Autocratization and Transgender Rights

• In Event: 50 Years of LGBTQ Scholarship at APSA Mini-Conference: The Global Backlash to LGBT Rights

Abstract

Despite the emergence of transgender rights discourse, recent years have seen a global anti-trans wave. Several prominent right-wing populists have specifically targeted transgender rights through their rhetoric and policies. For example, on the International Trans Day of Visibility in 2020, Viktor Orban’s Fidesz-controlled parliament introduced legislation banning legal gender marker changes for transgender individuals in Hungary. In the United States. the Trump Administration rolled back anti-discrimination protections for transgender individuals to access housing, healthcare, and education. This anti-trans wave overlaps with a wave of autocratization. How does autocratization affect a country’s protection of transgender rights? Previous research has yet to examine the intersection of regime transformation and transgender rights despite the increasing scholarly attention being devoted to these topics separately. Research on autocratization – or moves toward autocracy along the democratic-autocratic continuum – tends to focus more heavily on its causes rather than its consequences. When studies examine its impact on rights, the scope is often limited to issues such as physical integrity or women’s rights. Empirical work on transgender rights also remains limited, as “LGBT” scholarship traditionally focuses exclusively on sexual orientation minorities. In this paper, we assess the relationship between autocratization and transgender rights using theory-building nested analysis. Drawing on original data tracking transgender rights from the Transgender Rights Indicator Project (TRIP) and the Episodes of Regime Transformation (ERT) dataset from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project, we quantitatively test the correlation between autocratization and transgender rights in 173 countries from 2000 to 2021. Contrary to expectations, we find that transgender rights tend to improve during episodes of autocratization for the years covered in our analysis. To understand this unexpected result, we qualitatively investigate several prominent off-the-line cases of democratic backsliding, including Bolivia, Brazil, India, Slovenia, and the United States. Through these cases, we uncover several potential causal mechanisms to explain why autocratization, even when characterized by anti-trans rhetoric, is associated with improvements in transgender rights. Thus, the paper contributes to the literature by providing a more nuanced understanding of the consequences of autocratization, especially for highly marginalized groups like the transgender community.

Authors

• Myles Williamson, University of Baltimore

• Amanda B. Edgell, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa