Dr. Gino Pauselli.

Asst. Prof. Pauselli: LGBTQ+ Rights Have Become a Symbolic Boundary in Global Politics

by Editor’s ChoiceForeign PolicyGenderHomeHuman RightsInterviews

Authoritarian governments, populist movements, and rising powers are increasingly challenging the liberal international order not only by contesting specific human rights norms but also by questioning the institutions that create and enforce them. In this interview with the ECPS, Assistant Professor Gino Pauselli of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign examines how international norms are negotiated, resisted, and reshaped in an era of geopolitical rivalry and democratic uncertainty. Drawing on research spanning LGBTQ+ rights, migration, border securitization, China’s influence in global governance, international organizations, and civil society, he argues that contemporary struggles over human rights are fundamentally contests over political authority, sovereignty, and the power to define international law itself.

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

Throughout the post-Cold War era, the international human rights regime has often been understood as one of the defining pillars of the liberal international order. Built upon the principles of universality, multilateral cooperation, and the progressive expansion of international legal protections, this order has contributed to significant advances in the promotion of civil liberties, minority rights, and transnational accountability. Yet, in recent years, these foundations have come under mounting pressure. Across both established and emerging democracies, populist leaders, authoritarian governments, and rising powers have increasingly challenged not only specific human rights norms but also the institutions and legal processes through which those norms are produced, interpreted, and enforced. Far from being confined to domestic politics, contemporary conflicts over sovereignty, migration, borders, LGBTQ+ rights, and civil society have become central battlegrounds in a broader contest over the future of global governance and the legitimacy of liberal universalism.

It is precisely these transformations that lie at the heart of the scholarship of Dr. Gino Pauselli, Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Combining insights from international relations, comparative politics, and human rights scholarship, Dr. Pauselli examines how international norms emerge, diffuse, and are contested through interactions among states, international organizations, NGOs, and transnational advocacy networks. His research offers an original perspective on the contemporary struggle between liberal and illiberal visions of international order, moving beyond simplistic accounts of democratic decline to reveal the complex political processes through which global norms are negotiated, resisted, and reshaped.

In this wide-ranging interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Dr. Pauselli argues that contemporary disputes over LGBTQ+ rights are ultimately less about sexuality than about political authority itself. As he puts it, “the ostensible subject is LGBT rights, but the deeper objection concerns who gets to make international law and how.” In his view, sexual orientation and gender identity have become powerful symbolic markers through which states signal their position in an increasingly polarized international order. Consequently, “LGBT rights have become the issue through which states perform that boundary—a way of signaling which side of a supposed civilizational divide a state stands on.”

Dr. Pauselli also offers important insights into the changing dynamics of authoritarian and populist politics. While acknowledging that anti-LGBT rhetoric often serves to divert attention from policy failures, he argues that it represents something more ambitious: “an active project to reshape society or build society around a notion of a heteronormative state.” Similarly, his research on border securitization demonstrates that restrictive migration policies can generate unintended human rights consequences. Rather than rhetoric alone, he finds that visible state projects such as border walls communicate heightened threat perceptions to border officials, thereby increasing the likelihood of abuse.

The interview further explores China’s growing influence within international institutions, the contestation surrounding sexual orientation and gender identity resolutions at the UN Human Rights Council, the emergence of illiberal NGO networks, and the evolving relationship between populism and international human rights governance. Throughout the conversation, Dr. Pauselli challenges conventional assumptions that rising powers necessarily reject global governance altogether. Instead, he argues that they increasingly seek to reshape existing institutions from within, because they “do value order and global governance,” while contesting the liberal content of the norms that sustain them.

Despite documenting an increasingly coordinated transnational backlash against liberal human rights norms, Dr. Pauselli remains cautiously optimistic about the future of the human rights project. Resistance to human rights, he observes, is hardly new; what is new is “the transnational coordination of this opposition at both the state and non-state levels.” Yet he also insists that attacks on the postwar human rights regime cannot ultimately succeed without offering a compelling alternative. The greatest challenge for liberal actors, he concludes, is not simply defending abstract legal principles but demonstrating, through people’s lived experiences, how universal human rights meaningfully improve everyday life. In an era increasingly shaped by populism, geopolitical rivalry, and normative contestation, this interview offers a timely and sophisticated examination of the future of democracy, international law, and the global human rights order.

Here is the revised version of our interview with Assistant Professor Gino Pauselli, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication.

Opposition to LGBT Rights Is Ultimately a Contest Over International Authority

Homophobic counter-protesters from Malopolscy Patrioci organization, during manifestation against Krakow Equality March (Pride parade) at Main Market Square in Krakow, Poland on August 29, 2020.

Dr. Pauselli, welcome! Let me begin with your recent research on LGBTQ+ rights and authoritarian politics. You suggest that opposition to LGBTQ+ rights is often embedded within broader resistance to the liberal international order. Why have sexual orientation and gender identity issues become such powerful symbols in contemporary struggles over sovereignty, nationalism, populism, and global norms?

Asst. Prof. Gino Pauselli: First, international law has historically been understood through consent. Sexual orientation and gender identity norms, by contrast, expanded rapidly at the international level, largely through the interpretive work of courts, treaty bodies, and non-state actors rather than through explicit state agreement. That makes them an almost ideal target for a sovereigntist critique: they can be portrayed as obligations imposed without consent by unelected actors, thereby expanding the jurisdiction of international institutions. The ostensible subject is LGBT rights, but the deeper objection concerns who gets to make international law and how.

The second reason is that these issues rest upon the symbolic material that nationalism mobilizes: the family, reproduction, the gender order, and the continuity of the nation across generations. That makes them a clear boundary marker. In my own work, I think about this in terms of ingroups and outgroups. Criticism over human rights tends to produce compliance among states that see the critic as one of their own and backlash among those that see the critic as an adversary. LGBT rights have become the issue through which states perform that boundary—a way of signaling which side of a supposed civilizational divide a state stands on.

Third, opposition is cheap. Restricting these rights carries little material cost and threatens no powerful economic interests, while yielding a high identity return. It is a low-cost, highly visible signal of standing apart from the liberal international order.

Many authoritarian governments portray LGBTQ+ rights as foreign impositions or manifestations of “Western values.” How much does this rhetoric overlap with contemporary populist narratives that oppose cosmopolitanism, globalization, and transnational human rights norms in the name of national sovereignty?

Asst. Prof. Gino Pauselli: This is exactly what I was mentioning. It is true that populist and conservative governments have used anti-LGBT rhetoric to challenge what is perceived as a foreign imposition. But this rhetoric, as I mentioned before, is itself borrowed from transnational actors, including both non-state actors and organized state actors abroad.

Economic Growth Can Strengthen, Rather Than Weaken, Anti-LGBT Projects

To what extent do anti-LGBTQ+ campaigns serve as political instruments through which populist and authoritarian leaders mobilize conservative constituencies, manufacture moral panics, and divert public attention from governance failures or economic grievances?

Asst. Prof. Gino Pauselli: This is a very common interpretation of the instrumentalization of anti-LGBT rhetoric. I wouldn’t say that this is not the case. This powerful strategy of opposing LGBT rights and LGBT norms does, indeed, divert attention away from economic grievances. But in the research that I’m conducting with a graduate student at the University of Illinois, what we’ve been observing is that this is not the full story. There’s also an active project to reshape society or build society around a notion of a heteronormative state and heteronormative norms.

So, on the one hand, it is true that there’s the scapegoating thesis, which basically argues that anti-LGBT rhetoric is useful for leaders because it diverts attention from the failures of their own policies. But at the same time, there is some evidence that, during periods of economic growth and economic development, this rhetoric actually becomes even more powerful in strengthening the state and reinforcing certain ideas about the state. In other words, it is precisely when the state has the resources to impose and advance these anti-LGBT projects that this rhetoric becomes most effective.

The Real Contest Is Over Who Has the Authority to Shape International Law

The UN Human Rights Council has become a major arena for disputes over sexual-minority rights. What do the debates surrounding sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) resolutions reveal about the changing nature of global human rights governance and the growing contest between liberal and illiberal visions of international order?

Asst. Prof. Gino Pauselli: The idea of sexual orientation and gender identity being discussed and debated at global international institutions, especially human rights organizations, is relatively new. In the UN Human Rights Council, the first attempt to pass a SOGI resolution occurred in 2003, while the first resolution to be voted on and adopted came only in 2011. So, this is a very recent development—less than two decades old. And every time these initiatives have emerged, we have observed strong opposition from a bloc of countries. Although this bloc has changed over time, SOGI resolutions have consistently been among the most contested issues before the UN Human Rights Council.

So, this leads to the question that I’m essentially reframing from your question: Why is this the case, and what does it tell us about the contestation between liberal and illiberal visions of the international order?

One of the things that has become much clearer recently, especially after the many interviews I conducted in Geneva last summer, is that many states—particularly liberal states—are deeply concerned about the ability of multiple international institutions to reshape international law independently. The concern is that—or at least the way many states frame it—non-state actors, including the Human Rights Council and treaty bodies, have modified or reinterpreted international law beyond the consent of states. This challenges the basic, traditional understanding of international law, which has historically rested primarily on state consent.

What many states argue is that they never signed up for this. They basically say that they never consented to incorporating sexual orientation as one of the categories protected by international human rights law. They’re not necessarily contesting that these rights should not be protected. Rather, they do not accept this as part of the international human rights project because they never consented to it.

There is no international human rights treaty that explicitly includes it, and it is not part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. So, the concern is deeper than sexual orientation and gender identity themselves. It is fundamentally about the ability of these bodies—these non-state actors—to reshape international law and then hold states accountable for standards to which they have never consented.

But there is also concern about these norms empowering domestic actors who are currently repressed and who might use these international frameworks to challenge the domestic status quo. For authoritarian rulers, this is particularly threatening. They fear allowing advances and changes at the international level that domestic actors could subsequently invoke to challenge their own rule.

Political Anxiety, Not LGBT Rights Themselves, Drives Much of the Conflict

Helsinki Pride parade.
Helsinki Pride parade on July 2, 2010. Photo: Dreamstime.

Looking ahead, do you expect conflicts over LGBTQ+ rights to remain one of the principal battlegrounds between liberal and authoritarian visions of international order, or are other human rights issues likely to supersede them?

Asst. Prof. Gino Pauselli: This is very hard to tell. It’s very difficult to predict the future, and every time social scientists have tried to do that, they usually fail because we’re not trained to know what’s going to happen. But one thing I’ve been observing is that the transnational LGBT movement is learning how to counteract the conservative backlash. Actors who have been promoting and protecting LGBT rights have been thinking very carefully about the frameworks and strategies that might be most helpful and effective in preventing the conservative backlash from gaining further ground. If these actors ultimately succeed in limiting the conservative backlash, then conservatives will probably find another issue to politicize. In that case, LGBT rights would gradually move away from the center of this contestation over the international liberal order.

At the end of the day, societies care about their well-being. The lack of progress and the anxieties generated by technological change have probably led many individuals to embrace anti-LGBT rhetoric as a way of resisting change and channeling their own anxieties. But the current challenge for the conservative side is that it ultimately needs to start delivering results and providing answers to those anxieties. If opposition to LGBT rights fails to do that, then they may find themselves in some trouble. They may need to turn to another issue or rely on something else to maintain their political power.

Rising Powers Prefer to Reshape Existing Institutions Rather Than Replace Them

In your research on China’s influence within the UN Human Rights Council, you show that Beijing’s presence systematically affects the voting behavior of other states. What does this finding tell us about how rising powers can reshape international norms from within existing institutions rather than by creating alternative ones?

Asst. Prof. Gino Pauselli: There are many things that are relevant to this issue. One is that, when we observe China being effective or successful in undermining international legal norms through its participation in the UN Human Rights Council, the first thing that comes to mind is that creating new institutions and providing them with legitimacy is very difficult. So, many authoritarian or illiberal states that oppose the international liberal order may find it much easier to advance their own agenda—even if it is an illiberal one—from within existing institutions that already enjoy high levels of legitimacy than through creating new institutions that few people know about and that may lack legitimacy in the eyes of the international community.

But, to address your question directly, the first thing this tells us is that rising powers like China are deeply interested in global governance. They’re not after anarchy, per se. So, by opposing the international liberal order, they are not opposing order itself. They do value order and global governance, but they may object to the content of the current norms that sustain that order. As China rises to the top of the global power hierarchy, it does not isolate itself. On the contrary, it actively participates in international institutions that help build and sustain order at the global level. It works through these institutions to advance its own goals.

Secondly, the other point I want to make is that international organizations are very important actors in shaping international norms. These norms essentially delineate what constitutes appropriate state behavior and what does not. They may not have teeth. We know that there is no global police force, and there is no United Nations army. But the norms that are developed and shaped within international organizations create a context—a normative structure—in which certain forms of state behavior become more or less costly. That normative environment may benefit some countries more than others. That is precisely where the contestation lies.

Independent Expert Bodies Are More Resistant to Political Contestation

Your research challenges the assumption that participation in international institutions necessarily socializes rising powers into liberal norms. Based on the case of China, under what conditions can international institutions instead become vehicles for norm revision, contestation, and the diffusion of illiberal ideas?

Asst. Prof. Gino Pauselli: This is a very interesting question, and it’s a very difficult one for me to answer. I don’t think I have a definitive answer. What I would say is that, based on research conducted by colleagues, it seems that institutions with broad participation—especially those characterized by direct state participation, where governments send representatives who ultimately decide whether to approve an institutional outcome, and where there are no independent experts or autonomous bureaucracies—are the institutions most likely to be used by illiberal states to challenge and contest international liberal norms. That’s the case with the UN Human Rights Council, for example. Every state has one vote, and every resolution is adopted if a simple majority of states votes in favor of it.

That is not the case, for example, with treaty bodies, where decisions are made by independent experts who adjudicate the cases brought before the institution. In those settings, states cannot—or at least do not necessarily—directly influence the outcomes through official channels.

Opposition to Human Rights Is Old—Its Transnational Coordination Is New

Turkish women rallied in Istanbul to protest proposed anti-abortion laws by then-Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on June 18, 2012 in Istanbul, Turkey. Photo: Sadık Güleç.

How do you interpret the growing convergence between right-wing populist movements and authoritarian governments in their critiques of international human rights institutions? Are we witnessing the emergence of a transnational backlash against liberal universalism, and if so, what are its implications for the future of global human rights governance?

Asst. Prof. Gino Pauselli: One thing that I find very revealing when I teach international human rights to my students is that resistance to international human rights—and even to liberal conceptions of rights—has been with us for a long time, almost since the beginning of the universal human rights project in the post-war era. What I would say is that norms that provide tools for marginalized individuals, communities, and other actors to resist power, abuse, and the arbitrary exercise of power will always be resisted and criticized by those who benefit from the existing status quo.

What I do think is somewhat new in recent years, or perhaps over the past few decades, is the transnational coordination of this opposition at both the state and non-state levels. This coordinated opposition to the international liberal order and its norms—especially human rights—is something that is genuinely new. The opposition itself has always existed, but the coordination of that opposition is new.

I’m not sure what the future of the human rights project will be. But I would be very surprised if attacks on the human rights project were successful without offering an appealing alternative. What I do think is that, in the short run, attacking the international liberal order may be politically appealing to some individuals or actors, but, at the end of the day, something else has to replace it. I don’t see that happening right now. Nor do I think such an alternative would be particularly appealing to most actors.

Fear Flourishes Where Diversity Is Least Experienced

Your research on intergroup contact suggests that exposure to diversity can increase support for human rights. How should we understand this finding in light of the success of many contemporary populist movements that thrive on anti-immigrant, anti-minority, and exclusionary narratives?

Asst. Prof. Gino Pauselli: It’s actually quite consistent with what we’ve been observing regarding the success of these movements in advancing anti-group rhetoric and exclusionary visions of society. If we think about Brexit, or about some research that I’ve conducted on the LGBT-free zones in Poland, the areas that have embraced this rhetoric most strongly are precisely those that have had the least contact with these perceived outgroups. So, these movements tend to be particularly successful in areas—and among individuals—with relatively little exposure to migrants, minorities, or other perceived outgroups.

Securitization Changes How Border Agents Perceive Threats

In your work with Beth Simmons, you demonstrate that border hardening can increase allegations of torture and abuse by border and immigration officials. What does this reveal about the unintended human rights consequences of securitization policies in contemporary states?

Asst. Prof. Gino Pauselli: What we find in our research is that the construction of border walls predicts, in the short run—between one and four years—an increase in allegations of torture committed by border and immigration officials. Importantly, this effect is limited to that specific subset of state agents. We do not observe a corresponding increase in torture allegations against other state agents, such as the police or the military, but only among those tasked with enforcing the border.

What these findings tell us is that there is a human cost to promoting securitization projects. Expensive and highly visible initiatives, such as border walls, which are designed to restrict the entry of individuals into a given country or territory, may signal to the state agents responsible for border enforcement that there is a serious threat out there—even if, in reality, there is not.

The presence of these highly visible and costly projects may also signal that these agents need to rely on more extreme measures to protect the nation or its territory. This ultimately translates into concrete actions in the form of more cases of physical abuse and human rights violations. It’s not necessarily that border walls constitute a direct instruction from political authorities to torture individuals. Rather, these projects are interpreted by border agents in two ways: first, that there is a heightened threat, and second, that they should rely on a broader range of tools to prevent that threat from affecting their own country.

Border Walls Transform Political Messages into Enforcement Practices

Ramallah, Palestine, surrounded by the controversial Israeli wall that separates the State of Israel from West Bank. Photo: Giovanni De Caro.

Many governments justify stricter border controls in the language of security and sovereignty. To what extent has the rise of populism transformed migration governance by legitimizing policies that may undermine international human rights protections while claiming democratic legitimacy?

Asst. Prof. Gino Pauselli: What we actually find in our research is very interesting in terms of the connection between populist movements and rhetoric. Rhetoric alone—whether expressing anxiety over borders or anger about migration—does not predict greater abuse. Simply having a leader speak publicly about the border, migrants, and the need to protect the nation from an external threat does not, by itself, translate into border agents committing more acts of torture. This is conceptually and theoretically related to the idea that security and sovereignty are not necessarily at odds with human rights, or at least with sovereign border control. In principle, they can coexist.

