Thursday, 24 October 2019 at 5:00 pm – Thursday, 24 October 2019 at 7:30 pm

Dimitrii Tolkavhev: Russia and Anti-LGBT Legalisation

Date: Thursday 24th October 2019

Time:

5pm-6.30pm talk
6.30-7.30pm wine reception

Location: GMLT3, Geoffrey Manton Building, Rosamond St West, Manchester Metropolitan University

Tickets: Free - Available on Eventbrite

Organised by The Queer Research Network Manchester (QRNM) at Manchester Metropolitan University

Policy evaluation of “non-traditional sexual relationships” regulation

In 2013 the Russian federal law "For the Purpose of Protecting Children from Information Advocating for a Denial of Traditional Family Values” had been adopted. Before this law successfully passed the Russian parliament, there was a number of ‘prohibition of homosexual propaganda’ attempts on the regional level. The law was hugely controversial and debated based on different assumptions about sexuality. Propaganda understood as an activity of purposeful and uncontrolled information dissemination have banned by law. However, the results of this policy are controversial and must be thoroughly studied. It is pointed out that this “uncontrolled information” still is not under state control because of complexity of public/private divide, so we need to take into consideration the results not only in public sphere.

Moreover, evaluation of this policy depends on the view on essence of homosexuality (assumptions as in argumentative tradition) and the methods of result evaluation. It is possible to evaluate direct results of the law by the court decisions (outputs), however we did not know how citizen’s behavior has changed (outcomes), including their assumptions about homosexuality, and how it affects the policy (impact). This attempt to regulate citizens’ private lives through the invention of ‘traditional values’ is challenged by existing legal norms regulating human rights. Public policy theory, in particular, based on the policy process model and failed policy studies, gives an opportunity to explain unexpected results of the ‘Propaganda’ law implementation by investigating interrelations between institutions, discourses, identities, policy frameworks and policy results: policy outputs, outcomes and impacts. So what is the level of synergy between outputs, outcomes and impacts of the “propaganda” law?” Moreover, if there is a lack of correlation between the different types of results, how these inconsistencies can be explained? Reasons underlying this inconsistency in public policy theory are generally related to the limitations of goal settings and lack of understanding of target groups

Dmitrii Tolkachev is PhD student (political science department, Higher School of Economics, Moscow) and writing about LGBTI Rights in Russia and Europe. His research focuses on sexual politics, queer theory, policy evaluation, anticorruption policy. He has published with Varvara Vasileva in “Uplifting Gender and Sexuality Education Research” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). His researches results were presented at conferences at HSE (Moscow, St. Petersburg; Russia), University of Helsinki (Finland), University of Adelaide (Australia), Manchester Metropolitan University (UK), Maynooth University (Ireland), Cardiff University (UK) and others.

He was organised gay student community in Higher School of Economics University and “Higher School of Equality” (HSEq) student organization. HSEq is pro-queer and pro-feminist student organisation and first queer student community in Russia. He has given public lectures on homosexuality and provides comments to Russian and foreign media.

The Queer Research Network Manchester (QRNM) is a new interdisciplinary research network that aims to bring together researchers working with queer themes across the Manchester universities. We host regular discussion and reading groups for and organise bi-monthly events and speakers.

QRNM provides a space for engaging with significant themes and debates within queer research.

For more information about QRNM: https://qrnm.home.blog/