Repoliticising multi-stakeholder standards processes: the Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials’ standards and certification scheme

The Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials (RSB) is one of a number of sustainability standards schemes that have been approved by the European Union under its 2009 Renewable Energy Directive (EU RED). The RSB scheme is often referred to positively not only because the sustainability standard is considered to exemplify greater rigour than many of the other EU-approved standards in terms of their claims to protect ‘sustainability’, but also because it provides an example of a ‘multi-stakeholder’ model of standards development that is assumed to confer greater legitimacy on the sustainability standards that are produced. In recognising that standards processes are part of wider processes of neoliberalisation, this paper explores the process in which the RSB standard was produced. In doing so it considers how notions of sustainability embodied in the RSB standards were shaped not only by its ‘multi-stakeholder’ process, but also by wider influences that were brought to bear in that process, including the growing spectre of a ‘standards market’ produced by the EU’s approval of different schemes.     

Sex isn’t Gender: Reforming Concepts and Measurements in the Study of Public Opinion

The importance of sex and gender to political behavior is reflected in the volume of work examining gender gaps in public opinion and partisan choice. Despite their centrality, sex and gender are poorly measured in survey research. The principal problem is the conflation of gender with sex in survey research. Consequently, gender is typically treated as a dichotomy, with no response options for androgynous gender identities, or indeed degrees of identification with masculine or feminine identities. We compare a new measure of genuine gender identification with a conventional measure of biological sex to determine whether the practice of using sex as a proxy for gender is sound. Sex is a fair proxy for gender, but for about a quarter of our sample, it is not. Moreover, greater nuance is gained when analyses incorporate a finer-grained measure of gender than is possible by using biological sex as a substitute. We argue that this is simply the start to an important conversation and that more research is needed to ascertain how we might best measure “gender” in the future.     

HOPE VI: A Promising Vintage?

Public housing policies in distressed communities if they are to succeed, must be based on much more realistic assumptions than they are now. We look at HOPE VI, a public housing policy that not only changes the physical environment, but also social services, job training, work opportunities, transportation, child care and other support services. HOPE VI goes a long way to improving public housing policies for distressed communities.     

Do conditional cash transfer programs shift votes? Evidence from the Honduran PRAF

How do national social programs influence local voting? This study utilizes the experimental set up of a conditional cash transfer program to show that small, targeted cash transfers can have large electoral effects. The Honduran PRAF program allocated an average of $18 per capita per year to poor households within municipalities that were randomly assigned to receive the program. Although the program was administered at the national level, the program increased an incumbent mayor's re-election probabilities by 39%, without significantly influencing voting behavior in presidential elections. Moreover, the evidence suggests that transferring cash to poor households were more effective at increasing political support than interventions providing public goods for poor villages.     

The role of government in maintaining rural water supplies: caveats from Malawi's gravity schemes

Malawi earned a great deal of praise for its programme to build gravity‐fed piped water schemes in rural areas, because the government limited its own role by turning over many responsibilities to the community. Unfortunately, the government has not been able to provide the supporting services and recurrent financing necessary under even this limited role. As a result, the schemes are functioning at about 50% of capacity. These problems did not arise because programme designers and implementers neglected to plan for operation and maintenance. Rather, they thought that a very good system was in place. However, both observers and those directly concerned failed to identify or act on flaws in the planned system for a number of reasons, such as the blinding success of the construction programme, and a willingness to accept rather than evaluate underlying critical assumptions. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.