![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
Although a growing number of European governments have legalized same-sex civil unions (SSU) and same-sex marriage (SSM) in the past two decades, others have moved in the opposite direction by stalling partnership legislation or adopting constitutional amendments defining marriage as a heterosexual institution. Why do some European countries move forward with SSU/SSM policies while others do not? Few studies have examined the effects of party politics on partnership laws and those that do highlight the positive influence of Left parties. We revisit this question and suggest that SSU/SSM legalization depends not on governments’ traditional left/right positioning as commonly claimed, but on their preferences for ‘traditional’ versus ‘self-expression’ values. Using event history analysis, we show that governments favoring postmaterialist, self-expression values are more likely to legalize SSU/SSM, irrespective of where they are situated on the conventional left/right spectrum. Along with suggesting that competition over SSU/SSM has not been absorbed into the left/right axis, our findings show the importance of political ideology, and not just social movements or public opinion, for the advancement of LGBT rights in Europe.
Notes
1 Countries with SSM include Austria (starting in 2019), Belgium (2003), Denmark (2012), England (2014), Finland (2017), France (2013), Germany (2017), Iceland (2010), Ireland (2015), Luxembourg (2015), Malta (2017), the Netherlands (2011), Norway (2009), Portugal (2010), Scotland (2014), Spain (2005), Sweden (2009), and Wales (2014). Countries with SSUs, defined as legally recognized same-sex partnerships with rights equivalent or near equivalent to those in civil marriages, include Andorra (2014), Croatia (2014), the Czech Republic (2006), Cyprus (2015), Greece (2015), Hungary (2009), Italy (2016), Liechtenstein (2011), Slovenia (2006), and Switzerland (2007). Since 2016, Estonia also recognizes same-sex marriages performed abroad.
2 We exclude Scotland, Greenland, and other subnational entities from our analysis due to data limitations.
3 Article 46 of the Irish Constitution stipulates that all proposed constitutional amendments must be approved by a national referendum, but only if the government consents to holding one. In Switzerland, voters chose to legalize SSUs after the conservative Federal Democratic Union forced a referendum in the wake of a successful partnership bill in the National Council.
4 In 2013, the Finnish Legal Affairs Committee recommended against the proposed SSM bill, which effectively prevented the law from reaching the full parliament for a vote (where it would likely have passed). In response, a citizens’ initiative compelled both the parliamentary committee and full parliament to reconsider the SSM bill, which not only passed through the parliamentary committee but was ultimately approved in the Eduskunta by a wide margin.
5 The effects of party politics have also been documented in Latin America. Differentiating between the moderate left and the contestatory left, Schulenberg (Citation2012) finds that both are generally supportive of LGBT policies, though the latter is more gay-friendly than the former. Center-right parties may also adopt pro-LGBT stances in order to pull progressive voters away from center-left and left parties (Corrales, 2015).
6 Scores range from the furthest on the left of 1 to the highest on the right of 10. Higher scores on the economic left/right spectrum indicate greater support for the free market and less state intervention in the economy, while higher scores on the GAL/TAN scale indicate more culturally conservative stances (Döring & Manow, Citation2016).
7 The legal status and rights (relating to adoption, inheritance, and social benefits) afforded to same-sex couples vary significantly across countries and according to the type of legally-recognized relationship.
8 Overall left/right ideological scores include a party's positions on European integration. We exclude this separate ideological spectrum from our analysis.
9 Data available at http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD accessed August 26, 2016.
10 We kindly thank Jason Jordan for providing the merged data set. The full data are available at http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp For many years in our sample, there is no data available. Excluding this variable significantly reduces the number of cases available for analysis. As a remedy, we calculated the sum of the percentage of the population that reported that ‘religion was every important in their life’ or ‘rather important in their life’ for each country, averaged the results for the years available, and extrapolated that figure across time for each country. While this increases the efficiency of our estimates, it risks introducing bias. However, we assert this risk is low given that levels of religiosity change little over the period of time covered by this study.
11 All religion data is collected by averaging the number of people who reported belonging to either faith across multiple WVS and EVS surveys.
12 Quality of democracy scores are based Freedom House's ‘Freedom in the World’ Data, 1973–2016. Countries are coded according to the quality of civil and political liberties, with 1 being the ‘most free’ and 7 being the least free. We calculated the inverse sum of these two measures to measure the quality of democracy in a country in a given year. Data available at: https://acrowinghen.com/data/
13 The Weibull specification provides efficient coefficient estimates for monotonic functions (Allison, Citation1984).
14 ‘Latest setbacks facing Italy's same-sex couples due to politicians, not church,’ Stephanie Kirchgaessner, The Guardian (UK), February 19, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/19/italian-same-sex-couples-face-setbacks-in-fight-for-equal-marriage-rights accessed August 9, 2016.
15 Cabinets with ideological position values less than 4.0 were classified as Left, between 4.0 and 5.0 were considered Centre, and greater than 5.0 were classified as Right.
16 California's adoption of Proposition 8 in 2008 and Bermuda's renewed SSM ban in December 2017 are clear exceptions.