The real risk lies in how this rhetoric is interpreted by the agents tasked with enforcing the border. The situation changes when this rhetoric is combined with a costly signal. One thing is for an agent simply to hear the leader talking about the border. But it is something quite different to hear the leader talking about the border while also observing a massive border wall that has cost millions of dollars. That is a much more concrete signal that this is a serious issue, that it is a priority for the state, and that there is a serious threat out there.

Human Rights Monitoring Depends on Networks of Trust

Your research on international organizations and NGOs emphasizes the importance of trust-based relationships in the production of credible human rights information. Why are some NGOs more influential than others in shaping international responses to rights violations?

Asst. Prof. Gino Pauselli: Here’s where we move to the micro level of these actors. As political scientists, we’ve traditionally thought about international organizations and NGOs as actors. We call them non-state actors, but, in reality, they are made up of individuals. NGOs do not walk down the street by themselves. We cannot observe an NGO in the same way we observe a person. An NGO doesn’t have a conscience, nor do international organizations. Individuals do. They are the staff of these organizations, and they are the ones who actually carry out their work. So, trust between organizations is often built through trust between the individuals who belong to those organizations.

In our research, we find that interactions between NGO members and international organization staff over time increase the likelihood that the international organization will later speak out about issues in the countries those NGOs care about. For example, during a hearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, certain NGOs participate in the proceedings. They interact with Commission members, have conversations, and even share coffee with them. Then, months or even a couple of years later, because they now have their WhatsApp number or email address, they can contact the Commission and say, “Look, this is what’s happening in this country right now.”

It’s not that the Commission would have been unaware of those violations if the NGO staff had not reached out. Rather, because the information comes from an NGO with which Commission members have already established a relationship, that information is trusted—or at least trusted more—than the same information arriving through other channels, where they may not have the same ability to assess the credibility of the source.

This is how interactions between NGOs and international organizations can shape the monitoring role of international organizations in holding states accountable to international norms. It’s not that NGOs are the only providers of this information. Rather, because of prior contacts and repeated interactions, the information they provide carries greater credibility and is therefore more likely to influence the organization’s response.

Illiberal Regimes Are Building Their Own NGO Networks

Across Europe and the Americas, populist leaders frequently frame international organizations, NGOs, and human rights advocates as unelected elites disconnected from ordinary citizens. How has this populist critique affected the legitimacy and effectiveness of global human rights institutions?

Asst. Prof. Gino Pauselli: That’s a very interesting question. At the moment, I’m not aware of research that provides a clear answer to it. But I can imagine a few ways in which we might approach it. I think rhetoric is a very powerful tool for advancing political goals. But at the same time, these same populist and authoritarian leaders have also used NGOs themselves to boost their own legitimacy and advance their own agendas. So, while they argue that nobody elected these organizations and that it is unclear whom these NGOs actually represent, they also send their own NGOs abroad and rely on the credibility of the broader NGO community to shield themselves from international criticism.

I am currently developing research with a colleague, Sarah Bush, in which we examine what we call “illiberal NGOs,” or “cheerleader NGOs.” These organizations essentially participate in international institutions to praise authoritarian governments. We’re still not sure whether this is an effective strategy, but these populist and authoritarian regimes are clearly relying on NGOs to advance their own rhetoric. At the same time, whenever NGOs say things these governments don’t like, they respond by arguing that nobody elected them. That they do not necessarily represent or enjoy the support of society.

Norms Are Contested Because They Redistribute Power

A young woman on street enjoy holding gay pride banner during a protest. Photo: Dan Rentea.

Across your scholarship, a recurring theme is that international norms are not simply imposed from above but are contested, negotiated, and reshaped through interactions among states, international organizations, and civil society actors. How should we rethink the process of norm diffusion in an increasingly multipolar world where populist, nationalist, and sovereigntist actors challenge the universality of human rights norms?

Asst. Prof. Gino Pauselli: This is a tough question. I’d like to begin by saying that we should think about norms and international norms as not being value-free. They’re not value-free. At their core, a norm is an expectation of appropriate behavior. The content of these norms may reflect liberal ideas, but they can also generate expectations about illiberal behavior. It’s not the case that, simply because a norm exists, it is, by definition, a liberal one.

At the end of the day, norms are about what constitutes appropriate or expected behavior for states, actors, or individuals in general. That behavior may be either consistent or inconsistent with the status quo. The expectation may be for individuals or actors to behave differently from how they have behaved in the past, or to behave in ways that challenge the existing distribution of power.

Because norms create expectations about certain forms of behavior over others, multiple actors naturally become interested in how those norms are developed, diffused, or resisted, since they affect the status quo in one way or another. They either reinforce it or challenge it. The contestation and negotiation that you’re asking about are really about the content of these norms. Norm diffusion should be understood as the diffusion of normative frameworks that benefit certain groups over others, depending on the content of the norm.

The Future of Human Rights Depends on Their Relevance to Everyday Life

And lastly, Professor Pauselli, taken together, your work examines authoritarian resistance, rising powers, borders, human rights, international organizations, and civil society. Do you see contemporary populism as primarily a challenge to specific liberal policies, or as a broader challenge to the universalist foundations of the postwar human rights regime? What does this imply for the future of democracy and global human rights protection in the twenty-first century?

Asst. Prof. Gino Pauselli: Many colleagues might not agree with this, but the way I understand populism, or the concept of populism, is that it is, by definition, at odds with liberal conceptions of the polity and of how societies are organized. In terms of what populism implies for the future of this project, populism is the latest effective tool that certain sectors of the elite have found for gaining and maintaining power. I’m not sure whether they even think about the future of the international human rights regime. Populism is simply instrumental for them in maintaining or gaining power. It is effective because of the contemporary anxieties that societies face—anxieties that many members of society do not necessarily see being addressed by liberal democracy or liberal norms.

So, basically, there are two things going on here. On the one hand, we have the supply side, where elites find populist strategies and rhetoric effective for gaining or retaining power. On the other hand, we have the demand side, where members of society are looking for alternatives that can reduce their anxieties over issues such as economic development, progress, and inequality in general. And this is why populism is so effective right now.

Now, turning specifically to the human rights project, those actors who are engaged—or have long been engaged—in promoting and protecting human rights, the liberal actors, in some way, should be thinking about developing and strengthening tools that effectively communicate, through people’s lived experiences, how these norms—how human rights—positively affect their lives. Their everyday lives, in the areas and issues they care most about. I know this is very difficult. It is very hard for a human rights NGO to communicate to rural communities, or even marginalized urban communities, that an abstract text signed 70 or 80 years ago is relevant to them if they cannot see exactly how it connects to their own lives, especially when their lives lack so many basic things. This is the main challenge if the human rights project is to survive in the future: for constituents, broadly speaking—not just elites—to understand the value of that project for their own lives.

Jordan Bardella and Princess Maria Carolina of Bourbon-Two Sicilies captured in a staged, paparazzi-style moment—where romance, image, and political branding converge on the cover of Paris Match.

‘Ugly, Badly Groomed, and Bitter’: Gendered Delegitimation and Aesthetic Politics 

by CommentariesEditor’s ChoiceEuropean ObservatoryGenderHome

In this incisive analysis, Dr. Gwenaëlle Bauvois interrogates how contemporary far-right discourse mobilizes gendered and aesthetic hierarchies to structure political legitimacy. Focusing on the controversy surrounding Rassemblement National (RN) leader Jordan Bardella’s relationship with Princess Maria Carolina of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, Dr. Bauvois demonstrates how misogynistic rhetoric operates through a dual mechanism of delegitimation and idealization. The stigmatized figure of the female sociologist—constructed as intellectually suspect and aesthetically deficient—is juxtaposed with the idealized “princess” archetype, embodying socially sanctioned femininity. This contrast reveals how populist communication instrumentalizes gendered imagery, transforming private relationships into symbolic resources that reinforce political narratives, hierarchies of visibility, and claims to cultural legitimacy.

 

By Gwenaëlle Bauvois

Controversy Around a Romance 

The relationship between Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally / Rassemblement National (RN), and Princess Maria Carolina of Bourbon-Two Sicilies has recently attracted significant media attention in France and abroad, particularly after their romance was featured on the cover of a gossip magazine and circulated widely across both political and lifestyle media outlets. 

During a televised exchange on this subject, Sébastien Chenu, a leading figure of the Rassemblement National, stated: “I am delighted that [Bardella] is in love, I am delighted that his partner, who could possibly become First Lady, is a young lady who speaks six languages.” Interpelled by the journalist who noted that Maria Carolina is a “luxury influencer,” he responded: “Why not!” He then added: “Not everyone is destined to be a sociology lecturer,” “ugly, badly groomed, and bitter,” (Chenu, n.d.).

Chenu’s remarks triggered significant backlash across political, media, and academic circles.As a national spokesperson for the Rassemblement National, Chenu is already recognized for his provocative communication style, which was especially apparent in this instance. The French National Union of Researchers, for instance, stated that these comments reflect the Rassemblement National’s anti-feminist positioning, which regularly targets women’s rights and reproduces outdated gender stereotypes. 

The Sociologist: Failed Femininity

At the center of Chenu’s remark lies the figure of the Sociologist, a familiar symbolic target in far-right discourse. In France, sociology occupies a particularly visible position within broader “culture wars” dynamics, where academic disciplines become entangled in political and ideological conflicts over questions of identity, inequality, and gender. Within this context, sociology is often framed by some right-wing and far-right political actors as emblematic of a politicized or ideologically biased academia. 

Crucially, however, the figure used by Chenu is here implicitly gendered: it is not a neutral academic subject that is evoked, but specifically the female sociology lecturer, whose presence is central to the rhetorical effect of the statement rather than incidental to it. The emphasis on a woman in an academic position is significant because it enables the statement to operate simultaneously through professional and gendered delegitimation, thereby amplifying its symbolic effect. 

This framing reflects three intersecting discursive logics. First, populist anti-intellectualism constructs experts and academics, more often in social science, as ideologically driven rather than legitimate producers of knowledge. Second, it specifically frames female academics as socially deviant and suspect. Third, misogynistic aesthetic stereotyping delegitimizes women through appearance and affect, casting them as Chenu describes as “ugly” and “bitter.” Together, these patterns construct the figure of the female social sciences academic as a rhetorically productive figure within far-right discourse, whose authority is simultaneously undermined along epistemic, social, and gendered lines. 

Female academics and public intellectuals are disproportionately targeted through appearance-based insults and narratives of emotional instability, particularly when they are associated with feminist or progressive positions. Within this frame, the figure of the female sociology lecturer mobilized by Chenu is used as an instance of failed femininity, insofar as she is represented as failing to conform to normative expectations of feminine appearance, emotional disposition, respectability and desirability. 

The Princess: Worthy Femininity

In contrast to the representation of the female sociologist as ugly and bitter, Maria Carolina of Bourbon-Two Sicilies is implicitly constructed through a combination of aristocratic lineage and conventional markers of attractiveness—youth, blonde hair, and normative beauty—alongside her prestige and glamour. The opposition between these stereotypes reflects two radically different regimes of femininity within far-right populist discourse, structured around processes of delegitimation and idealization.  

Within this configuration, the figure of the Princess does not merely function as an aesthetic ideal, but also as a form of symbolic validation. It produces a culturally legible ideal of femininity in which aesthetic conformity and social status reinforce one another. It illustrates how visibility and worth are distributed unevenly, rendering certain bodies desirable and socially legitimate, while others are marked as deviant or unworthy —an opposition explicitly echoed in Chenu’s references to ugliness and bodily neglect. 

More than a static ideal, the Princess figure operates as a normative reference point for acceptable and desirable femininity, where beauty, refinement, and social legitimacy are tightly aligned. Taken together, these contrasting constructions of femininity serve a broader populist logic of image-making, in which gendered archetypes are mobilized to organize hierarchies of legitimacy, visibility, and credibility. In this sense, the Princess archetype embodies the “right” kind of femininity and womanhood within this symbolic economy—one that is aesthetically intelligible, socially valorized, and politically functional. 

The Princess figure also works particularly well in the context of Bardella’s electoral positioning ahead of the 2027 presidential race, especially given the timing and circulation of the orchestrated, paparazzi-style photographs of the couple. The Princess figure is highly media-friendly and easily integrated into simplified narrative formats, including “fairy-tale” framings that translate personal relationships into emotionally resonant political stories. In this sense, rather than functioning as a private individual, the Princess operates as a branding resource.

The Populist Leader and the Princess: Romance as Political Resource?

This romance between the young, ambitious populist leader of the French far right and the glamorous jet-setter princess can indeed be seen as part of a wider strategy of political communication and personal branding, contributing to the construction of Bardella’s profile as a prospective presidential candidate.

It also reinforces a narrative of upward social mobility, in which Bardella’s self-presentation as emerging from a modest, working-class background is juxtaposed with his growing proximity to aristocratic lineage and inherited forms of cultural and social capital. 

However, this construction is also potentially ambivalent. Bardella has long cultivated an image as a politician who speaks for ordinary people against the elites, a figure of social ascent from below. Yet his relationship with a luxury influencer, jetsetter and heir to a fortune worth several hundred million euros—risks complicating that populist narrative of proximity to these “ordinary people” he claims to represent.

References

Chenu, S. [@sebchenu]. (n.d.). “Je suis ravi de voir @J_Bardella amoureux et que tous les deux soient épanouis ! N’en déplaise à certains, tout le monde n’a pas vocation à finir comme une prof de sociologie à Nanterre, moche, mal coiffée et aigrie ! @franceinfo” [Post]. X. https://x.com/sebchenu/status/2045028471185821837

La Provence. (2026, April 17). “Une prof à Nanterre, moche et aigrie” : Chenu défend la vie amoureuse de Bardella et s’attire les foudres de la gauche. https://www.laprovence.com/article/politique/1346683888928215/une-prof-a-nanterre-moche-et-aigrie-chenu-defend-la-vie-amoureuse-de-bardella-et-sattire-les-foudres-de-la-gauche

Caulcutt, Clea. (2026, April 9). “Jordan Bardella: France romance with Italian royal heiress goes public.” Politico. https://www.politico.eu/article/jordan-bardella-france-romance-italian-royal-heiress-goes-public/

SNCS-FSU. (2026, April 20). “Le SNCS-FSU dénonce les propos diffamatoires et misogynes de Sébastien Chenu.”https://sncs.fr/2026/04/21/le-sncs-fsu-denonce-les-propos-diffamatoires-et-misogynes-de-sebastien-chenu/

Helsinki Pride parade.

The Ripple Effect: How a Finnish Hate Speech Case Fuels Transatlantic Culture Wars

by CommentariesEditor’s ChoiceEuropean ObservatoryGenderHomeHuman Rights

Dr. Gwenaëlle Bauvois shows how a single legal case can reverberate far beyond its national context, becoming a transnational resource in contemporary culture wars. The conviction of Päivi Räsänen by the Finnish Supreme Court—carefully distinguishing between protected religious expression and punishable factual claims—has been rapidly reframed into a simplified narrative of “persecuted faith.” In this process, complex legal reasoning gives way to emotionally resonant claims about censorship and moral decline. Dr. Bauvois highlights how transatlantic conservative networks mobilize such cases to advance broader agendas, transforming local disputes into symbolic battlegrounds. The episode ultimately reveals how culture wars today are not merely domestic conflicts but globally circulated struggles over truth, authority, and the boundaries of legitimate speech.

By Gwenaëlle Bauvois

The Event: A Controversial Verdict

On 26 March 2026, Finland’s Supreme Court convicted Päivi Räsänen, a long-serving Christian Democrat MP and former Minister of the Interior, of incitement against a minority group. The conviction concerned a 2004 pamphlet by Räsänen, whose title roughly translates to “Male and Female He Created Them: Homosexual Relationships Challenge the Christian Understanding of Humanity.” The Court noted that Räsänen described homosexuality as “a disorder of psychosexual development” and a “sexual abnormality.”

The pamphlet’s claims about homosexuality were found to be framed as factual generalizations, not religious expression, and therefore fell within hate speech law. By contrast, her 2019 social media post—which quoted a Bible verse to criticize the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland for sponsoring Helsinki Pride and added that homosexuality was “shameful and sinful”—was deemed protected religious expression.

The political reaction was swift. Riikka Purra, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance from the Finns Party, wrote on social media: “Freedom of speech took another serious hit today through the supreme court’s voting decision.” But the ripple effect extended beyond Finland. The US Embassy in Finland called the verdict “a troubling ruling for religious freedom and freedom of expression.” A Washington Post editorial sharply criticized the decision, opening with: “Finland is often ranked as the happiest country on Earth, but that’s only if you like cold winters and harsh limitations on freedom of expression.” The conviction also drew a response from the Trump administration. Riley Barnes, a top official in the US State Department, argued on X that the conviction is “baseless” and that “in a democracy, no one should face trial for peacefully sharing their beliefs.”

The Context:  Struggles over Gender and Sexuality 

The Räsänen case is not an isolated legal dispute. It exemplifies a broader shift in Western democracies: the growing centrality of culture wars to populist mobilization. Increasingly, conflicts are driven by cultural backlash—a reaction against progressive value change that fuels today’s culture wars (Norris & Inglehart, 2019). Nowhere is this more evident than in the transnational struggles over gender and sexuality, which are the central front of contemporary culture wars (Ayoub & Stoeckl, 2024; Goetz & Mayer, 2023).

At stake in the Räsänen case is therefore not only a legal boundary but an epistemic conflict: a struggle over who has the authority to define truth, normality, and the limits of acceptable speech regarding gender and sexuality. On one side stand scientific and legal institutions that define homosexuality as a normal variation of human sexuality – a position codified by the WHO’s removal of homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in 1990. On the other side are religiously grounded claims asserting moral truths, often framed as non-negotiable values.

The Finnish Supreme Court’s reasoning reflects this tension. By classifying Räsänen’s pamphlet statements as factually incorrect generalizations, the court affirms the authority of scientific and legal knowledge. At the same time, it draws a clear line: religious belief remains protected, but its translation into degrading claims about a minority group is not.

