This chapter offers an inductive approach to defining women’s interests in politics, mapping gender gaps in preferences and where they fall in the left-right political space. Unlike previous studies, which do not define a priori expectations about quotas and policy change in comparative context, this chapter clearly defines expectations about which policies we can expect quotas to change in rich OECD democracies. Using survey data, the chapter explores the size and direction of gender gaps in preferences for a large number of policy issues across countries and over time. While women prefer more spending than men on issues like unemployment, health care, and poverty, no gender gaps emerge on other issues often perceived to be gendered, like education or military spending. The largest gender gaps exist over the issue of maternal employment, where women are more progressive than men by about ten percentage points, and the gender gap has been growing over time. Gender gaps on maternal employment are not explained by partisan ideology. Gender differences persist within political parties, and attitudes towards maternal employment form a distinct underlying response pattern compared to attitudes towards government intervention. Because of this, subsequent book chapters focus on maternal employment and associated work-family policies as key outcomes of interest.

The first chapter introduces the book’s key puzzle: do gender quota laws affect policy outcomes for women? Quotas are often viewed as a way to promote not only women’s inclusion but their political interests. Yet, we know very little about whether quotas lead to meaningful policy change for women. The question is crucial given how controversial quotas are, and the questions they often raise about tokenism and backlash. After motivating the research question, the chapter organizes current explanations of identity and political decisionmaking to demonstrate the crucial role that quotas can play in bringing not only more women but added salience to gendered issues. It previews the main argument: gender quota laws will lead to policy change on issues that women prioritize which fall off the main left-right (class-based) dimension, like work-family policies. Quota laws add important salience to these cross-cutting issues that parties would otherwise prefer to ignore. Chapter 1 also provides an overview of the data and cases that provide the empirical foundation of the book. Taking a mixed methods approach, the book pairs statistical analysis of party priorities and government reforms with in-depth qualitative case studies from the cases of Belgium and Austria, and Portugal and Italy.

Chapter 5 tackles the question of whether quotas lead to real policy changes. I examine data on public spending on family policies and the composition of leave policies. Work--family policies have evolved rapidly, and I look for evidence that quotas are linked to policies that support mothers working outside the home -- specifically, paid leave that can be shared by parents and paternity-only leave, as opposed to maternity-only leave and family allowances (both of which reinforce gender stereotypes of care). I find that quotas shift the configuration of leave policies towards gender equality -- more paid parental and father-specific leave, and less maternity-only leave. The size of these effects is influenced by how effectively the quota increased the number of women in office (the “quota shock”): the larger the quota shock, the greater the policy shifts observed. I find no evidence of change to spending in areas in which men and women tend to have similar policy preferences, or where issues fall within the bounds of the mainstream, left--right policy dimension (like overall social spending). A key finding from Chapter 5 is that quota laws affect policies: they shift the spending and composition of work--family policies to better support women’s preferences on maternal employment.

This chapter captures the substance and range of the EU’s toolbox in tackling democratic backsliding in its Member States. It also discusses the limitations of these tools. The chapter shows how deterioration of democracy and the rule of law have had significant consequences in the migration context. It goes on to evaluate the EU’s toolbox against democratic decay in a migration context and discusses how the EU is currently bringing new initiatives forward to strengthen its democracy and legitimacy. The chapter concludes with a number of suggestions de lege lata and de lege ferenda on how the EU’s toolbox could become more effective.

This chapter investigates how the challenging questions and tensions caused by migrants and their universalist claims for inclusion, have been approached and resolved in liberal democracies. By regarding the development of populism as a real and dangerous political phenomenon that has significant traction, the chapter asks whether populism adds something new to this approach and resolution. More specifically, does populism add some distinctiveness that we should be more sensitive to? With reference to the requirement that the state has to provide justifications for measures that affect individuals, the chapter asks how the tensions between exclusion versus inclusion and particularism versus cosmopolitanism, have been adjusted. It concludes that the adjustment has been in favour of exclusion and particularism. The concern that arises is that populism might further shape this adjustment to the point where the balance is completely tipped in favour of exclusion and statism. This raises general concerns about the nature of the community and its organizing liberal values.

This chapter argues that the particular variety of populism in effect in Italy that has been labelled PopSovism is interesting to comparative lawyers for many reasons. The chapter explains that in the Italian case, restrictions of migrants’ rights represent a form of democratic decay in populist time. This phenomenon was particularly evident during the first Conte government, when Italy became the first European country in which two self-styled populist forces formed a coalition government, but its roots can be found even earlier. Italian populism has ancient roots and restrictions of migrants’ rights preceded and continued after the populist wave. At the same time, the nativist approach to migrants should not be seen as the only manifestation of democratic decay in Italy, which is broader in nature. As a consequence, resilience through legislative reforms is not likely to be forthcoming. More success can be expected if resilience is pursued through judicial remedies both at national and international level.

This chapter argues that an inability to provide for legal resilience against restrictive migration laws and policies should not be understood as ‘merely’ a failure of ECHR, EU and constitutional law. Instead, the problem runs much deeper than the country studies seem to suggest. It is claimed that the problem resides in the very legal infrastructure used to further policy goals aimed at limiting migration: administrative law. Administrative law is distinctively well-suited to produce restrictive migration laws, whether enacted by populist or mainstream parties. In an important sense, the three types of legal resilience identified in most country studies – judicial interventions by the ECtHR, CJEU and constitutional courts – signal and legitimize the lack of legal resilience within administrative law itself. Resilience against restrictive migration laws will remain marginal and incidental, the chapter concludes, as long as the legal profession fails to critically examine and challenge the basic features of the legal infrastructure underpinning migration policies: administrative law.

This chapter adopts a two-stage analysis of legal resilience against far-reaching restrictions of migrants’ rights. It first investigates the resilience of the Belgian constitutional system against potential hostile take-over by right-wing populists. It is concluded that the constitutional framework provides relatively robust protection against democratic decay, as a result of which the separation of powers remains intact. At the same time, most constitutional safeguards that prevent a hypothetical slide towards authoritarianism in Belgium only provide weak constraints against the very real and systematic undermining of migrants’ rights. Therefore, during the second stage of the analysis an assessment is made of the room for legal resilience in Belgium. Unlike in Poland and Hungary, it is shown, civil society actors have been able – and often forced – to resort to the independent courts in a bid to safeguard migrants’ rights in Belgium. In practice, the chapter concludes, this has led to mixed results, in that courts have only safeguarded minimal respect for migrants’ rights rather than adopting a maximalist interpretation. The room for legal resilience against restrictive migration laws and policies in Belgium thus remains more limited than could be expected.

This chapter interrogates European law as actively contributing to the undermining of migrants’ rights, since its inception. It claims that European case law in the area of migration is a continuation of a pre-existing characteristic: the tendency to privilege the interests of European states over those of migrants and of Europeans with transnational ties. The chapter thus examines the hypothesis that current-day migrants, being people from former European colonies, are subjected to a split form of legality that was perfected at the end of the colonial era. The legal system maintains the pretence of equality before the law while at the same time relegating colonial subjects to sub-standard legal protection by either excluding them from the application of human rights standards altogether or by lowering these standards. In addition to these two elements, a third legal governance technique with its origins in colonialism is the use of emergency powers themselves. Coloniality thus remains a structuring element of human rights law as it responds to migration. Naming and exposing this colonial structure may be helpful to the extent that it makes a legal and political critique possible, in addition to helping actors to navigate the field.