unique in Brazil in ­having attempted to organize its urban expansion in 1935, with a plan limited to a defined expansion of traffic circulation. During the fifties an ­attempt was made to establish an integrated master plan involving traffic, ­housing and places for factories and leisure. This gave rise to an attempt during the authoritarian regime to produce an integrated city plan. In 1979 the first Porto Alegre CMP emerged with several novel elements of urban planning and participation: the separation of urban and rural parts of the city; urban zones differentiated into planning units; and the incorporation of some emerging forms of participation. That 1979 plan remained the city plan for twenty years, during which the new problems of the continuous subdivision of urban land and the impossibility of legalizing urban occupations of public land emerged. These issues, which had been subjects of debate during the Constituent Assembly and the elaboration of the Statute of the City, received a different response in Porto Alegre to elsewhere. Several legal instruments for urban planning emerged in Porto Alegre in parallel with the debates on urban planning at the federal level. In 1991, the city

differentiated its permanent urban landholdings destined for green areas and urban conservation from occupied lands that could be used to legalize the urban tenure of poor urban dwellers; it also legalized the collective concession of urban property by the city. In 1994, the city created an urban planning fund, part of which was established through the creation and sale of urban land. Thus, Porto Alegre’s urban legislation pre-empted instruments that most cities would use only after the approval of the Statute of the City, showing that civil and political society working together gave the city leeway in urban reform that no other city in Brazil had at that point. Interestingly, the state and federal courts did not block such attempts. Porto Alegre’s consensus for a new CMP emerged in 1993 during the first Conference of the City. The new city master plan was crafted in 1995/96 and submitted to City Hall, but, in response to civil society demands, the incoming administration withdrew the project to allow more debate (Guimaraens 2006), which centred on the limits for new construction in the city. During 1997 new public hearings took place and the law returned to City Hall, where it was approved in 1999. In the case of São Paulo the enactment of urban controls before the approval of the Statute of the City had proved impossible in spite of the strength of civil society urban movements in the city. Even during the PT’s tenure in the city between 1988 and 1992 most proposals for urban reform were defeated in the City Council or overturned by the courts (Singer 1994). In Porto Alegre, civil society’s strength and the PT administration’s initiative made possible advances in urban legislation such as the outorga onerosa (property concession with onus, an instrument created by the Statute of the City to legalize public property occupied by poor people). It is also interesting to see the different roles played by the courts: in São Paulo they were activated by conservative property interests in the city, whereas in Porto Alegre they anticipated devices later introduced by the Statute of the City. Without the Statute of the City, most of these progressive provisions would never have been implemented in the city of São Paulo. Salvador is an interesting third case, although little information is available on what went on between 1999 and 2002 while the plan was being developed. In 1999, the city hired a private consultancy service to provide it with a preliminary diagnosis on urban development (Sampaio 2000). No civil society association or urban planning movement participated in this diagnosis, allowing the administration to draw its own conclusions favouring property interests. In 2003, the city held two public hearings to collect suggestions for the master plan. One took 166

Very strong. It participated No legal actions were taken. in the Congress of the City in which the revision of the CMP was decided.

Salvador Weak. Hegemony of the PFL, a right-wing party. Controlled by the Magalhães family.

Legal actions were taken by civil society and progressive political actors in order to offset real estate interests.

Legal actions were filed by conservative sectors in order to allow real estate interests to be present at the public audiences.

Porto Alegre

Divided throughout the democratization period. The PT administered the city twice, conservatives three times.

Strong, being one of the origins of the urban reform movement. Property interests in the city very well organized.

Legal actions involved

São Paulo

Political society actions

Civil society organization



table 7.1  Configuration of civil and political society and its impact on CMP processes

The CMP was declared illegal after being sent to the City Council.

Approved the CMP without negotiations with conservative sectors.

Approved the CMP with changes negotiated with conservative sectors.

City Council

place, the other did not, owing to a lack of publicity for the meeting. The mayor submitted the proposal to the City Council despite the fact that the process failed to meet the legal requirement for public hearings in the Statute of the City. Salvador’s Federation of Neighbourhood Associations and the city’s section of the OAB moved to get the Ministério Público to enact a civil suit against the approval of the law by City Hall unless the city fulfilled the full requirements of the Statute of the City (Caribe 2005). It won the civil suit in November 2003, making the CMP null and void. The incoming administration in January 2005, headed by the PDT, sponsored public hearings in the course of elaborating a new plan. This comparative exercise allows us to propose a typology of the different contexts in which civil society national actions become effective. Salvador’s case shows that in a context of weak civil society and progressive political society actors, the Statute of the City mattered and effectively blocked the actions of conservative sectors. Thus, the effectiveness of national civil society actions varied according to different configurations, as Table 7.1 shows. Conclusion: national civil society and urban reform in Brazil

In concluding, I will elaborate more on the characteristics of national civil society and its relationship with local social actors in the case of urban reform in Brazil. The Statute of the City is a case of successful action by civil society ­actors in the crafting of national legislation, thanks to the long-term presence of the FNRU in the Brazilian Congress and its successful lobby­ing capacity. Important legislation emerged from the Constituent ­Assembly in the areas of health, social welfare, agrarian reform and labour rights. In this respect, Brazil does not seem to be very different from other recently democratized countries such as South Africa. However, there is in fact a key difference: Brazil’s long-term, continuous organization of civil society actors at both national and local levels. This has been characterized by a low degree of alignment of civil society organizations with political parties. To take the case of the accession of the PT to national government, Brazilian civil society actors have been more critical of the PT government’s actions than in the case of the accession of the African National Congress to national government in South Africa.6 The urban reform movement is instructive as to the non-alignment of civil society actors with political society actors throughout Brazilian democratization. The urban legislation that emerged in 2001 was a result of long-term civil society actions in Congress. Primary alliances were made with left-wing 168

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parties, but centre parties have never been excluded from civil society alliances. Again, this differentiates the Brazilian case from the South African case (Friedman, this volume) owing to the diversification of poli­ tical alliances, and from the Philippine case (Borras and Franco, this volume) owing to the independence of Brazilian civil society’s lobbying process from their allies in government. A second important characteristic of the Brazilian case is the nature of the civil society alliance and the change in strategy as the democratization process evolved. The urban reform movement resembled most of the civil society movements in Brazil during the 1980s. However, it was the first to figure out the need to tactically change its composition and strategy in the process of struggling for urban reform. The transition from MNRU to FNRU demonstrated its ability to keep close links with the PT while also reaching beyond the political spectrum, in order to craft a new legislation which was crucial for the approval of the Statute of the City. Thus, civil society power at the national level and its ability to selectively negotiate with key political actors was one of the decisive factors for the emergence of legislation at the national level in a nonfavourable context of rearticulation of conservative interests in Brazil during the early and the mid-nineties. The FNRU also knew how to take good advantage of the change in the power correlation after President Collor’s impeachment in 1992. It resumed its campaign for urban reform after Cardoso’s election as president in 1994 – which represented a shift in the power correlation against the left and in favour of the PLF – knowing that it could count not only on the defeated forces of the left. Flexibility in strategy and the ability to negotiate were major assets of the FNRU. The third important characteristic is the interaction between national legislation and the local context. Analysing this allows us to differentiate between different dimensions of state action. As demonstrated, national legislation led to three different political configurations in the process of approval of the CMP. Again, Brazil can be differentiated from a recently democratized country such as South Africa, where the leading political force has a uniform and homogeneous influence throughout the country. In Brazil, though the PT has had a strong presence in the three local contexts, this presence is not homogeneous and depends more upon local than national politics. In the case of Porto Alegre, a broad social and political coalition including sectors of the legal system is what explains the capacity of social and political actors in the city to pursue urban reform. In the case of São Paulo, a new CMP would never have emerged if national legislation had not interacted with a

PT administration and strong civil society actors. Even in that case, the City Council and the legal system were able to block significant parts of the CMP. Porto Alegre and Salvador are different cases that express opposite extremes. Salvador is a completely distinct case that shows the continuous presence of conservative semi-authoritarian political actors in city politics. In Salvador, a planning process exempt from the mandatory participatory features and devices such as public hearings would have led to a CMP without any of the features introduced by the Statute of the City. Thus, in the case of urban reform in Brazil national civil society introduces an element of homogenization of civil society strength, which is still very uneven in democratic Brazil owing to different local traditions. The urban reform movement expressed well the new strength of civil society actors at two levels: those of large cities and national politics. The emergence of the new legislation has been a huge advance in democratic Brazil and showed an amazing capacity for articulation between civil society and progressive political actors. Though it is true that not all local contexts required the Statute of the City, most local contexts did need it, and the ‘supra-party’ element helped in the crafting of the new legislation. Moreover, following the election of Lula as president in 2003, leaders of the right to the city movement were gradually brought into the national Ministry of the Cities, where they were able to consolidate the implementation of the plan further. A number of its effects in the contexts where it was most needed are already clear. For instance, the plan has given a legal framework for resolution of disputes over urban development, giving rise to dozens of lawsuits, often by social movements pursuing the rights of the urban poor against business interests. In so doing, the movement is gradually achieving its goals of preventing property interests from commanding the urban policy of a city even if it is run by a conservative government, and allowing progressive political society to pursue urban reform in adverse political contexts. Notes 1  Brazilian law does not allow for administrative interpretation of the constitution as is the case in AngloSaxon countries. The 1988 constitution required specific legislation in many areas. This legislation is called ‘infra-constitutional’ legislation, and it exists in the areas of health, social assistance and urban reform.

2  The Ministério Público is a l­egal figure whose role was completely changed by the 1988 constitution. Before 1988, the role of the Ministério Público was to defend the interests of the federal government and the Union; in 1985, the role acquired other prerogatives, the most important among them being

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family have held state governorships and various influential positions in the federal government on repeated occasions during and since the authoritarian period. 6  Steven Friedman, another contributor to this volume, observes that the key difference is that between a national liberation movement and a left-wing political party. The PT is a left-wing party, with strategies for government that may or may not preserve its legitimacy in the eyes of its constituencies. The ANC has retained the legitimacy of a people’s liberation movement.

References Almeida Silva, C. (2002) ‘Os fóruns temáticos da sociedade civil: um estudo sobre o Fórum Nacional de Reforma Urbana’, in E. Dagnino (ed.), Sociedade Civil e Espaços Públicos no Brasil, São Paulo: Paz e Terra. Antonucci, D. (1999) ‘Plano Diretor de São Paulo – 1991 avanços e permanências’, Unpublished master’s dissertation in urban architecture, University of São Paulo. Arruda, I. (2001) ‘Estatuto da cidade uma conquista histórica’, www. inacio.com.br/downloads/ ESTATUTO_DA_CIDADE_ SEPARATA_2001.doc, accessed 29 May 2006. — (2006) ‘Nota política sobre os ­Vetos do Estatuto e as conquistas da Reforma Urbana’, www.­camara.gov.br/inacioarruda/­ noticias/vetosestatuto.htm, accessed 20 March 2006. Avritzer, L. (2000) ‘Democratization and changes in the pattern of association in Brazil’, Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, 42(3).

— (2002a) Democracy and the Public Space in Latin America, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. — (2002b) ‘New public spheres in Brazil: local democracy and deliberative politics’, Unpublished manuscript. — (ed.) (2004) A participação em São Paulo, São Paulo: Editora UNESP. Baierle, S. (1998) ‘The explosion of experience: the emergence of a new ethical-political principle in popular movements in Porto Alegre, Brazil’, in S. Alvarez, E. Dagnino and A. Escobar (eds), Cultures of Politics/Politics of Cul­ tures: Re-visioning Latin American Social Movements, Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Boschi, R. (1987) A arte da associação: política de base e de democracia no Brasil, Rio de Janeiro: Vértice/ Iuperj. — (1999) ‘Descentralização, ­clientelismo e capital social na governança urbana: comparando Belo Horizonte e Salvador’, ­Dados, 42(4). Brasil, F. (2004) ‘Espaços públicos, participação cidadã e renovação

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the defence of diffuse interests. 3  Ermínia Maricato became a well-known urban reformer in democratic Brazil. She occupied the position of housing secretary in the Luisa Erundina administration of the PT in São Paulo. She was the deputy Minister of the City between 2003 and 2005. 4  The other national legislation on participation that was highly contentious was that on health, where there was a battle in 1990 on the participatory format of health policy. 5  Members of the Magalhães

nas políticas urbanas locais nos anos 80’, Unpublished master’s dissertation in sociology, University of Belo Horizonte. Caldeira, T. (2000) São Paulo, City of Walls, Berkeley: University of California Press. Caribe, D. (2005) ‘Plano Diretor de desenvolvimento urbano de Salvador: alguns limites para a implementação da participação cidadã na elaboração do projeto’, Unpublished master’s dissertation in administration, Federal University of Bahia. Estado de São Paulo (2002) ‘Plano Diretor aprovado inclui mudanças em zonas residenciais’, 23 August, www.estadao.com.br/agestado/ noticias/2002/ago/23/305.htm, accessed 12 May 2006. Federal Republic of Brazil (1988) Constituição. Constituição da República Federativa do Brasil, Brasilia: Senate. Fernandes, E. (2002) ‘Do Código Civil de 1916 ao Estatuto da Cidade: ­algumas notas sobre a trajetória do Direito Urbanístico no Brasil’, in L. Mattos (ed.), Estatuto da ­Cidade Comentado, Belo Horizonte: Mandamentos. Folha de São Paulo (2002) ‘Moradores e construtoras duelam na Vila Mariana’, 29 September. Gohn, M. (1991) Movimentos Sociais e Lutas pela Moradia, São Paulo: Edições Loyola. Guimaraens, M. (2006) ‘A Competência Municipal e o 2º PDDUA’, www.portoalegre.rs.gov.br/ planeja/spm2/4.htm, accessed 30 May 2006. Holston, J. (1993) ‘Legalizando o ilegal: propriedade e usurpação no Brasil’, Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais, 8(21). Instituto Brasileiro de Geografica

e Estatistica (2003) ‘National Household Sample Survey’, www. disc.wisc.edu/newcatalog/study. asp?tid=14094&id=8182, accessed 30 May 2009. Ireland, R. (1999) ‘Popular religions and the building of democracy in Latin America: saving the Tocque­ villian parallel’, Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, 41(4). Macaulay, F. (1996) ‘“Governing for everyone”: the Workers’ Party administration in São Paulo 1989–1992’, Bulletin of Latin American Research, 15(2). Rolnik, R. (1997) A Cidade e a Lei – legislação, política urbana e territórios na cidade de São Paulo, São Paulo: Studio Nobel. — (2006) ‘Raquel Rolnik: inédito’, Unpublished transcript of an interview given to Marcos Morais, São Paulo. Sampaio, A. (2000) ‘Consultoria para atualização do Plano Diretor de Salvador’, Unpublished paper. Saule, N. (1995) ‘O direito à cidade na Constituição de 1988. Legitimidade e eficácia do Plano Diretor’, Unpublished master’s dissertation in rights, Catholic University, São Paulo. Silva, T. (2003) ‘Da participação que temos à que queremos: o pro­ cesso de orçamento participativo na cidade de Recife’, in L. Avritzer and Z. Navarro (eds), A inovação democrática no Brasil: o orçamento participativo, São Paulo: Cortez Editora. Singer, P. (1994) ‘São Paulo’s master plan, 1989–92: the politics of urban space’, Comparative Urban Studies Occasional Paper no. 2, Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, www.­wilsoncenter.org/

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Whitaker, F. (2003) ‘Iniciativa popular de lei: limites e alternativas’, in M. Benevides, P. Vannuchi and F. Kerche, Reforma política e cidadania, São Paulo: Perseu Abramo.

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index.cfm?topic_id=1410 &fuse action=topics.publications& group _id=24862, accessed 5 May 2006. Singer, P. and V. Brandt (eds) (1980) São Paulo: o povo em movimento, São Paulo: Vozes/CEBRAP.

