This book advances the most exciting debate in the revolutionary Americas: is changing the world by electing radical forces to take state power, or by forging social movements to re-make power locally, the better path to radical social change? Two strong forces meet in these cases studies, and the results are explosive.

John Foran, professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara

This collaborative work is the first to systematically address a fundamental question in twenty-first century Latin American politics: How do the newly elected left governments respond to the social movements that played a major role in bringing them to power as well as the pressing economic and social hardships they seek to alleviate? The edited collection provides first-rate analysis of a range of state-social movement interactions - from facilitation to co-optation and repression - in arguably the most important cases in South America.

Paul Almeida, Associate Professor, School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts, University of California, Merced

This valuable examination of Latin America's innovative social movements sheds light on their complex, often uneasy interaction with the region's left-leaning governments. The authors' focus on relations between the state and mass mobilization poses a key question for the post-neoliberal era.

Richard Stahler-Sholk, Department of Political Science, Eastern Michigan University