“Flagship” for Transatlantic Conservative Networks

The significance of the Räsänen case extends far beyond Finland. It has become a resource in transnational culture wars, especially around gender and sexuality. Contemporary conservative politics are indeed increasingly organized through cross-border networks that coordinate legal strategies, political messaging, and legislative agendas (Cooper, 2017; Du Mez, 2020).

For instance, the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) —a US-based conservative Christian legal advocacy group classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group—has supported Räsänen throughout her trial, providing legal aid and raising funds. ADF has framed her case as prime evidence of a growing threat to free speech and religious liberty in Europe.

This framing has reached the highest levels of US politics. On 4 February 2026—over a month before the Finnish Supreme Court’s final conviction—Räsänen testified before the US House Judiciary Committee at a hearing titled “Europe’s Threat to American Speech and Innovation.” She was invited by Republican lawmakers, including Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, who has very strong ties with the conservative Christian think-tank The Heritage Foundation. During her visit, Räsänen also attended a Prayer and Repentance gathering alongside Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, a prominent conservative Republican who has expressed alignment with Project 2025, the ideological and political programme laid out by the Heritage Foundation.

For transatlantic conservative and Christian-right networks, Räsänen functions as a “flagship” —a symbolic figure they can brandish to illustrate how bad things are in Europe. Her experience is a cautionary tale used to support claims that Europe is suppressing Christian expression, that European legal systems are hostile to traditional religious beliefs, and that free speech protections are under threat from European regulatory models. The fact that she was actually acquitted of the Bible-quoting charge is conveniently omitted. The narrative that she was prosecuted for “quoting the Bible” is politically useful, even if factually false.

The Politics of Simplification: From Legal Nuance to Moral Narratives

The Räsänen case illustrates how complex legal judgments are translated into simplified moral narratives. Nuanced legal distinctions—such as the Supreme Court’s careful separation of protected religious speech (the social media post) from punishable factual generalizations (the pamphlet)—are flattened into binary oppositions: freedom versus censorship, faith versus secularism, Christian truth versus gender ideology.

Media coverage sympathetic to Räsänen conveniently ignores the complexity of the ruling—which found that context, framing, and genre matter. Conservative and Christian media outlets such as The European Conservative, Christian Network Europe, and The Hungarian Conservative have covered the case with simplifying headlines like “Is It Hate Speech to Call Homosexuality a Sin?” These outlets frequently refer to hate speech laws as instruments of secular oppression, ignoring the court’s explicit reasoning that religious expression remains protected.  

This simplification is not accidental but constitutive of populist politics. It enables actors to construct clear moral boundaries, mobilize emotions, and reinforce collective identities. The Räsänen case thus functions as a symbolic resource, anchoring abstract claims about moral decline in concrete, personalized narratives that can travel across borders.

The distinction between protected belief and punishable speech is replaced by a more resonant narrative: Räsänen is a respectable Christian politician, a grandmother and physician, sanctioned simply for expressing her faith. This narrative ignores the court’s explicit acquittal on the Bible charge and its careful reasoning. But in the logic of culture war mobilization, accuracy is secondary to affective resonance. A long, complex legal judgment does not rally supporters. A story of martyrdom does.

Conclusion

The Räsänen case is no longer about what she wrote or said, but about what others have made of her. A complex verdict has been simplified and redeployed, its original details mattering less than its political and ideological utility.

The involvement of The Heritage Foundation and the broader MAGA movement is not coincidental. In recent years, The Heritage Foundation has actively cultivated alliances with European conservative, right-wing and far-right actors—politicians, think tanks, and nationalist movements—across Hungary, Czechia, Spain, France, and Germany, and has reportedly engaged with parliamentary groups such as Patriots for Europe.

Räsänen did not become a flagship on her own. Within these conservative circles, some ideas from Project 2025 are seen as transferable to European debates on immigration, sexuality and regulation. Räsänen’s case, her hearing, and her symbolic elevation by US conservative networks are small but significant components of this larger agenda.

The Räsänen case illustrates a wider pattern: culture wars are increasingly produced transnationally, circulating through networks that reframe narratives across borders. A local case becomes a global resource, translated and repurposed for the aims of the culture war.

References

Ayoub, P. M. & Stoeckl, K. (2024). The global fight against LGBTI rights: How transnational conservative networks target sexual and gender minorities. NYU Press.

Du Mez, K. K. (2020). Jesus and John Wayne: How white evangelicals corrupted a faith and fractured a nation. Liveright.

Goetz, J. & Mayer, S. (2023). Global Perspectives on Anti-Feminism. Edinburgh University Press.

Norris, P., & Inglehart, R. (2019). Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian Populism. Cambridge University Press.

Southern Poverty Law Center. (2017, July 24). “Alliance Defending Freedom through the years.” SPLC Hatewatch. https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/07/24/alliance-defending-freedom-through-years

Washington Post. (2026, March 27). “A free-speech farce in Finland.” [Editorial]. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/03/27/finland-free-speech-religion-paivi-rasanen/

Ice Hockey Women’s Team USA warms up before its preliminary round Group B match against Finland at the Milano Ice Park in Rho, Milan, during the 2026 Milano–Cortina Winter Olympics. The United States defeated Finland 5–0. Photo: Walter Arce | Dreamstime.

March 8th: For Every Victory That Was Not Considered Important

by Editor’s ChoiceGenderHomeVoice of Youth

In this reflective Voice of Youth (VoY) commentary for International Women’s Day, Emmanouela Papapavlou examines how gender hierarchy persists not only through overt exclusion but through the subtle normalization of unequal recognition. Using the contrasting reactions to the US men’s and women’s hockey gold medals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, she argues that women’s athletic success is still too often treated as supplementary rather than self-evidently equal. The issue, she suggests, lies less in explicit insult than in the quiet cultural codes that frame male achievement as the default and female achievement as the exception. By focusing on laughter, tone, and seemingly minor acts of dismissal, Papapavlou offers a sharp critique of how misogyny survives in normalized everyday reactions, revealing the distance that still separates formal equality from genuine social recognition.

By Emmanouela Papapavlou*

At the 2026 Winter Olympic Games, the United States won two gold medals in hockey. One by the men’s team. One by the women’s team. Same sport, same flag on the chest, same summit. A few hours later, in a conversation with the President of the United States, it is announced that the men’s team will be invited to the White House to be honored for their victory. And in the flow of the conversation, comes the phrase, “we have to invite the women too.” The players burst into laughter. A spontaneous, collective, light laugh.

It was not an insult. It was not an attack. Nothing explicitly degrading or offensive was said. And yet, in those few seconds, something deeper was revealed. Because the women’s victory entered the sentence as a footnote. As a reminder. As something that “also” happened.

A gold medal has no gender. The flag is raised the same way, the anthem sounds the same, while on paper, in official statements, in medal tables, the two achievements are absolutely equal. And yet, in our collective reaction, they are not. The men’s category is considered the default version of sport. The women’s is the special category. The men’s is the prototype, while the women’s is treated as its variation.

And this was not born in that room. It did not begin with a joke. It is the product of a culture that has learned to treat male success as a given and female success as an exception. As something worthy of congratulations, but not of the same unquestioned recognition. As something that “it would be good to honor as well.”

We live in 2026 and sport remains deeply male-dominated. Not only in terms of funding and visibility, but in symbolism. The hero, the captain, the leader, the warrior. Think about it. The images that accompany these words are still male. When a woman wins, we often describe her journey as “inspiring,” her endurance as “moving,” her presence as a “role model.” When a man wins, we speak of dominance, power, greatness. One victory moves us. The other confirms expectations.

What is most troubling, however, is not the difference in adjectives. It is that the laughter caused no discomfort. There was no pause. No split second of silence suggesting something was off. It felt natural. And that sense of naturalness is the problem. So why did it feel so natural in the first place?

Misogynistic mentality today rarely appears through shouting. It does not openly declare that “women are worth less.” It shows up in subtle tones. In inflections. In glances. In “jokes” that pass unnoticed. In the familiar “come on, don’t take it so seriously.” In an invitation framed like an obligation. In an achievement treated as an addition rather than as an unquestioned equal.

These small things, which seem insignificant, are what sustain the larger structure. As with every form of gender inequality, the root does not lie only in extreme incidents. It lies in what we have learned to consider normal. In the fact that unequal treatment no longer surprises us. In the fact that it does not bother us enough to react. In the fact that we laugh too or remain silent.

That is how hierarchy is built without ever naming it. Through small concessions. Through subtle diminishments. Through a society that speaks of equality on paper, yet in practice continues to place the male experience at the center and the female one at the margins. If the medal is equal, why isn’t the reaction?

And today, on International Women’s Day, we will once again speak about rights, achievements, and struggles that were fought to get us here. We will honor the women who fought to stand on fields that did not want them, in competitions that did not count them, in societies that preferred them silent. For every woman who spent countless hours training, who endured doubt, mockery, less funding, less coverage, less recognition. For every woman who reached the top knowing that even there she would have to prove her worth all over again, only for the very country she represented to remind her, the next day, with a laugh, that her effort and her victory were not quite as important.

This is not about oversensitivity. It is not about “political correctness.” It is about value. If a woman’s success requires a reminder in order to be acknowledged, then it is not considered self-evident. If inclusion provokes laughter, then equality has not taken root. It has merely been legislated.

So the question is not whether someone had bad intentions. The question is why diminishment fits so easily inside a joke. Why the idea that “we have to invite the women too” sounds like an add-on rather than an obvious part of the sentence. Why, even today, female success requires clarification.

Perhaps because our sense of normal has not changed as much as we think. Perhaps because the equality we proclaim has not yet moved from law into consciousness. And until it does, we will continue to encounter misogyny not only in the loud and blatant moments, but in the small, smiling ones.

The issue is not to stop laughing. The issue is to start asking ourselves what exactly we find funny.

(*) Emmanouela Papapavlou is a high school student from Thessaloniki, Greece, deeply passionate about social and political issues. She has actively participated in Model United Nations and other youth forums, serving as a chairperson in multiple conferences and winning awards in Greek debate competitions. Writing is her greatest passion, and she loves using it to explore democracy, civic engagement, and human rights. Her dream is to share her ideas, inspire action, and amplify the voices of young people who want to make a difference. Email: emmanpapapavlou@gmail.com

Professor Elin Bjarnegård.

Prof. Bjarnegård: Gender Will Become a Central Fault Line Between Liberal Democracy and Authoritarian Populism

by AuthoritarianismEditor’s ChoiceGenderHomeInterviews

In this ECPS interview, Professor Elin Bjarnegård (Uppsala University) argues that gender is no longer a side issue but “a useful, malleable concept for authoritarian leaders”—and will become “an increasingly central fault line” separating liberal democracy from authoritarian populism. Moving beyond a simple backlash thesis, she shows how regimes alternate between ‘genderbashing’ and ‘genderwashing’, weaponizing equality talk for legitimacy at home and abroad. Professor Bjarnegård also links democratic backsliding to gendered intimidation, online harassment, and what she calls “sexual corruption.” Noting that the Epstein files revealed abuses “in the corridors of power” in democratic settings too, she warns that personalistic rule heightens risk—especially the “impunity surrounding them.” She urges resisting polarization, scrutinizing symbols, and asking where gender concretely matters in policy.

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

In an era marked by democratic erosion and the global rise of authoritarian populism, gender politics has emerged not merely as a cultural battleground but as a strategic axis of regime competition. In this interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Elin Bjarnegård of Uppsala University argues that gender will increasingly function as a defining fault line separating liberal democratic governance from authoritarian populist rule. Moving beyond conventional explanations that frame anti-gender politics primarily as ideological backlash, Professor Bjarnegård emphasizes the instrumentalization of gender as a tool of political survival, legitimacy, and international signaling. As she explains, “gender becomes a useful, malleable concept for authoritarian leaders—a powerful symbol that can be mobilized for regime purposes,” underscoring how strategic deployment rather than doctrinal conviction often drives contemporary gender politics.

This strategic perspective helps explain why gender rights are likely to intensify as a central arena of geopolitical and normative contestation. Professor Bjarnegård anticipates that “gender rights, or perhaps the strategic use of gender, will become an increasingly central fault line,” not only because of ideological polarization but also because gender provides an “easy, simplistic narrative to deploy strategically” in polarized societies. Such narratives enable regimes to oscillate between exclusionary rhetoric and symbolic inclusion, reinforcing domestic authority while communicating selectively with international audiences.

The interview also highlights the darker governance implications of weakened accountability in populist and authoritarian systems, particularly regarding gendered abuses of power. Drawing on her concept of “sexual corruption,” Professor Bjarnegård reframes such abuses as systemic governance failures rather than isolated misconduct. Referencing the recent release of the Epstein files, she cautions against simplistic regime-type explanations, noting that “these gendered abuses of authority have also proliferated in the corridors of power in predominantly democratic contexts in Europe and the United States.” Yet she stresses that personalistic rule and eroded oversight create heightened risks in authoritarian settings, where such systems are “more at risk both of experiencing these gendered abuses and, perhaps especially, of the impunity surrounding them—of people not reporting them, of them remaining unseen, and of not being addressed.” This dynamic speaks directly to the broader vulnerability of populist authoritarian governance to gendered exploitation and unaccountable power.

More broadly, Professor Bjarnegård situates these patterns within a continuum of gendered violence that includes psychological intimidation, reputational attacks, and digitally mediated harassment—forms of coercion that undermine democratic participation without overt repression. Taken together, her analysis suggests that gender politics is becoming a diagnostic lens through which scholars can assess democratic resilience, institutional integrity, and the trajectory of global political competition. The interview thus positions gender not as a peripheral social issue but as a central structural dimension of contemporary struggles between liberal democracy and authoritarian populism.

Here is the edited version of our interview with Professor Elin Bjarnegård, revised slightly to improve clarity and flow.

Gender Is a Strategic Resource for Authoritarian Survival

Gender equality.
Illustration: Dreamstime.

Professor Elin Bjarnegård, thank you so much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: In your scholarship, you argue that authoritarian leaders treat gender not primarily as ideology but as a strategic resource for regime survival. How does this perspective revise dominant interpretations of populism’s relationship to gender politics beyond the conventional “backlash against feminism” thesis?

Professor Elin Bjarnegård: Thank you for that question. I would say that what this perspective really adds is a strategic dimension. It is not that we want to suggest there is no ideology involved—of course ideology plays a role. The relationship between populism and gender politics, and the backlash narrative in particular, still has analytical value. However, what is often overlooked is the presence of a very important strategic component. That is what we seek to foreground by adding this strategic dimension to the equation.

So we are not arguing that ideology is irrelevant, but rather that strategy deserves more attention. In this sense, gender becomes a useful, malleable concept for authoritarian leaders—a powerful symbol that can be mobilized for regime purposes.

From an ideological perspective, one must focus on policy positions and attempts to persuade opponents. A strategic perspective, by contrast, emphasizes negotiation and maneuvering. This is why I believe it is an important lens to introduce. It opens possibilities for collaboration in a polarized world and encourages us to see political opponents as actors with whom dialogue remains possible, particularly when we recognize the strategic component of their actions.

Gender Equality as Both Shield and Weapon in Global Politics

Your work distinguishes between “genderbashing” and “genderwashing” as complementary authoritarian strategies. Under what structural and international conditions do regimes oscillate between these tactics, and how does the global bundling of democracy and gender equality norms enable such strategic manipulation?

Professor Elin Bjarnegård: We see this oscillation, as you say, more clearly now and in recent years because we have had a fairly strong global norm of gender equality for the past three decades or so. That norm is now evaporating, or at least stagnating, and we also see alternative norms emerging. As the global order itself is increasingly questioned, the norm of gender equality is likewise being challenged. In a multipolar world, actors may view gender mainstreaming—as promoted by the UN or the EU—as no longer the only legitimate path. This creates space, particularly for authoritarian actors, to use gender equality as an instrument to portray themselves as modern, progressive, or even democratic, especially since gender equality and democracy have long been bundled together in major democracy-promotion efforts.

At the same time, however, this shift opens the door to a different interpretation, in which gender is used to distance regimes from global institutions such as the UN and the EU by rejecting what they frame as the foreign imposition of values in favor of traditional family norms. What was once a relatively stable landscape—where countries knew their allies, audiences, and signaling targets—has become more fluid. States now communicate simultaneously with multiple audiences. As a result, the same country may present itself as supportive of gender equality and committed to combating violence against women on the one hand, while simultaneously promoting homophobic narratives to justify, for example, military engagement with other countries.

Feminationalism Turns Inclusion Into a Weapon

Feminism.
Photo: Dreamstime.

 

Many populist actors claim to defend women’s rights selectively — for instance, against migrants or minorities — while undermining broader gender equality. How does this selective emancipation differ from classical authoritarian gender politics, and what dilemmas does it pose for liberal and intersectional feminism?

Professor Elin Bjarnegård: This type of politics—sometimes called feminationalism, or homonationalism, depending on the target group—is also part of the broader package I mentioned earlier about bringing strategy into gender politics and into authoritarian politics. It is a clear illustration of how highly strategic these dynamics can be, because in these narratives, inclusion is deployed, as you say, only selectively or strategically—and ultimately for the purpose of excluding certain groups.

If the intersectional perspective, as originally conceived, aimed to ensure that we identify the most vulnerable groups and recognize multiple systems of oppression so that people do not fall between the cracks but instead benefit from policies designed to protect them, this type of feminationalism—or the selective defense of women’s rights deployed against minorities, for instance—does the opposite: it pits these systems of oppression against each other.

In a way, it draws on our knowledge about intersectional layers of oppression but turns them against one another, claiming, for example, that gender equality and women’s rights are under threat from migration. The dilemma it poses is quite similar to that of genderbashing and genderwashing. Insofar as there is a solution, it requires caution. We need to scrutinize these narratives carefully and be specific—not simply respond to symbolism or easy answers, but examine what is actually being claimed and who is being favored—in order to look beyond the strategy.

Militarized Masculinity Fuels Authoritarian Appeal

Your research on militarized masculinity suggests that patriarchal norms can coexist with formal democratic institutions and fuel political violence. How does the persistence of such masculinist political cultures help explain the gendered appeal of authoritarian populism across diverse contexts?

