The implementation of Directive 2001/20/EC into Belgian law and the specific provisions on pediatric research

The European Clinical Trial Directive (2001/20/EC) was implemented into the Belgian legal system by the Law of 7 May 2004 concerning experiments on the human person (LEH). Apart from implementing the European Directive, this law also broadens the scope of the Directive from interventional clinical trials to all medical experiments involving human persons. This article offers an overview of the requirements for involving minors in medical experiments that are captured in the LEH, illustrates the process of protocol review by an ethics committee, and discusses the dissimilarities between the LEH and the European Directive.     

Gender and power in the research process

This article explores the gender dynamics in a multidisciplinary research team, focussing particularly on the way gendered power struggles affect the production of knowledge. Gender-based conflicts over the relevance of gender to the research process threatened to silence all the women involved in the research: the researchers, the participants and the woman on the management team. As the research was exploring the under-representation of women in senior positions in organisations and their experiences of gendered processes at work, this silencing would have had particularly serious implications for the outcome of the project. During this conflict, power resources were mobilised by both women and men. The eventual resolution of the conflict ensured that women's voices were heard and their experiences made visible. This had a crucial effect on both the research process and the outcome of the research project and demonstrates the critical effect of gender on the knowledge that can be produced by research.     

Passing the buck? Analyzing the delegation of discretion after transposition of European Union law

This article seeks to map and explain the extent to which national legislators constrain discretion contained in European Union directives during transposition. To this end, we use standard hypotheses from the domestic delegation literature regarding the necessity of policy conflict and transaction costs. Our empirical approach is based on a focused comparison of the transposition of several provisions of the Asylum Reception Conditions Directive in France, Germany, and the Netherlands. In order to capture content‐specific aspects of discretion we employ an innovative measurement tool, the so‐called Institutional Grammar Tool. The study shows that while all three states formally comply with the directive, the level of European Union discretion delegated to practical implementers varies considerably across the cases. Standard delegation theory cannot fully explain the patterns. Instead, existing delegation theories have to be adjusted to the transposition context, by accounting for domestic preferences regarding the status quo.     

The Role of Class Action Litigation in Achieving Child Welfare Reform: A Study in Public Conflict Resolution

This article traces the history of a 16-year court battle over the child welfare system in Kansas City, Missouri, which eventually headed toward resolution as the result of an innovative public policy negotiation process. The process combined the substantive expertise of nationally and locally respected child welfare professionals with political muscle at the state, local, and community levels to develop and implement a plan for reform. If the results of this process become institutionalized in the Kansas City child welfare system, it will represent a significant transformation in the governing culture and practices of the system and the community it serves.