This thesis explores how presuppositions and assumptions can affect policy making, by investigating if anti-trans and 'gender critical' rhetoric may have affected the now reversed NHS policy ‘Amendments to service specification for gender identity development service for children and adolescents’ which directly influenced the still in use Karolinska University Hospital policy, ‘Policyförändring gällande hormonell behandling till minderåriga patienter med könsdysfori inom Tema Barn’. By using the Foucauldian inspired poststructural WPR policy analysis method by Bacchi and Goodwin, it was uncovered that the underlying assumptions and presuppositions of the hegemonic ‘truths’ the representation of the problem relied on, assumed dominance through an increase of anti-transgender and anti-gender-diverse rhetoric in political and public debates, and in media. A monumental aspect of this is the Bell v Tavistock case and its now overturned first ruling, which was used to legitimise anti-transgender and anti-gender-diverse policies and politics. The point of departure for these ‘truths’ is the publication of The Transexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male (1979) by Janice Raymond, which inspired TERFs, as well as far-right politicians, who echo the intention to limit gender-affirming treatments, and the centres where they are performed, in order to morally mandate it out of existence.

The devolution of immigration policy to the 50 states has resulted in the enactment of more than 1,500 state-level immigration since 2005. For the record 42 million immigrants living in the U.S., these laws have had tremendous consequences related to healthcare utilization and access, community relations with law enforcement, family dissolution, and the exacerbation of income inequalities. While the legislative arena has shifted to the states, our understanding of immigration policymaking remains unclear due to inconsistent and omitted predictors of immigration policy, subjective coding of immigration laws, and statistical modeling that does not take into account changes in key independent variables. Using data primarily from the Census Bureau’s American Factfinder, the Current Population Survey, and the National Council of State Legislatures, and other sources this research refines the quantitative determinants of immigration policy while using time-series analysis to highlight the factors linked to laws designed to integrate or exclude immigrations in the 50 states. Once empirical analysis is conducted, I delve into the details of state level immigration policymaking by interviewing state level bureaucrats within state health departments to determine the role that they, their data analysis, and the research play when it comes to influencing legislators and shaping immigration policy. This mixed methods approach combining statistical modeling and key informant interviews provides important findings that give a clear picture on why state institutional arrangements are crucial for understating immigration policy at the state level.

Yes / Higher Education [HE] policy makers play a major role in the application of international standards on gender equality. Depending on the particular characteristics of each Higher Education organisation, this responsibility is borne and/or shared by specific actors that may be located in Human Resources departments, and/or could be strategically placed throughout the organisational structure. It also rests on the actions and commitment of senior leaders and managers, who are visual and powerful champions for structural change. Either way, policy actors are particularly involved in monitoring and evaluation processes, and policy implementation, as well as legitimation of gender equality standards. Therefore, it is fundamental to work with a clear roadmap to integrate gender equality into organisational change, which would sustain context-specific, legally compliant and responsive policies that meet international and national standards of gender equality and non-discrimination. Accordingly, this resource offer a hands-on and transparent approach to gender mainstreaming in Higher Education institutions, constituting a support tool for policy makers and actors involved in policy development and implementation, which is key for regulating and legitimating organisational transformation along gender sensitive, gender competent, gender balanced and gender equal principles. / FP7

Qu'est-ce que l'Europe politique et l'Europe du sport peuvent faire afin de mieux former les jeunes footballeurs et de mieux les protéger au cours d'un transfert ? Cette interrogation permet aisément la lecture de ce qui est en jeu à la jonction entre le champ sportif et le champ politique. Cet espace de positions sociales que constitue le football européen voit s'affronter des acteurs du mouvement sportif d'un côté, avec d'autres agents issus des institutions européennes. Nous démontrerons comment répondre politiquement à un problème footballistique, ce qui passe par une volonté politique de haut-niveau. Ainsi, le processus de policy-making résulte d'un compromis rendu obligatoire par l'autonomie et la spécificité dont bénéficie le football. La coordination entre les autorités publiques et le mouvement sportif sera un élément prépondérant de contrôle et de régulation pour faire face aux défis actuels dans le monde du football, dans lequel les Nations conservent le véritable pouvoir. / What can the political Europe and the Europe of sport do to better train young football players and to better protect them during a transfer ? This question allows us to see what is at stake in the junction between the sports and the political social field. This European football social space is divided into actors from the sports movement on one's hand, and into agents from the European institutions on the other hand. We'll demonstrate how to answer politically to a problem dealing with football, which requires a high level of political will. Thus, the policy-making process is a compromise made compulsory, both by the specificity and the sports movement autonomy, and by the weight of the national habitus. In the future, coordination between public authorities and the sports movement has been identified as a key element of control and regulation, in order to face up to the current challenges in the world of football, upon which the Nations still hold the real power.

No description available.

