Global Norms, Rival Transnational Networks, and the Contested Case of LGBT Rights
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Queering the World Society: Global Norms, Rival Transnational Networks, and the Contested Case of LGBT Rights Kristopher Velasco University of Texas at Austin ABSTRACT: As the world society is increasingly populated by illiberal actors, is it possible the mechanisms once used to explain compliance with liberal normative standards are now influential in explaining defiance to them? I investigate this question by examining how integration into the world society via rival pro- and anti-LGBT networks influences the expansion and contraction of LGBT rights from 1990-2018. Through extensive original data, I use time series, cross-sectional and multinomial models to showcase how global LGBT norms can spur defiance and backlash – not just compliance. Moreover, the relative strength of these rival networks is associated with policy changes in alignment with that networks’ preferences. This study contributes to our understanding of the changing international system by revealing how illiberal actors simultaneously co-opt and subvert the mechanisms built by the liberal world society to advance illiberal outcomes. Countries are increasingly enacting policies that are not just counter to, but in active opposition of, normative standards set out by the international community (Bromley, Schofer, and Longhofer 2019). This is occurring through democratic backslide, the derision of formal education, protectionist and retaliatory trade policies, and most relevant for the present study, discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities (Schofer et al. 2019; Hadler and Symons 2018; Hendrikse 2018; Kurlantzick 2013). Why is this happening? Given that these events are occurring around the globe, I turn to global and transnational-level theories, rather than localized accounts, to answer this question. While realist scholars present the global redistribution of power via material resources as a key explanation, I draw on world society theory to provide a culture-based understanding because “this is more than a power transition: it’s also about culture,” (Reus-Smit 2017: 851). While world society theory is typically used to explain the isomorphic diffusion of liberal policies (for review see Drori and Krucken̈ 2009), is it possible the mechanisms outlined within this process are also fundamental to explaining the broader retrenchment presently taking place? This is a pressing question for world society scholars as the theory’s very foundations of a liberal global context are being challenged (Boyle et al. 2015; Bromley et al. 2019; Hadler and Symons 2018). To answer these questions and illuminate the changing international system, I utilize LGBT rights as an ideal case.1 First, compared to most scripts analyzed by 1 Two notes on language. First, I use the term “LGBT” throughout the manuscript. Across transnational organizing, though, there are alternative preferences such as “LGBTI” to acknowledge intersex communities (as evident in the now-named International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association) or to not explicitly use identities and instead advocate for “SOGIE” rights, meaning sexual orientation and gender identity/expression (Mekler 2018). Second, while language today is more inclusive, this language does not reflect how debates and policies have unfolded historically regarding these communities – which were traditionally focused on the regulation of gay men because men’s sex lives were considered part of the public domain while the sex lives of women were considered to world society scholars, LGBT rights are less institutionalized on the world stage (Wilkinson and Langlois 2014). Therefore, this emergent norm is a better barometer of the changing forces than other issues (Hadler and Symons 2018). Second, because LGBT rights are seen as the “apex” of 21st century human rights discourse (Rahman 2014), they have become an explicit target both on the international level and in a multitude of domestic contexts around the world (Ayoub 2014, 2015; Fetner 2008; Symons and Altman 2016; Weiss and Bosia 2013). Consequently, examining the strategies and tactics used by illiberal actors to undermine this issue can advance our understanding of how they may subsequently counter other norms as well (Bob 2012; Terman 2019). Specifically, I argue that transnational networks of illiberal, anti-LGBT actors simultaneously employ two tactics, co-optation and subversion, to reframe LGBT norms as existential threats to the family and religion, sovereignty and the nation, and/or child well-being and population demographics and, therefore, in need of a backlash policy response to protect against such threats (Ayoub 2014, 2016, 2019; Boyle et al. 2015; Buss and Herman 2003; Frank et al. 2010; Frank and Moss 2017; Korolczuk and Graff 2018; Nuñez-Mietz and García Iommi 2017). First, through co-optation, they utilize the norms already established within the liberal world society to justify their claims and illiberal motives – such as using rationality and pseudo-science to argue against LGBT protections. Second, through subversion, they weaken the legitimacy of the norm in question by advancing an alternative framework – such as promoting “natural family” or traditional values throughout the United Nations (U.N.) (Korolczuk and Graff 2018). Therefore, be regulated by their husbands in the private sphere (Adam et al 2009; Connell 1990; Frank and Moss 2017; Frank and Phillips 2013). Public advancements and subsequent backlashes of policies specific to other aspects of the LGBT community are a much more recent development. greater exposure to international norms via these actors simply means that the norm is a greater threat in need of policy protection (Nuñez-Mietz and García Iommi 2017; Terman 2019). To get a full account of how global norms influence domestic policies, then, it is imperative to consider how a country is simultaneously positioned within the “twin countervailing forces” of supportive and rival networks (Hadler and Symons 2018: 1725). To test this argument, I use time-series cross-sections and pooled multinomial logistic regress models to predict a country’s changing adoption and implementation of 18 LGBT policies based on embeddedness within both pro- and anti-LGBT transnational advocacy networks from 1990-2018. Policy change is measured as either expansion, contraction, contestation (both types of events occur), or status quo. By creating original datasets to measure both pro- and anti- LGBT transnational advocacy networks over time, as well as a policy index encompassing changes in the adoption, scope, and implementation of progressive and regressive policies, this project gives new insights into transnational explanations for where and why backlash and resistance occurs. To date, most world society scholarship, and studies of norm diffusion more broadly, focuses on the mechanisms and processes by which policies supported by liberal values are successfully adopted (for counter example see Bromley et al. 2019; Boyle et al. 2015). This results in an understanding that a state’s response to global norms lies somewhere between status quo and full compliance and that any act of resistance or active backlash must be attributable to domestic attributes preventing the socialization to global norms (for caution against this theme see Ayoub 2016; Frank and Moss 2017). In contrast, my findings reveal that a transnational network of anti-LGBT actors, anchored across state, religious, and civil society actors like the World Congress of Families, Alliance Defending Freedom International, the Vatican, and Russia, are co-opting the structures and mechanisms within the international system to coordinate the transnational diffusion of LGBT backlash and resistance as well (Boyle et al. 2015; Korolczuk and Graff 2018). The conceptual model used in this analysis, of simultaneously considering both countervailing forces, can be used to understand the adoption, resistance, or retrenchment of a range of liberal norms as networks of actors hostile to the present system grow. Liberalizing the World Society: Understanding the Foundations for LGBT Rights Though there are several theories to explain the international system, I draw on theories within sociology and constructivist political science that prioritize cultural dimensions (Dobbins et al. 2007; Katzenstein 1993; Strang and Meyer 1993).2 I do so primarily because the present “crisis of liberalism” is rooted within cultural contentions like beliefs in markets after the 2008 financial crash, nationalistic identities and borders, and trust in democratic institutions (Castells 2018; Leith et al. 2019; Rupnik 2018). Therefore, to understand if liberal cultural traditions are waning, and the implications this carries for policies and ideas rooted within them, it is appropriate to draw on theories characterizing the cultural operations of the international system – namely, world society and other neo-institutional theories. Neo-institutional theory argues that to understand the structures and policies of an organization, it is important to consider the broader institutional environment the organization is embedded (DiMaggio and Powell 1983; Meyer and Rowan 1977). 2 While there are other mechanisms of diffusion, such as coercion, present research suggests that this is an ineffective route for LGBT policies (see Velasco 2019). Shifting this logic up to the global scale, world society theory contends that states, themselves organizational actors, adopt cultural scripts legitimized