Omar G Encarnación
Biographic Data
| ID | 2492013 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Omar G Encarnación |
| GIVEN NAMES | Omar G |
| FAMILY NAME | Encarnación |
| SIGNATURE | ENCARNACIÓN O G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Bard College |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3238-805X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 41 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 160 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 41 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
How Spain Became a Global LGBTQ Rights Leader
After the persecution of sexual minorities under the Franco dictatorship, Spain became one of the last Western countries to decriminalize homosexuality. Democracy led to declining influence for the Catholic Church in Spanish society, as did revelations about the Church’s collaborations with the dictatorship. But the Church and allied conservatives still mustered strong opposition to a campaign for same-sex marriage rights. Support from a Socialis…
Transitional Justice at 40
Transitional justice, a movement devoted to bringing accountability to departed political regimes, has been the engine of the international human rights community in the past four decades. But while much has been said about how transitional justice enables successful democratic transitions, some of the movement’s legacy is more checkered—from endangering such transitions to rekindling old feuds and undermining the rule of law. Acknowledging this …
Why Separatism Is No Match for Democracy
A central paradox in the relationship between separatism and democracy is that while democracy provides a fertile environment for separatism—often by means of democracy's own institutions, mechanisms, and policies—democratic states are also well equipped to thwart and defeat separatist movements. The same pluralistic flexibility that allows pro-independence movements to blossom provides the tools to subvert and even crush separatist aspirations. …
Democratic Backsliding: Comparative Reflections on the American Experience
Democratic backsliding, or the debilitation of democracy by those elected to protect it, looms large in the current debate about the global crisis of democracy, including Sara Wallace Goodman's Citizenship in Hard Times: How Ordinary People Respond to Democratic Threat. In keeping with the prevailing view of backsliding as a political phenomenon rooted in extreme partisanship and polarization, Goodman is concerned with strengthening the citizenry…
Latin America's Abortion Rights Breakthrough
In recent years, Latin America has experienced an abortion-rights breakthrough that stands in striking contrast to the wave of criminalization of abortion afoot in the United States. It also ended some of the world's most draconian abortion bans. At the root of this breakthrough is the framing of abortion not as an issue of personal choice but as a human-rights matter. This strategy, borrowed from previous campaigns for equality and justice in La…
Transitional Justice: Comparative and Historical Perspectives from Latin America
This essay reviews the following works: Memory's Turn: Reckoning with Dictatorship in Brazil. By Rebecca J. Atencio. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2014. Pp. xviii + 144. $26.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780299297244.Human Rights Policies in Chile: The Unfinished Struggle for Truth and Justice. By Silvia Borzutzky. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Pp. 242. $119.99 paperback. ISBN: 9783319536965.Intermittences: Memory, Justice, and th…
The gay rights backlash: Contrasting views from the United States and Latin America
This essay examines the conditions that enable a ‘gay rights backlash’ through a comparison of the United States and Latin America. The United States, the cradle of the contemporary gay rights movement, is the paradigmatic example of a gay rights backlash. By contrast, Latin America, the most Catholic of regions, introduced gay rights at a faster pace than the United States without much in the way of a backlash. Collectively, this analysis demons…
Trump and the Retreat from Human Rights
Despite a storied history, the human rights movement ... has not fared well in the twenty-first century
Response to Stephen M. Engel's review of Out in the Periphery: Latin America’s Gay Rights Revolution
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Religious Freedom and Gay Rights: Emerging Conflicts in the United States and Europe
Undoubtedly, one of the most pressing issues of our time is the tension between the claims for equality by the gay rights movement and the pushback by religious communities that gay rights demands impinge on religious freedom. In recent years, this tension has been thrust into the public square. In 2015, in the wake of Obergefell v. Hodges, the historic U.S. Supreme Court ruling that made same-sex marriage the law of the land in the United States…
The Troubled Rise of Gay Rights Diplomacy
It is premature to gauge the full impact of the developed West’s effort to sell gay rights to the developing world, but the early returns are not auspicious
Human Rights and Gay Rights
The gay rights movement has emerged as the defining human rights cause of our time
Response to Jeffrey Davis’s review of Democracy Without Justice in Spain: The Politics of Forgetting
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Gay Rights: Why Democracy Matters
