Esther Keymolen & Dennis Broeders (Erasmus University Rotterdam)

Western governments increasingly turn to technological solutions when dealing with social problems. Public safety requires CCTV, immigration policies require biometric databases, the fight against terrorism requires massive data mining, and improving healthcare has also taken a digital turn. In the Netherlands the digitalization of youth care, in the form of the introduction of a 'National Reference Index High-Risk Youngsters' (Verwijsindex Risicojongeren, VIR), provides a very poignant case. Not because of digitalization itself, but because of the manner in which the undisputed goal of protecting and caring for innocent youth contrasts with the practical implementation of the system in terms of technology and functions. The VIR is the result of public outcry about a number of well publicized cases in which the tragic deaths of very small children were (at least) partially connected with a failing youth-care system. Youth- (health)care organizations failed to protect children from seriously damaging home situations, even when the family problems could or should have been known. Lack of co-operation between youth-care professionals has been put forward as one of the reasons for insufficient vigilance and care in these cases. Under the rallying cry 'never again a Maas-girl' - one of the toddlers was found in the river Maas - public and political sentiments aligned in a call for a solution to prevent professional miscommunication and lack of cooperation. In line with Snow et al. (1986) we can speak of value amplification. The innocence of a child must be protected and cared for. Once such sentiment is validated and diffused, mobilization of actors and reorganizations can start up without too much resistance. The narrative of the lost innocence of children created a frame of resolve and action that led to the national installment of the VIR. This Reference Index is an information system that collects risk reports (e.g., contacts with the police, drug or alcohol addiction, child abuse) about children and adolescents provided by different youth-care professionals within and across municipalities. The Reference Index mutually informs these professionals on their involvement with these children and enables information exchange and collaboration. All in all, the national debate resulted in a call for a rather basic and straightforward system that requires professionals to get into contact when the system indicates they have a 'joint' case. Increased information should lead to increased vigilance and surveillance which, in turn, should prevent new tragedies.

 The practical and technical implementation of the Reference Index has been entrusted to the municipalities. This has significantly broadened the actor field and has led to a great diversification of local systems which are often much broader in set up than is needed to meet the requirements of the National Reference Index. This diversification of systems has also translated into a diversification of functions. The original basic approach formulated at the national level was predominantly rooted in the notion of (youth) care. With the translation of the national idea into local practices and systems, new power relations and interests have entered the digital arena of youth care, which in turn altered the meaning of the Reference index. We argue that in the translation from the national to the local level two additional relations are made possible by the system that focus more on control than on care. In addition to the function of increasing the care of the healthcare professionals for high-risk youth the system enables a control relation among professionals themselves (a 'surveillance of peers') and a (automated) control relation between the system itself and the professionals. In this third surveillance relation some discretionary power is delegated (comp. Latour 1992) to the local Reference Index itself through automatic decision trees, automatic reminders and notifications to supervising actors. The translation between the national and the local level will be built on the case of the system the city of Rotterdam has introduced. These additional functions are the result of a broadening of the original nationally formulated aim of the system and the interaction between local youth care and the much wider municipal agenda. In this sense the basic idea of the Reference index lost some of its innocence too.   

Céline Mavrot (Université de Lausanne & KPM-Université de Berne)

The current research is a case study on harm reduction policies in matter of drug addiction in two Swiss cantons. We aim to find out why the formulation of such policies is a matter of professional specialists in Geneva, whereas the question is highly politicized in the canton of Vaud. Actually in Vaud, a decisional system including very few actors was replaced by a confrontation between two large policy networks contending with each other in various policy formulation arenas. The conflict between professionals was first redoubled by an administrative dispute, and finally came to a long term communal and cantonal parliamentary controversy. We thus analyze why the struggle in Vaud progressively led the two networks to reconfigure themselves along a right/left political opposition. We will also show how this controversy between the proponents and the adversaries of harm reduction policies was characterised by the confusion between drug prevention's and AIDS prevention's discursive registers.

