The election of Michelle Bachelet as president of Chile in January 2006 was heralded in the world press as an advancement of women's rights in Chile. Not only did Bachelet's election increase women's representation at the highest levels, but it also raised expectations that Chile would adopt more women-friendly policies as well. Although focused on the years between the democratic transition and the election of Bachelet, Liesl Haas's Feminist Policymaking in Chile speaks volumes to the questions of how and why such representation makes a difference. Although the women's movement and feminist policymaking in Chile have been well mined by gender scholars, Haas provides a different perspective, both in terms of time frame and of theoretical argument. The book is notable for its extensive documentation of the legislative process, church activism, and feminist policymaking in Chile in the posttransition era. This rich description will make it valuable to gender scholars wishing to understand the Chilean case and to Latin Americanists wishing to understand more about gender politics in Chile. But my particular interest, and my focus in this review, concerns what the book tells us about the reasons that feminist policies get adopted in a particular place at a particular point in time.

To illuminate the factors that influence feminist policymaking in Chile, Haas compares three interrelated policy areas—violence against women, abortion, and divorce. Each of these cases represents a very different outcome: Legislation to prevent violence against women (Chapter 3) was passed quickly after the 1990 democratic transition, but remained relatively toothless until after 2005 when new legislation was passed and President Bachelet provided the resources necessary to effectively enforce the existing legislation. Attempts to pass legislation permitting therapeutic abortions in a few carefully proscribed circumstances—described in Chapter 4—are infrequent and ineffective. In contrast, divorce legislation (Chapter 5), though initially stalling in legislative committees, eventually passed in 2004 despite strong opposition by the Catholic Church. Although these three policy areas are presented as contrasting cases—early and continued success, total failure, and failure followed by success—Haas is careful to recognize that these cases are not independent, and a large part of her theoretical focus concerns the learning of appropriate political strategies by feminists across the three types of policymaking.

In Chapter 2, Haas highlights many factors that may influence policymaking, including the degree of mobilization in the women's movement, whether the movement coordinates with feminist activists within the state, the number of women in office, whether there is a women's policy agency, the importance of the political Left, the framing of the political issue, the role of religion in the political process, public opinion, and the political institutions. While she deals with each of these issues somewhere in the book, she does not (and could not) adequately develop each and every one of these factors in every chapter. Rather, she examines each policy area to see which of these factors appear to be playing a significant role. While a few factors are central to all aspects of policymaking, others play a larger role in particular policymaking processes. And so Haas argues in Chapter 3 that legislation to fight violence against women suffered from a lack of cooperation among feminists in the legislature, the external women's movement organizations, and women in the executive.

In Chapter 4, which deals with attempts to pass legislation granting limited access to therapeutic abortion, Haas notes that even though public opinion favored access to abortion in some circumstances and the legislation was framed in terms of protecting mothers, it failed because of church lobbying and intransigent legislators on the Right. However, in Chapter 5, she shows that in the case of divorce, women's movement actors were able to effectively counter strong church opposition and proposed legislation from the Right that would have attached even stronger penalties to divorce. She argues that several factors led to the passage of the divorce legislation. First, by framing the legislation in terms of preserving the sanctity of the family and by compromising on certain aspects, the bill drew support from legislators across the political spectrum. Second, feminists inside and outside the state were able to coordinate: Feminists in the legislature introduced the bills and worked on compromises acceptable to multiple parties, while feminists in the executive branch provided formal support for the bill and eased institutional constraints, and outside women's organizations applied outside pressure through public events.

With so many causal factors considered in each case study, it might seem difficult to draw larger theoretical conclusions from the book. But two important theoretical arguments run throughout the empirical chapters. First, Haas shows how the particular configuration of political institutions in Chile, including the power of the executive to label a bill “urgent” and the power of legislative committees, greatly influenced the timing for adoption of legislation. Second, in every chapter she highlights the importance of feminist activists both inside and outside the state working together. Legislation has the strongest chance, she argues, when women in the major women's policy agency—Servicio Nacional de la Mujer, or Sernam—coordinate their activities with feminist legislators from the different parties and feminists in grassroots and nongovernmental organizations.

Haas's analysis is strongest in describing how feminist legislators negotiate the constraints of political parties and legislative institutions. For example, she provides an excellent analysis of how feminist legislators in the Socialist Party were constrained by the variation in their party's support for feminist policymaking over time (e.g., p. 129). In contrast, she does not show the same degree of subtlety in dealing with feminists working within Sernam. Haas almost always portrays the agency as a unified entity, and rarely attempts to distinguish how different ministers of Sernam made a difference. To understand how cooperation can be created among feminist activists inside and outside the state and how political institutions like executive power really constrain policymaking, it is necessary to examine key institutions carefully, and Haas herself argues that Sernam is a key institution. For that reason, I expected her to explore the political and ideological constraints that might restrict feminist activists within the bureaucracy.

Instead, at times, the author seems almost to imply that Sernam maintained a constant feminist position regardless of the president's party and the position of the minister of Sernam (see, for example, p. 128 where she says that “preventive efforts should include sex education and better availability of contraception. This reflects the position of Sernam”). As a result, one is left with the impression that the president's party and ideology have no bearing on the agency or on the minister who runs it. Moreover, the absence of this analysis is not just a matter of being more thorough (no study can cover everything), but rather of being open to alternative interpretations. For example, Haas argues that one reason for recent successes is that feminists have learned to be more strategic in building cross-party connections. But it seems equally plausible that two consecutive socialist regimes gave feminists a more favorable ideological context within which feminist legislators in the Socialist party might produce policy.

There is less attention to this counterhypothesis in Haas's book, although having the socialist party in power could explain much of the success or failure of different legislation. In part, her analysis of politics since the transition to democracy is limited by the small number of presidential administrations. Here, the 2010 election of a president from the Right will provide an opportunity—albeit one unwelcome by most feminists—to examine more carefully the role that presidential administration plays vis-à-vis the importance of strategic action by feminists.

In sum, Liesl Haas has written a vivid account of feminist coordination inside and outside the state. For anyone interested in women's policy in Latin America or in how feminists organize across and within the boundaries of the state, it represents an important, if sometimes less than satisfying, work. I hope it encourages more empirical and theoretical work on the actions of feminists inside and outside the state both within specific nations and in comparative analyses across them.