8 ·  Winning women’s rights in Morocco: cultural adaptations and Islamic family law A lexandra P ittman with R ab é a N aciri 1

This chapter highlights the efforts of the Moroccan women’s movement that contributed to the 2004 legislative reform of the Moudawana (Personal Status Code),2 or Islamic family law. Specifically, we focus on the advocacy and lobbying strategies of a particular progressive feminist human rights non-governmental organization (NGO) in Morocco, the Association Démocratique des Femmes du Maroc (ADFM, Moroccan Women’s Democratic Association) and its alliances. This case provides an overview of the movement strategies developed and deployed during the 1990s and early 2000s. The campaign to reform the Moudawana took place in a contentious political context with a strong opposition, stemming from the organizing efforts of religious conservative and Islamist groups. The conservative social and institutional context also presented challenges to the women’s rights activists’ legal reform efforts and their goals of achieving equal status in the family. Despite the constraining context, progressive women’s rights activists were able to mobilize culturally resonant discourses and strategies to obtain support for legal reform. The Moroccan case is interesting to analyse because women’s rights activists located the proposed legislative changes in an Islamic frame of reference as well as in relation to universal principles of human rights. Practically, this case broadens knowledge of the dynamic activism that exists in the women’s movement in Morocco as well as describing contributions that enabled the reform of the Moudawana. The organizing successes of the Moudawana campaign have also been seen as a model for women’s rights activists across the Maghreb and the Middle East to be drawn upon, contextualized and adapted. First, an overview of the Moroccan legal context and the women’s movement’s goals is presented. Next, we highlight the main movement factors that appear to have contributed to the success of the Moudawana reform, which include the capacity to utilize and actively create political opportunities, to enhance the depth and strength of advocacy efforts, to extend the reach and influence of alliances and coalitions, and to remain flexible and adaptive in campaign strategies. 174

In 1957/58, after independence was gained from France, a commission of Oulema (religious scholars and interpreters of Islamic doctrines and laws) underwent a process of debate, negotiation and consensus on the contents of the Moudawana. The legislation was strongly inspired by Muslim rights within the Malikite tradition of Islamic jurisprudence based on fiqh (legal rules developed in the Islamic jurisprudence process, deriving from the Koran), which legislates the rights and obligations of men and women in all aspects of private life. This first Moudawana (1957/58–2004) was a patriarchal law, with the man being characterized as the head of the household and superior to the woman, while the woman was conceptualized as a minor under the guardianship of a man. Legal restrictions prevented women from seeking divorce, retaining custody of the children in case of divorce, or gaining equal inheritance. In Morocco, the Moudawana is the only legislation that falls under Islamic law. All other legislation, including penal and constitutional, is secular, set in a civil court system. It is important to note that these laws are not entirely equitable. Interestingly, even though the civil constitution adopted in 1962 grants equality to all Moroccan citizens, the Moudawana primarily determines women’s rights in the family.3 Since the Moudawana’s promulgation, progressive women’s rights activists have been organizing for reform to ensure equal rights (Sadiqi 2008). The activists have argued that the Koran, the Hadith (oral traditions relating to the words and deeds of the Prophet) and the sunnah (the Muslim way of life) had been subject to a masculine and conservative interpretation (CME95 2003). The activists locate the fiqh within a historically evolving perspective and draw upon the fundamental notions of ijtihad (the process of making an independent jurisprudent decision on the religious interpretation of Islamic law), in order to reinterpret traditional laws with modern values (CME95 2000, 2003). Prominent mobilizations in the earlier campaign periods for Mouda­ wana reform were moderately successful. One of the most important activ­ities at the time was the grassroots ‘one million signatures’ campaign, supporting a petition in favour of Moudawana reform. The in­ itiative was launched by Union de l’Action Feminine (UAF, Union for Women’s Action) through its newspaper, 8 Mars, on 3 March 1992. The petition was a great success and illustrated significant public support. In 1993, legislative amendments to the Moudawana were made, after over thirty years of unsuccessful reform attempts. These reforms were considered superficial because major issues of concern to women’s rights activists, including marital tutorship, polygamy, divorce and 175

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A history of the Moudawana

r­ epudiation, were left virtually untouched (Buskens 2003). Despite considering them superficial, activists saw the reforms as a critical success for future reform efforts. Once the Moudawana was amended, it could no longer be seen as an unalterable text, thus lifting the veil of sacredness surrounding it.4 After the 1993 reforms, women’s rights groups continued to mobilize for more extensive legislative amendments. In the early 1990s, they began to shift their communication strategies to incorporate human rights arguments and a democratization discourse along with the need for new religious interpretations.5 Amina Lemrini, founder of ADFM, shared some of her organization’s strategies. The NGO ‘looked for local cultural strategies that secured the universal values of freedom, dignity, and rights […] We justified this equality in terms of religion, using an argument that was hard to refute in our context.’6 Activists highlighted a multi-pronged approach to arguing for reform as predicated by ijtihad and based on the current path the nation was taking towards more democratic structures that aligned with principles of human rights, justice and equality. They crafted arguments in favour of the Mouda­ wana reform deploying religious, constitutional, sociological and human rights discourses for use with different audiences (CME95 2003). However, during this time an Islamist backlash in the country intensified and women’s rights activists and their allies were increasingly charged with being un-Islamic, among other insults. The women’s rights activists faced a strong countermovement that opposed their progressive claims. Two main currents of opposition formed at the time. Conservatives and Islamist political groups began to use religion to persuasively reject the women’s rights activists’ claim of equality within the family. The religious conservatives argued for a close interpretation of Islamic principles and stated that any revision made to the Personal Status Code would be against Islam. They countered that in place of reforms there should be greater respect for the traditions of Allah and the religion itself. On the other hand, the political Islamists framed the reforms proposed by the women’s movement as an influence from the West with the goal of destroying social values and the Moroccan family. Their longer-term political plan entailed Morocco moving forward towards the goal of establishing an Islamic state.7 Owing to accusations from the opposition that women’s rights activists were Westernized or ‘loose’, progressive women’s rights NGOs began issuing statements and reports. For example, the Ligue Démocratique pour les Droits de la Femme (Democratic League for Women’s Rights) declared: 176

For many liberal activists ‘true Islam means equality, human rights, and ijtihad’ (ibid.: 103). A key shift in the Moroccan campaign occurred with a change in political leadership (ibid.). Following the legislative elections in 1997, the Union Socialiste des Forces Populaires (USFP, Socialist Union of Popular Forces) came into political power, by winning the most seats, 57 of 325, and votes, around 14 per cent, of any political party.8 Following this victory, in early 1998 King Hassan II appointed Abderrahmane El Youssoufi of the USFP to become prime minister. Building upon these opportunities, the women’s rights activists aimed to create a collective national platform, which could then be adapted for local, regional or national mobilization and campaign ­efforts. The outcome of this vision for legal change was the Plan d’Action pour l’Intégration des Femmes au Développement (PANIFD, Plan of Action for the Integration of Women in Development), which integrated the tenets of an international platform agreed at the 1995 World Conference on Women in Beijing. Seven of the two hundred measures were related to the revision of the Moudawana. On 19 March 1999, Prime Minister Abderrahmane El Youssoufi publicly came out in support of PANIFD. The political opportunity for women’s voices to be heard further increased when, in 1999, King Mohamed VI assumed office following the death of his father. King Mohamed VI supported women’s equal rights, democratic deepening and economic liberalization. A significant portion of the population held high hopes for improving their quality of life, so much so that the public characterized him ‘the king of the poor’ (ibid.: 94). However, an extreme backlash from the conservative Islamist groups arose in response to this public display of support. Among such declarations was the League of Oulema of Morocco, who opposed the reform of the Moudawana because it contradicted the sharia (the body of religious Islamic law), the Koran and the sunnah. The League of Oulema was angered because they were not consulted before the government supported the measure and therefore they insulted women’s rights activists and supporters of PANIFD, deeming them heretics (ibid.). Women’s 177

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Islam has from the beginning been a religion of justice and equality. On the basis of ijtihad the interpretations laid down in the Moudawana, which date from a period of decadence of Islamic scholarship and are closely linked to customary law, can be changed. Equality is not a foreign idea, but was defended by Islam long before it became fashionable in the West. (Translation from Buskens 2003: 102)

rights groups responded not only that religious scholars did not have the absolute right to interpret Islam and that true democratization would result from cultural reinterpretations of Islamic law (ibid.), but that the constitution conferred rights of legislation on the king and parliament rather than the Oulema. During this time, the conservatives and political Islamists formed an opposition network, the Organisme National pour la Protection de la Famille Marocaine (ONPFM, National Group for the Protection of the Moroccan Family). The group launched a powerful opposition campaign, mobilizing and disseminating conservative ideology through mosques and within other shared cultural spaces such as  in the medinas (marketplaces) and popular media, as well as lobbying in the political arena.9 Soon thereafter, the government withdrew its support for PANIFD. After these mobilizations, women’s rights associations in Morocco organized two networks of NGOs in 1999. The first, Réseau d’Appui au PANIFD (RAP, Network of Support for PANIFD), advocated the adoption of the action plan by the government. The network encompassed over two hundred human rights, women’s rights and development associ­ ations that supported and promoted the measures put forth in the plan of action.10 The network took on a public mobilization and political role in promoting the plan to show that extensive support for women’s rights existed in the country and that it was primarily mobilized through civil society organizations. The second network formed in 1999 was the Front de Défense des Droits des Femmes Marocaines (FDFM, Front for the Defence of Moroccan Women’s Rights); it consisted of more than fifty women’s associations. The FDFM, in order to show mass support for PANIFD, focused heavily on mobilizing trade unions and cultural organizations along with women’s groups to garner national and inter­ national support for the reform efforts and against the conservative Islamists’ hostile actions against women’s rights groups. While the networks pursued separate actions, they were also complementary and initiated common actions, such as mobilizing support for the Rabat march of 2000. It was during this critical mobilization event in 2000 that tensions between the women’s movement and the opposition movement peaked. In the streets of Rabat, a large public demonstration was held in which tens of thousands of progressive women and men marched through the streets demanding legal changes in women’s status. At the same time, a countermarch was organized in Casablanca by the conservatives and political Islamists opposing the women’s rights activists.11 The Rabat rally was large, but the opposition march was much larger. The opposi178

Not only did they [conservative Islamists] rally their constituency and people in the party, but also the average Moroccan […] women in jeans, marched against the plan [PANIFD]. It was not about covering up and it was not about belonging to a political party. It was about religion and the attack against their religion and they believed that they should make their voices heard.

The countermovement’s locally resonant discourse was very powerful. In fact, public resistance to the Moudawana reform was so strong at the time, some people wouldn’t even listen to women’s rights activists’ arguments.13 Following the public demonstrations of women’s rights activists and their allies (modernist movements of Moroccan politics and civil society) and the conservatives’ and Islamists’ attacks, King Mohamed VI decided in March 2001 that, given the social and political importance of the question, he would deal with the issue in his capacity as Amı¯r alMu’minı¯n (Commander of the Faithful). Forty important female ­leaders from women’s organizations and political and social movements in Morocco were invited to meet with the king and provide recommendations for Moudawana reform. In order to most effectively adapt to the new political developments, a group of activists formed a new coalition, the Coalition Printemps de l’Egalité (CPE, Spring of Equality Coalition) in 2001.14 More limited in scope, this smaller coalition aimed to establish a network to advocate reform of the Moudawana and more closely monitor the situation and its developments. In 2001, the coalition sent King Mohamed VI a memorandum with their propositions and visions for reform of the Moudawana. The efforts of the coalition, in tandem with the past actions of the RAP, were successful in mobilizing an official response from the king as he created the Royal Consultative Commission (RCC) of Oulema, responsible for the reform of the Moudawana. The RCC was composed of religious scientists, lawyers, sociologists and doctors. Three out of sixteen members were women from highly respected professions. The RCC met regularly between 2001 and 2004. No immediate reforms were initiated in these early years owing to the extreme conservatism of certain members of the RCC. However, the RCC’s work, as well as mobil­ izations by the CPE, helped to keep the Moudawana reform ­efforts and 179

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tion was extremely successful in mobilizing broad support on the basis of religious and national identity and by framing the women’s activists seeking reform as cultural outsiders, affiliating with foreign ideas. Raja el Habti12 recalls:

the progressive feminists’ demands on the political and legal agenda. In 2003, King Mohamed VI nominated a new president to the RCC and a more open dialogue followed. Nouzha Guessous, professor in the Faculty of Medicine, women’s rights activist and a member of the RCC, describes the reform pro­ cess. The Commission based their reform decisions on principles and guidelines recommended by King Mohamed VI. First, the reforms were to be coherent with the founding principles and spirit of Islam, or maqasid. Second, the reforms were not obliged to follow the Malikite school of legal tradition, but could invoke any type of ijtihad as long as it was in favour of the family and harmony. Third, we were to follow international obligations vis-à-vis human rights principles and universal human rights laws, which are recognized in the preamble to the constitution of Morocco.15

During the three-year period when the RCC reviewed the Moudawana proposals, the CPE launched an advocacy and awareness-raising campaign that targeted different groups. The advocacy arm of the campaign focused on the RCC. Women’s rights activists insisted to Commission members that any changes made to the Moudawana be passed through parliament in keeping with the democratic process normally applied to other legislation. The objective was to simultaneously consolidate the application of the democratic process and to standardize any reforms made to the Moudawana. The second arm of the campaign focused on public awareness-raising. Much of this work was done by reaching out to the grass roots through media campaigns and face-to-face events. In particular, the CPE produced materials that raised public awareness using real cases of women who had experienced injustice under the old Moudawana, such as domestic violence, repudiation and early marriage. Each case ended with the slogan ‘Building a democratic Moroccan society depends on the respect of women’s rights’. In using this slogan, the country’s political and social goals were leveraged to secure women’s equal rights. In October 2003, the RCC passed on its recommendations for Moudawana reform to King Mohamed VI and for review by parliament. Leveraging shifting political opportunities16

The country’s move towards more openly democratic and liberal economic structures in the 1980s and 1990s created the space for civil society groups to flourish, particularly women’s rights associations. Specifically, King Hassan II divided power between the legislative and 180

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the executive system and through constitutional reforms in 1996 estab­ lished a bicameral parliament.17 Additionally, King Hassan adopted a structural adjustment policy to address debt (Denoeux 2001). In the climate of state-sponsored democratization, there was greater political space for civil society organizing to occur, and through this a second generation of the women’s movement developed (Eddouada 2001). In the early 1980s, human rights advocacy organizations were limited ­owing to government pressure; gradually, more groups began to emerge during the next decade (Buskens 2003). While there is evidence of a Moroccan women’s movement that dates back to the 1950s at independence, the new political and economic shifts ushered in the greater organizing of women’s advocacy groups (Sadiqi 2008). Within this next generation, feminist organizations began to play a central role in shifting dominant socio-legal norms. While some of these organizations were closely affiliated with political parties at their founding, over time the organizations evolved to be partially or completely autonomous from partisan structures. The ADFM and the UAF are examples of such organizations, NGOs that focus on urgent matters of gender discrimination, civil rights, violence against women and sexual harassment (Naciri 1998). The activities of the feminist organ­izations were specifically linked to the mobilization efforts for the Moudawana reform. Feminist arguments emerged, calling for equality between men and women as a fundamental prerequisite for achieving a democratic society, respectful of human rights (ibid.). Two major political changes facilitated mobilizations for the Mouda­ wana reform in the late 1990s: the forming of a left and centre majority government and King Mohamed VI’s ascendance to the throne. After the king’s enthronement, a number of high-profile women were appointed to political positions in the government (Sadiqi and Ennaji 2006). These political shifts signalled a changing environment which activists could strategically leverage to maximize their campaign’s impact. Political support for reform was strengthened as the leftist parties were more likely to support modernist reinterpretations of the Moudawana. Additionally, the king was a strong proponent of justifying legislative changes within an Islamic frame of reference to ensure religious legitimacy, thus strengthening progressive activists’ discourses of ijtihad. With the political and monarchic changes, women’s rights activists found themselves at a turning point with a unique opportunity to voice their concerns and demands for reform (ibid.). However, the traditionalist, conservative and Islamist countermovement, led by the ONPFM, constituted a threat to the actualization of

reforms, limiting opportunities. The shifting nature of the political opportunities and strength of the countermovement’s demands were particularly evident after the government’s official withdrawal of its support for PANIFD, owing to growing public dissent and the carefully executed opposition campaign by the ONPFM. In light of these closing opportunities, the women’s movement organized to deepen grassroots networks of support and to craft and broadly communicate an effective discourse of ijtihad along with a respect for human rights. The strategic use of alliances

