Contesting LGBTQI Inclusion: Expansion, Contraction, and New Dilemmas

LGBTQI politics has become a vibrant field of inquiry, illuminating how struggles over sexual and gender diversity shape core debates in comparative politics and international relations. This review synthesizes scholarship on the causes, consequences, and contestation of LGBTQI rights, tracing the path from grassroots mobilization to institutional uptake. We thus reflect on the question of why LGBTQI rights expand and contract, while highlighting the unprecedented speed of rights expansion alongside persistent and growing coordinated opposition. The review underscores that queer agency has been central to these transformations in ways that inform our core theories in political science. It argues for integrating LGBTQI politics into mainstream theory building as a key site for understanding democratic resilience and the contested evolution of human rights.