https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.2307%2F3343168.pdf

Development as Freedom

The four Visegrad states — Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia (until 1993 Czechoslovakia) and Hungary — form a compact area between Germany and Austria in the west and the states of the former USSR in the east. They are bounded by the Baltic in the north and the Danube river in the south. They are cut by the Sudeten and Carpathian mountain ranges, which divide Poland off from the other states. Poland is an extension of the North European plain and like the latter is drained by rivers that flow from south to north west — the Oder, the Vlatava and the Elbe, the Vistula and the Bug. The Danube is the great exception, flowing from its source eastward, turning through two 90-degree turns to end up in the Black Sea, forming the barrier and often the political frontier between central Europe and the Balkans. Hungary to the east of the Danube is also an open plain. The region is historically and culturally part of western Europe, but its eastern Marches now represents a vital strategic zone between Germany and the core of the European Union to the west and the Russian zone to the east.

Economy and Society

Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy

Ethnic Groups in Conflict

Women empowerment and economic development are closely related: in one direction, development alone can play a major role in driving down inequality between men and women; in the other direction, empowering women may benefit development. Does this imply that pushing just one of these two levers would set a virtuous circle in motion? This paper reviews the literature on both sides of the empowerment– development nexus, and argues that the interrelationships are probably too weak to be self-sustaining, and that continuous policy commitment to equality for its own sake may be needed to bring about equality between men and women.

Women Empowerment and Economic Development

Over the past four decades, violence against women (VAW) has come to be seen as a violation of human rights and an important concern for social policy. Yet government action remains uneven. Some countries have adopted comprehensive policies to combat VAW, whereas others have been slow to address the problem. Using an original dataset of social movements and VAW policies in 70 countries over four decades, we show that feminist mobilization in civil society—not intra-legislative political phenomena such as leftist parties or women in government or economic factors like national wealth—accounts for variation in policy development. In addition, we demonstrate that autonomous movements produce an enduring impact on VAW policy through the institutionalization of feminist ideas in international norms. This study brings national and global civil society into large-n explanations of social policy, arguing that analysis of civil society in general—and of social movements in particular—is critical to understanding progressive social policy change.

/pdf/the-civic-origins-of-progressive-policy-change-combating-19suq66po3.pdf

The Civic Origins of Progressive Policy Change: Combating Violence against Women in Global Perspective, 1975–2005

Since elite women mobilised around suffrage rights in the nineteenth century, gaining access to decision-making power has been a central objective of women’s movements in Latin America. Today these demands appear to have been realised. Between 1991, when Argentina became the first democratic state in Latin America to establish a strict women’s quota, and 2000, when Colombia became the most recent country in the region to do so, 12 Latin American countries enacted national laws establishing a minimum level of 20 to 40 per cent for women’s participation as candidates in national elections. The regional trend toward the enactment of quota laws is unprecedented in world history. Only Belgium and Taiwan have similar quota legislation. Today (December 2000), women occupy 13 per cent of the seats in the lower houses of parliament in Latin America. The region ranks behind North-ern Europe (at 39 per cent), and compares with the world average, the rest of Europe, as well as the United States (all at 13 per cent).

Engendering the Right to Participate in Decision-making: Electoral Quotas and Women’s Leadership in Latin America

Abortion, divorce, and the family: how did the state make policy decisions in these areas in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile during the last third of the twentieth century? As the three countries transitioned from democratic to authoritarian forms of government (and back), they confronted challenges posed by the rise of the feminist movement, social changes, and the power of the Catholic Church. The results were often surprising: women's rights were expanded under military dictatorships, divorce was legalized in authoritarian Brazil but not in democratic Chile, and no Latin American country changed its laws on abortion. Sex and the State explores these patterns of gender-related policy reform and shows how they mattered for the peoples of Latin America and for a broader understanding of the logic behind the state's role in shaping private lives and gender relations everywhere.

Sex and the State : abortion, divorce, and the family under Latin American dictatorships and democracies

This essay proposes a framework to analyze cross-national variation in women’s legal rights. To explore the distinct logics of policy change, we disaggregate sex equality policies on two dimensions: 1) whether they improve the status of women as a group or alleviate gender-based class inequalities, and 2) whether or not they challenge the doctrine of organized religion and the codified tradition of major cultural groups. We show that policies promoting gender equality seek fundamental social change and therefore challenge historical patterns of state-society interaction concerning relations between the state and the market; the respective authority of the state, religion, and cultural groups; and the contours of citizenship. Different issues, however, challenge different aspects of these relations. What’s more, the priorities, strategies, and effectiveness of advocates and opponents of change (including women’s movements, left parties, international NGOs, and organized religion) are shaped by state capacity, policy legacies, international vulnerability, and the degree of democracy.

When Do Governments Promote Women's Rights? A Framework for the Comparative Analysis of Sex Equality Policy

Some 50 countries officially allocate access to political power by gender, ethnicity, or both. Yet in the world’s electoral democracies, the policies used for women differ systematically from those used for ethnic groups. The former receive candidate quotas in parties; the latter, reserved seats in legislatures. Why? My explanation focuses on the varying ways that gender and ethnic identities intersect with partisan cleavages and on the distinct “work” performed by the different remedies for underrepresentation. Quotas, which make space within existing parties, are appropriate for groups whose boundaries crosscut partisan divisions. Reservations, which create incentives for the formation of group-specific parties and permit them direct representation, suit groups whose boundaries coincide with political cleavages. Since gender is crosscutting while ethnicity tends to be coinciding, women receive candidate quotas while ethnic groups get legislative reservations. Claims for inclusion via quotas pose less of a challenge to liberal institutions than claims to difference through legislative reservations. Case studies of representational politics in France, India, and Peru illustrate the argument.

/pdf/is-gender-like-ethnicity-the-political-representation-of-2529bkp6dg.pdf

Mala Htun

Papers

The Civic Origins of Progressive Policy Change: Combating Violence against Women in Global Perspective, 1975–2005

Engendering the Right to Participate in Decision-making: Electoral Quotas and Women’s Leadership in Latin America

Sex and the State : abortion, divorce, and the family under Latin American dictatorships and democracies

When Do Governments Promote Women's Rights? A Framework for the Comparative Analysis of Sex Equality Policy

Is Gender like Ethnicity? The Political Representation of Identity Groups