In order to achieve their vision of a Moroccan society with egalitarian laws, progressive women’s rights activists created broad-based networks and webs of alliances and coalitions. There were many opportunities for women’s rights organizations to tap into horizontal and vertical networks and create alliances in order to build, broaden and deepen the movement. Key civil society networks and coalitions involved in the Moudawana reform campaign included the RAP, the FDFM and the CPE, as well as regional alliances, such as the Collectif Maghreb Egalité 95 (CME 95, Maghreb Equality Collective 95), a network of women’s organizations in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. Each played slightly different yet complementary roles, and contributed diverse characteristics, inputs and supporter bases to the campaign as a whole. The RAP and the FDFM, both formed in 1999, put pressure on the government to support a plan to reform the Moudawana. The large membership base as well as the shared agenda of the need for legal reforms incorporating the gender equality of the national network demonstrated the strength of women’s alliances (ADFM 2003). The CPE, which was formed later, included activists and organizations that had been key stakeholders in the two previous networks. This coalition gave tactical priority to advocacy and media campaigns aimed at the public (ibid.). The CPE demanded changes in the Moudawana, including the eradication of marital tutorship, a rise in women’s legal age of marriage to eighteen (equal to the legal age of marriage for men), the legitimization of divorce, the establishment of equality in marriage, and abolition of polygamy. The CPE facilitated strong, continuous and relevant use of the mass media in order to maintain pressure on decision-makers. Women’s rights activists also mobilized support from the grass roots using education campaigns that highlighted inequalities the average Moroccan woman might face, such as domestic violence, repudiation and early marriage. These issues were then fashioned into narrative case studies of real women. Using narratives is a persuasive way to heighten 182

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public sympathy and concern for an issue, as well as cultivate a sense of connection and identification with the narrative subject (Polletta 1998). Still, there was difficulty convincing men of the necessity of reform, owing perhaps to the privileges the current social system procured for them. Thus, activists began embedding their reform discourse within men’s personal experiences of family. Activists placed the issues at stake in the Moudawana reform within the family context by asking men whether they wanted their daughters protected from injustices such as repudiation and domestic violence.18 Offering tools, resources and transnational visibility, the CME95 was created in 1992 to actively reflect on and propose reforms to family legislation in the Maghreb. It is a coalition of women’s activist organizations, intellectuals, leaders and researchers. ADFM in Morocco coordinated the work of CME95 for ten years. A priority for the CME95 was to ensure that they did not duplicate or compete with the work of other women’s groups and organizations, but instead prepared and shared unique tools that were appropriate for their daily activities within the Maghrebian context.19 The CME95 drew upon experts in different fields, such as legislators, activists and educators, and formed a theoretical foundation for its project to reform Maghrebian family laws. In order to effectively communicate the need for egalitarian laws to the public, in 2001 they created a complementary and comprehensive strategy for arguing for family law reform in the region which has also been utilized in countries with Muslim-majority populations (CME95 2003; Anwar 2005). However, activists did not rely only on national and regional partnerships. Instead the movement sought to broaden their community of support by establishing a variety of international partnerships. In mid-2001, ADFM invited Women’s Learning Partnership (WLP)20 to be the first international organization to support the appeal to Prime Minister El Youssoufi to reform the Moudawana.21 WLP sent a petition of support for the Moroccan campaign to their international network of NGOs, activists, academics and policy-makers. Over two hundred activists, academics and organizations joined Moroccan NGOs in support of their quest for improving women’s rights. This enhanced the international visibility of the Moroccan campaign and strengthened South–South and South–North linkages. Finally, bilateral partnerships were also established with the expatriate community. One example of these relations was in the Netherlands, where the Marokkaanse Vrouwen Vereniging Nederland (Association of Moroccan Women in the Netherlands) supported the reform plans

and gained public support through petitioning the Dutch parliament on International Women’s Day in 2000 (Buskens 2003). While trans­ national connections, such as those described, were useful leverage for Moroccan activists in some spheres, they could also be drawn upon as evidence of foreign support and influence, fuelling the opposition’s arguments. Thus, activists were careful in the extent to which they publicized trans­national sources of support, while trying to maximize the strategic advantages of collaborations. This constellation of alliances and campaigns created an extensive network of constituents from diverse locations in society, ranging from the grass roots, activists, NGOs, politicians, artists, the media and ­scholars. Framing the debate: rewriting gender equality through a cultural lens

The feminists chose to use relevant and pragmatic arguments in order to broaden support for the goal of Moudawana reform.22 Rabéa Naciri, president of ADFM and a previous executive director of CME95, notes: We chose not to separate the universal human rights framework from the religious framework in our campaign arguments in favour of reform. We maintained and repeated that Islam is not opposed to women’s equality and dignity and should not be presented as such. On the contrary, it is a religion that values equity and justice. Fiqh is not the sharia and we need to distinguish between both. Islamic law is a human and historical production, and consequently is able to evolve, to account for social developments and to fulfil the current needs of Muslim men and women.23

This perspective involved producing and disseminating a rationale for the conceptualization of equality within an Islamic framework. As part of this strategy, the CME95 formed a multi-pronged approach for supporting family law reform. First, in 1995, the organization produced the Hundred Measures and Steps for Egalitarian Legislation of Family Relations in Morocco. This paved the way for the long reform process of the Moudawana. An Algerian member of the CME95, Caroline Brac de la Pérrière, highlights the starting point for the Maghrebian code: ‘we agreed that we would not accept anything less than the rights guaranteed in the Tunisian law. We were from the same culture – the Maghreb – so we felt that we should not have discriminatory laws [as existed in Morocco and Algeria] when Tunisians enjoy equality [in most spheres 184

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of their life].’24 This became the basic level of shared understanding that the CME started with in rewriting new egalitarian laws.25 After the Hundred Measures had been prepared, the CME95 realized that activists often lacked tangible tools which they could use to frame their debates, counter the opposition and mobilize support. In order to address these challenges, the coalition drafted the Dalil pour l’égalité dans la famille au Maghreb (Guide to equality in the family in the Maghreb). The Dalil pour l’égalité is an activist’s resource that provides arguments for family law reform from a sociological, human rights, religious and legal perspective. Eleven key issues in family legislation in the Maghreb are addressed, such as the legal age of marriage, the ban on polygamy, the duty to obey and the obligation to support the family. There is a review of the current Personal Status Codes in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, and justifications for achieving legal equality from the four different perspectives. Within the Moroccan context, the Dalil pour l’égalité was used to document past legal shifts and to provide reinterpretations of religious texts. The framing was strategic, relevant and a part of everyday life for Moroccans. It pointed to the emerging democratic ideals in the region as one of the bases for women’s legal and social equality. The Moroccan arguments were pragmatic, as activists included issues that would be most likely to reach a broad consensus among their democratic and modernist allies. Such issues included head-of-the-family status, abolition of the woman’s obedience duty to her husband and abolition of the marriage guardianship as non-negotiable. On the other hand, issues such as equality in the inheritance and marriage of a Muslim woman to a non-Muslim man were not included in the list of claims, for political and social reasons.26 Not only was there a clear and tangible rights-based vision outlined, but the women’s rights activists used the religious and political sentiments of the time to advance their objectives (Pittman 2007). In any movement, considerable discursive and framing negotiations take place between actors. Certainly these dynamics were no less prevalent in the CME95 case. Specifically, challenges arose in the group when discussing whether or not to include religious argumentation supporting family law reform. For the Moroccans, it was very important to include this form of argumentation, whereas many of the Algerians and Tunisians preferred to use secular arguments. However, through group negotiation the CME95 was able to come to a working consensus on a variety of strategies that could be used. Each organization could then adapt their methods for mobilizing family law change according

to their own context. In fact, each NGO in the collective adapted the Dalil pour l’égalité differently: the Moroccans used a variety of strategies including religious argumentation, the Algerians utilized mainly the secular arguments in support of their family law reform efforts, and the Tunisians, who already enjoyed equality within the family law, focused on inheritance law reform using secular argumentation.27 Even with challenges in communicating across different societal conditions, the strengths of the CME95 lay in its ability to cross national boundaries, to share experiences and learn from others, to develop trust and solidarity after years of joint advocacy efforts, and to co-create advocacy tools to be utilized by a cadre of women’s rights activists in any context.28 A flexible and adaptable campaign

The iterative and adaptive nature of the women’s movement’s reform campaign could be conceptualized as an important element related to success. The activists strategically utilized the political opportunities available and actively created new political opportunities through reframing their message and offering alternative legislation amendments, as well as creatively responding to the countermovement’s claims. At a fundamental level, the responsiveness of a campaign to its own weaknesses can determine its success or failure. In the Moroccan case, in the early 1990s, the Moudawana reform campaign was charged with being elitist and as not representative of the general public’s concerns. In response to these challenges, women’s rights NGOs began diversifying their base, expanding their use of religious, democratic and rights-based argumentation, and strengthening grassroots relationships. The interplay between activist and opposition forces is also critical since the ways in which groups respond to each other affect the movement playing field and the political opportunities at stake (Meyer and Staggenborg 1996). The women’s rights activists responded to a relative decrease in political opportunity after the initial rejection of the PANIFD by re­ organizing and engaging in diverse networking and coalition-building strategies. El Habti speculates on the importance of political timing in the reform effort: I think that if the king had intervened after the demonstration [marches in 2000 in Rabat and Casablanca], I don’t think the public reaction would have been positive. I think that it would have created more tension within the Moroccan society […] [A]fter the Commission the 186

It was after the PANIFD rejection that activists tapped into different segments of the population in order to build a broader constituency. They also began holding public awareness-raising lectures. These public lectures, along with political support and timing, may have contributed to a shift in the public debate on the Moudawana. The activists created new political opportunities by responding to extremist forces and justifying reforms using the same language as the opposition. By continually shifting the mechanisms for framing the discourse and increasing the relevancy of their claims in different contexts, the women’s rights activists were in a unique position to accomplish their objectives. A good example of the multiple framing strategies occurred in the Dalil pour l’égalité: the multiple options for justifying legal changes provided activists with a veritable toolbox of persuasive strategies to utilize according to the context. Significance of the changes

After over forty-six years of feminist and activist contestation of institutionalized gender inequality, the Moudawana was fundamentally altered. On 3 February 2004, the new Family Code was unanimously passed by parliament after being presented by King Mohamed VI months earlier. The main legislative changes to the Moudawana included the abolition of marital tutorship, the elimination of the principle of obedience to the husband, the establishment of joint responsibility between husbands and wives within the family, the establishment of new divorce procedures in addition to the former ones (mutual spousal divorce and divorce for irreconcilable differences), the establishment of eighteen as the legal age for marriage for men and women alike, the expansion of legal guardianship rights for women, restrictive regulation of polygamy, and allowing grandchildren to inherit from maternal as well as paternal grandparents. The reforms provided essential legal changes for institutionalizing women’s rights and autonomy within an Islamic framework.30 At the individual level, some of the most important changes were the co-responsibility between husbands and wives within the family and the abolition of the duty of obedience. Taken together, these changes supported women’s full, equal and autonomous participation in their private and public lives. Through these alterations to the Family Code, 187

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tensions had lessened; people felt more comfortable talking about the Moudawana, questioning the Moudawana. It became part of the public debate.29

religious law was no longer seen as sacred and untouchable, but rather as open to reinterpretation based on principles of equality within the Koran as well as more universal principles of dignity, freedom and equality. The adoption of the new Family Code in 2004 represented a turning point for Moroccan women as well as for the entire society.31 However, even with these successes, significant challenges still exist. Even though the reforms increased women’s equality in the family, the Moudawana is not considered a perfect law, particularly as issues such as the ban on polygamy was not outlawed and inheritance issues were not addressed.32 In fact, Nouzha Guessous notes that ‘there are many contradictions within the new Moudawana. Many of these contradictions occurred due to article revision process.’33 Guessous suggests that the Moudawana is not a coherent set of laws because the Commission was not able to analyse the laws in relation to each other; therefore, there was no transparency or consistency between different Moudawana articles. The lack of consistency made it difficult for RCC members to advocate for changes in one law without knowing the consequences on another.34 Such inconsistencies in the Commission’s reform processes as well as its outputs are a matter for further analysis. In short, women’s rights activists feel there is more work to be ­accomplished, which should be the focus of future planning and mobil­ izations. Rabéa Naciri notes: ‘Success can have pernicious effects and lead to loss of identity and particularity of the Moroccan women’s movement. The idea that Moroccan women have gained all of their rights may represent a danger.’35 Further difficulties may arise owing to the problems in implementing these new rights, in view of high illiteracy, difficulties of legal enforcement and a growing backlash from conservatives and Islamists.36 Another potential challenge may also arise from the new judiciary system created through the reforms. Family matters will now be taken out of the ordinary court system and placed within these special family courts. Many argue that the separation of family issues from the ordinary judicial system may be problematic owing to a lack of family court accountability (Bordat and Kouzzi 2004). The Anaruz network, created in April 2004, seeks to address some of these concerns by following up and monitoring the implementation of the new provisions of the Moudawana.37 Anaruz is a national network of information and legal assistance centres aimed at women victims of violence that now encompasses thirty-nine organizations throughout Morocco. The network has been conducting research on implementation of the Moudawana, engaging in an advocacy campaign to ensure 188

Through the recent legislative reforms (Family Code, Penal Code, and Labour Code) Morocco is committing to a road of equality and justice for all Moroccans. However, there are numerous forms of injustices 189

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the Family Code is correctly applied, and offering legal advice for victims of domestic violence under the new family law standards. Most recently Anaruz prepared a documentary film (Anaruz 2009) entitled Le Code de la Famille: La Loi et la Vie des Femmes (The Family Code: The Law and Women’s Lives). The film presents women’s testimonies, highlighting the disconnect between the written law and their experiences of conjugal violence, domestic repudiation and divorce, to shed light on the implementation of the new family court system and the Family Code. In addressing accountability concerns, Naciri suggests mobilizing: to ensure that the Moroccan constitution explicitly incorporates equality between men and women in all domains, to promote equality and justice with every local piece of legislation, to ensure that legislation is implemented and effective, and to implement gender-based programmes and policies, such as positive discrimination policies (or affirmative action) in order to promote women’s public and political participation as well as economic activity.38 At its heart, this campaign was about challenging unequal patriarchal norms and ensuring that women experience equal freedoms, dignity and opportunities in an Islamic society. Yet paradigmatic social shifts such as these within a society cannot transpire overnight. For these reasons, women’s rights activists, such as ADFM, have shifted their strategies from active campaign mobilizations to education and empowermentbased initiatives. Some of the public education campaigns include television and radio announcements explaining the new rights gained with the new Family Code. In May 2005, ADFM launched a media public awareness campaign in French and Moroccan Arabic to educate the public about women’s rights, gender equality and the new changes made to the Moudawana. Six main social problems were targeted: domestic violence, divorce, expulsion, sexual harassment, matrimonial tutorship, and gender discrimination in the workplace. An example of the marital tutorship message that ran on radio and television is shown below. The text reads: ‘Yes, adult women have the full legal capacity to finalize their marriage. Why be silent when the law protects you? Article Twenty-three in the new Family Code stipulates that women have the right to finalize the act of marriage on their own.’ At the end of each printed public awareness message the text stated:

toward women that persist in daily life: violence, sexual harassment, discrimination between men and women in access to education, health services, employment, and decision-making […] These new legal texts punish these abuses. When respected, it is moving forward from state consolidation of rights and toward democratic opening. When ignored […] it is again a form of exclusion, of violence and of denying half of the Moroccan population its citizenship. (ADFM 2005)

The media campaign helps to raise public awareness of new women’s rights in the Moudawana and lays the foundation for shifting the way in which men and women conceptualize women’s rights within the family (Pittman 2007). The activists offer a powerful juxtaposition of national symbolism with women’s rights to educate the public on the impact of the Moudawana reforms. Implications

