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International Organizations, Nongovernmental Organizations, and Police Implementation of Domestic Violence Policies in Liberia and Nicaragua

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2019

Peace A. Medie  and
Shannon Drysdale Walsh
Peace A. Medie
Affiliation:
University of Ghana
Shannon Drysdale Walsh
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota Duluth
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Abstract

Domestic violence is the predominant form of violence against women in most countries in Africa and Latin America. Scholars have theorized the adoption of domestic violence laws and policies in both regions. However, policy implementation is understudied and under theorized. Therefore, we compare how international organizations and women's nongovernmental organizations have influenced the implementation of domestic violence policies by police officers in Liberia and Nicaragua. We introduce the concept of the transnational implementation process and describe how international organizations and women's organizations have employed training, institutional and policy restructuring, and monitoring to influence police behavior at the street level. The effects of these strategies have been conditional on the political environment. We identify two patterns of international and domestic influence on street-level implementation: internationally led and domestically supported implementation in Liberia, with domestically led and internationally supported implementation in Nicaragua.

Keywords

Women's rightsimplementationviolence against womendomestic violenceLiberiaNicaraguawomen's policingtransnational advocacy
Type
Research Article
Information
Politics & Gender , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , March 2021 , pp. 136 - 166
Copyright
Copyright © The Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association, 2019

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Footnotes

1.

Authors are listed in alphabetical order; both contributed equally to this article.

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