ABSTRACT
This study focuses on the factors that shape relationships between women’s CSOs and political parties in Indonesia compared to those in South Korea and Argentina. Several path dependent explanations of specific issues like women and politics in policy-making and political representation can be facilitated by using these three nations as points of comparison. The main research question in this study is: why women’s CSOs have distant or close relations with political parties in order to shape consolidated representation in Indonesia, South Korea, and Argentina? This study argues that the relations between women’s CSOs and political parties affect the development of women’s political representation in consolidated democracies. A distant and critical engagement between women’s CSOs and political parties in Indonesia is evident in some progressive gender policy reforms in parliament, but the weak implementation of these laws in society still remains. Although there has been a strong, a close alignment between women’s CSOs and political parties in South Korea and Argentina that has encouraged women’s political representation outcomes, both countries still face some problems. It is difficult for South Korean CSOs to achieve autonomy from the state and political parties; meanwhile, in Argentina the major parties are strongly dominant in the political structure.