In summary, the Moudawana reform campaign produced successful legislative changes that fundamentally altered the power and equality that women are entitled to within the family. Moroccan women’s rights were affected at both the private and the public level with article reforms that grant women legal autonomy and shared decision-making in the family. These legislative gains not only contribute to a better quality of life and lay the groundwork for shifting social norms, but also pave the way for further reform efforts designed to ensure equality in the public realm and as citizens. In this case the conservative Islamist opposition were initially successful in framing progressive activists as cultural outsiders, tapping into a binary that opposes ‘culturally authentic’ and ‘foreign import’. The strategic use of religion as a pretext for the impossibility of reform was directly addressed by activists after they saw how persuasive these arguments had been in the public sphere. The reformist feminists and other progressives countered that in fact many religious principles within Islamic legal texts necessitated women’s equality. According to this perspective, reform could be achieved through ijtihad and the reinterpretations of religious texts. Moroccan women’s rights activists were successful in locating Islamic law in an historically evolving framework using ijtihad, highlighting the importance of popular national discourses of democracy, human rights, and social justice. By using personal narratives, the activists were able to bring the legal code to life, thus increasing the likelihood that the public would engage and connect with the issue of reform. Through 190

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their extensive efforts in engaging the grass roots and lobbying public officials, the activists contributed to the democratization of public space (Sadiqi and Ennaji 2006). While social and practical barriers to women’s equality in Morocco still remain a challenge, women’s rights associations are now shifting their strategies to public awareness-raising of the new rights afforded in the Moudawana. Some NGOs, such as ADFM, are going even farther to lobby for women’s fuller inclusion as citizens through additional reforms in nationality laws.39 Moreover, NGOs in other Muslim-majority countries perceive the Moroc­can case as a successful and adaptable model for Islamic ­family law reform. While the strategies and discourse employed in the ­Moroccan reform would vary depending on the sociocultural context, the core lessons of actively reinterpreting Islamic law through ijtihad and creating culturally resonant discourses that draw on prevailing national ideo­ logies, social realities and cultural values are applicable across settings. The Moroccan strategies have in fact been used in reform efforts in many different countries. For example, the Dalil pour l’égalité was recently translated into Persian for adaptation by the WLP and used in the Iran­ ian context as a reference for the ‘one million signatures’ campaign. Furthermore, the transnational Musawah campaign launched in February 2009, a global movement calling for equality, justice and dignity of Muslim women’s rights in the family, draws from the Moroccan family law reform, among other important regional reform efforts, in creating its Platform for Action.40 In addition to tangible impacts on the ground, analysis of the Moroccan case also contributes to the academic literature on the building of and successes of localized feminist movements, as well as on the bridging of political, state and civil society. Strategically, the success of the women’s movement in reforming the Moudawana stemmed from their full engagement with the political opportunities and the space that materialized during the shift of leadership at the end of the 1990s. However, of equal importance to the success of this campaign were the progressive activists’ mobilization of the grass roots; the pressure on the state to make legal changes; the continuous deepening and strengthening of advocacy efforts, including lobbying parliamentarians and using multiple strategies for framing messages to different target audiences; the work to extend the reach and influence of alliances and coalitions by mobilizing horizontal and vertical alliances; the capacity to leverage a unique combination of sociocultural resources including religion, democratization and human rights; and the ability to adaptively respond to campaign challenges and opportunities.

Finally, the Moroccan women’s movement’s efforts offer a deeper theoretical understanding of the ways in which social movements can respond to and adapt to varying environmental challenges and opportun­ ities. Activists not only interacted within a shifting political opportunity structure, which offered moments of opening and closing, but actively constructed new political opportunities through the strategic use of discourse and by framing their arguments through a human rights and religious lens (Alimi et al. 2006). The activists used native religious frameworks and linked these frameworks to universal claims of human rights, women’s equal status and dignity within their context. To date, there has been a strong tradition of research that shows how social movements appeal to broader means of external legitimacy, ­using instruments such as international human rights frameworks (Keck and Sikkink 1998). More recently, attention has also been placed on local ­efforts to bring about change through internal means of legitim­izing one’s claims using social and political normative realities. In the ­Moroccan context, neither one of these frameworks applies completely. Instead, this case highlights the intersection of these two modes and explores the nuances of appealing to external and internal legitimacy through the negotiation of global and local norms. Notes 1  We would like to extend deep thanks to all of the individuals who took time to participate in the interviews, particularly Amina Lemrini, Caroline Brac de la Pérrière, Mahnaz Afkhami, Nouzha Guessous, Rakhee Goyal and Raja El Habti, whose perspectives and feedback were integral to the success of this project. We would also like to extend our warmest gratitude to Gary Hawes, Ford Foundation, and John Gaventa, IDS, for helpful editorial suggestions and for financial support of this project. Thanks to Bill Gamson, Ali Banuazizi and Sunnee Billingsley. Finally, thanks to Pinar Ilkkaracan, Amita Baviskar, Jun Borras, Michael Layton and everyone in the IDS working group who provided insightful comments. 2  The old Moudawana

(1957/58–2004) is referred to as the Personal Status Code. After the reform in 2004, the Moudawana is referred to as the Family Code. 3  This was the first independent Moroccan constitution. The constitution has undergone four amendments since its adoption. 4  Interview, Amina Lemrini, 2005. 5  For an in-depth history of the struggle to change the Moudawana, see Buskens (2003). 6  Interview, Amina Lemrini, 2005. 7  Interview, Nouzha Guessous, 2007. 8  An Islamist political party also enjoyed its first election to parliament in 1997. In 2007, the Islamist PJD gained 46 seats in parliament, finishing second to the nationalist Independence party, with 52 seats.

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21  Interviews, Mahnaz Afkhami and Rakhee Goyal, 2009. 22  Interview, Rabéa Naciri, 2007. 23  Ibid. 24  Interview, Caroline Brac de la Pérrière, 2007. 25  Interviews, Caroline Brac de la Pérrière and Rabéa Naciri, 2007. 26  Interview, Rabéa Naciri, 2007. 27  Interview, Caroline Brac de la Pérrière, 2007. 28  Ibid. 29  Interview, Raja el Habti, 2007. 30  Interview, Amina Lemrini, 2005. 31  Interview, Rabéa Naciri, 2007. 32  Interview, Amina Lemrini, 2005. 33  Interview, Nouzha Guessous, 2007. 34  Ibid. 35  Interview, Rabéa Naciri, 2007. 36  Interviews, Amina Lemrini, 2005 and 2006. 37  Interview, Rabéa Naciri, 2007. 38  Ibid. 39  In the winter of 2007, Moroccan women’s rights activists were successful in reforming the nationality codes so women can pass on their nationality to their children, a right that has historically been granted only to men. 40  See www.musawah.org/, accessed 9 May 2009.

References ADFM (2003) ‘Rapport parallèle des ONG au rapport périodique du gouvernement du Maroc: sur la mise en œuvre de la Convention CEDAW’, www.learningpartner ship. org/docs/adfmcedawfrench rep.doc, accessed 21 April 2009. — (2005) ‘Stop aux violences contre les femmes. Campagne d’information sur les nouvelles dispositions du Code de la

Famille’, Media public awareness campaign message, press conference, 27 April 2005. Alimi, E., W. Gamson and C. Ryan (2006) ‘Knowing your adversary: Israeli structure of political opportunity and the inception of the Palestinian Intifada’, Sociological Forum, 21(4). Anaruz (2009) Documentary film, www.anaruz.org/portail/spip. 193

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9  Interviews, Raja el Habti and Nouzha Guessous, 2007. 10  Interview, Amina Lemrini, 2005. 11  Ibid. 12  Interview, Raja el Habti, 2007. 13  Ibid. 14  CPE was initially composed of nine women’s organizations, but eventually grew to thirty. 15  Interview, Nouzha Guessous, 2007. 16  In this chapter, political opportunities are characterized as the integration of structural and cultural components in which actors are both influenced by and influence the cultural environment and the varying structural opportunities and threats by actively creating opportunities for the movement (Alimi et al. 2006). 17  Denoeux and Maghraoui (1998) highlight the paradox of state-mandated democratic opening and its impact on legislative and policy negotiations that occur in the country. 18  Interview, Amina Lemrini, 2006. 19  Interview, Rabéa Naciri, 2007. 20  WLP is a transnational feminist NGO network with twenty partner organizations across the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Central Asia.

php?article294, accessed 11 May 2009. Anwar, Z. (2005) ‘A shared vision for change: women and legislative reform in Muslim-majority countries’, Talk given 17 November, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD. Bordat S. and S. Kouzzi (2004) ‘The challenge of implementing ­Morocco’s new Personal Status Law’, Arab Reform Bulletin, 2(8). Buskens, L. (2003) ‘Recent debates on the reform of family law in Morocco. Islamic law as politics in an emerging public sphere’, Islamic Law and Society, 10(1). CME95 (2000) Women in the Maghreb: Change and resistance, Brussels: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. — (2003) Dalil pour l’égalité dans la famille au Maghreb, Rabat : Editions Collectif 95. Denoeux, G. (2001) ‘Morocco’s economic prospects: daunting challenges ahead’, Middle East Policy, 8(2). Denoeux, G. and A. Maghraoui (1998) ‘King Hassan’s strategy of political dualism’, Middle East Policy, 5(4). Eddouada, S. (2001) ‘Feminism and politics in Moroccan feminist non-governmental organizations’, www.postcolonialweb.org/poldiscourse/casablanca/eddouada2. html, accessed 21 April 2009. Keck, M. and K. Sikkink (1998)

Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy networks in international politics, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Meyer, D. and S. Staggenborg (1996) ‘Movements, countermovements, and the structure of political opportunity’, American Journal of Sociology, 101(6). Naciri, R. (1998) ‘The women’s movement and political discourse in Morocco: UNRISD’s contribution to the Fourth Conference on Women’, Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development. Pittman, A. (2007) ‘The evolution of discourse: the campaign to change the Family Law in Morocco’, in N. Payne (ed.), Building Feminist Movements and Organizations: Lessons from diverse experiences, London: Zed Books. Polletta, F. (1998) ‘Contending stories: narratives in social movements’, Qualitative Sociology, 21. Sadiqi, F. (2008) ‘The central role of the Family Law in the Moroccan feminist movement’, British Society of Middle Eastern Studies, 35(3). Sadiqi, F. and M. Ennaji (2006) ‘The feminization of public space: women’s activism, the Family Law, and social change in Morocco’, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, 2(2).

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9 ·  Re/forming laws to secure women’s rights in Turkey: the campaign on the Penal Code P inar I lkkaracan

On 26 September 2004, a draft law aimed at the reform of the Turkish Penal Code was accepted in the Turkish parliament as the result of a three-year campaign led by a platform of women’s and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) organizations, the Women’s Platform on the Turkish Penal Code (WPTPC). The campaign secured thirty-five amendments towards recognition of women’s legal entitlement to sexual and bodily autonomy and rights despite strong opposition from the right-wing, Islamist Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP, Justice and Development Party) government. It aimed to transform the underlying philosophy and principles of the old Penal Code, which constructed women’s bodies and sexuality as belonging to their families, fathers, husbands and society; to eliminate all articles that constituted violations of women’s human rights, particularly sexual and bodily rights; and to ensure progressive definitions of sexual crimes. This signified a groundbreaking shift in the overall perspective of the Turkish state and the public on the issue. The campaign occupied the public agenda for three years, generated wide discussion and broke taboos on issues related to sexuality. This chapter provides a critical account of the campaign, its actors and the factors that contributed to its success. It draws on the author’s personal experience as the co-founder of the Women’s Working Group on the Penal Code (WWGPC), which initiated the campaign; and coordinator of the NGO Women for Women’s Human Rights – New Ways (WWHR – New Ways), which acted as the coordinating body throughout. The historical and political context: women and civil society in Turkey

Primary education has been mandatory in Turkey since 1924, but 32 per cent of women are still illiterate (State Statistics Institute 1986). The percentage of paid women workers is still a mere 16.1 in urban areas (Ministry for Women’s Affairs and Social Services 1994). The representation of women in parliament remains under 10 per cent. Yet the official 195

discourse of the state holds that the problem of the status of women has been solved and that Turkish women should consider themselves lucky because they were granted specific rights in the public sphere even before their European counterparts. The founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923 after the war of independence was followed by the introduction of several revolutionary reforms, including drastic changes regarding equality of women and men in the legal sphere; secularization of the state; the abolition of the Sultanate, the sharia (Islamic religious law) and the caliphate; and the adoption of Latin letters as the Turkish alphabet.1 In 1926 the introduction of the Turkish Civil Code, modelled on the Swiss Civil Code, banned polygamy and granted women equal rights in matters of divorce and child custody. The Civil Code in particular was an important victory over advocates of sharia. However, even this widely acknowledged and cele­ brated reform of the Turkish Civil Code, which has been predominantly regarded as progressive both in academic circles and among the Turkish public, was far from bringing actual equality for women in Turkey. Until the reform of the Civil Code in 2001, several laws, especially those in the marriage and family section of the old Civil Code, reduced women to a subordinate position. For example, the husband was defined as the head of the marriage union, granting him the final say over the choice of domicile, and over issues concerning children. This state discourse on the status of women has been internalized by many of the women who have been able to benefit from the new possibilities of the young republic, such as professional women living in big cities or women of the bureaucratic elite. Consequently, most women’s groups and associations formed during the post-republican era have concentrated on ‘helping’ or ‘educating’ women in rural areas, instead of questioning their own status or pressing for further rights. Moreover, the dichotomy they have perceived between themselves and rural women has hindered their understanding of the problems and potentials of these women, reducing the effectiveness of their efforts. In the 1960s and 1970s, right- and left-wing political movements dominated Turkish political debate and activity in reaction to strong state controls. Women’s issues and activists were subsumed into the Marxist movement and its discourses. The 1970s witnessed an armed conflict between right- and left-wing groups, resulting in tragic violence and the deaths of hundreds of activists and civilians. The 1980 military intervention, justified by the military as the only way to end the anarchic atmosphere, suppressed leftist opposition by force, while also systematically depoliticizing the masses and setting the stage for 196

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neoliberal policies proposed by the International Monetary Fund and other capitalist forces. In this atmosphere of repression and fear, the first new social movement to articulate its demands and oppose the government was the women’s movement.2 Since 1980, several factors have weakened state authority and control in social life, thereby enabling the development of civil society in Turkey. Transition towards a free-market-based economy, political and cultural conflicts and globalization have all led to the rise and development of a civil society with autonomy vis-à-vis the state. A major research study on the status and progress of civil society in Turkey notes that in this context women’s organizations deserve particular attention for their success (Bikmen and Meydanog˘lu 2006). The new feminist movement of the 1980s brought private-sphere women’s human rights violations in Turkey to public attention for the first time, initially campaigning on domestic violence. In 1989 another widespread and energetic feminist campaign followed against sexual harassment and sexual violence. This brought an important achievement in the legal arena. Article 438 of the Turkish Penal Code, which reduced by one-third the sentence given to rapists if the victim was a sex worker, was repealed by the Grand National Assembly in 1990. A law aimed at protecting victims of domestic violence was passed in 1998 as a result of another feminist campaign.3 Throughout the 1990s, feminist advocacy and lobbying for legal reform concentrated mainly on the reform of the Civil Code, which contained several provisions violating both the constitutional guarantee of gender equality and international conventions to which Turkey was a signatory, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).4 Although the reform of the Civil Code and amendments for gender equality first got on to the agenda of the Turkish parliament in the 1950s, none of the reform attempts was conclusive until the fully fledged reform of the Civil Code in 2001, the result of a broad and intensive campaign by the women’s movement. This was achieved after a decade of campaigning. Conditions appeared favourable: the government was well disposed to the women’s movement’s demands and European Union accession prospects were expected to intimidate opponents of gender equality. Nevertheless, male members of parliament (MPs) rebelled against their own government to overturn the proposed gender equality provisions. The women’s movement responded with a large-scale campaign which influenced public opinion and eventually contributed to the approval of a new Civil Code in November 2001, which abolished

the supremacy of men in marriage and established full equality of men and women in the family. The reform of the Civil Code was in many respects a trial run for the Penal Code reform campaign. Its success generated inspira­tion and momentum for this. Moreover, WWHR – New Ways, which initiated the campaign for the reform of the Penal Code, accumulated significant experience in lobbying and campaigning by acting as one of the informal secretariats of the campaign for gender equality in the Civil Code. The issue: the construction of gender and sexuality in the Turkish Penal Code of 1926