Professor Elin Bjarnegård: I think masculinist cultures are both persistent, as you say, and increasingly revealing themselves and being strengthened in many places. We can begin with the fact that they coexist with, and also exist within, democratic settings. Democratic institutions were originally built by men, for men, and are imbued with male norms; studies of feminist institutionalism, for instance, have made this argument for a long time. Patriarchal norms have therefore always coexisted, to some extent, with formal democratic institutions. However, they have been challenged in recent decades, and they certainly vary and take different forms across contexts.

Many of us associate the political with masculinity to such an extent that it becomes difficult to pinpoint. While there has been significant focus on women in politics, there has been far less attention to men and masculinity in politics. Several research projects in Europe are now examining political science questions from a masculinity perspective, reflecting the rise of new forms of hegemonic and militarized masculinities that make clear the need for deeper understanding. “Men4Them” is one such project, examining radicalized young men as well as leadership and the spillover effects between the two. As part of this project, we seek both to understand the masculine ideals that politicians and leaders attempt to embody and, importantly, how these ideals can be transformed. We know change is possible: not long ago, in my country, Sweden, party leaders competed to present themselves as feminists, which is no longer the case.

This shift is likely related to the broader global order. We see geopolitical tensions and increasing militarization, alongside a reversal of the movement from soft power toward hard power. Narratives emphasizing traditionally masculine traits—such as strength over cooperation—are returning. Research shows these cultures have always existed, but what is striking today is that they are once again becoming, if not hegemonic, at least highly prominent.

Protection Narratives and the Return of Strongman Politics

Women rally in Istanbul.
Women rally in Istanbul to protest proposed anti-abortion legislation by then–Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, June 18, 2012. Photo: Sadık Güleç.

Relatedly, how do hypermasculine narratives and honor ideologies shape the emotional and symbolic appeal of strongman leadership, particularly among male constituencies experiencing status anxiety in periods of social transformation?

Professor Elin Bjarnegård: This goes back again to the question we have just discussed, because, of course, it is about leadership and about what an ideal leader is supposed to be in a specific context at a particular point in time. But as I mentioned, it is really important to consider the spillover and interaction between leaders and their constituents. There is a constant interplay between the two.

In this context of status anxiety and social transformation, there is a great deal of fear and uncertainty, which tends to favor the presentation of easy solutions to complex problems. I think one of the easiest sentiments to mobilize is a sense of lost entitlement, and looking back at traditional gender roles can provide a feeling of security.

These honor ideologies often build on an idea of protection, which speaks to a basic need for security. At the same time, we need to scrutinize this and critically examine strongman ideology. Protection may be necessary, but the key question becomes who is positioned to protect whom. It also relies on a separation between genders and assigns different values to them. This reflects a return to hard-power narratives that signal traditional strongman characteristics—protection achieved not through collaboration, but through the display of force, coercion, and strength.

Online Gendered Abuse Threatens Electoral Integrity

You have shown that violence against women in politics often operates along a continuum that includes psychological intimidation and reputational attacks. How does this less visible violence function as an informal mechanism of democratic backsliding even in electoral regimes?

Professor Elin Bjarnegård: Violence against women, as well as violence against political actors in general, operates along this continuum. But we do see that violence against political actors has gendered components.

Specifically, if we look at those gendered components and include the continuum you mentioned, it becomes important to recognize violations that occur not only physically but also psychologically and online, because the types of reputation-damaging slander that women and men encounter are fundamentally different in character. It is not that men are protected online—that is not the case—but if we examine the types of slander campaigns deployed against men and women politicians, we see that, to a much larger extent, women politicians face narratives targeting them as persons, often highly sexualized and directed at their family members, whereas men are more often, sometimes harshly and unfairly, criticized for their policy stances or political positions.

I, therefore, think it is important to demonstrate this continuum and to include psychological intimidation and reputational attacks, because they can be equally damaging to democratic procedures. They reflect a similar readiness to violate democratic integrity as physical forms of violence. Although such actions may not violate bodily integrity to the same extent as physical violence, they certainly violate personal integrity just as much. If we are concerned with threats to democracy and with disrespect for democratic procedures and institutions, I believe that violations occurring online must also be included in that continuum.

Homosocial Recruitment Sustains Male Dominance in Populist Parties

Your feminist institutionalist research highlights how informal party networks and homosocial recruitment reproduce male dominance. To what extent do populist radical right parties intensify these exclusionary mechanisms compared to mainstream parties?

Professor Elin Bjarnegård: It is a difference in degree rather than in kind. In general, what we see in parties and organizations alike is that if you only or primarily network with like-minded people who tend to think, act, and behave like you, and if you mainly recognize competence in those you perceive as similar to yourself, you may be able to shape a very strong and coherent message. Collaboration may be smooth in that group, and you will be surrounded by people who agree with you.

But you will not have broad representation, you will not hear other perspectives, and you will not be challenged by—or learn from—others. Insofar as populist radical right parties tend to build more on loyalties than on representational claims, and more on personal relationships than on bureaucratic recruitment procedures, we can certainly see this type of homosocial recruitment producing male dominance there as well. It becomes a kind of celebration of like-mindedness rather than a reflection of a diversity of ideas. This plays a significant role in the masculine dominance we observe both among constituents and within these parties themselves.

Gender Equality as a Tool of Authoritarian Legitimacy

Giorgia Meloni.
Giorgia Meloni, Prime Minister of Italy and leader of the Fratelli d’Italia party, speaks at an electoral rally ahead of the national elections in Turin, Italy, September 13, 2022. Photo: Antonello Marangi / Dreamstime.

Authoritarian regimes sometimes increase women’s descriptive representation through quotas while simultaneously restricting civil liberties. Does such symbolic inclusion risk legitimizing illiberal rule by projecting an image of progress without substantive empowerment?

Professor Elin Bjarnegård: That is exactly the risk of what my colleague Per Setterberg and I have come to call autocratic genderwashing, especially when this descriptive representation does not lead to substantive representation, or when it is limited and includes only women affiliated with the government, for instance.

In many places, with Rwanda perhaps as one of the clearest examples, we do see that the introduction of gender quotas really boosts the representation of women. But if we take a closer look, we see that it mainly boosts the representation of government-affiliated women. This then leads to an even stronger electoral dominance of an already dominant authoritarian party, at the same time as it generates goodwill and international prestige, because the country is seen as favoring and promoting gender equality and women’s representation. It can present itself as modern and progressive and, interestingly enough, because of this bundling of democracy and gender, even as a democratic country.

All the while, if we look more closely at what happens behind the scenes, we also know that this is a country that keeps jailing opponents, restricting civil liberties, and remains authoritarian. So it is about taking a closer look and considering what kinds of signals they are able to send and who this reform actually favors. It can be that it favors both. We can end up in tricky situations where a gender equality reform improves conditions for women—perhaps for a select group of women, but nevertheless for women—while at the same time strengthening the hold on power of an autocratic regime.

That is, in a way, an impossible conundrum we are faced with, but we nevertheless have to recognize it. That is really what we hope to spur discussion on: not to see it as one thing or the other, or simply accept the image these regimes want to portray, but to recognize these value clashes, these conundrums, and discuss what we should do in such cases.

Democratization Does Not Automatically Deliver Gender Equality

Your work suggests democratization does not automatically produce gender equality and may even coexist with patriarchal power structures. How should scholars rethink linear assumptions linking democratic transitions to women’s rights advancements?

Professor Elin Bjarnegård: In principle, if you ask most scholars, my guess would be that this linear assumption has been rethought. At the same time, it remains a very relevant question, because versions of it still persist in people’s minds. Even when asked explicitly, people may not believe in a strictly linear progression where one development automatically produces the other. As I have often noted, in democracy promotion and in discussions about how to advance democracy, the inclusion of women has become a core component.

While many would define democracy as something that cannot exist without the proper inclusion of all groups—and the inclusion of women is, of course, necessary and important for a genuine democracy—it does not follow that inclusion can compensate for a lack of competition. This is where we have often gone wrong, allowing inclusion to substitute for the absence of political competition in the eyes of the international community, for instance.

Looking back historically, if we examine the issue more closely, some cosmetic gender-equality reforms—for example, in many communist countries where equality was a prominent ideological principle and women were relatively well represented in parliament—did not make those systems democratic. We have also seen in many contexts that women played crucial roles in democratic transition movements, only to be marginalized once parties and institutions were established. The relationship is therefore far more complex than the linear assumption suggests. At the same time, the connection is not entirely absent, because inclusion remains an important principle of democracy; it is simply not the only one.

Sexual Corruption Is a Systemic, Not Isolated, Problem

Jeffrey Epstein
Float featuring a caricature of Jeffrey Epstein and the slogan “Everyone protected the criminals and ignored the victims” at the Rosenmontag carnival parade in Düsseldorf, North Rhine-Westphalia. Photo: Elena Frolova / Dreamstime.

Your concept of “sexual corruption” reframes gendered abuses of authority as governance failures rather than isolated misconduct. Do such practices proliferate under populist or authoritarian rule where institutional accountability mechanisms are weakened?

Professor Elin Bjarnegård: Yes, such practices proliferate anywhere institutional accountability mechanisms are weak. But then again, as the recent release of the Epstein files, for instance, has clearly demonstrated, these gendered abuses of authority have also proliferated in the corridors of power in predominantly democratic contexts in Europe and the United States. So it is not as simple as a matter of them and us when it comes to sexual corruption and this kind of gendered abuse of power. The problem exists everywhere.

Interestingly, it has perhaps received the most attention in areas like Sub-Saharan Africa, where there have been significant campaigns against practices such as teachers handing out grades in exchange for sex. But we have to look at different contexts and recognize that they carry different types of risks in different areas.

Insofar as your question concerns populist and authoritarian rule, these systems generally have a greater propensity to overlook institutional accountability mechanisms in favor of, as we discussed earlier, more personalistic loyalties. They are therefore certainly more at risk both of experiencing these gendered abuses and, perhaps especially, of the impunity surrounding them—of people not reporting them, of them remaining unseen, and of not being addressed.

Digital Harassment as a Tool to Exclude Women from Politics

How are online harassment, disinformation, and gendered hate speech transforming the authoritarian toolkit, particularly as methods for discouraging women’s political participation without overt repression?

Professor Elin Bjarnegård: Yes, we talked a bit about this earlier when we discussed the continuum of violence, which of course includes psychological forms of violence, intimidation, and hate speech that increasingly take place online. The use of technology in this type of harassment, disinformation, and hate speech is making an already effective and efficient authoritarian toolkit even more efficient, because it gives it wider reach, causes more harm than before, and can project images and ideas that are simply not true.

The fact that these violations have increasingly moved online, or are also spread online, means that technology is now used both to spread fear and to disseminate propaganda in new ways. It also represents a move away from ideological discussion, because it often disregards ideological stances entirely, relying instead on targeted messaging and algorithms to influence different groups in a particular direction, making it more like marketing than politics in a sense. It is not about convincing people; it is about moving them in a specific direction, even if it means misinforming them. This is an area where the authoritarian toolkit is clearly expanding. For women’s political participation, as well as participation in general, we see a number of new methods emerging here.

Trumpism Normalized Anti-Gender Rhetoric Globally

MAGA
Woman wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat prays at a “Stop the Steal” rally in Helena, Montana, on November 7, 2020, in support of Donald Trump and claims that the election was stolen by Joe Biden. Photo: Dreamstime.

From a comparative perspective, how do you evaluate the global impact of Donald Trump’s presidency on gender politics? Did Trumpism normalize gender-based rhetoric and policy rollbacks that other populist leaders subsequently emulated?

Professor Elin Bjarnegård: It is almost hard to overestimate the impact, but nevertheless I think that what we see happening in the US did not come from nowhere. There was already a platform for this kind of discussion. Political leaders like Putin, Orbán, and Erdoğan had already drawn media attention for both sexist remarks and derogatory statements about what they called “gender ideology,” a broad concept often deployed to describe perceived threats to gender equality against traditional family values. So I think that during Donald Trump’s second term in office, he could simply follow these already existing international narratives, and he did so even in his inaugural address. He vowed to dismantle gender mainstreaming and announced an executive order for government agencies to remove statements, policies, and regulations that promote or otherwise incorporate gender ideology.

This is certainly rhetoric he could build on, and we could say that sometimes it functions mainly as a strategy to align himself with certain parts of the population while distancing himself from others. But the potential danger with these narratives, and with genderbashing in general, is that to be a credible leader, one sometimes also has to follow through. We see that in the US: it has not just stopped at rhetoric. We have also seen the dismantling of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives across various sectors.

This shows that he had a platform to build on and could follow suit, but when both this rhetoric and these policy rollbacks occur in the US, they also normalize these types of discussions and narratives, portraying gender not necessarily as something positive but as something potentially dangerous and harmful.

The Rise and Fall of Sweden’s Feminist Foreign Policy

Sweden’s feminist foreign policy was widely seen as a pioneering normative project yet was later discontinued. What does this reversal reveal about the resilience — or fragility — of gender-progressive policies amid shifting political coalitions and populist radical right pressures?

Professor Elin Bjarnegård: Sweden’s feminist foreign policy is an interesting case in point because it vividly illustrates how much the world has changed in just a few years. When the feminist foreign policy was first adopted and launched in Sweden in 2014, it was the first of its kind. It was, as you said, seen as pioneering. We were in a world where being feminist was seen as a good thing and where this was something people competed over in Sweden and elsewhere, and we could also see that a lot of countries followed suit. It is a bit difficult to know exactly what constitutes a feminist foreign policy, but at least 15 or 16 other countries declared, in one way or another, that they also wanted to pursue a feminist foreign policy.

But then, just a few years later, in 2022, when we had a new government, the very first thing they did was to withdraw the feminist foreign policy, claiming that they were not against gender equality but against these labels, which were more about showcasing and using the word feminist than about actually doing things. It is interesting that the first country in the world to adopt a feminist foreign policy was also the first country in the world to withdraw it, and it is very symptomatic of the development we are seeing.

I think it goes back to many of the issues we discussed, particularly the potential danger that gender as a word, and gender equality as a norm, has been so all-encompassing. In gender mainstreaming, for instance, it has been something said to apply to all sectors, all policies, and all genders. In the success story of gender equality over the past few decades, we may have run the risk of not being specific enough, of not saying what matters and why it matters. That leaves the door open for interpretations, misinterpretations, and adaptations of what gender as this big concept actually is and could be.

That is what we are seeing now, and it explains why leaders can juxtapose using gender equality as a good thing with using gender ideology as a bad thing, oscillating between the two, because it is not necessarily clear what it is supposed to mean. That is also why it has been difficult, to some extent, to evaluate policies like the feminist foreign policy. But what we did see is that it was, at least, more than a label. It did change the way things were carried out in Swedish foreign policy, even though it was in place for only a few years.

Gender Rights as the Next Global Fault Line

And lastly, Professor Bjarnegård, looking ahead, do you anticipate that gender rights will become an increasingly central fault line in the global contest between liberal democracy and authoritarian populism — and what forms might meaningful resistance and democratic renewal take?

Professor Elin Bjarnegård: That is the million-dollar question. I do, unfortunately, anticipate that gender rights, or perhaps the strategic use of gender, will become an increasingly central fault line. But I also think that this is why the strategic component we are trying to remind people of is important, because it means that we can find areas where it may not be all about sexism, misogyny, and ideological differences, but also about how gender has become a useful, easy, and simplistic narrative to deploy strategically.

If we try to resist not by increasing polarization but rather by finding spaces for negotiation and discussion, it helps—at least it does for me—to think that part of this is strategy, not only ideological conviction. I really think the first step is to be a bit more cautious whenever we see people speaking about gender, either in the form of potential genderbashing—building this large phantasm of so-called gender ideology—or genderwashing, emphasizing all the good things a country or regime has done for gender equality. We should be careful not to fall into the trap of letting gender become a single, overarching symbol, but instead try to be specific: where and how does it matter in a particular policy area?

Sometimes we also have to be clear about the trade-offs and value clashes that are part of politics. We cannot always have everything that is good, and not everything that is good is compatible. At least for me, looking back at the past decades, it has been an unprecedentedly positive era for women’s rights, and it is in many ways remarkable that gender equality achieved such status as a global norm. But that also means we now need to take a second look in this different era and ask where we need to be more careful and more specific about why it matters, focusing on concrete issues rather than treating gender merely as a symbol, because it is important for many other reasons as well.

Voters queue at a polling station in Sendra village near Beawar during the Panchayati Raj elections in India on September 28, 2020, held amid the COVID-19 pandemic, with turnout exceeding 83 percent in the first phase across 25 districts. Photo: Dreamstime.

Voting with Freebies: How Direct Welfare Benefits Reshape Electoral Behaviour in India

by CommentariesEditor’s ChoiceGenderHomeVoice of Youth

In this analytically rich commentary, ECPS Youth Group member Saurabh Raj examines how direct welfare delivery is transforming electoral politics in India. Focusing on the recent Bihar assembly election, Raj shows how visible and targeted benefits—especially cash transfers to women—have become a powerful political language shaping voter participation and choice. Conceptualising this shift as “freebie populism,” the article argues that welfare now operates not only as a developmental tool but as a mode of political mobilisation, mediated through digital infrastructures and personalised state–citizen encounters. While caste, religion, and ideology remain influential, Raj highlights the growing importance of the individual beneficiary as a new axis of political belonging. Situating Bihar within broader interstate patterns, the article raises critical questions about democratic accountability, political reasoning, and the future trajectory of Indian democracy.

By Saurabh Raj*

The recent Bihar state[1] assembly election provides a useful lens to examine how welfare-centred mobilisation is reshaping contemporary electoral politics in India. Bihar recorded its highest ever voter turnout at 66.9 percent. The gender pattern was even more striking. Women voted at 71.6 percent while men voted at 62.8 percent. In 130 of the 243 constituencies, more women than men participated. These are not small variations or one time anomalies. They represent a structural shift in who participates and who determines electoral outcomes (Basu 2021).

