Religion in Action: The Impact on the Backlash against Equality+ in Europe

• In Event: Secular-Religious Cleavage and Party Competition in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

Opposition to equality+ initiatives has dramatically expanded into a pattern that displays key features of morality issues. Controversy over classic gender issues such as reproductive rights has been reactivated across Europe through a growing number of attacks. At the same time, attacks also increasingly focus on new issues such as transgender+ rights. Across Europe, far right parties have often taken the lead in attacking gender+ equality while traditional religious parties have often stumbled in identifying a vote-seeking positioning compatible with their increasingly secularised ideology. The question arises to understand the impact of the revival of the secular-religious divide on these new political dynamics in morality issues across Europe.

Relying on the systematic analysis of attention (party manifestos, cabinet speeches, parliamentary questions) and action (laws, constitutional court cases) across Western Europe (Austria, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, and the UK) and Central Eastern Europe (Hungary and Poland), this paper investigates the dynamics in attention and action against gender+ equality issues to identify the determinants in the ebb and flow of the anti-gender attacks on the institutional agendas, the actors involved and the strategies in issue coupling and issue travelling across institutional venues, space, and time.

Author

• Isabelle Engeli, University of Exeter