Читать книгу Civil Society and Gender Relations in Authoritarian and Hybrid Regimes - Группа авторов - Страница 7

Although the nexus between authoritarian politics and gender relations as an essential component and core of civil society is increasingly becoming the focus of political science analyses, it is still hardly understood theoretically or systematically. Just as gender relations were a focal point of research on democratic transformation – especially in institution-centered approaches, which focused on political participation and quotas (Norris and Inglehart 2001; Saxonberg 2000; Tripp 2001) – so too were gender relations in authoritarian regimes important for the empirical studies and country examples of authoritarianism research.

Such approaches typically conceptualize gender relations more in terms of the political order and less in terms of the social order. This is apparent, for instance, in the studies of Southeast Asia, which look at the reproduction of social elites in dynasties, scrutinize the political participation of certain women, or investigate the postcolonial legacy and significance of social diversity in gender (Robinson 1999). Other analyses have considered – against the background of the low level of political representation of women – the role of women in the construction of democratic oppositions (Fleschenberg and Hellmann-Rajanayagam 2009). Research on democratic transformation in Eastern Europe centered on how gender relations were changing on political and social levels; it examined the decreased institutional representation of women during the transition and the development of the political representation of women in democratization processes, which varied significantly across regions. In addition, gender research on Eastern Europe took up the problem of the trafficking of humans, especially women (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Osteuropakunde 2003; Hinterhuber, Fuchs, and Karbstein 2006; Hasibovic, Nickel, and Sticker 2007). Gender relations in autocracies have become the object of numerous political science analyses (for an overview, see Kreile 2009) in studies on the Middle East; scholars problematize specific and unequal forms of political participation; the degree of limited plurality (Linz 1964: 255); how political representation and parliaments function as mechanisms of authoritarian rule (Matz 1987); and the nexus between modernization, political emancipation move [14] ments, and democratization (Al-Rebholz 2014; Yesilyurt Gündüz 2002) with regard to the political and social position of women.

Beyond such studies – which focus above all on political rule and investigate how “electoral authoritarianism” (Schedler 2006) in voting procedures and parliament (Köllner 2008: 358ff.) impacts the gender order – current analyses of developments in Latin America and of the Arabic Spring have demonstrated that liberalization and formal democratization do not automatically lead to more equality or gender justice (Al-Ali 2012; Roy 2012; Antonakis 2017).

But explaining the sluggish democratization of social gender relations as the result of the stubborn persistence of patriarchal traditions and cultural religious foundations would be too easy.

Recent developments all over the world obviously show that the increasing authoritarian organizations and political power are shaking up not only societies striving for democracy. Civil society, a space for ideas of gender justice, plural gender identities, and equal life chances, is also diminishing, and its activities, responsibilities, and solidarities are limited by systemic mechanisms of discrimination, hierarchization, exclusion, and arrangements. According to this understanding, the institutions, parties, groups, and social organizations have a fundamental effect on civil society and the gender relations inscribed there. This is clearly what is happening by means of ideological, populist, discursive, and materialistic strategies, which offer traditional forms of gender identification and secure power and provide legitimation in authoritarian settings (Graf, Schneider, and Wilde 2017; Wilde and Meyer 2018).

Even in established European democracies the call has become louder for conservative family values, women’s maternal role is being emphasized, and women are being precluded from political representation; the significance and function of hierarchical-patriarchal gender orders, traditional power structures, and non-governmental actors have now become more than evident: they serve the reproduction of domination structures and the stability of authoritarian regimes, as well as the democratization of gender relations (Sauer 1996: 123f.).

But research on autocracy and right-wing populism has kept quiet about this topic – the nexus between autocracies and the inscription and constituting of gender relations as social power relations falls neither into theoretical nor empirical focus in political science research, which is preoccupied with the [15] structures and institutions of authoritarian systems, their core properties, functional logic, and maintenance mechanisms.