The pattern of results closely mirrors this shift. The incumbent governing coalition won 114 of the 130 seats where women led the turnout which is close to 88 percent of all such constituencies. This alignment coincided with the scale and timing of welfare measures that reached women directly, warranting closer analytical attention. A direct cash transfer equivalent to approximately USD 120 to over twelve million women shortly before the election was only one part of a wider package that included pension increases, electricity bill relief and higher payments for frontline workers. The opposition responded with guarantee booklets, registration drives and promises of future support, as well as cards distributed by Jan Suraj[2] that signalled an alternative welfare imagination. Welfare was not an accessory to the campaign. It was the central axis around which political mobilisation occurred.

This election therefore makes visible a broader phenomenon that has been unfolding across India. Welfare centred electoral strategies are transforming political communication, voter reasoning and the emotional structure of democratic belonging. The rise of freebie populism, a term used here to describe the combination of populist rhetoric with highly visible and personalised welfare delivery, marks a distinct shift in how the state is imagined and how voters evaluate political actors. The term “freebie populism” is used here as an analytic category rather than a normative judgement. It refers not to the undesirability of welfare provision but to a specific political logic in which competitive electoral incentives privilege immediacy, visibility, and personalisation of benefits. This logic differs from rights-based or institutionalised welfare regimes, where entitlements are routinised and less directly tied to electoral cycles. The distinction is important, as the argument advanced here concerns the mode of political mobilisation rather than the legitimacy of welfare itself. ​​

Methods Note

This commentary draws on publicly available data from the Election Commission of India (Election Commission of India, 2024), state budget documents, press releases, field reporting in Hindi and English media and academic literature on populism, welfare delivery and voting behaviour. Interpretive arguments build on comparative work on populism (Mudde, 2004; Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2017) and on scholarship that links welfare delivery to political participation (Khemani, 2022; Kruks Wisner, 2018). Additional reference is made to studies on gendered political engagement, digital welfare architecture and direct benefit transfer systems. The purpose of this article is analytical rather than predictive. It aims to situate the Bihar experience within a wider conceptual and empirical framework that illuminates the changing nature of electoral politics in India.

Classic Understandings of Populism

Cas Mudde defines populism as a thin centred ideology that imagines society as divided between “the pure people” and “the corrupt elite” and insists that politics must directly express the general will (Mudde, 2004). Because it is thin centred, it can attach itself to a range of ideological projects including right wing, left wing or regionally specific imaginations of welfare, nationalism and identity. Mudde and Kaltwasser note that populism becomes powerful when leaders present themselves as direct protectors of ordinary citizens and construct emotional and symbolic shortcuts that bypass institutions and complex policy debates (Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2017).

Comparative research from Latin America demonstrates how populist leaders frequently combine emotive rhetoric with selective welfare delivery to cultivate direct affiliation with the masses (Hawkins, 2010; Roberts, 2015). These transfers are not incidental. They are political instruments through which belonging is reinforced and legitimacy is sustained. In India, populism has historically relied on religious mobilisation, symbolic gestures, charismatic leadership or caste-based appeals. Material transfers existed but did not shape political identity in the pronounced way witnessed today.

The current moment therefore extends rather than replaces classic understandings of populism. It adds a strong material and bureaucratically mediated dimension that is deeply embedded in the digital public infrastructure of the state. This dimension is responsible for the heightened immediacy with which political commitment is experienced.

Conceptualising Freebie Populism

Freebie populism represents a contemporary variant of populist mobilisation in which the primary bridge between leaders and citizens is constructed through direct material transfers rather than symbolic or rhetorical appeals alone. It does not replace classic definitions of populism but operationalises the promise of protection and recognition by making it tangible through targeted benefits. Cash transfers, subsidised electricity, expanded pensions, and free travel serve as visible proof of political commitment. These benefits act as recurring reminders that the state, often personified through political leadership, acknowledges the immediate material needs of citizens. Three features distinguish freebie populism from broader welfare politics. 

Immediacy is central, as transfers are often timed close to elections and their effects are felt within household budgets almost immediately. Voters therefore perceive the state not as a distant bureaucracy but as a source of immediate relief. 

Visibility is another critical feature. Digital transfers generate SMS alerts and bank notifications, and these alerts themselves function as instruments of political communication, turning a routine bureaucratic act into a concrete political moment. 

Personalised recognition is a third characteristic. Scholars note that direct transfers create a strong sense of being acknowledged by the state, particularly among women who manage household finances (Khemani, 2022). This personalisation transforms welfare from a bureaucratic entitlement into a more intimate political relationship between the individual and the state. 

Freebie populism does not erase caste or religious identities, which remain significant in shaping expectations and voting behaviour (Jaffrelot, 2021). However, welfare delivered directly to individual bank accounts establishes a new axis of political belonging. A woman from the Yadav or Paswan community may continue to retain group-based preferences, but her voting choices are also influenced by whether the state has reached her personally. The digital architecture of Aadhaar-linked transfers deepens this individualisation, making the relationship between the voter and the state more immediate, measurable, and experientially reliable.

Bihar and the Emergence of the Individual Beneficiary

The Bihar election demonstrates the mechanics of freebie populism with unusual clarity because the scale of targeted transfers was unprecedented. The distribution of ten thousand rupees to more than one crore twenty lakh women created a widespread perception that the state was acknowledging their economic vulnerability. This was part of a larger environment that included electricity bill relief, increased pensions and higher remuneration for frontline workers. These measures were repeatedly communicated through public meetings, local level messaging and digital outreach, ensuring that beneficiaries associated them with the ruling leadership.

The opposition attempted to counter this by centring women in its own campaign. Guarantee booklets, self-registration drives and targeted promises sought to build an alternative welfare narrative. Jan Suraj’s cards, for instance, attempted to construct a future oriented welfare claim. Yet the immediacy of actual deposits seemed to carry greater weight than future promises. Voters were able to verify receipt of benefits in the most tangible sense.

Turnout and voting patterns align closely with this political strategy. Women led the turnout in 130 constituencies, and the incumbent governing coalition won 114 of these. The fact that this alignment occurred during a period of intense welfare messaging suggests the strong influence of direct benefits on electoral behaviour. The political message materialised not as an abstract claim but as a verified deposit received through a mobile phone alert. Politics was increasingly experienced through the position of the individual beneficiary.

This alignment does not imply that welfare purchases votes. Rather it indicates that welfare is functioning as a channel through which political recognition, credibility and responsiveness are evaluated. Voters appear to be rewarding the government for delivering measurable relief and penalising actors whose promises remain untested.

Shifting Political Behaviour

The Bihar data indicates that freebie populism is reshaping political behaviour in ways that build on and extend earlier research. Scholars have noted that low-income voters are highly strategic and responsive to welfare delivery, often making reasoned decisions based on evidence of state performance (Khemani, 2022; Kruks Wisner, 2018). The Bihar experience reinforces this insight and highlights three important dimensions of change. 

First, welfare is increasingly becoming the primary language of political recognition. Women voters demonstrated exceptionally high turnout and a strong preference alignment in constituencies where welfare delivery was both visible and recent, suggesting that direct transfers and other targeted benefits have emerged as key instruments through which citizens assess the state’s commitment. 

Second, citizenship itself is being experienced through the household economy. This does not reduce political engagement to a transactional exchange but instead reflects a new democratic imagination in which the state operates as a direct economic actor within the household. For many women, welfare programmes provide relief from domestic pressures, enhance financial independence, and support caregiving responsibilities, thereby strengthening political agency. At the same time, political reasoning is increasingly grounded in immediacy. 

Third, freebie populism shifts the focus from abstract or long term developmental claims toward the voter’s immediate lived experience. Citizens evaluate political actors on the credibility, timing, and scale of benefit delivery and the responsiveness they witness in practice. This approach does not indicate passivity; rather, it reflects active and informed political calculation based on tangible outcomes and personal experience (Chauchard, 2017). 

Taken together, these patterns suggest that political loyalty is increasingly shaped by repeated and recognisable acts of recognition rather than broad ideological or identity-based appeals, signalling a profound shift in how democratic engagement is conceptualised and practiced.

These patterns resonate with findings from other democracies where targeted welfare provision has become central to electoral competition, including parts of Latin America and Southeast Asia. In such contexts, welfare delivery increasingly functions as both policy and political communication, blurring the boundary between governance and mobilisation. The Indian case therefore contributes to a growing comparative literature on how material distribution reshapes democratic participation under conditions of economic precarity.

Patterns Beyond Bihar

The pattern observed in Bihar is not an isolated development but part of a broader transformation in electoral politics across multiple Indian states. Welfare centred strategies have become essential elements of political competition, and their design increasingly reflects the logic of freebie populism, where visible and immediate benefits shape political belonging and voter behaviour. Each state offers a slightly different model, yet all demonstrate the growing centrality of targeted welfare in shaping electoral outcomes.

Jharkhand provides a clear example of this shift. The state expanded support for low-income women through age linked educational transfers and targeted assistance schemes that reached households directly. These interventions were not presented merely as development initiatives but became central to political communication, especially in rural districts where economic insecurity remains acute. The emphasis on young women and first-generation learners created a perception that the state was intervening meaningfully in the life chances of vulnerable households. Political actors highlighted these measures during election campaigns, illustrating how welfare has become a key electoral asset.

Maharashtra further demonstrates the consolidation of welfare centred politics. The Ladki Bahin Scheme placed women at the centre of the electoral narrative by offering regular financial assistance and presenting the state as an active participant in household welfare. The scheme was supported by recognisable branding, sustained outreach and continuous communication that associated the ruling leadership with direct support for women. This combination of financial transfers and symbolic visibility strengthened the perception that welfare was both a right and a political commitment, reinforcing the link between beneficiaries and the state.

Telangana presents another version of this emerging trend. Successive governments have relied heavily on targeted welfare, particularly through agricultural support schemes, marriage assistance programmes and community specific initiatives. These policies created strong emotional and material incentives for distinct social groups and demonstrated that welfare could be used strategically to cultivate enduring political alliances. Welfare delivery in Telangana has become an essential component of electoral mobilisation rather than a supplementary tool and continues to play a decisive role in shaping partisan loyalty.

Tamil Nadu offers one of the longest running traditions of welfare linked mobilisation in India. The contemporary phase builds on earlier frameworks but introduces new elements such as free bus travel for women, expanded meal schemes, higher pensions and targeted relief for vulnerable households. Welfare delivery is deeply integrated into political identity and party narratives. Campaigns consistently highlight the immediacy and continuity of state support, reinforcing the idea that welfare programmes are expressions of political care rather than bureaucratic entitlements.

Across these states, welfare is framed not merely as development but as a direct political relationship. This relationship is mediated through digital systems that enable individual bank transfers, local mobilisation networks that translate policy into political communication, frontline workers who act as intermediaries between the state and beneficiaries and the emotional resonance generated when citizens experience state recognition in concrete and material form. Together, these elements show how freebie populism has become a national phenomenon shaping political participation and redefining the meaning of electoral competition.

However, important differences remain across states. In Tamil Nadu and other states, welfare programmes are embedded within long-standing party institutions and ideological narratives, reducing their electoral immediacy. In contrast, states such as Bihar and Jharkhand exhibit a more episodic and election-timed deployment of benefits, intensifying their political salience. These variations suggest that freebie populism operates most strongly where welfare delivery is newly individualised and weakly institutionalised.

Limits of Attribution and Scope of Argument

This article advances an interpretive rather than causal argument between welfare transfers and electoral outcomes. Voting behaviour is shaped by multiple overlapping factors, including caste alignments, candidate credibility, party organisation, and broader political narratives. The observed alignment between women-led turnout and electoral outcomes in Bihar should therefore be read as indicative rather than deterministic.

The argument advanced here is that welfare delivery has acquired heightened political salience under conditions of digital transfer, electoral competition, and economic precarity. Direct benefits function as signals of state responsiveness that voters incorporate into broader political reasoning. This does not imply political passivity or vote-buying; rather, it reflects strategic and experiential evaluation by citizens based on verifiable state action. Future research using booth-level data or longitudinal beneficiary tracking would allow for more precise estimation of causal effects.

Conclusion

Welfare centred mobilisation has become a central feature of contemporary electoral competition in India. The Bihar assembly election provides a useful illustration of how direct and visible welfare delivery is reshaping patterns of political participation by foregrounding the individual beneficiary as a significant site of democratic engagement. High female turnout and the alignment of women dominated constituencies with electoral outcomes underline the growing importance of welfare as a medium through which citizens experience and evaluate state responsiveness.

This shift does not indicate a decline in political reasoning or a reduction of citizenship to transactional exchange. Instead, it reflects a reorientation of democratic judgement in which voters increasingly rely on observable and verifiable state action to assess political credibility. Welfare delivery, mediated through digital and bureaucratic systems, functions not only as policy intervention but also as a communicative practice that signals recognition, reliability, and proximity between the state and citizens.

At the same time, the increasing centrality of welfare in electoral mobilisation raises important questions for democratic accountability. An emphasis on immediacy and visibility may encourage short term distributive competition at the expense of institutional consolidation and sustained policy debate. As electoral legitimacy becomes more closely tied to the timing and scale of benefits, political contestation risks narrowing to questions of delivery rather than deliberation.

The broader challenge for Indian democracy therefore lies not in the expansion of welfare itself but in the political logic through which welfare is mobilised. Understanding how welfare delivery reshapes political participation, voter reasoning, and experiences of citizenship is essential to assessing the evolving character of democratic practice in India. The Bihar case suggests that future electoral outcomes will increasingly be shaped by how convincingly the state makes itself present in the everyday lives of citizens, alongside enduring influences of identity, ideology, and organisation. Beyond India, the analysis highlights how welfare delivery can reconfigure democratic engagement in contexts where citizens encounter the state most directly through material transfers.

 

(*) Saurabh Raj is a core team member at the Indian School of Democracy and is associated with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). He has a decade of experience in Indian politics and elections.

 

References

Aiyar, Y., and Walton, M. (2015). “Rights, accountability and citizenship: Examining India’s social welfare architecture.” Accountability Initiative.

Basu, P. (2021). “Women and electoral participation in India: Changing patterns of turnout and political engagement.” Economic and Political Weekly, 56(12), 34 to 42.

Chauchard, S. (2017). Why representation matters: The meaning of ethnic quotas in rural India. Cambridge University Press.

Election Commission of India. (2024). State Assembly Election Data: Bihar.

Hawkins, K. A. (2010). Venezuela’s Chavismo and populism in comparative perspective. Cambridge University Press.

Jaffrelot, C. (2021). Modi’s India: Hindu nationalism and the rise of ethnic democracy. Princeton University Press.

Khemani, S. (2022). “Political economy of welfare delivery in India.” World Bank Research Observer, 37(2), 245 to 270.

Kruks Wisner, G. (2018). Claiming the state: Active citizenship and social welfare in rural India. Cambridge University Press.

Mudde, C. (2004). “The populist zeitgeist.” Government and Opposition, 39(4), 541 to 563.

Mudde, C., and Kaltwasser, C. R. (2017). Populism: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press.

Roberts, K. M. (2015). Changing course in Latin America: Party systems in the neoliberal era. Cambridge University Press.

Footnotes

[1] Bihar, one of India’s most populous and economically disadvantaged states, has historically exhibited lower levels of state capacity and social welfare penetration, making recent shifts in voter participation particularly significant.

[2] A recently formed political party in Bihar positioning itself around governance and welfare reform.

Turkish women took action on May 8, 2020 in Istanbul not to repeal the Istanbul Convention, which provides protection against domestic and male violence. Photo: Emre Orman.

Iran and Turkey through ‘The Golden Cage’ and ‘Contextual Gendered Racialization’ Lens: Populism, Law, Gender and Freedom

by CommentariesEditor’s ChoiceGenderHomeHuman Rights

In this commentary, Dr. Hafza Girdap offers a compelling comparative analysis of populism, law, gender, and freedom across two authoritarian contexts. Bringing Shirin Ebadi’s “The Golden Cage” into dialogue with transnational feminist theory, Dr. Girdap examines how populist regimes in Iran and Turkey moralize “the people,” narrow citizenship, and weaponize law to discipline dissent—particularly women’s dissent. Drawing on her original framework of contextual gendered racialization, she shows how gender governance operates through both patriarchy and racialized belonging. The article foregrounds women’s resistance as a form of epistemic, legal, and care-centered praxis, redefining freedom not as order or security, but as memory, accountability, and collective struggle beyond the confines of the “golden cage.”

By Hafza Girdap

This piece offers a condensed commentary drawn from a broader, ongoing project of mine that seeks to trace a coherent trajectory bridging sociology, feminist theory, and human rights practice. Centering the experiences of racialized and marginalized women, my project examines how women actively reclaim voice, produce knowledge, and build solidarities across borders. By integrating scholarship with activism, it aims not only to interpret structures of oppression but also to intervene in them—amplifying marginalized women’s voices, reshaping public discourse, and contributing to justice-oriented social change at both local and global levels.

Within this framework, the article examines populism, gendered repression, and resistance in Iran and Turkey by bringing Shirin Ebadi’s The Golden Cage into dialogue with transnational feminist theory and my conceptual framework of contextual gendered racialization.

Across both cases, populism constructs a moralized vision of “the people,” narrows plural citizenship, and weaponizes law to discipline dissent, particularly women’s dissent. Read together, Iran and Turkey reveal a shared trajectory from revolutionary or reformist promise to authoritarian consolidation, where legality becomes an instrument of domination, intimacy is reorganized by fear, and women’s resistance redefines freedom not as comfort or order, but as accountability, memory, and collective care (Shabnam, 2016).

Populism and the Moral Community

In post-1979 Iran, Islamist populism intertwined anti-imperialism with religious moralism, deifying state power as the authentic voice of the ummah and framing dissent as moral deviance or foreign betrayal. Hardship, repression, and top-down governance are justified as ethical sacrifice, while sovereignty is equated with the regime itself (Qaderi et al., 2023; V for Human, 2025; Bottura, 2024).  

In Turkey, the populism of ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan evolved from counter-Kemalist majoritarianism into a religio-nationalist project that performs unity through slogans such as “one nation, one flag, one religion,” increasingly centralizing authority in the figure of the leader. While initially framed as democratizing, this project narrowed citizenship through moral conformity, loyalty, and cultural homogeneity (Yalvaç & Joseph, 2019; Yabancı, 2022). 

