Anne Jenichen

The Unhappy Marriage of Religion and Politics: problems and pitfalls for gender equality

Abstract This article explores how religion as a political force shapes and deflects the struggle for gender equality in contexts marked by different histories of nation building and challenges of ethnic diversity, different state–society relations (from the more authoritarian to the more democratic), and different relations between state power and religion (especially in the domain of marriage, family and personal laws). It shows how ‘private’ issues, related to the family, sexuality and reproduction, have become sites of intense public contestation between conservative religious actors wishing to regulate them based on some transcendent moral principle, and feminist and other human rights advocates basing their claims on pluralist and time- and context-specific solutions. Not only are claims of ‘divine truth’ justifying discriminatory practices against women hard to challenge, but the struggle for gender equality is further complicated by the manner in which it is closely tied up with, and inseparable from, struggles for social and economic justice, ethnic/racial recognition, and national self-determination vis-à-vis imperial/global domination.

External networks and institutional idiosyncrasies: the Common Security and Defence Policy and UNSCR 1325 on women, peace and security

Abstract In 2008, the Council of the European Union (EU) adopted a ‘Comprehensive Approach’ that outlines a strategy for securing gender mainstreaming; two years later, the Council introduced a set of indicators to assess its implementation. The EU was responding to the United Nations Security Council’s call for regional institutions to assist in implementing Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325, adopted on 31 October 2000, concerning ‘women, peace and security’. This resolution sought to meet the ‘urgent need to mainstream a gender perspective into peacekeeping operations’. Considering that prior exposure to gender issues, resources and well-established relations with civil society and gender advocates are lacking, the adoption of both the Comprehensive Approach and the indicators, as well as the structures and procedures established since then as part of the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy, requires some explanation. This article draws on feminist institutionalist approaches to argue that the impetus for change came from individuals and groups within the EU who were involved in external networks, both above and below the supranational level, who seized on institutional idiosyncrasies that also shaped the implementation of UNSCR 1325 in important ways.

Politische Innovation in internationalisierten Nachkriegskontexten

Am Beispiel des frauenrechtspolitischen Wandels in Bosnien und Herzegowina und im Vergleich mit weiteren internationalisierten Nachkriegskontexten geht Anne Jenichen den Ursachen fur die Diffusion von Policy-Innovationen unter den Bedingungen internationaler Nachkriegsinterventionen nach. Sie fuhrt einen Mechanismus innovativen politischen Wandels ein, der bisher nur wenig wissenschaftliche Aufmerksamkeit erhalten hat. Dieser betont die Kooperation zwischen internen und externen sowie staatlichen und nicht-staatlichen Akteuren und zeigt, wie internationale Nachkriegsinterventionen inlandischen PolitikunternehmerInnen als Gelegenheitsstruktur dienen, mittels derer sie ihre eigenen politischen Anliegen durchsetzen konnen.

Explaining variation in the implementation of global norms: Gender mainstreaming of security in the OSCE and the EU

Why do regional security organizations choose different approaches to implementing global gender norms? To address this question, we examine how the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the European Union (EU) integrated requirements derived from UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (UNSCR 1325) on women, peace and security into their security policies. We identify differences in scope and dynamics between the change processes in the two organizations. The OSCE simply adapted its existing gender policy and has not changed it since, whereas the EU introduced a new, more extensive and specific policy, which it has already amended several times. Drawing on historical institutionalism and feminist institutionalism, we found that, first, reform coalitions prepared the ground for gender mainstreaming in the organizations’ respective security policies; and that, second, embedded policy structures, including rules and norms about external interaction as well as existing policy legacies, were responsible for the different approaches of the EU and OSCE with respect to UNSCR 1325.

Gendering European security: policy changes, reform coalitions and opposition in the OSCE

ABSTRACT The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has rarely been considered in scholarship on gender and security, even though it was one of the regional security organisations whose gender policy predated the United Nations Security Council’s call for more international attention to issues related to women, peace and security in October 2000. Based on an analysis of official OSCE documents and on semi-structured interviews, we trace the integration of gender issues in the OSCE and explore the rationale behind and the challenges associated with it. We identify two phases of gender policy change in the OSCE and show how the integration of UNSCR 1325 brought about an expansion of OSCE gender policy from an exclusive focus on “soft” security issues towards increased inclusion of gender in the area of “hard” security. Drawing on historical and feminist institutionalism, we argue that reform coalitions were crucial for the policy changes in the OSCE but that they encountered institutional and ideational barriers, which hampered implementation of the gender policy. In light of rising opposition, our analysis warns of a backlash that might jeopardise current achievements.

