Success or Failure? Explaining Domestic Violence Policy Outcomes in East and Central Europe

Project Rationale

After conspicuous absence from policy agendas during state-socialism, domestic violence emerged as a policy issue almost simultaneously in most CEE countries in the aftermath of the 1995 Beijing World Women’s Conference. In subsequent years, women’s movements across the region, in cooperation with transnational women’s and human rights networks advocated for legal and policy change. As a result of complex processes of movement mobilization, negotiation between state and intergovernmental actors, the effects of Europeanization and globalization of human rights norms, as well as rapid political transformation in the region, policies, laws and strategies against domestic violence were adopted between 2003 and 2005 in most CEE countries.

Project aims

The project aims to understand:

a) what policy processes and mechanisms of involvement of different level actors explained the almost simultaneous policy outcomes

b) how these policy processes and mechanisms impacted on the differences in the quality of policies in the field of domestic violence in five Central and Eastern European Countries: Hungary, Bulgaria, Croatia, Poland, and Romania.

The research aims to develop the understanding of how gender equality norms were diffused, adapted and co-opted in the context of Central and Eastern European countries, and what factors were influencing their successful adoption. In particular, the project assesses the following factors:

1. influence of transnational women’s networks in disseminating norms on violence against women;
2. importance of women’s NGOs and coalitions of human rights NGOs in transferring and adapting the issue from the transnational level to the national policy environments;
3. direct impact of NGO mobilization on bringing about policy responses to domestic violence
4. influence of good practices (‘models’) from other countries in comparison with the influence of international norms;
5. the impact of Europeanization for a policy issue, in which the European legislation has no direct remit.
6. the role of state - civil society interfaces in achieving policy change.

Related Events

Experts’ Meeting on Gender Equality and Policy Responses to Violence against Women organized by UN Women. Bratislava, 6 June, 2011. Talk  by Andrea Krizsan on “Gendering Policy Framing, Gendering Implementation. A Comparison of Domestic Violence Policy Making in Central and Eastern European countries”

 Symposium on Gender-based violence policies in the EU organized by Lancaster University and QUING Project. April 12-13, 2011. Talk by Andrea Krizsan on “Frames in Contestation:Domestic Violence Policy Debates in Five Countries of Central and Eastern Europe”

 2nd European Conference on Politics and Gender organized by the ECPR Standing Group on Politics and Gender, Budapest, January 13-15, 2011.  Panel “Policies on Violence against Women in Europe” convener Andrea Krizsan.

Conference "Success and efficience of new restraining order regulations in Hungarian domestic violence policies” annual conference of the Association of Hungarian Women Judges. Budapest, 25 June, 2010. Plenary speech on „Framing Domestic Violence Policies in Countries of Europe” by Andrea Krizsan.

Conference Council for European Studies Seventeenth International Conference Montreal, Canada, April 15-17, 2010. Andrea Krizsan presented papers “Frames in Contestation: Domestic Violence Policy Debates in Five Countries of Central and Eastern Europe” and “Constructing Europe in Making Domestic Violence Policies in Central and Eastern Europe.”

Swedish Presidency of the EU Conference on strategies to combat men's violence against women. Stockholm 8, November 2010. Plenary Speech "Understanding Domestic Violence Policy Processes across Europe Lessons from Central and Eastern Europe” by Andrea Krizsan and Raluca Popa.

11th WAVE CONFERENCE Stop Violence against Women and Children, Vienna September 25, 2009. Plenary Speech "Domestic violence policies: an analysis of Central and East-European countries” by Andrea Krizsan.

Project Outcomes

Book project Gendering Domestic Violence Policy Outcomes in Five Countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Work in progress Andrea Krizsan and Raluca Popa

Paper in progress "Strategic Feminism in Post-Communist Europe: Success or Failure?Advocating Domestic Violence Policy Reforms in Hungary and Poland"  by Andrea Krizsan and Magda Dabrowska

Krizsan, Andrea, Raluca, Popa “Frames in Contestation: International Human Rights Norms and Domestic Violence Policy Debates in Five Countries of Central and Eastern Europe” prepared for publication to journal Violence against Women

Krizsan Andrea, Raluca Popa. 2010. Europeanization in Making Anti-Domestic Violence Policies in Central and Eastern Europe. Social Politics, Vol.17/3