This book critically analyzes the European Union’s promotion of LGBTI rights in the international arena. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersex rights are heavily contested across the globe, with over 70 countries criminalizing same-sex relations and at least 10 imposing the death penalty. The book details how the EU, based on different member state positions, attempts to jointly formulate and implement guidelines for the external promotion of LGBTI rights. It also problematizes the various normative and policy-based Eurocentric prescriptions to further these rights. Drawing on an international political sociology framework infused with queer theoretical thought, the author investigates the apparent normative tensions emerging from Europe’s promotion of LGBTI rights as liberal human rights and the ensuing pushback by culturally and politically conservative states. He examines the compatibility of EU institutional and member states’ conceptions of LGBTI rights and the more general question of the EU’s normative agenda-setting power on the world stage. He then explores the external policy areas in which LGBTI rights promotion is formulated and diffused – namely in development and foreign aid, in enlargement and neighbourhood policies, and in other international organizations. In conclusion, the author suggests viewing the contention surrounding LGBTI rights within broader governance contexts, and thus reimagining rights promotion in a more holistic manner. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of LGBTI and Human Rights, European Politics, and International Relations.

This book systematically analyses the EU’s commitment to a human rights-based approach to development through the lens of global justice theory. It identifies limits to the EU’s approach and discusses how standardised policies, particularly in the case of human rights sanctions, may be perceived as neo-colonially intrusive and can come at the cost of recognizing the experiences and interests of vulnerable groups and allowing for partner countries’ democratic ownership of their own development trajectory. Engaging with primary sources including official documents, reports, and 45 semi-structured interviews with EU and member state officials, the book also presents a novel explanation for why the EU, at times, steps out of its commitment to rights-based development and chooses differentiated foreign policy responses to similar situations. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of EU foreign policy, EU development policy human rights, and international relations as well as policy practitioners working in the fields of development, human rights and democracy promotion.

"This book offers a sweeping and in-depth look at the global movement to curtail LGBTI rights, exploring both how this moral conservative movement functions-in terms of its key actors, claims, and venues of resistance-and how the LGBTI movement responds to it"--

LGBTI Politics and Value Change in Ukraine and Turkey focuses on the impact of European Union promotion of LGBTI rights in Turkey and Ukraine, offering a re-evaluation of the mechanisms used by the EU and the domestic and external conditions that result in different outcomes. With the protection of LGBTI rights becoming one of the core principles of the EU, the last two decades have seen a consistently growing commitment of the Union to defending the human rights of LGBTI people, not only in its member states but also internationally. Drawing on rich empirical data, this work uses the cases of Turkey, a candidate state, and Ukraine, a state in the European Neighbourhood, to evaluate the ability of the EU to promote tolerance and diversity in countries where the population has not experienced a radical shift of attitudes toward LGBTI people. Examining the export of 'European values', politics of LGBTI rights in the enlarged European Union, the development of LGBTI rights in Turkey and the transformation of its political system, competing normative powers and LGBT rights in Ukraine, Maryna Shevtsova traces the ‘Europeanization’ of rights beyond Europe. This book will be of interest to researchers in LGBTI Studies, Eastern European Politics, the European Union and Gender Studies.

EU commitment to human rights policies has grown following the Lisbon Treaty. Taking stock of those developments, this book describes the framework, actors, policies, and strategies of human rights across the EU and how their impact is felt. Contributed to by scholars from across the EU, this provides an in-depth and holistic view of the issues.

This book analyzes the promotion and protection of freedom of religion in the international arena with a particular focus on the role and influence of the US International Religious Freedom Act, 1998. It also investigates the impact of the IRFA on the legislation and policies of third countries and the EU. The book develops the story of the protection of religious freedom through foreign policy by showing how religious laws affect and shape a more communitarian dimension of the notion of freedom of religion which stands in contrast with a traditionally Western individualistic understanding of the right. It is argued that it is still possible to defend the unstable category of freedom of religion or belief especially when major violations are at stake. The book presents a balanced contribution to the academic debate on the promotion and protection of religious freedom. The comparative approach and interdisciplinary methodology make it a valuable resource for academics, students and policy-makers in Law, International Relations and Strategic Studies.

