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Informationen zum Autor Kelly Kollman is a Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Glasgow Klappentext This book examines the development of same-sex unions policy (SSU) in eighteen western democracies and seeks to explain why the overwhelming majority of these countries have implemented a national law to recognise gay and lesbian couples since 1989. The author argues that this dramatic wave of SSU policy adoptions across Western Europe and North America is, to a significant degree, the product of international norm diffusion and socialisation. The first part of the study traces the creation of a norm for relationship recognition within the European polity, and describes how this norm has catalysed policy change in many western democracies. The second part examines these processes in greater depth using two comparative case studies (Germany and the Netherlands; the United States and Canada) to identify how the norm has influenced domestic policy debates as well as which factors determine the power it can exert in different national settings. Challenging much current theorising about the domestic translation of international norms that focuses on institutional factors, this analysis reveals that culture - especially religious values, international norm legitimacy and public conceptions of human rights - also profoundly influences how countries have received the SSU norm as well as their decisions about whether and what kind of SSU law to adopt; marriage, registered partnership or unregistered cohabitant. Kelly Kollman traces the internationalisation of the idea of same-sex unions that has resulted in a remarkable transformation in the formal recognition of LGBT relationships. This book provides a powerful and thought-provoking anatomy of this major shift, and a testimony to the achievements of the LGBT movement, perhaps the most successful of the social movements that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. Jeffrey Weeks, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at London South Bank University -- Jeffrey Weeks, Emeritus Professor of Sociology. Zusammenfassung This book examines same-sex unions policy (SSU) developments in eighteen western democracies and seeks to explain why the overwhelming majority of these countries has implemented a national law to recognise gay and lesbian couples since 1989. -- . Inhaltsverzeichnis 1. Introduction: the same-sex unions revolution in western democracies2. Sexual citizenship, LGBT movements and the relationship recognition debate in western democracies 3. International policy diffusion: socialisation and the domestic reception of international norms 4. Same-sex unions: the globalisation of an idea5. Same-sex unions in the Netherlands and Germany: common norms, diverse policy models6. Same-sex unions in Canada and the United States: international learning across the pond? 7. Conclusions: the same-sex unions revolution, its past and futureReferences...
