Illiberal Coalitions against ‘Gender’: Analyzing Contentious Interactions

Abstract

Illiberal conservatives have continually and successfully mobilized masses by strategically politicizing gender, women’s and LGBTI rights issues in the last decade. As part of this trend, we have witnessed anti-gender and anti-abortion protest campaigns and opposition to the Istanbul Convention which have created contention across societal and geographical cleavages. Opposition to liberal and progressive morality policies has become an important element of a broader trend of democratic backsliding and authoritarian populist governance. This panel focuses on traditionalist movements as well as national, transnational and state actors in the East of Europe, including Croatia, Bulgaria, Hungary and Turkey, comparatively. We focus on these new horizons of contentious interactions between various conflicting political actors by using innovative methodologies initially developed for Western European liberal democracies, such as contentious episode analysis. In addition, we utilize key social movement concepts to shed light on illiberal and radical right movements, their frames, discourses and strategies. The panel aims to highlight the importance of research using a transnational and comparative outlook to follow the increasing collaboration and diffusion of issues, values and frames among illiberal and authoritarian actors.

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