The European Union has the ambition to be one of the largest markets and one of the most influential trade actors in the globalized economy, but also the mission to spread the values and principles at the foundations of the European integration process: democracy, the rule of law, respect and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms, environmental protection and sustainable development. This twofold mission is at the origin of the measures which are the object of this book. The focus of the research is the role of the Union in pursuing sustainable development and human rights in third countries through unilateral trade instruments and applying different methods of regulation. The study is conducted against the background of international law and of the WTO rules on multilateral trade. It addresses the tension between unilateralism and multilateralism in EU policies for sustainable development, with a focus on the problematic issue of the extraterritorial reach of EU measures.

Examining the EU's promotion of human rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans+ and intersex (LGBTI) persons in Uganda during the period of 2009 to 2017, this book investigates how a public administration defines and deals with a wicked problem. The empirical puzzle of how the topic of human rights for LGBTI persons, despite its highly contested nature, travelled between Brussels and Kampala, became codified in form of LGBTI Guidelines (2013) and institutionalized within EU foreign policy is addressed as one of translation and sensemaking. The investigation focuses on the process of problem definition in everyday practice by EU staff and EU member states’ staff in Brussels and Kampala. This book therefore provides key insights into how public administrations deal with wicked problems, how contested ideas can become institutionalized and how an idea is translated and made sense of across time, levels and cultural boundaries. The findings are of interest especially to scholars of wicked problems, sociological new institutionalism and public administration as well as international relations and EU studies, human rights, gender and sexuality studies.

This book explores how gender equality, a central part of the Nordic imaginary, is used in the political communication of Nordic states. The analyses presented move beyond conventional images and discourses of Nordic gender- and women-friendliness by critically investigating how and to what extent gender equality serves nation-branding in the Nordic region. Nation-branding is an unescapable part of globalisation, which is a market-oriented process dominated by the West and predicated on the creation of winners and losers. Hence, efforts to strengthen the national brand or reputation of specific Nordic countries with the aid of gender equality as a political and symbolic value inevitably help to reinforce already established global hierarchies where the Nordics play the role of moral superpower. This book comprises scholars from various fields of specialisation, and provides evidence and understanding for the growing interaction between gender-equality policies and nation-branding in all five Nordic countries. It does so by exploring a variety of policy fields and issues including women’s rights, foreign policy, rape and legislation, female quotas and business policies, in addition to the index industry. The rise of the global indexes has reproduced forceful images of the Nordic countries as frontrunners of gender equality, which indeed help the Nordic countries to further position themselves as ‘best at being good’. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Nordic gender equality in political science, sociology, law, criminology, political psychology and history, as well as those interested in nation branding, Nordic studies and exceptionalism. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003017134, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

“An excellent collection of essays that illustrate how EU member states’ wish to implement normatively inspired policies is confronted with the geopolitical realities of today’s world. The authors succeed in presenting an even-handed account of the way in which the tensions between norms and geopolitics play out, as well as of the responses given by EU policy makers.” —Wil Hout, International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University, the Netherlands The European Union (EU), while collectively constituting the world’s largest development provider, has come under internal and external pressures over the past decade. This book argues that the EU’s development policies are situated between the bloc’s normative ideals and the global geopolitical realities in which it is embedded. In order to investigate these tensions, it asks how far the 'normative power' Europe concept exists in EU development policies, and how far it is recognizable in the EU’s focus on human rights, the rule of law, and sustainability. In light of the tension in EU development policies between those ideals and the necessity to project neoliberal and geopolitical interests, how do receiving countries perceive the EU’s development efforts? This volume, complete with contributions from academics from a wide range of disciplines based all around the globe, provides answers to these essential questions.