With the exception of post-structural and governmental approaches (Foucault 2000, 2001; Laclau and Mouffe 1991; Mouffe 2007), attention is only seldom turned to society, and even more seldom to gender, gender roles, and gender identities, a fact which has been criticized for a long time now by feminist autocracy research (Schneider and Wilde 2012). In light of political upheavals and changes aiming to turn civil society into a homogenous, enclosed entity and to inscribe gender relations as an essential and constitutive part of the questionable ideals of closed, non-pluralistic, and homophobic societies, mainstream research approaches and instruments for theoretical analyses are becoming increasingly outdated. The developing authoritarian inscriptions and mechanisms of control are far too complex to be explained by the distinction between unity parties or privileged parties and their fusions with different social organizations. And fundamental systematizations – such as Juan Jose Linz’s (1964, 2000) triad of totalitarian systems, authoritarian regimes, and democracies, which is still being used in comparative empirical research, for instance, on the regimes in the Middle East (Bank 2009) – are overwhelmed and hardly perceptive given the intersection of formal democratic institutions and principles of the rule of law with authoritarian practices, as well as in view of self-contained power and domination relations. Non-institutional mechanisms for securing domination and the social foundations of authoritarian rule have not been adequately considered conceptually or methodically (Köllner 2008: 362); though feminists have criticized autocracy research exactly for this reason, it still continues to focus one-sidedly on domination mechanisms and legitimation strategies (Albrecht and Frankenberger 2010, 2011).

Feminist research on autocracy and right-wing populism fills this gap. By focusing on the domains of non-institutional legitimation and power strategies and civil society processes, it provides numerous possibilities for analyses, all of which take into account gender and gender relations systematically and conceptually. Based on an understanding of society aligned with Antonio Gramsci (1991) as the unity of political and civil society, and based on a basic understanding of power relations, feminist research emphasizes the significance and function of hierarchical gender orders and traditional-religious gender roles. In [16] examining the retraditionalization of gender relations resulting from ideological, populist, or materialistic power and legitimation strategies, important knowledge about the reproduction of domination structures, the stability of authoritarian regimes, and the destruction of democratic relations has been acquired. By linking the establishment of political order to social conditions, retraditionalization is revealed as part of a practical life-nexus (Kreile 2016: 11); the focus becomes how phenomena of exploitation, alienation, exclusion, and violence intersect with political authorities in different domains of society. The construction of society as a closed entity inscribing gender relations as power relations becomes the central object of research and actual core of authoritarian politics.

Besides the ambivalent role of civil society organizations, a feminist perspective sees the public and private domains as powerful constructions (Wilde 2012). In this context, regulatory mechanisms are of central importance, as they posit relations between gender groups and distinguish the private from the public. It has been demonstrated that the activities of autocratic or totalitarian systems in the context of social policy, discourses about marriage and family, or the political organization of social reproduction have significant effects on the political inscription of gender relations as social power and domination relations. Signs of authoritarian policies are evident in gender identity constructions and role models in the public domain as well as – under the new negotiations of care work – in the limited self-determination and freedom of women in the private sphere.

Based on these criteria, and from a feminist standpoint, we can recognize the extent to which poverty and social inequalities are connected to the strengthening and establishing of authoritarian politics and domination relations. Also important for this project is understanding processes of socialization and the ideological upbringing of gendered subjects: how do authoritarian discourses and practices – which are in opposition to democratic ideas of equal and just gender relations – tailor gendered individuals to fit into their societies? Or, based on religious-cultural narratives and traditional family images, how is the systematic exclusion of women from the public domain and their discrimination carried out and legitimated (Schneider 2010)?

[17] This background sketch presents new challenges for feminist research on autocracy. Notably, there must be a new examination of theoretical approaches, an elaboration of conceptual foundations, a reformulation of central categories and concepts, and the systematization of research perspectives. The aim must be to obtain concrete information about the dynamic, persistence, and weaknesses of autocracies, as well as systematic knowledge of informal and non-institutional forms of domination, which inscribe gender relations as power relations in civil societies. The anthology contributes to this project.