Public Administration Education and Europeanization: Prospects for the Emancipation of a Discipline?

The twin processes of Europeanization and Transition provide significant opportunities for the development of Public Administration education in Europe and provide a possibility to further the 'emancipation' of the discipline. In terms of Europeanization, the increasing challenges of politico-administrative interaction between national administrations and the institutions of the European Union illustrate that it is essential for Public Administration graduates to acquire an informed understanding of both the European context of policy-making and of the administrative organization and culture of other member states and countries associated with the EU. As a second element, the transition process in Central and Eastern European states could provide the discipline with further impetus to search for its own identity and approach in a European context. This article reviews the key findings of the results of the comprehensive inventories undertaken by the SOCRATES Thematic Network in Public Administration with regard to the current direction in which Public Administration education in Europe is moving. It addresses whether attention to European issues is reflected in the curriculum as well as links with the profession and whether cross-fertilization between the development of new programmes in the transition states and PA academic programmes in the EU member states has actually occurred.     

Connecting social and environmental policy in Australia: Collateral gains or collateral damage?

Climate change research relating to “co‐benefits” suggests that the facilitation of social‐welfare outcomes through environmental policy offers a powerful means of incentivising climate change action. Concerns about social‐welfare, however, are often used to undermine climate change policies, typically through political claims that low‐to‐middle‐income households should not shoulder the costs of greater policy alignment between social and environmental objectives. Integrating the social into the environmental can therefore, on the one hand, lead to “co‐benefits” as each agenda promotes the other in political discourse, or alternatively to collateral damage if the policy objectives are framed as incompatible. This article explores both scenarios through two case studies of energy policy in Australia. The findings show that social‐welfare concerns can be a powerful discursive tool with the potential to facilitate political consensus, but also that this potential is not being fully realised, primarily because environmental concerns suffer when attempts are made to integrate the two areas discursively.     

Domain Name DRS Policies: from the sublime to the ridiculous

Legal context. Cybersquatting emerged as a major problem fortrade mark owners in the latter part of the 1990s. Litigationhas proved a heavy and expensive method of resolving disputes.Over the past decade, various alternative dispute resolutionpolicies have been introduced, most notably the UDRP and mostrecently the .eu ADR Procedure. Key points. The article tracks the development of dispute resolutionand associated sunrise policies from the UDRP, via the NOMINETDRS Policy to the new .eu ADR Procedure. The UDRP was designedto assist nobody but trade mark owners. The NOMINET DRS Policyis wider and covers other rights owners without being specificas to the nature of the relevant rights. The .eu ADR Procedureon the other hand expressly extends to a wide variety of rightsranging from trade mark rights to rights in respect of familynames and condemns speculative as well as abusive registrations.The article draws attention to some of the shortcomings of the.eu ADR Procedure and laments the fact that the European Commission,which is responsible for the introduction of the .eu domain,did not consult more widely with a view to arriving at a sensibleworkable result. The author predicts a shambles both in relationto the .eu sunrise policy and the ADR procedure. Practical significance. The UDRP, the NOMINET DRS, and the .euADR Procedure all contain very similarly worded provisions,which help to conceal the significant differences between them.Practitioners formulating and/or responding to complaints underthese policies and procedures need to be aware of the differences.     

The meat of the global food crisis

The global food crisis has been widely described in terms of the volatility of grain and oilseed markets and the associated worsening conditions of food security facing many poor people. Various explanations have been given for this volatility, including increasingly meat-centered diets and rising demand for animal feed, especially in China. This is a very partial reading, as the food crisis runs much deeper than recent market turbulence; when it is understood in terms of the biophysical contradictions of the industrial grain–oilseed–livestock complex and how they are now accelerating, meat moves to the center of the story. Industrial livestock production is the driving force behind rising meat consumption on a world scale, and the process of cycling great volumes of industrial grains and oilseeds through soaring populations of concentrated animals serves to magnify the land and resource budgets, pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions associated with agriculture. These dynamics not only reflect disparities but are exacerbating them, foremost through climate change. Thus, this paper suggests that rising meat consumption and industrial livestock production should be understood together to comprise a powerful long-term vector of global inequality.