The Turkish Penal Code was adapted from the Italian Penal Code in 1926 after the foundation of the Turkish Republic in 1923, as part of the legal and political reforms aimed at secularization and Westernization, including the reform of the Civil Code drawing on the Swiss Civil Code. As noted, the reform of the Civil Code was an important victory for the reformists against the conservative forces advocating the retention of religious law. Yet, as Tekeli (1982) asserts, the rights granted to women by Kemalists from 1923 onwards aimed to destroy the links to the Ottoman Empire and to strike at the foundations of the religious hegemony, rather than establish actual gender equality. The republican ideology also instrumentalized women, this time, as the ‘protectors’ of secularism, just as the preceding conservative ideology held women as emblematic ‘protectors’ of conservative family values and the social order. A striking divergence between the rhetoric and practice of the new republic regarding women can be found in the patriarchal construction of women’s sexuality and bodies in the 1926 Penal Code.5 In the seventy-eight years following its first introduction in 1926, until its fully fledged reform in 2004, several articles in the old Penal Code were amended but no amendments except one – the abolition of the article granting sentence reductions to rapists if the victim was a sex worker – concerned women’s human rights or sexuality. Sexuality, and in particular women’s sexuality, was constructed as a potential threat to public order and morality, and in need of regulation by law. For instance, all sexual crimes were regulated under the section ‘crimes against ­society’ and subsection ‘crimes against traditions of morality and family order’, instead of under the section ‘crimes against individuals’. The regulation of crimes such as rape, abduction or sexual abuse against women as crimes against society rather than against individual women manifested the Code’s foundational premise: that women’s bodies and sexuality were a property of men, family or society. 198

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The terminology and phrasing in several articles of the old Penal Code regarding sexuality referred to traditional notions, all adapted into Turkish from Arabic, and commonly associated with Islamic morality. The notion of ırz, defined by the Ottoman-Turkish dictionary as ‘honour’ or ‘purity’, was the key concept in the definition of sexual crimes. For example, the term used for rape in the Code was ‘penetrating one’s honour’, instead of the common word used for rape in Turkish, meaning violation or attack. This view alone disallowed criminalization of marital rape, as sexual acts within the context of marriage – even if forced or brutal – could not be considered an assault against one’s honour. Likewise, if a man who had raped or abducted a woman subsequently married his victim, the Code granted a suspension of the sentence,6 the underlying logic being that while a raped woman suffered a loss of honour, this could be restored and hence the offence undone if the ­rapist ultimately married her. In cases where a woman or girl under fifteen was abducted or raped by a group of men, if one of the perpetrators agreed to marry her, charges against all of them would be dropped.7 These provisions not only sanctioned the crimes of rape and abduction, but also encouraged men to abduct or rape women who refused them, thus virtually forcing women to marry their rapists in order to preserve their honour. Sexual attack, including non-penetrative sexual abuse of children ­under fifteen, was defined as an act against honour. Sexual intercourse with a person between fifteen and eighteen years of age, even if consensual, constituted a crime and carried a punishment of six months to three years of imprisonment.8 The law also sanctioned the murder of women in the name of honour, and reduced significantly the sentences on male and female perpetrators of honour crimes if the victim was caught in the act of adultery or illegitimate sexual relations9 or if there was evidence beyond doubt that the victim had just completed such an act. The Code assigned less value to unmarried women than to married women. The minimum sentence required for abducting a married woman was seven years of imprisonment, but if the abducted woman was unmarried, the sentence could be anything from three to ten years.10 Virginity was a value protected by law, thus the Code11 stipulated imprisonment of six months to two years for men who had sexual relations with a virgin based on misleadingly promising marriage; however, the sentence was to be suspended if the perpetrator agreed to marry the woman. Notions of haya (shame) and ar (things to be ashamed of, especi­ ally in relation to sexuality) were the main criteria for specification of

c­ riminal sexual behaviour. An article in the old Penal Code referring to a general, undefined notion of ‘shameless behaviour’ provided for up to one year’s imprisonment for ‘anyone who acts or engages in a sexual relationship without haya’.12 In practice, this article was often used to justify human rights violations by police against LGBT people, although homosexuality is not criminalized in the law. Additionally, all materials, including publications, literature and music which ‘severed the public’s feelings of haya and ar’ or ‘served to provoke or abuse feelings of sexual desire’, were considered to be criminal.13 These articles even applied to publications aiming to convey the experiences of women who have experienced sexual violence in their childhood. A novel about victims of sexual violence was banned and withdrawn as a result of a decision of the Istanbul criminal court based on the provisions. While the Code included a very broad definition of sexual behaviours considered criminal, it failed to penalize crimes of marital rape, sexual harassment in the workplace, virginity tests, discrimination based on sexual orientation or sexual crimes by security forces. The campaign: Penal Code reform from a gender perspective, 2002–04

In December 1999, Turkey was accepted as a candidate for membership by the EU and thus required to prepare a national programme to align its legal, political and economic system with EU requirements. The ‘National Programme for the Adoption of the Acquis’ was prepared and made public in 2001. It included a planned reform of the Penal Code. Perceiving this as a window of opportunity for gender equality, in early 2002 WWHR – New Ways initiated a working group aiming at a holistic reform of the Penal Code from a gender perspective. WWHR – New Ways’s national and international work, experience and networks on sexual, bodily and reproductive rights at both national and international levels, including at the United Nations, proved to be vital enabling factors for such an initiative. The group had been working on these issues since its inception in 1993, and had led a campaign for the law on restraining orders in 1998 and a campaign for the ban of virginity tests at high schools in 1999. During 2000/01, it worked as an informal secretariat for the Civil Code campaign, and in 2001 initiated and coordinated the Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies, a solidarity network of NGOs and academics working across the Middle East, North Africa and South and South-East Asia. Even given the momentum generated by the Civil Code reform campaign, the initiative was daring. In contrast to the case of gender equality 200

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in the Civil Code, gender equality in the Penal Code had never been on the public agenda. The European Commission (EC) was concerned mainly with the abolition of the death penalty, pre-trial detention provisions and the extension of the scope of freedom of expression, and not with gender equality. In fact, the only reference made by the EC concerning women in the Penal Code related to honour crimes, but even that was unsatisfactory and misleading as it targeted only one of the articles granting reduced penalties for perpetrators of honour killings and ignored another that served the same purpose. Neither was advocacy for gender equality in the Penal Code on the agenda of the feminist movement. The women’s movement had focused on equality in the Civil Code, and lacked women specialists in criminal law, traditionally a male domain. It was also preoccupied with the impact of the political victory of the Islamic religious right in the 1990s. The shift of political power to religious right parties after the 1994 local elections and 1995 general elections had a restraining impact on the range of discourses and demands of the new feminist movement of the 1980s, especially those related to sexuality.14 The new feminist movement, which had concentrated on women’s rights in the private sphere, including domestic violence, sexual abuse and sexual freedom, lost its attraction for many women, who were more concerned with saving their existing rights in the public sphere in the light of the threat posed by the advance of political Islam. Many women showed increased support for traditional women’s NGOs, whose historical primary agenda is to protect the principle of secularism. The rise of political Islam, arguably, dis­ couraged the new feminist activists from engaging in traditionally ­taboo areas related to sexuality, such as sexual autonomy, sexuality outside marriage, forced heterosexuality or lesbian rights; rather it focused them on issues like virginity tests and honour crimes. Vitally important as these are, it is striking that while the women’s movement concentrated on issues that involved blatant human rights violations, positive claims for women’s sexual liberation were missing from the feminist agenda. So were other forms of control of women’s sexuality, such as the value given to virginity, family pressures, restriction of women’s mobility and the lack of women’s and girls’ sexual autonomy. The WWGPC, which the WWHR – New Ways initiated in 2002, included fifteen representatives from NGOs, bar associations and academia from various regions of Turkey to ensure geographic representation at the national level.15 Most members had been active leaders of the campaign for the Civil Code reform. WWHR – New Ways sought to establish a mixed group including men as well as women, to increase

the group’s recognition by the general public. But the inclusion of male members proved to be very difficult to achieve in practice: the only male expert the group could attract as a member, a professor of law, withdrew after the third meeting in May 2002. The group initially met every two weeks to prepare the campaign. Their examination of the Penal Code Draft Law prepared by the coalition government, comprising the Democratic Left Party, the Nationalistic ­Action Party and the liberal Motherland Party, revealed that all provisions concerning women and sexuality were copied almost verbatim from the 1926 Penal Code, thus embodying the same discriminatory and conservative philosophy, language and outlook. After identifying all articles violating human rights and the right to sexual and bodily integrity in both the existing Code and the Draft Law, the group undertook a comparative study of penal codes in European countries, as well as other countries with progressive legislation on the matter. They prepared detailed proposals and justifications for about forty amendments, formulated as new provisions and articles to be integrated into the new law. A publication including an analysis of the existing Code, the Draft Law and the amendments proposed by the group was prepared, published and sent to all MPs and the government. However, just as the group was preparing to start lobbying government and parliament for their demands, a political crisis radically changed the political scene in Turkey. Setback: a political earthquake

In 2002, the three-party coalition led by the social democrats, with which the campaigners had established some key contacts, resigned unexpectedly after a political crisis, precipitating a decision for early elections. Despite this setback, an exciting and hope-inspiring development for the WWGPC was that one of its members, Professor Aysel Çelikel, was appointed as the justice minister for the pre-election ­period, in fulfilment of a constitutional requirement that the ministers of justice, interior and communications must be replaced by independent experts for three months preceding elections. During her brief tenure, Çelikel mandated a commission of experts, including two members of the Working Group, to review and revise the Penal Code Draft Law. The commission accepted some of the WWGPC’s proposals, including the criminalization of marital rape, but rejected others. WWGPC members considered this development generally promising for their campaign, which they planned to continue after the elections. The November 2002 elections gave a stunning victory to the newly 202

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formed party of the religious right, the AKP. As only one other party, the left-leaning Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (CHP, Republican People’s Party), reached the 10 per cent minimum necessary to hold seats, AKP was left with a two-thirds majority in parliament although it had received only 34.2 per cent of the vote. This development shook the political scene like an earthquake, not only because the Islamists gained the majority in parliament for the first time in Turkey’s history, but also because the structure of the parliament changed so dramatically: all parties repres­ ented in the previous parliament were left out while two  parties that previously held no seats gained all of them. The AKP was established only after the 1999 elections and the CHP had not received enough votes in the previous election to have won any seats. Immediately after the elections, the WWGPC met to analyse developments and strategize for the future. The dominant outlook was that with a religious right party in power, all hopes for the reform of the Penal Code regarding gender equality were lost. Despite this negative outlook, the group decided to continue their campaign, no longer with great optimism regarding the inclusion of their demands in the Penal Code, but rather with a determination to get their demands on to the public agenda and demonstrate their opposition in a visible manner, hoping to leave a hint for future generations. Obtaining a copy of the draft of the new Penal Code prepared by the new government proved to be a major challenge. Formal requests to the Ministry of Justice and parliament were unsuccessful. As it became clear that the Working Group would not obtain it through official means, it resorted to alternatives and obtained it through the covert action of a liberal journalist friend with access to some key people in the new government. Analysis revealed that all amendments made by the Çelikel commission had been ignored and articles pertaining to sexuality and women again copied verbatim from the old Penal Code. The only proposed amendment concerning women was the extension of the legal abortion period from ten to twelve weeks’ gestation, a proposal that would not make its way to the final draft. The WWGPC publication setting out its demands was revised to ­address the new draft law prepared by AKP, and was sent to all members of the new parliament and media representatives. Repeated requests for an appointment with the minister of justice were left unanswered. Finally, after several months, the head of the Justice Commission and several key MPs agreed to meet with Working Group representatives on 28 April 2003. This first lobbying effort with the new government did not give much cause for hope. A member of the group summarized her

impressions of the visit to parliament on the electronic mailing list set up for members of the Working Group: ‘The head of the Justice Commission listened to us silently and gave no reaction, as typical of AKP.’16 She also reported that an influential woman MP from the opposition party, a law professor, viewed the cause as hopeless. Inching forward: the campaign expands

Faced with these dramatic setbacks and the persistent refusal of the new minister of justice to meet with the WWGPC, the group took a strat­ egic decision to transform its efforts into a massive public campaign. It set up a wider national platform, the WPTPC, including other NGOs and LGBT groups that supported its demands, increased its lobbying of parliament, targeted the media more systematically, and intensified its awareness-raising throughout the country by organizing conferences and meetings. In May 2003, it held a press conference presenting its critical analysis of AKP’s draft law and its demands for revision. The press conference received widespread media attention, thanks to the WWGPC’s long-term, diligent and persistent networking efforts with the media. This forced the AKP government to respond: the head of the Justice Commission announced that a sub-commission would be set up to review the WPTPC’s demands. The Islamist newspapers ignored the press conference until Vakit, one of the extreme religious right newspapers, headlined it five days later as a ‘shameless proposal’ and argued that the demands of the Platform in relation to sexual and bodily autonomy and rights were completely detached from the lives of Turkish people in general and went against so-called Turkish values (Yılmaz 2003). The Justice Commission finally appointed a sub-commission to review the draft on its behalf in October 2003. It comprised eight members, all male: three MPs from AKP, two MPs from the CHP and three academic consultants.17 The media bombarded the members and head of the Justice Commission on their opinions regarding the Platform’s demands as soon as the sub-commission was formed. In one of his first interviews to a major news channel, the head of the Justice Commission gave the first signal of government recognition of the Platform’s demands, praising the WWGPC: ‘Women’s NGOs have really demonstrated an exemplary action on how public opinion might be shaped around an issue. They have sent reports and representatives to our commission to ensure their participation in the process; moreover, they have led the public opinion in a remarkable way.’18 The expanded Platform continued the campaign with numerous con204

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ferences and meetings held in Ankara and Istanbul, as well as in smaller cities. A moderated electronic mailing list was set up and WWHR – New Ways took over the coordination of the campaign. The meetings and decisions of the Justice Sub-commission on the Penal Code were followed on a daily basis and the coordination office disseminated an analysis and critique of the sub-commission’s decisions to commission members and women’s and human rights groups, as well as media representatives, on a continuous basis. Representatives of the Platform visited parliament several times to voice their demands. An important impact of the campaign was increased media attention to court decisions related to sexual crimes. Some rulings on sexual crimes that seemed to favour the male perpetrators started to meet widespread public scorn for the first time, creating a more favourable public atmosphere for the campaigners and women’s demands in general. One such case was a court decision releasing twenty-eight perpetrators who had allegedly had forced sex with a thirteen-year-old girl in Mardin, south-east Turkey (Özgen 2003). Influential women columnists were the first to carry the discussion into newspaper opinion columns. Most were long-standing members of the women’s movement and friends of the campaign’s initiators. Two of them, Ferai Tinc from Hürriyet and Zeynep Oral from Cumhuriyet, co-founders of the Platform, played key roles in influencing fellow (male) journalists and pressing the Justice Ministry to recognize and respond to the Platform. Some critical writers even got into legal trouble: Ruhat Mengi, who also significantly contributed to the campaign with her column in Vatan, was sued by a law professor, a co-writer of the first draft law, in a court case which drew much media attention. Islamist newspapers were silent on the campaign for a long time. While public criticism towards the AKP’s draft law mounted, Yeni ¸Safak, an Islamist newspaper that also has liberal columnists, praised the draft law in a full-page article, without a word about the critiques or demands of the campaigners (Göktas¸ 2003). However, some days later, liberal columnists of the same newspaper supported women’s demands in their columns (Bumin 2003). Columnists at the newspaper Vakit reacted to the wide mainstream media coverage of women’s demands in a very hostile manner, targeting representatives of the Platform as ‘belonging to high-society and radical leftist organizations, whose sexual instincts have become out of control’ (Karakoç 2003). A very late response from the women’s minister came following the statements of the head of the Justice Commission. Her statement that the new Penal Code would be shaped by women MPs, though her party’s

women MPs had not engaged with the Penal Code issue at all until then, clearly revealed that she had ‘discovered’ the Penal Code issue only at a point when it could provide her with some political currency (Hürriyet 2003). In October 2003, the parliamentary sub-commission revising the draft law accepted some demands initially formulated by the WWGPC and maintained by the Platform, including the criminalization of marital rape and sexual harassment in the workplace, the revision of all ­articles discriminating between single and married, virgin and non-virgin women, and the cancellation of articles that provided reduced senten­ cing on the premise that sexual abuse of a child could be consensual. The headline of the newspaper Aks¸am compared this development to the result of a boxing round, mirroring the public mood regarding the debate between the Platform and the government: ‘The first round won by women: revolutionary changes in the macho draft’ (Aks¸am 2003). It is interesting to note that the first negative reaction to the ­media’s celebration of the success of the women’s platform came from the minister for women. On the day the sub-commission accepted the women’s demands outlined above, she gave a press statement implying that the Penal Code should continue to include the patriarchal, traditional ­notions that women were struggling to change, a reaction considered ‘confusing’ by the media (Vatan 2003). A turning point: should a woman marry her rapist?

