From Global to Grassroots: The European Union, Transnational Advocacy, and Combating Violence Against Women investigates a paradox. Although nearly all governments have committed themselves to eliminating violence against women, the incidence of gender violence continues to increase. Using the European Union (EU) as the focus of her analysis, Celeste Montoya adopts a multi-method approach, combining historical analysis, social network analysis, discourse analysis, and studies of policy implementation to analyze intended and unintended consequences of policy interventions to address violence against women at local, national, and transnational levels. Using both quantitative and qualitative data to study the 27 members of the European Union and its candidate states, Montoya offers broad comparisons across a range of policy approaches and derives policy lessons from them that resonate in other parts of the world as well.

Contrary to received views that situate interpersonal violence solely within the confines of the nation-state, Montoya demonstrates that international and regional organizations and transnational advocacy networks play critical roles in structuring domestic policies concerning violence against women. Contributing to understandings of multilevel governance, social movement politics, and the complexities of social change in the twenty-first century, From Global to Grassroots develops an historical account of the emergence of violence against women as a policy issue, tracing the arduous efforts of feminist activists over decades to influence political discourses at both national and international levels. Attending to temporal as well as geographic differences, Montoya examines policy evolution in the context of changing conceptions of domestic violence as the failure of particular interventions generated new strategies to replace them. Her analysis breaks new ground in demonstrating how international and regional organizations deploy policy incentives (or constraints) to strengthen non-state actors and governmental institutions, providing cogent examples of programs designed by international and regional organizations that support states’ capacity-building, while also sustaining local advocates’ efforts, and strengthening ties between local advocates and transnational networks.

Making an important contribution to comparative policy studies, From Global to Grassroots corrects the naïve notion that policy victory consists in passage of legislation. Illuminating the gap between policy adoption and policy implementation, Montoya identifies the manifold ways that legislation alone can be sorely disappointing. And she shows how international organizations play a crucial role in pushing states beyond symbolic lawmaking by interacting with state institutions and policy advocates to influence programs and service delivery within the borders of particular states. The book provides detailed accounts of complex interactions between multilevel governance within the EU and nonstate actors (women’s advocacy organizations, policy experts, practitioners). Investigating the EU within a larger context of the United Nations, as well as in relation to its member states and countries vying for accession, Montoya’s cross-national comparisons enhance understandings of how the EU operates, while also helping to explain intricate connections between the global and local.

In developing her analysis, Montoya incorporates many facets of international relations theory, drawing insights from realist, constructivist, and transnational network approaches to illuminate dynamics of state action. In contrast to the view that policy change depends solely on the will of those in power, she distinguishes between a state’s willingness to implement policies and its capacity to do so. This important distinction creates space for Montoya to investigate international and supranational efforts to promote institutional capacity building of governments as well as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

Providing an impressive overview of the intricate policy apparatus of the EU, Montoya emphasizes the fluidity of EU decision-making bodies over the past five decades, differentiates units, identifies the scope of powers, and explores the effects of changing composition within these bodies, changing rules of the game, rotating leadership, neoliberal reforms, and the impact of the current economic crisis. Supplementing her analysis of the changing roles of the European Council, the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, the European Parliament, the European Court of Justice, and the Council of Europe, Montoya traces how these units interact with member states, distribute resources that facilitate transnational cooperation, and disseminate norms that legitimize particular modes of local activism. In this complex policy context, the book contrasts several models of policy change, comparing the effectiveness of domestically-driven policies (bottom-up and top-down) with transnationally-driven policies that stem from coalitions of domestic activists and transnational organizations and externally-driven international reform.

In addition to providing a fascinating account of the emergence of violence against women as a policy priority, From Global to Grassroots also demonstrates why “priorities” of international organizations and nation-states may fail to achieve their explicit objectives. Montoya examines multiple policy discourses developed in relation to violence against women, showing how the issue gained traction in EU policy circles only when tied to the plight of sexually-abused children. But she also analyzes the unintended consequences of this coupling: by emphasizing physical vulnerability rather than structural gender inequalities, the feminist content of policy initiatives has been eroded. Exploring the negative effects of the “War on Terror” and increasing state emphasis on securitization since 2001, Montoya shows how discourses on trafficking have supplanted concerns with domestic violence and how discourses framed in terms of border control and law enforcement displace attention from women’s dignity and human rights. Examining the effects of the current economic crisis, she suggests that budget constraints created by the crisis contribute to new priorities that put women’s issues on the back burner. She also provides a telling account of the complex effects of institutionalization on feminist policy content. When incorporated into national and international policy agendas, feminist issues are often “degendered,” reframed in ways that subvert feminist goals. Indeed, she shows how discourses concerning violence against women have been reframed to further marginalize immigrant communities. By focusing on honor killings, coerced marriage and female genital mutilation, many European policymakers exoticize domestic violence in ways that make it appear that it occurs only in “other” communities, masking the fact that violence against women occurs in all sectors of the population.

To address violence against women, policy success requires capable organizations with the will and the resources needed to change behaviors, beliefs, values, and practices. Yet Montoya’s sophisticated analysis demonstrates that weak and ineffective government institutions are far more prevalent than imagined. In dramatic contrast to studies that characterize “weak” state institutions as the bane of the global South, Montoya shows pervasive weakness in the institutions of the European Union—both those of the supranational entity and those of member states. Although the EU is moving toward the development of binding legal instruments—“hard laws” to address violence against women—the growing economic crisis threatens to eliminate all funding to the vibrant policy networks that are currently doing most to address the issue. Beyond the inadequacy of “hard laws,” Montoya identifies other significant obstacles within the EU that make eradication of violence against women unlikely any time soon: inconsistent implementation of existing policies, weak state capacity to enforce laws, persistent public attitudes that blame victims or attribute violence only to cultural “others,” and inadequate resources to address the issue in any systemic way.

Montoya’s impressive analysis of EU efforts to address violence against women raises important points of comparison with recent developments in the United States. When the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) was reauthorized by the US Congress in February 2013, it had been amended to include the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. Debates within the House and the Senate focused on the jurisdiction of tribal courts in handling cases in which the perpetrators of violence were not Native Americans. As in the EU, discourses that situate violence against women in the context of trafficking and foreign policy initiatives or within Native American populations shift attention away from the far more prevalent issues of rape and intimate-partner violence. When gender-based violence is exoticized, the alarming incidence of rape within the military and on college campuses is conveniently disappeared. As Rose Corrigan has documented in Up Against a Wall: Rape Reform and the Failure of Success (NYU Press, 2013), state and federal funding for anti-violence programs depletes feminist content as the concerns of medico-juridical institutions press professional-service providers to do the work of the state rather than transforming the state toward feminist ends. As the focus shifts from the transformation of values essential to violence prevention to criminalization, gender equality and physical integrity are supplanted by debates over police handling of complaints and the comparative merits of mandatory investigation and mandatory arrest policies. In addition to creating a rich foundation for assessing parallel policy developments in the EU and the US, Montoya provides a new paradigm for thinking about strong and weak states. Hobbes’ Leviathan established the provision of physical security as the fundamental obligation of the state. When women’s physical security is placed at the center of analysis, some of the strongest states in the Western world appear markedly weak. Whether the focus is policy machinery, scope of authority, allocation of resources, or commitment of officials working in key institutions, the growing incidence of domestic violence, rape, and sexual harassment and the pitiful record on prevention or prosecution of the accused for such offenses suggest that liberal democratic states fail miserably to fulfill their most basic responsibilities. Despite a proliferation of hard laws proclaiming that gender-based violence is unacceptable, contemporary states remain remarkably weak-willed.