In an era of post-truth, the legitimacy of policy knowledge is questioned, especially in de-democratizing contexts where governments purposefully engage in post-truth politics to support their regimes. In such contexts, technocratic evidence-based policymaking is undermined, and the role played by policy advice changes. Recognizing the significance of political contextual factors that might differ across de-democratizing contexts, we analyzed how changes in policymaking and public administration in de-democratization contexts impact policy advice, focusing on think tanks in two de-democratizing countries of the European Union: Hungary and Poland. We identify four aspects of policymaking that are particularly consequential for the role of think tanks and the knowledge they produce in policymaking processes: questioning and politicizing expertise, centralizing policymaking, politicizing public administration, and dismantling accountability mechanisms. We argue that changes in policymaking along these four aspects are conducive to a controlled policy advice system, favoring short-term policy advice aligned with government ideology, while marginalizing and excluding the actors and knowledge that do not align. Our research, along with other literature on knowledge regimes in consolidated autocracies, suggests that control in these European Union–based contexts is not complete, and the think tank field continues to be characterized by diversity, particularly contestation and polarization between those who are aligned with the regime and those who oppose it. We substantiate our claims using an original interview dataset on think tanks in Hungary and Poland.

In 2022, Sweden retracted its feminist foreign policy (FFP). What are the consequences for Swedish foreign policy and for FFPs elsewhere?

We published an extensive report on the Swedish FFP in 2023, based on a survey that went out to all Swedish diplomats, interviews with more than 30 key foreign policy officials, and hundreds of steering documents from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. The article draws out new insights from the report.

The retraction is likely to result in a deprioritization of gender equality in Swedish foreign policy.

Sweden will likely lose its international leadership role on gender issues.

However, FFPs may be more resilient than anticipated because of how foreign policy is governed. Governments that wish to retract FFPs are constrained by three key governance features:

First, international agreements and soft law on women's rights place demands on policy content.

Second, the decentralized nature of foreign policy implementation allows considerable autonomy on the ground, so that implementors may continue to work with gender equality.

Third, longstanding international expectations for Sweden as a gender equality champion create a role-based constraint.

These factors contribute to the ‘stickiness’ of FFPs, suggesting that a retraction is unlikely to result in a wholesale abandonment of gender equality activities.

The article also examines the enduring legacy of the Swedish FFP beyond its formal retraction, highlighting adoption of FFPs by a growing number of states in different parts of the world.

Pernicious polarization is an antagonistic Us versus Them division, where the other group is perceived as an existential threat. It is often intertwined with the erosion of democratic norms and institutions. Although studies on polarization abound, there are still some blind spots to be filled. Our contribution is the focus on the mesolevel of civil society and the theoretical development of (de)polarization mechanisms at this level.

Empirically, we study think tanks, a special type of civil society organization, in the context of democratic backsliding in Hungary and Poland. The analysis is based on 53 interviews with Hungarian and Polish think tankers conducted between 2020 and 2022. We contend that through a shift in perceptions of Us, Them, and the middle ground, think tanks contribute to both polarization and depolarization. Rather than being passive receptors of polarization dynamics, we show casethink tanks’ agentic roles as they emerge through these three mechanisms and through think tanks resorting to specific patterns of discourse and interactions.

How can feminist scholarship advance the field of foreign policy analysis to better understand contemporary foreign policy actions and challenges?

This groundbreaking book provides the state-of-the-art in the study of gender, feminisms and foreign policy. Bringing together contributors from around the world, chapters offer new analyses of foreign policy topics, including diplomacy, trade, defence, environment, peacebuilding, disinformation and development assistance. The book advances new theories, concepts and empirical knowledge for the emerging field of feminist foreign policy analysis.

The book stands as a vital resource for scholars, students and practitioners seeking to understand and respond to the multifaceted gendered dynamics of global politics.