The minister for women was not alone in opposing the revisions accepted by the sub-commission. However, the public uproar against the government’s defence of the draft law was triggered less by her statement than by the remarks of the chief consultant to the minister of justice, who defended the draft by referring to ‘Turkish realities’ on virginity and rape thus: This draft law is prepared according to realities in Turkey. No man would like to marry a woman who is not a virgin. Marrying the rapist ­after a rape is a reality of Turkey. The girl’s brother, the father of a girl who was raped, want her to marry the rapist. Those who are opposing this here [at this meeting] would also like to marry virgins. If they claim the opposite, it is forgery. (Quoted in Yalçın 2003; Önal 2003; Korkmaz 2003)

This statement was a turning point for the campaign. It triggered the widest public opposition against the government on the draft law since the start of the campaign, and maximized public attention on the debate between the government and the Platform. The article of the 1926 206

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Penal Code that provided for suspension of punishment in cases where a rapist married his victim, which was defended by the consultant and became the focus of debate, had previously been unknown to most of the Turkish public, as it affected women and girls of lower socio-economic status who tend to be deprived of the means to protect themselves from crimes and human rights violations. The consultant triggered an even larger uproar during a televised debate when he confirmed that this Penal Code article usually operated only in the case of such women, noting that he could not imagine applying it to his own daughter. When asked whether he would marry his daughter to a man who had raped her, he replied, ‘No, but I’m different, I’m a professor. I would think that she had gone to him on her own will. If that wasn’t the case, I wouldn’t allow her to marry him.’19 The statement swelled public contempt for him, to the definite advantage of the Platform. The Platform was now confident that some of their more than forty demands would meet little resistance from the public. Several concerned outdated articles incompatible with the current public perspective. These included a clause that presumed a child under fifteen could consent to sexual abuse, and the article premised on the idea that a woman should marry her rapist to save her honour. On the other hand, activists expected stronger public opposition to several other demands, including criminalization of marital rape, criminalization of discrimination based on sexual orientation and the adoption of progressive definitions of rape that considered any violation of bodily integrity as rape, as these issues had not been widely discussed in Turkey. However, members were determined to maintain a holistic approach to the protection of sexual and bodily rights, and decided not to compromise on their demands. Meanwhile, the minister ignored calls for the consultant to resign. Moreover, as he never issued a statement distancing himself or his ministry from the opinions expressed by his consultant, the general public perception was that the AKP supported the statements, and this worked to the Platform’s benefit. The Platform was quick to harness the increased recognition of and support for its cause. The experience with the Civil Code reform campaign had shown that opposition from parliament to gender equality and women’s human rights issues could come from any party, from left to right. Thus despite the expanding public support for the campaign, resistance was still considered possible from male MPs of the opposition party CHP, a concern shared by its own female MPs. The coalition strat­ egized to pre-empt this. With the help of a member of the Platform who had won a CHP seat in parliament in the 2002 elections, it ­convinced

the CHP party leader to publicly pledge unconditional support for the Platform’s demands in November 2003. Another gain resulting from debates following the public uproar was the first official declarations from several AKP MPs in support of the women’s demands. As a result of increasing public pressure, the minister responsible for women finally gave a statement supporting women’s demand that the clauses sanctioning forced marriage of women to their rapists be removed from the Penal Code (Posta 2003; Üstüner 2003). Backlash: the religious right initiates an attack

A strong reaction from the religious right ensued. Vakit accused the Platform members of having no morals (adab) or shame (haya), as evidenced by their call to eliminate these concepts from the Penal Code. Vakit’s headline used the adjective azgın (oversexed, wild, mad or excessively lustful) in reference to the Platform’s proposal. The article also implied that the proposals were created under Jewish influence, targeting a member of WWHR – New Ways whose father was Jewish (Vakit 2003). Meanwhile the government was also undertaking contentious ­actions. The minister of justice launched an investigation against the girl who had been raped by twenty-eight men, after she wrote him a letter asking what he would have done if it had been his daughter that had been raped. The investigation was based on a law regulating the crimes of insulting the republic, the government, ministries, military and security forces or courts (Günes¸ 2003). AKP proposed a new law to ban abortion in cases where the child would be born with a grave physical or mental defect, starting a controversial public debate on abortion for the first time since its legalization in 1983. This debate continued for several months, until AKP finally withdrew its proposal in February 2004 after intense criticism from NGOs, including the Chamber of Medical Doctors, and associations working for the rights of the disabled. All of these developments engendered intense public and media debate, with news items on the Penal Code and the campaign in all the newspapers, magazines and on television almost daily, contributing to growing criticism of the AKP. Broadening the struggle: an international dimension

As the public debate raged, a closed meeting organized by WWHR – New Ways in cooperation with the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women on 10 December 2003 brought together representa208

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tives from the Platform, the parliament and the EU for a dialogue on the Penal Code. The Special Rapporteur, who was Turkish and had been a member of the Platform since its establishment, had been appointed to the UN position in July 2003. The timing of the meeting was critical as the government and conservative right reaction against the campaign, as well as growing public criticism of the government, were becoming increasingly hostile. Both the date and the venue of the meeting were strategically chosen: the date coincided with International ­Human Rights Day, symbolizing the link between women’s demands and ­human  rights, as well as the importance of the issue for Turkey’s human rights agenda. The venue, a venerable state guest house, was chosen as a symbol of women’s right of access to the state. Until now the Working Group and the Platform had not used Turkey’s accession to the EU to bolster their argument for the reform of the Penal Code from a gender perspective. On the contrary, they had emphasized that the reform should ensure gender equality and protection of women’s sexual autonomy, not because of accession to the EU, but because these reforms were demanded by Turkish women. Not only was this truly the case, but it also helped to thwart any potential arguments by the religious right claiming that the Platform’s demands were Western impositions embodying Western constructs incompatible with Turkish culture. Nevertheless, the campaign gradually attracted the attention of the EU representatives in Turkey. I was invited as a key speaker to monthly meetings of the EU embassies in Ankara as a  representative of the Platform to inform them of campaign developments. Yet until this dialogue meeting, this contact had remained at the level of information exchange, and the Platform maintained the position that we did not want the campaign to become an EU affair, emphasizing this constantly in interviews with the media. However, the increasingly antagonistic attitude of the government and the religious right, despite growing public support, signalled a need for new allies at the international level, namely the UN or the EU. Thus, the involvement of the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women in the meeting, and the participation of high-level EU representatives, assumed great strategic importance. The justice minister agreed to attend the meeting as a speaker, his first recognition of the Platform’s existence. Other speakers representing the government included the women’s minister, the head of the Justice Commission and the head of the sub-commission working on the draft. The meeting clearly demonstrated the national and international recognition of the campaign, as well as the support for women’s

­ emands at the UN and the EU. It established the basis for future d ­dialogue between Platform members and the government for the first time. Afterwards, Platform representatives were finally received by various sub-commission members and the Justice Commission to discuss their demands, as well as by key MPs in both the governing and opposi­ tion parties. A broad geographical representation of the Platform was ensured in these visits, to counteract claims by the government and the religious right that the demands represented only women from big cities and not Turkish women per se. As the commission review of the new draft law was concluded towards mid-2004, the initial pessimism of the Platform had transformed into a cautious optimism. The persistent negotiations with the commission and the government had yielded fruit: almost all the demands of the Platform were included in the final version of the draft law to be pres­ ented to the Parliament General Assembly for a vote. As the Platform prepared new advocacy and lobbying strategies for the final ‘round’, the AKP made a last-minute proposal to add a provision to the Penal Code criminalizing adultery. This triggered a debate that extended beyond the boundaries of Turkey, making headlines in Europe and around the globe. This AKP initiative came only weeks before the draft was due to be voted on in parliament and a month before the EU was due to critically appraise Turkey’s progress towards EU standards.20 Given that adultery had been decriminalized in the late 1990s on the grounds that  differential treatment for women and men in cases of adultery violated the Turkish constitutional principle of gender equality and had not been a point of discussion since, the proposal was an unexpected and rather perplexing move. A newspaper headline in August 2004 announced that the AKP was considering recriminalizing adultery to comply with the demands of ‘­Anatolian women’ – that is, women living in rural areas (Korkmaz 2004). The headline immediately sparked intense debate, which divided the nation in two. Even the government appeared to be split over the issue. While the justice minister argued that there was no need for such a revision since adultery had been decriminalized years earlier by the Constitutional Court, the women’s minister defended the proposal by claiming that the annulment by the Constitutional Court of articles regulating adultery had caused a deficiency in the law. She also stated: ‘We cannot give up our own values just because we want to join the EU. […] We have to respect the values of Turkish society’ (quoted in Zaman 2004). The opposition CHP also signalled an initial acceptance of the move, later revising its position following fervent criticism from women’s groups. 210

Mobilizing the masses: ‘Our bodies and sexuality belong to ourselves’

The potential of a last-minute backlash had been anticipated by the Platform. A big march had been organized by campaigners over the previous year, to coincide with the parliamentary vote, to confront government resistance and any relapse. This proved a very challenging task, as the government repeatedly changed the date for the parliamentary vote owing to the national and international political debates unleashed around the proposal for the recriminalization of adultery. Finally, on 14 September 2004, hundreds of women marched before parliament chanting: ‘Our bodies and sexuality belong to ourselves.’ The AKP government announced that it would withdraw its proposal on the recriminalization of adultery. However, two hours later, the government declared that it had withdrawn the entire draft law on the Penal Code for another review at an unspecified date, an announcement that shocked both the Turkish and the European public. The delay of the Penal Code reform triggered the biggest crisis between the EU and Turkey since the start of the accession talks. Erdog˘an accused the EU of interfering in Turkey’s internal affairs (BBC News 2004b). The European Commission reacted by stating in no uncertain terms that if the draft law was not adopted soon, and if the government insisted on criminalizing adultery, the EU would not start negotiations with Turkey (BBC News 2004c). The markets fell drastically, threatening a new economic crisis only three years after the devastating crisis of 2001. While not the first economic and political crisis in recent Turkish history, this was certainly the first one triggered by an issue concerning sexuality. The entire country agonized over the developments, aware 211

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As the debate swiftly overran the public agenda, women’s groups were the first to react (Doyle 2004). One side, led by Prime Minister Erdog˘an and joined by almost all MPs – female and male – in his party, religious women’s organizations, some religious officials, the conservative and religious right media plus several academics and jurists, demanded recriminalization. The other side included the Platform, the opposition CHP, the liberal media and business associations concerned that the proposal would prevent Turkey’s EU accession. A week later the Europeans joined the debate. The EU enlargement commissioner first expressed astonishment and was quoted as saying ‘This can only be a joke’ (BBC News 2004a). Despite increasingly vocal opposition in both Turkey and the EU, Erdog˘an and the government stood firm on the proposal.

that if Erdog˘an continued to insist on criminalizing adultery, bridges to the EU would be burnt and turmoil would result. Meanwhile, rumours circulated that the AKP wanted not only to criminalize adultery but also to decrease penalties for rape and reconsider the article that overturned sentence reduction for rapists who married their victims (S ¸enol 2004). WWHR – New Ways issued several press statements a day on behalf of the Platform, following the news hourly. Finally, after a meeting with the EU enlargement commissioner, the prime minister announced his withdrawal of the proposal to criminalize adultery. As the Turkish public breathed a sigh of relief and the markets started rising again, Erdog˘an expressed anger towards the Platform. At a meeting organized by his party’s women’s branch, he accused the Platform of being a ‘marginal group that does not have any right to represent the Turkish woman’ (Zaman 2003). Conclusions: how did the campaign succeed?

Media coverage of Erdog˘an’s harsh insult to the women’s groups that comprised the Platform, who fought so hard for three years to elim­inate gender discrimination in the new Penal Code, was scarce and neg­ligible. The Platform members were too exhausted to react to the insult after their marathon struggle. Only a day after Erdog˘an’s statement, on 26  September 2004, the new Penal Code was finally approved by parliament, including verbatim most of the Platform’s propositions. The Campaign on the Reform of the Turkish Penal Code (2002–04), led by a platform of Turkish women’s and LGBT organizations, had succeeded in a revolutionary change of the underlying philosophy of the Turkish Penal Code towards the recognition of women’s autonomy over their sexuality and bodies, despite the religious right government. The new Penal Code classifies sexual offences under the section ‘crimes against individuals’, subsection ‘crimes against sexual inviolability’, instead of ‘crimes against society’, subsection ‘crimes against moral customs’. The notion that women’s bodies and sexuality are commodities of men and of society, and that sexual offences are to be regulated with reference to patriarchal constructs such as ‘society’s traditions of morality’, ‘chastity’ and ‘honour’, were stamped out, bringing first-time legal recognition of women’s ownership of their bodies and a notion of gender equality in terms of the inviolability of the body.21 The campaign, which triggered numerous, wide-ranging public debates and made frequent front-page headlines for three years, generated the widest discussion on issues related to sexuality in Turkey since the foundation of the Turkish Republic in 1923, and broke several taboos 212

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on issues such as the constructions of morality, honour, virginity, sexual orientation and adultery. The campaign was a pioneering example of an effective democratic opposition initiative that involved a long process of awareness-raising and efforts to gain public and media support in Turkey. Moreover, it has also been exemplary of long-term, sustained democratic political bargaining between two politically opposed social actors: the feminists and a religious right government. Research on the state of civil society in Turkey has cited the campaign as one of the most successful civil society initiatives in Turkey, along with the efforts of human rights CSOs on expanding civil liberties (Bikmen and Meydanog˘lu 2006). The success of the campaign was also acknowledged by the very government representatives with whom the campaigners had struggled fervently during the campaign. The success of the campaign was a result of the combination of several key factors. The early and extensive preparation of campaign organizers, their holistic approach to the reform of the code from a gender perspective with a thorough analysis, and their determination for their ultimate aim – namely the recognition of the autonomy of women’s bodies and sexuality – were crucial factors. Given the wide range of their specifically formulated demands (involving the revision of more than forty articles), the campaigners emphasized from the beginning their determination not to bargain on specific articles one by one and demanded the reform entail a complete transformation with the inclusion of all their propositions. Only in this way could the ultimate objective be realized. Another significant factor that led to success was the meticulous coordination and a tactical day-to-day follow-up of political developments with immediate reactions. This included daily action alerts; phone calls and faxes to Platform members, MPs and media representatives; daily e-mail and phone briefings to interested journalists; organization of lobbying visits to parliament; and organization of interviews with TV, newspapers and radio. As the coordinating office, WWHR – New Ways staff maintained a dedicated, voluntary but simultaneously professional attitude throughout the three years, refusing to accept any funding for the campaign, in line with the principle that this was a campaign of Turkish women for their own rights, with no external intervention or imposition. The tactical use of the media, which involved daily briefings to interested key journalists, ongoing personal communication with ­media representatives, publicizing the campaign via phone or e-mail, and daily feedback on published articles or aired programmes, was among the main strategies of the campaign that proved to be very effective. The campaigners, who had the advantage of years of accumulated

advocacy experience, seized a number of political openings and windows of opportunity, such as the process of accession to the EU, as well as exploiting their informal contacts with media, UN or EU representatives in a strategic and tactical manner throughout the campaign. Yet their insistence on setting the campaign within a national framework, led by national actors, was a strategic move that contributed decisively to their success. Five years later, the impact and success of the campaign are still very evident. In addition to introducing a novel and progressive legal approach to women’s sexual and bodily rights with the shift from the regulation of sexuality to the safeguarding of sexual autonomy, the campaign has led to a broad public recognition of issues concerning sexuality. Furthermore, given the conservative political climate – in Turkey and around the globe – the achievement has been timely and of further significance. Challenges remain, in particular in terms of the effective implementation of the law. But precedents set so far by court decisions on issues such as marital rape, honour killings and sexual harassment have already revealed the impact of this reform. Notes 1  Women in the Ottoman Empire had been advocating reforms on gender equality from at least the mid-nineteenth century, with writers such as Fatima Aliye Hanim cham­ pioning women’s rights. 2  A similar development regarding the emergence of a feminist movement took place in Pakistan after the military intervention of Zia ul-Haq in 1977. 3  Law no. 4320, ‘The Law on the Protection of the Family’. For an account of the campaign for protection orders, see www.edc.org/GLG/ end-violence/hypermail/endviolencenov98/0021.html, accessed 23 May 2005, and WWHR – New Ways (2005). 4  Turkey ratified CEDAW, with sev­eral reservations, in 1985. A prom­ ise to quickly remove the reserva­tions was not realized until 2002. 5  The following paragraphs make extensive reference to Law 765 of the old Turkish Penal Code, adopted

on 1 March 1926. Available at www. ceza-bb.adalet.gov.tr/mevzuat/765. htm, accessed 17 June 2009. 6  Article 434. 7  Ibid. 8  Article 416. 9  Article 462. 10  Article 429. 11  Article 423. 12  Article 419. 13  Articles 426, 427 and 428. 14  The 1994 local elections, which resulted in the triumph of the pro-Islamic Welfare Party in thirty-seven provinces, including the urban centres of Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir, resulted in a drastic shift in the Turkish political scene. The pro-Islamic Welfare Party gained the highest percentage of votes in the 1995 general elections with 21.4 per cent. 15  They included representatives of WWHR-NW, the Purple Roof Foundation, the Women’s Rights

214

sion, interviewed by the Yakın Plan (Close Look) programme on NTV, www.ntvmsnbc.com/news/240152. asp, accessed 21 October 2003. 19  Consultant to the justice minister, interviewed on the Basın Kulubü (Press Club) programme on the Habertürk channel, first aired on 2 November 2003, and repeatedly ­aired on the same channel for sev­ eral days afterwards. 20  The EC was expected to issue a crucial report to the EU on 6 October 2004, stating its view on whether or not to open the accession negotiations. This report would serve as the basis of discussions at the EU Brussels Summit of 17 December, where the final decision over Turkey’s accession was to be made. 21  For more detailed information regarding the amendments made in the Turkish Penal Code as a result of the campaign, see www.wwhr. org/tck_kampanyasi.php, accessed 12 May 2007.

