Making Prevention Work: Case Study France. Materials about Prevention Vol. 17 June 2020.

As part of a larger project mapping preventive structures and policies for children, young people and families in 12 European countries, the Making Prevention Work study aims to provide a consistent base for developing preventive policies in Europe. It examines approaches across the EU that demonstrate success with local preventive work. The in-depth case study of France presented in this publication is one of three published in the context of the Making Prevention Work study. Making Prevention Work draws on a concept of prevention that is framed in universalist and integrative terms. The concept is universalist in that it addresses all children and young people, even those not seen as being “at-risk.” It is integrative because prevention should be organized from a child’s point of view, not in terms of administrative responsibilities. As such, this concept targets the establishment of prevention chains that link different institutions over the life-course. Making Prevention Work includes summary factsheets of the preventive concepts, structures and practices mapped in 12 EU member states (Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, England (UK), Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden) as well as three case studies (Austria, France and the Netherlands) featuring data from interviews with experts and implementing actors

The manifold meanings of ‘post-New Public Management’ – a systematic literature review

For more than 30 years, New Public Management has been the most popular label for public sector reform. For more than 15 years, however, New Public Management has also been heavily criticized. There is a growing trend to consider New Public Management as ‘dead’ and claim the evolution of a new reform trend, called post-New Public Management. Like New Public Management, post-New Public Management is an umbrella term that is used to prescribe and/or describe different reform trends. The aim of this article is to give a state of the art of recent post-New Public Management literature by discerning the manifold meanings of this label. For this purpose, a systematic review of 84 articles published in peer-reviewed high-quality journals has been conducted. The article shows that, so far, the post-New Public Management idea has been very influential as an ‘ideational weapon’ to indicate a crisis of the New Public Management model. The use of the post-New Public Management idea as a blueprint for future reform, however, still needs further treatment

Angeschoben oder ausgebremst? Die Verstetigung der integrierten Stadtentwicklung in der Sozialen Stadt

Das städtebauliche Bund-Länder-Programm "Soziale Stadt" hat seit seiner Initiierung 1999 in zahlreichen Kommunen politische und administrative Lernprozesse im Hinblick auf die Entwicklung benachteiligter Gebiete angeschoben. Die drastische Reduzierung der Fördermittel durch den Bund im Jahr 2011 bei fortbestehender Unsicherheit der weiteren Förderperspektive konfrontiert die lokalen Akteure mit dem Problem, wie eine Verstetigung des eingeleiteten Policy-Wandels erreicht werden kann. Der Beitrag illustriert anhand von vier Fallstudien, dass weniger die „klassischen“ Erklärungsfaktoren der Politikfeldanalyse, sondern vielmehr die Probleminterpretation und der politische Wille die Inangriffnahme oder das Unterlassen von Verstetigungsbemühungen beeinflussen.In many cities the German urban development programme "Social City" launched in 1999 has contributed to political and administrative learning of local authorities as regards the development of deprived neighbourhoods. As the German Federal Government cut funding to a considerable extent in 2011 and future prospects of funding being insecure local authorities were facing the problem how to perpetuate the policy-change initiated during the programme's implementation. Analyzing the implementation process in four cities this article shows that local authorities' efforts to perpetuate policy innovations are largely influenced by their problem interpretation and willingness to change rather than by the classical determinants usually put forward in public policy analysis