This thesis investigates asylum seekers/refugees’ orientations to belonging and identity. It is based on in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted among asylum seekers/refugees residing in Scotland between 2006 and 2008 and on a media monitoring of a number of UK newspapers. The interviews were analysed for interviewees’ orientations to feelings of belonging and identity with the UK, Scotland and homelands. They were also analysed for interviewees’ perceptions (beliefs and understandings) of newspapers’ reporting of asylum and importance to their sense of national belonging and national identity forming. The monitoring provided the context of newspapers’ reporting of asylum at the time of interviews. It enabled a small-scale examination of media content with reference to interviewees’ perceptions. The thesis explores two assumptions. Firstly, asylum seekers/refugees’ national belonging and national identity formations are complex and contingent upon their everyday ‘lived’ experiences. Secondly, asylum seekers/refugees’ belonging and identity formations, as social processes of citizenship, cannot be understood in isolation from the high visibility of the asylum issue in UK media. As an empirical study, therefore, its findings are deployed to critique policymaking, theoretical and media accounts of non-British citizens’ forms of belonging to, and identification with the British ‘nation’. It is suggested that, in addition to policymaking, there are other social circumstances that would facilitate ethnic minority migrants’ national belonging and national identity formations. These factors do not only account for the prioritising of Scottishness over Britishness, but also migrants’ ‘hyphenated’ identities. This thesis will therefore provide evidence suggesting that non-citizens (ethnic minorities), have their own meanings and agency of orientating to a feeling of national belonging and national identity that is nuanced and contingent on their experiences. The thesis does not aim to establish media causality. However, it highlights the fact that newspaper coverage can evoke responses from marginalised groups and provide the context from which identities are narrated and mobilised. The thesis will improve our understanding of the practices, meanings and contestations of belonging and identity that is grounded in the ‘lived’ experiences of noncitizens. This sociological dimension to ethnic minorities’ citizenship forming is not only poorly understood, but has been dominated by theoretical and policymaking accounts in the contemporary state.

This thesis explores how decentralisation of basic pharmaceutical assistance was introduced in Brazil. Decentralisation aimed to improve access to basic medicines. Nevertheless, the inconsistency in the availability of medicines in the Brazilian public health system (SUS - Unified Health System) justified the development of two seemingly contradictory, yet co-existing, approaches: decentralisation and recentralisation. The central question of my thesis was how the simultaneous processes of decentralisation and recentralisation, which took place between 1998 and 2011, have affected access to medicines distributed by SUS. My second aim was to explore how political and power dynamics impacted the implementation of decentralisation policies. I carried out semi-structured interviews with key actors in policy-making for pharmaceutical assistance; interviewees were selected from among the health secretaries and Ministry of Health officials that participated in interfederative boards of agreement. The Grounded Theory approach, as well as documentary analysis, informed my data collection and analysis. My findings suggest that decentralisation was important for improving the availability of medicines, although levels of improvement varied across the country. Decentralisation in itself was not sufficient to improve the availability of medicines largely due to the regional differences. Federative relationships involved in the decentralised management of pharmaceutical assistance are seen as important by health secretaries, but are considered laborious and time-consuming by Ministry of Health officials. Lack of compliance with agreements at state level was mentioned as one of the main barriers to further improving access to medicines. In this context of struggle, the Popular Pharmacy programme, controlled by the federal government, was created in 2004. The initiative, which can be regarded as a recentralisation process, rapidly improved the availability of basic medicines. There is no clear indication of which is the best approach for improving access to basic medicines in Brazil. Both decentralisation and centralisation worked well in some contexts but failed in others.