The year 2013 featured unprecedented strides for gay rights in some parts of the world, particularly in Western Europe and the Americas, but also startling setbacks elsewhere, as in Russia and some countries in Africa. Wealth and religion are the most discussed factors behind this so-called global divide on homosexuality. Less studied and therefore less understood, however, is the effect of the political regime, especially whether the country is …
International Influence, Domestic Activism, and Gay Rights in Argentina
Journal Article International Influence, Domestic Activism, and Gay Rights in Argentina Get access Omar G. Encarnación Omar G. Encarnación OMAR G. ENCARNACIÓN is Professor of Political Studies at Bard College. He builds upon this article in his book Latin America's Gay Rights Revolution (forthcoming by Oxford University Press). Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 128, Issue …
Assisting Civil Society and Promoting Democracy
Justice in Times of Transition: Lessons from the Iberian Experience1
A key contention of the transitional justice movement is that the more comprehensive and vigorous the effort to bring justice to a departed authoritarian regime for its political crimes, the better the democratization results. This essay challenges this common assumption with empirical evidence from the Iberian Peninsula, where the global wave of democratization of the late twentieth century was born. In Portugal, political trials and bureaucrati…
International Justice on Trial
In many instances human rights violations are better confronted as a political problem rather than as an ethical or legal challenge
A Political Philosophy in Public Life: Civic Republicanism in Zapatero's Spain by José Luis Martí and Philip Pettit
Journal Article A Political Philosophy in Public Life: Civic Republicanism in Zapatero's Spain by José Luis Martí and Philip Pettit Get access A Political Philosophy in Public Life: Civic Republicanism in Zapateroʼs Spainby José Luis Martíand Philip Pettit. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2010. 210pp. $29.95. Omar G. Encarnación Omar G. Encarnación Bard College Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Po…
Latin America's Gay Rights Revolution
This essay explains the gay-rights revolution in Latin America marked by the legalization of same-sex marriage in Argentina. Among the factors examined are the use of human-rights rhetoric to end anti-gay discrimination, the employment of the Internet to mainstream gay culture, the creation of a gay market to leverage clout for the gay community, and critical alliances with the political establishment. These explanations suggest that the Latin Am…
The military transition: Democratic reform of the armed forces
Spain Remade, Again
The real legacy of the second transition is that it has revealed the hidden strengths of Spanish democracy
Políticas de la Memoria y Memorias de la Política: El Caso Español en Perspectiva Comparada (Politics of Memory and Memories of Politics: The Spanish Case in Comparative Perspective) by Paloma Aguilar…
Políticas de la Memoria y Memorias de la Política: El Caso Español en Perspectiva Comparada (Politics of Memory and Memories of Politics: The Spanish Case in Comparative Perspective) by Paloma Aguilar Fernández." , 14(3), pp. 365–366
Spain's New Left Turn: Society Driven or Party Instigated
This essay explains the rise of ‘new-leftist’ policies in Spain as part of Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's ‘second transition’, including gay marriage, gender parity, and reparation for the victims of the Spanish civil war. Setting aside society-centred explanations, such as the advent of post-material values and the strength of civil society, this essay relies upon a party-centric explanation. It emphasises a process of self-renova…
Reconciliation After Democratization: Coping with the Past in Spain
Gay Rights: Why Democracy Matters
The year 2013 featured unprecedented strides for gay rights in some parts of the world, particularly in Western Europe and the Americas, but also startling setbacks elsewhere, as in Russia and some countries in Africa. Wealth and religion are the most discussed factors behind this so-called global divide on homosexuality. Less studied and therefore less understood, however, is the effect of the political regime, especially whether the country is …
Latin America's Gay Rights Revolution
This essay explains the gay-rights revolution in Latin America marked by the legalization of same-sex marriage in Argentina. Among the factors examined are the use of human-rights rhetoric to end anti-gay discrimination, the employment of the Internet to mainstream gay culture, the creation of a gay market to leverage clout for the gay community, and critical alliances with the political establishment. These explanations suggest that the Latin Am…
Civil Society Reconsidered
Reconciliation After Democratization: Coping with the Past in Spain
Civil Society and the Consolidation of Democracy in Spain
Beyond Transitions: The Politics of Democratic Consolidation
The gay rights backlash: Contrasting views from the United States and Latin America
This essay examines the conditions that enable a ‘gay rights backlash’ through a comparison of the United States and Latin America. The United States, the cradle of the contemporary gay rights movement, is the paradigmatic example of a gay rights backlash. By contrast, Latin America, the most Catholic of regions, introduced gay rights at a faster pace than the United States without much in the way of a backlash. Collectively, this analysis demons…