Ebadi’s metaphor of the “golden cage” captures the populist bargain in both contexts: material security, national pride, and moral certainty are offered in exchange for silence. Belonging becomes conditional, and pluralism is redefined as threat. Populism thus does not merely mobilize “the people”; it redraws their boundaries.

From Rule of Law to Rule-by-Law

Ebadi’s central assertion, “law without justice is violence,” resonates powerfully across both cases. In Iran, juridical language legitimates repression through moralized penalties, surveillance, and gender policing. Courts, decrees, and security forces recode dissent, especially women’s défiance, as disorder, immorality, or national betrayal. Following the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising, intensified surveillance technologies and punitive legislation targeted women’s everyday presence in public space (V for Human, 2025, Makooi, 2025).

In Turkey, a shift from institutional reform to rule-by-law recalibrated the judiciary, media, and religious institutions to executive power. Gender governance became a central showcase of this transformation. The withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention via presidential decree exemplified how formal legality can be used to hollow out rights while projecting a moralized policy turn. In both contexts, legality masks authoritarian consolidation, transforming law into a technology of control rather than protection (Girdap, 2021; Sarac et al., 2023).

Family, Fear, and Everyday Life

The Golden Cage demonstrates how authoritarianism penetrates the most intimate spaces of life. Ebadi’s family narrative traces siblings forced into divergent ethical trajectories; revolutionary idealism punished by imprisonment or execution, loyalist complicity pursued for survival, exile chosen at the cost of belonging. Love and loyalty become calculations of risk under surveillance.

Ebadi’s family members function as ethical projections under coercion: the revolutionary idealist destroyed by the system, the loyalist navigating compromise at psychological cost, and the exile living with safety and loss. Ebadi herself stands as the ethical center, a jurist-witness insisting that memory is a civic duty and that law must be reclaimed for justice. Her feminism is not abstract; it is anchored in accountability, testimony, and refusal to forget.

Contemporary Turkey echoes this intimate violence. Employment bans, travel restrictions, stigmatization of dissidents, and criminalization of speech ripple through households. Families become sites of risk management; ordinary communication is shaped by caution. The political becomes domestic, and repression is lived not only through spectacular events but through everyday self-censorship and fractured trust.

Gender as the Authoritarian and Democratic Measure

Gender emerges as both the primary target of authoritarian control and the most sensitive measure of democratic erosion. In Iran, women led the Woman, Life, Freedom movement following the death of Mahsa (Jina) Amini. Despite lethal repression, mass arrests, and intensified surveillance, women’s everyday practices, particularly in urban spaces, signal irreversible shifts in presence, visibility, and refusal (European Parliament, 2022; Blout, 2025).

In Turkey, women’s citizenship is increasingly restricted into motherhood, family duty, and moral loyalty. Feminism and LGBTQI+ activism are framed as moral and foreign threats, while patriarchal governance is legitimated through religious and nationalist discourse. The Istanbul Convention withdrawal galvanized resistance, making gender a central site through which democratic backsliding and civic resilience are simultaneously revealed.

My framework of contextual gendered racialization sharpens this analysis by showing how Sunni Turkishness is privileged through an ethno-religious “Turkishness Contract,” producing double marginalization for Kurdish, Alevi, Armenian, and dissenting women. Gendered governance thus operates through both patriarchy and racialized belonging (Unlu, 2023).

Transnational Racialization and Migration

Racialization travels across borders. In Turkey, difference is marked through proximity to dominant Sunni Turkish identity rather than skin color; minority women are symbolically racialized as deviant or suspect. In the United States, Muslim women become hyper-visible within Islamophobic regimes of surveillance, legally white, socially brown (Aziz, 2020). Hijab, accent, and names trigger institutional scrutiny across immigration, healthcare, education, and labor.

Women respond through strategic identity management: negotiating visibility, silence, and speech; altering dress or disclosure; cultivating selective belonging. These practices constitute feminist praxis rather than mere adaptation, resisting both authoritarian repression and reductive Western feminist frames. Situated feminisms emerge from lived negotiation rather than abstraction (Girdap, 2025).

Law, Memory, and Care as Resistance

Across Iran and Turkey, women deploy diverse resistance strategies that transform opposition from episodic protest into durable institution-building. Ebadi’s ethic of defending rights even within captured institutions finds parallels in feminist lawfare and documentation practices in Turkey. Litigation, femicide databases, survivor testimonies, and non-enforcement audits preserve public memory and sustain accountability even when legal victories are limited. As national protections erode, opposition-led municipalities expand shelters, hotlines, training, and care infrastructures, producing constituent feminism beyond electoral cycles. Campaigns such as #İstanbulSözleşmesiYaşatır (#IstanbulConventionSavesLives) and recurring protests after femicides sustain public scrutiny and agenda pressure. Groups like Mor Dayanışma link gender violence to labor precarity, militarism, ethnic repression, and anti-LGBTQI+ moral panics, expanding coalitions and articulating care-centered, class-conscious feminist praxis (Mor Dayanışma, 2025; Najdi, 2025; Şeker & Sönmezocak, 2021).

Conclusion: Freedom Beyond the Golden Cage

Bringing Ebadi’s ethic of law, memory, and freedom together with a transnational feminist analysis clarifies the stakes of the Iran–Turkey comparison. In both contexts, populism narrows [established] citizenship into a moral community, and gender becomes the key nexus of belonging. Yet women’s epistemic and practical resistance, through legal advocacy, documentation, care spaces, migration, and transnational solidarity, takes a huge step to widen citizenship back into rights, pluralism, and accountability.

Freedom, in this sense, is not comfort or order. It is collective remembering, feminist institution-building, and sustained struggle against normalization. The golden cage is broken not by silence, but by women who insist on memory, justice, and shared political futures across borders.

 

References

Aziz, Sahar F. (2020). “Legally White, Socially Brown: Racialization of Middle Eastern Americans.” In: Routledge Handbook on Islam and Race (ed. Zain Abdullah), Rutgers Law School Research Paper No. Forthcoming, https://ssrn.com/abstract=3592699 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3592699

Blout, Emily. (2025, September 16). “Resisting Iran’s High-Tech War on Women Three Years After Mahsa Amini’s Death.” Stimson. https://www.stimson.org/2025/resisting-irans-high-tech-war-on-women-mahsa-amini/

Bottura, Beatrice. (2024). “Theocracy, Radicalism and Islamist/Secular Populism in Iran, Afghanistan & Tajikistan.”European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). October 18, 2024. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp0089

European Parliament. (2022). Protests in Iran over the death of Mahsa Amini.https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2022/733671/EPRS_ATA%282022%29733671_EN.pdf

Girdap, Hafza. (2021). “Right-wing populism, political Islam, and the Istanbul Convention.” European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). https://www.populismstudies.org/right-wing-populism-political-islam-and-the-istanbul-convention/

Girdap, H. (2025). “Racialization and Response Through Embodied Identification.” In: From a Shadow to a Person: A Gender Studies Assessment of Women in the Middle East, edited by Shilan Fuad Hussain, Routledge, manuscript in preparation.

Holliday, Shabnam J. (2016). “The legacy of subalternity and Gramsci’s national–popular: populist discourse in the case of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” Third World Quarterly, 37:5, 917-933, DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2015.1113872

Makooi, Bahar. (2025, September 9). “Three years after Mahsa Amini’s death, Iranian women have seized ‘irreversible’ liberties.” France 24. https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20250916-three-years-after-mahsa-amini-death-iranian-women-have-seized-irreversible-liberties

Mor Dayanışma. (2025, February 11). “Women, Work, and War: Organizing and Resistance in Turkey – an Interview with Mor Dayanışma.” https://www.mordayanisma.org/2025/02/11/women-work-and-war-organizing-and-resistance-in-turkey-an-interview-with-mor-dayanisma/

Najdi, Youhanna. (2025, September 16). “Mahsa Amini: 3 years on, will Iran face fresh protests?” DW.https://www.dw.com/en/mahsa-amini-3-years-on-will-iran-face-fresh-protests/a-74000756

Qaderi, H.; Delavari, A. and Golmohammadi, A. (2023). “Populism and Politics in Iran after the Islamic Revolution: Content Analysis of Presidential Speeches from 1989 to 2017.” Political Strategic Studies, 12(44), 9-58. doi: 10.22054/qpss.2022.66333.3002

Sarac, B. N.; Girdap, H., & Hiemstra, N. (2023). “Gendered state violence and post-coup migration out of Turkey.” Women’s Studies International Forum, 99, 102796. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2023.102796

Şeker, Berfu and Sönmezocak, Ezel Buse. (2021, June). “Withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention: War on Gender Equality in Turkey.” Freedom House. https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/2021-06/06292021_Freedom_House_Turkey_Policy_Brief-2-Withdrawal-from-the-Istanbul-Convention.pdf

Unlu, B. (2023). “The Turkishness contract and the formation of Turkishness.” In: F. M. Gocek & A. Alemdaroglu (Eds.), Kurds in Dark Times. Syracuse University Press.

V for Human (2025, August 12). Erased from the Scene: Türkiye’s Withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention. https://www.vforhuman.org/publications/erased-from-the-scene

Yabancı, B. (2022). “Religion, nationalism, and populism in Turkey under the AKP.” Middle East Institute. https://www.mei.edu/sites/default/files/2022-10/Religion%2C%20Nationalism%2C%20and%20Populism%20in%20Turkey%20Under%20the%20AKP.pdf

Yalvaç, F. & Joseph, J. (2019). “Understanding populist politics in Turkey: a hegemonic depth approach.” Review of International Studies, 45(5), 786–804. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26843268

A survivor of domestic abuse sits in silence, reflecting the fear, trauma, and isolation experienced by countless women affected by violence, harassment, and exploitation. Photo: Dreamstime.

November 25: The Normalization of Violence and the Forgetting That Keeps It Alive

by CommentariesEditor’s ChoiceGenderHomeHuman RightsVoice of Youth

In this compelling VoY essay, Emmanouela Papapavlou confronts the uncomfortable truth behind society’s yearly cycle of remembrance on November 25th. Drawing attention to the gap between public displays of solidarity and the everyday normalization of gender-based violence, Papapavlou argues that symbolic outrage too often gives way to collective amnesia. She highlights how cultural attitudes, institutional responses, and pervasive biases continue to silence women long after the awareness campaigns fade. This powerful reflection challenges readers to rethink what it truly means to remember—and what it would take to break the cycle of forgetting that enables violence to persist.

By Emmanouela Papapavlou*

Every year, on November 25th, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, we collectively remember. Or at least, we pretend to. We speak about statistics, about bruises that never made it to the news, about women whose names became hashtags only after their lives were taken from them. We speak about abuse as if it were an unexpected tragedy instead of a structural reality. And, on this day, we suddenly remember surveys and studies that have been sitting on desks and websites for months. They resurface not because something changed, but because today, the world feels obligated to look at them.

One of these reports, brought back into the spotlight once again, reminds us that one in three women over the age of fifteen has been subjected to domestic or sexual violence. A number repeated so often that it risks becoming meaningless, yet behind every “one” is a life permanently split into “before” and “after.” Tomorrow, not metaphorically, literally tomorrow, this report will be forgotten. We know this cycle. We’ve lived this cycle.We will slide right back into the comforting loop of what we call “normality.” And that is the most devastating truth: the empathy of today, no matter how intense, rarely survives beyond these twenty-four hours. We talk, we post, we condemn. We temporarily allow ourselves to feel. But the next morning the world resets. Outrage fades. Commitment dissolves. And we return to a daily life that quietly, steadily, and consistently tolerates violence against women as a background condition of society.

Politicians will step forward to insist that “progress has been made.” They will talk about panic buttons, shelters, hotlines, protocols, committees, and agencies. They will list every tool created over the past decades, as if the presence of infrastructure were equivalent to the presence of justice. But women know better. You know it. I know it. Every woman who has ever hesitated before speaking knows it. Reality does not change just because systems exist on paper. Reality does not change because a country has a handful of shelters while countless women remain too afraid to simply pick up the phone.

Because violence doesn’t hide in the absence of services. Violence hides in the culture that shapes how those services respond. Violence hides in the judgments whispered behind closed doors. Violence hides in the tone of the questions asked by police, by courts, by the media. Violence hides in our normality.

A normality that allows political representatives to make sexist, demeaning remarks publicly and return to their roles a few months later without consequence.

A normality that allows television panels to sneer at, interrupt, belittle, or humiliate women while the audience laughs or scrolls on. A normality that allows courtrooms to ask, “What were you wearing?” or “Why didn’t you leave sooner?” instead of asking the only question that matters: “What was done to you?” A normality that allows lawyers, people responsible for upholding justice, to be perpetrators of intimate partner violence while society digs for ways to blame the woman. A normality where a terrified woman can call for help and hear the phrase: “A police car is not a taxi.” A normality that teaches women every day, in every small way, that they must endure, justify, or hide what has happened to them.

And so, many women choose silence, not because they lack strength, but because they know exactly what comes next if they dare to speak. They know they will be interrogated, doubted, scrutinized. They know their character, their clothing, their tone, their past relationships, their mental health, their messages, their behavior, everything except the behavior of the perpetrator, will be put on trial. They know he will be offered excuses: stress, alcohol, jealousy, passion, misunderstanding. And they will be offered judgment.

We keep talking about panic buttons as if technology can solve what culture refuses to confront. But violence does not end because a button exists. Violence ends when a society refuses to tolerate the conditions that make that button necessary in the first place. And the truth is uncomfortable: We tolerate these conditions. We normalize them. We teach them, sometimes without noticing.

Every November 25th, we post, we share, we mourn, we “raise awareness.” And then, quietly, predictably, we forget. Reports will continue to be published. More women will become statistics before they become stories. More anniversaries will arrive to remind us of what we collectively failed to address.

The real question, the painful question, is not whether violence will continue. It is whether we will continue to look away. Whether we will continue to allow tomorrow to erase today’s conscience. Whether we will continue to slip back into a normality built on silence, excuses, and selective memory. So the question remains: Will we continue to forget? Or will we finally demand a world where remembering is not limited to a single day?


(*) Emmanouela Papapavlou is a high school student from Thessaloniki, Greece, deeply passionate about social and political issues. She has actively participated in Model United Nations and other youth forums, serving as a chairperson in multiple conferences and winning awards in Greek debate competitions. Writing is her greatest passion, and she loves using it to explore democracy, civic engagement, and human rights. Her dream is to share her ideas, inspire action, and amplify the voices of young people who want to make a difference. Email: emmanpapapavlou@gmail.com

Daytime view of Akihabara in Tokyo, known as “Electric Town” for its many electronics shops, duty-free stores, and vibrant youth culture. Photo: Dreamstime.

Prof. Klein: It Is Difficult to Label Japanese PM Takaichi a Populist, Despite Her Nationalism and Anti-Feminism

by Editor’s ChoiceGenderHomeInterviews

In this incisive interview for the ECPS, Professor Axel Klein offers a nuanced assessment of Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s ideological profile. While her blend of nationalism, anti-feminism, and strong-leader rhetoric has led some observers to categorize her as a populist, Professor Klein cautions against this simplification. As he notes, “nationalism and anti-feminism… are trademarks of a conservative or right-wing politician, but they are not necessarily populist phenomena per se.” Instead, he situates PM Takaichi within Japan’s broader political culture—one shaped by nostalgia, stability-seeking voters, and the enduring dominance of the LDP—arguing that her conservatism reflects continuity more than populist rupture.

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

Sanae Takaichi’s rise to the premiership marks one of the most significant ideological shifts in Japanese politics in recent decades. Her ascent has sparked debates not only within Japan but also among scholars of comparative populism who are examining whether her blend of nationalism, anti-feminism, and assertive leadership constitutes a new populist moment in East Asia. In this wide-ranging interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Dr. Axel Klein— Professor for Social Sciences of East Asia / Japanese Politics at Institute of East Asian Studies and Faculty of Social Science, University of Duisburg-Essen and one of Europe’s leading specialists on Japanese politics and populism—offers a nuanced interpretation of her leadership style and ideological positioning.

Reflecting on the definitional complexities of populism, Professor Klein begins by cautioning against the automatic classification of PM Takaichi as a populist merely because she deploys rhetoric familiar from global right-wing movements. As he notes, “I think you would find it difficult to label her a populist… nationalism and anti-feminism… are trademarks of a conservative or right-wing politician, but they are not necessarily populist phenomena per se.” This observation forms the conceptual backbone of the interview. It foregrounds a tension between PM Takaichi’s affective, backward-looking appeals and the analytical criteria political scientists typically use to identify populist actors.

Several sections of the interview explore the symbolic and strategic dimensions of her conservatism. PM Takaichi’s frequent invocation of Margaret Thatcher, for instance, is not simply an ideological alignment but part of a deliberate performance of decisiveness and moral clarity. Professor Klein situates this “Thatcherian” posture within Japan’s evolving political culture, noting that a significant segment of the electorate has come to desire a strong, assertive leader capable of cutting through bureaucratic inertia. Her rejection of feminist policy is similarly framed as part of a broader moral and nostalgic project rather than a carefully structured ideological program.

The interview further scrutinizes PM Takaichi’s positioning in domestic and international contexts: her recourse to economic protectionism toward China, her appeal to Japan’s aging conservative base, and her relationship to emergent right-wing actors such as Sanseito. Professor Klein’s long-term analysis of Japanese democratic institutions raises critical questions about whether her brand of conservative moralism represents a stabilizing force or a potential risk for democratic quality. While Japan’s electoral patterns and party system differ markedly from Western cases of democratic backsliding, Professor Klein argues that structural conservatism, low youth engagement, and a dominant-party landscape may create conditions in which moralizing politics can flourish without substantial opposition.

Taken together, the interview provides an analytically rich and contextually grounded assessment of PM Takaichi’s leadership, situating her not as a straightforward populist but as a figure whose political significance lies in the interplay between nostalgia, nationalism, and Japan’s institutional continuity.

Axel Klein is a Professor for Social Sciences of East Asia / Japanese Politics at Institute of East Asian Studies and Faculty of Social Science, University of Duisburg-Essen and one of Europe’s leading specialists on Japanese politics and populism.