Relations between diplomats and civil society are central to diplomatic work. However, scholarship on diplomacy has not paid sufficient attention to how diplomats interact with civil society actors abroad. This article theorises and empirically examines diplomatic engagements with civil society organisations (CSOs) in host states. The article introduces a new concept – maternalism – into the analytical toolbox of diplomacy studies. While the Bourdieu-inspired ‘practice turn’ has entailed a recalibration of the study of diplomacy towards the everyday work of diplomats, I claim that we need notions that will help us understand these everyday practices in the context of structural power inequalities. In this endeavour, instead of turning to the established notion of paternalism, I follow feminist thinking regarding motherhood and the ethics of care. Maternalism is proposed as a complementary heuristic to paternalism that is helpful in capturing different modes of engagement between unequal actors in international politics and is not marked by financial dependency or military power. Maternalism and paternalism rely on distinct practices of care and control. To empirically illustrate the utility of the notion of maternalism, I analyse diplomats representing seven liberal states in the illiberal states of Poland and Hungary.

A politicization of diplomacy weakens the professionalism of the foreign service and arguably endangers the external relations of states. Yet, this phenomenon has largely escaped scholarly scrutiny. Public administration research on politicization usually overlooks the foreign service, whereas diplomacy scholars have focused almost exclusively on the United States. Our exploratory study of ambassador appointments compares the levels and modes of politicization (through politically connected professionals, or political appointees) of 669 ambassadors in 2019, across seven countries and three administrative traditions. The analysis is guided by three expectations: 1) countries that are more politicized overall appoint more non-career ambassadors; 2) patronage recruitment of political appointees focuses on low-hardship postings; and 3) politically connected professionals are used to control politically important foreign missions. We find that states politicize their foreign services to a varied degree and in different ways. Appointing politically connected professionals instead of political appointees is the most common way of politicization among our cases. In this regard, the US is an outlier, which also points to the need of studying politicization of diplomacy comparatively. This article thus makes an important contribution by setting the agenda for future research on this hitherto underexplored topic.

Think tanks, or organizations producing and disseminating policy knowledge to influence policymakers, are a given element of political systems around the globe. Depending on the national opportunity structure, think tanks take different forms. Individual think tanks usually represent a given ideological orientation or set of values. This chapter studies think tanks that align with the illiberal political agenda in Poland. These organizations, most of which self-identify as conservative, have played a significant role in the electoral success of Law and Justice, and after the party gained power, they have helped sustain the illiberal political orientation by providing the government with policy ideas and communicating policy decisions to the broader public domestically and abroad. Conservative think tanks form the intellectual infrastructure for the illiberal government, both proactively inspiring the illiberal agenda and reactively legitimizing it to external audiences. Benefiting from illiberal policymaking, they form the illiberal knowledge regime.

Denna rapport innehåller en första systematisk bedömning av implementeringen av den svenska feministiska utrikespolitiken över tid och inom olika politikområden, med fokus på bilateralt utvecklingssamarbete. Den svenska feministiska utrikespolitiken (FUP) lanserades 2014 som den första uttryckligen feministiskautrikespolitiken i världen. Sedan dess har ett dussintal andra regeringar följt efter. Förutom att införa feministisk terminologi på högsta utrikespolitiska nivå var FUP banbrytande för svensk utrikespolitik i minst två avseenden. För det första riktade den sig till samtliga utrikespolitiska områden inom och under Utrikesdepartementet (UD). Medan den svenska utvecklingspolitiken hade införlivat jämställdhetsmål i årtionden, stakade FUP ut en ny riktning för politik och säkerhet samt för handel och främjande. För det andra skulle FUP involvera hela utrikesförvaltningen, inklusive de myndigheter som genomför utrikespolitiken och de mer än 100 ambassader och delegationer som representerar Sverige i bilaterala och multilaterala forum runt om i världen. En utgångspunkt för rapporten är att politik inte genomför sig själv. Politiska deklarationer och policydokument måste aktivt genomföras, det vill säga tolkas och omsättas i konkret praktik av tjänstemän, i myndigheter och på ambassader, som konkretiserar och gör något (eller inte) av de politiska målen. Den övergripande frågan som står i centrum för denna rapport är därför: Med tanke på det otroligt komplexa svenska utrikespolitiska maskineriet, med långt över hundra relativt autonoma implementerande myndigheter i Sverige och runt om i världen, vad hände med FUP i den bilaterala implementeringen? Förvandlades högtravande deklarationer och feministisk terminologi till praktisk handling? I så fall, inom vilka politikområden och på vilket sätt? De mer specificerade frågorna listas i slutet av denna sammanfattning, tillsammans med ett kort svar på varje fråga. [. . . ]