本研究透過文件分析法、調查研究法和訪談法等研究方法，預測我國教師組織的功能定位及發展趨勢，並據以提出政策制定及法令修訂上的相關建議。 本研究以自編的「教師組織定位調查問卷」為研究工具，調查對象為臺灣地區教育行政人員，中小學校長、主任及教師，家長團體代表等，問卷有效樣本為1,247人，其中包括445位中小學學校行人員（54位校長、391位主任、組長）、661位中小學教師（320位國小教師、205位國中教師、136位高中職教師）、101位中央及地方教育行政人員（36位教育部人員、65位地方教育局人員）、40位家長團體代表。訪談對象則立意選取各層級教師組織意見領袖、專家學者、教育部及教育局管理幹部、立法委員、教師代表及家長代表等共計13人。 本研究經實證研究所得之結論為： 一、教師組織的理想定位應朝高專業與高工會的統合型發展。 二、教師組織定位的發展其理想與實際之間仍有相當差距。 三、不同背景受試者對教師組織定位的認知有相當差異。 （一）就現職而言：教育行政人員與家長對教師組織定位較持專業傾向看法，而教師本身則持工會傾向看法，學校行政人員之看法則介於中間。 （二）就性別而言：男性的受試者比女性更認為教師組織定位應該朝專業取向發展。 （三）就服務年資而言：服務年資較短的受試者，較有教師組織工會取向的看法；而服務年資越長者，則較為傾向專業取向。 （四）就是否為教師會會員而言：教師會會員較非會員更為傾向教師組織工會取向。 （五）就學校類別而言：國民中小學教師較高中職教師更為傾向教師組織工會取向。 （六）就學校性質而言：公私立學校教師對教師組織定位整體看法並無顯著差異；私校教師認為教師角色應為專業取向，但實際上卻扮演工會取向角色。 四、可另訂特別法回應教師勞動三權的訴求，但應引導其循教師法爭取權益。 五、教師會幹部可適度給予會務假，但經費問題仍未形成共識。 六、教師組織之強制入會訴求並未獲得大多數人的認同。 七、教師之罷教權並未獲得大多數人的支持。 依據上述研究結論，提出對教師組織之建議為： 一、發展方向應兼顧教師專業成長及維護教師權益。 二、訴求目標應以「合理的勞動三權」取代「完整的勞動三權」。 三、未來運作應凝聚發展共識，積極開發人力和物力資源。 對教育行政機關之建議為： 一、應以法令及制度引導教師組織朝統合型發展。 二、應協助教師組織縮短理想與實際間的發展差距。 三、應賦予教師合理的勞動三權。 對法令修訂之建議為： 一、應先行推動教師會法。 二、應結合法制及行政支援，同步修訂教師法。 三、應研議修正相關教育法規，以因應「工會法」第四條之修正。 / The research is to forecast the functional orientation and developmental trends for teacher organizations in Taiwan. The methods of the study are based on the interview of related experts, document analysis, and survey studies. The aim of the study is to propose some suggestions for decision makers for reference when they are making policies and revising ordinances in the future. In the study, educational administrative staff, principals, chiefs and staff of elementary and secondary schools, and representatives of parents communities in Taiwan are requested to respond to the Questionnaires of Organizational Orientation for Teachers, and 1,247 effective samples received. These include 445 elementary and secondary school administrators (54 school principals and 391 chiefs and directors), 661 elementary and secondary school teachers (320 elementary school teachers, 205 secondary school teachers and 136 general and vocational high school teachers), 101 central and local educational administrative staff (36 MOE staff and 65 local Education Bureau staff) and 40 representatives of parents communities. The target group of interviewing, a total of 13, are intended to meet all levels of the leaders, educationists and experts in teachers organizations, managers in MOE and Education Bureau, legislators, representatives of teachers and parents. The conclusions of the study are as follows: 1. The ideal orientation of teacher organizations is to develop toward a direction of the integration of high professional and unionization. 2. The gap of the development of organizational orientation for teachers is rather wide between ideal and reality. 3. The perceptions of the organizational orientation for teachers are quite different for the surveyed objects due to the different status and conditions. (1) Regarding current post: About the orientation of teachers’ organizations, the educational administrative staff and parents tend to support the idea of teachers’ being highly professionals while school teachers tend to support unionization of it while the school administrators are about in-between. (2) Regarding sex: Males support professionals than females do. (3) Regarding seniority: Teachers with less experience tend to support unionization while those with rich experiences tend to support professionals. (4) Regarding membership in a teachers’ organization: members tend to support unionization than non-members. (5) Regarding classification of schools: Elementary and secondary school teachers tend to support unionization than general and vocational high school teachers do. (6) Regarding the nature of schools: No distinct diversity for the opinions of public and private school teachers. Only private school teachers consider this post should be more professional, but on the other hand, they admit the unionized associations had taken the place of it. 4. In response to teachers’ demand for the three basic labor rights, we suggest formulating specific ordinances and encourage them to act on the basis of Teachers Law. 5. The approbation of official leave of absence is suggested by most of the people. However, the problem of the budget has come to a halt. 6. The pursuit of the mandatory of participation into the teachers’ organizations does not reach the agreement of the majority. 7. The rights for revoking teachers do not obtain sufficient support of the majority. In accordance with the above conclusions, the suggestions proposed are as follows: 1. The future direction of development should focus on both the growth of teachers’ professionals and preservation of their deserved rights. 2. The goal will be rational labor rights in place of the three basic labor rights. 3. The goal is to be consensuses of development of the organization, and to input manpower as well as material resources with more endeavor. Suggestions for the education administration authority: 1. To lead teachers’ organizations to the formula of unionization under ordinances and decrees. 2. To assist teachers’ organizations to narrow down the gap of the development between ideal and reality. 3. To reward teachers with rational labor rights. Suggestions for revising ordinances and decrees: 1. To formulate Teachers Organization Act is the top priority. 2. To revise Teachers Law with legal and administrative supports. 3. To amend and thrash out related education regulations, in response to the 4th term in the Union Law.

