Thesis Chapters by Nae Patricia
Member states in the European Union's Central and Eastern region are facing an increase in nation... more Member states in the European Union's Central and Eastern region are facing an increase in nationalist and populist movements that threaten their fragile democracies. As a result of democratic backsliding, provoked by the emergence of nationalist and right-wing parties that end up in Parliaments, scholarly interest has been drawn to the topic of women's voices and motives for joining this new type of politics. Right-wing nationalist parties are frequently seen as reactionary, conservative organisations that advocate patriarchal and anti- feminist values. Surprisingly, the Alliance for Romanian Unity (AUR) party has the greatest gender ratio of any legislative party in Romania, with more than one-third of its National Board and more than 22 percent of female members, making it Romania's most women-friendly political party. What drives women to join this political party? Furthermore, how do these women reconcile their gender identities with those of members of a right-wing nationalist party? To address this puzzle, I suggest the concept of nationalist quasi-feminism, which explains how the party's nationalist and gender discourses are linked. Based on eight interviews with AUR women politicians, I argue that they engage in a bricolage of nationalism and cardinal feminist beliefs, with potential implications and effects on Romanian politics, such as the leveraging of women and women’s vote in the AUR's catch-all strategy in preparation for the 2024 elections.
Papers by Nae Patricia
Following the 2008 financial crisis, several countries in Central and Eastern Europe experienced ... more Following the 2008 financial crisis, several countries in Central and Eastern Europe experienced democratic backsliding. While the literature on democratization has extensively examined these trends, research on democracy promotion has largely overlooked the region beyond the 2007 EU accession. This proposal seeks to fill this gap by investigating how German and American foundations operating in Romania and Hungary have conceptualized and addressed democratic backsliding, and how these conceptualizations were implemented in their activities from 2010 to 2020. The theoretical framework combines democratization theory and norm translation theory to describe both the process of understanding democratic backsliding and how these understandings were applied to specific projects of these foundations. As an exploratory study, it uses a qualitative methodology that includes document analysis and interviews with officers from German and American foundations in Hungary and Romania. This study adds to the literature on democratic backsliding, democracy promotion, and political foundations by examining how American and German foundations have conceptualized and addressed democratic backsliding in these countries from 2010 to 2020. While its scholarly purpose is to improve knowledge of responses by Western foundations to democratic backsliding in Central and Eastern Europe, its policy implications aim to provide insights for creating more effective foreign political aid programs by donor organizations in the region.
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Thesis Chapters by Nae Patricia
Papers by Nae Patricia