Maxime Forest

The Europeanization of Gender Equality Policies: A Discursive-Sociological Approach

This article argues that a discursive–sociological approach to study Europeanization is particularly apt for understanding the dynamics of policy change in Europe. It does so by bringing closer the agenda of discursive institutionalism (DI) and gender policy analysis, drawing upon the recent sociological and discursive turns in the study of the domestic impact of Europe, and the long-term interest of gender policy analysis for discursive framings, norm diffusion, actors’ interactions and EU soft policy instruments. Challenging the limitations of Europeanization studies that only focus on convergence, the article explores the contribution that both Schmidt’s DI and discursive gender approaches make to the understanding of policy change in Europe. While seeing the two approaches as complementary in the study of Europeanization, the article discusses the added value of gender approaches for improving our understanding of policy change in Europe.

Is Gender Equality Soluble into Self-Governance? Regionalizing and Europeanizing Gender Policies in Spain

The Europeanization of regional governance has long been addressed from the sole perspective of the regional policy of the EU, hence almost exclusively from a top-down perspective. Limited attention was paid to the different types of regions involved, especially those emerging regions with a legislative capacity (Carter and Pasquier, 2006). Meanwhile, attempts to capture the complexity of domestic change as a consequence of Europeanization processes have focussed mainly on the state level. Putting forward the EU adaptation pressure as one of the main impetuses for changes to policy and legislation often led to neglecting the role of subnational domestic agents and institutions.

Global Perspectives on Same-Sex Marriage

This book provides a comparative, neo-institutionalist approach to the different factors impacting state adoption of—or refusal to adopt—same-sex marriage laws. The now twenty-one countries where lesbians and gay men can legally marry include recent or longstanding democracies, republics and parliamentary monarchies, and unitary and federal states. They all reflect different positions with respect to religion and the cultural foundations of the nation. Countries opposed to such legalization, and those having taken measures in recent years to legally reinforce the heterosexual fundaments of marriage, present a similar diversity. This diversity, in a globalized context where the idea of same-sex marriage has become integral to claims for LGBTI equality and indeed LGBTI human rights, gives rise to the following question: which factors contribute to institutionalizing same-sex marriage? The analytical framework used for exploring these factors in this book is neo-institutionalism. Through three neo-institutionalist lenses—historical, sociological and discursive—contributors investigate two aspects of the processes of adoption or opposition of equal recognition of same-sex partnerships. Firstly, they reveal how claims by LGBTIQ movements are being framed politically and brought to parliamentary politics. Secondly, they explore the ways in which same-sex marriage becomes institutionalized (or resisted) through legal and societal norms and practices. Although it adopts neo-institutionalism as its main theoretical framework, the book incorporates a broad range of perspectives, including scholarship on social movements, LGBTI rights, heterosexuality and social norms, and gender and politics. (Publishers abstract)

Institutionalizing Intersectionality in Southern Europe: Italy, Spain, and Portugal

This chapter explores the institutionalization of intersectionality in a selection of South European countries (SEC): Italy, Spain, and Portugal.1 It argues that, although a multiple inequalities agenda is beginning to blossom under the impetus of the EU anti-discrimination policy, this does not mean that truly integrated approaches have been implemented so far. The chapter analyses the patterns of convergence and variation around multiple inequalities, focusing on Europeanization as the main convergence factor, which acquires different levels of relevance depending on the respective paths of institutionalization of the equality policies in each of the three case studies.

Europeanizing vs. Nationalizing the Issue of Same-Sex Marriage in Central Europe: A Comparative Analysis of Framing Processes in Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia, and Slovenia

This chapter addresses policy debates around the regulation of same-sex partnerships in Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs). Theoretically grounded in sociological and discursive institutionalisms, it draws upon the comparative analysis carried out by the team of the EU-funded Quality in Gender + Equality Policies (QUING) project, complemented by the author’s own legislative tracking of debates on this issue. The chapter first places recent developments against the background of institutional legacies from state socialism as regards the regulation of homosexuality. After a brief account of the debates on the recognition of same-sex partnerships held in the region in the context of EU accession, it further explores the role of Europeanization-driven versus domestic variables by focusing on four specific countries: Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia, and Croatia.

Prospects and Challenges for Discursive-Sociological Studies of the Europeanization of Equality Policies

In this book we have aimed to strengthen the synergy between the gender equality and Europeanization research agendas, in order to better our understanding of policy change in the European Union (EU). It has been our argument that a better analysis of gender and other equality policies calls for the adoption of comprehensive and pluralistic approaches to Europeanization. These approaches are necessary to grasp the complexities of a field in which soft measures have abounded, actors’ interactions have been crucial to significant policy outcomes, and discursive usages have facilitated policy legitimation processes, social learning, and norm diffusion. Our choice of a discursive-sociological perspective to study Europeanization appeared essential to accounting for the multiplicity of factors affecting policy change on gender and other inequalities in Europe. Our intentions in Chapter 1, therefore, were not only to start our discussion from a common state of the art, but also to outline a plausible research agenda. This included paying attention to different levels of analysis (actors, discourses, meanings, usages, learning mechanisms, conditionality effects, or institutional heritages), to the variety of policy sectors considered, and to the multilevel dimension of policymaking in the EU. Yet we opted for a relatively open perspective (rather than for a unified approach) in order to bring both research agendas closer together, thus encompassing most of the cognitive, discursive, institutionalist, and sociological approaches that have recently blossomed in the fields of European studies and gender policy analysis.