This report delivers a first systematic assessment of the implementation of the Swedish feminist foreign policy (FFP) over time and across policy areas, with a focus on bilateral development relations. The Swedish FFP was declared in 2014, as the first expressly feminist foreign policy in the world, which has since prompted a dozen other governments to follow suit. In addition to introducing feminist terminology at the highest level of foreign policy, the FFP was ground-breaking in Swedish foreign policy in at least two respects. For one, it was directed to all foreign policy areas of the foreign ministry. Whereas Swedish development policy had incorporated gender equality aims for decades, the FFP staked out a new direction for politics & security and for trade & promotion. Second, the FFP was to involve the entire foreign service and more, including not just the foreign ministry but also the public agencies executing foreign policy and the more than 100 embassies and delegations that represent Sweden in bilateral and multilateral fora around the world. A point of departure for this report is that policy is never selfexecuting. Original policy declarations need to be implemented, i.e. interpreted and put into concrete practice by civil servants in bureaucratic agencies and embassies that concretize and make something (or not) of policy aims. The overarching question at the center of this report is: given the incredibly complex Swedish foreign policy machinery, with well over one hundred relatively autonomous implementing actors in Sweden and around the world, what happened to the FFP in bilateral implementation practice? Were lofty declarations and feminist terminology converted into practical action? If so, in which policy areas and in what ways? The more specified questions are listed at the end of this summary, along with a brief answer to each question.  [. . . ]

In this article, we study polarization within civil society. While earlier research on civil society has shown that civil society organizations can be divisive, research on polarization has only paid scant attention to the role of civil society. We bring these two aspects of the literature together to develop a framework for analyzing social capital in a polarized context. The framework helps identify practices that organizations may engage in when shaping social capital  and  working  with  others:  facilitating  the flow  of information; providing credentials for actors; influencing agents; and  reinforcing  identity  and recognition.  Importantly,  while originally developed for a fundamentally positive analysis of the mechanics of social capital, this framework includes inverted practices. In our analysis, we observe a bifurcation of actions depending on what role they play in the polarization dynamic–integrating relations within the poles or separating relations between the poles. In this sense, social capital contributes to intensified polarization. Empirically, the article is based on a dataset of 30 interviews with 24 policy-oriented civil societyorganizations (CSOs), here termed think tanks, in Poland.

De-democratization is a global trend, with an increasing number of governments gradually dismantling democratic institutions and norms in their countries. De-democratization can be seen as an incremental crisis that radically redraws the sociopolitical order. This article is among the first to highlight external knowledge producers in autocratizing contexts. Relying on a unique data set of 40 interviews with Polish think tankers conducted before and after the Law and Justice party came to power in 2015 and began pushing the country in an authoritarian direction, the article analyses how liberal think tanks handle de-democratization. The findings show that autocratization entails a reconfiguration of the think tank space; i.e. think tanks aligning with the government blossom and think tanks opposing the government are marginalized through a lack of public funding and access to policymakers. Second, significant changes in think tank tactics, strategies, and identities, especially among liberal organizations, are exposed. The doxic mode through which liberal think tanks produce analyses and provide policy advice as “nonpartisan experts” has shifted to the use of contentious tactics and the assumption of an openly political identity as “democracy defenders”