Ratifying Istanbul Convention: Between Authoritarian Transition and Transnational Anti-feminist Movements

The Council of Europe Convention of Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (Istanbul Convention, IC) has been an object of political contestation since it was opened for signature in 2011. Many societal actors in various countries mobilized around contesting the so-called “gender-ideology” of the Convention. However, mobilization efforts are not limited to social movement actors. In many contexts, governments, political parties, and various civil society groups mobilize against the Convention, too. The role played by governments that ultimately have to decide whether to embrace or reject the IC, varies; in some cases, governments tacitly support civil society groups, whereas, in others, they are the main orchestrators of protests. Contestation of the Convention is particularly salient in countries experiencing an authoritarian transition or democratic backsliding, and governments often play an active role in this contestation, undermining thus both international efforts to enforce the protection of women’s rights and domestic human rights law. In this project, we seek to understand states’ inclination to embrace or avoid commitment to the Istanbul Convention. To do so, we create a novel cross-country time-series dataset on the ratification patterns of the IC by the 47 member states of the Council of Europe, complementing thus existing case evidence on IC contestation. In terms of explanatory factors, we focus on the quality of domestic democratic institutions and on governing parties’ ideology concerning gender equality. However, domestic institutions are only one side of the story. Many actors that contest the IC organize transnationally, and they come up with a common agenda, develop precise strategies, and mobilize their own financial resources. Hence, we also take the prevalence and strength of transnational networks in a country as another explanatory factor. In this context, we code the strength of networks and their interactions with governments, leveraging novel data on cross-country financing of anti-gender movements in Europe. In particular, we hypothesize that transnational anti-gender movements will be most successful when their strategies and agendas interact with the ideologies of populist or authoritarian parties in a country, leading thus to non-commitment to the IC. The interaction of transnational anti-feminist networks with populist or authoritarian parties is a novel phenomenon that has not yet been studied by the literature, but that has gained considerable political importance in recent years as significant financial resources are poured in transnational European anti-gender networks. By theorizing and examining the alignment between government parties and transnational networks, our study contributes to the literature on human rights in transitioning countries and to debates about the dynamics of democratic backsliding and growing authoritarianization.