Spain's New Left Turn: Society Driven or Party Instigated
This essay explains the rise of ‘new-leftist’ policies in Spain as part of Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's ‘second transition’, including gay marriage, gender parity, and reparation for the victims of the Spanish civil war. Setting aside society-centred explanations, such as the advent of post-material values and the strength of civil society, this essay relies upon a party-centric explanation. It emphasises a process of self-renova…
Labor and Pacted Democracy: Post-Franco Spain in Comparative Perspective
According to conventional wisdom about contemporary democratization, when democratic transitions and pacts collide, contradictory outcomes ensue. While they constitute a brilliant strategy for introducing democracy after the demise of an authoritarian regime, pacts compromise the quality of the emerging democracy by marginalizing mass actors such as the labor movement. Evidence from Spain, the paradigmatic example of a democracy built on pacts, c…
Justice in Times of Transition: Lessons from the Iberian Experience1
A key contention of the transitional justice movement is that the more comprehensive and vigorous the effort to bring justice to a departed authoritarian regime for its political crimes, the better the democratization results. This essay challenges this common assumption with empirical evidence from the Iberian Peninsula, where the global wave of democratization of the late twentieth century was born. In Portugal, political trials and bureaucrati…
The military transition: Democratic reform of the armed forces
The Politics of Dual Transitions
Social Concertation in Democratic and Market Transitions: Comparative Lessons from Spain
This essay employs a state-structuralist approach to explain the emergence of social concertation as a policy mechanism to facilitate democratization and economic liberalization in post-Franco Spain. Concertation emphasizes the institutionalization of consultation and cooperation on macroeconomic policy involving peak representation from the state, employers' associations, and the organized labor movement. The author demonstrates how state struct…
International Influence, Domestic Activism, and Gay Rights in Argentina
Journal Article International Influence, Domestic Activism, and Gay Rights in Argentina Get access Omar G. Encarnación Omar G. Encarnación OMAR G. ENCARNACIÓN is Professor of Political Studies at Bard College. He builds upon this article in his book Latin America's Gay Rights Revolution (forthcoming by Oxford University Press). Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 128, Issue …
Civil Society and Democracy in Latin America
Introduction * Civil Society and Democracy: the Latin American Case - Carlos H. Waisman, Richard Feinberg& Leon Zamosc * Part I: Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives * Autonomy, Self-regulation and Democracy: Tocquevillean-Gellnerian Perspectives on Civil Society and the Bifurcated State in Latin America - Carlos H. Waisman * Civil Society in Latin America in the Twenty-first Century: Democratic Deepening, Social Fragmentation and State Crisi…
Do Political Pacts Freeze Democracy? Spanish and South American Lessons
This essay challenges the conventional wisdom that political pacts intended to consolidate the transition to democracy have the paradoxical consequence of compromising or freezing democracy. It suggests, instead, that political pacts have a neutral impact and that whether they are good or bad for democracy depends upon the inclusiveness and political diversity of the bargaining cartel and its ties to societal organisations. These arguments are de…
Latin America's Abortion Rights Breakthrough
In recent years, Latin America has experienced an abortion-rights breakthrough that stands in striking contrast to the wave of criminalization of abortion afoot in the United States. It also ended some of the world's most draconian abortion bans. At the root of this breakthrough is the framing of abortion not as an issue of personal choice but as a human-rights matter. This strategy, borrowed from previous campaigns for equality and justice in La…
Beyond Civil Society: Promoting Democracy after September 11
Democratic Backsliding: Comparative Reflections on the American Experience
Democratic backsliding, or the debilitation of democracy by those elected to protect it, looms large in the current debate about the global crisis of democracy, including Sara Wallace Goodman's Citizenship in Hard Times: How Ordinary People Respond to Democratic Threat. In keeping with the prevailing view of backsliding as a political phenomenon rooted in extreme partisanship and polarization, Goodman is concerned with strengthening the citizenry…
On bowling leagues and NGOs: A critique of civil society’s revival
Federalism and the paradox of corporatism
The Politics of Dual Transitions
Social Concertation in Democratic and Market Transitions: Comparative Lessons from Spain
This essay employs a state-structuralist approach to explain the emergence of social concertation as a policy mechanism to facilitate democratization and economic liberalization in post-Franco Spain. Concertation emphasizes the institutionalization of consultation and cooperation on macroeconomic policy involving peak representation from the state, employers' associations, and the organized labor movement. The author demonstrates how state struct…
