Protecting gains: Extractivism, social movements, and the politics of policy implementation

Scholarship on social movements around conflicts over extractive development has advanced in identifying when movements are likely to impact policy adoption. Yet, in Latin America policies are rarely implemented – a reality that commonly leads conflicts to reignite. This introduction sheds light over this often overlooked issue. We focus on the politics of policy implementation – when and how social movements around extractive development have higher chances to favorably impact policy enforcement. To this end, we switch the attention from the strategies of social movements and their outcomes over policy implementation at the local level, to their cumulative impact on national-level policy. We argue for a comparative political economy approach that enables us to identify the systemic, intermediate, and short-term factors that impact the effect of movements on conflicts over policy implementation. Building on this approach, we propose three potential implementation outcomes – positive, status quo and rollback – depending on the degree to which they align with a movement's position. We conclude highlighting the contributions of the articles in this issue to the politics of policy implementation and providing some insights for social movements’ course of action to protect their gains.