Varieties of LGBTIQ+ equality: between policy action and antilgbtiq+ institutionalism

Abstract

This panel examines the contemporary transformations of LGBTIQ+ equality through the dual lens of progressive policy action and the rise of regressive reactions. Over the past two decades, several political systems have expanded their equality programs through new regulatory tools and targeted policy instruments. At the same time, a growing number of governments and state agencies have adopted institutional practices that restrict, contest, or strategically reframe LGBTIQ+ rights. These counter-developments include legislative rollbacks, administrative obstruction, moral regulatory mechanisms, and the embedding of anti-gender and anti-LGBTIQ+ narratives and actors within bureaucratic routines and institutional arenas. By focusing on varieties of LGBTIQ+ equality, the panel brings together contributions that map cross-national and intra-national differences in the design and implementation of equality policies. The papers mobilize a range of methodological approaches to capture how equality-enhancing and equality-restricting dynamics interact within specific political opportunity structures. A central question guiding the panel concerns how policy action and innovation and institutional backlash co-evolve: under what conditions do equality policies consolidate, adapt, or fragment in the face of structured opposition? How do political actors, civil-society organizations, and administrative bodies negotiate this tension? The panel pays particular attention to the emerging institutionalization of antilgbtiq+ politics. This phenomenon is understood not merely as the presence of hostile actors in state institutions, but as a set of organizational practices, regulatory strategies, and formal and informal arrangements that stabilize contestation within the policy process itself. Contributions examine how anti-gender and anti-lgbtiq+ frames are translated into legal norms, bureaucratic procedures, funding schemes, and interpretive guidance. Taken together, the panel aims to advance a comparative and theoretically grounded understanding of the evolving politics of LGBTIQ+ equality, and also to theorize the specificity of antilgbtiq+ institutionalism as a theoretical model that allow us to understand double-helix dynamics (Ayoub and Stoeckl 2024) and regressive institutional practices, and as a methodological tool that allow us to observe such practices.

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