 Three dimensions have been investigated in order to understand to what factors we can infer the two politico-professional coalitions' stabilization in Vaud. First, the associative and professional institutionalization of both drug addiction's and aids prevention's fields is reconstituted. This permits to comprehend the conflict opposing the professionals as well as their differentiated chances of access to the public authorities. From the study of this fields' professionalization, we secondly turn to the analysis of the alliances made between these professionals and the local political parties. We show why these professional fields' structuring dynamic led the harm reduction militants to operate a politicization of the question in order to make it exist. The analysis thirdly retraces the progressive fragmentation of the arenas that sheltered the debate. We see here how the alliance/concurrence process between the groups and their cognitive framing activity were influenced by their insertion in a plurality of action and enunciation scenes, each of these scenes being governed by partly autonomous dynamics.

 We will explain the structure of preference's genesis of these two groups of actors and their actualisation during their inclusion/exclusion of the different spheres of policy formulation. The theoretical posture thus adopted is definitely processualist. The main focus will be on the continual dynamic between actor's stances and activities, as well as on the discursive constraints that structure idea formulation in each arena. The analyse recount the articulation between the specialist's claims, the ties that link them to administration and to the policy mediators, and finally the debate among political parties. The finality is to seize the successive "ideas in action" adjustments in the long range. Thereby, we retrace each step of the extension of the chaîne de traduction between the diverse arenas, as well as of the diversification process of the decisional system. We will show that far from being a zero-sum game, the progressive implementation of these policies nourished the oppositional process between the two groupings. We will outline that the two sets of "big ideas" in conflict for this policy formulation don't have a per se existence, but rather befall in the course of action.

Frédéric Schoenaers & David Delvaux (University of Liège)

When "interessement" doesn't necessarily involve enrolment! The case of the introduction of the management paradigm in the Belgian Judicial system

Since the 90's, the totality of the judicial sphere (police and justice) has been widely criticized by the political world and by the public opinion because of its "disorganization" and slow. A new kind of pressure appeared in order that justice improves its performances in terms of efficacy, quality and efficiency. In other words, new expectations were addressed to the jurisdictions and their actors. They should strengthens the profile of public service of justice by being more opened towards the outside world (development of partnership, better consideration of the users, better accessibility and intelligibility) but also by agreeing to enter in a logic of reporting.

These new requirements were accompanied with a series of reform's plans ("Octopus plan", "Themis plan", reform of the judiciary map, development of workload measurement devices, total quality management, etc.) all supposed to contribute to an improvement of the functioning of the judiciary. If we analyse the hyperactivity of the governments and their succeeding initiatives, one can say that justice lives a deep mutation: the management paradigm has gained this "protected" sphere. At least, all the involved stakeholders (within or outside) the jurisdictions seems to be "interested" by the management. More specifically, the discourses around performances and quality make common sense among public prosecutors or judges. At the same time, we can also testify, following our own field observations, that none of all the initiatives cited above have been concretely completed! In other words, if magistrates seem to be "interested" by management, they are, since 15 years, not yet really "enrolled".

This contribution will firstly try to briefly retrace the emergence of the management paradigm in the Belgian judiciary. Secondly we will emphasise on one specific project started 10 years ago and which is still not effective: the measure of the workload for the bench's judges. In this second part, we will show in what all the judges are sharing a common view about the principle of workload measurement but also why they are blocking the innovation process.

Christophe Dubois (University of Liège)

 From restorative justice to restorative detention: intermediary artefacts and actors in a policy making process.

« Although it is recognized as being inhuman by some people and inefficient by others, prison only seldomly serves as a gathering political objective ». The ministerial circular of 4 October 2000, which is implementing « restorative justice » in Belgian prisons, seems however to be an outstanding case in this matter as it includes prison in the political program. The circular, that creates a new role of « restorative justice consultant » and plans to assign one in each prison, is indeed a first step towards a gradual reconsideration of Belgian penitentiary policies. It is also the result of a policy making process involving several elements such as, among others, militancy, religious thoughts, political voluntarism, new professional practices, scientific strategies, and so on. Many of these elements are incorporated in various intermediary artefacts such as documents, white papers, scientific reports, Internet websites, folders, books, drafts, memoranda, submissions, minutes of meeting, letters of guidance or press releases.