The Comparative Study of Democratization: Transition Politics in Eastern and Southern Europe
Federalism and the paradox of corporatism
A Casualty of Unemployment: The Breakdown of Social Concertation in Spain
This essay examines the consequences of high unemployment on governance and policy-making in Spain. It contends that a casualty of the unemployment crisis is the end of consensus on macroeconomic policy born with the transition to democracy in 1977 and sustained through 1986. This development is illustrated in an analysis of the breakdown of the process of social concertation defined as the collective pursuit of economic goals among the governmen…
Beyond Transitions: The Politics of Democratic Consolidation
Labor and Pacted Democracy: Post-Franco Spain in Comparative Perspective
According to conventional wisdom about contemporary democratization, when democratic transitions and pacts collide, contradictory outcomes ensue. While they constitute a brilliant strategy for introducing democracy after the demise of an authoritarian regime, pacts compromise the quality of the emerging democracy by marginalizing mass actors such as the labor movement. Evidence from Spain, the paradigmatic example of a democracy built on pacts, c…
Civil Society and the Consolidation of Democracy in Spain
On bowling leagues and NGOs: A critique of civil society’s revival
Managing Ethnic Conflict in Spain
Beyond Civil Society: Promoting Democracy after September 11
Coming to Terms with Iraq
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Do Political Pacts Freeze Democracy? Spanish and South American Lessons
This essay challenges the conventional wisdom that political pacts intended to consolidate the transition to democracy have the paradoxical consequence of compromising or freezing democracy. It suggests, instead, that political pacts have a neutral impact and that whether they are good or bad for democracy depends upon the inclusiveness and political diversity of the bargaining cartel and its ties to societal organisations. These arguments are de…
Trust and Rule by Charles Tilly
Civil Society and Democracy in Latin America
Introduction * Civil Society and Democracy: the Latin American Case - Carlos H. Waisman, Richard Feinberg& Leon Zamosc * Part I: Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives * Autonomy, Self-regulation and Democracy: Tocquevillean-Gellnerian Perspectives on Civil Society and the Bifurcated State in Latin America - Carlos H. Waisman * Civil Society in Latin America in the Twenty-first Century: Democratic Deepening, Social Fragmentation and State Crisi…
Civil Society Reconsidered
Reconciliation After Democratization: Coping with the Past in Spain
Spain Remade, Again
The real legacy of the second transition is that it has revealed the hidden strengths of Spanish democracy
Políticas de la Memoria y Memorias de la Política: El Caso Español en Perspectiva Comparada (Politics of Memory and Memories of Politics: The Spanish Case in Comparative Perspective) by Paloma Aguilar…
Políticas de la Memoria y Memorias de la Política: El Caso Español en Perspectiva Comparada (Politics of Memory and Memories of Politics: The Spanish Case in Comparative Perspective) by Paloma Aguilar Fernández." , 14(3), pp. 365–366
Spain's New Left Turn: Society Driven or Party Instigated
This essay explains the rise of ‘new-leftist’ policies in Spain as part of Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's ‘second transition’, including gay marriage, gender parity, and reparation for the victims of the Spanish civil war. Setting aside society-centred explanations, such as the advent of post-material values and the strength of civil society, this essay relies upon a party-centric explanation. It emphasises a process of self-renova…
The military transition: Democratic reform of the armed forces
International Justice on Trial
In many instances human rights violations are better confronted as a political problem rather than as an ethical or legal challenge
A Political Philosophy in Public Life: Civic Republicanism in Zapatero's Spain by José Luis Martí and Philip Pettit
Journal Article A Political Philosophy in Public Life: Civic Republicanism in Zapatero's Spain by José Luis Martí and Philip Pettit Get access A Political Philosophy in Public Life: Civic Republicanism in Zapateroʼs Spainby José Luis Martíand Philip Pettit. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2010. 210pp. $29.95. Omar G. Encarnación Omar G. Encarnación Bard College Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Po…
Latin America's Gay Rights Revolution
This essay explains the gay-rights revolution in Latin America marked by the legalization of same-sex marriage in Argentina. Among the factors examined are the use of human-rights rhetoric to end anti-gay discrimination, the employment of the Internet to mainstream gay culture, the creation of a gay market to leverage clout for the gay community, and critical alliances with the political establishment. These explanations suggest that the Latin Am…
Assisting Civil Society and Promoting Democracy
Political science (41 works) · Law (35 works) · Politics (34 works) · Law (26 works) · Sociology (26 works) · Political economy (20 works) · Democracy (19 works) · Economics (11 works) · Democratization (9 works) · Latin Americans (9 works)