Permissive und restriktive Muster in den Asylpolitiken der Bundesländer

Die Asylpolitiken der deutschen Bundesländer sind durch große Unterschiede gekennzeichnet. Im verbundföderalen System der Bundesrepublik Deutschland nutzen die Länder ihre Verwaltungshoheit für eigene Akzente bei der Umsetzung der bundeseinheitlichen Regelungen. Der Beitrag verfolgt das Ziel, entsprechende Unterschiede in den Asylpolitiken der Länder systematisch zu erfassen und einzuordnen. Die zentralen Fragen lauten: In welchem Ausmaß unterscheiden sich die Politiken in den Ländern? Und: Lassen sich Muster einer eher "restriktiven" oder "permissiven" Asylpolitik erkennen? In der Tat finden wir in der Anwendung des Asylbewerberleistungsgesetzes, den Rückführungspraxen und der (Nicht-) Einrichtung von Ankerzentren länderspezifische Muster einer eher "permissiven", d. h. den Zugang von Geflüchteten zum sozialen und öffentlichen Leben erleichternden, oder eher "restriktiven", d. h. Zugang hemmenden, Asylpolitik. Mit dieser systematisierenden Darstellung der Unterschiede in der Policy-Anwendung leisten wir einen Beitrag zur vergleichenden policyanalytischen Untersuchung der Asylpolitiken der Bundesländer und liefern die Grundlage für weitere, kausalanalytische Untersuchungen.Asylum policies of the German states vary greatly. Within the German system of cooperative federalism, the states use their administrative power when implementing federal asylum law in very different ways. The article seeks to record and classify the according differences. To what extent do asylum policies of the states vary? Can we detect patterns of "permissive" or "restrictive" policies at the Länder-level? We analyse the states' practices in implementing the German 'Asylum seekers benefits'- Law, in deporting rejected asylum seekers, and in establishing (or not) special reception centres. We find states with more "permissive", policies and states with more "restrictive", policies. The article delivers a systematic description of the differences in how the German Länder apply central rules regarding the treatment of refugees, thus contributing to the comparative analysis of the states' asylum policies and paving the way for causal analyses yet to come

Was ist ein Politikfeld und warum entsteht es?

Mit der Frage, was ein Politikfeld ist, hat sich die Politikfeldanalyse bislang allenfalls am Rande beschäftigt. Die wachsende Differenzierung von Themenfeldern und die Zunahme von Problemlagen führen zu einer Proliferation "politikfeldverdächtiger Konstellationen". Welches aber sind die konstituierenden Merkmale eines Politikfeldes und welches sind die Kausalfaktoren, die die Entstehung eines solchen Politikfeldes verursachen? Diesen beiden Fragen geht der Beitrag nach, indem er erstens das Politikfeld definiert und anhand der festgelegten Kriterien fünf "politikfeldverdächtige Konstellationen" untersucht. Zweitens werden theoriegeleitete Hypothesen zu den Ursachen der Entstehung von Politikfeldern entwickelt und diese Hypothesen in den fünf Feldern überprüft und abschließend präzisiert.Whereas policy analysis in German is called "Politikfeldanalyse", so far little effort has been made to define what a policy field really is. The differentiation of issues and the increase of problems produce more and more constellations that could be a policy field. Yet, what are the criteria for a policy field to exist? And which are the driving forces that cause the emergence of policy fields? This article addresses these two questions. It first defines the policy field and analyses accordingly five constellations that could be a policy field. Second, based on theoretical assumptions the paper develops three hypotheses on the possible causal driving forces and tests these hypotheses with our five constellations

Against the rules: pressure induced transition from high to reduced order

Envisioning the next generation of drug delivery nanocontainers requires more in- depth information on the fundamental physical forces at play in bilayer membranes. In order to achieve this, we combine chemical synthesis with physical–chemical analytical methods and probe the relationship between a molecular structure and its biophysical properties. With the aim of increasing the number of hydrogen bond donors compared to natural phospholipids, a phospholipid compound bearing urea moieties has been synthesized. The new molecules form interdigitated bilayers in aqueous dispersions and self-assemble at soft interfaces in thin layers with distinctive structural order. At lower temperatures, endothermic and exothermic transitions are observed during compression. The LC1 phase is dominated by an intermolecular hydrogen bond network of the urea moieties leading to a very high chain tilt of 52°. During compression and at higher temperatures, presumably this hydrogen bond network is broken allowing a much lower chain tilt of 35°. The extremely different monolayer thicknesses violate the two-dimensional Clausius–Clapeyron equation

Two-Year Progress of Pilot Research Activities in Teaching Digital Thinking Project (TDT)

This article presents a progress report from the last two years of the Teaching Digital Thinking (TDT) project. This project aims to implement new concepts, didactic methods, and teaching formats for sustainable digital transformation in Austrian Universities’ curricula by introducing new digital competencies. By equipping students and teachers with 21st-century digital competencies, partner universities can contribute to solving global challenges and organizing pilot projects. In line with the overall project aims, this article presents the ongoing digital transformation activities, courses, and research in the project, which have been carried out by the five partner universities since 2020, and briefly discusses the results. This article presents a summary of the research and educational activities carried out within two parts: complementary research and pilot projects