Omar Encarnación’s eloquent and captivating book, which examines lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights mobilization in Latin America with specific focus on Argentina, begins with a set of provocative paradoxes. Encanción opens with Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that declared the denial of marriage to same-sex couples unconstitutional, and he notes that while the contemporary LGBT rights movement may have started in the United States, insofar as it is often dated to the Stonewall Riots of 1969, a variety of other countries recognized same-sex marriage (as well as implemented sexual orientation and gender identity nondiscrimination law) well before the United States. How did the pioneer in LGBT rights mobilization become a laggard in LGBT rights policy? Furthermore, many countries that preceded the United States in recognizing same-sex marriage were in Latin America. How did a region characterized by machismo culture, which would seem to undergird homophobia, and known for high rates of Catholicism, a religion that has denigrated homosexuality, become “a gay rights trailblazer in Latin America and the global South” (p. 77)? Finally, if any country were to lead in LGBT equality in Latin America, it would be Brazil. And yet, “Latin America’s most famously sexually liberal society is also one of the region’s most troubled places when it comes to advancing and protecting the rights of LGBT people” (p. 153). How did Argentina become one of the most committed countries to equal citizenship for LGBT peoples, given that Brazil was culturally, politically, and historically better positioned to take on that role?

These paradoxes only persist when we remain committed to viewing LGBT rights mobilization as a phenomenon that begins in the United States and spreads to other countries. Such a center—periphery dynamic is common in journalistic and academic discussion of LGBT movements. Encarnación identifies three strands within this framework: 1) global queering, which suggests that Latin America has become engulfed within a wave of international cultural and political practices with roots in post-Stonewall U.S. gay rights; 2) international human rights socialization, which posits that Latin America has embraced a broad international commitment to human rights that since at least the mid-2000s has included LGBT rights; and 3) policy diffusion, which positions Spain as a model for much of Latin America, so that when Spain adopted same-sex marriage in 2005, Latin America would follow in short order. Encarnación aims to “decenter gay rights,” which is to say that rather than deny international influences on domestic social movement politics, he wants to draw attention to domestic politics and how it mediates such external pressures. How does the domestic context—in particular, the politics and history of Argentina—help us to resolve the paradoxes laid out here, and more generally, how can we recognize how domestic politics imprint on and alter a global movement?

To answer these questions, Encarnación examines trends throughout Latin America, including economic modernization, the rise of secularism and the decline in Catholicism, and a set of constitutional reforms that have enshrined liberal individual rights and empowered judicial institutions to defend those rights. He then moves to the specific case of Argentina, the unique domestic history of military dictatorship and disappearances (less unique in their occurrence per se than in their horrific scale), which, during the transition to democracy, provided a context for commitment to the restoration of human rights. Insofar as LGBT concerns could be crafted by activists as within a broader politico-cultural commitment to human rights and parceled with the remedies to human rights violations associated with dictatorship, they were integrated into a national democratization process. Gay rights would become domestically resonant by linking them to the democratic recovery from dictatorship. For Encarnación, “Argentina, where the campaign for gay rights, especially marriage equality was provocatively framed as a human rights crusade, premised on the view that the freedom of sexuality is a basic human right, provides the most compelling example” of this pattern of framing external international pressures through a domestic context so that they are nationally relevant (p. 188). Consequently, Encarnación’s study is an important corrective to comparative political studies that focus primarily on domestic politics and to international relations work that examines nongovernmental organizations or other mechanisms of international socialization to the exclusion of domestic politics in social movement development. In the interaction of the two lies the compelling explanation.

Out in the Periphery shines in its study of Argentina, especially in highlighting how LGBT rights as advanced by the Comunidad Homosexual Argentina (CHA) were grounded in the broader discourse of human rights that resonated given the history of dictatorship and disappearance. And Encarnación elevates such strategic framing as the singular way in which domestic and international LGBT politics interact. Insofar as social-movement actors have agency and strategy, it is, for Encarnación, most evident in their framing tactics. This translation of international gay rights commitments into a domestically resonant message is the lynchpin of Argentinian success: “What has been most decisive in shaping successful gay rights activism in Latin America is not whether gay rights movements are strong in the conventional sense—membership rich, financially well endowed, and aligned to the political system—but rather the skill of gay rights activists in transporting international gay rights ideas and adapting them to the domestic context, especially by framing their struggles in ways that evoke the local context” (p. 72).

I have little doubt that there is truth to this claim. However, given that numerous other Latin American countries experienced similar (if to a lesser degree) dictatorships and human rights abuses, I was left unsure as to why this explanation did not hold for other countries (whether it is simply a matter of scale). Is it plausible to suggest that gay rights could be integrated into a liberal regime that might be anti-Franco in Spain or anti-Pinochet in Chile? Indeed, Encarnación positions Argentina as exceptional, and he posits that this unique history “limits how much the case can serve as a model to other countries” (p. 188). This point may bolster just how much domestic politics may matter in explaining the spread of a global social movement, but it also would seem that other activists might utilize this frame with less success for reasons other than lack of frame resonance.

The book is so empirically rich that it highlights a range of alternative explanations that it never fully discounts. For example, actor agency is evident not only in the creation of frames but also in the selection of institutional venues through which to advocate for social change. Encarnación highlights how LGBT rights policy was first passed in the autonomous city of Buenos Aires. Consequently, the institutional design of federalism could be examined as a factor in the development of rights. He also points to the role of sympathetic (and unsympathetic) executives and members of the national legislature. He examines evidence related to tourism, economic growth, and the pink dollar, which could all be considered variables in cultural change. In his brief comparative study of Brazil, he points to a range of alternative arguments for the weakness of LGBT rights, including the higher political strength of Evangelical Protestants and a more fractured parliament that creates legislative impasse. Nevertheless, he returns to the idea of “the crafting of the gay rights campaign as the crucial factor” (p. 154).

The emphasis on framing as the primary explanation of movement success follows, in part, from Encarnación’s aim to challenge the idea that material resources are the necessary explanatory factor. The author positions his analysis as a corrective to resource mobilization theory, which he calls “the dominant theoretical paradigm for understanding the success and failure of social movements” (p. 9).

I disagree with this assessment of the social movement literature. Resource mobilization has been critiqued as too narrow for some time (see Steven M. Buechler, “Beyond Resource Mobilization?” Sociological Quarterly 34 [May 1993]: 217–35). And resources have been incorporated as just one important variable in a fuller accounting of movement development, strategy, and results in the political process model (PPM) (see Doug McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930–1970 [1982] and my The Unfinished Revolution: Social Movement Theory and the Gay and Lesbian Movement [2001]). While PPM has been critiqued (see Jeff Goodwin and James M. Jasper, “Caught in a Winding, Snarling Vine: The Structural Bias of Political Process Theory,” Sociological Forum 14 [March 1999]: 27–54, and Elizabeth A. Armstrong and Mary Bernstein, “Culture, Power and Institutions: A Multi-Institutional Politics Approach to Social Movements,” Sociological Theory 26 [March 2008]: 74–99), Encarnación’s challenge to resource mobilization theory, by drawing attention to strategic framing, leaves other factors of institutional context and social-movement actor agency acknowledged and discussed but undertheorized.

Nevertheless, the rich description and analysis that Encarnación offers illustrates just how much political science can benefit from a fuller engagement with LGBT politics in cross-national perspective.