References Aks¸am (2003) 22 October. BBC News (2004a) ‘Turkey signals U-turn on adultery’, 14 September, news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/world/ europe/3654650.stm, accessed 20 May 2005. ­— (2004b) ‘Turkish PM attacks EU ‘“pressure”’, 17 September, news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/ europe/3666288.stm, accessed 20 May 2005. — (2004c) ‘EU demands new Turkish Penal Code’, 20 September, news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/ europe/3672834.stm, accessed 20 May 2005. ˘lu (eds) Bikmen, F. and Z. Meydanog (2006) Civil Society in Turkey: An era of transition, Civicus Civil Society Index Country Report

for Turkey, Istanbul: TÜSEV Yayınları. Bumin, K. (2003) ‘Kadınları Unutarak AB’ye Girmek Mümkün mü?’ [Is it possible to become an EU member without remembering women?], Yeni S¸afak, 16 July. Doyle, C. (2004) ‘Women attack Turkey adultery law’, BBC News, 2 September, news.bbc.co.uk/1/ hi/world/europe/3623072.stm, accessed 20 May 2005. Göktas¸, E. (2003) ‘TCK’da Devrim g is¸iklik’ [Revolutionary Gibi De˘ revisions in the Penal Code], Yeni S¸afak, 13 July. Günes¸ (2003) ‘Sen misin Bakana Mektup Yazan’ [You dare write to the minister?], 29 November. Hürriyet (2003) ‘Yeni TCK’yı Kadın 215

9 ·  Ilkkaracan

Enforcement Centre, the Istanbul Governorate Human Rights Desk and the Istanbul Governorate Women’s Status Unit from Istanbul; the Republican Women’s Associ­ ation from Ankara; the Women’s Commission of the Bar Association from Diyarbakır; the Women’s Commission of the Bar Association from Izmir; Professor Aysel Çelikel and Professor Mehmet Emin Artuk, one of the few male academics concentrating on sexual crimes and law in Turkey. 16  Canan Arın, ‘The meeting in the parliament yesterday’, 29 April 2003, groups.yahoo.com/group/ tck_kadin/message/36, accessed 19 May 2005. 17  The academics in the sub­commission were Dr Adem Sözüer from Istanbul University Law School, Dr Ahmet Gökçen from Marmara University in Istanbul and Dr ˙Izzet Özgenç from Gazi University in Ankara. 18  Head of the Justice Commis-

Vekiller ¸ Sekillendirecek’ [New Penal Code will be shaped by women MPs], 20 October. Karakoç, A. (2003) Vakit, 6 October. Korkmaz, S. (2003) ‘Herkes Bakire ˙Ister’ [Everybody wants a virgin], Hürriyet, 23 October. — (2004) ‘I˙¸ ste AKP’nin Zina ­Gerekçesi’ [Here is AKP’s justification for adultery], Hürriyet, 28 August. Ministry for Women’s Affairs and Social Services (1994) The Status of Women in Turkey: National report for the Fourth Women’s World Conference, Ankara: Bizim Büro Basimevi. Önal, G. (2003) ‘Kimse Bakire ­Olmayan Biriyle Evlenmek ˙Istemez’ [Nobody wants to marry a woman who is not a virgin], Milliyet, 23 October. Özgen, L. (2003) ‘Tecavüz: Bir ˙Insanlık Suçu [Rape: a crime of humanity], Finansal Forum, 6 July. Posta (2003) ‘Aks¸it: Tecavüzcüyle g il’ [Marrying Evlendirme Adil De˘ the rapist is not just], 8 November. ¸ Senol, N. (2004) ‘Marrying the rapist’, 23 September, groups.yahoo. com/ group/tck_kadin/message/ 1022, accessed 20 May 2005. State Statistics Institute (1986) Turkey Population Census of 1985, State Statistics Institute Publication no. 1211, Ankara: DIE. Tekeli, S. (1982) Kadınlar ve Siyasal Toplumsal Hayat [Women and

socio-political life], Istanbul: Birikim Yayınları. Üstüner, S. (2003) ‘Tecavüzcülere “Evlilik Affı” Yok’ [No marriage amnesty for rapists], Aks¸am, 15 November. Vakit (2003) ‘Azgın Teklif’ [The wild/ oversexed proposal], 14 November. Vatan (2003) ‘AKP’li Bakan ¸ Sas¸ırttı: g il, Toplum’ Hedefimiz Kadın De˘ [AKP minister’s confusing comment: our target is not women, but society], 22 October. WWHR – New Ways (2005) Turkish Civil and Penal Codes from a Gen­ der Perspective: The success of two nationwide campaigns, Istanbul: Women for Women’s Human Rights – New Ways. Yalçın, Z. (2003) ‘Bakan Danıs¸manının “Bekaret” Takıntısı’ [Minister’s consultant obsessed with ‘virginity’], Sabah, 23 October. Yılmaz, M. (2003) ‘Edep’siz Teklif’ [The shameless proposal], Vakit, 28 May. Zaman (2003) ‘Türk Kadınını, Marjinal Bir Kesim Temsil Edemez’ [A marginal section cannot represent the Turkish woman], 25 September. — (2004) ‘Bakan Aks¸it: AB’ye g iz Diye De˘ g er YargılarıGirece˘ mızdan Vazgeçemeyiz’ [Minister Aks¸it: just because we want to join the EU, we cannot give up our values], 28 August.

216

About the contributors

Ireri Ablanedo Terrazas is a researcher for the Philanthropy and Civil Society Project of the International Centre for Not-for-Profit Law. She holds a bachelor’s degree in international relations from the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico, and is co-author of several papers on civil society and philanthropy in Mexico, including Defining a Fiscal Agenda for the Development of Civil Society Organizations in Mexico. Leonardo Avritzer is associate professor of political science at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. He coordinates Prodep, a research centre on participatory democracy which studies experiences of participatory budgeting and policy councils in Brazil. He is the author of many books, among them Democracy and the Public Space in Latin America (2002) and Participatory Institutions in Democratic Brazil (2009). He has been a visiting scholar at MIT and the Woodrow Wilson Center, and occupied the Greenleaf Chair for Latin American Studies at the University of Tulane in 2008.

Amita Baviskar is associate professor of sociology at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi. Her research focuses on the cultural politics of environment and development. Her books include In the Belly of the River: Tribal conflicts over development in the Narmada Valley (1995) and Waterscapes: The

cultural politics of a natural resource (2007). She is currently writing about bourgeois environmentalism and spatial restructuring in the context of economic liberalization in Delhi. She has been a visiting professor at Stanford, Cornell, Yale and the University of California at Berkeley.

Saturnino M. Borras, Jr is Canada research chair in international development studies at Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. He is the author of Pro-Poor Land Re­ form: A critique (2007) and co-editor of Transnational Agrarian Movements Confronting Globalization (2008). He has published in leading journals, including the Journal of Agrarian Change, Development and Change and Review of International Political Economy.

Beatriz Campillo Carrete is studying for a master’s degree in development studies at the Institute of Social Studies, the Netherlands. She has worked as a political analyst in the public sector, as programme manager, researcher and trainer for a research and capacity-building NGO in Mexico City, and as research assistant and trainer for the Programme of Conflict Prevention and Negotiation at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Jennifer C. Franco is a researcher at the Amsterdam-based Trans­ national Institute. She is the author 217

of ­Elections and Democratization in the Philippines (2001). She has published in leading journals, including World Development and the Journal of Devel­ opment Studies. Her research interests include land reform, rural democrat­ ization, and social movements, in the Philippines and internationally.

Steven Friedman is director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy at Rhodes University and the University of Johannesburg. He is a political scientist who, during the 1980s, produced a series of studies of reform apartheid and its implications for a democratic future. He wrote on the South African transition to democracy before and after the elections of 1994 and has, over the past decade, largely written on the relationship between democracy and social inequality. In particular, he has stressed the role of citizen voice in strengthening democracy and promoting equality. His publications include Building Tomorrow Today (1987), a study of the trade union movement.

Rights in Muslim Societies and Women for Women’s Human Rights – New Ways in Turkey. She has participated in several UN conferences both as NGO representative and as a member of the official Turkish dele­ gation. She is the editor of Decon­ structing Sexuality in the Middle East and Women and Sexuality in Muslim Societies. In 2007 she received the Gruber Women’s Rights Prize.

Michael D. Layton is director of the Philanthropy and Civil Society Project of the International Centre for Not-for-Profit Law, and an Associ­ ate Professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico, Mexico City. He has lectured and written extensively on philanthropy, and is co-author of Defining a Fis­ cal Agenda for the Development of Civil Society Organizations in Mexico (2007). He has worked as a consultant with the Ford Foundation, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation and United Way International, and has collabor­ ated with the Synergos Institute.

Claudio Fuentes is associate profes-

Rabéa Naciri has taught at the

sor and the current director of the Social Research Institute at the Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile, where he also teaches political science. His most recent books are the co-authored volume Instituciones Cautivas (2008), La transición de los militares (2006) and Contesting the Iron Fist (2004). He won the American Political Science Association Best Dissertation Award in 2003.

University of Rabat in Morocco for nearly twenty-two years. She is also the Executive Director of DEMOS Consulting, a research working group and think tank on gender and democratic development. A lifelong activist, she has founded and worked in prominent domestic, regional and international women’s rights and human rights organizations. She is the former president of the Association Démocratique des Femmes du Maroc and was the chair of Collectif 95 Maghreb Egalité for ten years, and remains actively involved with both organizations. She has conducted extensive research on women’s rights and the women’s movement, demo-

Pinar Ilkkaracan is a feminist activist, advocate and researcher, trained both as a psychotherapist and political scientist. She has founded several NGOs and networks, including the Coalition for Sexual and ­Bodily

218

Alexandra Pittman is a Visiting Scholar at Boston College, where she is transforming her dissertation into a book on transnational feminist advocacy and movement building in Muslim-majority societies. She also works as an independent research consultant on gender equality and evaluation and is currently working with the Association for Women’s Rights in Development on the ‘Where is the Money for Women’s Rights’ Initiative. Her current research interests include adaptation of human rights norms in local campaigns for women’s rights and equality in the global South, and US media narratives of women from the Middle East and North Africa over

the past decade. Her prior research focused on conducting a collaborative evaluation with a Moroccan NGO to explore the effectiveness of a women’s leadership programme.

Ana María Sánchez Rodríguez is ­ irector at the Human Rights Comd mission of Mexico City, where she leads the team in charge of social liaison and non-discrimination promotion. Since she finished her studies in NGO management at the London School of Economics, her interests have lain in the relationship between the state and CSOs, and public funding to the sector. Her work has involved her in issues of civic participation, and she took part in research on the ‘Financial sustainability of civil society in Mexico’, funded by the Ford Foundation.

219

About the contributors

cratic development in Morocco, and gender-based violence.

Index

abortion, 92, 96, 203, 208 accountability, 1, 7, 8, 13, 130, 132, 135, 150, 189; private, 148 Achmat, Zackie, 45, 47, 55, 59–60, 62, 64 actors, linking together of, 9–10 Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP) (Turkey), 195, 203, 204, 207, 208, 210, 211 adultery, 213; criminalization of, 210, 211 advocacy, 34 African National Congress (ANC), 14, 47, 51, 53, 56, 57, 168 agrarian reform, 154 Agrarian Reform Community (ARC) (Philippines), 80–1 AIDS, treatment of, in South Africa, 44–68 see also Treatment Action Campaign AIDS conference, Toronto 2006, 16 alliances: building of, 24, 55, 60–1; importance of, 24–5; strategic uses of, 182–4 Alvear, Soledad, 117 Anaruz network (Morocco), 188–9 Ankur organization (India), 147 antiretroviral treatments (ARV), 49–52 Aquino, Corazon, 74, 85 Arranque Parejo en la Vida pro­ gramme (Mexico), 96, 98–9, 100 arrest on suspicion (Chile), 117–18 Asian Development Bank, 144, 146 Asociación Chilena Pro-Naciones Unidas (ACHNU), 113, 115, 118, 119, 120, 121, 125 Association Démocratique des Femmes du Maroc (ADFM), 174, 176, 181, 183, 189, 191

Aylwin, Patricio, 110 Battarcharjea, Ajit, 140 Belo Horizonte (Brazil), 155, 160 Better Life programme (Chiapas), 101–2 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) (India), 145 bibingka strategy (Philippines), 73, 74–82, 84 Bolivia, 6 Bonduki, Nabil, 164 Brac de la Pérrière, Caroline, 184 Brazil, 6, 13, 15, 19, 26, 30; democratization of urban policy in, 153–73; urbanization of, 153 see also Right to the City campaign Bulatao, Gerry, 75 bureaucracy, reform of, 144 Campaign on the Reform of the Turkish Penal Code, 212 catalysts of change, 1–43 Catholic Church, 20, 27, 61, 73, 86, 112, 113, 115, 121, 127 Católicas por el Derecho a Decidir (Mexico), 21, 98 Çelikel, Aysel, 202 Central dos Movimentos Populares (Brazil), 159 Centrão group (Brazil), 158 Centro Nacional de Equidad de Género y Salud Reproductiva (Mexico), 96–7 Chiapas, 97, 99; advocacy in, 101–2 Chief Information Commissioner (India), 147, 148 child custody, 196 child protection, in Chile, 109–29

220

Concertación (Chile), 110, 116, 119, 123 Conferéncia Nacional dos Bispos (Brazil), 157 Congress for a People’s Agrarian Reform (Philippines), 72 Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), 61 Congress Party (India), 131, 145–6 Consorcio para el Diálogo Parlamentario y la Equidad (Mexico), 95 contentiousness, concept of, 11, 35 contraception, 92 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), 16, 197 Convention on the Rights of the Child, 16, 110, 113, 115 Coordinación de Organizaciones Civiles por un Milenio Feminista (Mexico), 94 Corporación de Promoción Universitaria (CPU) (Chile), 116 corruption, 130, 131, 134, 135–6, 139, 142, 147 cultural preservation zones (Brazil), 164 Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (CHP) (Turkey), 203, 207–8 Dalil pour l’égalité dans la famille au Maghreb, 185, 187, 191 dams, Narmada, 132 death penalty, 17 decentralization, 5, 135 Declaration on Safe Motherhood, 93 Del Gatto, Delia, 120, 121, 122 Delhi Vidyut (Electricity) Board (DVB), 138 democracy, 15, 55, 65, 112, 124, 131, 157, 162, 185, 190; extension of, 7, 146; under liberalization, 133 Democratic Left Party (Turkey), 202 democratic openings, 16; importance of, 13 democratization, 13, 56, 90, 169; in Brazil, 155 (of urban policy,

