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Most politicians are men, yet there is a surprising lack of focus within political science on the causes and consequences of male dominance. This article outlines how political science could benefit from greater engagement with scholarship on men and masculinities. The concept of ‘political masculinities’ has focused on the importance of ‘the political’ to masculinities scholarship; we argue for extending this concept to analyse men and masculinities within political science. We identify insights from scholarship on masculinities that would deepen our understanding of power within formal political arenas. We consider how gender and politics scholarship could benefit from expanding its focus on men. We highlight feminist institutionalism as a tool for bringing masculinities into the study of political institutions. We then offer a framework for taking this research agenda forwards, showing how we can better understand male dominance by thinking about how men access, exercise, maintain and reproduce power.
This chapter analyses two court cases in Sweden and Norway in which men with positions of entrusted power were convicted of making their services conditional on sexual favours. This is known as ‘sextortion’. The chapter shows how the verdicts from the District Courts in both countries took into consideration the perpetrators’ abuse of entrusted power and the victims’ positions of dependency, which enabled undue exploitation. However, the verdict from the Swedish Court of Appeal introduced a discussion of consent and applied a ‘reverse sextortion logic’, arguing that since the victims were dependent on the services of the perpetrator, they effectively ‘consented’ to the sexual acts. The chapter argues that an analytical framework of sextortion necessitates a shift in focus from the question of the consent of the victim to the perpetrator’s abuse of entrusted power and, through this, manages to recentre the perpetrator’s responsibility for the abuse. Furthermore, the chapter analyses how a Nordic self-image characterised by ‘exceptionalism’ – including aspects of gender equality, othering of sexual violence, and a non-corruption culture – prevents acknowledgement of the abuse of power. Such a self-image protects perpetrators that operate from the core of national belonging, contributing to the invisibility and impunity of their crimes.