Streitbare Demokratie in Deutschland und den Vereinigten Staaten: Der staatliche Umgang mit nichtgewalttätigem politischem Extremismus im Vergleich

Book Review : Streitbare Demokratie in Deutschland und den Vereinigten Staaten : Der staatliche Umgang mit nichtgewalttatigem politischem Extremismus im Vergleich, Gereon Flumann, Wiesbaden, Springer VS, 2015, 450 pp., £50.99/€59.99

Europäische Nachbarschaftspolitik – Entstehung, Effektivität, Herausforderungen

„Ich wunsche mir einen Ring von Freunden um die Europaische Union und ihre engsten Nachbarn herum, von Marokko bis Russland und zum Schwarzen Meer“, formulierte Kommissionsprasident Romano Prodi bereits im Jahr 2002. Fur die Gestaltung kooperativer Beziehungen zu diesem Ring von Freunden ist die Europaische Nachbarschaftspolitik (ENP) das jungste Instrument der Europaischen Union. Die Kooperationen erfolgen in einer Reihe verschiedener Politikfelder und sollen dazu dienen, Stabilitat, Sicherheit und Wohlstand an den Ausengrenzen der EU zu sichern. Ziel dieses Beitrags ist es, einen Uberblick uber die Europaische Nachbarschaftspolitik (ENP) zu geben, insbesondere uber ihre Grundung und Entwicklung, ihre zentralen Institutionen und Entscheidungsprozesse sowie die Debatte um ihre Wirksamkeit. Der Beitrag schliest mit einem Uberblick uber Forschungslucken und offene Fragen, die weitere Forschungsarbeiten zur ENP anregen sollen.

A social role for churches and cultural demarcation:how German MEPs represent religion in the European Parliament

This study deals with the question of how German members of the European Parliament (MEPs) represent the German model of religion–state relations at the European level. Based on a survey and interviews with German MEPs as well as a content-analysis of German MEPs’ speeches, motions and parliamentary questions during the seventh term of the European Parliament (EP), our study demonstrates that this model is represented in three dimensions. First, German MEPs reflect the close cooperation between the churches and the state in Germany, primarily on social issues, through largely church- and religion-friendly attitudes and relatively frequent contacts with religious interest-groups. Second, by referring to religious freedoms and minorities primarily outside the EU and by placing Islam in considerably more critical contexts than Christianity, German MEPs create a cultural demarcation line between Islam and Christianity through their parliamentary activities, which is similar to, though less politicised than, cultural boundaries often produced in public debates in Germany. Third, our study illustrates similar patterns of religious affiliation and subjective religiosity among German parliamentarians in both the EP and the national Parliament, which to some degree also reflect societal trends in Germany. Yet our data also suggest that European political elites are more religious than the average German population. If the presence of religion in terms of religious interest-groups and arguments is included, the EP appears to be more secularist than the German Parliament.

Frauenrechte und Religionsfreiheit in Europa – ein Plädoyer für Versöhnung statt Hierarchisierung

Frauenrechte und Religion mussen keinen Gegensatz darstellen, wird anerkannt, dass religiose Inhalte verschiedentlich interpretierbar sind und sich uber die Zeit verandern und dass Geschlechtergleichstellung auch das Recht von Frauen auf freie Religionsausubung umfasst. Dieser Artikel stellt, ausgehend von einer sozial-konstruktivistischen und einer menschenrechtlichen Perspektive, alternative Strategien des politischen Umgangs mit Konflikten zwischen Religionsfreiheit und Frauenrechten in Europa zur Diskussion, die einer Hierarchisierung dieser beiden Menschenrechtsbereiche entgegentreten. Women’s rights and religion do not have to form a contradiction if we acknowledge the fact that religious contents can be interpreted in different ways and change over time and that gender equality includes women’s right to the free practice of religion. Starting from a social constructivist and a human rights perspective, this article discusses alternative strategies for dealing politically with conflicts between religious freedom and women’s rights in Europe; these alternative strategies oppose the hierarchization of these two areas of human rights.