Backlash advocacy and NGO polarization over women's rights in the United Nations

Cupać, Jelena; Ebetürk, Irem

doi:10.1093/ia/iiab069

Cited by 15 publications

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“…One of the main strategic concerns of conservative and feminist NGOs is ensuring access to various UN bodies (we make a similar point elsewhere, see Cupać and Ebetürk 2021). To miss an opportunity to influence these bodies is to cede territory to the other side.…”

Section: Effect Of Socialization: Polarizationmentioning

confidence: 89%

“…The struggle for institutional spaces One of the main strategic concerns of conservative and feminist NGOs is ensuring access to various UN bodies (we make a similar point elsewhere, see Cupać and Ebetürk 2021).…”

Section: Effect Of Socialization: Polarizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The concepts of socialization and polarization we develop in this article hint at how these gaps can be filled. However, given that this is not the main focus of the research, we offer more detail on this issue elsewhere (Cupać and Ebetürk 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Competitive mimicry: The socialization of antifeminist NGOs into the United Nations

Cupać

Ebetürk

2022

Glob. Con.

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Conservative NGOs contesting women’s rights in the United Nations are on the rise, and their activity is increasingly described as an antifeminist backlash. This article focuses a new theoretical lens on this development: socialization. It argues that conservative NGOs’ socialization into transnational practices and the United Nations has played a significant part in facilitating the antifeminist backlash. To support this claim, the article examines socialization comprehensively, applying several analytical angles: its definition, directionality, mechanism, degree and effects. It also treats conservative NGOs’ socialization as both a process and an outcome. As a process, it unfolds horizontally, by conservative NGOs competitively mimicking feminist NGOs in two domains in particular: their manner of transnational organizing and their skilful use of the UN human rights framework. The article finds that conservative NGOs have socialized into transnational NGO practices and the regulative institutional rules of the United Nations, but not into all its constitutive norms. The chief effect of this kind of socialization is polarization. The article singles out and empirically illustrates three of its manifestations: the struggle for institutional spaces; zero-sum politics based on a sense of existential threat; and the use of a strong moralizing discourse.

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Section: Effect Of Socialization: Polarizationmentioning

confidence: 89%

Section: Effect Of Socialization: Polarizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Competitive mimicry: The socialization of antifeminist NGOs into the United Nations

Cupać

Ebetürk

2022

Glob. Con.

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“…Beyond threatening the physical safety of feminists, the politics of enmity drives political polarization with implications for national and global governance (Cupać and Ebetürk 2021; Symons and Altman 2015). Compromise, so crucial for international agreements, is becoming increasingly fraught.…”

Section: Enmity and Polarizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Special issue introduction: Contemporary international anti-feminism

Sanders

Jenkins²

2022

Glob. Con.

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In recent years, conservative governments and their civil society allies have undermined international women’s rights treaties and SOGI rights initiatives and challenged domestic rights protections. The articles in this special issue grapple with these trends by analysing the ideologies, discourses, and strategies of contemporary anti-feminism in global and comparative contexts. Several prominent patterns emerge: the core significance of social hierarchy and biological essentialism to anti-feminist conservative thought; the polarizing demonization of feminists by religious conservatives and populist nationalists; the appropriation of rights discourses and advocacy tactics by anti-feminist campaigns; and the strategic importance of law and legal language as a terrain of rights contestation. Taken together, this research suggests that anti-feminism is not incidental to reactionary anti-democratic politics, but instead a constitutive element of political movements that seek to naturalize inequality and legally enforce conformity with conservative social norms.

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“… 23. For a conceptualization of backlash, see Alter and Zürn (2020). For backlash within the United Nations, see Cupać and Ebetürk (2021). …”

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confidence: 99%

Unbowed, unbent, unbroken? Examining the validity of the responsibility to protect

Scherzinger¹

2022

Cooperation and Conflict

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How has the sentiment around the “responsibility to protect” (R2P) changed over time? Scholars have debated far and wide whether the political norm enjoys widespread discursive acceptance or is on the brink of decline. This article contends that we can use sentiment analysis as an important indicator for norm validity. My analysis provides three crucial insights. First, despite the well-known fear of some scholars, R2P is still frequently invoked in Security Council deliberations on issues of international peace and security. Second, overall levels of affirmative language have remained remarkably stable over time. This finding indicates that R2P is far from being obliterated. Out of 130 states, 4 international organizations (IOs), and 2 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) invoking the norm, 65% maintain a positive net-sentiment. Third, zooming into Libya as a case illustration of a critical juncture, we see some minor tonal shifts from some pivotal member states. Adding the fact that interest constellations within the Permanent Five are heterogeneous concerning the third pillar of R2P, future military interventions, sanctioned under the norm, seem unlikely.

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Backlash advocacy and NGO polarization over women's rights in the United Nations

Cited by 15 publications

References 0 publications

Competitive mimicry: The socialization of antifeminist NGOs into the United Nations

Competitive mimicry: The socialization of antifeminist NGOs into the United Nations

Special issue introduction: Contemporary international anti-feminism

Unbowed, unbent, unbroken? Examining the validity of the responsibility to protect

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