Queer Interest Groups in the EU (QUEST - QUeer-interEST): Explaining Organization and Strategic Interaction in Hostile Contexts

In many EU member states powerful political actors increasingly fight against the proliferation of equal rights for LGBTQ+ people. This directly endangers the well-being of millions of LGBTQ+ people in the EU. Due to this threat, the role of LGBTQ+ organizations that defend and/or promote these rights is crucial. Yet, scholarship has a limited understanding of how these organizations are structured and how they navigate their strategic interactions with policymakers or likeminded organizations to reach their (political) goals. Moreover, it is unclear how national context affects the strategies of LGBTQ+ organizations. This limited understanding is partly because LGBTQ+ organizations have so far mainly been approached as social movements. Instead, this project will approach these organizations as interest groups to theoretically and empirically analyze their organization and strategic behavior. Using this novel approach, the project asks: How do national contexts affect the organization and strategies of LGBTQ+ interest groups in EU member states? Its analyses will be based on three datasets on LGBTQ+ interest groups' organization and strategies in 6 EU countries with varying degrees of hostility. Using quantitative methods and social network analysis, this project will 1) map and compare the organization of LGBTQ+ interest groups, 2) determine the hostility towards LGBTQ+ rights, and 3) model the effects of national contexts on interest groups' strategic interactions.

Keywords:LGBT, EUROPEAN UNION, INTEREST GROUPS

Disciplines:European union politics, Interest group politics, Queer studies