Gender Mainstreaming Strategies in the E.U.: Delivering on an Agenda?

Recent years have witnessed the emergence of anew policy style within the E.U., characterized by voluntary policy transfer between member states and soft policy instruments including exchange of best practice, targets, benchmarking and national league tables. This article examines how these methods have been used by gender mainstreaming advocates and evaluates the impact of this strategy to-date upon E.U. policy-making procedures and outputs. It is argued that mainstreaming has provided new opportunities for feminists to influence the E.U. policy agenda, but that the impact of mainstreaming varies between sectors and member states. The concluding section considers the implications of E.U. mainstreaming from the perspective of the European Women's Lobby(E.W.L.). This discussion highlights the potential opportunities and risks for feminists of mainstreaming. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Donor conception, secrecy and the search for information

Donor conception has historically been shrouded in secrecy. Such secrecy has been underpinned by social views and legal issues concemrning the adults involved in the process--the donor, the recipient parent(s), and, at times, the doctor. However, there is increasing recognition of the need to focus upon donor-conceived people's interests and rights to have identifying and non-identifying information about their donors. This editorial examines issues raised in relation to information release, while also introducing some of the arguments presented by other authors in this Special Issue of the JLM. It also considers recent Australian federal and State government inquiries that have favoured information release and the former Victorian Infertility Treatment Authority's service model to support people in the process of information access and release. While there has been a clear shift to favouring openness and honesty, legislative action is still required to ensure the balancing and realisation of people's interests.     

Narrative Inquiry and the Search for Connectedness: Practitioners and Academics Developing Public Administration Scholarship

Maintaining a vibrant field of public administration requires ongoing efforts to link the worlds of academic researchers and practitioners. We suggest that research itself, traditionally pursued by academics, is a promising mechanism for making this connection. In particular, researchers and practitioners in public administration can do research together in a way that enhances mutual learning, draws on the strengths of each to create useful knowledge of high quality, appreciates and tolerates of each others' worlds, styles, and contributions. Using research to promote connectedness means rethinking the roles that practitioners and academics play in generating knowledge in the field. In our project, insights from the assumptions and practices of narrative inquiry helped us to identify three research roles for practitioners: as sources of knowledge, as producers of knowledge, and as active consumers who inform the research process.     

Lesson-Drawing from New Zealand and Covid-19: The Need for Anticipatory Policy Making

The Covid-19 pandemic has seen most governments worldwide having to think on their feet rather than implementing detailed and well-rehearsed plans. This is notwithstanding the fact that a pandemic was bound to happen, sooner or later (and will happen again). The effectiveness of national responses has varied enormously. Globally, New Zealand has been perceived as setting the gold standard in ‘curve crushing’, and for a short period achieved Covid-free status. For this achievement, much credit is due to the New Zealand government, especially to Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern. However, post-lockdown the New Zealand government has encountered a number of Covid policy implementation problems (many of which could have been anticipated). Nevertheless, Covid-19 might still turn out to have been a seismic shock to existing policy processes and policy frames (such as austerity). If so, there are grounds for hope that in the future, governments and voters might be less short-term in their outlook. Perhaps anticipatory, rather than reactive policy making, might become more fashionable?     

Public spending interactions and local politics. Empirical evidence from French municipalities

This paper aims at testing whether there exist spending interactions between French municipalities by estimating a dynamic panel data model. Our results suggest that there are some interactions between neighbouring municipalities as regards primary and investment expenditures. A positive relationship between municipalities’ wage bill and unemployment rates is likely to stress a rise of temporary employment in those municipalities that suffer from social troubles. Further, the estimation results show that these interdependences also exist between cities whose mayors have the same partisan affiliation. Finally, our results confirm the opportunistic behaviour of local governments, which increase all categories of public spending in pre-electoral periods     

Migration and the EU Global Strategy: Narratives and Dilemmas

Migration did not figure in the European Security Strategy of 2003. Never mentioned as a threat, it was not even mentioned as a risk. Thirteen years later, migration is widely cited in the new European Union Global Strategy. Much richer than the previous security document and global in aspiration, the Global Strategy treats migration as a challenge and an opportunity, recognising the key role it plays in a rapidly changing security landscape. However, this multi-faceted perspective on migration uncovers starkly different political and normative claims, all of which are legitimate in principle. The different narratives on migration present in the new strategic document attest to the Union’s comprehensive approach to the issue but also to critical and possibly competing normative dilemmas.