doi:10.1017/S0003055412000226 The Civic Origins of Progressive Policy Change: Combating Violence against Women in Global Perspective, 1975–2005

Over the past four decades, violence against women (VAW) has come to be seen as a violationof human rights and an important concern for social policy. Yet government action remainsuneven. Some countries have adopted comprehensive policies to combat VAW, whereas others have been slow to address the problem. Using an original dataset of social movements and VAW policies in 70 countries over four decades, we show that feminist mobilization in civil society—not intra-legislative political phenomena such as leftist parties or women in government or economic factors like national wealth—accounts for variation in policy development. In addition, we demonstrate that autonomous movements produce an enduring impact on VAWpolicy through the institutionalization of feminist ideas in international norms. This study brings national and global civil society into large-n explanations of social policy, arguing that analysis of civil society in general—and of social movements in particular—is critical to understanding progressive social policy change. V iolence against women is a global problem. Re-search from North America, Europe, Africa,Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia has found astonishingly high rates of sexual assault, stalking, trafficking, violence in intimate relationships, and other violations of women’s bodies and psy-ches. These assaults violate human rights, undermine democratic transitions, harm children, and are tremen-dously costly.1 Today, violence against women (VAW