Denise M. Horn is an Assistant Professor of International Affairs at Northeastern University in Boston, MA. Her research examines the effects of US foreign funding in the development of civil society in transitional states, particularly in the areas of women's issues and women's NGOs.

Denise M. Horn offers a fresh, innovative feminist-constructivist perspective to the debates about democratization and civil society by arguing that Western gender norms-i.e. those norms that determine degrees of participation within civil society-inform the policies of hegemonic powers and transform the foundations of civil society in transitional states.

Part 1: Constructing Gender and Democratization Within a Framework of Geopolitics 1. Gentle Invasions: Creating Pro-American and Pro-European Spaces for Global Democracy 2. Gentle Invasions and the Development of Civil Society in Transitional States 3. Post-Soviet US and EU Foreign Policy: Exploiting the Tools of Democratization Part 2: Case Studies: Gentle Invasions and the Newly Independent States 4. Setting the Agenda: US and Nordic Gender Policies in the Estonian Transition to Democracy 5. Constructing Agency: Civil Society and Gender Identity in Moldova 6. Gentle Invasions: Universally Applicable or Culturally Specific?