My research focuses on the experience of policy development and implementation. It draws on my involvement in a government policy taskforce, the development of an organisation’s strategy to the taskforce’s recommendations and the commissioning of frontline services. The research material is my personal experience contained in a number of narrative accounts of important happenings. These are then used as a basis to engage with literature and conversation with practitioners, academics and fellow researchers. It is from this iterative process that the argument develops. The approach is therefore qualitative and reflexive in nature. I have argued against the traditional separation between the content of research and methodology. This is on the basis that human experience does not distinguish between the two as we make sense of new emerging situations. The research has been heavily influenced by analogies drawn from complexity sciences as a way of increasing our understanding of ongoing human interaction, namely complex responsive processes of relating (Stacey et al, 2000). By paying careful attention to the experience of policy development and implementation over an extended period of time I am illuminating that the development of policy can often be seen in literature and in the techniques people use as an activity that is isolated from the work of frontline staff. For example, a policy group is formed, policy or a strategy is drafted and the work is then seen to be done. This can be demonstrated by paying attention to the modus operandi of how policy and strategy groups work and how performance criteria are established. When it comes to frontline practice, policy is often silent to the multitude of unfolding interconnected possibilities that present themselves to practitioners as they seek to go about their activities. The way that policy is often presented implies that there is linearity from policy to implementation. Drawing on Elias’s notion of Involvement and Detachment (1987) I am highlighting a paradoxical relationship between policy and implementation. In introducing the notion of paradox, there is a “vitality” that is required to prevent a collapse to one of the two ends of a continuum; for example a conscious or unconscious rejection of policy in favour of embracing frontline practice, or an over reliance on policy to blindly drive through organisational change. In spending three years looking at the policy and implementation I argue that it is more helpful to consider policy and implementation as a “flow”, rather than a series of discrete activities that are seen to be completed before moving to the next policy area. In looking at policy as something that occurs over a span of time (as opposed to an isolated bounded activity) there is an opportunity to prevent the collapse of the paradox outlined above. By accepting the concept of paradox and considering policy from a temporal perspective, rather than one that is a spatially bound system, the issue of policymaking practice can be considered. There are books and management experts that recommend that managers should “walk the walk”, and get closer to frontline activity. My research has sought to add clarity here, arguing for an experiential and temporal form of reflexivity of practice (as opposed to reflective practice). In this context working and being present with frontline practitioners, paying very careful attention to the experience of the unfolding contingent nature of activity influences the practice of policy making. This is a different experience from simply being present, and being seen to be present. It would be ironic for my research to be converted into a policy document with key elements extracted and condensed into bullet points to be applied like a rule. Instead my research is best kept alive in evoking stories and reminiscences between people as they make sense of their experience of policymaking and implementation together.

This thesis explores the significance of hosting the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games (OGs) on elite sport and sport for all development in China. The impacts of the OGs have received significant attention from both academics and practitioners worldwide in the last 20 years and attention has been predominantly paid to political, cultural, economic, and environmental impacts of hosting them, especially as these emerge after the event. However, little concern was given to changes in the host country s sport development that are due to games related preparations. This study identifies the characteristics of the sport system, the policy actors, and how such actors were involved in preparations for the 2008 OGs, and it also outlines the development of policy concerning elite sport and sport for all. A case study approach was adopted focusing on the 2008 OGs. Adopting a qualitative methodology, the study utilised document analysis and semi-structured interviews to elicit data regarding the significance of preparations for the 2008 OGs on elite sport and sport for all. Globalisation, governance and policy making were found to be useful lenses through which to explore the processes of the emergence of such impacts. This thesis found that central government and the General Administration of Sport (GAOS) were the two most powerful policy actors in both elite sport and sport for all development in China, and made decisions as regards how to develop China s sport taking the opportunities of hosting the 2008 OGs. The research reveals that preparations for the 2008 OGs have various impacts on the elite sport and sport for all sectors. On one hand, the impacts can be witnessed in increased funding, more attention received from central government and GAOS, more sport policies, increased number of sport venues, new and updated facilities and equipment, technological, scientific and medical support, and increased sport participation; on the other hand, through providing such support, GAOS exerted its control over non-governmental organisations and individuals, such as via the restrictions by GAOS on athletes commercial activities, and national competitions. The research found evidence that globalisation had influenced China s general governance (including sport governance) process since the 1970s, with governance becoming more privatised and decentralised. However, sport governance took a different path after China won the bid in 2001. Against the backdrop of decentralisation having been previously officially adopted for Chinese sport governance, the research revealed that in pursuit of the aim of winning more medals in the 2008 OGs temporarily recentralisation occurred as required by central government and GAOS. The research also revealed that increased numbers of policies were produced to develop both elite sport and sport for all, however the interests of the public had not always been satisfied because of China's closed policy making process. Therefore, some impacts had not turned out as expected for the public.