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Backlash against the F-Word : Feminist Foreign Policy in German Political Discourse.

Huck, Felicitas (2025) Backlash against the F-Word : Feminist Foreign Policy in German Political Discourse.

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Abstract:Adopting a Feminist Foreign Policy (FFP) has promised a paradigm shift of Germany’s approach to international relations. Due to its transformative nature aimed at overcoming unjust power structures, this reform process has, however, faced considerable resistance. Indeed, the possibility of constructive debates has been decisively jeopardised by the devaluation, false allegations, and trivialisation tactics of the far-right. These dynamics carry the risk of ever-increasing polarisation, and if they manifest themselves in the form of backlash politics, there is not only a threat of denigrating and abolishing FFP in Germany, but also of endangering liberal norms generally as gender equality functions as a benchmark of democracy. Understanding backlash politics as the combination of retrograde aims, exceptional questioning of dominant scripts, and entrance into public debates, this paper bridges insightful feminist ideas and findings with the validity and usefulness of a clear determination of backlash politics, examining the controversy around FFP via a Qualitative Content Analysis of 84 statements delivered in the German Bundestag between January 2021 and June 2023. The results indeed indicate significant polarisation amounting to backlash politics, with considerable implications for German political dynamics, including a newly emerging cleavage, and possibly a retrograde shift as well as institutional change.
Item Type:Essay (Master)
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:89 political science
Programme:European Studies MSc (69303)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/104956
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