Gender mainstreaming and the framing of women's rights in Europe: The contribution of the Council of Europe

Drawing on published materials from the Committee of Ministers, Assembly and expert working groups of the Council of Europe, this paper investigates the distinctive contribution made to the framing of women's rights over the last two decades by this regional organisation, which recent studies of the `Europeanisation' of public policies have largely neglected. Elements of congruence are identified between the major mobilising themes of second wave feminism and the Council's emphasis on protecting individual rights, and its sensitivity to the incompleteness and shortcomings of `actually existing' democratic institutions and practices. The relative openness of its agenda-setting processes is also underlined. The Council's flag ship policies for women are shown to have centred since the mid-1980s on a `politics of presence' frame and the (contested) concept of `parity democracy', and the tensions between these and the more recent turn to gender mainstreaming are explored. But the paper also points to the Council's role in diffusing into the E.U. governance arena women's claims to equal participation and presence in the policy process, and notes recent French and U.K. legislation as testifying to the continuing salience of these claims at the national level.     

A Model of Learned Implementation

The majority of the literature concerning the implementation of public policy assumes that public managers can carry out new policy initiatives regardless of the behavioural, cognitive or technical demands that the introduction of such policies may make upon them. There has been a tendency to assume that managers actually have the detailed technical knowledge by which to enact such new policies. The paper proposes that in effect, public managers have to learn a range of often new and detailed techniques in order to implement what are often ambiguous policy directives. Drawing on data gathered from the introduction of capital investment appraisal in the British National Health Service, a model of Learned Implementation is presented that describes one way in which public managers can learn to enact new policy initiatives. Using a mix of six organizational processes and variables, the model demonstrates how learning occurs and is used to solve the problems that are inherent in the introduction of new policy initiatives. The model further describes how the managers routinize these solutions into job tasks and procedures and hence a policy initiative is operationalized. The paper concludes with a discussion about the difficulties of predicting the operational consequences of new policy initiatives and raises questions about knowledge, ability and capability in the implementation of public policy.     

Sociocultural causes of family violence: A theoretical comment

During the past decade, family violence has been increasingly reported and discussed by the mass media, as well as having become a subject of scholarly investigation in several academic disciplines. While there is an impressive number of empirical studies dealing with various aspects of family violence, they tend to focus on samples of the victims of such physical and sexual abuse. This paper seeks to supplement their findings by presenting a theoretical analysis of certain major sociocultural changes that have seriously weakened the moral standards that are the primary sociocultural deterrents of family and other interpersonal forms of violence. These changes include widespread residential mobility, the weakening of parental authority, and the impact of the themes of violence and sexuality that are emphasized by the mass media and popular culture.     

Mediating the War of Olives and Pines: Consensus-Based Land-Use Planning in a Multicultural Setting

The proposed Nahal Tzalmon national park lies in the Galilee region of northern Israel. It encompasses land of unique natural beauty, some of which is occupied by Arab-Israeli families. Statutory plans defining the park's boundaries were enacted more than twenty years ago. Despite ongoing preparation, however, the park has not yet opened to the public, in part because of continuous conflict between the Israeli government authorities and the resident families over property rights affecting construction, land use, and nature preservation.
In 2000, after a long period of stagnation and discord, the Joint Environmental Mediation Service ( JEMS), guided by its founding organizations — the Consensus Building Institute and the Israel–Palestine Center for Research and Information — led a mediation process in the region. This was the first such process in the history of Israeli land-use planning. The mediation resulted in a settlement that was agreed to and signed by nearly all parties on July 8, 2004. The agreement allows residents to remain on their land and it includes incentives, such as park employment, to ensure that they help preserve the natural environment. Plans based on this agreement are currently undergoing state ratification, although several implementation challenges are yet to be resolved.
This case points to the importance of having a mediation team knowledgeable about and sensitive to local cultural norms and the difficulties of ensuring appropriate representation in the absence of a strong civic culture and organized advocacy groups. It also highlights the requisite for ensuring that all parties thoroughly understand the consensus building process and how it fits in with established bureaucratic procedures, as well as the critical need to secure strong support from implementing agencies at the outset.     

Review Symposium: Interdisciplinary Readings of Ari Z. Bryen's Violence in Roman Egypt: A Study in Legal Interpretation—Introduction

Bryen, Ari Z. 2013 . Violence in Roman Egypt: A Study in Legal Interpretation . Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Pp. 376. $75.00 cloth; $75.00 eBook.     

Zimbabwe black population data on the six short tandem repeat loci – CSF1PO, TPOX, THO1, D3S1358, VWA and FGA

Allele frequencies for six tetrameric short tandem repeat (STR) loci CSF1PO, TPOX, THO1, D3S1358, VWA, and FGA were determined in a Black African sample population from Zimbabwe. All loci are highly polymorphic and meet Hardy-Weinberg expectations. An inter-class correlation test analysis detected only one departure from independence out of 15 pair-wise comparisons of the six loci (i.e., CSF1PO/VWA loci, P=0.026). The allele frequency data at four of the six STR loci in the Black African sample population are similar to African American data.     

Nonmission–Based Values in Results–Oriented Public Management: The Case of Freedom of Information

Since the 1940s, Congress and the federal courts have sought to make U.S. federal administration more responsive to democratic–constitutional values, including representation, participation, transparency, and individual rights. As manifested in the National Performance Review, the New Public Management emphasis on results may reduce attention to these values, which for most agencies are not intrinsically mission–based. Freedom of information illustrates the problem of protecting nonmission–based, democratic–constitutional values in results–oriented public management. Agencies' annual performance plans under the Government Performance and Results Act overwhelmingly ignore freedom of information, even though it is a legal requirement and performance measures for it are readily available. This study concludes that focusing on results may weaken commitment to democratic–constitutional values by default. It suggests that using a balanced scorecard approach in performance plans could enhance attention to freedom of information and other democratic–constitutional values.