Is civil society’s influence favorable to the evolvement of democratic structures and democratic gender relations? While traditional approaches would answer in the affirmative, the authors highlight the ambivalences. Focusing on women’s organizations in authoritarian and hybrid regimes, they cover the full spectrum of civil society’s possible performance: from its important role in the overcoming of power relations to its reinforcement as backers of government structures or the distribution of antifeminist ideas.

What concepts of ‘gender’ and ‘diversity’ emerge in the different regions and pertinent research and practical fields? On the back drop of current European developments – from the deregulation of economy, a shrinking welfare state to the dissolution and reinforcement of borders – the book examines the development of Gender and Diversity Studies in different European regions as well as beyond and focuses on central fields of theoretical reflection, empirical research and practical implementation policies and politics.

This book offers insights and perspectives from a study of “Cultural Encounters in Intervention Against Violence” (CEINAV) in four EU-countries. Seeking a deeper understanding of the underpinnings of intervention practices in Germany, Portugal, Slovenia and the United Kingdom, the team explored variations in institutional structures and traditions of law, policing, and social welfare. Theories of structural inequality and ethics are discussed and translated into practice.

The year 1918 was significant in many ways, seeing the end of World War 1. At the same time, the impact and transformational effects of this event enabled civil society activists and politically institutionalised actors in European countries to pick up the threads of democratic social movements and parliamentary aspirations, and make use of “political opportunity structures” to obtain citizen rights for larger parts of the population. One result of this process – albeit with a difference between European states – was that more groups in society gained suffrage. Amongst those were large sections of the working class and women. While the vote was won for some new social groups in European societies, others were still excluded. After one centennium of struggle for political participation, we would like to discuss specific problems of politics of belonging. The question concerning the full recognition of citizen rights was and continually is connected to ideas of a specific membership of a nation state, a fact that denotes the particular problem of membership and non-membership and of inside and outside. This Research Topic will take account of this special field of tension of democratisation – e.g. inclusion through exclusion – from a perspective of social history, political science, gender studies and intersectionality approaches. This analytical foil shall be used to examine the relationship between state or government action and civil society, as well as the reproduction of social and political inequality despite increasing democratisation movements.

Desired States challenges the notion that in some cultures, sex and sexuality have become privatized and located in individual subjectivity rather than in public political practices and institutions. Instead, the book contends that desire is a central aspect of political culture. Based on fieldwork and archival research, Frazier explores the gendered and sexualized dynamics of political culture in Chile, an imperialist context, asking how people connect with and become mobilized in political projects in some cases or, in others, become disaffected or are excluded to varying degrees. The book situates the state in a rich and changing context of transnational and localized movements, imperialist interests, geo-political conflicts, and market forces to explore the broader struggles of desiring subjects, especially in those dimensions of life that are explicitly sexual and amorous: free love movements, marriage, the sixties’ sexual revolution in Cold War contexts, prostitution policies, ideas about men’s gratification, the charisma of leaders, and sexual/domestic violence against women.

Autocratization in Contemporary Uganda analyses two interrelated outcomes: autocratisation, manifest in the deepening of personalist rule or Musevenism, and the regime resilience that has made Museveni one of Africa's current-longest surviving rulers. How has this feat been possible, and what has been the trajectory of Museveni's increasingly autocratic rule? Surveying that trajectory since 1986, the book takes as its primary focus the years since 2005; bringing to the fore the 'autocratic turn', placing it within a broader comparative lens, and enriching it with comparative references to cases outside of Uganda. While positing the notion of 'autocratic adaptability' as a defining hallmark of Museveni's rule, the book examines the factors and forces that have made that adaptability possible, analysing the dynamics around three keys themes: institutions, resources, and coalitions. Through empirical research, each chapter seeks to demonstrate how either one or two of these three variables have functioned in propelling autocratization and assuring regime resilience - producing theoretical and and comparative implications that reach beyond Uganda.

This open access book examines how civil society organizations in Poland, Russia, and Sweden (re)act to transformations of opportunities and limitations in access to various forms of resources. The volume’s contributions discuss the constraints associated with different types of resources as well as organizations’ capacities to generate resources—or compensate for their lack—as they negotiate and contest barriers. The resourcefulness of civil society is revealed to be rooted in a variety of capabilities: converting resources, eliciting organizational change, and metamorphosing in response to organizational and environmental development. ​

The book explains an unexpected consequence of the decrease in conflict in Africa after the 1990s. Analysis of cross-national data and in-depth comparisons of case studies of Uganda, Liberia and Angola show that post-conflict countries have significantly higher rates of women's political representation in legislatures and government compared with countries that have not undergone major conflict. They have also passed more legislative reforms and made more constitutional changes relating to women's rights. The study explains how and why these patterns emerged, tying these outcomes to the conjuncture of the rise of women's movements, changes in international women's rights norms and, most importantly, gender disruptions that occur during war. This book will help scholars, students, women's rights activists, international donors, policy makers, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and others better understand some of the circumstances that are most conducive to women's rights reform today and why.

This book discusses the diversity and resilience in a hybrid regime where civil society organisations are either provided with complex sets of opportunities or face severe constraints. By studying the case of Iran between 1997 and 2013, it shows how the Islamic Republic regime went into two opposite directions under two presidencies and played in-between supporting and suppressing advocacy NGOs. After accommodating a novel theoretical framework enabling scholars to identify the contributing factors of diversity in the regime, four case-study chapters are designated for comparing the women’s rights and environmental NGOs across local and national governments. These two political and technical policy areas demonstrate the different scopes of freedoms for advocacy NGOs. The contrasting narratives of the civil activists and policymakers imply paradoxes and shifts in the arrangement of opportunities for action and advocacy, although the leadership and structure of the regime remained unchanged during the period of study.

This insightful Handbook brings together leading and emerging scholars within the field of nonprofit organization, serving as a call to action for academics to interrogate key contemporary issues such as backsliding and authoritarianism. It meticulously distinguishes traditional, often marginalist perspectives from nuanced counterarguments to balance out the field.