Pristupačnost
The upcoming edition of the Advanced Research Seminar with our guest Sydney K. Smith (Washington State University) will take place on 11 November at 15:30 in the lecture room 503 (5th floor).
Abstract:
The signing of the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (Istanbul Convention) in May 2011 marked a significant milestone in Europe's efforts to combat gender-based violence and advance international gender equality law. Widely regarded as the most comprehensive legal instrument addressing violence against women, the Convention establishes binding obligations across four pillars: prevention, protection, prosecution, and coordinated policies. Yet despite its ambitious scope and legal force, fundamental questions remain about whether regional treaties like the Istanbul Convention translate into meaningful change at the local level. To explore this treaty implementation, I consider that it does not occur in isolation but unfolds across multiple, interconnected levels of governance—from international monitoring bodies to national governments to regional and local authorities. With this in mind the central question guiding this project asks: how does multilevel governance affect how the Istanbul Convention has been implemented? By examining how these different levels interact, coordinate, and sometimes come to conflict, this research illuminates the complex pathways through which international treaty commitments become or fail to become lived realities that transform gender relations and reduce violence against women. To research this, I use a multi-methods approach conducted in two phases. The first phase uses quantitative analysis to examine how GREVIO, the Convention's monitoring body, examines compliance across all assessed states to help provide a baseline for how the Council of Europe has evaluated implementation. While the second phase, is centered around using process tracing that applys the Gender Equality Policy in Practice (GEPP) approach to conduct a comparative analysis between Croatia and Slovenia. Throughout the story contend with and explore the tension between grassroots views on how states have implemented the Convention in comparison to international views on the implementation process. Ultimately, the research moves beyond examining formal legal adoption to explore how different governance configurations including coordination mechanisms and actor involvement mediate the translation of international commitments into domestic action.
About the speaker:
Sydney K. Smith is a Political Science Ph.D. Candidate at Washington State University's School of Politics, Philosophy, and Public Affairs. She holds a BA in International Studies from Arcadia University, a MSc in International Relations from the University of Glasgow, and a MA in Political Science from Washington State University. As a 2025-2026 Fulbright-Schuman Scholar to the European Union, her project examines the role of multilevel governance and transnational advocacy networks in states' implementation of the Istanbul Convention in Croatia and Slovenia. Her broader research sits between the fields of Comparative Politics and International Relations as she focuses on gender and politics at both the international and national levels exploring gender equality efforts across international organizations in Europe. Additionally, she is also involved in research examining the intersection of gender identities and political identities, particularly the use of masculinity by politicians in the United States.
