Transnational Activism and National Movements in Latin America offers extraordinary insights into crucial questions of social movement mobilisation and social change in the twenty-first century. The edited collection assembles nine renowned Latin American social movement scholars to scrutinise the relationship between national and transnational scales of collective action. For good reason the authors place most attention on how domestic alliances with transnational movements influence national level mobilisations, especially in terms of strategy and efficacy. Eduardo Silva provides a concise and theoretically-driven opening chapter synthesising readers to themes of multi-level social movement relations (national and transnational), transnational movement relations with leftist governments, North-South and South-South linkages, and the incorporation of labour movements into transnational movement analysis. The introductory chapter also highlights key gaps in the existing transnational social movement literature, especially the role of international threats linked to neoliberal economic reforms on national level mobilisation as well as how heterogeneous multi-sectoral coalitions are sustained in the heat of protest campaigns. The introductory chapter alone stands as its own theoretical guide to the literature on the multiple scales of collective action.

Important specifications are made in the country case study chapters contributing to what is often a very abstract literature on transnational mobilisation. For instance, in Rose Spalding's chapter on the anti-mining movement in El Salvador, she develops a useful classification system of distinct types of INGOs, namely ‘domesticating’ and ‘power’ INGOs. The domesticating INGOs have long-term commitments to marginalised and excluded social groups in the countries in which they operate and play a major role in providing the types of resources to support local social movement-type mobilisation. Power INGOs have links to global decision-makers and can assist local struggles when conflicts reach international courts and financial institutions. The Salvadorean anti-mining case also established ‘horizontal’ transnational links with local anti-mining movements in neighbouring Guatemala and Honduras, providing critical sources of information about potential consequences of industrial mineral extraction in communities with more years of experience on the issue. The national movement against mining also demonstrates how a campaign can generate a relatively successful outcome (i.e., a mining moratorium) with strategic domestic and international allies and relatively little mass mobilisation in the streets.

Marisa Van Bulow analyses a domestic coalition with transnational ties from a rare, but much-needed longitudinal perspective. She centres her chapter on the Brazilian Network for the Integration of the Peoples (REBRIP), one of the most important actors in resisting the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA/ALCA) in the 2000s. By examining the trajectory of REBRIP over time, she demonstrates that downward and upward scale shifts in transnational activism varies by changing political contexts. Collective mobilisation was first launched in the early 2000s in the face of the economic and national sovereignty threats emanating from the FTAA. As the treaty eventually stalled and fell in defeat, REBRIP moved on to both domestic and regional organising. At the regional level, by the mid- to late 2000s, a sufficient number of leftist governments had come to executive power that REBRIP could react to the positive incentives of possible social integration in South America. Nonetheless, the multi-sectoral coalition remained divided on the appropriate path and strategies to achieve civil society integration across countries in the region, leading to less efficacious mobilising and eventual fragmentation. The study reminds us of the benefits gained by taking a temporal approach to transnational activism, which includes a rich and contextual analysis of the changing political climate.

In a related chapter of domestic and transnational interactions in the Andes, Lucero highlights the complex relationships between progressive international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) and local indigenous organisations. INGOs such as Oxfam America supported the creation of domestic organisations and indigenous identities in Bolivia and Peru. These newly created organisational structures and identities assisted local communities in gaining protection and resources from international institutions following ILO Law 169, but had mixed outcomes in social movement struggles at the national level.

Nolan-Garcia's sombre cases of union recognition struggles in Puebla, Mexico's garment industry, highlight the complexities of labour battles in the era of NAFTA free trade and Mexican democratisation. She advances on past research by incorporating several negative cases in her study whereby the goal of union legalisation is not achieved, even with transnational and local NGO allies. Under the best of circumstances, a labour union may be able to succeed by aligning with nationally registered independent unions. Another insightful chapter includes Rossi's examination of the Central de Trabajadores de la Argentina (CTA). Part of the success in the continent-wide struggle against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) resided in the CTA's ability to mobilise the core of demonstrations during the 2005 Fourth Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata that led to the final defeat of the treaty after over ten years of elite-dominated negotiations. Wittman's chapter brings the critical transnational work of La Via Campesina in focus with special attention on Brazil's landless workers' movement (MST) in the international coalition.

The authors of the closing chapter, ‘The Road Less Traveled’, perform a quasi meta-analysis of the country cases and demonstrate their central theoretical advances in our understanding of the domestic consequences of transnational activism in the Americas. This compelling set of studies offers the most sophisticated accounting of transnational movements in Latin America in the twenty-first century. Students and scholars of social movements, Latin America, and international politics in general will be impressed in what they learn from engaging in this superb collection of works.