Through the dynamic of their writing, reading and diffusion, these artefacts can be understood as carriers or vehicles of messages and ideas, norms and representations. Behind such dynamics, some intermediary actors are producing and carrying these artefacts and their messages from one social world -such as associations, militancy, criminology and politics- to one another. Focusing on intermediary artefacts -documents- and actors -brokers-, we will depict the genetic process through which some ideas (such as peace building, mediation, victims and prisoners' rights, culture of respect and so on) have been translated, feeding a policy making process that institutionalizes the criminological concept of restorative justice in a prison policy and litigation.  To report this policy making process, we will use an analytical scheme inspired by the sociology of translation. This translation concept is about « cognitive activities, their transformations, the loans and reinterpretations they rely on. But it also stresses the importance of material elements (written documents, statistics) and real interactions between people involved » in the analyzed process. This theoretical scheme is really appropriate « when the relationship or mixing of distinctive social worlds need to be analyzed » and when « the issues hybridization and their management coordination by public administration appear to be critical ».

Arno Simons (Technische Universität Berlin)

The idea of using carbon trading as a policy instrument to mitigate anthropogenic climate change has spread from the US, where it originated from the idea of tradable permits since the 1970s, around the globe and lead to the development of carbon markets in various countries. With the parallel emergence of specialized regulatory agencies, consultancies, certifiers and verifiers, brokering firms and think tanks, carbon trading has become a professional business - the so called carbon economy.

How are we to understand this transformation of carbon trading as an idea of economic theory into enacted policy practice? Building on an emerging sociology of policy instrumentation, this paper rejects the idea that the success of carbon trading can be explained in terms of economic efficiency, or rational choice of policy instruments. Rather it argues that the development of markets for carbon trading can best be understood as contingent processes of innovation in governance. These processes are only partly intended or deliberatively designed and ultimately the result of continual negotiation and mutual translation. Also contrary to what a functionalist 'tool box' perspective suggests, carbon trading is not a passive and neutral tool that is simply 'at the disposal' of policy makers. Instead it shows, to some extent, characteristics of a collective actor that actively promotes solutions and seeks to create political demand.

This paper explores dynamics of the European carbon market (ECM) by suggesting and probing a constructivist network building approach. Evolving carbon market institutions shall be understood as outcomes of translations within the innovation network. EU and member state governments, energy companies, think tanks, consultancy firms, research institutes, financial service providers, traders etc. are all involved in the construction of the market while they each pursue different goals and follow their own agendas. Different actors take on different roles (e.g. designers, users, sponsors, evaluators etc.) and show different degrees of market shaping abilities. A particular focus will be on the formation of reflexive interests among actors for whom emissions trading has become an end in itself.

By comparing and evaluating different (social) network approaches for the study of innovation in governance this paper sketches an approach to map actor constellations and trace interactions and movements of actors in the construction of carbon markets.

Sarah Armstrong (University of Glasgow)

This paper reports on emergent themes from an 'ethnography of penal policy' I am currently conducting. In this larger research project, I have been following, and sometimes participating in, a major reform of imprisonment in Scotland. An ethnography of policy, as opposed to one of policy makers, treats policy as the agent which brings social actors to life and into relationships with each other. Policies also activate settings in which particular spaces, knowledges and materials are available for guiding action. For all actors in this policy process the recognised policy objects are prisons (how to reduce the populations they contain) and prisoners (how to stop them getting into prisons). Like boundary objects, the meaning imbued in these entities varies across settings as policy actors work in tandem (Lee Star). But differences may be more fundamental, for not only does meaning vary depending on one's perspective but the resources available in each setting to recognise the basic existence of these objects suggests that the object itself changes. A prison is: an experience of institutionalisation (for prisoners), an employer (for staff), a neighbour (for communities), a budget item (for governments), a customer (for toilet paper makers), a research subject (for me) and a fiefdom (for penal governors). 

 The paper identifies three distinct social settings in the current penal policy reform and considers for each of them how their particular knowledges, materials and spaces affect not just what prison (or the prisoner) means, but what it is. In understanding the policy object as changeable according to setting, it raises a problem of translation for a policy process which depends for its implementation on consensus. The aim of the paper is twofold: to give a substantive (though preliminary) account of how different actors conceive of prisons and prisoners differently in the debate about reform, and to consider what methods are best (i.e. credibly, robustly and legitimately) able to work in such a reflexive, constructionist environment.