Here is the edited transcript of our interview with Professor Axel Klein, slightly revised for clarity and flow.

Takaichi’s Nationalism and Anti-Feminism Don’t Make Her a Populist

Professor Axel Klein, thank you very much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: In your work on East Asian populism, you describe Japan’s populist movements as “muted” compared to their Western counterparts. How does Sanae Takaichi’s ascent complicate this framework? Does her blend of nationalism, charisma, and anti-feminism mark a new populist phase in Japanese politics?

Professor Axel Klein: I think it depends a bit on your definition of populism. In political science, we have three or four dominant concepts of populism, and if you applied these concepts to Mrs. Takaichi, I think you would find it difficult to label her a populist. There are also a number of less well-known concepts, and perhaps she would meet some of those criteria here and there, but personally, I find it difficult to call her a populist. That is because nationalism and anti-feminism, or a marked disregard for any feminist agenda, are trademarks of a conservative or right-wing politician, but they are not necessarily populist phenomena per se.

Takaichi’s Strong-Leader Persona Reflects Voter Desire, Not Ideological Thatcherism

PM Takaichi frequently invokes Margaret Thatcher as a role model. To what extent does this “Thatcherian populism” reflect a fusion of neoliberal economics and patriarchal conservatism unique to Japan’s political culture?

Professor Axel Klein: If you consider simple messaging and clear-cut language as a populist trait, then that’s probably something Mrs. Takaichi tries, and in that sense, she may appear similar to Margaret Thatcher. She has referred to her, as you rightly said, and the image of the Iron Lady may be something Mrs. Takaichi wants to project. But she hasn’t really had enough time to prove that she can be such a hardliner. The Japanese political system, especially the power structure within the LDP, doesn’t necessarily allow someone to push through a reform agenda. Thatcher did that with a neoliberal reform agenda, and she had Ronald Reagan at her side—these two were, so to speak, the neoliberal pioneers of that era. I don’t see that context in the case of Takaichi.

What I find interesting, despite many commentaries to the contrary, is that while some argue Japanese culture doesn’t allow for a strong leader, my experience observing Japanese politics over the last 30 or 40 years suggests that a large share of the population actually wants one. People want someone who can take decisive action. Mr. Ishiba, who was of course Mrs. Takaichi’s predecessor, tried the opposite approach. He was very considerate, spoke to many involved parties, and tried to take numerous views into account—but this slowed him down and made it difficult for people to see any progress. Mrs. Takaichi seems to try to convey the image of someone who can make decisions and push them through. And that may be exactly the kind of strong leadership many people in Japan are looking for, because they have seen that a more considerate, slower approach may not deliver the results they want, especially lowering consumer prices.

As long as people expect Mrs. Takaichi to be a decisive leader, I think her support rates will stay high, and as long as they stay high, the LDP will follow her. So, the comparison with Mrs. Thatcher may be sustained by the fact that Mrs. Takaichi is a female leader, lacks feminist motivation, and had to push aside many male competitors. But regarding tough decision-making, we are still waiting. She hasn’t had much time yet, so we need to be a bit patient.

Takaichi’s Gender ‘Takes a Backseat’ in Conservative Japan

How does PM Takaichi’s gender—combined with her rejection of feminist policy—function symbolically within a patriarchal political order? Is her leadership likely to reinforce or subtly reconfigure Japan’s gendered hierarchies of power?

Professor Axel Klein: If you look at Angela Merkel in Germany and Mrs. Thatcher in Britain, and the same is true for Mrs. Meloni in Italy, gender takes a backseat. The issue is not particularly relevant to these leaders. There are many other characteristics that matter more when trying to understand how they function and why they do what they do. And I think with Mrs. Takaichi it’s exactly the same. There may have been some naïve expectations among observers that, because Mrs. Takaichi is a woman, that alone would be reason enough for her to push issues like gender equality. But I’m afraid she may disappoint those expectations. She may instead show that Japan is not so much a patriarchal order as a very conservative one, dominated by people who have risen through the system and are willing to defend it against progressive ideas. And if you take that view, then you will see that the gender or sex of the leader isn’t really important.

Nostalgia, Not Populism, Defines Takaichi’s Leadership Style

In the comparative perspective you have applied to European and Asian populisms, how might we situate Takaichi’s brand of leadership alongside figures such as Giorgia Meloni or Marine Le Pen—female leaders who combine nationalist populism with anti-feminist discourse?

Professor Axel Klein: Let’s leave the question whether Mrs. Takaichi is a populist or not aside for the moment. First of all, she is someone who represents the wish to return to the good old days. And that, again, is indeed something that populists sometimes refer to. And when I say the good old days, I mean the time maybe in the 1980s, when Japan was economically really doing well, the 1970s, when it was economically growing, the 1960s, of course, when the LDP was still the dominant political force, running the country all by itself from 1955 to 1993, so almost four decades of LDP rule, and where everything seemed to be more predictable, stable.

And that was before, of course, there was political upheaval in Japan in the sense that other parties took over government, even though just for a very short period of time, but that created some instability. And then, of course, about 20–25 years ago, we had Prime Minister Koizumi, who introduced a number of neoliberal ideas and carried out major reforms. His key project was the privatization of the postal services. So if you are now a conservative leader who claims to protect the country and its people from many of these progressive, neoliberal ideas—also on a social level—you can argue that such reforms have made life more difficult for ordinary people.

What Mrs. Takaichi would probably refer to is more of what Abe Shinzo, former prime minister, referred to as beautiful Japan. He had this book published, he was the author, and he described a Japan that was a Japan of the good old days. Of course, Mrs. Takaichi also represents the hope of the LDP to return to that dominant position that the party was in 30 years ago.

‘Sanaenomics’ Is More PR Than Populism

Japan’s former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Photo: Dreamstime.

You have written extensively about the nexus between populist rhetoric and technocratic governance in Japan. How does PM Takaichi’s economic policy—her so-called “Sanaenomics”—use populist language of protection and prosperity while maintaining elite continuity within the LDP?

Professor Axel Klein: Mrs. Takaichi claims to revive Japan, which is something that a couple of prime ministers before her have also done. Reviving Japan—that’s more or less her slogan. Looking from the outside, and as you can see, I’m not a Japanese voter, I’ve always wondered who has actually been in power over the last 30 years, because the LDP has always claimed to know how to solve the crisis Japan is in. And most election campaigns over the last decades really looked a bit like this: there is a huge crisis, only we know how to deal with it. Don’t try any experiments, Mr. or Mrs. Voter. Choose the LDP, and we will take care of it.

But what the LDP has never addressed is the question: who is in charge? Who is responsible for this crisis? Isn’t the government of the day, or the governments of previous years, also responsible for what is happening? Yet the LDP has always portrayed the crisis as something coming from the outside, caused by external factors beyond its control.

So Mrs. Takaichi speaks to what is possibly the most important wish of voters, which is stability. That’s a term that comes up a lot in the LDP’s election campaigns. If you are looking for one red line running through all LDP governments over the last decades, it is this: stability, security, and, in a way, the promise of a carefree life. By the way, that’s what Mrs. Takaichi also emphasized in her speech in Parliament—that in order to stabilize politics, she agreed to form a coalition with the Japan Restoration Party or Japan Innovation Party, whichever English translation you prefer.

This is interesting because this coalition between the LDP and the Restoration Party does not even have a majority. They are one seat short. They don’t have a majority in the lower house, and they don’t have a majority in the upper house. So if you look at it closely, you may ask yourself: where is the stability?

Takaichi’s Economic Agenda Echoes Abenomics

But anyway, leaving that aside—Sanaenomics? To me, it’s like Abenomics. It’s a PR term that professional advertisers have come up with. It may be wise not to spend too much time discussing this, because we should judge or assess her performance as prime minister by what she does, not what she says. That is universally true. And I’m not an economist, so I don’t know whether there is some secret recipe behind what she says she wants to do as prime minister.

But in preparation for this conversation with you, I have a little quotation here from her speech, and please bear with me—I’ll read it, and then you’ll see what I’m driving at. Mrs. Takaichi said in Parliament: “We endeavor to raise incomes, transform people’s mindsets regarding consumption, and boost tax revenues without raising tax rates as business earnings increase, all in keeping with our approach of responsible and proactive public finances.”

So it’s a bet on economic growth that will pay more taxes or produce more tax revenue, and all of this will supposedly be driven by domestic consumption. If that is a viable option, I wonder why the LDP hasn’t done anything like this before. And it’s a bit like promising everything to everyone. So, again, maybe we shouldn’t look at what she has announced and what she has said, but wait for what she will actually do.

Takaichi’s Hard Line Plays Domestically but Complicates Diplomacy

Photo: Dreamstime.

How do you interpret PM Takaichi’s invocation of sovereignty and economic independence from China in the context of populist “economic nationalism”? Does it resonate domestically as protectionist populism, or as pragmatic geopolitics?

Professor Axel Klein: The relationship with China has always been difficult and on thin ice. It’s easily disturbed. Since 1999, when Komeito joined the LDP as a coalition partner, Komeito acted as a stabilizing factor. For several reasons, it has very close relations with China, and I remember a very tense period between the two countries when then Prime Minister Abe sent the leader of Komeito to Beijing to mend the relationship. But now that Komeito is no longer part of the coalition, options for communication between the two governments—sometimes even discreet, below-the-surface channels that are crucial in diplomacy—have become more limited.

Mrs. Takaichi has already provoked significant protests from China. We know about the Chinese diplomat who made an inappropriate remark about her, and we have seen the usual reaction in China, especially among the public, where people cancel flights to Japan and say they no longer want to visit. So, a remark meant to signal Japan’s stance toward Taiwan brought about all these consequences.

It may be that Mrs. Takaichi still has hawkish instincts that make it difficult for her to stay consistent in her foreign policy agenda. And if she cannot control these impulses, it will be difficult to achieve more harmonious relations with China. But this is not only because of her own views; it is also because China tends to react very strongly to such statements from foreign leaders.

‘Good Old Times’ Conservatism Drives Takaichi’s Moral Appeal

Takaichi’s rhetoric fuses anti-feminist appeals with nationalist morality. Does this align with the moral populism you’ve analyzed in Japan’s right-wing discourse—where the “moral majority” is mobilized against both foreign and liberal domestic elites?

Professor Axel Klein: That’s a very important question. Mrs. Takaichi, as I said before, represents the good old times. So she clearly doesn’t stand for a socially progressive agenda. The good old times also featured a very weak political left, sometimes none to speak of, and what is generally referred to as a convoy economy—where everyone in Japan, at least those who worked in certain industries and companies and their families, joined a national effort to grow the domestic economy. And that, of course, included women staying home to take care of the family and children, and the single breadwinner model, where husbands went out to work. Everyone was supposed to benefit from this arrangement. That was the general idea.

This convoy economy doesn’t exist anymore and hasn’t for quite some time. But it remains part of the nostalgic image people have of the good old days, and foreign influences and liberal forces are seen as obstacles to returning to that ideal. In the upper house election last July, we saw a right-wing party grow—Sanseito, which translates itself into English as the Do-It-Yourself Party. This refers to their idea: if there is no political party you like and want to support, then create one yourself. That was their basic message. They emerged out of the pandemic, with many people sitting at home in front of their computers, and the man who founded the party gathered enough support and followers on YouTube and other social media platforms. Then he—or they, since it wasn’t his work alone—created Sanseito.

‘Japanese First’ Spiral Pushes LDP Rightward

Poster for the Sanseito political party featuring its leader Sohei Kamiya and the slogan “Japanese First” in Tokyo, Japan on October 9, 2025: Photo: Hiroshi Mori.

But no one really cared about them at first. They had a supporter base of around 1.5 million people, which is a lot, but not enough to make decisive inroads into Japanese politics. In the lower house general election last October, they were not very successful; they had not much more than those 1.5 million supporters. But then in June this year, they started campaigning with the slogan “Japanese First.” Their agenda combined anti-liberal ideas and strong skepticism toward anything coming from abroad. And because “Japanese First” sounded like what Trump and his MAGA movement do with “America First,” the mass media picked up the story. And the mass media—and we’ve done research on this at my university—really were the ones who made Sanseito widely known.

Then you have this spiral, where the party is discussed in major newspapers and on TV, and foreign journalists also pick up the story: “Oh, finally, we have a right-wing populist party in Japan—the Sanseito—and they’re xenophobic, they don’t like foreigners.” You saw stories about tourists misbehaving, about people on social welfare without Japanese citizenship, etc. All of this reinforced itself. It was like a spiral that kept growing, and more and more people learned about Sanseito. By the upper house election last year, the result was that they gained far more seats than they would have with normal media coverage.

I think that frightened many people in the LDP. They thought a new force might overtake the LDP from the right, so they needed to move rightward to prevent that. That may have been another reason why not only Mrs. Takaichi was elected president of the LDP, but also why her policy agenda is now shifting the country further right than under Ishiba and previous prime ministers.

I don’t know if that will be enough to stop Sanseito. Sanseito, in my view, is a very immature party. It has many proposals that obviously do not work. And based on analyses of voter behavior, it seems many people who usually have little interest in politics saw a new party saying “Japanese First” and superficially liked the idea of a party that claimed it would take care of ordinary Japanese. They may not have taken it as a message against foreigners—only as a good idea: “Let’s take care of the ordinary Japanese, not big companies or banks or other elite groups,” which they think the LDP has favored for too long. And that’s why they voted for Sanseito.

But I’m not sure this success can be sustained. And I’m not very good at predicting the future, so I’ll leave it at that.

Confucian Norms Shape Japan’s Hesitation on Equality Policies

How do you assess the relationship between Japan’s deep-rooted Confucian patriarchy and the populist rejection of gender equality reforms, such as same-sex marriage or separate surnames?

Professor Axel Klein: That is a difficult question for me to answer. Since I’m in Germany, I often compare what is happening in Japan with developments here, and to a certain extent, I also look at other European countries. I observe how their societies evolve and how the legal frameworks governing these communities change. And every now and then, I’ve thought that Japan is following a similar trajectory—only, in some respects, it does so later than European countries. I don’t mean this as negative criticism; I’m simply saying that issues like the ones you raise—same-sex marriage and separate surnames—will probably eventually come.

I think Japan will, at some point, pass legislation allowing same-sex marriage, and it will also change the family-name system, but it will take a little longer. And again, I don’t know whether that is good or bad. I have a personal opinion, of course, but from an academic perspective, all I can really say is that the process takes more time. Currently, couples in Japan do have the option, when they marry, to choose which of the two family names—the husband’s or the wife’s—will become the family name. But I can clearly see why this is not sufficient for people with established careers or simply those who want to keep their own names.

I think pressure within Japanese society is building to the point where these reforms will happen, and even a prime minister like Mrs. Takaichi will not be able to prevent them.

Moral Populism in Japan Runs on Sentiment, Not Structure

A right-wing speaker delivers a public address in the Asakusa district in Tokyo, Japan on December 27, 2015. Though small in number, Japan’s right-wing groups are known for highly visible demonstrations. Photo: Sean Pavone.

To what extent is her moral populism driven by affective nostalgia—an emotional politics of loss centered on family, nation, and purity—rather than coherent ideological reasoning?

Professor Axel Klein: Very much so. As I said before, I think she speaks to a desire felt by many—especially those from their fifties onward, the senior citizens of Japan. There is this idea that in the old days things were better, and objectively, consumer prices, for example, were much lower than they are now. And I think we observe this in many countries: people seem increasingly overwhelmed by the complexities of contemporary life, and many wish to return to how things were 30 or 40 years ago. Of course, there is a great deal of nostalgia in this, and life may not actually have been as easy then as some remember it today.

But it is this deep-rooted longing that Mrs. Takaichi is drawing on, just as Abe did. It’s a kind of promise that cannot really be fulfilled—you can’t turn back time. But I agree: I would rather try to explain Mrs. Takaichi’s policies from this perspective than from any coherent ideological reasoning.

Youth Apathy, Not Populism, Is Japan’s Democratic Weak Point

And lastly, Professor Klein, from your long-term perspective on Japan’s democratic institutions, do you see Takaichi’s populist conservatism as a stabilizing corrective within Japan’s party system—or as a potential source of democratic backsliding under the guise of moral renewal?

Professor Axel Klein: Let me answer that with a question first. Where does Japan slide back to? You may ask how democratic a state can be when it has been run by one dominant party for 65 of the last 70 years. We cannot ignore the fact that Japan’s democracy, even though it is the oldest in Asia, is in this respect quite different from other industrialized countries you might use for comparison. For 65 of the last 70 years, the LDP has been in power, and for most of that time it has governed alone. And when it didn’t, it usually had just one coalition partner.

So, that’s one important characteristic of Japanese democracy. A second is that Japanese voters are overwhelmingly conservative. This is reinforced by the enormous disinterest of young people in politics. Voter turnout among those under 30 is a little over 30%, meaning that two-thirds of young people do not vote. This is a remarkably high number. I actually consider it a disaster for a democracy. You need to get young people involved and interested. I think young people in Japan are not taught what it means to be politically active, what it means to vote. And then, of course, when they grow older, they realize that many things they encounter in daily life—rules, taxes, regulations—are being decided somewhere, and they are being decided by the government. So they should get involved in politics.

I have many Japanese exchange students in my courses here at my university, and it is really frustrating to see how little they care about Japanese politics and how little they know. So my point is this: if young people are so disengaged, and senior citizens want stability and safety, and politics that promise a carefree life, then national politicians may feel they can pursue this moral renewal. But I don’t think voters care much about these ideas. What they care about right now are other problems. High consumer prices, as in most countries. The price of rice is a very symbolic issue that affects everyone in Japan.

And returning to what I said earlier, when you hear what Mrs. Takaichi has said in Parliament about how she intends to tackle these problems, I’m very curious to see whether she will succeed—because personally, I have my doubts.

Dr. Monika de Silva is a political scientist at the University of Gothenburg.