221

Index

Chile, 13, 15, 20, 22, 30, 31; child rights campaign in, 2, 27, 109–29 citizen action, 1–43; in Mexico, 104–6 citizen advocacy, 1, 8–9 citizen voice, 4–12, 34 City Master Plans (Brazil), 154–73 civil disobedience, 45, 47, 50, 58, 59, 60, 61, 65 civil society, 4, 9, 13, 24, 89, 102, 116, 124, 153, 159–62, 163, 166, 181; autonomous, 8; dividing line with state, 127; engagement of, 16–17, 34; in Brazil, 168–70 (configuration of, 167); in Turkey, 195–8, 213; strengthening of, 1, 18, 29, 30 civil society organizations (CSOs), 14, 16, 85–6, 94, 126; in Mexico, 92–3 CNEGSR (Mexico), 100, 103 Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies, 200 Coalition Printemps de l’Egalité (CPE) (Morocco), 179 coalitions, 36, 174; building of, 14, 18–25, 143 Code de la Famille (Morocco), Le, 189 Collectif Maghreb Egalité (CME), 95, 182, 183, 184, 185 collective action, 4–12 Comité por una Maternidad Sin Riesgo (CPMSR) (Mexico), 93–4 Committee on Consumers and Environmental Affairs (Brazil), 161 Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, 146 communications technology, importance of, 60 Communist Party (Philippines), 72 competition for political power, 16–17 Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Programme (CARP) (Philippines), 69, 72–3, 74, 76, 77, 80 Comunicación e Información de la Mujer (Mexico), 97–8

153–73); of public space, 36, 191; relation to Islam, 178 Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) (Philippines), 73–86 dharnas (sit-ins), 135, 137, 148 divorce, 175, 187, 189, 196 Dogra, Bharat, 140 Drèze, Jean, 145 drought relief, 140

Infancia Dañada por los Estados de Emergencia (PIDEE) (Chile), 115, 121 Fundación Niño y Patria (Chile), 120 FUNDAR research centre (Mexico), 22, 97, 98, 102

education, public, 14 El Mercurio newspaper (Chile), 117 Emergency Obstetric Care (EmOC) protocol, 99–100, 103 empowerment, 33–7, 63, 131, 149 enhanced possibility, politics of, 58–62 Erdog ˘an, Recep, 211, 212 Estrada, Joseph, 79, 82–3 European Union (EU): concern for civil liberties in Turkey, 201, 208; Turkish accession to, 17, 197, 200, 209, 210, 211 fair price shops (India), 138 faith groups, role of, 20 Federação dos Economiários (Brazil), 159 Federação Nacional dos Arquitetos (FNA) (Brazil), 156 Federação Nacional dos Engenheiros (FNE) (Brazil), 156 federalism, structure of, 57 food, right to, 137–8 Foro Nacional de Mujeres y Politicas de Población (FNMPP) (Mexico), 94 Fórum Nacional para Reforma Urbana (FNRU) (Brazil), 161, 162, 169 Fox, Vicente, 95–6 framing strategies, 25–9 freedom of the press, 13 Frei, Eduardo, 110, 116 Front de Défense des Droits des Femmes Marocaines (FDFM), 178, 182 Fundación de Protección a la

Gandhi, Shailesh, 140, 141 Gandhi, Sonia, 15, 145–6 Garilao, Ernesto, 24, 74, 76–7, 78, 80, 82, 85 gender, construction of, in Turkey, 198–200 gender equality, 184–6 Gender Equity Committee (Mexico), 101 Global Call to Action against Poverty, 1 governance, good, 146–7 green areas, in Brazil, 166 Grupo de Apoyo Nacional (GAN) (Chile), 110, 115 Guessous, Nouzha, 180, 188 Habti, Raja el, 179, 186–7 Hassan II, King, 15, 177, 180 haya, concept of, 199–200, 208 Hazare, Anna, 139 healthcare, 112; in Mexico, 90–2 Heywood, Mark, 45 HIV/AIDS, 122 Hogar de Cristo (Chile), 120 homosexuality, in Turkey, 200 honour crimes, 17, 199, 201, 212, 214 Houtzager, P., 5–6, 10 Hundred Measures and Steps for Egalitarian Legislation of Family Relations in Morocco, 184 ijtihad, 175–7, 180, 181, 190 India, 13, 15, 17, 19, 22, 26; National Right to Information Law (2005), 2; right to information campaign, 130–52 indigenous communities: maternal mortality in, 91–2; women in, rights of, 106

222

jan andolans, 134 jan sangathans, 134 jan suvais, 135–6, 148 Joshi, Prabhash, 140 Justice and Constitutionality Commitee of FNRU, 161 Kannabiran, K. G., 140 Kejriwal, Arvind, 138, 142 Lagos, Ricardo, 16, 118–19, 118 land: urban, provision of, 166; usage rights for the poor, 154 land occupations, 73, 78, 153, 154, 160 land reform, 24; in Philippines, 69–88 (history of, 70–4) Land Reform Code (1963) (Philippines), 71 leadership, political, changes in, 15 League of Ulema of Morocco, 177 Lemrini, Amina, 176 LGBT issues, in Turkey, 200, 204 liberation theology, 20–1 Ligue Démocratique pour les Droits de la Femme, 176–7 lobbying, 159–62 Lula, election of, 170 Macapagal-Arroyo, Gloria, 79, 83, 85, 86

MacArthur Foundation, 97, 104 Machado, Antonio, 106 Madlala-Routledge, Nozizwe, 52 mailing lists, use of, 205 Make Poverty History campaign, 1 Makgoba, Malegapuru, 65 Malikite school of Islam, 175, 180 Mandela, Nelson, 65 Mander, Harsh, 140–1, 149 Marcos, Ferdinand, 71–2 Maricato, Erminia, 157–8 marital tutorship, 175, 185, 187, 189 Marokkanse Vrouwen Vereniging Nederland, 183–4 marriage: age of, 185; arising out of rape, 199, 206–8; supremacy of men in, 198 Martínez, Lorena, 113, 121 maternal mortality campaign in Mexico see Mexico, maternal mortality campaign Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) (India), 20, 133, 134–8, 143 Mbeki, Thabo, 14, 48, 49, 53–4 media, tactical use of, 213 media and popular communications actors, role of, 21 Mengi, Ruhat, 205 Mexico, 13, 15, 16–17, 19, 20–1, 30; maternal mortality campaign, 2, 22, 25, 27, 28, 31, 89–108 (context of, 90–2) midwives, traditional, 92 Millennium Development Goals, 3, 6, 16, 89 Millennium Development Summit, 94–5 Minors Law (1967) (Chile), 125 Mlambo-Ngcuka, Phumzile, 52 mobilization, 56, 58, 158, 211–12; by peasants, 72–3; from below, 74–82, 86; strategies, 25–9 mobilizing structures, 11, 18–25, 34; building of, 23–4 Mohamed VI, King, 21, 177, 179, 180, 187 Morales, Horacio, 82–3 223

Index

Institute for Development Studies (Philippines), 9 International Conference on Population and Development (1994), 94 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), 16 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 8, 197 International Safe Motherhood Initiative (ISMI), 93 ırz, concept of, 199 Islam, relation to democratization, 178 Islamic family law, 3, 26, 174–94

morality, in politics, 59–60 Morocco, 14, 15, 17, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32; reform of family law in, 26; women’s rights in, 2–3, 174–94 Motherland Party (Turkey), 202 Moudawana (Morocco): history of, 175–80; reform of, 3, 174–94 Movimento em Defesa dos Favelados (Brazil), 156 Movimento Nacional para Reforma Urbana (MNRU) (Brazil), 154, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 169 Mthembu, Gordon, 51 Mumbai, 140 Musawah campaign (Morocco), 191 Naciri, Rabéa, 184, 188, 189 Narmada Dam, action around, 13 National Action Plan in Favour of Children (Chile), 110 National Alliance of People’s Movements (India), 132, 134 national aspect, importance of, 5–6 National Campaign for Land Reform (Philippines), 2 National Campaign for People’s Right to Information (NCPRI) (India), 130–52; formation of, 137; history of, 133–42; organizational strategy of, 143–4 National Health and Allied Workers Union (South Africa), 51 national ownership of programmes, 36 National Policy in Favour of Children and Young People (Chile), 111, 118 national policy reform, 1–43 Nationalistic Action Party (Turkey), 202 Ndungane, Njongonkulu, 65 neighbourhood associations, 164, 165 neoliberalism, 132, 133, 146–7, 149 Netherlands, 183–4 networking, 18–25; strategies of, 132 newsletters, use of, 141 NGO Initiative on the Rights of the Child (Chile), 122

non-governmental organizations (NGOs), 6, 9, 18, 19, 20, 72, 73, 78, 81, 82, 97, 102, 112, 113, 118, 122, 123, 126, 156, 159, 178, 181, 183, 191, 201; in Chile, 109–29 (cooperation with government, 115–23, 124–5); in Mexico, 90, 93, 104, 106; urban and middle-class, 36 Oaxaca (Mexico), advocacy in, 101–2 Official Secrets Act (1923) (India), 135 Opción organization (Chile), 114, 115, 118, 119, 121, 125 Oral, Zeynep, 205 Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil (OAB), 157 Organisme National pour la Pro­ tec­tion de la Famille Marocaine (ONPFM), 178, 181–2 outorga onerosa (Brazil), 166 Oxfam, How Active Citizens and Effective States Can Change the World …, 10 panchayats, decentralization of, 135 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, 6 Parivartan organization (India), 133, 138–9 participation, 4–12, 34, 153–73; with the state, 6–8 Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) (Mexico), 95–6 Partido Communista do Brasil (PC do B), 156, 159, 160 Partido da Frente Liberal (PFL) (Brazil), 164 Partido do Movimento Democratico Brasileiro, 161 Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) (Brazil), 156, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 166, 168, 169, 170 Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) (Mexico), 89, 91, 94 Partido Socialista do Brasil, 161 patriarchy, 31

224

Ramos, Fidel, 15, 74–5, 76 rape, 197, 198, 199, 208, 212; marital, 199, 200, 202, 206, 207, 214 see also marriage, arising out of rape Rath, Mathias, 52 rational-legal record-keeping, 13, 144 Red Nacional por la Infancia (RNI) (Chile), 113, 121 Réseau d’Appui au PANIFD (Morocco), 178, 182 resettlement programmes, 71 Right to Information Acts: (2000)

(Rajasthan), 137; (2002) (India), 138; (2005) (India), 131 right to information campaign (India), 13, 17, 28, 31, 32, 130–52 Right to the City campaign (Brazil), 2, 26, 31, 153–73 Rio de Janeiro, 155 roadworks, notification of, 130–1 Roy, Aruna, 141, 143, 145 Roy, Bunker, 141 Royal Consultative Commission (RCC) (Morocco), 179–80 Safe Motherhood Committee (Chiapas), 101 Sahagún, Marta, 96 Salvador (Brazil), 155, 156, 162–8, 170 sangathans, 141 São Paulo, 153, 155, 160, 162–8, 164, 169 satyagraha protest, 138 Saxena, Naresh C., 145 schooling, rates of, in Chile, 112 secularism, 201 Seguro Popular de Salud (Mexico), 90, 100 Servicio Nacional para los Menores de Edad (SENAME) (Chile), 110, 113, 114, 119, 120, 121, 122, 124 sewerage systems, 154 sexuality: construction of, in Turkey, 198–200; taboos of, 31 sharia law, 196 Singh, Arjun, 141 single-issue campaigns, 59, 64 social movements, 142; analysis of, 10–12, 21–2; in Brazil, 155–9 Sociedad Protectora de la Infancia (Chile), 120 Sousa, Pompeu de, 159–60 South Africa, 13, 14, 16, 19, 20, 25, 26, 27, 31, 32; AIDS treatment in, 44–68 South Africa National Civic Organization, 52 speaking truth to power, 54–8, 136 Special Economic Zones (India), 150

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patron–client relationship, 73 Paz Ciudadana (Chile), 117 PEACE Foundation, 78 peasants, mobilizations by, 72–3 Penal Code, Turkey see Turkey, Penal Code people’s organizations, 132, 134, 142, 143 pharmaceutical companies, 47, 61; and AIDS drugs, 44–5 Philippines, 13, 15, 19, 20, 24, 26, 30, 31; land reform in, 28, 69–88 Plan d’Action pour l’Intégration des Femmes au Développement (PANIFD), 177, 182, 186–7 policy spaces, concept of, 12, 17 political opportunities, 11, 12–18, 34, 35, 56, 72, 84, 182, 214; leveraging of, 180–2 political process approach, 11 political scaling up, process of, 9 polygamy, 175, 185, 187, 188, 196 poor people: access to services, 132; migration of, 137; resources needed for politics, 84–5 Porto Alegre, 153, 155, 160, 162–8, 169, 170 poverty, 112; reduction of, 23 Poverty Reduction Strategy process, 8 Programa Nacional en favor de la Infancia (PNI) (Chile), 115 Public Grievance Commissioner (India), 131 public interest litigation, 134

Statute of the City (Brazil), 161, 162–8 Stiglitz, Joseph, 7 structural adjustment programmes, 149, 181 success: analysis of, 142–7; measurement of, 29–33, 35 Suplicy, Mart, 164

UN Declaration of Human Rights, 3 UN Millennium Campaign, 1 UN Population Fund, 100 UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, 28, 209 USAID, 47

tactics for mobilization, 213 Tarrow, Sidney, 12, 56 Task Force Fast-Track (Philippines), 79 Tinc, Ferai, 205 Toofani, Shanta, 147 Torres, Osvaldo, 113–14 trade unions, 156, 159, 178; in Mexico, 91 traffic plans, in Brazil, 165 transparency, 130, 136, 144, 146–7, 149 transportation, collective, 164 Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) (South Africa), 2, 13, 17, 21, 25, 27, 44–68; biography of campaign, 48–54; structure of, 45–8 Tunisia, 185; gender equality in, 184 Turkey, 14, 19, 20, 21, 27, 30, 31; campaigning for women’s rights in, 195–216; Civil Code, reform of, 197–8, 200–1; Penal Code (1926), 198–200 (reform of, 15, 22, 26, 28); women’s rights campaign in, 17 see also European Union (EU), Turkish accession to União das Associações de Moradores de Porto Alegre (UAMPA), 163 Union de l’Action Feminine (UAF) (Morocco), 175, 181 Union Socialiste des Forces Populaires (USFP), 177 United Nations (UN), 104; People Matter report, 7 UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 110, 115, 118–19 UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, 115, 121, 126

Vakit newspaper, 205, 208 violence: against women, 209; domestic, 182, 189 (campaigning on, 197); sexual, 199, 200, 206, 214 virginity, 206, 212; legal protection of, 199; tests of, 200; value of, 201 water: access to, 154; pricing of, 139 women: classed as minors, 175; in Mexico, 89–108; in Treatment Action Campaign (South Africa), 46; rights of, 28, 174–94 (in Morocco, 191–2; in Turkey, 195–216) Women for Women’s Human Rights – New Ways (WWHR – New Ways), 195, 200, 201, 208, 213 women’s groups and organizations, 94, 105, 176, 178; in Mexico, 93; in Turkey, 196–7 Women’s Learning Partnership (WLP) (Morocco), 183 women’s movement, 181, 186; in Morocco, 2; in Turkey, 201 Women’s Platform on the Turkish Penal Code (WPTPC), 195, 204 Women’s Working Group on the Penal Code (WWGPC) (Turkey), 195, 201, 202, 203, 204, 206 World Bank, 8, 17, 133, 139, 144, 146; World Development Reports, 6 World Conference on Women (Beijing 1995), 94, 177 World Summit for Children, 115 Youssoufi, Abderrahmane El, 177, 183 Zuma, Jacob, 54

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