This chapter discusses the treatment of civilization as a concept and phenomenon in feminist scholarship from the late 1970s until the present. How have feminist scholars understood and approached civilization and its relation to gender and/or women? In what ways have these interventions contributed to and challenged more mainstream scholarship on civilization, particularly on the West and Islam? The chapter begins with a discussion of feminist treatments of civilizations as bounded sociocultural entities and the role of women and men therein. It then continues with a longer analysis of the alternative feminist understanding of civilizations as discourses that are contextually unfolding. In this understanding, gender and the status of women are implicated in the production as well as challenging of civilizational boundaries and hierarchies. The chapter ends with suggestions for the direction of future research, including a call to more directly engage central civilizations scholarship that is inattentive to gender.

Focusing on ambassador appointments, the aim of this pioneering article is to address some fundamental questions about where men and women are positioned in diplomacy. Most of the gender-related diplomacy studies are limited to individual Ministry of Foreign Affairs and say little about diplomacy as an aggregate set of practices. We draw on theories of gender and positional status to ask whether there are gender patterns in ambassador appointments—with men occupying positions of higher military and economic status than women—much like the ones found in other institutions. Our analyses are based on a unique data set containing almost 7,000 ambassador appointments, made by the fifty highest ranked countries in terms of GDP in 2014. The results show that female ambassadors are less likely to occupy high-status ambassadorships than men. In short, gender patterns, linked to power and status, are present also in ambassador appointments. Diplomacy studies need to do much more to address the presence and impact of gender in international affairs.

Diplomacy is an institution of prestige and political weight. In a discussion of cabinet rankings, Krook and O'Brien (2011, p. 14) designate foreign affairs as an elite and high-prestige area as it offers individuals the potential for sustained "visibility and significant control over policy." It is also an institution that has traditionally been populated by an elite political class – such as the nobility in Europe – which continues to provide diplomacy with an air of exclusivity. Diplomats thus occupy a position which carries considerable prestige and esteem, often more so than other public positions. Diplomacy is interesting for corruption research in other respects as well. To ensure that diplomacy functions even in situations of international enmity and competition, diplomats need to be shielded from politically motivated persecution and harassment by foreign states. Diplomats thus enjoy privileges of immunity from the host country's laws and are not susceptible to prosecution unless diplomatic privileges are waived, which is very rare. Compared with other political elites analyzed in this volume, diplomats therefore enjoy more unchecked power and less accountability for criminal actions. While perhaps necessary, such protections can obviously be abused, turning immunity into impunity.

This article explores some ways in which the condition of women has been articulated as a standard of civilisation, focusing on articulations by a range of European and non-European political thinkers and political actors in the 19th century and the present, two important periods marked by intense discussions of the status of women and civilisation. In short, the status of women is used by a broad range of actors to draw up civilisational boundaries and to mobilise for action. The standard also functions as an arena of contestation in which alternative visions of a good society are debated. However, whereas the alleged link between sexual equality and "the West" was highly disputed in the 19th century, this claim is much less contested today. The article ends with a discussion of the problematic implications of using the status of women as a standard of civilisation for feminisms around the world. © The Author(s) 2014.

Gender historians have identified the period around 1800 as a crucial time for transforming elite masculinities in Europe: there were shifts away from ideals of polite gentlemen towards more martial forms of manhood; and this was a transition period away from more fluid notions of masculinity and an emphasis on the mixing of male and female towards a period of upholding stricter binaries between male and female. This article contributes to scholarship on the intersection of masculinities and states by centring on the formation of a new, partially independent Norway around 1814, when the Norwegian constitution was crafted. I use the analysis of Norway as an entry to exploring broader European trends at that time. As this article will show, Norwegian ideals of masculinity suitable for state office are a good illustration of more general interpretations of elite manhood in northern Europe. Norwegian constructions did offer a twist, however, as they idealized the Norwegian elite male as rough, unsophisticated, and natural.

In contrast with other forms of elite state-bearing European masculinity, which emphasized

advancement and cultivation, Norwegian masculinity was celebrated for its lack of refinement.

This article examines the gender ideology of the parliamentary radical right populist party (RRPP) – the Sweden Democrats. More specifically, the article analyses how the party integrates old nationalist ideas about the importance of traditional gender roles and male superiority for the stability and welfare of the nation with new nationalist ideas about Sweden as the most gender-equal nation in the world. Prior studies suggest that RRPPs have integrated gender equality as a policy measure against multiculturalism and immigration. Our analysis shows this to be true also of the Sweden Democrats. However, unlike prior scholarship, we argue that the integration of gender equality is a tenuous and difficult one, as nationalist ideologies generally rest on ideas of sexual difference and male superiority. While the Sweden Democrats claim to support gender equality in discussions of multiculturalism and immigration, the party is a fierce critic of gender equality in all other contexts.

This article aims to rethink the operation of norms in international policy diffusion. Norms do not simply standardize state behaviors, as is conventionally argued; norms also draw on and set up hierarchical social orders among states. Through a conceptual rethinking we gain a better understanding of where-among which states-new policies may first emerge: social hierarchies create incentives for new policies to develop at the margins of international society so that policies may diffuse "from below." We also get a better grasp of how policy advocates frame the appropriateness or benefits of a new state practice: they must frame policy demands in terms of the international standing and rank of the targeted state. This article's empirical aspiration is to use these insights to help account for the international policy diffusion of legal sex quotas, a policy to increase the level of female legislators that developed first among "developing" states rather than among the so-called core of international society. By pointing to the link between norms and social hierarchy, the article helps account for policy diffusion "from below." © 2012 The IO Foundation.