Dr. de Silva: Anti-Gender Narratives Are Highly Interlinked and Interconnected Across Borders

by Editor’s ChoiceEuropean ObservatoryGenderHomeHuman RightsInterviews

“Anti-gender discourses are very interlinked and interconnected; we see these floating narratives repeated across countries like Latvia, Poland, and Russia,” says Dr. Monika de Silva. She explains that populist actors strategically exploit linguistic ambiguity around concepts such as gender, transforming technical legal terms into polarizing political symbols. “Language is never neutral… this linguistic openness is used to argue that because gender replaces the word sex, we can no longer talk about men and women,” she notes. The Istanbul Convention—intended to prevent violence against women—has thus been reframed as an LGBTQ+ threat or “radical feminist project.” Yet Dr. de Silva stresses the importance of civic resistance: Latvia’s mass protests “undoubtedly shaped” the president’s decision to return the withdrawal bill to parliament.

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

In recent weeks, Latvia has become a focal point in Europe’s ongoing struggle over gender equality, human rights, and democratic resilience. On October 31, 2025, the Saeima (Latvian Parliament) voted 56–32 to withdraw from the Council of Europe’s Istanbul Convention—only a year after ratifying the treaty designed to prevent and combat violence against women. The move relied heavily on claims that the Convention promotes “radical feminism” and “gender ideology,” echoing narratives with well-documented transnational origins. President Edgars Rinkēvičs soon returned the bill to parliament for reconsideration, warning that overturning ratification within a single legislative term would send “a contradictory message… to Latvian society and Latvia’s allies internationally.” He urged postponement until after upcoming elections, noting that Latvia risked becoming the first EU member state to renounce a human-rights treaty.

The backlash triggered the country’s largest civic protests since the 1990s. On November 6, 2025, more than 10,000 demonstrators gathered in Riga under the slogan “Let’s Protect Mother Latvia,” signaling a groundswell of civic resistance. At stake is not only the institutional integrity of gender-equality policy but also the credibility of Latvia’s constitutional and international commitments, especially given that the EU itself acceded to the Convention in 2023, making certain provisions binding regardless of national withdrawal.

It is against this turbulent backdrop that the European Center for the Study of Populism (ECPS) spoke with Dr. Monika de Silva, a political scientist at the University of Gothenburg. Her research, situated at the intersection of international relations and EU studies, examines how contested normative frameworks travel across borders. Her 2025 doctoral dissertation, “‘Gender Wars’ in Europe: Diplomatic Practice under Polarized Conditions,” traces how bilateral diplomacy and Council of the EU negotiations have been reshaped by conflicts over gender equality and LGBTQ+ rights. She is also affiliated with the Gender and Diplomacy project (GenDip) and the Centre for European Research (CERGU).

In the interview, Dr. de Silva argues that anti-gender discourse is best understood as a transnationally circulating narrative rather than merely a domestic reaction: “Anti-gender discourses are very interlinked and interconnected… we see manifestations of that as floating narratives that are very similar, whether we look at Latvia, Poland or Russia, etc.”

She identifies both supply and demand factors driving the spread of “gender ideology” rhetoric across Europe, noting that populist radical right actors strategically translate technical legal language into ideologically charged frames, exploiting linguistic ambiguity: “Language is never neutral… this linguistic openness is definitely used to advance such narratives.”

Dr. de Silva further highlights how withdrawal debates are reframing the Istanbul Convention away from its core purpose—preventing violence against women—toward narratives that depict it as an LGBTQ+ threat or “radical feminist project.” These interpretations, she warns, are not new; similar tropes have circulated across Europe for nearly a decade.

Yet her analysis also highlights agents of democratic resilience. Civil society mobilization, she observes, has already influenced decision-making: “The president… decided to return the  law to parliament, and I am sure that seeing the largest protests in Latvia helped shape this decision.”

Finally, she issues a clear warning about governance consequences. Withdrawal would remove Latvia from GREVIO’s monitoring regime, generating critical transparency and implementation gaps: “A state not part of the Convention would not report to GREVIO… whatever it does is therefore less transparent, especially internationally.”

This interview thus offers rich insight into how legal, discursive, and geopolitical forces converge to shape contemporary anti-gender mobilization—and how democratic institutions and civil society may yet respond.

Here is the edited transcript of our interview with Dr. Monika de Silva, slightly revised for clarity and flow.

Latvia’s Withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention Signals Deep Democratic Trouble

Demonstrators in Riga on April 25, 2023, demand accountability after a woman’s murder, calling for political responsibility over Latvia’s years-long failure to ratify the Istanbul Convention. Photo: Gints Ivuskans.

Dr. Monica de Silva, thank you very much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: Latvia became the first EU state to vote to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention—just a year after ratifying it. The move, driven by the right-wing Latvia First party and backed by a governing coalition partner, relied on claims that the treaty promotes “gender ideology,” echoing Kremlin-style narratives. It triggered Latvia’s largest civic protests since the 1990s, despite the country having the highest femicide rate in Europe; President Edgars Rinkēvičs has since sent the bill back to parliament for review. How do you interpret this backlash—primarily as a cyclical conservative reaction, a structural anti-gender countermovement, or a strategic tool of PRR mobilization?

Dr. Monika de Silva: Of course, the fact that populist radical right parties like Latvia First mobilized around the Istanbul Convention and now seek to withdraw from it is not surprising; it is a continued strategy of populist radical right parties. What is different—and concerning—in this case is that a conservative party, the Union of Farmers and Greens, has joined these radical right actors in pursuing withdrawal from the Convention.

The Union has always had reservations about the Convention, which is typical not only of radical or far-right parties but also of more mainstream conservative parties. However, what distinguishes this situation is that the Union is part of the government, and, as such, agreed to a coalition deal in which the Latvian government committed to ratifying the Istanbul Convention. Now they are backing away from a commitment they made to the Latvian public and to their coalition partners, which is deeply troubling for the state of our democracy.

It has been a very long process from Latvia’s signing of the Istanbul Convention to its ratification just last year. During this period, we saw extensive democratic debate in parliament, as well as a case before the Constitutional Court, which confirmed that the Convention complies with the Latvian Constitution. Upon ratification, Latvia also adopted an interpretive declaration affirming that it would not replace the word “sex” with “gender” in national legislation, and so on. Many voices participated in this process, and concerns—for example, about the legal implications of the Convention—were duly assessed.

It is therefore very worrying that, at this stage, we still face efforts to retract this commitment. This raises questions not only about Latvia’s commitment to its own citizens—particularly women—but also to other states that are parties to the Convention.

The Supply and Demand of Anti-Gender Politics in Europe

In your view, what explains the political salience of “gender ideology” narratives in opposition to the Istanbul Convention across such varied contexts as Latvia, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Hungary?

Dr. Monika de Silva: I like to think about the gender ideology narrative as having a supply side and a demand side. On the supply side, we have in all of these countries very strong populist radical right parties, but also other political movements that are very effective at mobilizing against the Convention and transnationalizing this issue. So this is the supply side of the narrative.

But what is even more interesting is the demand side. This strategy would not work without the resonance of this argument among a certain part of the population. What is similar in all of these countries—you mentioned Latvia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Hungary—is that they all participate in European integration but are not at the core of this project. They are not Western European countries; they are Central and Eastern European countries, or even countries on the boundary between Europe and other continents.

There are also many interlinkages between European identity and gender equality norms. We see that adopting certain norms or laws gives states a certain status within European integration. The case of Turkey is illustrative. The Istanbul Convention is named the Istanbul Convention for a reason. It was adopted in Turkey, and Turkey gained a lot of status points by hosting the conference; it was able to brand itself as European, liberal, etc.

But let’s remember that this was over 10-15 years ago, and now we live in a different moment. Today, Turkey’s accession to the European Union is much less likely. We also live in a moment where the European Union does not have as much power as it used to. So, this linkage between Europeanness and gender equality does not work as well as it once did, and it creates backlash. 

Gender equality norms are very dear to people; they are part of people’s social identity, whether on the left or on the right. So, it is not something that can be easily changed. People also do not want to feel that something is being imposed on them, so it is very easy to mobilize against this narrative in these countries—arguing that this is Western Europe, or the EU, or the Council of Europe, etc., or the elites forcing them to change their core norms.

Women and LGBTQ+ activists in İzmir, Turkey, rally for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, highlighting femicide and the withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention. Photo: Idil Toffolo.

Populism, Geopolitics, and the Cross-Border Spread of Gender Backlash

To what extent is anti-gender discourse a domestic phenomenon, and to what extent is it borrowing transnational scripts, including Kremlin-linked rhetoric that frames the Convention as destroying “traditional family values”?

Dr. Monika de Silva: Of course, anti-gender discourses are very interlinked and interconnected, and we see manifestations of that as floating narratives that are very similar, whether we look at Latvia, Poland or Russia.

In the Latvian case, for example, I have not seen any new tropes in the anti-gender discourse, even though we have had this conversation since 2015–2016. So now, almost ten years on, there is nothing new. The Istanbul Convention is presented as a threat to the family, sneaking in certain gender-equality or feminist or LGBT norms that states did not initially think were in the Convention, or that it will make states allow for non-binarity in their legal systems, or make more lenient laws regarding transgender rights.

We see this over and over again, across time and space. What is the reason for that? To some extent, it is coordinated. We have coalitions of states that cooperate with each other in venues like the United Nations—traditional-values coalitions and so on—and they exchange and build their discourses together. We also have non-state, transnational organizations like the World Congress of Families that do this.

Regarding the link between these narratives and Russia or the Kremlin: we definitely see why there would be an incentive for Russia to stir up the conversation around the Istanbul Convention in Latvia and other Baltic states. This creates a lot of mistrust between countries like Latvia and other Western European countries and the EU, especially in a situation where we have this aggression on the eastern border of Europe. This is a problem that can steer the fate of this country one way or another.

We have elections in Latvia next year, and the Istanbul Convention will surely be a significant part of the campaigns. Hopefully, it will not steer the political scene in this country toward a pro-Russian direction. I hope we will see well-informed, democratic debate on the Istanbul Convention. But of course, since this is such a polarizing topic, there are certain risks involved.

Populist Actors Exploit Linguistic Ambiguity in EU Gender Debates

How do PRR actors transform technical legal language into ideologically charged rhetoric, especially around contested terms like “gender,” which your work has shown can be strategically mistranslated or emptied of meaning in EU negotiation spaces?

Dr. Monika de Silva: The discussion around the term “gender” shows us that language is never neutral. It is always politically charged, whether it is adopted as technical or legal. In the case I studied, several EU member states at some point decided that they did not want to use the word “gender” in EU-adopted documents. This, of course, stirred a lot of contestations around what gender even means for the EU, and so on. The fact is that what gender means, or what gender equality means for the EU, has never been a settled issue.

As you know, all EU languages have equal legal value. In different languages, gender equality is translated basically as equality between men and women. This had not been an issue for a long time because it did not spark as much discussion as it does now, with many states being very attached to the idea that gender should include more than men and women, and some countries being attached to the idea that it should not.

So, there is this discursive openness in what gender means for the EU. It existed before the so-called gender-language crisis. Populist parties, populist governments, are very skilled at using this discursive openness. Because if we do not know what the exact boundaries of a certain word are—and this is not atypical in political discourse—it is very easy to argue that this word means something essentially ridiculous. For example, because gender replaces the word sex, we can no longer talk about men and women. This is, of course, not what the word “gender” means, but this linguistic openness is definitely used to advance such narratives.

Why Some States Avoid Ratification: The Limits of EU Influence

European Union flags against European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium.

In your research, you explore “language bargaining” and diplomatic-legal talk. How have these dynamics influenced EU-level negotiations on the Istanbul Convention, and how did they enable states such as Hungary or Slovakia to avoid ratification?

Dr. Monika de Silva: Definitions and decisions in the EU are always outcomes of negotiations. There are diplomacy and negotiation involved in reaching a jointly acceptable outcome. That, of course, is a good, healthy thing if we have parties that are not always expecting to arrive at their maximalist outcome. This is not possible in an organization with 27 member states.

The ability to make these compromises and negotiate was something that enabled the European Union to accede to the Istanbul Convention, even though several member states decided that they themselves would not accede to the Convention. But they accepted the fact that, within a legitimate process and based on the rule of law—with also a case in the Court of Justice of the EU confirming that the EU can accede to the Istanbul Convention—yes, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

So, there is very little that the EU can do to make other member states ratify the Convention. This is their sovereign decision; they are not obliged to ratify the Convention under EU law. Even given the narratives that we talked about—the imposition from the EU and so on—this may actually have a reverse effect, a backlash against this sort of narrative of imposition.

So, I think the way to go is to maintain a culture of compromise, which assures these governments and their populations that this is the way we work in the EU, including in cases like the Istanbul Convention.

How a Women’s Protection Treaty Became a Culture-War Symbol

Could you reflect on how the Istanbul Convention became symbolically detached from its core purpose—preventing violence against women—and reframed instead as an LGBTQ+ threat or “radical feminist” project?

Dr. Monika de Silva: Of course, this is very unfortunate—what we see is that a convention intended to protect women from violence, gender-based violence, and protect domestic-violence victims, not only women, suddenly becomes a token in political discussions.

Even if some political movements would like the Istanbul Convention to stand for LGBT rights and feminist projects to a larger extent, it does not do so, as populist parties would like us to believe. That is why it is very important to counter misinformation around the Istanbul Convention and always go back to what it actually stands for and what it actually says. This is how movements across Europe will succeed in ensuring that the Convention is a successful tool—by returning to its true purpose, which is largely consensual. If we look at public opinion across Europe, most people agree that violence against women is not something they want to see in their societies.

We may have different ideas about the scope of the problem and how to tackle it, but returning to this core purpose is something that can mobilize support for the Convention. Bringing the Convention back to its purpose and localizing that purpose—not as something imposed or defined by other countries on Latvia, for example, but as something important within Latvian society itself—is very important.

We see civil society learning to do that—to focus on these two things. When we look at the protests in Latvia, I have seen a lot of Latvian flags; the protest itself has this motto of protecting Mother Latvia. So, it gives you the idea that this is about the citizens and population of Latvia. It is not about the EU; it is not about how we look in the eyes of EU bureaucrats. This is a local issue.

People Power Matters: Protest as a Deterrent to Anti-Gender Politics

Women protest in Warsaw, Poland, against the abortion ban and new laws restricting the right to contest fines or penalties. Photo: Eryk Losik.

What role does civil society mobilization play against gender backlash? Latvia has seen some of its largest protests since independence—can such mobilization create durable political resistance?

Dr. Monika de Silva: Of course it matters, and we have seen this in the case of Latvia. The president of Latvia decided to return the decision about the Istanbul Convention to parliament, and I am sure that seeing the mobilization of people and witnessing the largest protests in Latvia helped shape this decision.

We have other cases as well. Poland is a very good example of how civil society mobilization really works. Think about the Women’s Strike in Poland, and the fact that even though Poland had a populist government for over eight years, very much threatening gender equality, Poland has not withdrawn from the Istanbul Convention. This was, to a large extent, the success of civil society mobilization, acting as a deterrent to incumbents—showing that if you take a decision that is against our core values and beliefs, we will not continue supporting you.

At the end of the day, people want to stay in power, and civil society mobilization shows them that they can only do so if they take into account what civil society wants. This mobilization has to continue until the elections in Latvia next year, and hopefully in a way that mobilizes a large part of society rather than polarizing it.

Can EU-Level Binding Offset National Withdrawal?

How has EU legal accession to the Istanbul Convention (2023) shaped the political field? Does EU-level binding partially compensate for national withdrawals or refusals to ratify?

Dr. Monika de Silva: This is a complex legal issue—really an issue for legal nerds—but it is important for the public to understand it, too. Some parts of the Istanbul Convention are ratified by the EU, and the majority of the Convention can be ratified by EU member states, depending on who has competence in a given issue.

So, the EU—regardless of whether member states ratified the Convention or not—will have a certain part of the Convention apply, for example in the case of Latvia, just because the EU ratified it. But this is a very limited scope: it includes transnational cooperation between national court systems on violence against women and domestic violence.

A second area is asylum and refugee policy, because the EU has competence over this policy. And third, the EU has to implement the Convention within its own institutions.

So, this is a limited scope—this is one thing. Another issue is that although in theory it may sound all well and good, a division of competences, in practice this is a bit of a mess. Even though the EU is legally responsible for asylum policy, it is actually member states that implement it. It is states that run asylum-seeking centers, states that receive asylum requests, and so on. So, in practice, it may be difficult to differentiate who is responsible for what, and we have yet to see how this will work in practice.

The Real-World Costs of Leaving the Istanbul Convention

Women and LGBTQ+ activists in İzmir, Turkey, rally on November 25 for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, highlighting femicide and the withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention. Photo: Idil Toffolo.

And lastly, Dr. de Silva, from a governance-effects perspective, what are the tangible consequences of withdrawal or non-ratification for women’s lives, particularly in terms of monitoring gaps and legal reform trajectories?

Dr. Monika de Silva: In the case of Latvia specifically, the Istanbul Convention is still in force and will be so until the parliament votes otherwise. But this will likely not happen until the next parliamentary elections in Latvia next year. So, in the case of Latvia, we are so far safe.

But what would happen if Latvia withdrew from the Convention? Let’s think about this. Many provisions of the Convention are already implemented in this case, and then we would have to focus on keeping these provisions in place. This is also a strategy in countries where it is very clear that they will not ratify the Convention in any foreseeable future. Think about Hungary. This is where civil society should focus on national law on domestic violence and violence against women being as strong as possible and perhaps reflecting the provisions of the Convention to the largest extent possible.

Latvia has already reported to GREVIO, the expert body of the Convention that monitors its implementation, and from this report we know that there are still gaps. The government itself says, for example, that it does not yet have assistance centers for rape victims. Now the government is legally obliged to establish them in the foreseeable future. If Latvia were not a member of the Convention, it would not have a legal obligation to do so.

There are situations like that. But the biggest and most immediate difference we would see is that a state not part of the Convention would not report to GREVIO. Whatever it does is therefore less transparent, especially internationally. There is less scrutiny, because once a state reports to GREVIO, it is evaluated by this body of experts—experts on violence against women and domestic violence who know what the Convention requires and how it should be implemented. States outside the Convention would also not face scrutiny from other member states or from international civil society.

So, this would be the biggest difference.