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A Gender Analysis of What De-Democratization Does to the Demos

Citizenship
Democracy
Democratisation
Gender
Representation
Feminism
Petra Meier
Universiteit Antwerpen
Petra Meier
Universiteit Antwerpen

Abstract

De-democratization is an interesting term as it indicates a motion rather than a state, and as it is the undoing of something else, namely democratization. Democratization is, in brief, an issue of bringing in more democracy or making something more democratic. But what does that mean? And what would its undoing mean? In this paper I would like to unpack the concept of de-democratization starting from two angles. First, I would like to approach it from the concept of demos in democracy and, second, to do so from a feminist perspective, looking at the gendered dimension of the demos and its undoing. The encompassing concept of the demos has been put into question by feminist scholars in the past, pointing at its gendered and thereby exclusive nature when it comes to women, their rights, social position, needs and interests. Their emphasis was on how to make the demos more inclusive or gender balanced, eventually by redesigning the concept itself. This paper would like to build upon this scholarship, addressing the issue of de-democratization by looking into the concept of demos, the extent to which de-democratization means less demos, by what – if at all – it gets replaced and what this means from a feminist – and which feminist – point of view, and how this relates to former feminist criticisms. Particular attention will be paid to an increasingly narrow understanding of the demos, or by its articulation as a set of different demoi, and the gendered consequences thereof. Particular attention will also be paid to the intersections of gender with other social markers in processes of de-democratization and their effects on the demos.