The conventional wisdom about the causes of social rights expansion, and for LGBT rights in particular, goes something like this: rights are more likely to advance in high-income democracies (the modernization hypothesis), where social movements are abundant, strong, organized, and sufficiently networked (the social movement hypothesis), and where religion is less influential in the daily life of majorities (the secularist or culturalist hypothesis). This paper argues that these propositions, for the most part, hold true, but they must become more nuanced to account for the experience of Latin America in the past ten years. In particular, institutional factors, such as the role of alliances between movements and political groups, degree of party competition, degree of federalism, and degree of court assertiveness and progressiveness, should supplement structural variables, such as income. In addition, the notion of secularism needs to incorporate a discussion of the different ways in which two branches of religion—mainstream Catholicism and Evangelicalism—influence politics. | Autoría: Javier Corrales Editorial: USAID, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill País: United States Año: 2015 
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