Amanda Williams (University of Calgary)

Metaphors as tools of translation: A case study juxtaposition of policy planner and community understandings of the Alberta SuperNet

 Drawing on the contributions of actor-network theory (Akrich & Latour,1992; Callon, 1986; Law, 2002; Mol, 2003) and insights from both pragmatic (i.e. Hellsten, 2002; Maasen & Weingart, 2000) and cognitive approaches to metaphor analysis (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), this paper's fundamental premise is that metaphors ought to be taken seriously as actors in the policy world since they can reveal a great deal about translation dynamics. It begins first by reviewing the key concepts within actor-network theory and then illustrates how some of the current critiques associated with this theory-method (such as Maclean & Hassard, 2004; Whittle & Spicer, 2008; Winner, 1993) might be overcome by introducing metaphor as a central actor in the formation of emerging policy spaces. This investigation then elaborates on these ideas by conducting a conceptual metaphor analysis surrounding a "real world" initiative (the Alberta SuperNet).

The Alberta SuperNet is a recently established "big idea" technology project that draws on a wide range of metaphorical conceptualizations. This over half a billion dollar government initiative involved the building of a high speed, high capacity broadband network which links 429 communities across the province of Alberta, Canada. Since 2002, policymakers, users (mostly in rural communities) and researchers, have all actively engaged in the process of understanding and experiencing this initiative via metaphor, making it an ideal site of investigation. 

This paper juxtaposes the view of policy planners, gleaned through 10 semi-structured interviews, against those of rural citizens (gathered in six focus groups and during eight town hall meetings) with a view of answering two key questions: (1) how were metaphors used by policy planners to circumscribe which behaviours count, and what counts as behaviour, for both human and non-human actors, and (2) how did citizens respond to how this initiative was problematized, the assigned solution, and their roles as potential users?

In the final assessment, it is contended that metaphors play a core role in structuring the persuasive efforts of policy planners and in doing so metaphors become tools of translation. It is also demonstrated that while citizens often accepted the metaphors provided to them by policy planners, they used the same metaphors in quite different ways to challenge this particular policy space.  Overall, it is argued that metaphor can be quite useful for identifying the following within an actor-network: the simultaneous presence of coherence and difference (also known as multiplicity), potential sources of instability, and the success or failure of a particular translation effort.

Rosalind Cavaghan (University of Edinburgh)

This paper lays out a new way to consider gender mainstreaming, a potentially radical gender equality policy which has now enjoyed over ten years of implementation in the EU.  In short, the policy requires all policy makers in all areas to evaluate the gendered effects of their policies and to alter them, so as to contribute to increased gender equality. 

 In practice, multiple interpretations of 'gender mainstreaming', endowed with highly variable degrees of coherence and efficacy, have emerged in implementation. The research agenda for gender policy analysts therefore centres on two issues 1) How do local varieties of gender mainstreaming come about and 2) Given that some results have been 'disappointing', what really happens when 'gender mainstreaming' is implemented, whether successful or not?

 This paper draws on ANT and the concept of (gender) knowledge to examine  gender mainstreaming as an instance of 'translation'.  Using material from recent fieldwork this paper provides an overview of the sociological processes of change and power which the translation approach renders visible. 

 Firstly the paper shows how action emanating from DG Research's gender unit produced materials, inscriptions and durable associations which have endowed gender mainstreaming in EU science and research policy with a reasonable degree of instutionalisation.  Secondly, I will argue that these actions have in some instances successfully translated gender mainstreaming into DG Research staff's practice.

 Lastly the paper will explore instances within DG Research, where gender mainstreaming remains an inactive policy.  I argue that a crucial difference in the construction of 'gender' is visible between staff who are active or inactive with regard to gender mainstreaming.  Whereas staff actively involved in gender mainstreaming construct their understanding of the gender issue in terms of practice, inactive staff construct their understanding using anecdotal or personal knowledge.