Conclusion

Abstract

This chapter situates the results of the book in the wider context of the EU enlargement process and international LGBT politics. The chapter first summarises the key findings of the empirical material – namely that the EU enlargement process should be thought of as a political process in which the combination and imbrication of domestic and international politics produce outcomes that the dominant approaches in the Europeanisation literature cannot fully explain. In short, the domestic responses to EU enlargement are not simply a product of domestic hegemonic struggles as these do not occur in isolation but are the result of the specific configuration of the different scales of the political integration process and their associated politics. It is further highlighted that EU policies and/or norms cannot be viewed as given (or fixed), but that it is through their particular usage within a transnational context, and the interaction between domestic and international politics, that the meaning of these policies and/or norms are negotiated, (re)defined and reinterpreted. As such, the argument is made for a more critical analysis of the civilizational politics embedded in the EU enlargement process: that future research must go beyond institutional changes to included specific transnational configurations of politics and the complex (negotiated) outcomes they produce. Next, the chapter situates these findings beyond the European context and reflects on their wider implications on the global politics of LGBT equality and how international actors can engage with local struggles for LGBT equality.